Apex (5 page)

Jack stared off into space.
Was that how he was able to avoid being slashed by that soldier’s blade? Had he been able to unconsciously teleport each time the knife would’ve touched his skin? It made no sense, but none of this did so maybe it was the only explanation. He knew deep down that none of this was possible.

He got a sour feeling in his guts when he remembered that metallic sphere and what it did to them right before they blacked out. That
blue mist had done this to them, but why?

Dan and Molly

They had no way of knowing for sure if the lone farmhouse belonged to the couple, but it had to. There were no other houses in sight. The sidewalk leading to the front door was nothing but a gravel patch with weeds and grass sprouting through here and there. The house itself looked to have been recently abandoned, with chipped paint and a gutter dangling loose. There was a rusty tractor right in the middle of the lawn that looked like i
t hadn’t fired up since before World War two. It was nothing but a lawn ornament now. Bees circled it and flew inside. The cab was now a part of nature.

Jack was starting to have doubts about whether they were at the right place when Dan came crashing out through the screen door of the dilapidated house and pointed a shotgun at them.

Scott held up his hands and said, “It’s us.”

“I can see that. What the hell do you want?”

“We were hoping to talk.”

“We have nothing to say to you.”

Molly came out now and gently placed a hand on Dan’s muscular shoulder. “Come on now, Dan. You know we have a ton to talk about. Let the kids come inside.”

Molly looked different. Jack remembered her having sagging breasts and a slight paunch from
when he’d last seen her, but the woman standing on that rickety porch was thin and lively, with muscular calves showing under her skirt and forearms to make Popeye envious. Even her skin was clearer and devoid of the crows-feet wrinkles and blemishes that had once graced it. And Dan looked like he was designed for war. His biceps struggled against the dirty thermal shirt he had on and his shoulders moved like they were made of granite. His neck had doubled in size and he too looked to have lost about ten years.

Dan’s
agitation slid away. He lowered the shotgun and asked, “Who’s the bozo?” He was referring to Doctor Henshaw.

“He’s a doctor.”

“Can I trust him?”

“
We don’t know yet, but he knows about us so we can’t let him out of our sight.”

“Come inside then
.”

Under one Roof

The inside of the farmhouse wasn’t as dirty as the outside but it still left a lot to be desired. The furniture was ancient with varnish worn away over the years from constant use and little upkeep. The carpet was of a style that went out of fashion in the seventies, but the pictures on the walls and the smell of fresh baking made up for all of its deficiencies. It was a well lived in home, the way homes were supposed to be.

Dan took a seat at the kitchen table as Molly fussed around in the refrigerator for some snacks for her guests.

Where Molly was warm and welcoming, Dan was hostile and suspicious. He got right to business. “What the hell was in that artifact last week?”

“We don’t know.”

“It changed Molly and me
. We’re exhibiting some odd behavior lately.”

The doctor sat down now and leaned in, his interest piqued.
The mention of the word
artifact
took him by surprise.

Jack took a seat beside him and said, “It did the same to all of us then.”

“What can you do?”

Jack thought about that. He wasn’t sure of his capabilities yet. He had the feeling there were latent abilities still locked inside that he would discover later, but there was no way to put a finger on what they might be.

Melanie held a hand out and said, “I can do this.” A dirty plate, with crumbs on it, floated precariously in the air just inches from Dan’s face. It wobbled like one of those fake flying saucers from the videos charlatans made back in the fifties. Then it came down slowly on the table in front of him. “I’m afraid to do more than that because it’s hard to control it.” Memories of that poor soldier flitted across her mind and she was forced to put her hands in her pockets to hide the fact that they were trembling now.

“I know what you mean.
I can burn things, but I can’t control the heat yet. I’m practicing and it’s helping me focus it, but if I get distracted, the consequences are horrendous. I accidentally burned down my shed the day before yesterday. I was just trying to make a glass of water boil, to see if I could do it, and instead the shed erupted. The heat burned my clothes and reduced the shed to ashes in just a few minutes. It scared Molly half to death.”

Molly shot him a fearful look, and Dan looked away. He stared at his hands, ashamed about his lack of control.

Jack said, “It sounds like we’re going through the same crap then, except that all of our abilities vary. I teleported here from Denver.”

“Bullshit.”

Scott shrugged. “It’s true. He brought all of us.”

“What were you doing in
Denver?”

None of them wanted to answer the question. They knew how private the couple was and they didn’t want to frighten them with stories about quarantines and government cover-ups.

But the doctor screwed that up with, “We had them under supervision. We had to escape when the military decided they were too much of an anomaly to keep alive.”

Dan stood up and looked at Molly. She said
quickly, “Let them stay. We’re all in this together now.”

He sat back down and said, “
You’d better not have led them here.”

“We told them nothing and I teleported here. I don’t think there’s any way for them to guess where we are.”

Mount up

General Parsons had just finished his report. He’d been given the green light to go after the kids and he planned on wasting no time.

He had eight men left now
which would be more than enough with the additional firepower he had at his disposal.

To the group he said, “Alright men, we’ll have superior firepower and the element of surprise on our side. And now we know what the enemy brings to the table. Mount up. We’re heading to a little crap-hole called Ault.”

Tests

The doctor had set up a line of soda cans on a tree stump in the backyard.

He said, “You all have powers. From what I can see, Melanie has telekinesis, Scott can erect invisible force fields, Jack can teleport, and Dan can burn things. What can you do Molly?”

Molly said, “I’m indestructible.”

Jack was about to chime in with,
me too
, because he remembered the doc telling him that needles couldn’t puncture his skin, but he didn’t want to steal Molly’s thunder. He also knew that Scott and Melanie had similar attributes, and Dan probably did too. Maybe Molly didn’t have an ability or maybe she was even more indestructible than the rest of them were.

The doc asked,
“How do you know?”

“I was inside that shed when Dan accidentally torched it. All that happened was my clothes burned off. I didn’t even feel the heat. I’m strong too.”

Dan stared off into space, ashamed of what he’d accidentally done to his wife, but thankful she’d gotten out of it unscathed.

Molly looked around and then said, “Follow me.” She led them out to the front and walked over to the ancient tractor. She reached beneath it and tilted it over with one hand. Her smile was priceless.

That was an ability that none of the others had, but it was pretty lame compared to telekinesis. No one brought that up because Molly’s smile was too contagious.

She rejoined them and they went back around the house.

The doctor said, “I’d like each of you to practice your aim. I understand you don’t have powers to direct Molly, so you can help me reset the cans.”

Jack said, “I don’t understand why we’re doing any of this. What the hell are we going to do with powers? We’re not superheroes. We’re not going to don tights or capes and stop crime in
Ault, Colorado.”

Melanie said, “We could go to a ghetto in
Greeley. There’s plenty of crime there.”

“It’s not like we have crime radar. And crimes don’t happen around every corner. If a seventeen year old white kid like me showed up in the ghetto, the only crime would be me getting mugged.”

Scott added, “I think that’s called entrapment.”

“Right. It wouldn’t be legit.”

The doctor interrupted them. “Why are you guys interested in costumes and crime fighting? You just survived an attack by the United States government. You have to imagine that men with guns are looking for you at this very moment. If that’s not motivation to explore your abilities then I don’t know what is.”

“He’s right.”

Uncontrolled Power

Molly got bored watching them miss their
aluminum targets so she disappeared inside the house.

The doctor kept saying things like, “concentrate,” and “focus your mind,” but he had no idea what he was talking about.

It wasn’t until Scott told him so that he shut up.

Melanie was the closest to being able to aim her ability. She did manage to lift the cans into the air, but chunks of tree bark floated up with them. She got mad about that, and they watched in awe as all of the cans crushed themselves flat.

She said, “I didn’t know I could do that,” as the smashed cans fell back to the ground.

The doctor set a new batch up and had Scott give it a shot but all he was able to do was create a force field around his own body. The doctor had no idea the field was even up until he walked face first into it.
But at least Scott’s eyes didn’t get affected this time. In fact, they had almost healed entirely already from when he’d had to erect a field to stop the bullets that would’ve surely killed them all.

Jack wondered if that meant they had super healing powers too, but there was no way to know that yet.

Scott said, “I practiced in my cell for an entire day but I couldn’t get a handle on it. It’s tough to control.”

Dan said, “I’ve been practicing for a few days and my aim still sucks. I can’t even control the intensity of the heat I create. Watch this.” He held his hands out, palms out and fingers up. Nothing happened but the air did get drier and the grass in front of him started to turn brown. He let his hands fall down at his sides and said, “See,” but his powers were still at work. His pants started to smoke before he realized he hadn’t turned his ability off. He held his hands out again until he was sure they weren’t going to burn anything.

Molly rushed out of the house in time to pat out the fire engulfing his pants. She must’ve been watching them from the kitchen window. Dan tried to tell her to stop fussing but she wouldn’t hear it.

Jack took a turn now, sure that he would fail too, and he was right.

The doctor said, “Teleport a can away from there.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Just try it.”

Jack concentrated. He felt the power surge within him, and then he unleashed it all at once. Now he was standing on the stump with the cans. He’d accidentally teleported himself. “I told you so.”

The doctor said, “Try and fly then.”

“I can’t do that. I can only teleport.”

“You were flying in that hospital. I showed you the tape. You can do it again if you can harness the ability.”

Scott asked, “You flew in the hospital?”

“Yeah, well, it was more like floating, but I was still unconscious at the time.”

To the doctor he asked, “If Jack could fly while he was knocked out, what did me and Melanie do when we were out of it?”

“Nothing. Jack was the only one of you to exhibit any abilities. We saw what he could do, recognized that his two best friends were also unconscious with some unknown illness, and decided you must all have been afflicted with the same ailment. That’s why we quarantined both of you with Jack.”

To Jack
, Melanie said sarcastically, “Thanks a lot, man. You tipped them off about us while you slept.”

“Sorry. How could I know they’d try and kill us just for being special?”

Scott changed the subject. He said, “I’m starving.”

Jack was more interested in trying to sneak off to visit his mom, just to let her know he was ok, but Scott was right; he was famished. He could sneak into town later.

Dan said, “Come inside and fill your bellies.”

“Thanks Dan.”

Starving

Molly was sitting at one of those old fashioned sewing machines with the metal pedal and the big spinning wheel, hard at work when they walked in.