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Chapter 101 – ClambakeAlex ducked into one of the Humvees as the planes bombed the beach with water. And whatever was in the water. She really didn’t want that stuff on her if it might do something weird to her, because plenty of biochemicals had done freaky stuff to her body over the last five years. And her mom’s curry that one time? That was the least of it.
She heard Lieutenant Marshall’s announcement, so she chipped in, “Terawatt to team. And they’re incoming.”
Graham snapped, “Miller to team. Saddle up. Heavy loads. Carlson, dole ’em out.”
Alex watched as Lieutenant Lupo sprinted from the winch on one Humvee to where Sergeant Carlson had weaponry in the other Hummer. Someone wanted to shoot some stuff. It looked like Lieutenant Lupo had her tac vest on and her M203 ready before anybody else got to Sergeant Carlson.
Alex flew out of the Humvee and used her TK to toss the right tac vests to Graham’s other team members. Then she flew over to Azure Crush, who had her bikini bottom down around her ankles and was brushing sand out of places you should not be brushing in the middle of a busy parking lot.
Azure Crush looked over at her and snarled, “I got dragged backward a couple hundred feet. What’d you think would happen?”
Alex managed, “At least you didn’t get scraped raw. But you’re showing your butt to a bunch of camera crews.”
“B.F.D. I already showed everything I got to a camera, from a lot closer up, while I was in stupid-ass poses that guys think are sexy.” Az looked over at Lieutenant Lupo in her tac vest and web belt, and carrying that gun. “I guess someone else wants to put the hurt on these fuckers.” She yanked her bikini bottom back up, stomped over to a big metal sign telling people what they shouldn’t do on the beach, and ripped a steel strip off each side of the sign. She waved them through the air like swords and said, “Let’s rock and roll.”
Then she did the worst thing she could do. She ran right out onto the beach.
“Miller to Crush! Miller to Crush! Return at once! You’re in our lines of fire!”
“Tera to Az. Please get back here, they can’t shoot their grenades.”
But Azure Crush just headed straight at the one monster that was still sticking up from the sand. And there was a big bulge of sand on Az’s right that was headed straight for where she was going.
Alex didn’t know what to do, but she knew she had to do something.
So she leapt up into the air and tried something crazy. She only had maybe a hundred pounds of TK to spare, but she slapped the sand right beside the big bulge. She slapped down like someone running across the sand three or four steps and then just standing still.
The bulge whirled away from Az and came up underneath the last spot Alex slapped. The mouth broke the surface and tried to close in on whatever had smacked the sand.
There was a pawmp noise behind Alex, and a grenade landed right in the thing’s mouth. Alex darted away as fast as she could go, and the grenade exploded, blowing the thing’s mouth off. Alex glanced back to see Lieutenant Lupo hastily reloading.
Az didn’t stop. She dashed up to the still-protruding stalk and slashed with the torn metal like it was a machete. The raw power behind her strike sliced through the monster like it was made of jello. Horrible gray slime spewed everywhere, but Az ignored it and slashed on the other side with the metal in her other hand.
More gray slime flew, but the extended ‘neck’ toppled over away from Az, leaving only a small fraction of the neck still attached. Az slashed once more, severing the last chunk of monster, and the mouth-part crashed to the beach.
“Miller to Az. Behind you!”
Az leapt onto the severed chunk, which was maybe ten times bigger than she was. A sandpit opened where she had been standing, and something huge writhed under the sand there.
Az stood on top of the severed ‘neck’ and glared at the writhing thing under the sand. “Who wants some? Who wants some? Come and get it, bitch!”
“Marshall to team. They’re reacting to the chemical in the spray, but they’re huge. It won’t stop them for hours, and it may take several weeks before they starve to death.”
Alex used her TK some more, slapping the sand around each of the bulges she could see. The first creature that rose up out of the sand even a little got a big electrical zap in the face, plus about a hundred rounds of rifle and machine gun ammo from Graham’s team.
Alex spotted the next monster before it broke the surface, because she saw the ‘no double parking’ sign jut up from the sand several feet ahead of the thing’s mouth. Eww, it still had that signpole stuck in it!
Az spotted it, too. “Hey! That’s the fuck that tried to eat me!”
Alex used her TK to smack the sand right in front of the sign, and the thing lurched upward. With a ferocious yell, Az charged right at it.
But there was another roar from behind Alex, and the thing moved toward that instead. Alex glanced behind her and saw that the roar was coming from one of the Humvees, which Graham was driving. Lupo and Carlson were on top of it, and shooting at anything that moved up out of the sand. The other Humvee had pulled twenty feet onto the sand. Bailey and Marshall were scrambling out of its front seat to get on top of the Hummer with their weapons.
Alex flew down and hit the ‘no double parking’ sign with a massive jolt of lightning. The thing writhed angrily and lurched upward until its grasping mouth was a dozen feet above the sand.
That turned out to be the worst thing it could have done, since Az was armed and dangerous. She slashed through its ‘neck’, ignoring the spray of grayish slime, and she danced around to its other side. She slashed through its neck again, and the entire upper part collapsed. She wasn’t quick enough to get out of the way as it fell right on top of her.
Alex would have been really worried about anyone else getting clobbered like that, but she figured all it would do to Azure Crush was stain her bikini.
Something huge rocked the now-decapitated monster, and the biggest thing yet burst out of the sand. It had to be four feet thick and over twenty feet high, with a mouth that opened into a flat shape like a vicious lilypad ringed with teeth. The mouth had to be twelve feet across.
“Lupo to Tera. Get out of shrapnel range.”
“Miller to Crush. Stay under that cover.”
Alex flew straight up and backward. She went silvery at the same time, because she’d seen — and felt — how far grenade shrapnel went.
Three grenades hit the thing, one of them right in the center of the mouth and one just off-center. Two long bursts of bullets chewed into the thing’s neck.
The grenades went off, turning the enormous ‘mouth’ into shreds and slinging hot shrapnel everywhere. Chunks of the monster hit the sand before the upright ‘neck’ started to topple.
Two of the big chunks that landed on the sand got sucked down in more sandpits.
“Marshall to team. I think the chemical is already having a big effect. They seem unable to maintain usual hunting methods, so they may not be able to sense when they get near the surface anymore, or they may be losing the ability to tell which way is up.”
“Miller. Good, because they’re a lot easier to blast apart if they come up like this.”
Alex figured out what Graham meant as soon as he gunned the engine on the Humvee and rocked it forward a few feet, then backward. Alex said into the comms, “Tera to Miller. Cut your engine.”
As Graham turned off the engine, Alex slapped the sand with her TK in a string of circles running forward from the Humvee and off to Graham’s left. Then she picked a spot about fifty feet from the Humvee and slapped the sand there over and over, like someone running in place.
Another huge creature erupted up from the sand, bursting a good fifteen feet into the air. Alex hit it with a huge lightning bolt, just as four different weapons ripped the neck apart. And as it started to topple over, Az came running in waving the chunk that had fallen on her like it was a flail. “Take that, ya fuck! And that!” She beat the toppling thing until it was down and unmoving.
“Miller to Crush. Miller to Crush. Move onto a Humvee.”
Az didn’t. But she was completely covered in gray monster slime, so maybe she wasn’t getting the message.
Alex flew down and yelled, “AZ! Move!”
Az looked up and snapped, “What? I can’t hear you. I’ve got clam snot all over me and I lost that stupid ear-thing when that piece of shit fell on me.”
“Move!” Alex pointed several times toward the Humvees, but Azure Crush didn’t take the hint.
No, Az just wiped gray slime off her face with one hand while holding a metal strip in her other. She was still looking to kill something. Alex really hoped Az wasn’t secretly trying to get herself killed.
And there was another big thing tunneling through the sand right at Az’s feet. Alex slapped the sand in front of Az and then made a bunch of slaps running away from where Az was standing. The thing came up right underneath the last slap and erupted out of the sand. The mouth was open enough that one edge came up beside Az and knocked her over.
It was too close to the Humvee for anyone to use a grenade launcher, but that didn’t stop them from opening fire with their machine guns. Lieutenant Lupo and Sergeant Carlson coordinated their efforts and cut a line of massive bulletholes right across the thing’s neck. Alex was high enough and far enough back that she could see a lot of the bullets were ripping their way out the other side of the creature’s neck, tearing massive holes as they went.
Another raised tunnel chewed its way through the sand, telling everyone that yet another of the things was coming. “Lupo to Tera. Heads up.”
Alex looked over, and Lieutenant Lupo hurled a grenade her way. The pin was still in it, and the handle was still in place. Alex grabbed it with her TK and pulled the pin while it was still fifty feet away. As soon as the mouth punched most of the way out of the sand and then opened up, Alex let go of the handle and telekinetically shoved the grenade down its throat. Way down its throat.
“Tera to team. Fire in the hole!”
She flew up and backward, away from the blast zone. The grenade went off while it was still under the sand. The blast hurled chunks of monster and gallons of monster slime everywhere.
“Cease fire!” Graham commanded.
After all the gunfire and the explosions, the silence was weird. Could silence make your ears hurt? It sort of felt like that.
Her earjack crackled. “Miller to team. Any sign of more threats?”
“Terawatt to Miller. I don’t see anything. Azure Crush has lost comms, so don’t bother trying to tell her anything.”
“Marshall to Miller. I think we need to check with the geologists.”
“Miller. Do it.”
Alex flew around the battlefield. There were seven massive things that might not even be totally dead yet, plus who knew how many other monsters. But nothing else was stirring, at least near the surface.
“Marshall to Miller. Frank says they’re picking up something much smaller. Maybe one in the north section and one in the south section, but definitely smaller than these guys. And even after we get those things, we’re still going to have to monitor this beach for new mutations, or even eggs from these things.”
“Miller. I’m sure the city of Santa Monica will be thrilled to lose a thousand yards of primo beach for long enough to satisfy the EPA Superfund people.”
“Lupo to Miller. Give ’em the opportunity to turn it into a ‘giant monster’ tourist attraction.”
Eww. That would probably even be a huge draw. Go to Disneyland, then go look at the giant monster remains and stare at a beach that might have a real monster lurking under it.
“Terawatt to Miller. Are there any hazardous waste abatement companies that can clean up this beach and also guard against giant man-eating clam-things?”
“Bailey to team. Acid Burn just sent me another message. She’s already designed a remote controlled anti-clam weapon.”
“You’re shitting me. Sir.”
“Bailey. Absolutely not. It’s a remotely controlled dumptruck toy, only the signal to operate the hydraulics to empty the truck bed is used to fire four pounds of C-4 if something swallows the truck. Acid Burn’s got a cost estimate of $169 for the remote controlled truck and the control and the batteries, not counting the C-4 and blasting caps we supply, and she’s got an estimate of 25 minutes to make the necessary alterations. We can have the people who man the police cordon running a couple of these by this evening.”
“Carlson to Miller. Only problem I see is we’ll have guys fighting over who gets to drive the explosive truck around.”
“Lupo to Miller. We should sell tickets to operate the things. A remote control toy truck that you drive around so you might get to blow up real monsters? This is going to be more popular than Knott’s Berry Farm.”
“Bailey. Another message from Acid Burn. She found a toy store in Santa Monica about six blocks north of here, right up the beach, that has five in stock and she’s already reserved them on-line.”
“Miller. That’s more C-4 than we’re carrying, but I’ll grab our supply and the blasting caps. Walter will know where the closest supply is for more.”
“Carlson to Miller. Probably Army Corps of Engineers has a couple of groups in L.A. County.”
“Terawatt to Miller. If you can get someone to come up with the explosives, I can fly over and pick them up a lot faster than anyone can drive there in L.A. traffic.”
“Miller to team. Bailey, you’re on acquiring the dumptrucks. Carlson can help you with the modifications. Marshall, work with your geologists so we can track any additional threats under that sand. Lupo, you contact Walter and have him find someone who will give us the C-4 and blasting caps. Tera, help Azure Crush get cleaned up. I’ll try and keep the press behind the police cordon and out of everyone’s hair.”
Alex figured Graham was taking the totally worst job for himself, and she realized that was just what Jack would do … unless it was paperwork. She remembered it said in her dad’s management book that a good leader stands up for his staff and doesn’t let them get stuck with bad jobs he should be doing.
She flew down to where Az was walking onto the asphalt and wiping grayish slime off her. And boy, were a lot of guys trying to get pictures of that. Az was covered in gross clam slime! How was that supposed to be sexy? Guys were so freaky sometimes.
Az stomped over to a fire hydrant and easily unscrewed the cap and turned on the water with her bare fingers. Then she scrubbed slime off while the water poured all over her. It looked like the slime didn’t want to come off.
Alex flew over to a grocery store where two guys in store uniforms were standing there ogling Az. “Excuse me, gentlemen. Would either of you like to help? If you could take a few bars of soap over to Azure Crush, and maybe a loofah or a scrub brush? I’m sure she’d thank you.”
The two guys pretty much got into a fight as both of them dashed back into the store to try and be the first one to get some soap and a scrubbie over to Az. The taller guy even tripped the other guy, and then ran right into the gush of water to take stuff to Az. He got soaking wet, but Az smiled at him, and he acted like that was a great trade-off.
Most guys were totally weird. And horny. At least Graham was a good guy, because Alex was sure Didi would have totally put out for him if he had just smiled at her and said ‘yeah’.
Okay, she was pretty sure that Didi would put out for anyone good-looking if they said ‘yeah’. Or ‘I guess so’. Or ‘I don’t know’. Alex was so not going to introduce Didi to Willow.
Meanwhile, the sopping-wet store guy was back. With a big bottle of shampoo for Az, which she really needed after getting covered in clam slime. Az probably needed a really good conditioner, too.
By then, the team had heard back from Walter, and Lieutenant Bailey had GPS coordinates for a building on an army base way east of them that had an Army Corps of Engineers group who would let them walk off with twenty pounds of C-4 and a few dozen blasting caps. Alex wasn’t too comfortable with the level of inter-agency cooperation that would just let some masked superheroine fly in and pick up stuff like this for the SRI. Or the HWAAA. Or the DHS. Whichever.
It took Alex over twenty minutes to fly across the city to the base she was supposed to go to. Given the traffic on the interstates she flew over, she was guessing it would have taken a few hours for someone to drive over there.
She checked her tPhone, which was showing a little detail map from Lieutenant Bailey so she could tell what building at the base she needed to go to, and which door on the building.
There was a guy in a uniform waiting for her outside the door and watching her fly in. She glanced at the message from Lieutenant Bailey that said who she was supposed to meet. So when she landed, she asked, “Are you Sergeant Collins?”
He looked at her and said, “Yes, ma’am. Can I see some ID?”
Okay, she thought it was probably a good idea to be really careful when people were trying to walk off with pounds of plastic explosives, but did that question really make any sense?
She said, “If there is someone who can fake flying into your base as Terawatt, then I really doubt she would have any trouble faking an ID, too.”
He frowned at that, like no one had ever said ‘no’ before. So she said, “I’m sorry, but you watched me fly in here, and the DHS just called and told you I was coming. That’s as much ID as you’re allowed to see.” Because there was no way she was signing her name or leaving a fingerprint or anything that might ever get traced back to Alex Mack.
He insisted, “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’m not allowed to just hand out high explosive to anyone who shows up. I need some ID.”
She sighed, “Fine.” Then she pulled out her tPhone and called Walter. On speakerphone.
“HWAAA headquarters, Sergeant Harriman speaking.”
She looked at the guy and said, “Hi, Walter, it’s Terawatt. The Army Corps of Engineers guy won’t give me the C-4 and blasting caps. Can you connect me to General Hammond? Or the DHS Secretary? Or the President?”
Walter played along, “I may be able to get General Hammond. If I can’t reach him, I’ll see if I can get the Army’s Chief Engineer.”
Alex watched as the guy gulped. She figured that meant the ‘chief engineer’ had to be the head guy of the whole Army Corps of Engineers.
Jack came on the line. “Hey, Tera, I hear you’re having trouble.”
“Colonel O’Neill. Sergeant Collins here doesn’t have an ID from me, so he won’t release the C-4 we need.”
Jack asked, “Is this on speakerphone?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Jack then blared, “SERGEANT! This is official DHS business for which you have ALREADY received electronic confirmation. And you are looking at the only flying superheroine on the planet, so that has to count as ID no matter what! You can either give her the goddamn H.E. right this second, or you can expect to get busted down to private third class in the next thirty minutes! Do you read me, soldier?”
“Y-yes sir. B-but what do I put on the forms?”
Jack snapped, “Just what you got electronically. This is an emergency request from the DHS. You just write down ‘Captain Graham Miller, DHS’ with the code numbers like you’re supposed to, and you give Terawatt the gear. Then you go find your immediate superior and tell him that’s all you were allowed to get, and if he needs more, to call Sergeant Walter Harriman, DHS, right now.” And he gave the guy Walter’s phone number.
“Y-yes sir.”
“I can’t hear you, soldier!”
“YES SIR, COLONEL SIR!”
By the time Jack hung up, Alex was kind of surprised there wasn’t a big wet spot in the guy’s pants.
Alex told the guy, “I’m sorry to have to do it this way, but we have a major crisis in Santa Monica which is already all over the news. Just go in and turn on a TV or a radio to news coverage, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.”
The guy still didn’t want to let the explosives go, but he was pretty intimidated by Jack. She took the cases with the C-4, and the plastic case with the blasting caps. Then she thanked the guy, moved the blasting caps thirty feet away from the C-4, and took off into the sky with her deadly explosive packages following behind her.
A little over twenty minutes later, she landed beside the SRI Humvees. There was now a cordon of National Guard guys blocking off the beach. The newspeople were as close as the military cordon would let them get. She could see a couple of camera guys up on top of some of the overlooking buildings, and she had flown over half a dozen reporters talking into cameras for reports back to their networks.
There were about a dozen reporters interviewing Azure Crush as she tried to get into Didi’s car to go home. Alex figured Az needed pretty much zero help getting into the car, but she might need some help when Didi wanted to drive away. So Alex was keeping an eye on things over there.
Lieutenant Bailey and Lieutenant Marshall took the explosives over to where Sergeant Carlson had a row of cute dumptruck toys set at the edge of the beach. Alex rose a few more feet into the air so she could watch them work and also make sure Didi was allowed to drive off. After the stuff with the claymore mines in Arizona and the reports Jack made her study, Alex knew more about explosives and blasting caps than a normal person, but definitely not enough to be an explosives expert.
Maybe she should fix that someday when she had time and Jack could arrange it.
Sergeant Carlson pressed each block of C-4 into the dumper of the dumptruck, and then used half a dozen strips of duct tape to make sure the thing was going to stay in place. Alex had seen the stupid radula on some of those monsters, so she thought it was a really good idea to make sure stuff couldn’t just get ripped loose. Then Lieutenant Bailey wired in two blasting caps for each truck, shoved the caps into the C-4, and carefully set the trucks on the beach.
Didi finally managed to get away by rolling down her window and jiggling her breasts at a couple of camera guys who pretty much got paralyzed by boobs and moved out of her way. Alex really hoped there wasn’t a mind control woman running around loose doing that kind of thing.
Graham let Lieutenant Marshall and Lieutenant Bailey drive the trucks around first. It actually looked pretty fun, even if they had to be careful not to drive the things into any holes in the sand or any places that were all torn up from the battles against the giant clam-things. Alex figured that whatever was left creeping around under the sand was going to get hungry enough to try and eat the only things moving on the surface, and as soon as one of them swallowed a truck it was going to get blown to smithereens.
What were smithereens anyway? Could you have just one smithereen? She should remember to ask Willow.
* * *
Ray looked down the steep slope. Then he glanced over at Louis. “How did you talk me into doing this?”
Louis frowned and said, “Come on, I need your help. If there’s GC-161 contamination down in that creek, we need to find out. But I can’t risk going and telling the hazardous waste guys at the plant. If it gets out that the mud down there’s got GC-161 in it … Well, Marsha told pretty much everybody she fell in it. I can’t let her get hurt, and if people find out that mud’s contaminated, they’ll know about her. I screwed up so totally with Alex. I gotta protect Marsha.”
Ray groaned and adjusted his backpack. Louis was carrying the sampling gear, which really was just a fancy scoop with a box of disposable liners. And the GPS unit, so they could write the GPS coordinates on every vial. Ray’s backpack had a padded box that held up to fifty vials. Louis only wanted about one or two dozen samples, but this was what Alex’s dad had to loan to them.
They worked their way down from Louis’s car, through the steep parts, down to the creek. There still wasn’t any rain, so the thing was even drier than it was when Marsha and Louis fell in it. Louis had a little map off Google, and so they were going to walk the creek for a mile, take samples every two to five hundred feet, depending on how things looked, and then hike back up to the road. Then they’d have a mile walk that was mostly downhill back to Louis’s car.
Boy, the things you do for your friends.
And Alex’s dad was going to do the analyses, so no one had to know about the creek unless there was really something to deal with. Ray was figuring at least some part of the creek had to be contaminated, even if he didn’t see how any GC-161 would have gotten way over here. But maybe it was something small that they could handle themselves just by pouring antidote along the contaminated areas. Or something.
Ray stood on the bank and said, “Okay, let’s do this thing.”
Louis pulled out the sampling pole and put it together so he could reach fifteen feet out and operate the little scoop thing that would fill the liner. Then Louis would get the GPS readings. Ray would pull an empty vial, Louis would squeeze the liner’s contents into it, and write the coordinates on the vial with the special pen Alex’s dad gave them.
Things went pretty good for the first dozen samples. By then, they were maybe half a mile from their starting point. Ray hadn’t seen anything interesting. Well, he wasn’t counting the spot that looked like where Louis and Marsha had fallen in. Ray was kind of surprised that neither Louis nor Marsha had gotten really hurt, because that was a pretty long tumble.
Louis operated the scoop again. “Okay. Sample number … umm, fifteen?”
Ray nodded. “Yup. Here you go.” He fished another empty vial out and stepped forward with it.
The bank gave way under his weight, and he fell headfirst into the mud of the creek.
He pushed himself up out of the mud and spit stuff. Louis waded through the mud and peeled off his own shirt to give Ray something to wipe mud off with.
Ray wiped his face and complained, “We really should’ve brought towels or rags or something just in case this happened.”
Louis groaned, “Yeah. Because nothing ever goes wrong when I’m doing stuff. I’m an idiot.”
Ray wiped off his hands as well as he could. “Look, let’s wrap this up quick and just get the hell back to the car. I’ll open the backpack and let you get the vials out, since you still have clean hands.”
Louis nodded unhappily. “Sure. If you want. We could just head back to the car …”
Ray complained, “And have to do the rest with you some other day? Let’s just get this done.”
They got another hundred yards and two more samples before Ray sat down. “Louis, I’m not feeling so good.”
“What’s the matter?”
Ray said, “I don’t know. I just feel kind of weak, sort of …” A chill ran down his spine. “Sort of like when I drank that GC-161.” He looked at his hands.
Under the grime, his skin was starting to turn silvery.
He looked up at Louis. “Houston, we have a problem.”
Louis looked at Ray. Patches of Ray’s skin were doing that silvery morph that Alex did. And Ray had already told him how horribly that went for him that last time, down in Bakersfield.
Louis’s first reaction was blind panic. He shoved that down as hard as he could. “Ray! What do we do?”
Ray was staring at his hands and looking scared. “We gotta get to your car as fast as we can, and get to the Macks’ house. They’ve got some antidote hidden away. We call Dr. Mack on the way and have him meet us there, and we get me dosed.”
Louis thought it through, “Okay. If we run back the way we came, we can get to the spot we climbed down pretty quick, and we scramble up to my car. Then we peel out. If I get a speeding ticket, I get a ticket.”
Ray nodded. “Good enough. Let’s move.”
They got about a hundred yards before Ray collapsed.
Louis got an arm under Ray’s left arm and hauled him to his feet. “Come on, buddy, I’ve got you.”
Ray pulled off his backpack and groaned, “Louis, let go. I need you to not get pulled in, because I think I’m gonna mmm …”
Louis watched in horror as Ray and his clothes puddled down into a silvery blob. What the hell was he going to do now?
“Ray! Ray! Can you hear me?” That was stupid. Ray couldn’t talk. “Ray, if you can hear me, puddle to the left, then back.”
Ray puddled to the right and back. Oh, wait, that was Ray’s left.
Louis tried to think. “Okay, we can still run down the creek bed. I mean, you can puddle and I’ll run. Then I’ll help you get up the hill.” He slung the backpack over his shoulders and ran as fast as he could along the edge of the creek. Ray puddled right down the middle, moving over the mud like it was a concrete road.
Louis tried not to think about how much his side hurt. Or his lungs. Or how dry his mouth felt. He just tried to keep up with Ray. There was no way he could run half a mile with this stuff on his back, but he had to try.
* * *
“Stop! Ray, stop!” He sagged to his knees, and the puddle that was Ray moved back toward him. He gasped, “This is it. We made it. Now we just … have to go … straight up the slope … to the car. Without me … having a … heart attack.”
The puddle moved up the slope. Okay, the puddle was having an easier time than he was. That had to be a good thing, because there was no way he could lug two hundred pounds of puddle up a steep incline. He was just barely dragging himself up the slope.
Louis gasped and scrambled and clawed his way up. He just kept telling himself he only had to get to the car. Then he could get Ray into the car and over to Alex’s. He wasn’t going to abandon the backpack of samples for Marsha, and he wasn’t going to abandon Ray. He was going to gut it out even if he killed himself.
His side was killing him when he scrambled up the last rise and saw his car, sitting there on the gravel roadside waiting for him. He would have said something smart, but he couldn’t catch his breath yet.
He pulled out his keys and staggered around to the driver’s side. He managed to gasp, “Ray? We’re screwed.”
Someone had driven by and spotted his car, and probably taken their anger about the Homecoming thing out on him. Sure, he’d enjoyed making Kelly’s life miserable after all the crap she’d dished out to him and everyone he knew over the years. Sure, he knew Kelly and her friends and their boyfriends were pissed at him. And he knew Donna and her friends and their boyfriends were pissed at him, too. He’d expected someone would dump their milk on him some day at lunch, or hit him with a piece of pie.
He hadn’t expected someone would key his car and slash his tires. He was looking at two flats. He had one spare.
He pulled out his cellphone and checked. No bars. He tried calling anyway, and got … Nada. He couldn’t call for help. He couldn’t fix the flats. He couldn’t drive on two tires, especially on a road this twisty, so he couldn’t get Ray any help. And if what Ray had said was right, then Ray needed antidote pretty soon, before the stuff affected his DNA and the changes went permanent.
He had just doomed his best friend.
———
The Secret World (to the tune of “Part of Your World” from “The Little Mermaid”)
Wanted to be so exceptional,
Wanted to be, just to be the prom queen,
Getting all doused with that — what do you call it?
Oh — goop!
Coated in goop, you won’t get too far
’Specially when you’re glowing, melting
I’ve really stepped in the — what’s that word again?
Poop!
I can throw shocks, I can do more,
I can now slip right under a door,
This may sound dumb, this has become
Alex’s world.
What would I give if I could live free of this villain?
What would I pay to spend a day only chillin’?
I’ve got to fight for what is right
Whether it’s day or night or evening,
Superheroes, no more zeroes,
To take a stand.
I’m ready to do what I have to do,
Hit ’em with lightning and stop their scheming,
My colonel and my hacker — what’s her name?
Burn!
Now it’s my turn.
Now I can fly, fly and explore those skies way up high!
All land and sea,
It’s come to be …
Terawatt’s world.