The 6th Power (15 page)

Well, this wasn’t going to do. I couldn’t sand-speed all the way home. With a shriek, I managed to raise my arms over my head and point my way up. The rest of my body obediently followed and I was over the town again. Higher, I thought, and the power complied.

Cool wind blew against my back and I almost screamed again, it hurt so good. I managed to get the mask off and watched as it fell, circling down to Coralberry, landing who-knew where. My brain didn’t object. We were too high up to be seen now and we really had bigger fish to fry.

I didn’t want to think about how bad I was hurt. Instead, I thought about how I had saved Mr. Magellan. Well, I hoped that I had saved him. He looked to be in pretty bad shape. I’d have to find out what happened to him later.

Yeah, that was ridiculous. I probably wasn’t going to be doing much of anything later. Must not have been going fast enough when I hit the window frame. I felt… well, my top half felt pretty rotten. Like a used piece of firewood. The bottom half of me…

Couldn’t feel anything. Couldn’t even feel the spot on my leg where Chet had hit me. Nothing.

I looked down at Coralberry. She wasn’t feeling so good, either. The fire was going to take out the northern block of downtown. The memory of the gas can in the alley came back to me, but it was just there. One more question that I didn’t have an answer for, and to be honest, answers didn’t seem that important at that moment.

It was a shame that there wasn’t anything I could do about the fire. I could if I really was Superman, of course. Maybe Hannah and I could watch that movie together sometime. That’d be nice. I mean, the ending was a little ridiculous, when he flies around and around the Earth, turning back time...

Huh.

My brain piped up and told me there was no way I could turn back time, that even Superman couldn’t do that, that time travel didn’t work that way.

Still. Flying around and around. I wondered if it would work.

It was exactly two months ago to the day. Earth Science class. Mr. Herschel was talking about tornados and the different forms that they could take. If a tornado formed over dirt or sand, it was called a dust devil. If a tornado formed over water, it was called a water spout.

If a tornado formed over a wildfire, though, it was called a fire whirl.

Okay
, said my brain.
Suppose you could do that. Unlikely, but suppose you could. Where would you put it?

I’d lived in Coralberry my whole life. I knew exactly where I’d put it. But it was so very far away and I was so very tired. What I really needed to do was fly down to my house, in through my window, and settle down on my bed. Go to sleep and wake up in a year or so.

Bed. I was probably going to be spending a lot of time in bed for the foreseeable future. But right then, at that time, I could actually do something. I was likely the only person around who could really do something about the fire. I was the only one who could save the town.

No one was around, so when I wiped the tears out of my eyes, I didn’t have to pretend it was from the smoke. I started coughing, loud and hard. Shiny little specks appeared in front of my eyes and I hacked up something brown that I sent flying after the mask. If I was going to do this, I’d better do it quick, while I still could.

I stretched out my arms and streaked down towards the fire, whistling the Superman theme song as I went.

It was getting hard to put two thoughts together, and since the flight power was controlled by my thoughts, it was getting harder to fly. But for my plan to work, I needed to fly better and faster than ever. So I thought about Coralberry and how it looked at Christmas time, with everyone putting up lights and decorations. I through about the fireworks display over the ball field every Fourth of July. I thought about the library. I thought about the swimming pool. I thought about my comic book shop.

This was my town. Someone had tried to hurt it. They weren’t going to get away with it, though.

I forced my eyes open, focused, and banked around the column of smoke. The fire had spread, of course, but the worst of it was still centered on Mr. Magellan’s place and the shops on either side. If I could contain that bit, hopefully the fire crews could take care of the rest.

I came back around the column of smoke, then circled again. I thought about Superman, flying around the Earth at the end of that movie, and imagined myself as that blue blur, circling the fire that was eating my town. Around and around, again and again, faster and faster with each revolution.

When I started seeing myself, I knew that it was working. I was just a streak, creating a wall around the flame, drawing it in, forming it up, chaos becoming kinda cone-shaped. Chunks of burning building got pulled in. Something flew by, might have been a cash register, and came within inches of beaning me. I ducked my head and kept going.

I wondered what was going on outside. People were probably freaking out at the sight of a tornado springing up in the middle of town. Hopefully, they’d soon figure out that it was a good thing. The smoke poured up and out of my cyclone, leaving behind swirling flame and debris. It was time to go.

Making the fire whirl had been hard enough. Nearly passed out when I tried to move it. If I stopped, though, burning wreckage would go flying everywhere, and that wasn’t good. So I focused on going up. I visualized the weight of the fire settling on my back and, as I circled around, gaining altitude, the fire whirl would rise with me.

Which would not feel good.

The twister slowly rose into the sky as the flight power managed to do what my poor, tired brain wanted it to do. I cleared the rooftops and hovered for a moment, trying to catch my bearings, and then I started leaning to the east.

My brain felt like it was going to go shooting out of my ears at any moment. I needed to get where I was going and I needed to get there fast. 

My town is named Coralberry because the wild blackberries in the area kept the early settlers from starving to death, and because those settlers found bits of fossilized coral alongside the river that runs north of town. Coral-berry. Dumb, I know, but you can’t argue with pioneers. Anyway, the blackberries eventually died off, but the river has stuck around, and it’s been a real pain in the butt for the people who’ve lived here. The sucker used to flood every few years, wiping out crops and making people remodel their homes. Then the Army Corp of Engineers came to the rescue and built the Coralberry Dam. With the dam, the good people of Coralberry gained a lake, which they named, not surprisingly, Coralberry Lake.

I’d been to the lake a lot in my life. Swimming, picnics, et cetera. Nice place, if you enjoy being eaten by monstrous mosquitoes and having your brothers “pretend” to drown you (Ha, ha! You’re right, Mom and Dad. They’re such kidders.) 

Still, despite some bad memories, the lake seemed like the best place to deliver my package. I tightened up the whirl as I flew over the trees that made up the Coralberry State Park. I didn’t want any burning building bits to land down there. Smokey the Bear would get really ticked off.

Finally, thankfully, the lake was in sight. I eased the tornado down, and when I could see the glow of the fire reflected in the water below me, I streaked away from the fire whirl.

Once I reached a safe distance, I hovered there and watched. It looked like a huge, red, glowing top, spinning on blue water. Okay, it looked a lot more impressive than that, but I was too shredded to come up with another metaphor.

It took longer than I thought it would for the spinning to stop. Guess I’d been going pretty fast. Eventually, though, the flame and bits of burning Coralberry Comics and Collectibles fell from the sky and landed in the lake. Steam rose up. Soon it was all gone, like it’d never even existed.

I sighed. I coughed. I flew back up into the clouds. The cold, wet air felt good. My lungs crackled with every breath. My eyelids felt like lead, like it was Saturday night at Grandma’s house, full of her fried chicken, dozing on her couch while she watched the news. My everything hurt, except for those parts that I couldn’t feel at all, which I chose not to think about.

Went for a fly, trying to enjoy it, knowing it would end soon. I swooped and did a barrel roll. My head started to swim. Adrenaline. Yeah, I’d read somewhere (I knew where, but it wasn’t worth remembering at that moment) that when you’re pumped on adrenaline, it can mess you up when it goes away. I was getting more and more tired and I hurt more and more and I just wanted to…

My eyes snapped back open.

The wind roared in my ears as I fell. Not too far below me, I could see the parking lot of Coralberry Foods coming up to meet me awfully quick. I blinked hard, focused, and managed to level out.

Oh, that was really bad. Must have fainted. I had to get on the ground before I went splat.

I headed for home because, well, I couldn’t think of where else to go. Rosenberg Street looked quiet. I idly wondered where Chet was, but I really had bigger things to worry about. I swooped over the house and wondered what to do. Just fly down, land by the backdoor? What would I tell Mom? Did it really matter? I sighed. Yeah, it did. If I told her I got hurt while flying around, rescuing the town, my medical care might get delayed while she spent time yelling at me.

I looked at the big tree in our backyard.
Mom! I fell out of the tree!
Lame, but I didn’t see any other option.

Came in over the tree, floated down through the branches, and looked around for any sign of anyone. The backyard was clear, so I eased to the ground. Gravity immediately dropped a refrigerator on my head. I crumpled, my strings cut, and my head slammed into one of the big roots poking up out of the grass. Spots swam in front of my eyes again.

Couldn’t move. All I could see was the back corner of the garage. A pair of shoes came around the corner and walked towards me. Huh. They looked familiar. Sneakers. Nice ones. Dad had spent a lot of money on those shoes. Baseball shoes.

Chet’s baseball shoes.

I tried to keep my eyes from closing, to move, to get up, to fly away, to anything. Nothing. Something swung down, tapped the ground by the shoes, and swung back up. Chet’s baseball bat.

The shoes stopped in front of my face. The bat swung down and up again, inches from my nose. The darkness was crowding in, no matter how hard I tried to fight it off, but to be honest, I was pretty tired of fighting. Anyway, I was pretty sure I didn’t want to see what was going to happen next.

As I faded away, I heard a low, raspy voice say, “Okay. Let’s get started.”

Chapter 20

T
here was darkness and peace for a long time. Then there was light.

I missed the darkness. It was like sleep, but much deeper and quieter. No pesky dreams or nightmares. Just peace. I was sure that, with the light, the pain would return.

Not that it had ever left, but I couldn’t ignore it anymore. In fact, I could hardly breathe, everything hurt so bad. I would have returned to the dark, but one question nagged at me and pushed me to eventually open my eyes.

Why was I still alive?

I was in a room that I recognized immediately, though I’d never been there before. Clearly, I was in Coralberry Hospital. The closed window blinds glowed faintly, so I figured it was early morning or late in the day. How long had I been here? There was another window across the room, next to a closed door. The curtains did a crummy job of covering the glass and a beam of florescent light from the hallway hit me in the face. Ow. I closed my eyes again and focused on my other senses.

Equipment beeped and trilled around me. I breathed in and it smelled like medicine and water. Something, an oxygen mask, was strapped to my face. The back of one hand felt particularly sore and stiff. There was a needle in there, taped in place. An IV. Wondered what they were pumping into me. If it was painkillers, they were doing a lousy job. Something was attached to the end of one of my fingers, like a big clothespin. Didn’t know what that was. My chest itched where they’d probably attached sensors and stuff. My head was splitting open. My back and shoulders felt hot and raw, though I could tell they were covered with bandages. My legs…

Nope. Nothing.

Tears pushed at the corners of my eyes. I was worried that if I let them start, they’d never stop, so I came back to the question: why was I still alive?

Chet. He had been there in the backyard with his baseball bat. We had been all alone. Why hadn’t he finished me off? It would have been easy for him to brain me, make it look like just another injury. So why hadn’t he? Mercy? I’d seen the look on his face when he’d come at me in the park, and mercy didn’t seem very likely.

I sighed. I coughed. I moaned. Where was everyone? I needed something for the pain. I needed water. I needed… well, I needed my mommy.

The mask was lifted up off of my face and I immediately felt the urge to cough again. Before I could, though, someone pressed a straw to my lips. I slurped greedily, remembering that blessed bottle of water Hannah had given me behind the sporting goods store. Hannah. I wondered where she was.

I choked, started to cough, but kept on drinking. The straw was pulled back. I opened my eyes to glare and found Mr. Magellan standing over me.

He looked just like he always did. Khaki pants. Hawaiian shirt. A girl in a bikini surfed over his shoulder and into his breast pocket. He was holding a huge mug of water and was looking down at me, smiling, but in a very sad way.

“Hello, Mr. Holland,” he said.

I stared at him. After all this time, here he finally was. Assuming I wasn’t hallucinating. I managed to lift my little finger and touch his leg. He glanced down at that and his smile broadened.

“Yes, I’m real,” he said.

Okay. One question answered. Four billion to go. Unfortunately, my mouth wasn’t working too well. I croaked out something and Mr. Magellan shook his head, placing a hand on my arm.

“Don’t try to speak,” he said. “You’ve been in the hospital since yesterday. Your mom was here with you all night. She, uh, suddenly decided to go visit the cafeteria. Your dad is at home with your siblings.”