Authors: George Earl Parker
The Subatomic Kid (18 page)
“I never said I didn’t know it,” Cal protested. “I merely said it was irrelevant.”
“Oh, I merely said it was irrelevant,” Tex mocked in his best Queen of England impersonation.
John marveled at the way these guys could go from high danger to high humor in just a couple of steps. It was a testament to the human spirit, he thought.
“Okay, do we need to bust anyone else, or are we ready to move on now?” John asked.
The three of them turned and stared at him.
“You know, now that you mention it, we haven’t started on you yet,” Cal said.
“That’s true,” Tex echoed. “But then he’s always doing that disappearing thing; he’s hard to pin down.”
“Ah, he’s just shy,” Kate said seductively. “He needs to be coaxed out of his shell.”
Cal whistled, and Tex growled, as John blushed beet-red.
“I think there’s a door to the back of the building along here,” John said, heading toward it at the speed of light.
He wasn’t quite sure what it was he had felt; he didn’t have a name for it. It was a strange emotional concoction that seemed to consist of equal amounts of elation and embarrassment. He felt both hot and cold at the same time, and he was sure if he had tried to speak, the words would have had no meaning. He tried to focus on the task at hand, but his brain seemed like it had turned to wool. His heart was beating like a jackhammer, and his feet seemed to be twice as far away from his head as they normally were.
It was the oddest sensation, and not one he needed right now. He grasped the doorframe, stared out into the schoolyard, took a deep breath, and listened to the whistling in his head. Whistling? There was no whistling in his head; it was coming from outside.
He threw himself down behind the solid part of the door, and as Tex, Cal, and Kate joined him, he signaled them to do the same.
“What’s wrong?” Cal asked.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Tex exclaimed.
“No, listen, can’t you hear it?” John asked.
“Hear what?” Kate queried.
“Sssshhh,” John hushed.
They all sat and listened for what seemed like an eternity, but there was no sound.
“This isn’t a joke, is it?” Kate wondered aloud.
“No. I heard whistling outside,” John said.
“That was me, I whistled,” said Cal.
“Uh, uh. After that,” John corrected.
“Well, maybe it’s someone who could help us,” Tex suggested.
The three of them turned and stared at him as he reran the events of the day through his head.
“Or maybe not,” he concluded.
“Well, it seems to me that we could sit here and listen,” said Kate, “or, we could take a look.”
It was true; it was dark, what were they worried about? They could just take a peek outside and see what was going on.
“Yeah, I guess we could,” John agreed. “Maybe that whistle was in my imagination.”
They all scrambled onto their knees and slowly lifted their heads until they were peering out of the glass at the top of the door.
“What do you think?” John asked.
“Seems okay to me,” Cal offered.
“Moonlight looks like dark daylight, doesn’t it?” Tex marveled.
“Not now, Tex,” said Kate.
“Okay then,” John said, lifting his hands up to the bar that would release the door lock. He was a split second away from pushing it when a blinding light flashed out of the darkness. They all yelled, and ducked back down behind the solid part of the door.
***
Ron shut off his flashlight and ran toward the door in a zigzag pattern. In this day and age he felt you could never be sure if there was going to be gunplay or not, and he didn’t believe in taking chances. He threw his back against the wall next to the door and glanced sidelong into the window, but all he saw was moonlight and shadows on the floor inside.
He took a couple of steps to the side. He was flummoxed; he knew that he had seen what he had seen, but the evidence had disappeared
. Investigating what just happened is going to take some pretty fancy detective work
, he thought to himself. He unclipped the strap that secured his gun in its holster; now he was prepared for any eventuality. He ran a number of ploys through his mind and decided to go with the nonchalant check and disappear.
Sauntering up to the door again, he grabbed the handle and pulled back and forth to check that it was locked. He held the flashlight up beside his face, switched it on and swept the area inside. As he expected, he saw nothing, but this part of the exercise was just for show. Any reprobates who were skulking in the shadows would be lulled into a false sense of security by his subterfuge.
He flicked off the flashlight and walked away, softly whistling a hastily improvised tune. But once he reached the shadows, he got down on his hands and knees, quietly crawled back, and waited.
***
Hunter cruised into the schoolyard feeling pretty cool about everything. He had managed to divert a potential crisis, more by luck than judgment, but then that was his special talent. Longevity in his line of work meant never being the subject of blame, and as long as there’s an underling around, there’s always plausible deniability.
He rolled down the window, puffed on what was left of his cigar and wondered if he should wait for Steve. The radio was playing “Adagio for Strings,” a wonderfully melancholic piece composed by Samuel Barber. The music was too good to leave; the soaring strings were dredging up memories he hadn’t visited in decades.
He slipped his gun from his shoulder holster and checked the ammo clip; it was habit, something he always did before going into battle. He believed that whenever two people got together anywhere there was the potential for conflict. ‘Make love not war’ was an anathema to him; love
was
war. We are always marshaling our emotional troops somewhere on the frontline, and confrontations and skirmishes are inevitable when protecting our borders.
The music was intoxicating; in it he saw faces from the past and felt the pang of lost loves. He was no saint, but then neither was anyone else he’d ever met, and if they claimed they were, you had something they needed, and they would stop at nothing to get it.
It was said that Miyamoto Musashi, one of the best swordsmen Japan had ever produced, would meditate for days before he went into battle with an opponent. It didn’t matter to him if he was fighting one, ten or fifty; in his meditation he lived every blow of the fight, and by the time he rose from his cushion he was the victor. He never lost a fight.
Hunter leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes; the music was playing magical games with his imagination. He wasn’t really sure he had ever known what meditation was, but he had to admit as this moment in time expanded, he was pretty damn close to it.
***
The four kids huddled tightly against the door and watched the flashlight dance around the walls and across the stone floor. They breathed a sigh of relief when it was finally extinguished and allowed themselves to relax a little when they heard footsteps and whistling diminish into the distance.
“That was a close call,” whispered Kate.
“Do you think he saw us?” Cal asked.
“I don’t know,” Tex said. “He sure beamed us with that flashlight.”
They all knew there was a security guard at the school, and they all knew he was a complete idiot. But he was an idiot with a cause, and in any language that spelled trouble. He was as completely devoted to Doctor Leitz as Igor was to Dracula, and at one time or another they had all had a run in with him when he was clearing the building.
At that time, they had just considered it to be an unfortunate circumstance of life at the school. It was something they had learned to live with and navigate around. Often when things are routine, we become blind to them; we complain about the inconvenience and never ponder exactly why a strange event is occurring with amazing regularity.
But given their present predicament, they could see with the clarity of hindsight that these nocturnal interludes for experimentation were more treacherous than those of Doctor Frankenstein. Yet no parent, student, or teacher had ever questioned why exactly everyone had to leave the premises, and what exactly went on after they did.
We are blinded by the comfort of familiarity, even when something bad happens on a regular basis. As long as we expect it, it becomes okay. And of course, when change rears its ugly head, our first reaction is to resist it, when in actual fact we should invite it in at every opportunity. It is the wind of change that blows the scales from our eyes and opens our hearts to new experiences, before negligence finds the time to wreak havoc with power.
John thought they had sat and listened to the silence long enough. If there was danger, it had to be faced. They hadn’t come this far to cower in fear behind their portal to freedom. “I’m gonna take another look,” he said, “I can’t stand this drama.”
Tex, Cal, and Kate watched anxiously as he turned to face the door, got onto his knees, and peered out of the bottom of the window. He saw nothing at all, just a dark shape his eyes couldn’t penetrate.
***
As he crawled back to the door Ron had a brainstorm. He was a superior sleuth, he was convinced of that, and therefore his thinking in situations such as these was somewhat unconventional. He wanted to apprehend these reprobates, and he wanted them to know they had been caught by one of the slickest gumshoes still pounding the beat.
His plan was simple in its brilliance; he would wait, but not passively; aggressively. He wanted to shock the blood out of their veins. He wanted them confused and unsure so he could move in and grab them while they were wondering what had happened.
Arriving back at the door, he grasped the initiative by getting up on his knees and peering into the corner of the window where he imagined he had seen a pair of eyes. But his pièce de résistance, the addition that gave him his style and panache, was his flashlight. It was big and powerful, and he held it strategically beneath his chin. The moment he caught site of a felon, he would flick it on, and they would literally have the face of justice beaming down on them. The avenger from hell would strike fear into them, and shock them to the very marrow of their bones.
He drew the gun from his holster, held it up by his head, and waited patiently. It was the oldest game in the book, the cat and mouse game. He was the cheese, and they were the rodents, and the moment he caught sight of a silhouette moving up to confront him face-to-face, he knew he had them. He blasted the flashlight beneath his chin to full power, and the ghoulish countenance of his face flashed out like a lightning bolt.
***
It scared John out of his wits, and his first reaction was to do what any other person would have done in that situation; he yelled loud and long. If he had been any other kid in the world, that would have been the end of it—he would have been dazed, confused, and apprehended. But there was no other kid like him in the world, or in the universe for that matter, and in the whole history of the solar system there had never been anyone like him. He was unique, so unique in fact that he didn’t even understand himself.
In less time than it takes a thought to leap a synapse, his instinct kicked into action. His was no ordinary fight or flight response. His mind had the ability to reach down to the subatomic level and convert matter, and the amusement park of his imagination designed a wild and wicked sideshow to combat the freakish countenance that threatened him.
His face turned the color of fire and began to bubble and boil like lava in a volcano. His eyes glowed white with heat, and his hair began to writhe around on his head like snakes undulating to the flute of a charmer. It was utterly grotesque, and what made it even more disarming was the fact that the rest of his body was completely unaffected.
Kate, Cal, and Tex had watched as John rose up to peer through the window, and they had been startled when he emitted the bloodcurdling cry that seemed to come from the very depths of his soul. But nothing on earth could have prepared them for the hideous transformation of his face. They were shocked and awed; it was as if a medieval Japanese demon mask had been animated into life. They lost control of their senses, and under the bizarre circumstances there was nothing more they could do than scream at the top of their lungs.
***
Ron stared in horror at the monstrous apparition that glowed, bubbled, and writhed before him. He had witnessed some diabolical acts in his time but nothing, nothing even approached the heart-stopping, bowel-relieving, brain-crushing manifestation on the other side of the glass.
Every muscle, nerve, sinew, and bone in his body locked up tight. He was paralyzed with fear; every thought in his brain ran for the shadows, and for the first time in his memory, there was absolutely nothing in his head except an extremely loud buzz saw that seemed to stretch from ear to ear.
In amongst the wreckage of his former self, he managed to salvage two distinct and important responses. The first was his trigger finger, which, with a mind of its own, fired the gun he held right beside his ear. The second was his voice, which howled so loudly in horror it seemed like it was clamoring to escape him forever.
