|
Suddenly Memories: Pete Zahut
By Dac
The tunnels beneath the ruined city were still acrid with the smell of smoke. The sound of wind sweeping through the shadowy crevices made an eerie whistling sound, like someone blowing into a conch shell in the distance. The puddles stirred slightly as the breeze curled around them. Other sounds met the breeze: faint cracks and distant groans as the wreckage and concrete continued its tiring ordeal of straining to remain intact. Every so often the sound of another piece splitting free and dropping to the bottom of the tunnels, leaving an ominous thud to echo for miles. If not for these sounds there would be nothing but empty blackness, mute and hidden from the sky above. The tunnels were restless, but only moved a fraction of an inch at a time. Their groans and complaints from stress, brought on by the many breakages, went unheard and unnoticed by the rest of the world. The tunnels were a purgatory for themselves, a waiting place where things went to wait until their time came.
There came a loud rush of air and a young man flashed into existence in the tunnels.
Pete’s head whipped this way and that, frantically looking around for signs of something known only to him. His vision adjusted to the darkness, he caught a glimpse of his reflection in a nearby piece of glass.
Never before had he known himself to look so terrified.
He took off at a run down the tunnel, as fast as he could. His feet made a dull pitter patter sound as he ran, except for the occasional crunch as his feet caught a loose piece of brittle concrete. The loudest sound was his heavy breathing, a ragged, choking pant. His lungs felt like they were on fire, but he pushed on. His breaths were like a metronome off-balance, and he forced himself along with all of his energy. Inhale; right foot. Exhale; left foot. Inhale; right foot. Exhale; left foot.
His lungs continue to scream. Their screams were drowned out by the sounds, as Pete grew more and more aware of every tiny sound in the air around him. His own breaths. His footsteps. The splashes he made whenever he hit a puddle. The wind whistling through these dank tunnels.
The hair on the back of his neck stood up. That wasn’t the wind.
A laugh joined the sounds in the tunnel. A sinister, merciless laugh. A voice Pete had learned to fear very, very much.
Something seemed to coalesce in the gloom and Pete pulled up short. He lost his footing and tumbled forward, letting loose a loud cacophony as a hand shot out of the air in front of him. The mere sound of the hand whipping towards him sounded like a whip and Pete rolled to the side, springing to his feet, as the laugh got louder and Ren stepped out from the cloud.
“I love it when you try to run,” she sneered. “Did I tell you Geekers tried to run?”
Pete didn’t even stop for breath. He just bolted down the corridor. Ren laughed and ran a few steps after him before evaporating into another cloud of gas, shooting after him. Pete didn’t turn his head, focusing only on the tunnel ahead. The gas shot up next to him on the right and her voice, light and feathery as it issued from her hazy form, dug through his ears into his brain.
“He ran a while,” she hissed. “Almost ten miles. I chased the whole way.”
The gas shot past Pete to his left side with a malicious, gleeful snarl that echoed all around them like a cry from hell.
“He was fast on his feet, the bastard. He could run through walls. He was smart. Calm.”
Another hellish snarl and the cloud flew ahead of him. Taunting him with a trail of vapour.
“And I still caught him. Killed him. So tell me, little Pete.”
The cloud halted just as he ran through it. As it did, she condensed again and her human body fell on him. The pair of them fell to the ground and she seized him by the throat. In the dark, her eyes gleamed like pennies of the dead, and yet were utterly black and soulless. Pete stared up into them, his body now screaming for very different reasons. He could hear his own heartbeat, thudding like the devil’s drums, seeming to echo for miles.
“Do you really think you can do better?”
Pete gave a strangled cry and drove his open palms upwards, slamming them into Ren’s chest. Another dull thudding noise as they connected. Her body gave a bit, the shove coming sooner than she had expected. Her hand did not come away, but it loosened just enough. He thrust his legs out and tossed her sideways. Her hand came away.
The rush of air came again as Pete teleported away.
Ren froze and lay silent for a fraction of a second. She had been playing this game for long enough. She knew what to listen for. The breeze stirred her hair very slightly as she lay for that single moment, when she heard the rush of air come again. Somewhere else, but somewhere near.
She evaporated and shot through the tunnels. The footsteps. The harsh, loud staccato invading this realm of quiet rumbles. She sped after it through the darkness.
Pete heard the familiar sound. The whistling of gas moving at an unnatural speed. He threw himself around a corner and ground himself to a halt, lying motionless among a collection of rubble. He kept his eyes open, wide and searching, and his body utterly still among the debris. He waited.
Waited and listened.
The whistle of impending doom slowed uncertainly. He held his breath tight in case she heard it and pounced upon him. Where she was, he couldn’t guess. She was near. That was enough. His muscles still struggled to gain whatever respite they could, but Pete’s head was spinning.
The whistling slowed to a rustle, and Pete saw her.
The cloud drifted around the corner.
He did not recoil further into the crevice among the debris. He did not move save for his eyes, following her silently as she drifted towards him. Still he held his breath, refusing to even clench his hands into fist or strain his toes inside his shoes, lest they make some sound, give off some signal as glaring as a gunshot in the silent depths. He willed his heart to slow down.
She drifted closer. She drifted over him. He watched the cloud pass over his head.
She moved away from him.
He still did not budge, but inside his stomach churned. The gas continued to move away. Slower. She was confused now. The sounds were gone. She had to know he was here somewhere. She knew the sound of him teleporting, and she hadn’t heard it. She knew. Sooner or later she would double back. Soon enough.
Pete weighed his options. He had traversed these tunnels so often since the city was bombed. He knew them well, better than anyone. But he searched for anything down here. Supplies. His friends. An escape from the city. Ren only searched for one thing: him. More than that, she knew how to find him.
But she didn’t know the tunnels.
She had only been in this small area for the last little while. Stalking him like a relentless Predator. She stalked through the tunnels like a monster parents told children at night. Hunting him. She went where he went. She was stronger than him. Less exhausted than him. Less careful about being caught than him.
But she knew followed the prey, not the path.
He screwed his eyes shut and concentrated. This was going to hurt.
With a loud rushing of air, Pete teleported again. Instantly, not far away at all, Ren wheeled and shot back down the tunnel towards the sound. She listened intently, but could not hear Pete re-emerge. She came to where he lay and waited for the telltale sound.
It never came.
She cursed.
In a tunnel on the other side of the city, Pete retched and collapsed onto the cold concrete, exhausted by days of pursuit with only brief snatches of rest, barely any food, and the biggest jump he’d made in some time. Groaning, he attempted to stand up. He failed, fell to the ground, and his mind went blank.
***
Slowly he came to his senses, and instinct took over as he lay in the gloom. His body did not move. He listened first, with his eyes shut, for several minutes. How much time had passed, he had no way of knowing. He had nothing to tell the time, nor the vision to see it. His eyes were still adjusting, still waking up. He could smell nothing out of the ordinary, so gave himself completely to sound, straining to hear the chords of anything around him.
Nothing. No sound, malevolent or benign, came to him.
He stood up shakily, feeling the ground around him. He was on a mostly intact concrete slab, surrounded by more of the same. Probably not a tunnel then. The remains of a basement somewhere. Still, the damage to the city had probably punctured it. His eyesight returned to him bit by bit as he felt his way around, and spotted a large hole in the wall. He approached it and took a smell from inside. A familiar, stale scent. The tunnels he knew so well.
He looked around, in case there was anything here he could collect. Some tins of food or a missed bottle of water. Taking in his surroundings for the first time with his eyes, he noticed a doorway with some stairs behind it. He checked it. The staircase had caved in. Not that he would have ascended them anyway; going to the surface meant death. He was frequently astonished when, in encounters with the other members of the Family, they mentioned brief excursions above ground and the things that awaited them, Guardsmen, hero hunters or worse. He left the stairs behind and checked the basement. There was a cupboard that had been raided, containing only a few tins of tomato. One was dented; he ignored it. The others he stuffed into his threadbare backpack. Cautiously he began to move towards the hole in the wall, back into the tunnels. This place was a bottleneck, and he didn’t have the strength in him to jump. Before he could stop to recuperate and eat, he had to find somewhere he could run from.
He lay his hand on the edge of the hole when something loomed out of the darkness. A hand holding a knife.
Instinctively his hand shot out and seized it by the wrist, wrenching it through the hole into the basement. He dropped his whole body on that of his attacker and pinned him down, growling inaudibly. A torch flared up in the other hand and Pete shielded his eyes. In that brief moment of pause, he saw his attacker’s face.
He halted. The girl stopped struggling.
She was a skinny little thing, barely 12 years old. She looked like hell, her clothes in tatters and the knife too large for her to grip properly. He could see dried blood on her arm and bruising everywhere. He took the knife away from her and cautiously stepped away. She scrambled backwards lithely, pressing her back to the wall. He sat between her and the hole, peering at her curiously. She stared back, a touch of fear mixed in with defiant features.
“Hello,” he said. His voice sounded oddly metallic and raspy. He wondered how long it had been since he last spoke.
She stared straight back at him coldly, saying nothing. Slowly, he reached into his pack and pulled out the tins of tomato. His curiosity was not fading, but his sense of duty was overriding it. He had given himself the label ‘hero’ and everything that entailed, including not stealing.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t think anyone was down here.”
She still said nothing. A muscle in her arm was twitching. He held out the tins, but she didn’t move. He had anticipated that, and slowly he walked over to the cupboard, placing the tins back in. He shouldered his pack, already feeling a pang for the lighter load, and slowly moved back to his spot on the floor. The knife lay abandoned next to him. He noticed her eyes flicking to it. He didn’t touch it.
“How long have you been down here?” he asked.
No response. He scratched his head, wondering vaguely how long ago the city was bombed. She must have been caught down here when it happened, but why the hell was she down here at the time? Where were her parents? In the back of his mind, he cringed at the thought of the words; some small part of him still hated pop culture clichés.
“My name is Pete,” he said. “You have a name, kid?”
Still she glared soundlessly. He shifted uncomfortably, thinking just how out of his element he was. He called himself hero, and yet contact with normal people was still something he was getting used to. Dealing with shellshocked kids in a post-apocalyptic subterranean maze was going to be hard to come to terms with.
He cast his eyes around when they fell on the knife. He blinked, looking from the knife to the girl, to the cupboard, then back to the girl again. Part of him was still wondering how long he had been unconscious for.
“You could have hurt me while I was out cold,” he said slowly. “You didn’t. Why not?”
She shifted herself, her first movement since scuttling back into the wall. Pete stared hard at her, and he could almost hear the crack in her guard. Her mouth slowly opened and her voice spilled out. If Pete’s voice had been metallic, hers was outright rusty, and yet there was something under the layers of disuse, some harmonic tone that deserved to be heard. Pete stirred slightly at the sound of it. Something pleasant among the darkness.
“I wanted you to leave,” she said. “I was waiting for you to wake up and go. You weren’t supposed to know I was here. No one’s supposed to know I was here.”
He expelled a small breath at the sound of her voice before her words sank in. He tilted his head slightly. Old enough to try and defend herself and hide, but still young enough to believe, naively, that he’d simply leave without taking anything. He frowned. She shouldn’t be in the ruins.
“You been here for long?” he asked. Remove the directness from the question. Maybe that would help. At least she was talking.
“A while,” she said. “Since the city was wrecked. However long ago that was. My mom went to go talk to the people at the checkpoint. She said she knew someone from the Leader’s group, who would have preferred them to stay in the city. She never came home though. She told me to hide in the basement in case anything happened.”
Pete felt himself twist a bit inside. Her words were devoid of emotion, of anything. She rattled it off like she was reading the weather.
“Your father?” he asked automatically, without thinking.
“He’s dead,” she said flatly, calmly. “He died a few weeks before. A building fell on him.”
“Oh. I’m sorry,” he said hastily. “So you’re down here alone, is what you’re saying.”
“Yes.”
He breathed slowly, making a slight puffing noise. It had to have been a few weeks since the bombing, at least. She’d survived more than anyone would have expected, but that couldn’t last. He looked over at the food cupboard. He knew how many tins there were in there. Before long she’d have no food, and then she’d starve. There was no food to be found down here, and she’d either starve trying to find some or get picked up by the Leader’s men, who would more than likely just shoot her on sight.
He met her eyes again and saw the fire in them. She was a survivor, he could see that, but she’d need help to go on.
“You know it’s not safe here,” he said. She nodded calmly, saying nothing. He frowned. “I’m going to have to leave. If you come with me, I can help you get out of here. Out of the city.”
“Leave, then,” she said. “I’ll be fine here.”
“Kid, I’ve seen your food supply,” he said patiently. “I don’t know about water but I’d guess you’re not doing too well for that either. Sooner or later you’re going to run out. What will you do then?”
She said nothing. He could sense he’d gotten through to her; it was an easy victory, considering what he had to work with. He breathed deeply.
“I can get you past the checkpoint,” he said. “From there, you’d be able to find a ride to another city. You’d be safe there.”
He hoped she was too young to ask what to do when she got there. An image of her living on the streets flashed into his mind, but he shoved it aside. She looked suspicious.
“If you can get out, why haven’t you yet?” she asked.
“I have friends still in the city,” he said. “I can’t leave them here. Not when we’re being hunted.”
“You can get me out, but not them?”
“There’s a lot of them,” he said. “Getting all of them out would wear me out. Maybe even kill me. One person, though, I can manage that. And you need it more than them.”
“Why?” she demanded. “I can look after myself.”
“I see that,” he said. “Believe me, I see it. But if you’re outside the city, if you go somewhere else, they won’t chase you. They’ll let you go. Me and my friends, though...they bombed the city to find us. All the bad people around, they’re trying to find us, and they don’t care who gets in their way. They’ll never stop chasing us.”
Her gaze remained suspicious. She stared at him calculatingly, as though weighing her options. “So you know they’re chasing you, and you still think the best thing for me to do is go with you,” she said quietly.
He kept his composure, his expression not faltering. “Yes.”
Silence cut through the small room, and Pete listened carefully. There were no sounds issuing from the tunnel behind him, which kept him calm. He was poised and ready to spring if he heard the familiar whistle of a gas cloud, or the distant cry of a team of hero hunters, but no sound floated out of the darkness. He stood up, assuming what he hoped was a confidence-inspiring posture.
“You’ll have to leave sooner or later,” he said. “Let me help.”
She hesitated. He slowly, carefully closed the distance between them and held out his hand. She stared at it uncertainly for a long moment. The pause grew and grew, and he began wondering if he should withdraw, when she took it and stood up. A tiny smile creased the edges of his mouth, and he nodded in satisfaction.
They made their way to the gaping hole and crept inside. She took the tins from the cupboard as she passed, including the dented one, and they moved through the jagged, rocky hole until finally he came out into the tunnels he knew so well. He helped her through the hole and they walked north. He knew that area of the city better than the rest. It was fortified, so he had long been unable to get the others through there, but it would be easier to get one girl past the checkpoint. He hoped so, anyway.
They walked for hours without a sound. At one point she opened a small tin of beetroot and, after eating a handful, passed it to him. He accepted it gratefully and ate a few slices without hesitation before handing it back to her.
“Got anything to seal it with?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “I usually just eat it all so it doesn’t go bad.”
“Jesus,” he said. “No wonder you didn’t have much food.”
“I don’t eat that often,” she said. “Probably only two tins a day.”
Pete felt his insides writhe again. She’d been out here for too long. She needed to be somewhere safe, and she needed it days ago, if not weeks.
They kept walking in the darkness. More hours passed as he led her through the tunnels, further north. Every time they passed a piece of graffiti, or a uniquely-broken piece of rubble, Pete crossed it off in his head, recalling where they were. He’d been down here too long, he dimly realised, if he was instantly recognising such landmarks. Yet he’d never once seen the tunnel into the basement.
She dropped behind him. Without pausing, he turned and caught her, slowly easing her onto the ground.
“Easy,” he said. “Come on. We’ll rest here for a few hours.”
“I’m fine,” she said bitterly.
“You just fell over midstep,” he said. “We’re resting up. No arguments.”
She sulked against the wall as he sat down, handing her a bottle of water. She took a meagre sip and handed it back, her brown eyes glaring accusingly glaring at him. He ignored her, listening all around them. In the entire walk there had only been the sound of their footsteps, deafening to him but swallowed up in the darkness. As he sat, he could hear nothing, not even the breeze that occasionally broke in from above. He looked over at her. She was swaying slightly on the spot, trying to keep her eyes open.
“Get some sleep,” he said. “You look like you need it.”
“I’m fine,” she said again.
“Keep telling yourself that,” he mumbled idly. He pulled a small blanket he’d collected out of his pack and tossed it at her. She barely registered it as it hit her, and subconsciously pulled it over herself as she lay down. He was relieved when she didn’t snore, but she was definitely asleep. He sat up next to her, listening for any sign of movement.
There was nothing. They were alone in the shadows, away from harm. He breathed a sigh of relief and didn’t realise his eyes were beginning to droop.
***
He felt something grabbing at his shoulder. His arm shot up and swatted it away. Awake in an instant, he blind jumped away, swinging his head to and fro as his vision returned to him. He heard the girl whispering in the darkness, and foreboding increased when he caught the urgent tone in her voice.
“Are you awake yet?”
“Yes,” he hissed. “What is it?”
“I heard something. Noises. Down that way.”
His returning night vision spotted her arm as she pointed. Slowly he edged down in that direction, turning his ear towards the tunnel, listening out for any sound. His ears still buzzed with the strange white noise that came with only just waking up, but even so, he’d had a lot of practice. His sharp ears couldn’t hear anything.
“Nothing,” he said. “Were you dreaming?”
“I heard something,” she insisted. “It was far off, but I heard something.”
Pete looked down the tunnel forebodingly. He knew from experience better than to dismiss claims like that, even if he had no evidence that they were true. Paranoia had kept him alive and he wasn’t about to change that.
“We’d better get moving,” he said. “Come on.”
They made slower progress, their caution holding their feet back. For some time they didn’t speak, but after an hour and no sign of anything waiting in the darkness, they both began to relax and whisper back and forth to each other.
“So you’ve been hiding down here too?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “There’s a lot of us, so we split into groups and keep moving all the time. It makes it harder for them to find us.”
“Why?” she asked. “Why do they want to catch you?”
Pete heaved a sigh, unsure of how much to say. “The Leader...well, he’s a bad guy, and his men are worse. They hate us a lot.”
“You don’t have to sugar-coat it for me. I’m not a little kid.”
He had to marvel at how much resentful indignation she could inject into a barely-audible whisper. “You’re younger than anyone stuck under here should be,” he said distractedly, edging around a corner.
“No one should be stuck under here,” came the reply. “It shouldn’t have come to this at all.”
Pete paused for a moment to mull that one over. “Guess not,” he admitted.
“Like I said. I’m not a little kid.”
He gave her a cockeyed look as they moved further up the tunnel, his hands grabbing at steel bars hanging out of the wall and guiding her past them so she didn’t hit her head. She ducked under them and continued up the tunnel. He swiftly passed her and they walked side-by-side for a while. Her head, with a baseball cap pulled over her hair, barely reached his shoulder. They reached the end of the tunnel and came to a T-junction. Pete pointed down the left-hand side and they ducked across the intersection. A shaft of sunlight pierced a small sliver of the concrete about 20 feet above them, accompanied by the whistling of the wind struggling to get in. Pete was reminded of Ren and shivered.
The girl thrust out her arm and stopped him, her face suddenly hard. Pete halted and listened carefully.
“That sound again,” she breathed.
This time he heard it. There was no mistaking it: the light patter of footsteps, somewhere nearby. Worse yet, they were getting closer. Pete closed his eyes and strained hard. There was more than one, but he could hear no voices. That could mean anything.
Further down the new tunnel a flashlight beam illuminated the wall. Pete grabbed the girl and they crouched in a nearby alcove. He had a hand over her mouth, but she patted his arm and her eyes glared at him. He released her, giving her an apologetic nod, and they waited as another torch beam joined the first, then another, then another. At least four people. Pete’s muscles tensed. Unless he’d missed something and they’d regrouped, it was too many to be the rest of the Family.
That meant one thing: hero hunters.
He gritted his teeth. He’d gotten used to them, and had single-handedly taken down several teams. Hero hunters didn’t frighten him anymore. On the other hand, though, he wasn’t by himself this time, and a lot of the hero hunters he’d encountered seemed particularly unscrupulous. He wouldn’t put it past them to harm a child. Fighting was a last resort, then, and he’d have to use his standby for encounters with Ren or Celtic or other members of the Guardsmen: hide and wait for them to pass him by.
The torch beams got closer, and the hero hunters walked up the tunnel towards them. Pete instinctively moved in front of the girl, who was slowly getting more and more afraid. He heard her breathing quicken and found her hand, taking it in his. She gripped it tightly. He looked over his shoulder and gave her a small nod, hoping the expression on his face inspired a bit of confidence. She nodded back and her breathing slowed somewhat.
The first of the hunters passed, his torch beam moving over the ground ahead in rigid elliptical arcs. Another followed him, straight past. Neither so much as glanced at Pete or the girl, barely three feet to the right of them. Pete stole a glance down the tunnel. The fourth was lagging behind, keeping an eye out behind them. Pete watched him closely, waiting for him to hurry up and rejoin his fellows, when he heard a grunt of confusion.
His head snapped around. The third hunter was looking straight at him.
The torch swung round and burned into his eyes. He threw his arm up to shield them. The hunter gave a shout and ripped out his weapon. The other hunters came sprinting back towards him, and the girl gave a cry of terror, all within the space of a second.
Pete didn’t even stop to think. He looked the girl in the eye with grim resolution.
“Don’t let go,” he said. Wrapping her in an embrace, he felt the familiar rush of air as he teleported.
They reappeared somewhere else in the tunnels, not far away, but out of sight. Even as he recoiled, gasping for breath at the strain of teleporting someone else, he heard gunshots echoing through the tunnels, followed by shouts that weren’t distant enough for his liking. The hunt was on for them. He just hoped the place was too labyrinthine for them to find him and his new charge without knowing where they were going. He looked over at her, still gripping her hand after breaking the embrace. She was on her hands and knees, utterly pale and wide-eyed. She retched on the spot, vomiting up what little she had in her stomach. Pete groaned. He was hoping she would only be a bit disoriented, but he’d misjudged what it would do to her. Pulling out a small rag from his pocket, he cleaned it with a bit of water and wiped at her face.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t want to do that.”
“What...what was that?” she panted softly, weakly.
Pete hesitated before responding, sitting next to her and rubbing her back. “That’s what I do,” he said. “I teleport. I can disappear from one place and reappear in another instantly.”
She looked up at him, bemused. “Like a superhero?”
He laughed softly. “Well, yeah. Me and the guys, we try to be heroes. We all have powers, and we use them to help people. That’s why the Leader hates us.”
She sat upright next to him and leaned against the wall, still breathing heavily. He handed her the water and she gulped it down. Her posture slackened and she slid down the wall a bit, too suddenly exhausted to keep herself up.
“Usually I don’t teleport other people,” he went on. “I’m still practicing. Big jumps wear me out, and when I take other people they get a bit sick and I feel like I just got punched in the gut. That’s what happened just then. Sorry.”
She slid over and leaned on him. Her eyes looked up at him, full of the shaky laughter that only comes to people who just narrowly avoided death. “I think being sick is better than being shot.”
He laughed again. “I guess so.”
They sat in silence. Hesitantly, Pete put his arm around her, and they both regained their breath as best they could. Eventually Pete shook himself and slowly eased her off his side before standing up. He listened carefully. He could still hear their attackers in the distance, but they didn’t seem to be getting any closer. Nonetheless, he determined to move.
“We have to keep going,” he said. “Can you walk?”
“I think so...”
She struggled to stand, but slipped and fell shakily. Pete caught her and lifted her easily off the ground, slinging her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carriage.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ve got you.”
He felt a grateful noise behind him and began walking up the tunnel. She hung limply for a while, not complaining about his shoulder digging into her gut. Pete smiled, unseen by the girl. She was resilient, that was for damn sure. He kept listening for the hero hunters, when he realised she said something.
“What was that?” he asked.
“I said, do you ever feel sad? That you can’t teleport as well as you’d like?”
Pete blinked, caught offguard by the question. He barely managed to keep his legs moving as he pondered the question. Silence held between them as he contemplated it before answering slowly. “I guess, a bit. I mean, I would have like to get all my friends out of here a while ago. But all I can do is keep practicing, and maybe someday I’ll be able to do it. I can’t spend all my time thinking about what I wish I could do, I have to focus on what I can do.”
She was quiet for several paces after that. Pete thought she might have passed out from exhaustion, when he heard her speak again so softly he barely heard it.
“Thank you.”
He tightened his grip around her waist momentarily. “You don’t need to thank me,” he said. “I’m a hero. This is what I do.”
He looked over his shoulder, but her eyes were closed. He paused and moved her so he was holding her in both arms out in front. She did not stir. Pete continued walking, the darkness hiding his faint smile.
***
She woke up hours later. Pete had lain her on the ground with his coat over her and was resting, his eyes filled with the alertness absent from his body. She slowly sat up and rubbed her eyes, yawning. Pete passed her a small tin of peas, still half full, and a plastic spoon. She dug at it hungrily. Pete took a sip from the canteen before handing her that as well. She drank from it briefly and handed it back.
“Feel better?” he asked.
“Yeah, much,” she said. “How long did you carry me for?”
“A while,” he said. “Enough to get us further away from them. We stopped here about 20 minutes ago. Rest up a bit and we’ll move on.”
“What about you?” she asked. “Don’t you need sleep?”
“I’ll be fine,” he said dismissively. “If I’m right, we’re about three miles or so from the edge of town. Once we get there, we can go up to the surface, get close to the checkpoint and I can teleport you out.”
She screwed up her face apprehensively. He nodded.
“I know. But we don’t have a lot of options. If we can get really close then it shouldn’t be as bad. You know what to expect now, and the shorter the distance the better it will be.”
She nodded resolutely. He felt a pang of regret for lying like that, but he didn’t want her to worry about it the whole way there. He shifted uncomfortably when she spoke again.
“My dad worked for the Leader,” she said softly.
Pete blinked. “Really?” he said, caught completely unawares.
“Yeah. Well, stepdad, kinda,” she said slowly. “He...he and my mom met and grew pretty close about a year ago. He was really nice to me. They never got married, and I think it had something to do with his work, but he was nice.”
Pete sat silently, unsure if there was anything he could say. She looked up at him, her eyes wide with the fear of uncertainty only a child can muster, that something they believed may not be true.
“But the Leader has these guys down here,” she said. “Trying to kill us. Trying to kill you, and you’re a hero. The Leader ordered the city wrecked. The Leader’s a bad guy, you said so. Does that mean my dad was a bad guy?”
Pete sucked in a mouthful of air before responding. He spoke slowly, weighing his words carefully. “I don’t know,” he began. “Just because you work for a bad guy doesn’t make you a bad guy. You might do bad things, but you may not believe in them. Do you know what your dad did, for work?”
“No,” she said. “He never told me.”
Pete shrugged unhappily. “Then honestly, I don’t know. But he was good to you, right? He was good to your mom. He can’t be a bad guy if he was like that.”
She nodded and spooned more peas into her mouth. “Thanks,” she said through a mouthful.
“For what?”
“For not sugar-coating it.”
A small smile traced his mouth, and it struck Pete how much more he had smiled since he came across this kid. “You told me not to, so I’m not.”
“People don’t usually listen when I tell them that,” she said.
“Yeah, well, there’s nothing about what we’re doing that’s usual,” he said casually. She laughed and he grinned broadly. He took another drink of water and set the canteen down, listening to her still chuckling under breath.
Abruptly he heard the laughter stop, and in that moment of silence he heard something behind him. Something hit him in the back of the head and he fell down, grunting in pain. In the back of his head he cursed his own stupidity for not listening out. The cold blade of a knife pressed lightly against his throat as one of the hero hunter kneeled down beside him. One of the others stepped hurriedly over him and seized the girl, who had sprang up with a cry and gotten ready to pounce. She struggled fiercely as he gripped her arm, and the other two hunters entered Pete’s field of vision.
“Got them?” one asked.
“Got them,” confirmed the one with a knife to Pete’s throat. He dug the knife into Pete’s flesh a tiny bit, warning him. The hunter in command barely glanced at the girl, staring down at Pete.
“The teleporter,” he said. “Better kill him now. Otherwise he could get loose and vanish before we turn him in.”
“Damn it,” grunted one of the others. “It’ll take forever to drag a corpse back out of here.”
“Them’s the breaks,” said the leader. “Lynch. Cut his throat.”
The girl gave a wordless cry and elbowed the one holding her in the genitals. The man gave a yelp and released her, and she sprang into the hunter beside Pete. The pair of them tumbled to the ground. The two hunters still standing hastily grabbed Pete as the one she elbowed stood up unsteadily. The fourth one tossed the girl off him and stood back up. As everyone watched, he drew his foot back and gave her a solid kick in the gut.
The cry of pain seemed to eliminate every other sound in the vicinity for Pete. He barely realised the hunters were snapping at each other. He heard only the girl, and the noise she made stabbed into his brain like a red hot knife. His insides suddenly spiralled into a hurricane and any exhaustion in him vanished. The sound probed into the deepest recesses of his mind, like someone prodding an animal in a sensitive area, and as he flinched from the sound, the dam burst and rage flooded his body.
With a roar, his arm shot out and seized the one who had kicked her. The two holding him tried to wrench him back, and with a grip on one and the other two holding tightly, Pete teleported out of sight with a snarl.
The girl looked up. The last hero hunter stared in confusion at the spot where his comrades had been, startled, when he locked eyes with the girl. Baring his teeth, he pulled out his own knife and moved towards her.
“Hit me in the fucking nuts!” he growled. “You little bitch!”
She scrambled backwards as he approached when they felt the rush of air again. Pete’s fist, inexplicably bloody, slammed into the hunter’s face and sent him staggering backwards. Pete appeared behind him and seized him by the scruff of the neck, his own teeth gleaming by the fallen torches. Wordlessly, he and the man vanished.
The girl stared in shock. She grabbed one of the torches and swung it around violently, staring in every direction.
“Pete?”
There was no response. The darkness seemed to close in on her, held at bay only by the LED. She felt more afraid than she had in a long time. Alone in the basement of her house, she was at least in familiar territory. Now she was in shadowy tunnels she didn’t recognise, and for the first time since entering them, she was alone. She hugged her knees and stared wildly around her.
There was a rush of air and something fell out of mid-air several feet away. She rushed over anxiously and stared. Pete’s face and fists were bloody and he was breathing in heavy, ragged clumps. She brought the canteen over and held it to his mouth as he took several deep gulps. Pushing it away, he tried to sit up but fell back down. She put a hand on his shoulder reassuringly.
“Stop,” she said. “It’s OK. They’re gone. Wherever you took them to.”
“Somewhere they’ll have a hard time getting up to come after you again,” he said flatly. She felt a chill up her spine, but pushed it away. He was utterly drained. He had to be, after so many jumps with so many passengers. No wonder he couldn’t stand. She pulled his coat over him and turned the torches out.
“Just rest,” she said. “We’ll move again when you’re feeling better.”
“That’s a switch,” he chuckled. She managed a weak smile. Slowly his eyes drooped and his breathing evened out. It stopped echoing eerily around them as well, and she sighed in relief for that.
“Is that what you do? Whenever someone’s in trouble?” she asked softly.
He opened one eye and looked over at her blearily. “It’s a hard life,” he said.
She swallowed uneasily. “You saved me again.”
“You saved me too,” he said. “Don’t feel like you owe me anything.”
“You could have left me back at my place,” she said. “You nearly got killed because you brought me along.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” he grunted, closing his eye again. “You could say that I’m still alive because you stopped them.”
She nodded slowly, a tiny smile on her face. “You don’t even think about it. You just do it. You just help people.”
In the dark, she could see him smiling too. “Kid, I was brought to another world by an ethereal force that I’m pretty sure couldn’t care less and I spend my life trying not to be killed by old friends with superpowers. I am neither a teacher nor a role model.”
“You’re a hero,” she said.
He was silent for a long time. She sat there, listening for any movement in the darkness, but there was nothing. He gave a short yawn, making her jump.
“Wake me, if you need me,” he said. “In a while we’ll get out of here. I’ll get you out.”
She nodded. If she had responded, he wouldn’t have heard her. He was already asleep, his gentle breathing the only sound in the darkness. She leaned against the wall and kept listening for anything, but nothing was coming. She was content. It was enough to be with a hero. A real hero. She knew he wouldn’t come with her, if he did get her out. Part of her dreaded that, but as she thought about it, she remembered what he’d said before. ‘I can’t spend all my time thinking about what I wish I could do, I have to focus on what I can do.’
She smiled at him in the darkness.
“Be the hero,” she said.
No sound issued from the tunnel for a long time afterwards.
9/18/2011 4:57:39 AM
Comment on this fan fiction!
|
|
|
