Dark Lightning (Thunder and Lightning) (30 page)

“Not too bad,” I managed to say. In truth, that hadn’t been a problem until the last few minutes, when I had started to feel tired, then nauseous.

“It’s a hell of a workout,” she said. “I’ll tell you, I’ll admit it, I’m more tired than I ever remember being.”

“Me, too. But we’ll make it.”

“Sure we will.”

MILE FIVE

I really, really didn’t want to be the first. We have been competitive all our lives, trying to make hard things look easy, not acknowledging pain or weariness. But I had to give in. I thought I might be dying, and I didn’t want to die in fire.

“Cassie, can we maybe go down a little? Just a little bit?”

She didn’t say anything for a while, and I felt my face burning with shame, on top of all the other burns. My body was a mass of pain. The heat had cranked up to a point that I was seriously thinking we might both die from this. My first water bottle was empty and there wasn’t a lot left in the second one. Drinking it was like pouring it down the drain. As soon as it went down my throat—almost too hot to drink, but welcome all the same—an equal amount squirted out my pores. It must be sloshing around in my clothes, but I was too hot to feel it. I was roasted, parboiled, fried, and baked. I thought my hair might catch fire right through my helmet, which was too hot to touch. I wanted to wrench it off, it was like wearing an oven, but I knew that if I did, my brains would be sizzling even more than they were already.

My whole body was wearing out. It took a conscious effort to keep my legs moving, and each stroke was harder than the last. My hands were numb from gripping the handlebars, my lungs burned with every breath. The muscles of my abdomen felt like I had been punched in the stomach over and over, and my back had been worked over with a baseball bat. Everything hurt from my toes to my nose. I wasn’t even sure my mind was working well. A couple of times, I thought I almost drifted off into unconsciousness.

When Cassie did reply, I realized the delay had been because she was trying to gather the strength to talk.

“I’ve never wanted anything so much in my life,” she said. “But can we go on just a little longer before we do that? I’d hate to come all this way for nothing. Just get bagged up like a couple of roast turkeys because somebody saw us before we got there.”

“How much longer?”

“I don’t know. I’m not seeing very clearly. Things have been swimming around in my vision. How about you?”

“My vision is still okay. It’s about the only thing that’s okay. My legs are about to give out on me.”

“Me, too. You want to alternate? One minute on, and one minute off?”

I desperately wanted that, one of us pushing and one freewheeling. I thought I might be able to catch my breath, get a second wind,
something
. But I also knew that if we did that, we would be longer in the oven.

“I guess I’d rather get there sooner.”

“You’re right. You’re right. You have any water left?”

“Just a little.”

“I dropped my bottle. Just slipped out of my hand. It was half-full.”

“I’d share if I could get mine to you.” There was no way my hand could meet hers, I was too far behind her.

“I know you would. Well, maybe I can lick some off my arm, or wipe some from my face and into my mouth.”

Not likely, but I didn’t say anything.

“Mile six,” I said. “When we start into that last mile, maybe we can fall a little lower then. We wouldn’t be exposed for so long.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

My last plan had put us up here in the heat. I hoped this one would work out a little better.

MILE SIX

I felt the increased resistance in the pedals as the cycle started to roll to the right. It was a very slow roll, but up to that point we had been perfectly level with respect to the sun, and now I started to feel blazing heat on my left side, which hadn’t been in intense light before.

For a moment I thought I was hallucinating. I hadn’t noticed what was right in front of me, which was Cassie laid out prone over the handlebars. I hadn’t even noticed the increased resistance of the pedals, as she began freewheeling. The only thing holding her feet to the pedals were the clips.

“Hey!”
I shouted. “Hey, wake up, Cassie.”

Nothing happened. I shouted again, and exerted what limited control I had from the backseat on the attitude controls, trying to stop the roll. I think I slowed it a little, but I couldn’t be sure. We had rotated almost forty-five degrees by then.

I shook the handlebars, and the skeletal frame of the bike lurched up and down. I didn’t like the creaking sounds the wings were making.

Nothing seemed to rouse her. Even worse, she seemed to have frozen, with her hand pulling one of the stabilizing levers. We were rising. Slowly, but definitely rising. At this point, I didn’t think we could possibly survive getting any closer to the sun.

“Wings gonna melt, wings gonna melt.” I found myself chanting that with a tongue that would hardly move through lips cracked and peeling. I tried to work up spit, and nothing came. And we continued to rise, and turn. The blazing light fell on my left ear for the first time, and I actually cried out.

I needed a drink. I needed to think. I needed a drink to think or we were gonna sink. I thought that was funny. I reached for the water bottle. I shook it. It was empty. That was the saddest thing I’d ever heard of, an empty water bottle. I cried. I sobbed aloud, but no tears came. I’d never have enough water to make tears again. Then I got angry.

“Damn you, Cassie! Wake up!”

Asleep at the wheel. I’d never have gone to sleep at the wheel. I’d never have passed out, gone into a coma . . . died? Could she be dead?

“You can’t die on me, you bitch!” I threw the water bottle at her and it clanked off her helmet.

She jerked like a fish on a hook, shook her head, looked around.

“What? What? I’m not asleep, Coach.”

“Coach my sunburned ass, damn you! This is your sister, dummy, and you almost fell off.”

“No, I didn’t. I was awake.”

“Then why are we drifting? Why aren’t you pedaling?”

“I was just resting for a minute. Sorry. Sorry. I . . . Where are we?”

“About a quarter mile away.”

“I can’t see much, Polly. My eyes have been swelling shut. Do you have any water? I’m real thirsty.”

“That was my last empty water bottle that woke you up. What do you mean, you can’t see?”

“It’s not all black, but it’s all blurry. Something must have got in my eyes.”

I couldn’t imagine what that might be. Sweat? Could sweat blind you? I was sweating, too, and I could still see well enough.

“We need to roll to the left,” I said.

“Right.” And we began to roll even more to the right.

“Other left, dummy.”

“Oh, right. Polly, I can’t remember which side is left.”

Oh, man. She was more delirious than I was.

“The side that’s getting hotter, that’s your left.”

“I feel just as hot all over.
Polly, I’m burning alive!
”

I was crying again, great tearless sobs. Every breath burned down my throat and all the way into my lungs.

“We’re almost there. Think of signing your name. Holding a pen in your hand. That’s your right. Roll the
other way
.”

“Oh, right. No, I mean left.”

We finally started to roll the right way. But that was causing the whole cycle frame to creak and groan in protest. I realized the damn thing was on its last legs. Or wings, or something. I was the one on my last legs.

“Where are we going to land this thing?”

I couldn’t remember. It was a small village. There was nothing else up there at the poles. Were we going to the North Pole or the South Pole? Let’s go to the west pole! Anything to get out of this red hot pole.

“Just keep going straight. I’ll know it when I see it.” Would I? Did it matter? I tried to remember why we were doing this.

“What? What?” That sounded like my sister. Or else it was me, because we were the only ones up here. The only ones stupid enough to be up here, going somewhere. I started sobbing again. I didn’t want to go there. I didn’t want to be here. I wanted a bath and a drink of something and a bed with cool sheets. Why did everything hurt?

Did I smell smoke coming from my hair? My hair was on fire! It was on fire, and something was sitting on my head. It was a helmet. I was going to yank it off, but my arms wouldn’t move for some reason. My hands were glued to the handlebars. I had to let go, I had to let go. I tried opening my hands, and the fingers moved slowly. A little at a time, slowly, slowly, they opened. And then I didn’t know what to do with them.

“Are we on course?”

Course for what? Of course we were on course. A course is a course, of course, unless it’s coarse. I laughed, and started to share that with Cassie. Then I noticed we were almost upside down. That is, the sun was coming from . . . where? I couldn’t remember, but it was in my eyes.

“It feels like . . . we’re falling?” she said.

“Can’t fall in free fall. We’re too tall, that’s all.” I laughed again.

“I can see a little, damn you. But I can’t tell how close we are.”

“Just keep pedaling,” I said. “It’s under control. Goal. We have a goal. It’s the goal pole. There’s the eight ball!”

“Polly, you sound drunk.”

“Skunk drunk, punk!” I laughed again. Oh, I was on a roll. Goal. Goal pole . . . we were going somewhere. We had a goal. The goal was the pole. Somebody was there at the pole. Mama?

“Mama,” I sobbed. “Mama, where are you? I want my mama.”

“She’s up ahead,” Cassie shouted. “But how far ahead?”

For the first time in a while, I lifted my head. I was surprised to realize that my hair was not on fire. But my hands weren’t on the handlebars, either. And ahead was . . .

Some shred of sanity came back to me, and for a lucid moment the view in front of me crystallized. We were close, mighty close, too close.

“Reverse, reverse!”
I shouted, and groped for the gearshift. I realized I didn’t have one. Cassie had it, that bitch. Why didn’t I have one?

I heard an unpleasant grinding sound, the pop of a strut coming loose from its mount. Above me, one of the wings was crumpling. It was happening in slow motion, and it was beautiful. The material is so thin that it makes swirly rainbows, like oil on water. The central strut snapped, and just like that, we were tumbling head over heels, held together only by the wiry tangles of the remains of the skycycle.

I don’t know how fast we were going. It had to be a lot slower than when we started out. But it was fast enough that, when the impact came, it knocked the breath out of me. I didn’t have any breath to spare. I was woozily aware that I was lying on my back in the direct sunlight.

Have to get out of the sun. Have to get into the shade somehow. We’ll burn up. My hair is on fire. My legs are on fire.

That was my last thought as I plunged down into a welcoming blackness.

When I next opened my eyes, I was looking up into the face of my old enemy, Cheryl Chang.

I screamed.

Cassie:

I was as surprised as Polly was to see Chang.

We crashed . . . well, we weren’t going all that fast, but the impact was a big jar for me because I hadn’t been able to see where we were going. And the crash was enough to destroy the cycle, which had already been falling apart. I banged my head on something, and even protected by the helmet, I was a little dazed by it. I sprawled out there on a ledge of some kind, still far too close to the sun, and tried to get my breath back through a throat so parched it was like burning sandpaper. There was no saliva to swallow. I knew that if we didn’t get down the slope and get some water soon, we might die. We were still far from out of the woods.

“We made it, Polly,” I croaked. There was no response. I groped around through the tangle of wreckage, still all but blind. I could just see a little out of one eye, but nothing would focus.

“Hey, no more slacking off. We have to move. Where are you?”

Still no answer. I began to get real worried. Finally, I felt what seemed to be a boot and worked my way up her leg and body until I had her face. I slapped her a few times. I felt around her neck, not sure exactly where to look, but I soon found a pulse. It seemed steady and regular to me. I felt a huge relief that she was alive. But we had to get down.

At this altitude, of course, “down” was not a concept that made itself immediately obvious. I couldn’t orient myself visually. So I held still for a moment and slowly sank in the right direction. I felt it on my butt, so I was sitting in an “upright” position. Polly was off to my right. I got my arms around her and moved us both in the direction I was pretty sure was parallel to the sun. As soon as we were floating in the air, it was just about impossible for me to know which way I was going. I held still, and in a moment I felt a slight pressure on my shoulder. I had twisted in the air. But that was okay. I pointed my head down, and let the gradually increasing gravity pull me in the direction we had to go.

We bounced several times. I figured we would soon be in the regions where people lived, and that could be dangerous, but I couldn’t think of what else to do. We didn’t dare go all the way to the bottom, but there was no possibility of lingering near the sun until night came. I was going to have to trust to luck, hope that we would not come crashing down into one of the pole villages and into the hands of our enemies. From there, I’d have to find a way to wake Polly up. Blind as I was, I wasn’t going to be much use until I could find a way to get the swelling down around my eyes.

What the hell had caused that? I wondered. Polly hadn’t gone blind. Aunt Elizabeth could probably explain it.

Before long, we were falling faster than I wanted to, so I turned us around and put my back to the surface. I was able to slow our fall with my hands, boots, and butt against it. Finally, my feet hit what felt like a pathway, and I tumbled forward into some bushes. It was much, much cooler but still too damn hot.

“Goddam you, Polly,” I said to her. “Wake up! I can’t do this alone.”

“What the hell happened here?” It wasn’t Polly. I looked all around, feeling panicked, expecting to be handcuffed and trotted off to prison. But no one touched me. By squinting, I could make out a figure standing over us. That’s all I could tell for sure.

“We need some water,” I choked out.

“Where the hell did you come from?” The voice was a girl’s voice. “I saw you way up there, just before you crashed. Why did you idiots fly so close to the sun? Don’t you know that can kill you?”

“Water. Please.”

She opened my face shield. I heard a gurgling sound, and saw a tubular shape floating in front of my eyes. Some water splashed on my face and I gasped. It was cool! It was cold! My savior held the water bottle to my lips and poured. My mouth flooded with cold water, and I gulped it.

“Easy, I don’t think you should drink it all. That other girl needs some, too. What’s wrong with her?”

“Passed out. Please, give her some.” She did, I could hear it. “Is she drinking?”

“Well, her throat’s working . . . Ohmigod! You!”

“What? Who are you?”

“Which one are you, anyway? Your face looks like you’ve been worked over by an expert boxer.”

“I’m Cassie Broussard.”

“I knew you’re one of the twins. I’m Cheryl Chang.”

“Ohmigod!”

—

I didn’t know at first if she was going to help me or kick my ass all the way back to the South Pole. But it never became an issue. Generally, skypoolers are friendly out of the playing sphere, but I had always thought of Cheryl as an exception. She was so intimidating, so mean, and so focused on doing damage that it was hard not to take it personally. And, specifically, I thought she had a grudge against me and Polly. We had been offensive stars, and she was pure defense; that is, if defense can be viewed as an aggressive act, and the way she played, it sure could. She wasn’t a skilled rider, and seldom scored, but she was powerful on the pedals and could display real stealth in sneaking up on your blind side and letting you have it. Add to that the fact that she was big, not fat, outweighing most of us by 50 percent or more. She had to have a specially strengthened cycle, or she would have torn it apart just by pedaling.

Skypool is not a contact sport. Yeah, right, and neither is basketball, but watch that scrum under the net sometime. No blood, no foul.

But I had never met her socially. I had heard her screaming abuse at our team, and I’d shouted right back. But when she spoke now, it was softly, almost timidly.

“We’ve got to get you some help.” She picked Polly up like she weighed nothing—well, she was light up here, but we were still big girls—and took my hand and led me, stumbling, down a path I could barely see.

—

Cheryl took us to her home in Hilltown. I couldn’t see it at the time, but when the swelling around my eyes went down, I thought it was a neat and tidy dwelling though a bit small. She lived there with her mother and father, who were both at work, and a younger brother, Woody, about twelve and as large as his sister. She immediately sent Woody off to fetch a neighbor who was a nurse, or EMT, or something like that. Meantime, she stretched Polly out on a couch and got cool water and some washcloths.

She came to all at once, took one look at Cheryl, and screamed. Well, it must have been a rude awakening, to be looking up into the face of the girl who, last time she saw her, wrecked her cycle and sent her tumbling to the ground. But I got her calmed down, telling her Cheryl was on our side.

I hoped.

I still hadn’t explained the situation to her and was saved having to do that for a little bit by the arrival of the nurse. He examined Polly first—temperature, blood pressure, vital signs—and pronounced her exhausted, dehydrated, but otherwise not in too bad shape. He told her to keep taking sips of the cold water, not to gulp it. Then he turned to me and took my vital signs and peered into my eyes.

“Looks like an allergic reaction to the sunblock on your face,” he said.

“That doesn’t make sense. Why didn’t Polly get it? We’re twins.”

“I suspect she didn’t get any in her eyes.”

He gave me a pill, and in a surprisingly short time, the swelling went down almost to normal. I could tell that he was full of questions, but I caught Cheryl shaking her head at him. He shrugged and apparently decided to stick to medical confidentiality.

“So.” Big Cheryl, the Punisher, looked me in the eye, and was clearly not happy. “You think it’s about time you tell me what’s happening?”

I figured that in the next few minutes she would either kick us out of her house and tell us to get lost, best case, or turn us over to the mutineers, worst case. And there was precious little I could do about it, short of shooting her. And even that option was unlikely, as I realized that sometime during the chaotic trip to her house, our backpacks with all our lethal equipment had been left behind, and I didn’t even know where to look for them.

“Okay,” I said, cautiously. “First off, did you know that there’s a mutiny under way, right here in the ship?”

—

We told our story, beginning to end, as quickly as we could. I was very aware that time was passing, and we had no idea what the condition of the prisoners was. When my throat became too raw to go on, Polly took over, and we passed the story back and forth between blessed swallows of water, then hot coffee. I had thought I’d never want a hot drink again, but it was amazing how much the bitter black brew perked me up.

Cheryl listened without comment. At one point she sent Woody into the kitchen and he came back with BLT sandwiches, which we fell on like a couple of starving monkeys. Cheryl chewed hers more thoughtfully. Woody was sitting cross-legged on the floor, staring wide-eyed at us.

We came to the part about the flycycle trip and the reasons we had no other good options, and she sat up straighter. I got the feeling that Cheryl wasn’t the sharpest knife in the block, and probably wasn’t good at much but skypool, but she was very good at that. She understood flycycling and knew just how difficult and dangerous our trip had been.

Then we stopped. And waited.

“How long did it take you?” she asked. “Pole to pole?”

I really hadn’t known, but my trip meter had been quietly keeping all the stats, and I took a look at it. A little less than one hour.

“Six miles per hour,” she said, and whistled. “And on a piece of junk like that. That’s pretty good, considering you were cooking all the way.”

Hell, even I was impressed, now that I thought about it.

“Okay,” she said, getting to her feet. “I’m with you. There are some things I need to do. It’ll take a while, and I figure you two need to rest up for a little bit, get your strength back. Then you can tell me your plan.”

“Just like that?” Polly said.

“Just like that. Oh, I know, you guys don’t like me, but I got nothing against you. I’m the Punisher because I’m so big. It’s what Coach tells me to do. But I’m not bad. Not really. Ask Woody.”

“Well . . .” Woody started. She laughed and aimed a kick at him, but he was too agile.

“Come on, my room’s upstairs. I’ll get you bedded down.”

—

She insisted on taking all our clothes, which were still sopping with sweat. She gave us nightgowns, and told us to sack out. Her bed was a double.

I wasn’t sure I trusted her completely, and I felt vulnerable without my combat outfit and gear, but I didn’t know what else to do. If she wanted to turn us in, she could have held us down with one hand while Woody went for the authorities.

“She would have tried for the backpacks if she was pulling something cute, wouldn’t she?” Polly asked me, showing she was having the same thoughts I was. “Unless she’s way more stupid than I take her for.”

“I don’t think there’s anything stupid about her. Not swift, maybe, but smart where it counts.”

“Me, too. Still, it wasn’t all that long ago she nearly killed me.” She was unconsciously rubbing her butt where the broken spar had gone in, and where she would have a dime-sized scar for the rest of her life. You want to tell us apart? Ask us to turn around and drop our knickers.

“You know what?” I said. “If she’s fooling with us, there’s not a damn thing I can think of we could do about it. So how about let’s stack some Zs.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Stress is one of those things that can keep you awake, and we had plenty of that. But exhaustion is the best sleeping powder I know of. I had thought it might take a while, but I was asleep within a minute, and the last sound I heard was Polly’s soft snoring.

—

There was a loud party going on downstairs. I thought about going down there and telling them to keep it quiet, for goodness’ sake, didn’t they know we were in trouble, didn’t they know people were looking for us? I knew all that to be true, but for a while I couldn’t seem to remember just why people were after us.

And I didn’t want to deal with it. I was so tired. I rolled over and pulled a pillow over my head, but it didn’t do any good. Then somebody started poking me roughly. I opened my eyes, and saw it was Polly. She was half-dressed in her black battle outfit, and it all come rushing back to me.

“Get your ass out of bed,” she whispered. “I don’t know what’s going on downstairs, but it’s got me worried.”

I saw my own clothes carefully laid out on a wooden chair, not only cleaned, but starched and pressed. What the well-dressed freedom fighter was wearing today. Our weapons-filled backpacks were there, too. I yawned, stretched, then hit the floor and hurried into Cheryl’s bathroom and relieved myself of a lot of the water I had guzzled a few hours before.

As I dressed, I took stock of my body to see just how bad off I was, and it was nowhere near as bad as I feared. My face was still a little swollen, and my hands hurt from gripping the handlebars. There was a pain in my back when I turned a certain way, but nothing I couldn’t tolerate.

When we were dressed, with helmets and backpacks and boots and all, we looked at each other and silently decided to each put a pistol in a belt holster, but not to carry one in our hands. If the ruckus downstairs was trouble, we could get to them in seconds.

What we encountered downstairs was basically the Hilltown Hillbillies girls’ skypool team, with a few additions.

I almost didn’t recognize them without their helmets and uniforms. You don’t spend a lot of game time looking at faces; it’s arms and legs and wings you watch. But then I recognized Mazzie Niven, and Violet Silversteen and Suki Kurosawa, and the other faces fell into place. But I didn’t spend a lot of time looking at them, because I was astonished to see some of my own teammates. There was Pippa Mendez and Jynx Molloy and PJ Leaping Deer. And there was Milton Kaslov from the boys’ team. There were a few other boys. I didn’t recognize any of them. Either the boys’ team of the Hillbillies or boyfriends of the girls, I figured.

Most exciting of all was Coach Peggy, dwarfed by most of the other players, smiling up at us. I was so moved I could hardly speak at first.

“We’ve got a call out for the rest of the team,” Coach Peggy told us.