Blaze (The High-Born Epic) (36 page)

             
After about two hours of steady air-burning and searching, he heard something at the edge of the water.  He squatted and enhanced his vision.  It was a boy about Cooper and Scott’s age wearing dirty overalls.  He was oblivious to Harold and was just calmly washing off his arms.  Harold slowly looked around.  All up and down the bank and throughout the trees he could see children everywhere.

             
Gabby had picked a good spot. 

             
The trees were fairly thick and provided a great deal of cover from any eyes that could be watching in the sky.  As he walked towards the children, Harold could also feel something in the air, but he could not figure out exactly what it was.  He walked lightly, and silently, trying not to scare the children.  Along with his night vision and enhanced senses, he moved quickly and unseen through the children.  Even though the leaves were dry, he understood how to move through them with little noise.

             
He moved along the outskirts of the perimeter that the children had naturally created, and after a couple hundred yards, he found what he felt like was the center.  He could see the faint shimmer in the air that a cloaked gunship made, and he began scanning the area and the children.  Most of them were huddled in groups of ten or twelve and many of them were asleep.

             
“Hey there, hottie,” a voice whispered from behind him.

             
Harold spun to see Gabby stepping out from behind a tree just a few steps behind him.

             
“You’ve got to be quieter than that if you’re going to be any use,” she smiled.

             
“I was plenty useful earlier today,” Harold replied and took off his helmet.  “Have you been able to find any food.  I’m starving.”

             
“There was a little bit of food in a container in the back of the gunship,” she said and threw him a small bar-shaped piece of plastic.

             
“What is it?” he asked.

             
“They call it a battlefield bar,” she answered.  “They say it has a full day’s worth of nutrition in it.  It says on the packaging that its nutrients are released according to metabolic activity to maintain peak performance for longer periods of time.”

             
“Meta-what activity?” Harold asked.

             
“Metabolic,” she replied.  “I’m not sure what it means, but I think it has to do with how we absorb and use food.  Anyways, I ate one about an hour ago, and I already feel better.  So, why don’t you eat it, and get some rest.  I’ll watch out for us and the children for the time being.”

             
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Harold answered as he peeled off the wrapping.  “Did you do something to the air?”

             
“You can feel that, huh?” Gabby asked.

             
“I can’t quite put my finger on it,” he replied.  “But, yeah, I can tell that something is different.”

             
“I’ve created a large pocket in the air that is camouflaging us from their heat sensors,” she answered.  “The High-Born patrols will have a hard time finding us now.”

             
Harold raised his eyebrows, “That’s pretty smart, Gabby.”

             
She nodded and smiled.

             
Harold found a tree and sat down, leaning against it.  As he took his first small bite, he read the back of the packaging:

            
 
For optimum results, eat slowl
y
. 

             
He smiled to himself as he thought about Aunt Nean.

Chapter 31

             
Harold opened his eyes and could see a sparkling ocean in front of him.  He looked for the sun, but he could not find it, yet everything around was bright.  The water began rising in the distance, and it slowly grew into a dome.  The dome swelled and grew until the head of a gigantic man popped from beneath it.  As his bearded face and lightly glowing eyes rose into the heavens, Harold saw that he was shirtless and wearing only an animal-skin loin cloth.

             
His hands reached for the sky and he caught it in his palms.  He glowered toward Harold and looked around.  His head went from side to side as he looked for something beyond Harold.  He began walking toward the land, and Harold found it strange, but the ocean barely made any sound as he moved through it.

             
He soon made it to the land, silently looking back and forth.  Harold turned and looked in the direction that the giant was looking.  He could see the ruins of cities all throughout the landscape, but amidst the wrecked buildings were many large skyscrapers that towered into the sky. 

             
The giant walked silently across the land and stopped at one of the cities.  He studied it closely for a few moments and then made his way to another city.  As he walked towards it, he scanned the ground on either side thoroughly. 

             
Something caught the giant’s attention far in the distance.

             
Harold followed his eyes and could see flying shadows in the distance.  Most of them looked like crows and bats, but slightly different.  They had a strange shimmer about them that made them very hard to see.  Harold looked back towards the giant, but he was no longer there.  After a few more moments, the sky was full of silent crows, bats, and other things that Harold had never before seen.

             
Then he saw the wavering air move where the giant had just been.  An outline that resembled the shape of the giant moved towards another city while the strange shadows wafted around silently in a uniform pattern that left nearly no ground below them unseen.  Harold watched for a moment as the outline of the invisible giant and the shadows moved back and forth across the landscape.

             
Harold awoke with a stir and looked around.  It was still night time and as best as he could tell, it was at least a couple of hours before dawn.  He stood up and stretched.  He was surprised, but he felt great.  He moved his legs around and twisted his hips.  Then he began walking toward the cloaked gunship.

             
Just as he got close to it, the side door opened.  Harold found it strange how it looked.  The glowing interior of the gunship looked like the doorway to another world, and it just seemed to appear out of the nothingness in the air of the surrounding forest.  He walked in and saw Gabby at the front of the gunship pressing symbols on the light- green screen.

             
“Sleep well?” she asked with her back turned.

             
“Yeah,” he replied.  “You go ahead and get some shut eye now.”

             
“I’m fine,” she answered.  “I’m not that tired.”

             
“Okay,” Harold shrugged as he sat down beside her in the copilot’s seat.  “Have you learned anything useful?”

             
“Plenty,” she smiled lightly at him.  “That High-Born set the tracking device to come back on in twelve hours, but I’ve fixed that.  Now, I think I’ve figured out how to bring up the map of the surrounding area.”

             
“Can you show me?” Harold said.

             
“Sure,” she answered as she began pressing symbols.

             
A grid with misshapen formations appeared on the screen and it was easy to tell that they represented the trees around them.  There were even small red dots all over the screen.

             
“What are the red ones?” Harold asked.

             
“I think that they represent the children,” she said.  “Some of them may even be animals.  I think it picks up the heat of our bodies.”

             
“Really?” Harold asked.

             
“Yeah,” she said.  “I think so.”

             
“How do you know that?” he asked.

             
“I listened to the High-Born when they were chasing you,” she looked him in the eyes and smiled.  “They kept saying something about a heat signature.  You give off a lot of heat, and they didn’t have any trouble following you.  You did a really good job of throwing them off our trail.”

             
“So I’m not completely useless then?” Harold grinned.

             
“No,” she grinned.  “Not completely.  You made me realize that I needed to hide us from those sensors.”

             
“Well,” Harold rubbed his chin.  “If we can see the children, why can’t they?”

             
“It stresses me a lot to change that large of an area totally,” Gabby answered.  “But we’re close enough to the kids that the sensors work.”

             
“I toyed with it while you were leading them away and I figured out the right balance to not exhaust myself, but maintain a good deal of camouflage,” she replied.

             
“So how close do they have to be to see the kids?” Harold asked.

             
“About 100 yards,” she answered.  “Any farther than that, and we’re invisible.”

             
Harold raised his eyebrows, “You’re very useful, aren’t you?”

             
“Yes, I am,” Gabby smiled.

             
“So, Aireon,” Harold leaned back as she began tapping more symbols.  “How did you get to be like you are?”

             
“I guess you mean... how can I do the things I can do?” she asked without looking at him.

             
“Yes,” he replied.  “That’s right.”

             
“For as long as I can remember I’ve lived in the Marksville orphanage,” she answered as she went through various screens on the grid.  “I grew up there and I always helped out momma Gabby with the younger children.”

             
Harold gave her a look.

             
“Yes,” she glanced at him and then back at the control panel.  “That’s where I got my name.  I’m named after the four women who started the orphanage, but I know you’re thinking now… How does everyone keep it straight, right?  Well, the kids call her ‘momma’ and they call me Gabby.  I call her momma.  Anyways, until about three months ago, I was just a normal girl.”

             
She paused and wrinkled her brow as something she saw on the screen that puzzled her, “There was a fire at the orphanage and some of the kids were trapped inside,” she wiped her eye and sniffled slightly.  “I ran in to get them, and it took me a couple of minutes to fight my way through the smoke.  I finally found them and when I was helping them out,” she took a deep breath.  “I heard the ceiling starting to give way.  It was like an instinct, I just reached up to protect them and myself, and the boards and nails just stopped in mid-air right above me and the children.  Then the whole building fell around us.  The next thing I knew, I woke up in a bed and I thought that everything had been a bad dream.  But it wasn’t.”

             
“What happened?” Harold asked.

             
“Momma said that the whole building fell and the townsfolk were all cryin’ about the children,” Gabby looked out the window with a far away look in her eyes.  “But then some of the men saw me and the kids laying in the middle of the wreckage.  We were all knocked out, but none of us were hurt.  The townsfolk said it was a miracle.  Thankfully, none of the kids seemed to remember, and I even thought that I was crazy for a few days.”

             
“It wasn’t long before I was making all kinds of things move just by thinking about it,” she smiled at Harold.  “Then I started getting really strong, and fast too.  My studies even became easier.  Math problems and big words just started making sense to me.”

             
“Me too,” Harold replied.  “It was really cool.”

             
“I would go out in the woods by myself and practice all of the time,” she said.