Ability (Omnibus) (19 page)

He and Brian had done their best to make sure that the two necessary components to unlock the brain were available in the easiest formats to reproduce. There were still large numbers of people that hadn’t taken the drug and watched the module, though their numbers were growing smaller every day as they were swept up into the meat grinders that those with abilities unleashed in their attempts to dominate. Every town or gathering he’d come across that had an imbalance of juiced versus not had the
nots
living as little more than slaves.

“No offense, Donella,” Garret said, “but if you want to live on your knees and let someone else control you, then you deserve what you get.”

“It’s easy for you.”

“Yeah. It is easy for me, but not because I’m a juicer. Because I don’t let anyone walk on me. Because I don’t let anyone walk on others unless intervening would cost me my life. But that doesn’t mean I’m not a devious bastard who won’t double back and slag an entire town to ashes after pretending to be just like them.”

“Good for you,” Donella said. “I’m glad you’re so powerful that you can murder people indiscriminately.”

“If wiping out an entire clan of incestuous hillbilly rapists is indiscriminate, then sure, I’ll own up to that,” Garret said. “But I don’t kill indiscriminately. I kill with a purpose. And only when I have to.”

“Then go kill the Stocktons. And the Radeks, they aren’t much better. Kill the whole town and you’ll be sure to get all the bad guys.”

“Why the hell are you sticking up for them?” Garret said, trying his best to not raise his voice. “I’m offering you a chance to give them some payback. Get them back when they least expect it. The whole ‘revenge is a dish best served cold’ thing. Or just juice up and leave, find a place that doesn’t hate you for the color of your skin or the genitals you have. Or don’t have. But don’t just sit here and take it like that.”

“Why do you care?”

“Because I’ve seen what it eventually comes to. I’ve been through shithole communities that had one group dominating another because of race, religion, sexuality. Some simply dominated because they had the ability to. I helped some of the subjugated fight back. A lot of them died, but a hell of a lot more of the bad guys died with a look of surprise on their faces.”

“Good for them,” Donella said, her fear and shame bleeding through her attempted sarcasm.

“What would happen if you tried to leave?” Garret asked, changing tactics.

“They wouldn’t let me go.”

“What if you tried? What would happen? How would they know?”

“Trevor Barco would know. He keeps track of everyone.”

“How does he keep track of everyone? Does he do roll call every few hours? Do you have a comm behind your back that he tracks you with?”

“Please. Stop,” she said, her tears coming again as Garret manipulated her, making her bring her right hand out from behind her back.

Garret leaned forward to look at the object in her hand. It was a cheap laser print picture on stock paper that had been laminated. Instead of a stiff, protective layer, Donella had softened it to a pliable state over thousands of hours of holding it, talking to it, crying because of it. She moved her thumb and Garret got a good look. The girl in the picture was beautiful, with midnight skin, long, straight hair, and large, almost frightened eyes that contradicted the smile under them.

“Your daughter?” he asked.

Donella nodded. “Yvonne.”

“What happened?”

“She… she juiced. We ran from Dothan when everything went crazy. We traveled at night. She kept us safe…” Donella’s tears came harder, her chest hitching as if it were a broken machine.

“I’m sorry,” Garret said. “Listen.”

Donella looked at him, unable to stop crying. Garret began to sing in a soft voice, a light tune about finding happiness in the tall grasses of home on a warm summer’s day. Her tears trailed off, face relaxing as she listened to his soothing lyrics. She wiped her eyes with the fitted sheet while turning the picture around to look at it.

“Yvonne got us here. We didn’t have any destination other than
away
. This place looked like it had some kind of glass dome around it, keeping it safe. One of the Riley girls found us hiding out in a field. She promised us the town was safe, free of the madness that had infected the rest of the world. She promised us a hot meal and a safe place to sleep.

“It started almost right away. We were given jobs here at the motel. Hardly anyone stays here now, but for a while there was a steady trickle that passed through. None stayed more than a night or two, though. None were welcome. The families made that clear to all visitors, especially those that had abilities. Yvonne hid hers. She’d had to learn to use it to keep us alive for almost two thousand kilometers. It didn’t manifest itself out of the blue like it does with others.

“The third night, Yvonne told me that she’d been raped. When she told me how, I didn’t want to believe it. But we’d seen too many strange things while we were running. I knew she wouldn’t make something like that up. She wasn’t a child anymore. I didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know what to do. She said she could feel their collective power, as if it were some kind of radio signal, broadcasting loud and clear. The whole town, I mean. She said this whole town was like a giant antenna.”

Garret frowned. The town radiating power of the kind he himself wielded didn’t surprise him. Especially a town that had somehow found a way to work together instead of the all-out brawl between those with abilities that he’d witnessed almost everywhere he’d journeyed. He was concerned, yet curious, if those in Brewster with abilities had learned how to link with others in a sort of human parallel processor capable of much greater power, much greater combinations of manifested abilities.

Brian and Garret had thought of it almost immediately after Brian’s accidental overdose and discovery. They’d made many attempts, but had never been able to feel any kind of link with each other. The only contact either was able to make was when Brian had tried a little too hard, and sent Garret flying into the cabinets in the kitchen. Garret had been pissed at his roommate, but had been forced to admit that it was funny as hell after he’d calmed his racing heart and staunched the flow of blood from an ugly gash on the back of his head.

“So… what happened to her?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Two weeks after we arrived, she came to me one morning before we were supposed to work and told me that she was going with Elmore Stockton and a few others that were heading to Colby to try and salvage some supplies. She didn’t seem herself, but at the same time, she seemed excited to go somewhere, go on an adventure.”

“You think something happened to her?”

“Elmore Stockton and ‘a few others’ never went to Colby. He’s still strutting around town, bullying anyone he can when no one else is there to see him do it. I haven’t seen Yvonne since.”

She broke down again. After watching her cry for a full minute or more, Garret went to her, sitting on the bed next to her. When he attempted to put his arm around her shoulders, she
stood up, pocketing the picture, unwilling to talk anymore.

Donella wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “I’ll have your room ready in a few minutes.” She turned around and began to slip the fitted sheet over the corner of the mattress.

“So, that’s it?”

When she didn’t acknowledge his presence, Garret grunted, stood up, and walked out of the room. He’d met plenty like her. He’d also made the mistake of trying to help a few of them. He’d decided back in Rosston that he’d stay neutral. The two girls he’d helped get juiced had gone into a frenzy, leveling every building in the little town before one killed the other over some petty argument. Garret had put the girl down himself, unwilling to take the chance that she’d stay in Rosston and not murder anyone passing through, or wander down the road to the next surviving outpost of humanity and murder everyone there.

*

Five minutes later, Donella exited his room and pushed her cart to the end of the walkway. Garret debated trying to talk to her again, but decided it wasn’t his problem. Once she’d pushed the cart around the corner, he went inside and closed the door. He drew the heavy motel curtains shut after pulling out an emergency lamp. He hadn’t encountered electricity in almost two months other than an abandoned mobile home along TX-70, about fifteen kilometers south of the wreckage that had been Perryton.

The little mobile home had been fitted with solar cells that were less than a year old, the converters fully operational, the batteries still charged. He’d flipped the breaker for the well pump, and within a few hours, Garret lounged in his first hot bath in four months. The refrigerator was still cold, but the only thing edible left in it had been three cans of a brand of beer he’d never heard of. They’d tasted like heaven.

Garret opened the larger duffel and pulled out his jury-rigged security alarm. He wrapped the induction coil around the doorknob and armed the vibration sensors, sticking a few of the flat sensor receptors to the door and the door frame. He ran a final sensor from the alarm to the window. It would detect vibrations, though they had to be fairly strong, but it would sound the alert if the window flexed or rattled from an attempt to force it open.

Garret thought about arming the offensive capabilities of the alarm, but decided to wait until he was ready to sleep. It wouldn’t endear him to the locals if Donella or anyone else innocently stopped by to talk to him, ask about news from the places he’d been, maybe barter for some skill or item, and ended up with half a million volts roasting them for touching the doorknob. Then again, he thought, if they were innocent, they’d knock. He pulled the curtain back just enough to get another look at the parking lot below, noting the sun beginning it’s quick descent below the horizon.

The motel didn’t have electricity in the rooms, but it somehow still had running water. Garret was suspicious of what would come out of the faucets with all of the banging going on within the walls as water forced its way through the pipes. The water was clear and odorless. He let it run for a full minute before stopping the tub. When it was full, he sat on the edge of the tub, and began to heat the water. After bringing it to a boil and holding it for three minutes, he cooled it to just below scalding, undressed, and had his second hot bath in four months.

*

Garret dozed off for a while after scrubbing the road from his body and clothes. He woke to the alarm buzzing in his ear. He swung his legs off the bed and grabbed his pants, stepping into them as he made his way to the door. He formed a solid wall of air in front of him as he squinted through the peephole, just in case a juicer was on the other side and decided to blast the door open. Donella stood outside, almost blending into the night. He turned to the window, pulling the curtain back to see if anyone was with her. When he was sure she was alone, he glanced at his chron. It was just after ten.

He unlinked the window sensor and opened the door. Donella walked in without saying a word. Garret guessed she was under the control of one of the Stockton men. He wondered if he should leave his alarm out where they could spy on it. He mentally punched himself for not asking if they could see through her eyes when controlling her.

“I want to fuck,” she said when he turned around. The voice was hers, but was completely different than what he’d heard earlier.

“Sure,” he said, giving her a cheerful smile. “It’s a good thing I just took a bath, right?”

“Yes.”

Garret led her to the bed, then sat down on it and turned her to face him. He looked up at her face, trying to sense the real Donella. Her eyes were glassy, her expression a mix of exaggerated lust and what he knew had to be fear. Or hate. He felt his own hate begin to burn within him, breaking through his promise to not get involved.

He reached out, grabbed her by the hips, and pulled her closer. With one hand he pulled her shirt up, revealing a flat, smooth stomach. He leaned forward and kissed it, trailing his lips across her skin as he moved from her ribs to the waistband of her pants. Donella sighed, but Garret wasn’t sure if it was genuine or forced. She put her hands on the back of his head, pressing his face into her. He had a moment of guilt that he was going to take advantage of her, but he swiftly shut that thought down.

Garret’s fingers slipped into the waistband of her pants and he gently pulled them over her hips, letting them fall to the floor. He kissed her again, at the top of the mound of curly pubic hair, receiving another sigh and a quickening of her breathing for his efforts. He pushed her back gently so he could remove his boxers, then scooted back onto the mattress, gesturing her to straddle him.

Donella obeyed, and when she felt him slip inside, a moan escaped her. He reached up and grabbed a hand in each of his, palms locked together, and gave them a squeeze. Her hips began to rock forward and back as she build up speed. Garret squeezed her hands again to let her know to slow down. She smiled down at him, and again he couldn’t tell if the smile was forced or genuine. He laid his head back and closed his eyes, using her rhythm to spin his mind into a hyper-focused state.

Garret’s senses heightened as his mind cleared. He involuntarily squeezed Donella’s hands whenever her rhythm increased too quickly. Part of his mind enjoyed the physical sensation, the rest of it focused on finding the thread of consciousness that belonged to whomever was in control of her. Within another minute, he felt it. Unlike some of the more dangerous controllers he’d run into, whoever was on the other end of Donella’s mind was a brute, a hack. Garret was amazed that Donella hadn’t suffered a stroke or a seizure yet.