And It Arose from the Deepest Black (John Black Book 2) (26 page)

The name was familiar, though maybe I was thinking of Uncle Howard. Or Uncle Bob. Still, I nodded.

“Marcos is a black belt. I was talking to him about it at the last reunion. I think he said he was fourth dan. I can’t say I know exactly what that means, but it’s way up there. I can call him. He can help you learn to fight.”

She was earnest. But the whole thing was just weird. Plus, since I couldn’t even quite recall this Uncle Marcos character, I wasn’t terribly keen on revealing what I could do to him. Who knew if the lure of Banner Productions’ money would be too much for him? “No, Mom. No way. This is my problem to work out. I just need to figure out what to do about Jake.”

Again, she paused in thought. “If he has some other agenda, let him be,” she said, giving me a hard look. “But if he threatens you or our family, don’t hold back, John. You have power for a reason. Use it.”

“You’re really okay with that?”

She blinked, and for a moment, I thought she’d back down from what she’d been saying. But no. She squeezed my hand. “If Ranger comes for you, you kill him, too.”

5

Not surprisingly, Alpha’s change in direction took the media by storm. Where was she going? Why? It gave them something to talk about, and boy did they.

Of course, a lot of the speculation was around Black Sword. Would he chase down the last remaining Gorgol? And was he losing his mind? It was interesting to see how positive the pundits were in their baseless prognostication. Especially since they disagreed so completely. And especially since they were talking about me, when even I wasn’t sure what I should do next.

I was glad for the extra time. Because the conversation with my mom had cemented an idea I already knew to be true but didn’t want to deal with. A reckoning was coming, between me and Alpha. Holly couldn’t send the big beast back to where she came. And me? I didn’t even know where she came from, so for me to even try to send her somewhere was pointless. Besides, I had no idea how Holly did those things. I tried to picture the best-case scenario, one that didn’t involve any more death. Maybe Alpha would let us move her to a deserted island, where she could live out her days in peace. And maybe Jake would see reason.

Yeah. I know, I know. A reckoning was coming.

I’ll be honest, I was a little rudderless. I went to school Monday morning like nothing was happening. Like I wasn’t
that
guy. To my surprise, Bobby was at school, too. Not to my surprise, we didn’t talk, although I’m sure he saw me. He walked right past me as I dug through my locker for the fat red book labeled
Chemistry
.

“Hey, John,” a female voice called.
Carrie
. My heart raced as I turned around, closing the metal door with a harsh
clan
g
.

“Hey, Carrie.”

“Where have you been, stranger?” She smiled as she asked, but something about it seemed strained.

I realized immediately that I must have entered a new situation with Carrie, one where communication was no longer optional. Disappear for a few days, and it was a bad sign. A sign, perhaps, that I no longer liked her. In other words, not the sign I wanted to give her.

“Sorry, Carrie. I was crazy busy at home, you know, with, uh, my mom, and sister.” I’m pretty sure that sounded like bullshit, but I hadn’t prepared any better story. I made a mental note for the future. If I had to disappear playing hero, I was going to need to be better at coming up with alibis. It was with a strange sense of irony that I realized while I wouldn’t let myself push Carrie’s mind, I had no problem lying to her. Well, I had a problem with it, but I could make peace with the need. Besides, was I lying? I just wasn’t telling her the whole truth.

Oh, shut up. I know that’s lying, too.

“You wanna get together, maybe after school?” she asked with a hopeful gleam in her eye.

For a moment, I didn’t respond. I stood there staring at her like a deer stares at an oncoming pickup. What had I done to deserve this? How could it be possible that Carrie liked me?

She frowned. Not a sad frown, a silly frown, and she snapped her fingers in front of my eyes dramatically. “You in there, John Black?” With a mock-serious tone, she called out to no one in particular. “I’m going to need 10ccs of reality, stat. This kid needs to snap back to life.” She laughed at her own joke.

And then I unfroze and laughed, too.
That
was why it was possible that she liked me. Because Carrie was real. Not the cardboard cutout of a girl that some of the others pretended to be. Just a person. With a sense of humor.

She pushed a curl of red hair behind one ear.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that she was so beautiful.

“Yeah, definitely,” I finally said.

“Oh, we have a pulse,” she said, laughing again. “Okay, John. I have some homework, but why don’t we meet up at, say, five? Coffee shop?”

I made a face before I had time to think.
Coffee? Ew.

“Fine. You pick the place then,” she said, rolling her eyes.

I’ll meet you next to the dead body of Gorgol Sigma. We can have a picnic and watch the flies cover her body.

You can imagine that would have been a terrible response, right? Of course. That’s why I didn’t say it, even though that image sprang to mind. Thankfully, I had a more conventional idea, too.

“How about the pizza shop, Bernie’s? We don’t need to get pizza, if you don’t want, though. They have other stuff to eat there.” I started to extol the virtues of Bernie’s menu, pages three through six, when she interrupted me.

“Bernie’s is fine. See you later.”

* * *

After school, I rushed home to do my homework, so I’d be free and clear in time to meet Carrie.

Okay, fine, I also may have brushed my hair and teeth. Sue me.

I must have had some extra energy, or maybe not enough homework, because in no time I was done, and there were still nearly 45 minutes to go before my date.

I turned on the TV, figuring it couldn’t hurt to get an update on Alpha’s whereabouts. Good thing, too.

“…And we remind you that the footage is quite graphic.”

Oh, well, that got my attention.

And they weren’t wrong.

Since my little stunt with the helicopters — you know, their mandatory nap session — the media had apparently been rather conservative in how closely they would approach their targets. Of course, anyone with sense had been giving the Gorgols a wide berth since the beginning. But not everyone had sense.

The most outrageous, most dangerous shots earned big money. And big money was enough to make some people do crazy things, even if it meant risking their lives.

As the clip started, a nondescript green-and-white helicopter approached what appeared to be a dozing Gorgol Alpha. That seemed completely out of character for Alpha, so immediately my hackles went up. Within moments, the chopper was well within the reach of the creature, and I could tell already what I was about to watch — the demise of some fool pilot and cameraman.

But no, that was too simple.

“The chopper you see approaching Gorgol Alpha is piloted by Guy Mariana, and riding next to him is freelance cameraman Kurt Allen.”

It wasn’t Alpha that attacked, it was Jake. The helicopter wasn’t only close enough to reach with monster claws, it was close enough for Jake to make a mental connection. That’s when I realized he must have put Alpha into a type of sleep just so he’d be able to use his mental powers on something else without losing his grip on her.

Or maybe Alpha was hibernating. Going through some important period of her life. Maybe.

The chopper turned abruptly, heading away from Alpha and Jake. Once the idea was firmly planted in the pilot’s mind, distance wasn’t an issue. Jake didn’t even have to try to maintain a connection, he could just sit back and watch, like the way I’d sent Margrethe off to live her life, blissfully unaware that I ever existed. Only the two lives in the helicopter were doubtful to have a lot of time left.

There was a period in the video where no camera was following the action. Why should they? The money was on filming Alpha, not some odd pilot who might be running back to fill up on fuel or grab a sandwich. No one knew where the green-and-white chopper was headed until it was too late.

Of course, the military had done their best to evacuate the immediate surroundings of the Gorgol and her expected path, but they couldn’t evacuate everyone. Where would they put them all? And helicopters can cover a lot of ground very quickly.

“At this point, cameraman William Delaney in the C-News helicopter began to get suspicious,” the voiceover intoned as the footage suddenly blurred and shook. “When asked later, Delaney told us that he and Allen were old friends, having had lunch together earlier in the afternoon, and having left from the same airfield within 90 minutes of each other. When Delaney saw Allen’s helicopter speed off, he felt something was wrong.”

A muffled voice could be heard asking “Do you see that? Can you follow him?” Another voice, no doubt the pilot, sounded doubtful, but the cameraman — Delaney — was adamant. Soon the view changed to follow Allen and Mariana’s helicopter as it raced away from the hectic scene around Alpha.

The footage showed them flying oddly low, very close to the tree line, approaching a suburb with medium-sized office buildings arranged in a tight group.

It was calculated. Jake must have planted the idea to look for a sensitive target. The chopper circled and paused before making its move.

Then it dove straight into a five-story building, igniting a fireball that could be seen for miles around. They had many different angles of that.

In the end, 23 people died. How many did that total for the three Gorgols together? I had no idea. But this was all Jake.

Fourteen men, including the pilot and cameraman, six women, and three kids.
Kids
.

Furious, I punched at the TV, ostensibly to turn the damn thing off, but instead smashing it to pieces.

Well, that was going to need an explanation when Mom got home.

6

Sweeping up took a while. I didn’t try to hide it. Why bother? It isn’t like my mom wouldn’t notice that the TV was missing. But clean-up made me leave the house later than I’d wanted to, with not a lot of time before I was supposed to meet Carrie. So I ran.

I was filled with conflicting emotions. Anger at Jake and his stupid random violence. Concern about what I’d have to do about him, and about Gorgol Alpha. And yet, there was also excitement to see Carrie, mixed with fear of what I would say to her.

So it shouldn’t surprise you that I never saw it coming until it was too late.

Rounding a corner, two hands grabbed at my clothes. Sure, my
body
was excellent at sluicing away from attack, but my clothes were a different story. I’ll be blunt. My clothes were too stupid to get out of the way of a punch. There, I said it.

The rest of me was immediately on guard. A fist came up, I ducked. Another. I slid to the side. Then I threw a punch of my own. There were blurs, all around. It only lasted a few seconds.

“Are we really doing this in public, Bobby?” I asked.

He stopped.

“You’re a dick, you know?”

I thought about how I’d spoken to him, to Pip. What I’d
done
to Pip. How I’d walked off. “Yeah, I know. Sorry.” I tried to look sheepish. After all, I actually did feel bad about it.

Despite the fact that I knew I might do it again.

In any event, Bobby rolled his eyes. And that was that. I figured I might never make it up to Pip, but with Bobby, it was already over. “Where are you headed in such a hurry?” he asked.

“I’m meeting Carrie, and I’m going to be late.” I began walking quickly and Bobby picked up a backpack and slung it over one shoulder as he paced me silently. “Are you… are you coming along?” I asked, not sure how pleased I’d be to have a third wheel on my date.

Bobby shook his head. “Nah. But I’ve got something for you.” The way he looked at me got me suspicious. “It’s from Pip.” From the backpack, Bobby pulled out a box, about half the size of a shoebox. I noticed the outside was stained on one side.

Oh crap. What’s this?
I expected the top to spring off and snakes to fly out. Not those springy fake snakes that lame comedians use to scare people. I mean live, deadly snakes. Or maybe scorpions. Or both.

Bobby held out the box, and I took it.

“What is it?”

“Not my place to say,” he said. “Not my present.”

“
Present
? Pip got me a present? After…?”

“After you cut off her hand?” Bobby offered, and I nodded, turning a little red. “Yeah, no. She definitely is not in the gift-buying mood with you after that. She must’ve bought this before.”

I turned the box in my hands. “Why is it so… dirty?”

“Because she threw it away.”

I stopped. “Pip bought me a present, and then threw it away.”

Bobby grinned at me. “Congratulations, Johnny. You understand English.”

“But why?”

“Why, what? Why’d she throw it away? Didn’t I just mention that you were a dick? Don’t think she didn’t notice that, too.”

“Then…,” I started.

“Then why did she buy it in the first place? Who knows? Maybe she likes you. Or did.” Bobby looked away, his expression unreadable. Then he started walking again, and I hurried to catch up. “Anyway, open it.”

So I did.

At first, I had no idea what I was looking at. Because I had never seen anything like it before. It wasn’t fancy. More like a novelty.

Inside the box was a belt. Well, actually, two belts, sort of interconnected. Each one was about half the width of my normal belt, and they slid together in opposite directions, clasping each other in the middle. “Um… thanks?”

“Don’t thank me, Johnny. I didn’t get it for you.”

“But what am I supposed to do with it?”

“You’re not firing on all cylinders today, huh, buddy? It’s a belt, actually two belts. Pip figured you kicked so much ass with one belt, that with two you’d be out of control. The two belts work in opposite directions, meaning you can pull both out at the same time, one in each hand. Put it on, try it.”

I twisted my mouth up, turning the belt over in my hands, considering.

Handing the dirty box back to Bobby, I slid off my old belt as we walked, trading it for the new double-belt. It was awkward to feed the two parts in opposite directions, but once it was in place, the buckle clicked with a satisfyingly solid sound.

“See? When you wear it, it just looks like one belt.”

We were minutes away from the parking lot for Bernie’s. I looked at the box and old belt in Bobby’s hands, and the concern must have been apparent on my face. Or maybe it was just that friends read each other’s minds. “Go on. I’ll hold this stuff for you and bring it back to your house later.”

“Thanks,” I said, taking another look down at the new double-belt. Bobby waved and peeled off, headed who knows where, leaving me to ponder the strangeness of it all. “Thanks, Bobby!” I called out, meaning much more than just gratitude for the present. He waved without turning back.

I crossed the half-empty parking lot and walked up to the single-story pizza joint. In the window, signs promised food that probably looked delicious a decade or two back, before their color had faded to mostly different degrees of blue. The smiling face of a blue-tinted woman posed with a slice of blue-pepperoni. The poor woman had to sit like that for eternity, so close to her goal and yet never able to take a bite of that wonderfully blue pizza. Pity.

And prominently, near the door, a handwritten sign read “To Hell With The Monsters, We’re Open!” Below the words, someone had scrawled a drawing that looked more like three fat ducks than Gorgols. I had heard about the trend on TV – businesses posting signs like these, staying open. Maybe it was altruistic, serving the public, but I figured a good part of it was simply the fact that mom-and-pop shops needed the money to stay afloat.

A thought rolled around in my head.
Pip likes me — or liked me — enough to get me a present.

It was a really awkward thing to think at the moment I was opening the door to Bernie’s and waving to my date.

* * *

Turns out, we ruined our dinners.

Isn’t that what parents say when you eat before you’re supposed to eat? But what sense does that make? If you eat, you eat, right? How did I
ruin
dinner, if pizza
became
my dinner. I don’t think we ruined anything. We had a really great time.

Until the end, that is.

I collected the change after paying for the pizza that ruined our dinner, and we headed for the door to leave. Pip trailed behind me.

“New belt?”

Huh?
I thought. It was a belt, not like I was wearing a new purple feather boa. What I’m saying is, it was easy to forget, once you put it on. “Oh, um. Yeah.” I nodded. Instantly, I was nervous.

We walked outside, and I blinked at the still-bright afternoon. The smell of grease might have have diminished if it hadn’t completely permeated my nostrils.

“Where’d you get it?”

It was an innocent-enough question, with an innocent-enough answer. But I couldn’t just mention Pip’s name. Carrie had no idea who Pip was. “A girl gave it to me,” I said with a shrug.
Smoot
h
.

“Really? Who?” Carrie stopped. She wasn’t angry. Maybe not even concerned. But there was a twinge to her voice that was… different.

I heard the change and freaked out. I knew immediately that I had to cover up this whole new-belt thing. Make it a non-issue. “Oh, nobody. It’s just a belt. No big deal.”

Do you want to know how you make something into a big deal? Say that it’s no big deal.

Carrie crossed her arms, and the edges of her mouth dipped downward. Not quite a frown, yet. But working on it. “You don’t want to tell me who gave it to you?”

“It was…” My weak little fool of a mind spun and twisted.
Who?
“My mom!” I said it way too forcefully.

“Your mom?” Carrie said, clearly not buying it. Her crossed arms had tightened and her face was a full-on frown. Still, I nodded. Might as well double-down on the lie, right? “You said
a girl
gave it to you.” I nodded again, beginning to look more like a bobblehead giveaway than a real person. “You call your mom
a girl
?” I continued nodding.

She gave me a moment to come clean, but I didn’t. I stood there nervously grinning at her. I tried to look confident. To put off an air that it really was no big deal. And that I hadn’t just lied. It didn’t work.

“Whatever.” Carrie huffed and headed for home.

Great. Just great.