Stronger: A Super Human Clash, page 8
“No! How … What … Where do you come from?”
“My tribe,” I said, pointing back the way I’d come. “There’s, like, forty of us. You should go check it out.”
The man made a face of disbelief. “Gimme a break. Where are you really from?”
“I’m American. Going back home.”
I could see from their expressions that they just didn’t know what to make of me. I was bombarded with questions: Who are you? Why are you blue? What do you eat? Are there others like you? How come you’re so tall? What’s the deal with your eyes? How old are you?
I really should have said my good-byes and walked away, but I was enjoying the attention too much.
“What’s your name?”
I wasn’t about to tell them my real name, so I said “Barnaby” because it was the first thing I thought of.
One of the women smiled. “Yeah, right. So … ”—she made air quotes—“Barnaby, what are you doing here in Bolivia?”
“Like I said, trying to get home. It’s a long story. And most of it is secret.”
The other members of their party had kept their distance, and I didn’t give them much thought, until I heard the clicking and whirring of cameras.
I turned back to see that five or six of them had produced expensive-looking cameras complete with huge telephoto lenses.
“Ah, come on! What is this? Who are you people?”
“Photographers,” the nearest woman said. “There have been sightings of a rare tree frog in this area. It’s supposed to be extinct. So we …” She smiled. “Forget the frogs, Barnaby—you’re much more interesting!”
I spent most of the morning begging them not to publish their photos while they continued to take more and deluged me with further questions, all except for one—the first man—who only wanted to talk about the tree frog. One of his friends told me that they’d been in Bolivia for three weeks and that the guy had not once shut up about the frog, driving them nuts.
In the end I had no choice but to walk away from their camp. I had the vague hope that if their photos were published, most people would think they were fake, but my former captors would finally realize that I hadn’t died in Antarctica.
After I left the camp, I doubled my speed, but I knew that sooner or later I would be tracked and found.
And a few months later, on the afternoon of my fifteenth birthday, in Yapacana National Park in Venezuela, they found me.
CHAPTER 11
THEY CAME IN LOW over the trees, from all angles, more than twenty helicopters. And not people carriers this time: They were gunships.
I ran, of course, even though I knew there really wasn’t anywhere safe to go. But I kept to the jungle and avoided any clearings that might be large enough for the copters to set down.
I passed beneath the north-most copters, and they whirled around to track me as I crashed through the undergrowth, leaped over streams and rivers, vaulted fallen trees. My bare feet churned up the jungle floor, gouging a path that even an idiot could follow. Birds and other animals—usually unperturbed by my presence—scattered ahead of me, the birds taking to the air in great flocks, ruining any possible chance I might have had of hiding.
Just keep going! I told myself over and over. If they catch you, you’ll end up back in Antarctica! I was not going to let that happen. If I had to, I’d fight back.
But that would be a last resort. I was sure that the crews of those helicopters were only following orders. Unless they actually opened fire on me, I wasn’t willing to hurt them.
That thought had barely crossed my mind when they did open fire.
The jungle around me was torn apart, a storm of bullets ripping into the trees, killing countless animals, tearing up the ground far more effectively than anything I could do.
I was fast, but the copters were much faster and didn’t have to navigate uneven ground. Five of them darted ahead and resumed firing, blocking my path.
They’re not actually shooting at me! I thought as I made a ninety-degree turn to the right. They’re just trying to herd me in!
And then a volley of bullets streaked across my back, and I understood that this was not a mission of capture: They were here to kill me.
I was dead if I stopped, and just as dead if I kept running. There was only one other option: I had to fight back.
I snatched up a fallen branch as I ran, but it was rotten and crumbled to damp powder in my hands. I need something stronger. Bigger. I jumped straight at the nearest tree, its trunk the width of my waist, and, using my weight, wrenched it loose from its hold on the forest floor. I stopped just long enough to pull it free, leaves and bark raining down on me.
One of the gunships passed overhead from left to right, and I threw the tree like a spear: It clipped the copter’s rear propeller, causing it to spiral down into the treetops.
Another two copters swooped around ahead of me, their side-mounted guns flaring. Bullets ripped into my right shoulder with enough force to send me spinning. I crashed to the ground—and kept rolling as the forest floor around me was strafed with gunfire.
I collided with a huge manchineel tree and, seeing no other choice, leaped up and grabbed hold of its lowest branches. I pulled myself up and began to climb.
The base of the tree was peppered with gunfire. At first I thought the gunships were working their way up, adjusting their aim to hit me, but I quickly realized that they were trying to bring the tree down.
I reached about thirty feet before the manchineel’s branches were too weak to support my weight, and as I was preparing myself to leap to the next tree, one of the gunships cruised by, circling to get a better angle.
That was a mistake: I sprang forward, straight at the copter, and caught on to the stubby wings at the side that housed its guns and external fuel tanks.
The copter bucked and swayed as I pulled myself up. I saw the pilot slam the joystick forward, and the craft immediately pitched forward.
Still holding on to the edge of the wings—with my clenched fingers actually digging into the metal—I flipped my legs forward, braced them against the landing gear, and pushed as hard as I could.
The metal screamed as the entire wing was torn free of the fuselage.
Naturally, without anything keeping me up, I tumbled to the ground, but I knew that I’d survive the fall, and I had the pleasure of watching the copter spin out of control.
But that didn’t stop the others from swinging back around to target me again.
When I hit the ground, I immediately jumped to my feet and snatched up the now-leaking fuel tank. It felt sufficiently big and heavy as I hefted it in one hand. And it arced beautifully and made a very satisfying explosion when it struck the blades of one of the other copters.
As the second copter crashed down, the others pulled back. So far, no one had been killed. I felt a little better about that, but to be honest, right then I wouldn’t really have cared much if they’d all died: They’d started it.
The crews of the remaining gunships were clearly as angry with me as I was with them. They stayed at a distance but kept pace with me and continued firing. I was hit seven or eight times, maybe more, and though none of the bullets struck anything vital and I healed very quickly, I could feel myself slowing down.
I knew I wasn’t going to win, and it was clear that they weren’t going to let me go.
Then one of the copters launched a missile at me. I saw it coming and abruptly changed direction … And so did the missile. No matter which way I ran, the missile kept adjusting its course.
At the last moment—when the missile was only a couple of yards behind me—I ducked behind a wide-trunked tree. The explosion split the trunk, scattered burning fragments far across the jungle.
The copter passed low overhead—its powerful rotors dispersing the clouds of wood smoke and spreading burning cinders far and wide—and I crashed through the flaming debris in the opposite direction.
I emerged in a small clearing where I saw three new copters waiting for me. As one, they all launched missiles.
I changed direction again, and as I desperately tried to outrun the missiles, the jungle around me was being torn apart by gunfire from the other copters. I was a dead man running. I remember thinking, This is a lousy way to spend my fifteenth birthday!
Launching three heat-seeking missiles at the same time turned out to be a mistake: As I ran, and constantly shifted direction, the missiles came closer and closer together … Then—I later learned—one of them locked on to the heat signature of another. There was an explosion that tore the jungle apart.
I’d been knocked off my feet, and now quickly scrambled up to see that I was now in the heart of an inferno.
For a second all I could do was stand there, shocked, and then through the smoke and flames I saw the copters again, hovering just above the treetops. As I watched, one by one the copters peeled away.
Within a few minutes, the jungle was almost silent.
As soon as I escaped from the fire, I dropped down next to a tree to catch my breath, and tried to understand what had happened. Had they been ordered to pull out? Maybe they realized I wasn’t a bad guy after all. Or maybe the Venezuelan government had learned that a foreign military power was conducting an operation in their country.
That last thought triggered another: Why was I assuming that the gunships were American? For all I knew, they belonged to the Venezuelan military, or some other country.
But whoever they were, they now knew where I was. I pushed myself to my feet, and kept moving.
It was about half an hour before I realized why the gunships had called off the attack. They had been shooting at me almost nonstop for a good five minutes…. They had run out of ammunition.
And that told me that they would be back.
Five days passed before the copters came again. This time there were fewer of them—not more than five or six—and they came from the south.
I’d been running since the first attack, always heading north. I figured I’d covered more than a hundred miles—a lot more than I’d usually cover in five days, because I was no longer concerned about being seen, about carefully skirting around villages or waiting until nightfall before I crossed an open area. I was just running like crazy, and if that meant charging straight through a town in the middle of the day, so be it.
My goal was to get back to the USA, but I hadn’t decided exactly what I would do when I got there. The attack had changed that: Now what I wanted above all was revenge on the people who had imprisoned me for a year in Antarctica. I’d made no plans for the form that revenge would take, but I was determined that it would be big, and devastating, and very, very public.
At least this time they kept their distance and hadn’t started shooting yet.
Instead, it turned out that they were herding me into another trap. I should have seen it coming, but sometimes—especially when I’m boiling with fury—I find it hard to think past the immediate situation.
The gunships steered me right where they wanted me to go … out of the forest and into a huge plowed field that offered nowhere to hide.
Over the field a dozen more copters had set down in a wide semicircle, their rotors slowing to a stop. In front of each one, five or six soldiers stood with machine guns trained on me. And directly in the middle Harmony Yuan was waiting.
The soldiers hadn’t opened fire immediately—that was something—and I knew that if I returned to the forest, the gunships would come after me and this time they wouldn’t stop.
I slowed to a walk, and tried to look unconcerned and casual as I approached Harmony.
With her expression as dour as ever, she said, “So. Gethin. Or Brawn. Or Barnaby, if you prefer … You owe us almost eight and a half billion dollars.”
“Yeah? How do you figure that?”
“That’s what it’s cost to find you. Two years we’ve been searching. Two years.”
I sat down cross-legged in front of her. “You could have saved yourself all that money if you’d just given up after the first few days.”
“It was worth it. We’ve finally caught you.”
I looked down at my wrists, then back at Harmony. “Really? I don’t see any handcuffs. You haven’t caught me yet. As I see it, I’m still free.”
“How did you escape from Antarctica?”
“I’m not telling you that.”
Harmony pursed her lips. “Did you have help?”
“Help? Aside from your goons the only other living creatures I saw were penguins, and all they ever did was make a lot of noise and produce a heck of a lot of poo while doing their best to avoid me.”
“Then tell me how you’ve remained hidden all this time. How did you survive in the jungle?”
“Turns out I’ve got a stomach as strong as my skin. I can eat just about anything. I can live on grass and ferns if I have to.”
“Interesting … We’ll have to test that.”
I shook my head. “No more tests. I’m not going with you. Unless you’re just going to give me a lift back to the States.”
“Gethin, you don’t understand. You’re still only a kid. What happened to you is … It’s enormous. It potentially has incalculable repercussions for the human race. You can’t even begin to comprehend the scale of things.”
“I don’t have to comprehend anything!” I jabbed my index finger in her direction. “You people ruined my life!”
“We didn’t make you like this.”
“How do I know that? One minute I’m normal, the next I’m like this, and suddenly there’s cops and FBI people like you claimed to be and army guys all over the place! How’d you all get there so fast? And who are you really working for? There’s no way an FBI agent is authorized to smuggle someone out of the States and lock them away in the Antarctic!”
“Gethin, you have to come with me.”
“So you can figure out a way to kill me? You’re out of your mind!”
“We have no intention of killing you.”
“Yeah, well, a few days ago—”
She cut me off: “Things have changed in the past five days. We’re not here to kill you, or capture you. The Powers That Be have decided that you’re significantly more useful alive than dead. We’re giving you a job.”
CHAPTER 12
THE MINE
TIME SEEMED TO STOP. All I was aware of was that every-
one in the mine was watching me, wondering what I would do next.
I had a strong feeling that Hazlegrove was hoping I’d attack him: That would give him the perfect excuse to kill me right there and then. I wasn’t nearly as strong as I had been before my powers disappeared. One bullet to the head would only slow me down, but if all of the guards fired simultaneously … I wasn’t sure what would happen, and I didn’t want to find out.
Keegan was dead. Nothing I did would change that.
The only logical course of action would be to keep my head down and watch for a better opportunity to escape.
“Your fault, Brawn,” Hazlegrove said. “You created this situation. No one escapes. You got that? No one.”
I felt the fury subside a little as I looked at Keegan. She would want me to remain calm. I could almost hear her voice telling me not to do anything I would regret later.
I climbed to my feet, and slowly walked over to my friend’s body. The guards had not taken their eyes off me, nor had their aim faltered. They were ready for anything I might do.
Still moving slowly, I turned to look down at Hazlegrove.
His grin slipped, and I saw a single bead of sweat run down his forehead. He swallowed. “Well?”
“A few minutes ago you told us that we’d have to work harder. This is how you intend to encourage us? What if we drop our tools now, and never work again? Will you kill all of us? How would that look to the warden, and to whoever is pulling his strings? Do you think they would be pleased with you, or angry?”
“I don’t think you’re in any position to lecture—”
“She has to be buried. A proper funeral. Keegan was a Christian, a Catholic. We’ll need a priest.”
His usual smug composure returned. “That’s not going to happen.”
“A funeral,” I repeated. “With an ordained Catholic priest. And it has to happen within three days.”
Hazlegrove shook his head. “Keep dreaming. You can perform your own funeral service, but you are not getting a priest.”
I took a step back, and looked around at the other prisoners.
Beside me, Cosmo crouched down next to Keegan and gently closed her eyes. “Brawn…,” he said softly, so that only I could hear. “We … we have to do something.”
He was right. But what could we do? It was taking every ounce of my control not to grab Hazlegrove and rip his spine out through his chest, but I had to hold myself back. If I attacked Hazlegrove, the guards would open fire and a lot more people would die.
I looked back at Hazlegrove. “When the ventilators are repaired, we’ll go back to work. Like you said earlier, we work and you feed us. But this back-and-forth power play … these petty, cruel actions that you think make you a big man … that all ends now. No more games, Hazlegrove. Because this whole place is teetering on the edge, and if you push any harder, it will all come crashing down. Believe me, you do not want to be caught in the middle of that.”
Hazlegrove sneered. “You think you can get away with threatening—”
“It’s not a threat!” I roared, and Hazlegrove jumped back. “It’s a warning, and unless you’re the biggest moron who ever walked the Earth, you’ll heed it!”
He paused for a few seconds, looking at me, then nodded once and turned away.
Part of me wished he hadn’t, that he had tried one more thing to reinforce his sense of power, because I would have snapped. I would have locked my hands around his puny head and crushed it to jelly.
But I saw in his eyes that he knew how close he had come to death, and I hoped that this was a turning point, that some good would come from Keegan’s murder.
