Super Human (26 page)

A man’s voice replied: “Almost, ma’am. The Pyrokine will reach the power plant within the hour.”

“Good, good. . . . How much does he know?”

“Only that his powers are needed to trigger the temporal shift.”

“Interesting,” Lance said. “Wonder what
that’s
about.”

The woman’s voice again. “Ensure that Slaughter is with them, understood?”

“Understood. She’s currently resting from her battle with the telekinetic. The girl is proving to be a lot more resourceful than we’d anticipated.”

“Indeed,” the woman said. “An error on my part, I think. I should have taken more consideration of her pedigree. The girl with the sword?”

“Gone to ground,” Remington said. “I doubt we’ll be seeing her again.”

“Then you are a fool, Mr. Remington.” A long pause. “The children were not looking for our people in Oak Grove. They could not have known about our plans for the prison—Marcus was not privy to that information. It is possible—likely—that one of the children was smart enough to realize that the Pyrokine was too young to be affected by the plague. Yes . . . They were looking for him, to recruit him. An idea that was both clever and foolish at the same time—a trait that only the young truly possess. They encountered the Pyrokine in Oak Grove, but it is possible they did not know who he was. . . . I believe you will find the girl with the sword in the vicinity of the prison. Send a team, Mr. Remington. Immediately.”

Remington began yelling, “Team Seven, this is Remington! Get to the prison right now! If you find the girl—if you find
anyone
still standing—terminate them on the spot!”

A radio voice replied, “Acknowledged. We’re a couple of minutes away—will report back as soon as we have her.”

Lance and Thunder stared at each other for a moment, then both began to struggle frantically against their bonds.

Then the old woman said, “No . . . No, that would not be wise. Send
four
teams, Mr. Remington. And have another four on standby.”

 

 

Roz found out where she was from the freestanding maps on the train station’s platform—she was in Greenwood, almost ninety miles away from Oak Grove.

She made her way down through the station, past the ticket counters, and stopped in front of the locked gates that spread across the entrance.
Oh great. Got to go all the way back up again and find another way out.

She was about to turn away when she decided to test out an old idea. A few months earlier the superhero Impervia had visited the Daltons’ home—Roz suspected that Impervia and Max had some sort of secret relationship going on, but had never been able to prove it—and the woman had chatted with Roz about her budding powers.

“Telekinesis?” Impervia had said as they sat in the sprawling lounge sipping iced tea while Max helped their younger brother Josh build monsters out of Lego bricks. “That could be useful, Rosalyn. Very useful.”

“Yeah, but so far I can only lift things that I’d be able to lift with my arms.”

“Then if there’s a connection between your physical strength and your mental strength you’d better start hitting the gym. A few hours a day on the weights would do you a world of good. But of course telekinesis isn’t just useful for moving
big
things. Small things could be just as important.” She nodded over toward the piano. “You could play that from across the room.”

“If I could play,” Roz said. “And if I could move more than one thing at a time. And if I could actually
see
the keys. I can’t move what I can’t see.”

“Why not?”

“Because . . . Well, I just can’t.”

“If you know where something is, but can’t actually see it, can you move it?”

Roz shrugged. “I haven’t tried.”

Impervia took the TV’s remote control out of the hands of the boy sitting next to Roz, and placed it on the coffee table. “Try it now. Close your eyes, picture the remote in your head, and move it.”

Roz gave it a go, but it didn’t work. The remote control remained where it was.

But now, facing the gates, Roz thought she knew what to do. When she grabbed or touched something with her telekinesis she could feel a sort of feedback, resistance from the object due to its mass or inertia.

She probed the gate’s lock. She could sense the tumblers and pins inside, and was sure she felt one of them move—but it wasn’t much use. Without knowing exactly what the inside of the lock looked like, she didn’t know what to do next. After a minute of trying, Roz gave up and simply used her telekinesis to remove the pins from the gate’s hinges instead.

Back out on the street, it was now close to full daylight. The small town was still, silent. It looked as though it was deserted, but she knew that there were sick—dying—people behind almost every window. Scraps of litter blew lazily along the gutters and twenty yards away, a shaggy black-and-white mongrel was sniffing around an overflowing garbage can.

The dog raised its head, saw Roz, and trotted over, its tongue lolling and tail wagging. It sat down in front of her and slightly lifted its paw. She scratched its head between the ears. “Good boy. Go home. Home, boy!”

It tilted its head to the side as it stared at her with a look of expectancy in its brown eyes.

“I don’t have any food for you, boy. Now go on. Go home!” She pointed back down the street.

The dog looked at her finger for a moment, then back to her face.

“Listen, dog. Go away, OK? Go off into the fields and find some rabbits to eat. Um . . . Not baby ones, though. Or cute ones. Only eat the
evil
bunnies.”

It wagged its tail and raised its paw again.

“Not getting the message, are you?” Roz crouched down next to it and stroked its back. “There’s going to be a lot more hungry doggies like you in the next few days if they can’t find a cure for this plague.”

For the first time, the enormity of the situation struck her.
If The Helotry’s plague is fatal then . . . That’s pretty much the end of the world as we know it. There’s no way back from that. Max will die. God, he could be dead already!

She stood up and looked around. “All right.
That’s
what we need.” At the far end of the street was the familiar white and blue of a police car. With the dog trotting after her, Roz ran toward it.
Should be able to drive this most of the way to the power plant, as long as the roads aren’t blocked.

She slowed as she reached the car. Sitting in the driver’s seat, slumped over the wheel, was a uniformed officer.

Roz opened the door, put her hand on the man’s shoulder and pulled him back. He was alive, but only barely. He was breathing through his mouth, a ragged and weak uneven gasp. A thick plug of mucus had formed and solidified around his nose.
God, he’s going to suffocate!

Even though the officer wasn’t aware of her and there was no one else around to see, Roz tried not to make a face as she reached out with her telekinesis and pried the crust of mucus away from his nose. Almost instantly, his breathing eased and he groaned softly. His eyes began to flicker, trying to open—but they were gummed shut.

“Take it easy,” Roz said. “Just stay calm. . . .” She placed her gloved palms on either side of his face and used her thumbs to gently wipe away the sticky substance that was gumming his eyes shut.

The officer’s eyes darted around wildly for a moment, before settling on Roz. “Who . . . ?”

“My name is Roz Dalton. Max Dalton’s sister. . . . Look, I need to borrow your car.”

He shook his head. “No gas.”

“All right,” Roz said. “Your radio, then.” She reached in past him and grabbed hold of the radio handset, its coiled cable stretching out past the officer.

There was a brief click from the speaker, then Roz pressed the button on the handset. “Can anyone hear me? Is anyone listening?”

The radio hissed static.
Come on, come on. . . . The police bands are always monitored.
She tried again. “Hello? If there’s anyone listening please respond!”

Still nothing. She switched the frequency dial from channel 1 to channel 2. “Hello? Is anyone listening?”

For a moment there was only static, then a woman’s voice said, “I hear you! Who are you?
Where
are you?”

“My name is Roz Dalton. I’m trying to get in touch with someone in the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. Who am I speaking to?”

“Oh thank God, thank God! Listen, this is Doctor Janine Gertler at CDC. We’re in a sealed environment here and we’ve been working all night on decoding the virus. We’re pretty much one hundred percent sure that it’s Orthomyxoviridae Class H
₃
N
₂
modified by an artificially induced antigenic shift!”

“Uh, right,” Roz said. “You sound excited to have discovered that, but I’ve no idea what it means.”

“What? Jeez, where the heck did
you
study microbiology?”

“Nowhere, yet. I’m fifteen.”

“
What?
”

Roz raised her eyes and shook her head. “Doctor, can’t you just treat the infection with antibiotics?”

“Listen, kid . . . The difference between a bacteria and a virus is like the difference between . . . a comatose elephant and a hyperactive rat. It’s much harder to stop a rat from getting into your apartment. It’s also a lot easier to
find
an elephant. Understand?”

“Can I speak to someone who doesn’t have an attitude problem?”

There was a sigh. “OK. Listen carefully. A bacterium is pretty much self-sufficient, but a virus needs a living host in order to survive and multiply.
Now
do you get it? A virus is really just a bunch of genetic instructions—it changes whatever it infects. To get rid of a bacterial infection it’s often simply a matter of flushing the bacteria out of the system—that’s where antibiotics come in. But to beat a virus you need to develop a set of counter-instructions for the host’s body to adopt.”

“All right, I get it. So what are you telling me? What’s the prognosis?”

“The prognosis is that it takes a lot longer to develop a cure for a virus. And since viruses change the host, they also change themselves in the process: Viruses can and often do mutate from one form into another. Which means that by the time we develop a cure for The Helotry’s virus, it could already have changed into something that’s
immune
to the cure. Most viruses mutate at random—but we’ve been analyzing this one’s RNA and, well . . . a whole section of the genetic structure is designed to only modify itself. It’s continually changing, and at a steady rate. Near as we can tell, it’s a counter.”

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Nor should you. Whoever constructed this thing is an absolute genius. Every sample we’ve examined has the counter and they’re within seconds of each other. It’s constantly increasing. We can’t tell what number it’s aiming for, or what’ll happen when it reaches it, but they didn’t build it in for no reason.
Something
is going to happen. But it’s likely that people will start to die before then. The virus primarily infects the host’s respiratory system, causes the body’s immunities to go into overdrive. Their lungs clog up with fluid and mucus. That makes breathing difficult, which puts a huge strain on the heart and brain. When the level of oxygen in the blood drops below—”

“I don’t need to know all that. How much time do we have?”

“Some of the infected people are already close to death. The strongest might last a couple of days. That’s the other odd thing. . . . The plague broke out all over the world at pretty much the same time. This suggests it wasn’t just passed from one human host to another—that would take weeks or months. So The Helotry must have had some other method to disseminate it. You and your friends need to find out what that method is. We might be able to use the same trick to spread the cure.”

“OK. But . . . We got separated. I don’t even know where the others are.”

“Where are you? I’ll send a copter. We have a couple of pilots here who haven’t been infected.”

“Don’t. Slaughter is probably still looking for me. If she sees a helicopter approaching she’ll destroy it. I’ll get a car.”

“Do you know where The Helotry are?”

“No, but I think I know where they’re
going
to be.”

“Stand back,” Abby said to Brawn as they approached the high wire fence. “I’ll cut a hole big enough for you.”

He looked at her. “Why?” Before she could stop him, the giant grabbed hold of the fence, ripped out a four-yard-wide section, and tossed it over his shoulder.

“Oh great!” Abby said. “My way, the prison would at least have
looked
secure.”

“You mean, aside from that great big hole in the wall back there?”

He stepped through the remains of the fence, and Abby followed him. “Ah, free at last!” He grinned at her. “Well, nice meeting you. I’m outta here.”