Stronger: A Super Human Clash (3 page)

I knew what was coming next. We all did. Pastor Cullen had been stuck on the same topic for months: “To strengthen
our town, we need solidarity. Unity. Faith in our community as a whole and in its individual members. Buy your groceries and gas locally. Instead of going to West Peyton to buy a new car, save money and buy a good-quality used car from a dealer right here in town.”

I looked out over the sea of mildly irritated faces. No one had the guts to stand up and tell the pastor to give it a rest: His cousin owned the only secondhand-car dealership in town.

The pastor didn’t seem to be getting anywhere near the main point of the sermon—unless the point was “I want to talk and you’d all better listen”—so I found myself growing more and more agitated.

I had to sing as soon as he stepped away from the pulpit, and it was always nervewracking. The longer he talked, the more nervous I became, especially because he didn’t always build up to a dramatic ending that we could see coming: Sometimes he just trailed away like he was giving up.

I realized that I was clenching and unclenching my fists, so I forced myself to stop. A thin trickle of sweat ran down my back, even though it wasn’t a particularly warm day.

The guy beside me, Chad Farnham, whispered, “You OK?” Chad was in his twenties, but only a couple of inches taller than me. He’d been the number-one soloist until I joined the choir, so he was always looking out for me: If I got sick, he’d have to take my place, and he didn’t want to be there any more than I did.

“Just wish he’d get on with it,” I whispered back. Anyone who sings in a choir that’s led by a gasbag like Pastor Cullen pretty quickly learns the ancient art of ventriloquism.

“Well, just don’t mess it up this time,” Chad said.

“Once!” I muttered. “
One
time I got the verses mixed up!”

“He kept us all back for extra practice, dude. We all suffered.”

“Let it go, Chad.”

The pastor was still talking, going all over the place like a blind man trying to mow a football field in a hurricane. Then he started on another of his favorite topics, the fact that the community always donated much more to the local hockey team’s fund-raisers than to the church.

I felt my stomach churn like there was a massive belch brewing, the kind you get after downing a whole can of soda in one go, but I hadn’t yet had anything to eat or drink that day.

“You look like you’re gonna barf. You
sure
you’re OK?” Chad whispered out of the corner of his mouth.

“I will be. Back in a minute.” Where I was standing I was mostly hidden from the congregation, and the pastor couldn’t see me from that angle, so it was easy enough to slip back into the vestry without causing much of a disturbance.

The vestry was small, plainly decorated, and only just big enough for the whole choir to assemble. There was a desk, a single chair, and two other doors, one leading out into the church’s rear parking lot and the other to the toilet.

I pushed open the second door and knelt before the bowl. My stomach suddenly spasmed as though I was about to throw up, and at the same time my skin started to itch and sting like the worst case of sunburn ever. My arms and legs began quivering, and I had to clutch the sides of the toilet
bowl to steady myself. My brain started pounding,
Boom
,
boom
,
boom
… Over and over like a bunch of angry villagers trying to smash through the castle gates with a massive battering ram.

For a second, against the bowl’s white porcelain, my hands looked almost blue, but even as I tried to focus on them, the nausea and the headache faded. I took a few deep breaths, then pushed myself to my feet.

OK
, I told myself.
You’re all right. You’re not going to throw up.

I felt fine, as though nothing had happened. In fact, better than that: There was a sense of clarity that reminded me of the way my ears would sometimes pop a few hours after I went swimming and I’d realize that until then I hadn’t been able to hear properly.

I returned to the vestry and quietly opened the door to the church. Pastor Cullen was coming to the end of his sermon—accusing the people of loving hockey more than they loved God—and I was about to squeeze past the rear-most members of the choir and return to my place when it happened.

Something exploded out of me—that’s the only way I can think of to describe it: It felt like every square inch of my skin just erupted.

For a while—seconds, maybe minutes—all I knew was the pain. But it began to fade, and I became aware of the screaming, a deep bellowing roar that seemed to vibrate through the floorboards and shake the church’s walls.

When I was finally able to open my eyes, when the convulsions and retching eased, all I could see was what looked like a cobweb, black against a white background.

It took me a moment to realize that I was lying on my back, looking up at the church’s ceiling, its white plaster now shot through with fresh cracks. The cracks were spreading, growing sporadically as the ceiling shook and shuddered in response to the ongoing screams.

And the screams were coming from me.

I SLAPPED MY HAND
over my mouth and missed, hitting myself hard in the cheek instead. Had it not been for the pain still coursing through my body, I might have laughed at that.

But the pain was easing by the second, the all-encompassing cramps and nausea receding like the lake behind a shattered dam, leaving behind clusters of twitching nerves that hopped under my skin like suffocating fish.

I forced my mouth closed—that much at least I was able to do—and tried to sit up, but my arms and legs felt wrong. Too bulky, awkward, and unmanageable, like when you wake up with your arm tucked behind your head and it’s gone all numb.

Particles of plaster dropped from the cracks in the ceiling, and I instinctively raised my arms to shield my eyes, then al
most yelped when I saw two massive blue-skinned hands racing toward me.

So I lay there for I don’t know how long, looking up at my oversized blue hands, clenching them into fists, waggling my fingers, rubbing them together. I would have thought that maybe I was somehow now wearing large rubber gloves if not for the sensation: When I poked the skin, it felt real. I could even feel the pulse in my left wrist.

I raised my head and looked down the length of my body: Powerful-looking blue legs protruded from the shredded remains of my vestments, and all I could think about was how lucky I was to be wearing my sweatpants. They were stretched almost to the limit around my muscular legs, but at least I wasn’t naked in church.

My skin was
blue
. It was hard to get that concept to fit inside my head. Blue, and hairless: Even the tiny little hairs on my arms were gone.

I ran one hand over my head and felt my hair fall away from my scalp.

A tiny part of my brain was signaling for attention, like a niggling reminder that I’d forgotten something, and then I realized what it was: No one was saying anything.

I raised my head and looked around. I was next to the pulpit, right in the middle of where the choir should have been, but I was alone.

More able to control my limbs now, I hoisted myself up onto my elbows.

The church was deserted, the doors at the back wide open, some of the pews overturned, open hymnbooks scattered everywhere like a flock of rectangular birds that had all just dropped from the sky at the same time.

I rolled onto my stomach and pushed myself upright, and discovered that the church had shrunk: I could easily have reached up and brushed my hand against the cracked ceiling.

Crouched on the floor, half hidden behind the altar, was Pastor Cullen. He had his head down and was rapidly muttering prayers, his trembling hands gripping his dust-smeared copy of the Bible.

I took a step toward him and my bare left foot collided with the edge of the marble pulpit. I stumbled forward and grabbed the top of the pulpit to steady myself—and it shattered into fist-sized fragments.

Pastor Cullen looked up at me and shrank away, whimpering, then curled himself into a shivering ball, clutching the Good Book to his chest.

Then I was right beside him, looking down, trying to understand. He was either very small or very far away, but I couldn’t tell. I reached my hand down to him, and stopped. With my fingers spread, my left hand was large enough to cover his head.

“Please don’t kill me!” he screamed, and I jerked my hand back.

“What do you mean?” I asked. Or, at least, I
tried
to ask—but I couldn’t speak. All that came out was a series of deep, rumbling growls.

“Not me, not me … Take the boys instead!” He whimpered again—he sounded like an injured dog—and I took a step back.

What’s happened to me?
I wondered. I was still too shocked to fully take it in. Somehow I had changed from an average-sized twelve-year-old to a hairless blue giant.

I tried to say, “Pastor Cullen, please, you’ve got to help me!” but again my words came out like angry gibberish.

Then a voice from outside, electronically amplified, called, “This is the police. Whoever—
what
ever—you are, come out now! Hands where we can see them!”

I looked toward the rear of the church, at the doors that until a few minutes ago had seemed more than adequate—I’d always wondered why church doors were so large—but now I wasn’t actually sure that I
could
get out.

I made my way toward them, my legs awkward and only barely under control, crushing the wooden pews into splinters. Then I had to get down on my knees to peer through the doors.

Six police cars waited directly outside, the officers half crouched behind their open doors, their guns aimed directly at me, and even more police cars were roaring toward the church from both directions.

“Don’t shoot!” I yelled, but it came out as a growl.

The police officers shuffled in place, steadying their aim, clearly wanting to be anywhere else.

Beyond them I could see two hundred people: the members of the congregation, the rest of the choir—Chad was there, his
face pale with shock—and then I spotted my parents. Pa had his arm wrapped around Ma’s shoulders, and I wasn’t sure whether he was holding her back or holding her up.

“Ma, it’s me!” I called, but my words—rough, guttural, and unintelligible to their ears—did nothing to calm down anyone.

On my hands and knees I squeezed myself out through the doors, then straightened up. The onlookers all backed away even farther.

Everything looked smaller—and weaker—from this perspective.

One of the police officers lowered his gun, but kept it in his hand as he slowly approached me. “Who are you? Why did you attack these people?”

I started trying to tell him that I hadn’t attacked anyone, but gave up almost immediately.

The officer stopped a few yards in front of me and swallowed hard. “Look, you have to let us inside to help the wounded, all right?”

I shook my head, trying to tell him that there
were
no wounded inside, but that was clearly the wrong move, because he took a couple of steps back and tightened his grip on his gun.

What happened next was so fast, I guess no one can really be blamed: I stepped to the side so that the officer could see past me into the church, and on the edge of my vision something large and white and flapping rushed straight toward me. I reacted without thinking: I grabbed hold of the attacking thing and threw it.

It was only when it was in the air, soaring over the crowd,
that I realized it had been Pastor Cullen trying to dart past me. Screams burst from the spectators as the pastor crashed down onto the roof of a police car that was screeching to a stop, shattering its windshield and crushing its red and blue lights.

If the police had been waiting for a signal to open fire, this was all they needed. The first bullet struck me in the chest and the next two hit my shoulder. They hurt—no more than a bee sting but enough to make me cry out. And
that
was enough to kick the whole mess into a higher gear.

Bullets ripped into me and into the wall of the church. The screams of the fleeing onlookers were almost loud enough to drown out the gunfire.

A bullet hit me just below my left eye and I instinctively grabbed the nearest thing I could find to shield myself: one of the church’s thick wooden doors. I ripped the door from its hinges and held it in front of me. Almost immediately it shattered to splinters: I’d been squeezing it too tightly, and crushed it.

The bullets were still coming, and then there was an even louder
boom
and something heavy struck me in the chest, hard enough to knock me back against the wall.

I looked up long enough to see another cop standing by his car with smoke wafting from the barrel of his shotgun, and then I ducked down through the doorway and back into the church.

OK, all right
…, I said to myself.
What’s happened? Why am I like this? Is this even real?

I’d heard of lucid dreaming—when you know you’re
dreaming but still can’t wake up—but I’d never experienced it before.

Even if this
was
a dream, I sure wasn’t going to wait around for them to find a weapon powerful enough to kill me. As it was, the whole of my upper body—arms, chest, neck, head, and back—was covered with bullet holes. They didn’t hurt much, but there was quite a lot of blood. When I squeezed one of the holes, the bullet popped out, like when you squeeze a zit.

I looked around for something to clean up the blood, but the only thing I could find was the shredded remains of my alb. I used it to wipe down my arms and chest—which dislodged a few more bullets—then tossed the ruined alb aside. Ma was going to give me grief over that—they’re not cheap.

The growing wail of approaching sirens echoed through the church, and I knew I had to get out of there. The back door was ordinary sized, and I wasn’t sure I’d fit through.

And I also wasn’t sure that I
wanted
to run…. Where would I go? And how long was I going to be like this? That thought hit me harder than the shotgun blast:
Am I going to be like this forever?