Children of the After: The Complete Series: A Young Adult Postapocalyptic Action and Adventure series (35 page)

“Jack. Slow down. I can’t keep up,” Will shouted ahead, panting between the words.

“C’mon, Will, we can’t leave her there alone.” Jack retorted.

“Then fling me or something,” Will suggested. “Use your power and carry me.”

“I don’t know if I can do it while running. It’s not that easy to control. I have to focus.”

Will gave up. He didn’t want to order Jack to do it. Well, he kind of wanted to, but he wouldn’t. He had no choice but to keep pumping his legs, striving to keep pace with the others.

It must have been two miles. Maybe fifteen, Will wasn’t sure, but it seemed like forever, when Jack finally slowed and veered off the street. There, parked in the driveway of a burned out home was a jeep. Though the top was missing, and the char marks and bubbled paint were proof that the thing was not about to run, Will watched as Jack trotted up to it.

Gulping as much air as his lungs would let him, Will shook his head at his older brother. All the running must have starved his brain of oxygen or something. Without warning, Jack jumped up and into the jeep and pulled the shifter on the steering column down two positions. Then, Will watched as Jack put his hands on the wheel, and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath of his own. The jeep rocked backwards. No way!

Will stared on in astonishment as Jack’s grip tightened on the steering wheel to the point his knuckles turned white and the jeep began to roll slowly backwards towards the road. Jack was using his power to push the jeep. No way could he push them all the way to the town ahead. Could he?

Back and back the jeep came as Jack turned the wheel, sweat already dripping down his face.

“Hop in,” he said through clenched teeth.

Will didn’t hesitate and neither did Tammy. Within a second both were inside the jeep as Jack again forced his power upon the jeep. Slowly, again, the jeep rocked, only this time it inched forward before beginning to roll. Will could hear Jack taking slow, deep breaths, inhaling and exhaling through his teeth as he focused. Second after second the jeep rolled faster and faster, gaining both speed and momentum. Jack seemed to relax, his features smoothing out as the breeze danced through his hair as they slowly picked up speed. Will almost couldn’t believe it.

“You’re doing it, Jack! You’re pushing the jeep forward,” Will exclaimed in excitement.

“No, little man. That would be too easy,” Jack said, finally relaxed enough to smirk. “I’m pushing the world beneath us backwards.”

The breath caught in Will’s throat. Could he really do that? Was Jack’s power that strong? Could he actually move the whole world?

Suddenly both Jack and Tammy burst out laughing. He had been had. Jack had tricked him.

“I knew you were faking,” Will shouted. “You didn’t trick me!”

“Sure, little man.”

* * * * *

They were the Star Children. They had to be. Tammy was certain for sure now. Who else could do what they were doing? It had to be divine intervention, didn’t it? They were the chosen of the prophet. They were the destined saviors of the world and likely all the races of men. Sam had teleported ahead to scout and now Jack was propelling them forward in a vehicle using nothing more than his mind and willpower. Tammy didn’t need any more proof. Even so, she couldn’t help herself but ask a question or two.

“Is it hard to move the jeep?”

“It was hard to
get
it moving, but now that it
is
moving it really isn’t that difficult,” Jack replied.

Tammy was glad for his answer. She didn’t want to run another moment if she didn’t have to, and all of them knew that Will wasn’t a fan of the exertion either. Now, none of them had to run. So long as Jack was up to the task, they had unlimited fuel. Things were looking up.

Grinning into the fading light, Tammy raised her arms into the air, feeling the wind across her skin and shouted. With no engine noise the only sound was the tires humming on the surface of the road, so it startled Tammy when her shout was echoed somewhere in the distance, only it came back deeper and more prolonged. Angry.

Cursing herself for losing sight of how dangerous the world was, Tammy could not believe her own stupidity. Something was out there, and now it had heard her. Looking to her companions it was obvious that they had come to the same conclusion, as both Jack and Will now wore grim faces.

“I’m sorry,” Tammy said, ashamed of her mistake.

“No help for it now,” Jack replied. “Let’s find Sam and hope she’s got a good place for us to hide.”

Again the jeep surged forward and Tammy strained her eyes and ears in all directions, looking for the source of the sound that had mimicked her.  Minute after long minute she peered out into the growing gloom for any sign that they were being pursued but found none.

It was mere minutes later when they dodged a burned out car, swerving around it as they passed between the first pair of the town’s dilapidated buildings. Tammy knew that now, anything outside the town would not be able to see them and it gave her some comfort. Not even a full block inside the town, Tammy’s hopes were dashed as the deep resounding yell came again from somewhere in the distance. It was louder, more distinct.

Sam eyed the school suspiciously. There was no telling what lay inside. It could be filled with alien invaders bent on eating her, or then again there could be some remaining military, just hiding out waiting for reinforcements. Focusing on the front door of the building, she ported past the lines of defensive barbed wire and grabbed ahold of the door. Pulling the handle slowly, she opened it only an inch before it stopped abruptly with a metallic clang. Looking down through the gap in the door, she could see the links of a chain that bound it shut. This wasn’t going to be as easy as she hoped.

Turning around, she vanished again only to reappear in the street standing atop the tank. There, further down the face of the building, was another set of doors. Tammy smiled and blinked across the distance, grabbing the door’s handle before she even got her bearings again. It was dizzying, the ability to instantaneously travel from one location to the next, as if the brain had trouble keeping up, but it sure saved a lot of walking.

Pulling this door slowly, in an effort to be quiet, she felt it give and watched as it slowly relented to her. Inch by steady inch the door opened without so much as a squeak of protest. Peeking inside she could barely see twenty feet down the corridor inside, due to the lack of light. Throwing the door wide, she illuminated the hallway as much as was possible.

Where she expected to find a disastrous mess, she was surprised that it appeared more or less untouched. There were no piles of discarded trash, so mounds of ash or soot. Nowhere from the door could she see rubble where something had collapsed or caved in, and better yet, no aliens or dead bodies.

Sam wanted to explore further, but wasn’t about to enter and let the door close behind her. Looking about, she couldn’t readily find anything to prop the door open. Out beyond the once manicured lawn of the school was a different story. In one instant she blinked back to the road, grabbed a sandbag from the nearest machine gun post and ported back with the heavier than it looked bag of sand.

Propping the door open, Sam slipped inside, tiptoeing across the tile floor. Clinging to the lockers upon the wall, she inched down the hall looking all about for signs of movement. Peering down the long corridor it appeared much the same as any elementary school, she supposed. This side of the hall was covered nearly in entirety with a row of blue lockers, only broken by the doors, placed in pairs at regular intervals. The opposite side was identical, except the lockers were red.

Nearing the first doors, Sam first looked across the hall from her position into the rooms that each stood open there. Seeing nothing that posed a threat, she peeked around the corner into the first room to find it all but empty.

Decorated in the letters of the alphabet and cartoon characters, the room was once used to teach young children, likely kindergarteners. The room looked just as it might have, many months ago, before the invasion, minus the fact that on the opposite wall where Sam stood peering in the door, all the desks had been piled against the windows as a makeshift barricade.

Taking the single step to the next door, Sam found it in the same state as the first. Blinking across the hall, just because she could, she found the two rooms there similarly arranged. Turning to look deeper into the building, she blinked to the next set of rooms and then the next and finally a fourth before she found anything of interest.

Here, peering into the rooms it was obvious that they had been used by the military. Looking inside the first room, Sam found it arranged differently than the others. The walls had been stripped of all decorations, and maps had been plastered up over every square inch with symbols and numbers written in various colors of marker upon them. In the center of the room, the teacher’s desk sat alone with another map upon it. This one had small objects place about its surface like paperweights, but Sam realized they were there to represent something different. Turning, she saw strange scrawlings on the blackboard, though couldn’t make out their meaning. Lamps were placed about the room, all of their cords running to a singular surge bar, and from it another cord traced back out and into the hall.

Following the cord, Sam crossed the hall to the adjacent room and found it littered with electronic equipment in shades of olive green, and tan. Strange satellite dish-like tripods sat about the room with cables running here and there and in the corner, against the wall of boarded up windows sat a generator, its piping ducted through a hole in the plywood to the outside. Making a note of all she saw, she moved on to the next room.

Boxes and crates of various supplies stood stacked in organized piles in the third room she found. Though most of the boxes were labeled, they were too hard to read in the very limited light filtering in from the door, far down the hall. Abandoning the room, she quickly stepped into the fourth to find it filled nearly wall to wall with military style cots. Making a quick estimate, she guessed there were thirty in the room, though she had seen no evidence of any people still inhabiting the school.

Walking back into the hall, Sam peered further into the darkness. She could see an intersection in the corridor ahead, but just barely. So far nothing had presented itself as to tell her that the building was occupied and as such she felt comfortable enough to go back to Jack, Will, and Tammy, and escort them here for the night. Turning back the way she had come just moments before, Sam blinked back down the long hallway to the door and then again, out into the street when a sound erupted from somewhere down the road. She wasn’t alone.

* * * * *

Jack’s duty was threefold. Not only did he have to propel the vehicle forward, a task that took significant concentration, but he also had to watch the road for debris and steer. Not to mention look for Sam. With the remains of collapsed buildings, street signs, abandoned cars, and other obstacles, Jack slowed the jeep to a reasonable speed, even though he was now fairly certain that something sought to catch up with them. He would have been more scared a week or so back, but being chased was really starting to become a part of normal everyday life. He imagined it must have been much the same for cavemen, running and hiding from the large predators of their time. The primary difference, of course, being that the predators in this world were more intelligent, problem-solving killers.

His head swiveling this way and that he sought out any sign of Sam, or any building that looked complete enough that she might be inside investigating it. All about him, to either side of the road, was destruction, much like they had seen everywhere. Though some buildings clung to their former glory in vain, the vast majority were obliterated. Piles of rubble littered the spaces in between the skeletal remains of buildings, spilling out into the streets, causing the jeep to bounce and jostle Jack and his companions.  Like everywhere else, glass littered the ground in sparkling shards and crunched beneath the tires as they rolled deeper into the town. Great metal lamp posts leaned over, sagging, having been partially melted by the attack and following fires, and stubs of burned down telephone poles jutted up from the ground like grave markers at regular intervals. The place was dead.

Like most of the places they had seen, the town had been expunged from the world of the living and left as a desolate marker of a time now lost. Though Jack had never visited the town before, and didn’t even know its name, he felt the loss. There had been life here once. Lots of it. Now it was all gone, taken from them, but for what purpose? Jack knew that it was the question that he wanted answered above all others. It was one of the reasons he agreed to go on this supposed quest. He wanted to know why. He had to know.

Dodging the metallic lump of what had likely once been a compact car, Jack continued onward towards what he hoped was the center of town. He assumed Sam would be working in a straight line, towards the center, and thought there would be a chance of crossing paths. Tammy and Will began to shout her name, though the reply came not from Sam, but from somewhere in the distance in a deep and booming voice. It was coming, whatever it was, and it sounded huge.

Traversing a twist in the road, Jack pressed the brake to the floor and focused his power against the movement of the jeep. As he jerked the steering wheel to the left, all four tires broke loose and slid upon the greasy ash and glass-covered street. As the jeep slid sideways, he had no option but to brace himself for impact.  Out of control, the jeep careened forward into what Jack could only describe as a pair of armored vehicles. The world seemed to slow as the impending collision loomed nearer and Jack watched in vivid detail as shards of glass shot out from beneath the protesting tires and clouds of dust arose from the piles of debris upon the road that they disturbed. Nearer and nearer they raced towards impact, and he focused all his will to stop them in time, but it wasn’t enough.

As the entire passenger side slammed into the grill of one of the armored vehicles, it was only Tammy and Will’s seatbelts that saved them from serious injury. With appendages and necks jerking suddenly to the right as they hit, Jack imagined them all puppets with cut strings until he realized that he had never bothered to fasten his own seatbelt and though his companions had jerked suddenly and come to rest, he continued on, glancing first off of Tammy’s shoulder and then the roll bar before being completely ejected from the jeep altogether.

Before Jack’s eyes danced a thousand memories of his life. There were mom and Dad, both smiling at him. His first fishing trip with Grandpa out on the lake in a little green boat. The day Mom and Dad brought Samantha home from the hospital, making him the proudest big brother ever. Then his seventh birthday when they all went to the adventure theme park and he got to meet some of his favorite cartoon characters. His first track meet came next, followed by his memory of the day Will first smiled up at him as a baby and reached out to hold his finger. Those and a million more played out before his eyes as his shoulder exploded in pain as he ricocheted off and over the top of the armored vehicle towards a web of razor wire and concrete beyond. Jack knew it was over. He’d failed.

* * * * *

Will smashed against the side of the jeep, his seatbelt digging into this stomach and neck as he was whipped back and forth. His ears ringing, he screamed as Jack smashed against the steel bar atop the jeep before hurtling head over heels out of the vehicle altogether. He reached up, tried to grab his brother, but missed, as if he couldn’t move fast enough. The whole world was moving slow, he realized, and fought the urge to cry. Tammy too was reaching out towards Jack’s somersaulting body to no avail. Watching Jack smash into the truck they had hit, Will reacted on instinct as his brother careened over the vehicle to be lost from sight.

“Stop, Jack!” he shouted, his voice breaking before he could complete the thought.

Tammy unleashed a bloodcurdling scream as Jack vanished and tears streamed down Will’s face. He hurt. All over he hurt, but not his body. It was on the inside. Fighting with his locked seatbelt to get loose, Will wiggled and tugged, pushing the button upon the buckle with numb fingers as the horror inside him threatened to overcome him.

With a click the seatbelt relented and in an instant Will was jumping from the jeep to the hood of the armored truck and scrambling up and over the steel-plated windshield. Out of the corner of his eye he caught movement, and turning he watched as Sam vanished from where he had just seen her to appear atop the very truck he was climbing.

“Here,” Sam said, reaching out a hand to help him up. “You’re gonna want to see this.”

Taking his sister’s hand he pulled himself to the top of the armored truck with her help and raced to the back. There, suspended above the ground just a fraction of an inch above the deadly grasp of the razor wire, was Jack. With his eyes closed and powers focused, sweat beaded on his forehead as he levitated above that which would have maimed or killed him. Though the strain was apparent in his face and the rigidity of his limbs, he grinned as he opened his eyes.

Slowly, as if the world was still moving outside the confines of time, Jack began to raise up from his precarious position and though he wobbled this way and that slightly, he rose steadily until his feet touched the solid surface of the ground. Will couldn’t help but stare at his big brother with an open mouth. He could fly. Jack could fly. If he wanted to, he could have the coolest superpower ever.

“Thanks, Will,” Jack said, after a moment to calm himself.

Turning to make room for Tammy, who scrambled up the armored truck to join them, Will cocked his head to the side awaiting Jack’s answer.

“You stopped me.”

“No I didn’t. I don’t have telekinetic powers, I can only make people… Oh… Right. You stopped yourself because I told you to, not because you knew how.” Will put the pieces together. “Awesome!”

“That makes you a hero, sweetie,” Sam said, ruffling his hair.

“When you say it like that it doesn’t sound as cool,” Will replied. “You’re supposed to say it like this…
Saving the life of his older brother with his telepathic powers, young Will became the first of three heroes of the human race
,” Will said in his deepest voice.

Will grinned as all three of the teens with him laughed loudly at his joke. They were all OK. None of them had been seriously injured. Everything had worked out, and he had saved the day. It wasn’t until their laughs were responded to by the deep roaring of something in the distance that Will remembered that their troubles were not yet over.