The 6th Power (14 page)

I tossed the empty bottle into the dumpster. “Why?”

“Basic fire safety. It’s harder for smoke to get through wet cloth. It’ll be easier for you to breathe in there. Plus, it’ll protect your, uh, secret identity.”

I snorted, but did as I was told. The mask was a little big for me and felt pretty gross, but I figured it’d do the job.

Hannah looked me up and down. “Well, I don’t think you’ll make it on to the cover of a comic book, but it’ll have to do. What next?”

I quickly sketched out my idea, and maybe she was just being kind, but she didn’t call me stupid or crazy. “I’d take you with me,” I said, “You know, if I could.”

“I know,” Hannah said.

“It’s just, if I’m going to do this, I’ve gotta move as fast as I can, and…”

“I get it.” She put a hand on my arm. “Believe me, it’s okay.”

“Okay.”

“Be careful.”

“Yeah.” I tried to clear my throat, to say something more to her, because it felt like I should say more, but my mouth was too dry and stupid, even with the water. I really didn’t want to go. I really needed to go.

When Hannah dropped her hand, I leapt into the sky before I could change my mind.

Chapter 18

O
n the rare occasions when my family went out for dinner, when Chet didn’t have a baseball game and Dad wasn’t stuck late at work and Mom hadn’t made tuna-noodle surprise, we went to Friendly’s. When the meal was over, Dad would give the twins and me some quarters and we’d go play video games in the back of the restaurant. Chet and Robert would plunk their coins into
Death Rattle 3000
and
Ultimate Blood Splatter
, which left me playing
Asteroids
.

Asteroids
was an old game, but a simple one. You had a little white spaceship floating in space with a bunch of asteroids all around it. You shot the asteroids until they were gone. If an asteroid hit you, you were dead. Hit the thrust button and you went forward in the direction you were pointing. Take your finger off of the button and you kept floating in that direction, just like a real ship would in the vacuum of space.

The ship had no brakes. If you wanted to stop, you pointed in the direction opposite the way you were going and you thrust until your momentum dried up. If you were to ask a NASA physicist how that worked, he would probably give you a complex formula and bore you to death. Kids don’t need formulas, though. We just figured it out, one quarter at a time.

Why was
Asteroids
important? Well, even though I thought the flying power would protect me enough to get into the shop, I knew I couldn’t just float down there. When Hannah and I tried that before, the heat about melted my tennis shoes. So I figured that the power would only protect me from the heat if I was going really fast. The question was, then, how did I fly fast enough into Mr. Magellan’s shop so that the power protected me from the fire, while not getting turned into Nate-Jelly when I hit a wall or something?

The answer, of course, was
Asteroids
.

I flew away from Coralberry Sporting Goods, heading south, away from Mr. Magellan’s shop, out of town, as fast as I could go. I needed some room to speed up and I needed to make sure that I was right, that the power would protect me at high speeds. So I poured it on, going faster than ever before. I felt the wind tug at me, but it was no worse than if you stick your hand out the window of a moving car. Best of all, even though the friction caused by me moving through the air had to be pretty intense, I didn’t even feel warm.

Good. Now for part two. I was way out in the country, miles from town by this point. In the distance was an old billboard advertising fertilizer, and I adjusted my course slightly, heading right for it. I thought about that little V-spaceship and how I’d spin it around and jam my thumb on the thrust key to keep it from cracking up on a space rock. When I played the game, I wasn’t always successful at getting slowed down in time. No big deal. Just plunk in another quarter. If I failed here, though….

I had just seconds between when I aimed for the billboard and when I’d hit it. I cut my acceleration, flipped over like I was swimming laps at the pool, and started thrusting in the opposite direction.

For far too long, nothing happened. I kept flying through the air, now feet-first, destined to become a permanent part of rural advertising. I poured on the power and my bones started to rattle as forward motion fought against forward motion. I could feel something building inside of me, threatening to burst, and in what seemed like forever, I finally started to slow down.

 My shoes touched the billboard, gently, gently. My knees bent, taking in the impact, and for just that moment I was Wile E. Coyote, hanging there in midair until I remembered that there was such a thing as gravity. My out of town momentum finally dried up and my back to town moment shot me forward so fast that I was worried I’d left a trail of flame behind me.

I let out a howl as I rocketed back, hugging the ground, ducking under telephone lines, dodging pickup trucks. Okay, the test had worked. It was time to do it.

When I hit town, I had just moments to take it all in. Smoke was still streaming out of the downstairs window of Mr. Magellan’s shop, but the upstairs, where he had his office, where the light had been on that morning, didn’t look as bad. If he was still in the shop, hopefully I’d find him there. I adjusted my trajectory slightly to aim for one of the upstairs windows, flipped over and started thrusting in the other direction.

The window came up fast, faster than the billboard. I poured on the speed, trying to brake while still going fast enough for the power to protect me. Oddly enough, as I did, things seemed to slow down around me. My right foot was going to hit the window right where Mr. Magellan had placed a Spider-man sticker. My ears were filled with a roaring, not just from the fire, but from rumbling engines and babbling onlookers. I smelled burning, of course, not a pleasant fireplace smell or even the charred-dust odor you get when you turn the furnace on for the first time in the fall, but a nasal assault of destruction, the turning of decades-old solids into gases and, oddly, a big hit of oregano. The power was protecting me from the heat and, in fact, my skin suddenly felt all clammy as the reality of what I was about to do washed through me.

Glass shattered. Flash of heat and light. I was through and into the room. My momentum dried up and I cut the thrust before I went shooting back out the window. The coyote suddenly became aware of gravity and I fell to the floor, hard.

I experienced several sensations at once. None of them were particularly good. Gravity. Yuck. Hardwood floor. Ouch. Smoke. Gack. First degree burns. Whimper. I just laid there, not able to move, not particularly wanting to.

Could have stayed there all day, but the coughing and the gagging were keeping me from slipping into a nice, quiet coma. Plus, my perfect memory reminded me that I had a job to do. I managed to raise my head and take in my surroundings.

It must be incredibly cool to own your own comic book shop. You know, unless it’s on fire. Mr. Magellan’s office looked a lot like Dad’s office in The City. Desk, copy machine, filing cabinets, couch. But Mr. Magellan had posters of comic book characters all over his walls. They were kind of blackened, but still, pretty awesome.

Flames were traveling up the wall and past the window I’d just crashed through. Pretty soon and that way out would be gone. Needed to get this done.

Unfortunately, no sign of Mr. Magellan. The door that led downstairs was open, and the stairwell was filling up with smoke. No way could I go down there. I wouldn’t be able to see a thing. I’d suffocate. I’d burn up.

But if Mr. Magellan was in his office when the fire started, wouldn’t he have rushed downstairs? Wouldn’t that have been the first thing we would have done? I saw an empty hook on the wall beside the door, the kind of hook that would have held a fire extinguisher. He’d grabbed it and headed downstairs to save his precious shop, and part of me just knew that he was still down there. Yeah, said the rational part of my brain, but if he is, how likely is it that he’s still alive?

Not likely, but I had to know for sure.

I pressed my face to the floor and took as big of a breath as I could manage, then half-crawled, half-flew down the stairs.

The scene that met me there was horrific, even more so than the nightmare I’d experienced in Mr. Magellan’s back yard. The place I loved more than any other was being eaten before my eyes. The posters were gone. The racks of new comic books had been turned into a wall of fire. The boxes of precious back-issues had become a funeral pyre, a column of flame reaching up to the ceiling. The sheer heat of it all had turned the displays of dice and roleplaying miniatures into pools of plastic and lead.

It was awful. If I’d had the breath, I would have screamed at the sight of it.

Mr. Magellan was lying there at the bottom of the stairs, eyes closed, not moving, the fire extinguisher beside him. I had no idea whether he was alive or not, but I knew that I didn’t have time to check. The heat or the smoke was going to kill me very quickly, so I grabbed the old man’s wrist and let the power flow into him.

Before I could fly back upstairs, though, I noticed that the backdoor to Mr. Magellan’s shop was open. Bizarre. I knew from personal experience that that door was always locked. I squinted and could barely make out that the doorknob itself was gone, just a jagged hole left behind. I wiped my eyes and squinted even harder. A fortunate gust of wind caused the door to bounce closed and open again, the air dispersing the smoke for just a second, just long enough for me to see it there, lying discarded in the alley out back, where I’d stood just a few days before.

A gasoline can.

I let the image register in my mind, but I had absolutely no time to think about it. I pulled on Mr. Magellan’s wrist and we hovered up the stairs, back to his office.

So, clearly, I hadn’t thought this all the way through. To get back out the window without getting hurt, I’d need to go fast. Unfortunately, I only had about six feet in which to rev up speed. Really not good, but I couldn’t see any other options. 

I let the flying power build inside me, imagining myself as a racecar revving its engines, just waiting for the light to change so I could release the brake and shoot forward. The floor beneath me shuttered and settled. It was going to go, and when it did, this insane little adventure would be over. No more time. The flames had gotten more ambitious. I could barely see the window I’d broken through. No other choice, though. I released the brake, aimed myself at a small patch of blue sky that I could see through the fire, and shot forward, dragging Mr. Magellan behind me. At the last possible instant, before we went through, I turned and put myself between the impact and the old man.

Flame. Not just a sunburn, but searing and blistering.

Hit too high, between the panes. More glass shattered. Something else shattered. The window frame or my…?

Agony. My back exploded. Electric shocks down my legs.

We were through. Daylight.

We fell.

Chapter 19

N
ot sure how we made it to the ground alive. Must have floated, but I don’t remember doing it. The world kept coming and going, interspersed with sunlight and pain. My back screamed as I hit the pavement and Mr. Magellan settled on top of me. Blackness reared up again, but I heard people shouting nearby.

Get up.

My brain was sooo stupid. No way was I getting up. I was exhausted and hurt and I’d done quite enough, thank you very much.

Get up.

My brain was getting mouthy. I tried to tell it to shut up, but all that came out was a groan.

The other voices finally reached me. Mr. Magellan’s skinny arm had been lying across my eyes. Someone moved it, which was not a kindness, and the sunlight sliced right into my brain, causing fresh new pain.

One of the voices yelled for a backboard. A hand felt for my wrist.

They’re looking for a pulse
, my brain told me.
Soon, they’ll get Mr. Magellan off of you, and then they’ll start checking you out
.

That sounded great. Pretty sure I was in need of medical attention. 

To check you out
, my brain said,
they’ll take off the mask
.

Huh. Taking off the mask. That would be bad. Why was that?

They’ll know who you are. They’ll know that Nate Holland is the boy with superpowers. People in suits will put you in a little room and try to figure out how you can fly. Sharp bits of metal will likely be involved
.

Okay, hated to say it, but my brain was starting to make sense. I opened my eyes again and told Mr. Sun to go pick on someone else, but like all bullies, it didn’t listen. People wearing concerned expressions were putting a strap across Mr. Magellan’s forehead. Someone said, “On three.” They counted. They rolled the old man off of me. Didn’t even realize that I was having trouble breathing until then, but my lungs knew it, and they sucked in greedily. Big mistake. The coughing fit that followed nearly finished me off. Through my tears, I saw a smiling woman in a blue jacket hovering over me.

“Take it easy,” she said. “We’ll take care of you. Don’t move.”

Okay. You’re the boss. I kept coughing. The woman went away. Above me, the sky was so blue. I missed the sky. I wanted to lie there and let the nice lady take care of me, but I also wanted to be up there. She came back, still smiling, and reached for the mask. She was holding a pair of scissors.

There’s the first sharp bit of metal
, my brain barked.
Move
!

Dang, I really hate my brain sometimes.

I thought about shooting into the sky. The best altitude I could manage, though, was about two inches. So I made like Luke Skywalker’s sand speeder and skimmed along the ground, away from the EMT lady. She reached for me, yelling something that I didn’t catch.