Age of Power 1: Legacy (20 page)

“Vaughn?”
I heard. I turned to see Dana coming out of the library and locking the front
door. I’d been so busy looking for the noise that I’d walked almost all the way
up the stairs. I looked around to reorient myself. I saw two kids playing near
the memorial wall.

I
barely glanced at Dana as she joined up with me. She said, “Vaughn, how are you
doing? I meant to come and check on you, maybe get you out of the house. Are
you doing okay?”

Distracted,
I simply said, “Um, yeah, I’m doing all right. Look, have you been…”

I
stopped talking when I looked across the street. There was a person wearing
black leathers and a facemask. The costume—suit—or whatever, looked like the
same design as the woman on the bank wore. He was standing in front of the
newspaper office. Then I blinked, and he was gone.

I
muttered, “Wait, what—how?”

Before
I could react, a loud 
bang
 came from Main Street.
My heart leapt into my throat as I whipped around—knowing what
I’d see.
I heard enough of that sound on the Science Channel. A car’s
gas tank had exploded. To my horror, as Dana and I looked at the burning car,
we saw the tank of the car next to it explode, and then the one after that.
From east to west, the parked cars on our side of Main were exploding as their
gas tanks ignited. It happened so quickly that all Dana and I could do was
watch, frozen with shock.

My
feeling of terror worsened when the explosions happened again on the other side
of Main Street. I saw people react, trying to run from their cars or, strangely
enough, toward them. Worse, cars already driving on the road began to go up in
blasts. I pulled Dana down as one car blew up just as it passed the memorial
wall in front of the square. We could only stare as the car flew up and then
crashed to the ground, upside down and burning. Shrapnel was flying everywhere.
I could hear pieces hit walls, smash glass, and…people.

We
flinched with every new explosion. Controlling my fears, I followed the blasts
and I saw a faint blur near the end of an SUV before it too exploded. Then it
was gone, and the cars—both moving and parked—exploded in dark smoky blasts.
Worse, the secondary damage was ripping into the storefronts. Fragments from
the exploding cars slammed into the large glass display windows, spraying
bystanders with jagged pieces. I looked just as one woman came out of a store
in a dazed panic just in time to have a car explode right in front of her.

More
thunderclaps sounded as explosions continued down the streets out of our sight to
the east. I tried to understand the cause of the blasts, but I couldn't. At
most, I caught a blur. And it disappeared so fast that even the shape was
impossible to discern.

Then
my hearing got involved as something boomed loud, making me cry out and duck.
Painful ringing slammed through my eardrums. Like a sonic boom right next to
me. Dana grabbed me and yelled, "Vaughn! Pull yourself together! People
are in serious trouble! Stop panicking!”

I
looked up at her, wincing from the pain in my ears. I couldn’t say 
anything,
 I was too busy trying not to go deaf. Then a
muffled rumble started from the east. Cars exploded with flames from their
engines as secondary blasts fired off. That was when I saw the two kids
huddling down behind the memorial wall. They were crying with fear, not moving.

Behind
me, Dana yelled, “Oh, Gaia!” She pointed at the explosions of cars. They were
closing in toward the memorial wall, and each explosion was getting bigger.
Without thinking, I yelled for the kids to run. I knew what was coming. That
statue was too tempting a target for whatever this was. A fast attack predator
plane, a missile, a freaking laser—I didn't know.

Whatever
it was would shred their bodies. But, as frightened as they were, the kids
didn't run. It turned out that that was a good thing. What came next missed
them. They ducked just as the wall violently exploded. We had time to see it
fly toward us, passing over the children’s heads harmlessly.

I
screamed. At the same time, everything I heard began to lengthen and intensify.
Muffled roars turned to low rumbles of thunder while cries of pain became deep,
elongated growls. I felt something rumble deep inside my body. Vibrations began
rapidly moving up from deep in my throat. When I opened my mouth, raw force
rushed from me exploding like a fire hose releasing a high-pressure stream of
water. My eyes narrowed to slits, taking in only the stonework arcing toward
us. As it came closer, the wall blew apart at the edges. But the main part—the
statue—was still coming directly at us.

I
mentally pushed at the sound of my scream, and it focused even tighter. I could
see cracks building up throughout the statue as it closed in. Then, just as it
was about to crash into us, the marble soldier blew apart—bursting into a cloud
of dust and gravel right before it would have crushed us. Without thinking, I
turned and covered Dana as much as I could. The world turned silent for a
split-second as my nerves sang, thrumming throughout my body.

Then,
after a moment, the air came alive with sirens and the sound of screams. We
slowly looked up to see that yes, we were alive, and no, we hadn't been utterly
crushed by the large, flying marble wall and soldier.

Straightening,
I turned to see Dana looking at me with a mix of awe and…well, something that
wasn’t fear. For some reason, I thought there should have been fear, but there
wasn’t. I pushed back the odd thought and looked away, more than a bit stunned
at what had just happened. This time, I knew what I had done, and she'd seen me
do it. But no one else had. I was sure of it.

They
were too busy dying or screaming for help.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Everything was gray. Black smoke poured from so many cars that,
with the slightest wind from the north, it broke into a gray haze that dulled
all color. It didn’t help that snow-heavy clouds blocked the sky soon after the
bombings. In this
dull lit
world, everyone did their
best to save the victims of the bombings.

The EMTs, police, and volunteers from town and the region worked
through the debris
;
all trying to find survivors. It
wasn’t easy. There were so many people hurt. And the hardest for us to find
were those who
had been crushed
beneath debris. Thanks
to the numerous blasts waves, structural collapse had occurred in many the
storefronts.

With people buried underneath fallen walls and ceilings, I had
to use my hearing to find them. It ripped into me that I couldn’t save all the
ones that I found. Inside, a part of me screamed that it wasn’t fair. The rest
of me just accepted that not much had been fair since Yama had cut across the
sky. I pushed on, though, helping where I could.

The hardest thing of all was that I had to walk past the cars as
firemen got into them. But I couldn’t ignore the dead, or worse, the living and
burned, not when I could hear their screams when they
were
trapped
. Still, I kept going. I had to. With my hearing, I couldn’t help
but hear the cries for help.

Time passed, and I only realized that the daylight was fading
when I saw the few surviving streetlights come on. Lighting put up by police
quickly joined them, and I kept going in that light until someone touched my
shoulder. I looked and saw a man in a fireman’s jacket with a very dirty police
uniform underneath. With his gray-streaked face, it took me a moment to see
that it was Chief Sinclair. I stared at him dumbly.

He hiked a thumb over his shoulder and said, “Vaughn, go get
some water! You need a break!

I looked at him a few moments longer, too worn out to react.
Then it hit me what he had said, and with a nod, I took a break. Seeing that
emergency workers had set up tents, I went over and grabbed a water bottle from
a barrel full of them. Drinking it at the entrance of the tent, I watched
Sinclair walk the street with blueprints in hand, talking to people. He’d look
the papers over before giving out orders to rescue workers. I thought about it
and realized he’d been doing that all day. I’d just been taking the directions
without even considering that he’d been giving them.

It occurred to me that Sinclair was making hard decisions that I
could never make myself. He was choosing between the safety of the rescue
workers and the victims still trapped in the wreckage. He had to decide on
whether it was too dangerous to try to rescue them or not. That meant victims
had to wait for better equipment to make it safe to get them out. It hit me
that we were bodies, dead and living, we were all bodies. Sinclair was making
sure that the rescue crews weren’t going to end up in the ‘dead’ category.

I finished the water as I watched the police bringing in more
lights. They
were being taken
off trucks from other
towns. People were coming to help. I couldn’t have been happier. We needed the
searchers. As the night deepened, I knew there was still so much to do. With
that thought, I tossed the bottle in the trash and headed out.

Just as I started out the tent, Chief Sinclair came up to me. He
shook his head, as he said, “No.
No way.
You’ve done
enough Vaughn. I want you inside the library now.”

I looked at him. “Come on, Chief. People have been going in and
out all night. Why pick on me?”

Chief Sinclair gestured downward with his head. “Look at your
hands Vaughn. You’re so out of it, you haven’t even noticed, have you?”

I looked and stared. All this time, I hadn’t even noticed that I
shredded the gloves given to me by the emergency workers. I also hadn’t
realized how cut up my hands had become during the last few hours.

Smartly, I said, “And they don’t even sting.
Heh.”

Chief Sinclair chuckled softly. He said, “They will, trust me.
Come on, you need to clean up before they get infected.”

“But...but if I put on new gloves they should be okay.” I said.
I really wanted to get back to rescuing people.

But the Chief shook his head once and clapped a hand on a
shoulder.
“Uh uh.
Inside, Vaughn. Let’s go.”

With a sigh, I went with him. Heading past the tents, we walked
over to the stairs. I noticed the last of the ambulances leaving just then.
There would probably be more. Then we slowed down as we passed near the smashed
memorial. Someone had cleaned away the pieces and pushed them into a pile at
the side of the steps. I winced when Chief Sinclair knelt down near the pile.

Glancing up at me, he said, "You and Dana were damn lucky! She
says it barely missed the two of you. How’d you get past 
that?
”

Grinning, I said, "I don’t know—I was busy cowering!"

Huh. Dana hadn’t told him about me. Okay, I’d deal with that
point later. But he was wondering about it, and that was worrisome enough. He
was a good cop, and that included being an investigator. The damage to the
statue just didn't look like something a bomb explosion would cause. Yet here
it was, dust and bits of rubble all in a pile, yards from the blasts that sent
it flying. Yeah, he'd wonder, so would other people. 

But for now, the Chief only said, "Don't be modest. Dana
said you tried to shield her as it came at you. You were definitely very
lucky."

He glanced back at the pile and said, "That thing should
have crushed you. Thank your lucky stars, kid! I think you get a free life
after this! Though, I'd love to know why it blew apart like that."

I grinned, but inside, I worried. To distract him, I purposely
shivered. “Thank you, sir. So is the library warm?”

Thankfully, he took the hint and nodded as he opened the door.
“Just to warn you, the worst cases were brought here before we were able to
properly set up ambulance runs to the emergency room. So be ready.”

I snorted. Gods knew I had seen more than enough death to last
me a lifetime! How could anything affect me any worse?

Wow, was that a stupid thought. I’d seen people bloodied up
outside, sure. But nothing—
not even
the
most horrifying
of those sights—had prepared me for the
smell. Copper and iron rushed at me as we walked in. The smell shocked me. I
stopped moving, causing Chief Sinclair to bump into me.

Cal Hobbs had said that they had made the front area into a
triage station for the worst of the bomb victims. There weren’t any victims,
thankfully. Ambulances had taken them to the hospital once they were stable
enough to move. But the blood—on the tables, the floor, the walls, and chairs,
it was all there. I tried to swallow down the bile rising in my throat, but
nothing was going to take it away this time.

Rushing through the room, I passed people who tiredly looked up
from stacks of blueprints and street plans. I ignored them and headed to the
bathroom. I barely made it to the first stall before my stomach let loose. For
what seemed an endless moment, I was on my knees over the toilet. I flushed
every few minutes so the smell itself didn’t keep it going. Wonderful, some
hero I was. One little sight of blood and I freaked. I’d done it with Jessup
and his…ugh. I threw up again.

After I’d been leaning over the toilet for a while, I heard the
door open.
Wonderful.
This was so not the way I wanted
people to see me. Hell, even when I’d gotten drunk with Brand before, I hadn’t
gotten like this. For me, the hangover from hell happened afterward, and Brand
was the one ‘worshipping’ over the toilet. I thought for a second that he’d
laugh about this, but then it hit me that he couldn’t. Oddly, though,
remembering his death was like
being hit
by ice water.
It brought my stomach back under control. 
Priorities.

Whoever came in said, “Hey, don’t worry about being caught. I
did the same thing when all this went down…”

I gave a blazing retort of a groan. But I didn’t throw up again.
Taking it slow, I got up and went to the sink. After a moment of washing the
taste out of my mouth, I looked in the mirror, wondering who the ashen guy was
looking back at me. The water had plastered my hair down, and I looked like I’d
just seen Hell.

“Oh, yeah,” I muttered, “I just did.”

Then I looked past my reflection to nod to the guy with blond
curly hair and familiar blue eyes. He was taller and a lot thinner than I was.
He was wearing an ash-stained red sweater, blue jeans, and boots. And, for the
life of me, I could not remember where I’d met him before. I grunted at him as
I washed off as much ash as I could. Halfway done, I said, “Blood and ash…not
my thing.”

He sighed and glanced down. “Not mine, either. My sister says
I’m usually too prissy to let myself get this dirty!”

I grinned. “I’ve heard that sisters can be annoying. My mom has
one in Seattle. They always argue.”

I went back to cleaning up as much as I could and, once I dried
off, I reached out a hand and said, “Nice to meet you.”

He grinned and returned the handshake. As thin as he was, he had
an impressive grip. I barely noticed a tingling when we shook hands.

He said, “I’m Alan. Glad to meet ya. Come on, I think there are
some doughnuts upstairs.”

My stomach lurched, and I groaned. I said, “Oh no…still, I have
to eat so I can get back into the rescuing thing…”

Then I shook my head and looked at him. He definitely seemed
familiar. But I didn’t know him. So I said, “Sorry, I don’t think I know you…”

He opened the door for me as he said, “Hey, no problem, Vaughn.
I got into town just before all this insanity happened. I’ve been helping in
the tents doing gofer work, but I saw you out there. You’re pretty brave
going into stores like that, especially after dark.”

I didn’t catch it right away. I only snorted and said, “My best
friend’s old man is an EMT, and he was a fireman for some years before that. He
taught me a lot about rescue procedures and stuff. You were smart to play
gofer; I don’t think you’d have liked what’s been going on out there.”

He said, “Oh, no, I was in the library when the first explosions
went off. From that point on, I was just helping people.”

Wait, what?
 My
sludge-speed brain tripped on what he said and I turned and said, “Who the hell
are you? Dana had already locked up the library when those blasts hit. You
couldn’t have been in here.”

He took a step back down the stairs and said, “Well, crap. I’m
lousy at lying. Look, Hagen…”

I held up a hand to stop him. I had realized why he looked so
familiar. I was looking around to see if one of the cops was in the room when I
saw another far-too-familiar face. Sitting across the room and holding a damp
cloth to the forehead of an exhausted-looking firefighter was the petite Angela
Tursow. She was practically a twin to the guy standing behind me. I turned and
glared at him, forcefully pushing him back a couple steps.

I said, “Let me rephrase that. Who in the hell are you 
two
?”

Alan started to say something, but I interrupted, “Brother and
sister? 
Cousins?
 What are you both doing
here?”

Angela eyes widened as she looked up and saw me glaring at her.
Handing off the cloth to the firefighter, she came over and tugged at my
jacket. I let her pull me back into the shelf area behind the front counter
before saying anything. People in the room watched us go, shaking their heads
and mumbling about kids and their antics.

As we got to the corner, Angela turned to me, whispering,
“Vaughn, relax. We heard about the disaster and we came to help. That’s all.
Sorry, I meant to find you and tell you I was here.”

I shook my head.
“Uh huh.
 Who are
you two? You’re the one who tried bugging my room at the hospital. Then you
showed up at the memorial. But when I went to look for you later, I discovered
that you didn’t exist. No one had ever heard of Angela Tursow at the newspaper
office. So you aren’t a reporter. Now, tell me who you two are!”

Alan blinked. “Wow, sis, you told him you were a reporter?”

She glanced at Alan and said, “It was the best way to get to
them at the time. Nothing came of it, so I didn’t consider it a problem.”

She then looked back to me with a slight smile. “You went
looking for me? Why?”

I looked away as I felt my face heat up. “Um…you were the first
person to applaud for me after I gave my speech at the memorial. You got the
ball rolling…and I wanted to thank you.”

Angela’s smile widened. And she said, “You’re welcome. And
seriously, I think what you’ve been doing to honor Alex Shaw’s memory is great.
And we have gotten to know a lot about him from your interviews. I know doing
all that had to have been hard, especially given some of the weirdoes.”

I shook my head. “You have no idea how hard it was. Look, you
need to tell me what's happening! Why are you here? I mean, you have a deep
interest in Alex, and I want to know why!”