Project Aquarius (The Sensitives Series Book 1) (21 page)

Quickly, the men ran toward Laura and hooked their arms under hers. In a swift motion, they pivoted around and moved back toward the chopper, throwing Laura off balance, dragging her by the heels. She kicked and flailed. A look of absolute terror was on her face.

Not friendly. Drea didn’t have time to think before two more men exited the chopper. And they were bigger than the first two.

Darnell called to Drea from the side of the road, “It’s the po-po! Run!”

The burly men in black were carrying machine guns and they were headed straight for her. Drea’s body finally jumpstarted into action. She immediately dumped the contents of the wagon on the ground.

“Sammy!” she called out to her brother who was lying supine on the ground, holding onto his ears with all of his might, wailing in tune with the blades.

Drea had to double-back toward the chopper to get him.

“I’m sorry, Sammy,” she said as she used all her strength to scoop him up and throw him in the now empty wagon.

The sudden burst of strength shocked Drea. She had summoned it from somewhere deep within. If she could lift her brother under pressure, she could do anything. Drea intuitively knew she was going to make it. This must be what Laura was talking about, the deep knowing. She wouldn’t let anyone harm her brother. He was her responsibility now and they were going to survive together.

“Let me go. Let me go. Let me go,” Sammy wailed while upside-down. He had landed face first in the wagon, his body crumpled underneath him.

Drea took off running before his arms and legs made it all the way in. The weight of the wagon was more than she expected. Sammy was a big kid now. Dragging the weight behind her made her feel like her arm was going to fall off.

“Darnell, wait up!” she called.

But Drea couldn’t see him anymore. He had disappeared somewhere off the shoulder. All she could see was an endless repeating matrix of noise barriers, a ten-foot tall wall. She was trapped. There was nowhere to hide. Her thighs burned from the sprinting and the pulling. Her breathing was labored. But she moved forward and didn’t dare look behind. Her life depended on it. She had to find cover; she wasn’t sure how much stamina she had in her…

“Over here!” a familiar voice yelled above the cacophony. “There’s a hole in the fence!”

Drea saw it about thirty feet ahead. Her shoulder was screaming, trying to dislocate, but she couldn’t stop now. The blades of the chopper were still going and at least four goons were back there somewhere.

“Sammy, we gotta go bud!” she prepped him, still running.

She had seconds to pre-teach her brother about a big transition that would require all of his skills.

He was crouched in the wagon with his hands over his ears still screeching. His nose was dripping blood.

“You’re going to be alright, but I need you to listen to me. Okay?”

She couldn’t see if he nodded or not.

“I need you to run!”

Without stopping her forward momentum, using all of her upper body strength and her low center of gravity, she swung the wagon around 180 degrees until it landed in front of the hole in the wall.

“Go right now! Run, Sammy, run!”

She gave him an encouraging tug on the arm and was relieved when she felt him take his own weight. They ditched the wagon and dove through the jagged opening in the fence. Drea felt the corner of her favorite sweatshirt tear on the splintered wood and she winced. Sammy, miraculously, had followed her through the hole. That’s all that mattered.

They were in the backyard of a small cape house. She quickly took stock of the new landscape: a lone rusty swing set, abandoned toys, a dog crate. Nowhere to hide.

Darnell took charge before Drea’s brain could fully organize. “Yo, we gotta break into this house and hide. Like right now.”

“No… Too obvious… We need to keep moving. They can track us here,” Drea wheezed.

“Fine. You gotta better idea?”

The yard was completely surrounded by fence. They would have to go up and over the chain link to get out. She pointed and Darnell nodded.

“A’ight.”

He hopped the fence easily. As Drea boosted her brother over, her shoulder made a disgusting crackling noise. She swallowed the searing pain and scaled the fence in two moves, impressing herself.

Once in the front yard, Drea observed that they were in the middle of a quaint older neighborhood, a bit more densely populated than Weston. A pattern of 1950’s capes dotted the street. She didn’t want to play hide and seek with the aerial SWAT team in this predictable grid patterned neighborhood. In the distance, Drea saw the tops of some very tall old pines.

“Head for those trees.”

***

They were all out of breath and in need of water. Drea had led them to a small patch of woods, but they were surrounded by housing developments on all sides. They weren’t exactly well hidden.

“I told you, I don’t do woods,” Darnell reminded Drea.

“Suck it up and lay low. The trees provide cover. They can’t see us from the air.”

“They gone. They been gone. They ain’t followin’ us,” Darnell insisted.

“We don’t know that yet.”

“Listen. It’s so freakin’ quiet. The chopper is way out there. It’s movin’ away from us,” he pointed out.

“Just shut up and don’t move. We’ll move when it’s safe.”

The boys obeyed and sat still on the rug of pine needles under the enormous boughs. After a few minutes, the sound of the chopper faded completely into the distance. The bird had flown back toward the city with Laura in its claws.

Laura was gone.

A weight of enormous loneliness sat on Drea’s shoulders. She was left alone in a world where she was in charge of an eleven year old and a nine year old, even though most of the time she didn’t feel in charge of her own brain.

However, Drea had to give herself credit, her fast thinking had saved the group out there on the highway. Saved them from what exactly? Someone was hunting them. But who, and why?

Sammy rocked back and forth and counted to soothe himself. Other than the rhythmic drone of his counting, there was an eerie hush to the neighborhood. Weird how even the birds were gone. Sammy was starting his sixth set of a thousand, when he paused uncharacteristically and broke the pattern.

“I’m hungry,” he whined.

Drea’s stomach grumbled in agreement. “Me too.”

The group had been in their conifer tent for quite some time. It was well past time to eat.

As Drea instinctively grabbed at her side to answer the hunger pangs, she felt a sharp jab of pain ripple through her abdomen. “Ow!”

She pulled her fingers away from the torn fabric of her hoodie. They were covered in thick reddish brown goop.

“Dude, you bleedin’,” Darnell observed.

“I guess I am.”

Drea didn’t recall hurting herself in the chaos. She only remembered feeling fat as she squeezed through the fence, like there wasn’t enough room. But that wasn’t a new feeling…

She lifted up the side of her shirt to reveal a three-inch gaping gash. There was a large splintered piece of fence sticking out of a deep wound surrounded by angry purple blood cells.

“Oh, that’s nasty.” Darnell turned away and made a retching sound.

“Thanks. Are you going to help?”

“I ain’t no doctor,” he said.

Drea knew it would get infected. They had to act fast.

“On the count of three I want you to pull out the splinter,” she instructed.

“Nah, I ain’t touching that thing,” Darnell protested.

“I need your help.” Drea hated to admit it, but it was true.

“What if your guts spray e’rywhere or somethin’?”

“You watch too many movies. I’ll be fine. Ready? 1… 2…”

Drea never made it to three. Darnell pulled. Hard.

“Ahhhhhh!” she screamed involuntarily. The pain was searing and intense. She buckled in half and curled up on the ground, making animalistic moaning noises.

“Dude… you okay? Did I kill you or somethin’?”

“Dead people don’t make any noise, Darnell. I’m alive. Just in pain!”

The wound was pumping blood quickly and her sweatshirt was soaking through. She needed to clean it out, get pressure on it, and get inside. Fast.

“You want me to smash and crash the nearest house?” Darnell offered.

Drea’s brain was too tired to argue. Her vision was blurry. She closed her eyes and drifted.

There was that field again… with the words… She was floating high above for a moment until Darnell said, “We’re all set. It ain’t no mansion, but it works.”

Drea startled awake. “Help me up.” She leaned her weight on Darnell, heaving with all her might to stand. A wave of pain shot down the right half of her body. She wobbled and reached out for her brother to steady herself, only he wasn’t there.

“Where’s Sammy?” she asked.

“I dunno. He was already gone when I came back. I thought you knew.”

“What? You don’t know where he is?” The panic snapped her out of the pain haze and into action. “Sammy!” she screamed.

Drea lurched forward in a failed attempt to run. A streak of pain made her bellow, “Sa… Sammy!”

She stumbled and fell forward. When she hit the ground, her teeth clattered in her skull. There was a blink of darkness, but she didn’t let herself succumb. She had to find her brother. He was her responsibility.

With her face still on the ground, she saw the tips of her brother’s signature green sneakers. He was standing on the next lawn over, eating the bark off of a tree.

“Sammy, you can’t wander off like that!” she called from her prone position in the dirt.

“Sorry, I was hungry. I told you.” He continued to munch on what looked like a tree boil.

“What on Earth are you eating?”

“It’s just a conk.”

Drea cleared her throat in disbelief.

“A fungus,” he clarified.

“Of course you’re eating tree mushrooms,” Drea said.

“I got these for you.”

Sammy knelt down in front of her, extending his hand, which cupped a group of scraggly green leaves. There was still dirt clinging to what Drea recognized as some type of cabbage. She felt hot in the face. Here she was about to pass out from pain and her kid brother was picking daisies, again.

Biting through a surge of pain, Drea sat up. “Sammy, you need to stop messing around. You can’t go exploring anymore. It’s dangerous. You need to grow up and stop pulling up other people’s gardens!”

Drea impulsively reached out and hit Sammy’s hands so that the contents fell on the ground.

“Nooooo!” he wailed. He dropped to his knees and scrambled to pick up the bits. “No! They were for you.”

“I don’t want some dirty weeds. I’m hurt. I need to get inside.”

“They were for your cut. Cabbage and comfrey help to heal the skin.” He grasped several sad crumpled pieces in his hand.

“You were trying to help me?”

Sammy nodded.

“Cabbage and what?”

“Comfrey. It’s an old medicine. They used it in medieval times… and the Native Americans too… many cultures use it as a medicine.”

Sometimes he amazed her.

“I couldn’t find any garlic,” he said apologetically.

“That would help too?” Drea asked.

He nodded again.

“Maybe there’s some in the house Darnell got us. C’mon, let’s go.” She reached out for Sammy’s shoulder and this time was able to hoist herself up.

As she hobbled closer, it was obvious that Darnell had selected a refuge of convenience. The house was less than modest with peeling paint, a sloping porch, and weeds as tall as the front porch. It was a sad place, a place where the previous occupants couldn’t afford to pay their bills. Not ideal. But Drea was willing to ignore the rotting cat on the front walkway, as long as she had a place to lay down.

Once inside, Drea collapsed on the plaid couch. A waft of stale cigarette smoke hit her in the face.

“Okay you two, we need garlic, alcohol, and some dinner. Go to!” she ordered.

The boys skittered in opposite directions across the wall-to-wall stained carpet. Within minutes they had returned with an aging bulb of garlic, a bottle of cheap vodka, tomato soup, and canned peaches. Drea mandated that they eat first. After consuming their fill of canned fruit and cold soup, Drea asked Sammy, “Alright what do we do with the veggies?”

“We make a poultice,” he said matter-of-factly, handing his plant book to his sister.

“A what?!?” Darnell and Drea asked at the same time.

“Medicine paste,” the boy witch doctor clarified.

While Drea read about poultices in the plant book, Sammy rinsed all the ingredients in some bottled water Darnell had found in the basement. Then he mashed the cabbage, garlic, and comfrey into tiny bits. Drea had to admit it smelled pretty good. Her kid brother’s autistic obsession with plants made him some kind of naturopathic genius. He had saved that kid with asthma in the Applewood Gang and now he was going to save his sister.