Super Human (8 page)

“I’m not telling you until you tell me.”

He paused. “Well, how do I know you’re not one of the bad guys?”

“How do I know
you’re
not?” She moved a little closer and peered at his face. “You’re the guy from Leftover’s, aren’t you? The one reading the
Record Collector
magazine.”

He bit his lip. “Well, if I am, then that means you can only be the waitress.”

Aw, rats!
“Maybe I’ve got a power that lets me know things . . . sort of magically. You know, psychic stuff.”

“In that case, what’s my name?”

Abby sighed. “All right. I’m the waitress from the diner.”

“And I’m the guy with the magazine. So what can you do?”

“I’m strong, fast, and I’ve got this.” Abby removed the sword from her back.

“Can you use it, though?”

She shrugged, and held out the sword. “I don’t know how to fence, but it’s heavy and it’s sharp.”

He gently pushed the sword aside. “Well, keep the pointy end away from me. So what
is
your name? Your superhero name, I mean.”

“I haven’t actually thought of one yet. What about you?”

“Thunder. I can control sound waves.”

“Oh. Is that all?”

“It’s not enough?”

“Well, it doesn’t sound especially useful.” She took a step back and looked at his costume. It was a one-piece, skintight rubber, mostly black with wide green stripes down the arms and outside of the legs. A large zipper ran from his throat to his navel. “Wait, is that a
wet suit
?”

He looked a little defensive. “Well, yeah. But at least I
look
like a superhero. Yours looks like you made it yourself.”

“I
did
make it myself! And I’d rather look like this than some guy who looks like he can’t find his snorkel and flippers.”

Thunder put up his hand. “Hold on. . . . There’s more trucks coming. Five . . . no, six. And they sound bigger than the others. Reinforcements—it’s the National Guard.”

Abby looked around. All she could hear was the constant hum of the helicopters. She turned back to him. “Can you hear, like,
everything
?”

“Up to a distance of about five or six miles, yeah, usually. But right now there’s too much noise from the cops and the army and the helicopters for me to hear what’s going on inside the power plant. So . . . What’s your plan?”

“Don’t really have one. I just wanted to see if I could help. They said that Max Dalton got captured. I was sort of thinking of offering my services to the police.”

Thunder rubbed his chin. “Yeah, same here. But now I’m not so sure. They don’t know who we are.”

“We should sneak closer and maybe you can hear the guys inside the plant. Then we could tell the cops and they’d know we’re on their side.”

“And what’ll
you
do?”

“I don’t know yet.”

Thunder sneered. “Oh, good plan! You really are a newbie, aren’t you? First time out, is it?”

Abby ignored that. “We’re not helping anyone by sniping at each other. Let’s just get closer and see what happens.”

With Thunder leading the way, they crept forward through the long grass. After a few minutes, he said, “OK. . . . I can hear the army guy in charge—Colonel Morgan. He’s saying that Dalton’s helicopter pilot told them that Dalton’s sister is in there too. She went in after the others were captured, and got captured herself. Idiot.”

“Keep the noise down,” Abby said.

“They won’t hear us. We could set off a bomb here and they wouldn’t know unless they were looking. I’m stopping our sounds from reaching them.”

Abby wasn’t about to admit that that was a very useful ability. “So what are they planning?”

“I think they don’t know what to do. There’s supposed to be sixteen hostages. Eleven workers and Dalton and his crew.”

“Can you stop
any
sounds?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“So you could, like, block out every sound inside the power plant?”

“I could, but then they’d know something was up. We’re going to have to do something, though. Sounds like half of the cops and most of the army guys are coming down with the flu. Come on, we’ll see if we can get closer.”

It’s the perfect time to attack something,
Abby thought.
Seems like nearly everyone has the flu these days.
She froze.
Unless it’s
not
the flu. Maybe it’s something else.

She ran to catch up with Thunder. “Hey!”

“What?”

“Anyone you know got the flu?”

“Sure. Most of the teachers at school, my folks, most of my neighbors. Why?”

“Same here. My mother, my aunts. Four of the guys from work. Lots of the regular customers. The guy who lives in the apartment next door to mine was up all night coughing his guts up. . . . I don’t think this is the ordinary flu. There’s always some epidemic or other going around, but they take time to spread. This one is happening all over the world at the same time. That’s just not possible, unless it was done deliberately. Someone has created a plague.”

“I swear I left it right here,” the man with the deeper voice said. Lance swallowed.
Please don’t let them find me!
He peeled off the latex gloves and tried once more to open the jetpack’s clasps, but couldn’t find a catch or a button.

The other man said, “You musta already loaded it inta the truck with the other one.”

“I didn’t.”

“Well, check anyway. It’s not like anyone woulda took it. Hey, you don’t think that Marcus had it on him when he got arrested, do ya?”

“We would have heard.”

Seconds later, the man’s muffled voice came from outside. “I toldja, it ain’t in the truck.”

I’m outta here!
Lance darted out from under the workbench and made a dive for the door.

One of the men said, “What . . .
Hey
!”

Lance slammed the door behind him, ran through the musty office and out to the front. He jumped onto his bike, slung the backpack onto the handlebars, and began pedaling like crazy. He couldn’t help grinning.
I did it! I got away!

He zoomed around the corner and onto the main road, shifted up a gear, and increased his speed. It was tough going with the heavy jetpack on his back, but he wasn’t going to stop for anything.

Then he heard the roar of an engine coming up fast behind.

He risked a glance back: A large white panel truck was bearing down on him. Two black-suited men were in the cab, the passenger gesturing wildly while the driver sat with a grim, determined look on his face.

Lance took a sudden right into another narrow side road, almost coming off the bike. The driver had to hit the brakes to make the turn.

The road was closed off at the end, with only a narrow pedestrian passage leading through the gap between two buildings.
They’ll never be able to follow me through!
He mentally pictured his route home.
If I cut through the church grounds I can . . .
He stopped himself.
No, can’t go home. Not with all this stuff. I have to hide it somewhere.

As he was considering the best place to stash his stolen goods where they wouldn’t be found, he cycled out of the business park and onto the street. The rush-hour traffic was long gone, but the street was still busy.

He slowed a little as he approached the crossroads, weaved in and out of the waiting cars, then turned right, heading toward the mall. There was a dense clump of bushes at one end of the eastern parking lot—he’d often hidden stuff there before, and it had never been discovered.

At the next junction he jumped the red light and almost collided with a white truck that was turning the corner. He pulled hard on the brakes, put his foot down to steady himself, and glared at the driver. His face fell.
Oh no. . . .

The two black-suited men looked as surprised as Lance did. The passenger shouted, “That’s
him
! An’ he’s the same kid from the accident! He musta got Marcus’s briefcase!”

Lance jumped back onto the bike, darted around the truck and down the road, knowing that they’d have to make a U-turn to follow him.

He heard a loud
bang
and something shattered a mailbox as he passed. “They’ve got guns? Oh, this just gets better and better!”

Another
bang
, and Lance felt like something had thumped him in the back.
They hit the jetpack! OK, that’s it. I quit.
He slowed a little, steered the bike onto the pavement.
I’ll say I’m sorry and hand it all back and when their hands are full I’ll run like mad.
A hundred yards ahead was the pedestrian entrance to a housing estate.
Perfect. Stop there and—

There was a third gunshot. Lance changed his mind about stopping. He hunched forward, keeping his head low, and pushed as hard on the pedals as he could. There were two more shots, and before he even heard the second Lance found himself racing forward, as though he had just crested a steep hill.

But the road was almost flat, and still his speed was increasing. It felt like someone was pushing him from behind. Then a familiar whine reached his ears, and he knew what had happened: The last gunshot had somehow activated the jetpack.

He zoomed out onto the road, his knuckles white on the juddering handlebars.
I’m gonna die!

He knew that he couldn’t slow down or jump off the bike. With the jetpack still thrusting him forward he’d have no way of stopping. He couldn’t even lift his head more than a couple of inches.

Lance rocketed across an intersection, overtook a guy on a motorbike, narrowly missed a deep pothole. He could steer the bike, but it wasn’t easy—at this speed, the slightest nudge on the handlebars sent him weaving all over the road.
The fuel in this thing has to run out sometime. Need a good long stretch of road . . .

Ahead, the road branched to the right: the on-ramp for the freeway. He knew that bicycles weren’t allowed on the freeway, but figured that in this case the traffic cops might make an exception. Besides, he didn’t have any other option.

There was a line of cars at the end of the ramp waiting to pull out into the busy traffic. Lance zoomed past the surprised drivers and cut in ahead of a white Toyota.

The speed limit on the freeway was sixty-five miles per hour. Lance knew from being in the car with his dad that most drivers regarded sixty-five as the minimum speed, not the maximum. He didn’t know how fast he was going now, but he was overtaking everything else on the freeway. The bike shuddered and rattled over the asphalt and he prayed to the god of cycling that he didn’t blow a tire.

He tried to remember exactly what the newspaper article on Paragon’s jetpack had said about its range. He had a horrible feeling that there had been something about Paragon being able to make it all the way from New York to Chicago without the need to refuel.
And he’s a lot bigger than me too. Plus he’s got all that armor. This thing might not run out before I reach the end of the freeway!

Lance’s back and shoulders were aching from the strain, and he desperately wanted to sit back. He knew that if he did, the jetpack would launch him into the air, bike and all.

Paragon had spent years developing his jetpack. He knew how to control it, how to land safely.

Lance didn’t even know how to undo the clasps.

 

 

“I can hear breathing,” Thunder said. “Lots of it. A couple of dozen people. Most of them are struggling—their breath is all wheezy and bubbly.”

Special Agent Lloyd Rosenfield—a gruff middle-aged man with thinning hair and little patience—turned to the military officer. “Colonel, explain to me again why we’re taking advice from a couple of kids who think it’s Halloween.”

“Because we’re superhuman,” Abby said. “We can do stuff your soldiers can’t.” She’d disliked this man from the moment his shiny rented car had screeched to a stop and he’d bounded out brandishing his FBI badge.

They were half a mile downhill from the power plant, surrounded by armed police officers, soldiers, and FBI agents, standing on the narrow road next to the FBI’s operations truck. The power plant was now completely encircled by soldiers, but none closer than five hundred yards.

Rosenfield looked at Abby. “What? You want to say that again with the visor up so we can actually
hear
you?”

Colonel Morgan said, “They seem to be the real deal, Agent Rosenfield. At least, the boy does. He can hear stuff from miles away, block sounds, project his voice, all that sort of thing.” Morgan was a short, squat man in his forties with buzz-cut white hair.

Abby and Thunder looked at each other. It had been her idea to talk to the police—Thunder had wanted to find a way into the power plant without their help.

Rosenfield considered them for a moment, then nodded. “All right.” He extended his hand to Thunder. “Welcome aboard.” As Thunder reached out to shake it, Rosenfield said, “Whoa, wait a second. Where I come from we believe it’s disrespectful to shake hands wearing gloves.”