The Twisted Future (Teen Superheroes Book 4) (8 page)

Chapter Nineteen

Brodie peered up at the old sewer hatch. She, Chad and Sharla stood at the base of a rusty ladder dressed in protective suits; brown plastic outfits with helmets that looked disturbingly like goldfish bowls. The helmets contained miniature transmitters so they could communicate with each other.

‘Every remaining habitable area on the planet is surrounded by walls hundreds of feet high,’ Sharla explained. ‘The gas in the badlands won’t kill you immediately, but prolonged exposure will.’

‘How were the badlands made?’ Brodie asked.

‘An experiment of James Prices that went horribly wrong. Now we’re locked inside the walls like rats in a cage.’

Sharla handed them handguns that fitted neatly into holsters sewn into the suits. ‘Try not to waste bullets,’ she said. ‘They’re a precious commodity around here.’

‘Why do we need guns?’ Brodie asked.

‘There are things living in the fog. They used to be people. Somehow they’ve survived the gas...but what they’ve become isn’t pretty.’ She grimaced. ‘And James Price dumps his biological experiments in the badlands.’

‘Wonderful.’

‘But the biggest issue is still the fog.’

‘So if our suit rips..?’

‘Don’t breath
e in. The fog contains an acidic compound. It will irritate human flesh, but breathing it in will burn your lungs. You could probably survive a few days without a suit. Not much more.’

‘There isn’t a way around?’ Chad asked. ‘Or under. Or over?’

‘The subway tunnels have all been severed from here to Manhattan. If we had a vessel, you could try flying over the fog, but you’d show up on the Agency’s tracking systems.’ She paused. ‘They’d shoot you out of the sky. It’s this way or no way.’

Sharla climbed up the ladder first. She struggled with the hatch for a moment before it groaned open. Toxic gas started to pour into the tunnel. They quickly left, shutting the hatch behind them.

The mist was nicotine colored, and floated around them in tight, swirling formations. Sometimes, Brodie could see several feet ahead, but otherwise it was an impenetrable barrier. They were standing in a suburban street populated with closely set houses topped with pitched roofs. Brodie saw the distant sun. It dotted the sky like a brown rock in a murky river. She turned to Chad. Even he looked shocked.

‘How often have you done this journey?’ Brodie asked Sharla.

‘About half a dozen times.’

‘And you’ve always gotten through?’

‘I’ve gotten through, but the people I’ve chaperoned haven’t always been so lucky.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they didn’t listen to me,’ she said firmly, her eyes turning away as she remembered some distant tragedy. ‘Follow my instructions and we’ll be fine.’

She started down the street. Brodie was pretty certain she could survive anything that came at them. She still had her abilities, suit or no suit. Chad, however, was locked inside his outfit; his powers wouldn’t work outside it. Sharla, of course, had her powers, but they were probably ineffective
as well. She seemed to have an instinctive ability to move quietly through the shifting haze, darting across the uneven ground with ease. Brodie felt like a blundering idiot by comparison. The suit was cumbersome, and the gun at her side made her feel unbalanced. Chad was close behind. He was quieter than usual. Possibly it was the seriousness of the situation. He was almost likable when he wasn’t so full of himself.

They crossed a park. Amazingly, the grass and the trees were still alive, but matted with brown tar. Some of the trees seemed to be mutating to deal with the unnatural environment; their branches were anchored into the ground, as if seeking nourishment from the earth.

The fog cleared briefly, revealing a line of posters pasted across a wall, showing James Price with the message,
Report Terrorists to the Agency,
written across the bottom. An enterprising young rebel had responded by spray-painting swear words over them.

Sharla led them into a street where a pitched battle had been fought decades before; a school bus lay on its side with cars parked at each end to close the street off to traffic. Bullet holes riddled the makeshift barrier from one end to the other with skeletal remains scattered around the ground. 

Brodie picked up a gun. It appeared intact.

‘Leave it,’ Sharla said quietly.

Without asking why, she put it down.

Reaching a corner, Sharla held up her hand.
Stop.
Brodie peered into the mist. She couldn’t see anything. It continued to shift and flow around them like ghosts.

Then she saw Chad ready his weapon as a slithering sound echoed down the street.
What’s causing it?
She saw a car creeping along the middle of the road.

No, not a car, but something as big. 

It resembled an enormous armadillo. Its head was short and stumpy with two horns at the front. One eye was shut; it had either been destroyed by the fog or in a battle with something else. The other eye was fixed on the road ahead.

The creature
moved on a row of tiny feet like an enormous caterpillar, its rear ending in a long snake-like tail. It opened its mouth as if yawning and Brodie saw a jagged row of bottom teeth.

Sharla didn’t seem in a hurry to escape, so Brodie guessed she intended to keep them here, still and silent. There could be dozens—or hundreds—of these things in the fog. Maybe it was best to avoid them completely. The creature slithered close to them.

Only a few more feet
, Brodie thought.
It’ll be past us and everything will be fine.

Which would have been the case, but Chad chose that moment to fire his weapon into the ground.

Chapter Twenty

Chad let out a cry. ‘I didn’t mean to do that!’ he cried. ‘It went off—’

The creature roared, whirling about in the mist, its single good eye narrowing on them. The creature’s tail whipped about like a lasso and flew towards Sharla. Brodie leapt forward, shoving the girl to the ground as the tail slammed into the wall, sending bricks and mortar flying.

Chad ducked and fired the gun again, this time aiming for the creature’s body. He hit it, but bullet simply bounced off.

Sharla rolled and fired at the creature’s eye, but missed and now the monster started towards them like a tank. 

Brodie climbed to her feet, ran at the creature and jumped, her entire body weight
hitting the center of the creature’s eye. It screeched in pain, making a sound like torn metal as its tail whipped around catching her in the center of her back. She went flying.

‘Run!’ Sharla screamed.

Brodie was dazed, couldn’t tell up from down. Then she felt Sharla grab her arm and drag her along the ground. Chad grabbed her other arm. They stumbled up the street, the monster screeching behind. They ran two more blocks, the pain in her back slowly subsiding.

It sounded like the monster was still following. They turned a corner—and Brodie’s mouth fell open in amazement.

‘How the hell —’ she started.

‘Keep moving!’ Sharla commanded.

Somehow, at some time in the past, an ocean liner had ended up in the middle of the street. Brodie could not guess at how it happened. It appeared the ship had been picked up and dropped from a height. It had toppled over, reducing the buildings on one side to rubble.

They were at the bow
. Sharla led them up a pile of rubble to a lower deck. Brodie could still hear the creature in pursuit, but it was far behind. It gave a final plaintive roar as Sharla dragged open a rusty door, pushed them inside and slammed it shut.

Sharla pulled out a flashlight, barely penetrating the murky gloom. She turned it on Chad. ‘You idiot!’ she hissed. ‘Why did you fire the gun?’

‘I’m sorry.’ He looked genuinely apologetic. ‘I fired it by accident.’

‘Guns don’t go off by themselves!’

‘This one did!’

Sharla looked like she wanted to punch him in the face.

Brodie stepped between them. ‘What’s done is done,’ she said. ‘Now we need to keep moving.’

The other girl shot a final angry glance at Chad. ‘One more mistake like that and you can both go it alone,’ she said. ‘You understand?’

Chad nodded. Sharla shone the flashlight down the tilted corridor. ‘We’ll go this way. It looks like it’ll take us most of the way down the ship.’

They followed her. The ship appeared to have been in good condition when it was deposited here.

‘How did this ship end up here?’ Chad asked. 

‘How does anything happen?’ Sharla responded. ‘James Price.’

‘But why—’

‘Who knows why that lunatic does anything? The sooner you kill him, the better.’ She regarded them shrewdly. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any spare room in that time machine. Is there?’

‘You’re looking for a ride?’

‘Maybe.’

‘I’m not sure taking you to the past would be such a good idea.’

‘Why not?’

Chad thought. ‘I’m no expert on this—’

‘Obviously.’

‘—but there’s this whole thing about contaminating the time line.’

‘Sounds like fun.’

‘It’s probably not. Suppose we took you to our time and something happened that stopped you from being born.’ He paused. ‘What would happen? Would you just disappear? Or would you continue to exist? But how could you because you had never been born?’

They were complicated questions and no-one had any answers to them.
Taking someone to the past is obviously a bad idea
, Brodie thought.
Who knows what you might break?

Sharla might never be born. Most of the people they had encountered may never exist because their parents never met in the first place. Making changes in the past could cause irreparable harm.

Except, she reflected, it would seem the world would be a better place.

After all, it could hardly be any worse.

Could it?

‘What’s that sound?’ Chad asked.

They stopped. At first Brodie could hear nothing, but then she heard squeaking. They turned, but there was only an empty corridor. Then Sharla angled the flashlight to the floor.

‘A rat,’ she said. ‘And a big one too.’

It
was
large. Almost as big as a fully grown cat. Chad wondered if the yellow fog had affected it. Then he peered more closely.

‘What’s on its back?’ he asked.

‘They look like...’ Brodie started. ‘I don’t know what they look like.’

In the next instant they had their answer as the rat ran towards them and launched itself into the air. Spreading a pair of leathery wings, it flew onto the wall, landed on the edge of a Van Gogh print and gave a high-pitched cry. Brodie snatched up a cup
from the floor. She took careful aim and hit it. The creature swooped towards the ground and raced away.

‘A rat with wings,’ Brodie said. ‘Now I’ve seen everything.’

‘Not everything,’ Sharla said. ‘There are stranger things in the badlands.’

Brodie didn’t want to think about them. Increasing their pace until they reached a set of swinging doors, they pushed through into the next section. After another minute, Chad heard a sound from behind. He glanced back and saw the double doors were wedged open.

That’s strange
, he thought.
We closed them. How—.

‘Sharla,’ he said. ‘Point your torch back down the hall.’

She did. Dozens of rats were pushing into the hallway. The nearest was only a few feet away.

It launched into the air and flew directly at them.

Chapter Twenty-One

The creature flew at Chad. He stood frozen in shock as it headed directly towards his face. It was only at the last instant that Brodie’s gloved fist struck out, swatting it away in mid-flight.

‘Don’t shoot at them!’ Sharla shouted. ‘It will just bring more.’

‘Run!’ Brodie yelled.

They ran, followed by a stampede of clawed feet. Chad wanted to use his powers against them. He could incinerate them in an instant, but he needed his suit intact.
The next doors were still thirty feet away. He doubted they would reach them in time. 

‘To the left!’ Brodie yelled. ‘Go left!’

She disappeared through an open door with Sharla following. Chad was last. He leapt through the door just as a rat slammed into his back. He threw himself to the ground and rolled about, trying to dislodge it, screaming in panic. Normally he was in complete control, but that was when he had his powers. Now they amounted to nothing. He was helpless.

He saw Brodie aim a savage kick at the rat. It spun across the room, slammed into the far wall and lay still. Sharla had already bolted the door shut. One rat had been half-way through; its splattered remains stained the floor. A thumping sound came from the other side as its companions threw themselves against
the door in desperation.

They were in a private cabin, lit by a single porthole. Sharla shone her torch around. Another door led to the bathroom, but this did not even contain a window.

‘There’s only one way out of here,’ she said, pointing to the window. It was barely big enough for an infant let alone a teenager. Brodie examined it closely before peering about the cabin. She upended a bed, breaking off a six-foot metal strut.

‘We might be able to solve this with a lever and some good old fashioned grunt,’ she said, setting to work on the window.

Within minutes she had removed the casing. It took another half-an-hour to lever back enough of the bulkhead so that they could squeeze through. Now at the stern of the vessel, they were able to drop down a few feet onto the remains of a shattered building and continue their journey.

The remainder of the day passed without incident. After everything that had happened, Chad expected bizarre creatures to attack them from every corner, but the streets were surprisingly quiet. Only the fog remained, swirling and moving like a living thing. Chad
saw the outside of his helmet was fogging up from the murky substance. He tried cleaning it, but only seemed to make it worse.

‘Can someone help me out?’ he asked.

Brodie cleaned it as he returned the favor.

‘This would’ve been more fun if we were applying sun tan lotion on a sun drenched beach,’ he said.

‘You wish,’ Brodie said, smiling. ‘Let’s stay focused.’

‘We’ll need to find a place to crash,’ Sharla said. ‘I know a building nearby.’

Her timing was good. By the time they arrived at a brownstone a few streets away, the sky had turned a shade of murky brown; it was almost night. Sharla took them inside. An old spring mattress blocked the stairs. The girl pushed it aside and they climbed to a room on the second floor. It was surprisingly clean.

‘I’ve stayed here a few times,’ she explained. ‘We should be fine just as long as we stay quiet.’ She glared pointedly at Chad. ‘No shooting.’

The night passed slowly. Chad found himself waking every few hours. It was impossible to sleep comfortably in the suits. He felt hot and sticky, as if he were sleeping inside a plastic bag. He was hungry too. They had eaten before leaving, but his stomach was rumbling loud enough to wake the dead.

He heard the others breathing through the comm system. Sharla’s breathing was deep and rhythmical, Brodie’s shallow and faster.

When he next opened his eyes he found Brodie shaking his shoulder.

‘Come on, sleeping beauty,’ she said. ‘Time to move.’

They continued across the badlands, the fog dancing and tumbling around them. It was like being in an immense cave. Distance was impossible to gauge because there was no horizon. The only evidence of open space was the ever constant sun, a brown disk in the sky.

By late morning Chad was starving. They hadn’t eaten for almost a day and a half.

‘Any chance of food?’ he asked.

‘Sure,’ Sharla said. ‘You find a way to squeeze food through the filter and you can eat all you want.’

Great
, he thought.
Starvation will kill me if the gas doesn’t.

‘We’re almost there,’ Sharla said an hour later. ‘I can see the wall from here.’

Chad wasn’t sure how she saw anything in this murky mess, but within minutes a dark shape appeared. He felt a sense of immense relief; somehow they had survived this nightmare landscape.

‘Yay,’ he croaked. ‘Let’s party.’

‘There’s a subway tunnel ahead,’ Sharla said. ‘It’s a way into Manhattan.’

They had started to descend the stairs when the girl stopped.

‘Damn,’ she said. ‘We’ve got a problem. I broke my torch back there and we’ll need light to find the cross-tunnel.’

Chad thought for a moment. ‘I can provide light,’ he said. ‘All we need.’

‘But you can’t use your powers without removing your suit,’ Brodie pointed out.

‘What if I just take my glove off?’ he asked Sharla. ‘Just for a few minutes.’

‘There’s less fog down here,’ she said. ‘You might end up with some skin irritation, but it wouldn’t be permanent. Wait till we get further in though.’

They continued to the bottom. The murky light was sufficient to break though the gloom as they climbed over the barriers onto the concourse. Finally, Sharla said, ‘Okay Chad,’ she said, ‘this is as far as we can get. We need light.’

He carefully unzipped the glove. Flexing his hand, he immediately felt the strange fog twirling around his bare fingers.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let’s make this quick.’

He created a small flame above his palm. It immediately illuminated their faces—and that of a man standing behind Brodie. The stranger wore no shirt. His skin stretched painfully over his rib. His eyes receded so far into his head that they were almost invisible. Below the sunken orbs, his cheeks were missing entirely, making his teeth look like rows of tiny tombstones.

Before Chad could
utter a warning, the stranger leaped onto Brodie and bit her shoulder.