Rivals (25 page)

The rock
didn’t come down. Brent had thought maybe he’d just heard Lucy’s voice in his
own head, as a kind of hallucination, but apparently Maggie had heard it too.
She dropped the rock and it thudded in the sand.

“Where the
hell have you been?” she asked.

Brent’s eyes
weren’t focusing very well. He looked over to his side and saw Lucy standing
there, but there was something wrong with the image. She wasn’t wearing her
leg braces, he could see that much. Well, no, of course not—he’d seen
them, they were twisted out of shape and one of them was broken. But Lucy
couldn’t stand like that without the braces. Her legs were different
lengths—she should only be able to balance precariously on one foot.
Instead she was standing in a classic fighting stance, her feet braced against
the ground.

There was
something else weird about her, too. She looked kind of… well, green. Green
light was flickering on her shoulders and the top of her head. It disappeared
as he watched it. His eyes were starting to reshape themselves, to heal from
the injuries Maggie had given him. He could see a little better now.

“I got tired
of being a hostage,” Lucy said. “When you tied me up, you wrapped that wire
around my leg braces. It was easy enough to slip out of them, though I think I
might have messed them up a little.”

“No,” Maggie
said. “Tell me you didn’t.”

Didn’t
what?
Brent wondered.

“I had to
crawl, but that was alright, it wasn’t—” Lucy’s mouth twisted in a nasty
grimace. “Wasn’t—wasn’t far. Excuse me for—for a second.” Then
she reached into her own mouth and grabbed something. She pulled it out with a
grunt. A double length of wire with assorted bits of hardware dangling from
it.

No way
, Brent thought.
She just pulled out her
own braces!

“I think my
teeth just fixed themselves,” Lucy said. “That felt… weird.”

“You did,”
Maggie said, sounding horrified.

“Uh huh,” Lucy
told her. She dropped the twisted bits of wire on the ground and then wiped
her hand on the leg of her jeans. “I did.”

“Would someone
please tell me what just happened?” Brent asked.

Maggie spun
around and saw her brother kneeling on the ground next to her. There was blood
on his face but he looked a lot better than he had a minute earlier. Then he’d
been about to die—now he was seconds away from getting up and starting
the fight all over again. And now there were two of them—two people on
Earth who posed an actual threat to her safety and freedom.

Whatev.
I’ll just have to kill them both
, the
darkness said.

“Your little
friend went inside the cylinder,” Maggie explained. “She went to the well of
green fire. It might have killed her, but it didn’t. You know what that
means?”

“I think so,”
Brent said.

“Um, excuse
me,” Lucy said, walking toward them. “I don’t want to break up your little
moment, but it seems to me we’ve got some business to attend to over here. I
mean, if you’ve got a second. If it’s not too great an inconvenience.”

“What on Earth
are you talking about?” Maggie asked, turning to face the girl again.

“I need to
kick your ass,” Lucy said, and hit Maggie across the mouth with a right hook
that sent her spinning backwards. Brent tried to grab her as she
fell—maybe just to help her up, but probably to try to subdue her.
Maggie threw herself to the side to avoid him and landed on a pile of
construction tools.

I’m
stronger than they are. They’re just kids,
the darkness said.
I’m smarter than they are, that’s for sure.
She looked up and saw the two of the approaching
her
. Wait for them to come closer.

Her hands
moved through the pile of tools, looking for weaponry. They found what they
needed.

Lucy must have
seen what she was doing. “Be careful, Brent, she’s got—”

Maggie whipped
up her arm. She was holding a nailgun. Before Lucy could finish her sentence
she squeezed the trigger and a volley of nails snapped out at Lucy’s face. The
girl fell backwards, swatting at her face as if she were being attacked by a
swarm of mosquitoes.

Then Brent
knocked her sideways, hitting her hard enough to send the nailgun flying out of
her hand.

“I’m okay!”
Lucy shouted, but Brent didn’t seem to hear her. He was on top of Maggie,
pounding her face and shoulders with his fists. Maggie struggled up to her
feet as her ears rang and her vision blurred. He kept hitting her, again and
again, so she grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and threw him over the top
of a construction trailer.

Then she spun
around looking for Lucy—but the girl was nowhere to be seen.

“What’s the
matter,” Maggie roared. “Did you get scared and run away?”

She spun
around when she heard the noise of a diesel engine grumbling to life. A puff
of black smoke shot up from the exhaust pipe of a bulldozer off to her right.
She squinted and saw Brent sitting in the driver’s seat, pushing levers and
knobs and trying to get the thing moving.

“You think you
can get away in that? I can outrun that thing, Brent. I can chase it down and
tear you out of there. You haven’t got a chance!”

The bulldozer
lurched forward and then stopped suddenly. Brent scowled and slapped the
steering wheel. Maggie laughed.

Until Lucy
came out of nowhere and jumped on her back. Maggie whirled around and bucked
madly trying to get the girl off of her, but Lucy tugged at her ears, her nose,
her shoulders, always pulling her hands away before Maggie could grab them.
The younger girl wasn’t particularly strong—not by Maggie’s
standards—but she was faster even than Brent.

“Play fair,
you little twit,” Maggie screamed.

Lucy kicked
Maggie in the back of the head.

Enough
, the darkness said, and anger flared inside Maggie’s
brain. She waited for an opportunity, then she reached up and snagged one of
Lucy’s ankles. Digging in her heels for balance, she pulled Lucy free of her
back and then swung her around and around. Lucy’s arms and her free leg
flailed but Maggie had her now. She swung her around in a wide arc and let her
go.

Lucy shot away
from her like a cannon ball. The younger girl flew through the air as fast as
a comet and hit the side of the cylinder with a noise like a bass drum, then
bounced off and landed face down in the sandy soil.

Lucy tried to
get up but she was badly hurt. It was all she could do to push herself up on
one arm and stare in blind panic as Maggie stormed over toward her.

“Brent,” Lucy
called. “Now!”

The
bulldozer’s engine screeched and its tires spewed up great fountains of dust as
it shot forward. Its blade caught Maggie square in the back and knocked her
down, but it didn’t stop coming—instead it rolled right over her. The
giant tires barely missed crushing Maggie’s bones beneath the weight of the
construction vehicle and she thought Brent had made a big mistake—until
the bulldozer vibrated to a stop, right on top of her.

Its
undercarriage pressed her down in the sand. Maggie tried to get up but the
weight of the bulldozer was on her back. She tried to beat at the sand with
her hands, tried to push upward with every ounce of strength she had.

But it wasn’t
enough.

“Come on, damn
it,” she said through gritted teeth. “Come on!” She begged the darkness to
lend her strength and felt the anger coursing through her veins like dark
magma, felt her muscles push and heave and shove—

But it was no
use. She could pick up a car and throw it like a ball. She could punch her
way through the wall of a house. But the bulldozer must have weighed ten tons
and it was just too much for her. She couldn’t get any leverage—her arms
and legs were pinned and the ground under her was too soft to let her push very
hard against it.

She could just
turn her head to the side. She looked over, and saw two faces peering in at
her. Brent and Lucy were down on the ground watching her intently, watching to
see if they’d finally got her. If they’d pinned her enough that she couldn’t
get up. It looked like they had.

“Brent!
They’ll send me to jail forever,” she said. The darkness was leaking away, her
anger and her negative emotions fleeing her now that she couldn’t give them the
destruction they wanted any more. “Please! You can’t let that happen! You’re
my brother. Doesn’t that mean you owe me something?”

“Yeah,” he
said, very softly. “It does. It means I’ll come and visit you often, and make
sure they’re treating you okay. It means I’ll make sure you get the help you
need.”

“I’m serious,”
Brent told Special Agent Weathers, later on. “I’ll be keeping an eye on her.
If I see any sign that you aren’t taking care of her properly, you’ll have to
answer to me.”

“And what
exactly will you do, then?” Weathers asked. He sounded as if he was just
curious. “Will you spring her out of jail because we’re being mean to her?”

“I’ll—I
guess I’ll—”

“He’ll make a
stink,” Jill Hennessey said. “He’ll go to the TV news and tell them you’re
performing illegal experiments on her. Or that you’re defying the Geneva
convention. Brent’s a celebrity, and the media will
love
him after this. You’re with the government. They
already expect you to mistreat people.”

Weathers’ face
grew dark but he clearly knew she was right. He raised his hands in surrender.

“Thanks,”
Brent said. “I didn’t think of that.”

“Yes, I know.
Thinking isn’t one of your superpowers.”

“Jill!” Dana
said, shocked.

Jill and Dana
had done what he said and waited an hour, then went and got the police. A
whole fleet of jeeps with flashers and sirens had descended on the cylinder
site. SWAT teams with heavy weapons had set up perimeters. The FBI had sent
snipers and hostage negotiators. Men in bulletproof vests and baseball caps were
everywhere, collecting evidence in little plastic bags or photographing pieces
of equipment and vehicles that Maggie had turned into weapons. A whole medical
team had showed up to check out Lucy and make sure she hadn’t been hurt by the
green fire.

None of it was
necessary. Lucy was fine. Maggie was trapped and couldn’t get out. Every
once in a while she would scream in rage but that just meant she was alright
down there, so Brent didn’t mind. The police would have to figure out a way to
hold her once they moved the bulldozer, but that wasn’t Brent’s problem. Maybe
they could sedate her until they could move her to some kind of jail cell she
couldn’t break out of.

“It’s over,
detective. Can we take Brent home now?” Dana asked.

Weathers
sighed deeply and took out his notebook. “I’ve still got a lot of questions.
Brent, I need you to tell me again exactly how this happened.” He gestured at
the ambulance parked at the edge of the perimeter fence. Lucy was sitting on
its tailgate while a paramedic shone a light in her ear. “But maybe,” Weathers
said, shrugging, “maybe it can wait until later. I’ve got a bad headache right
now. A new one. I used to have two headaches, and now I have three.” He
wandered off muttering to himself.

Jill and Dana
grabbed Brent’s arms, one on either side.

“It’s over,”
Jill said. “And we won.”

“
Brent
won,” Dana said, and leaned her head on his
shoulder.

Over at the
ambulance Lucy looked up at him and frowned. Then, slowly, her face
brightened. She shrugged and smiled at him as if to say it was okay.

“Everybody
won, because we’re all safe now. Brent, you saved the day. There’s only one
thing left to do.”

“What’s that?”
Brent asked.

Jill clucked
her tongue. “You’re supposed to kiss the girl, stupid.”

“Oh, yeah.”
Brent looked down at Dana’s expectant face. “Sorry about this,” he told her.
Then he pulled free of the popular girls’ arms and jogged over to sit down next
to Lucy.

She looked
surprised.

“Hi,” he said.

She opened her
mouth but for probably the first time in her life she was at a loss for words.
So he leaned over and gently kissed her. On the lips. For real.

“I just wanted
to say I’m sorry,” he told her. His best friend. The girl who loved him. “I
was so blind—I had feelings for you too, I think I always have. I was
just worried if I said anything it would ruin our friendship.”

“Dummy,” she
said, and leaned into him. Her arms went around his neck. He put his hands on
her waist. “You look good in this,” she told him, and rubbed her chin against
the costume that covered his chest.

“We’ll need to
make one for you,” he told her. “You’re a superhero now, aren’t you?”

She laughed.
“I guess so, maybe.”

He pulled her
close and asked her, “Can I be your sidekick?”

David
Wellington was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He attended
Syracuse University and received an MFA in creative writing from Penn State.

In 2004 he
began serializing his novel Monster Island online. The book rapidly gained a
following, and was acquired for print publication by Thunder’s Mouth Press.

Since then,
Wellington has published more than 15 novels, and has been featured in The New
York Times, Boing Boing and the Los Angeles Times.

You can find
him online at davidwellington.net.

Plague Zone

Pass Fail

Rivals