The Elders (3 page)

Before she takes a step, I remember the
theory that had been on the tip of my tongue earlier, before she made me doubt Thomas. That theory would cover all the weird stuff that’s been happening.

For good measure, I still ask, “Is this about Thomas being Inert?”

Instead of answering, Mira closes the distance and attempts the exact move her currently frozen self is doing to my real-world body.

Kick me in the nuts once, shame on you.
Kick me there twice, shame on me. I put my arms in a crisscross block. The backs of my hands sting where her foot connects with them, but it’s nothing compared to what would’ve happened had I not blocked her kick.

She swings at me with her fist, and I dodge her punch, my certainty about what’s going on increasing. All the pieces fit. The cops. The way Thomas looked at me and attacked me. The
way he ignored Mira while we were fighting—a bad, irrational move. And the reason Mira is now intensely focused on attacking me
.

“You’re being Pushed,” I say as I step aside, dodging her punch.

She staggers, swinging at me again.

“Snap out of it!”

She doesn’t reply and continues her relentless attack.

I know I shouldn’t be offended that she hasn’t stopped—no one ever said that telling someone
they’re being Guided will allow them to break out of the compulsion—but it’s hard to imagine that I’d ever attack her, even if someone did Push me
.
I feel as if I’d be able to exercise my free will somehow. Then again, she probably didn’t consciously hear me when I told her she was being Pushed. In her mind, she may not be fighting
me
right now, but rather some illusory enemy.

If I can’t talk
her out of it, I have to stop her some other way. I decide to go for something ungentlemanly that doesn’t cross the line into hitting a girl. Before I start, I remind myself that this is the Quiet, and Mira will only suffer for a brief moment—if one can even suffer while in the state of being Guided.

I dodge a few punches, searching for my opening. When she moves to kick me, I see my chance.
I catch Mira’s leg before she can inflict any damage. It hurts my palms, but hey, no pain, no gain. Firmly holding on to Mira’s foot, I unceremoniously raise it in the air.

The result is as I hoped. Mira falls backwards. To my surprise and relief, she manages a soft landing, falling much more gracefully than I would have.

Her landing isn’t important, but the freedom from her strikes is, as it
gives me the opportunity to run up to my body—and I rush to do so.

Seeing the pained look on my statue-like face reminds me that I’m about to return to something very unpleasant, but I touch my frozen self’s arm without hesitation.

The world is back, as is the pain, which actually seems worse than before.

I force another breath into my lungs and, clutching my family jewels, use every ounce
of my strength to avoid falling on the ground. If I do, it will not end well for me.

Mira doesn’t wait for me to recover. She capitalizes on my inactivity by punching me in the face.

My cheekbone stings, but I ignore it. The pain is nothing compared to the blow my pride will sustain if a girl beats me to death.

She aims her next punch at my stomach, and I manage to catch her wrist with my left
hand. Without realizing what my body is doing, I move closer to Mira, the way I’ve done to initiate our million and one make-out sessions. Only this time, after I’m in her space, I circle around her. I bring her arm for the ride until it’s folded at an odd angle along her spine, ensuring that any movement will be extremely uncomfortable. If her kick to my balls didn’t preclude such thoughts, I’d
find this position mildly erotic.

She continues to struggle.

Crap. I can’t rely on pain as a means to restrain her, not in this case. She’ll only hurt herself.

I consider my options and do something that isn’t inspired by any martial arts training. I give her a tight hug from behind, pinning her arms to her sides. When she tries to twist out of my arms, I lock my fingers across her ribcage
and hold on. Standing like this, with my crotch against her butt and the tips of my fingers brushing against her breasts, the situation goes from mildly erotic to full-on hot. Hey, Mira’s kick didn’t cause any permanent damage—that’s good news.

All eroticism instantly vanishes when the back of Mira’s head connects with my face. Luckily, thanks to some martial-arts instinct, I leaned back in time.
My chin hurts, but at least my nose isn’t broken. When Mira swings her head back again, I dodge. This hug maneuver is not sustainable.

Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a blur of movement.

Just what I need,
I think and phase into the Quiet.

The lady cops I Guided to protect my moms are moving in. I get inside each of their heads and change their directives, then return to the real world.

I dodge Mira’s head-butts a few more times before help arrives.

One butch-looking lady grabs Mira’s shoulders from the front and the other pushes me aside. In a fluid motion, the cop locks her handcuff around Mira’s right wrist. Before I even register it, both of Mira’s hands are securely handcuffed.

“That was smooth,” I tell the cop, even though she probably won’t remember it later.

They gently
lower Mira to the ground, ignoring her thrashing legs and screams.

Handcuffed and disheveled, but still futilely trying to reach me, Mira looks like a hot zombie. It’s eerie.

I phase into the Quiet.

In the silence of my safe place, I can finally think about what’s happening.

Someone is doing to my friends what I did to Kyle. Someone else can reach Level 2, the psychedelic netherworld that’s
so unlike our everyday reality.

This someone Pushed my friends.

Did this person attempt to Push me too? I’m guessing not. If he or she had, it’s likely I would’ve been pulled into Level 2 with them. If they could get inside my head, they probably would’ve Pushed me to commit suicide, making this whole ordeal with my friends and the cops redundant.

So who’s doing this?

I recall the telltale
signs of Pushing I discovered inside Kyle’s mind at the science conference, the signs I wanted to investigate but couldn’t because Kyle’s head was in the process of blowing up from Victor’s shot. Could the ‘voice’ in the minds of the cops belong to the same Pusher? Damn, I wish I’d Read Kyle far back enough to hear the actual Pushing instructions. Then I’d have some reference to compare this voice
to.

In a moment of political correctness, I decide to call this new mystery Pusher a ‘she’
until I know more details. Also, to distinguish her from all the others, and given what she can do, I decide to call her the Super Pusher. For all I know, I might be right, and it could be some powerful girlfriend that Kyle was dating without my knowledge. If the Super Pusher is actually a guy, well, calling
him
her
is like calling him a bitch—which is fitting, since this individual is one.

I walk around the graveyard and closely observe my surroundings. Wherever the Super Pusher is, I assume she wouldn’t have bothered walking too far in the Quiet to Push my friends, which means she might be hiding in this very cemetery. My guess is that it’s one of the Guides from the wake. She probably followed
us to the cemetery and is now hiding like the coward that she is.

I inspect all possible hiding places in about a fifty-foot radius before realizing how futile this endeavor is. There are too many places where one can hide in a cemetery. You have crypts with doors, tall trees, large tombstones, bushes, and many other hidey-holes. Hell, she could even be sitting inside her car in the parking lot.

Wait a second. That’s actually a good place to check.

I run toward the parking lot, thinking that if I were this Super Pusher, that is where I’d be.

The parking lot is relatively empty, considering its size. There’s a long line of police cars off to the side, which I check first.

Two Honda Odyssey minivans catch my eye, probably because they’re parked right next to Lucy’s Crown Victoria, so
close that unless they move, we can’t leave the lot.

I approach the nearest van and experience my third shock of the day.

Inside it, I see the familiar bald-headed, orange-robed figures.

The monks from the Temple of the Enlightened.

I even recognize the Master, the monk whom I fought at the Miami airport.

Shit.
I run to look inside the second van. Besides more monks, I find someone much worse.

Caleb.

I’m not sure why I’m so shocked he’s here, since I know he works for the Enlightened. I guess I was hoping he would still be occupied with whatever trouble my aunt had gotten him into at that airport.

But no, here he is, riding shotgun with grim determination on his face. Whatever happened to him, he’s going to take out that frustration on me if he gets the chance. As Eugene likes to
say, trouble doesn’t travel by itself.

I try to stay calm. They’re most likely here to take me back to the Temple, so that my grandparents and the rest of the Enlightened can continue persuading me to ‘do my duty,’ which they define as screwing Julia, or whoever else they deem worthy of carrying my baby.

Unless they somehow sniffed out the truth about my new ability. Then they’d want to use
me
for whatever it is they need my future offspring for.

No, this latter possibility is less likely.

Regardless of why they’re here, this development changes everything.

I barely escaped this crew in Florida, and that was in a crowded airport without some Super Pusher hunting me.

I debate pulling Caleb in and telling him about this Pusher. If he believes me, he’ll probably get out of here.
After all, the Super Pusher could take control of him as easily as she took control of Thomas.

The thought chills me. I hate the idea of dealing with Caleb in general, but especially so if an unseen enemy is controlling him. Of course he won’t
believe me, and the likeliest outcome of me pulling him in would be me becoming Inert, with the tiny chance of me phasing into Level 2 as he brings me
close to death. No, thanks. That option just doesn’t work for me. I need to have my powers if I’m to have any hope of getting out of this alive.

I evaluate my options as I hurry toward my body. It doesn’t take long to realize I have only one: I need to run, thus getting the attention of this Pusher and these monks away from my friends and family. If I’m lucky, the Pusher and the monks might fight
over me.

Then again, I can’t just leave my moms, Thomas, and Mira here. What if the Super Pusher takes control of Caleb and does something to them?

I return to the burial site and formulate a quick plan.

The men holding Thomas will get off him, cuff him, and drag him to Cypress Hills Street.

The ladies holding Mira will take her to Forest Park Drive.

I Guide my moms to run in the direction
of the Jackie Robinson Parkway.

All of them—the cops holding Mira, my moms, and the Quarterback and co.—are instructed to grab a cab and meet me at what I now think of as Eugene’s new lair, the lab I funded for him in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.

I then Guide every single remaining person, including the priest, to stop the monks and anyone else who’s not part of the current ceremony. Since the majority
of these people are cops, I have to make the important decision of whether to allow them to use lethal force. As annoyed as I am by these orange-clad idiots, they’re just tools of the Enlightened, and I’m loath to see them killed. So I Guide the armed officers to empty their guns before the operation starts, but pretend as if they’re armed and dangerous. Seems like a good compromise to me.

Preparations
complete, I decide to finally leave the Quiet.

I run toward my body, slam into my frozen self, and as the world becomes noisy again, I keep running.

In my peripheral vision, I see everyone take action, on their way to execute my commands. All this mass Guiding would’ve made my aunt Hillary—the person who usually does it—proud.

I sprint so fast that after a mere minute at this pace, I feel like
my lungs might burst. I ignore the pain and run even faster, vowing to add more cardio to my usual workout routine. Finally, when I feel as though I’m about to have a heart attack, I see the welcome sight of the road at the edge of the cemetery’s green grass. Knowing that it’s the infamous East New York neighborhood beyond those gates doesn’t diminish my elation. The six-foot fence in front of
me is all that stands in my way. I climb the fence, trying my best to not get impaled by the leaf-shaped spikes, and carefully jump down.

When I land safely on the pavement, I look back through the fence. I’m not being immediately pursued, but that’s no reason to relax and do something stupid, such as wait until they catch up with me.

I phase into the Quiet and examine Jamaica Avenue, the street
in front of me. To my right, I see the subway in the far distance and a bus stop a block away. No go. I’m not taking public transportation in this part of town. Plus, I’d be moving slower than if I got a ride. I look across the street and see a drab Honda Civic.

Much better.

I cross the road, approach the frozen Honda, and open the driver’s door. The rotund woman inside must’ve just come out
of the deli, given the shopping bag she’s holding. I touch her on the forehead and focus. Once inside her head, I give her some Guidance:
 

Look across the street. That strapping young man is your nephew. You decided to lend him your car. You’re going to leave the car running with the keys inside and then locate a cab.
Your nephew might keep the car for a few days. You will not worry about your
vehicle, nor will you report it stolen. In a couple of days, you’ll remember that you left your car at a Hertz car rental in Bensonhurst. When you get the car, make sure to look in the glove compartment, where your nephew left you a thousand bucks.

I’m happy with my work and hope that I can use this car to pick up the rest of my crew, which would work out so much better than them looking for
cabs.