Edgewood Series: Books 1 - 3 (50 page)

The men had pulled Mr. Specter to his feet and were pushing him toward the shack poking his back with the muzzles of their guns. From here I could see that it was no bigger than my aunt’s garden shed. I envisioned a dark interior with one rickety chair positioned directly underneath a bare light bulb. An interrogation chamber.

Jameson was calling out to them, something about dinero, but they weren’t acknowledging his presence, and they weren’t worried about the rest of us either. They were walking away from us, heading to the shack, their guns aimed at Mr. Specter’s back. Jameson’s voice was rising in pitch, getting higher like it did when he was aggravated. “Stop! I’m talking to you,” he screamed, forgetting to speak in Spanish.

I heard the footsteps of the rest of the group coming up behind me. Mallory ran past Jameson and me, and strode right up to one of the masked men. Before we could stop her, she began punching his shoulder like a mad woman. When she didn’t get any reaction at all—he just kept going—she swung her leg forward like gearing up for kickball. Just like that, the guy went down, flat on his face. Mallory had brought down an armed man with a playground maneuver—she tripped him.

After that, everything happened at once. Mallory pulled the gun out of the startled man’s hand. The other two turned around and took in the situation all at once and one of them began shouting instructions in Spanish. Mr. Specter, still blindfolded, yelled, “Leave them alone! They don’t know anything.”

And knowing there was no turning back, we all rushed forward.

Russ

Mallory held the gun like it was a dead ferret. I wasn’t sure she knew how to use it, but at least our side had possession. And now the rest of us stood clustered around her in solidarity. One of the men hustled Mr. Specter into the shack, one was on his back on the ground, and the other one turned to face us. “Drop the gun,” he ordered, pointing his gun right at Mallory. His English was perfect and tinged with a bit of an American southern accent. This was unexpected. Gringos in the wilds of Peru.

“No,” Mallory said, raising the gun and aiming it right at them. The one on the ground looked from Mallory to his friend, unsure of what to do next.

“I’ll give you to the count of five to drop the gun, and then I’m shooting you,” he said.

“Maybe,” Mallory said, her finger curling over the trigger. “Or maybe I’ll shoot you on four.”

“This isn’t a game, girl.”

My heart pounded and adrenaline pumped through my veins. I knew I should do something, but I was paralyzed with indecision. All I knew for certain was how glad I was that Nadia was safe on the bus.

“I mean business,” he said. “One!”

We all froze, everyone waiting for someone else to take the lead. I did a quick check of the group and could tell at a glance that the so-called chaperones weren’t going to be any help. Kevin Adam’s face looked completely drained of blood. Mrs. Whitehouse stood with one hand on her hip, her mouth hanging open.

“Two,” he said, in a hard voice. “Drop it now.”

“No,” Mallory said. She wasn’t giving in.

“Let’s be reasonable now. We can work this out,” Mrs. Whitehouse said, but no one paid any attention to her.

“Three.”

Even though Mallory’s hands were shaking, she didn’t move, and the gunman wasn’t backing down. He waved the gun back and forth, like an insane guy, like he might shoot any of us at any time. “You need to drop that gun!” he screamed. His eyes flicked back and forth like he was trying to decide what to do next. Crazed.

“Now, now,” Kevin said, attempting to diffuse the situation. “Let’s all calm down and take a minute here.”

It seemed to me that Mr. Specter’s words:
They don’t know anything
, was code to us, a way of telling us how to handle the situation. We were supposed to act like normal high school students and normal high school students didn’t shoot electricity out of their palms. I felt my hands itching to release a charge of power. I could take them all down in thirty seconds. But should I?

Alex authoritatively stepped forward and said something in a low voice to Mallory, who handed him the gun and took a step back. In an instant, the guy on the ground jumped up and stood alongside his comrade, making them twins in their dark hats and face bandannas, but now only one held a gun. And then, unbelievably Alex stepped away from our side and lined up next to the other two men, aiming the gun right at us.

“What in the world?” Mrs. Whitehouse said, cementing my initial impression of her as the dim one in the group. Mr. Specter had said only those with superior intelligence witnessed the strange meteor shower and were bestowed powers, but clearly there was at least one exception.

“Alex?” Mallory said, bewildered. “What are you doing?”

The gunman who’d had the standoff with Mallory held up his gun and shot it into the air. The deafening blast echoed and Mrs. Whitehouse screamed like a girl at a haunted Halloween house. “We’re in charge now,” he yelled.

What happened next was pure reflex. I stepped in front of Mallory and shot an arc of lightning above the head of the gunman, knocking the gun out of his hand. At the same time, Jameson sent his bola flying through the air. It wrapped around the chest of the guy, trapping his arms to his side.

And then, before we could get to him, Alex pointed his gun straight at me and fired. I saw it happening, but I couldn’t react quickly enough. The bullet was faster than me. One second I was standing, the next a force like a sledge hammer knocked me to the ground. I felt a throbbing, burning sensation in my shoulder. Flat on my back, I clutched at my shoulder and felt the wetness on my hand before I saw the blood dripping off my fingers. The sky above me swayed and blurred.

“No, you idiot,” yelled the crazy-eyed gunman. “The old guy with the glasses is the target. We weren’t supposed to hurt anyone else.”

Alex stood over me, casting a long shadow. He nudged my arm with the toe of his boot. “Eh. He’ll live. I’m not sorry I did it,” he said. “I didn’t care much for this one. Thinks he’s better than everyone else.”

“Well you’re
gonna
be sorry.” I heard the voice of the other gunman coming like a distant radio station. “That one’s Russ Becker. The second gen.” And then more quietly. “We had specific instructions not to touch him.”

Mallory knelt down over me, fussing. “It’s okay, Russ. You’re gonna be okay.” She looked up at Alex and her voice changed to disgust. “I can’t believe you’re one of them.”

“Believe it,” Alex said. “Remember when I said you shouldn’t trust anyone? You should have listened.”

Nadia

When I realized I was going to throw up, I grabbed a plastic bag out of my mini-backpack, and dashed to the back of the bus. It happened to be the same bag my Lucky Man had come in. Maybe he was lucky after all. I hated throwing up. There was really nothing to recommend it. I despised the sensation of your intestines turning inside out, the gagging feeling, the horrible taste. And then, when you think you’re done, you get the aftershocks. When I finished puking, though, my stomach felt much better. I wiped my mouth as best I could, threw the bag down on the floor and made my way back up the aisle to see where everyone had gone.

I crouched down in the front, peering out the windshield to do a quick count. There were three men dressed the way you see bandits outfitted in really cheesy movies—wide brimmed hats and dark-colored cloth tied over the lower part of their faces. One of them was hustling a blind-folded Mr. Specter into the shed, a second one lay flat on his back on the ground and the last one faced Mallory with his gun pointed straight at her. I blinked, trying to process what I noticed next—Mallory was holding a gun too and had it aimed right back at them. The rest of the group stood in a cluster nearby. I heard voices, but didn’t see any movement. Why wasn’t anybody doing anything? We were teenagers with super powers, for crying out loud. Jameson should be using his telekinesis, and Russ should be shooting electricity in their direction. I knew we’d been instructed not to use our powers in public, but jeez, this had to be an exception.
Do something
!

I crept down the stairs of the bus. No one seemed to notice me coming out the door. I made a quick decision and went around to the back of the bus, then crossed the road. The whole time I was sure I was on the verge of getting shot. It would have been easy to pick me off at such a close range. One bullet to the heart and I’d be dead just like that. Instant Nadia corpse. These thoughts weren’t helping my anxieties. I felt my heart banging in my chest and I swear my breathing was loud enough for everyone in the group to hear even though they were forty feet away, but when I glanced in their direction, they were focused on each other.

I said a silent prayer, pleading that Russ wouldn’t get killed. And Mallory and the rest of them too, but if only one person besides me was going to survive, I’d go with Russ. I could admit that to myself, even if I couldn’t to anyone else. He and I had connected in a way I never had with anyone else. We had a history, and I was hoping (and maybe I was being delusional) that we had some kind of future as well. But if either of us died today, I would never know how it was all going to work out. And that would be a true tragedy.

I crouched down in the ditch by the side of the road, not totally obscured, but less visible. I kept low and crept along as fast as I could toward the shack. I couldn’t help the group, but maybe I could help Mr. Specter.

My stomach, now empty, fluttered with anxiety as I darted over to the shed where I’d seen the armed man take Mr. Specter. When I reached the building and was out of sight of the others, I was able to take a moment to swallow before creeping over to the window on my side of the building. The building was rickety and listed to one side. The window was only an opening, really an open square where there had once been glass. My eyes needed a moment to adjust, but when I could finally make sense of what I saw inside, I spotted Mr. Specter facing me, his arms at his side, the blindfold still covering his eyes. He was being held at gunpoint: the gunman’s back was so close to the window frame, I could have reached in and grabbed his shirt. He and Mr. Specter were speaking in Spanish, hurried, fluidly, in words that I didn’t understand, although clearly the conversation was serious.

I hated feeling so stupid and helpless. If Russ were here, he could zap this guy into unconsciousness. But me, I had super powers that weren’t really powers at all. I stared down on the ground, wishing I had a weapon, but the only thing I saw were rocks and dirt.

Rocks.

A rock could be a weapon. People used to be stoned to death. I moved slowly away from the window and picked up a large rock. I felt the weight in my hand. It was the size of a grapefruit, pitted with a sharp point on one side. A rock this size could do a lot of damage if it hit someone on the back of the head.

I snuck up quietly with the rock in hand and held my breath, wondering if I could do it. I’d have to throw it hard and straight. If it didn’t hit the mark, it would make things worse. Maybe, I thought, I was deluding myself. I was no hero. And I wasn’t in the best shape. Until recently I spent more time in my room staring at a computer than doing anything else.

Vacillating, I did nothing, but waited and watched. The gunman was speaking, but he didn’t sound menacing. Mr. Specter answered in Spanish and then pulled the blindfold off. A look of alarm crossed his face when he saw my face through the window. I gestured to the rock then threw it as hard as I could at the gunman’s back. In the distance, back by the road, I heard a gun being fired followed by a woman’s shrill scream. It coincided with the rock hitting the gunman’s neck. He stumbled forward and the gun went off, hitting Mr. Specter, whose whole body jerked before collapsing in a crumpled heap on the dirt floor.

I dropped the rock, shock and regret coursing through my veins. My hand went to my mouth in horror. By trying to help, I’d as much as killed Mr. Specter. I could have yelled to distract the guy. I could have grabbed the back of his shirt or knocked on the outside of the shed. I could have done any of these things, but I didn’t. I’d made a fatally bad decision. I should have snuck away right then, but because I was in shock, I just stared. The gunman didn’t look back to see what hit him. Instead, he walked over to Mr. Specter’s body and pushed him over with the muzzle of the gun so he was on his back. A second shot rang out from the road and I heard voices exclaiming words I couldn’t make out. I gulped and wondered if two of my friends were now dead.

The gunman was listening too, his head cocked to the side, so that he didn’t see Mr. Specter spring up off the floor and come at him full speed.

I don’t know much about martial arts, but Mr. Specter had some crazy Chuck Norris moves. He kicked the gun out of the guy’s hand, knocked him against the wall, and had him in a headlock before the guy even saw him coming. The guy’s hat flew off in the scuffle, floating gently down to the dirt floor.

And then Mr. Specter looked in my direction. “I hope you were taking notes, Nadia, because this is how it’s done.”

Russ

Mallory hovered over me, blocking my shot. She seemed to think I needed comforting, and protection from that traitorous idiot Alex. He said he never liked me. Well, I never liked him either, not even when I thought he was on our side.

I almost set them straight when they said I was a second gen. This wasn’t the first time I’d heard this term in reference to me. The Associates believed I had superior powers because I was the second generation in my family to be exposed to the light particles, but that wasn’t true. Neither of my parents were the right age to have been exposed to the every-sixteen-year event, and I had no reason to think that either of them ever had super powers. When I’d had trouble sleeping at night, they assumed my insomnia was stress related, not supernatural. I wasn’t a second gen, but if these guys wanted to think I was, it was nothing to me. In fact, it seemed to give me a certain value in their eyes.