And It Arose from the Deepest Black (John Black Book 2) (11 page)

18

“Hi, Mom.”

“John!” Clearly Mom was anxious. “You’re okay? I haven’t… you know, seen anything on TV.”

“We haven’t quite reached the Gorgols yet,” I said. I explained about meeting Pip, staying with her.

“You boys are sleeping in that girl’s apartment?” Mom asked, with a tense tone to her voice.

I had to laugh. Of all the things to worry about. We were attempting to defeat giant monsters, and my mom was concerned about a little hanky-panky. “It’s not like that!” I said, face flushing. “Remember, you were the one concerned about us stealing things like plane tickets and hotel rooms. Here, we’re just Pip’s guests.” Bobby shot me a look and I rolled my eyes.

“I’ll be outside, nerds,” Pip said, walking out. Clearly she had inferred the gist of my conversation.

“John, it’s been days. What’s your plan? Are you all still going to…?”

“Yeah, we are. Soon.”

Mom paused. Her next words sounded embarrassed. “What have you all been doing all this time?”

“Training with swords,” I replied. “A lot.”

“Swords? Really? Do you think that will help?”

“Pip seems to think so. Personally, I wonder how a three-foot metal sword is going to help me kill a 200-foot, armor-plated monster.” I chuckled at how ridiculous it sounded. “But I suppose it’s slightly better than the
just show up and wing it
plan that Bobby and I had in mind.”

“Not funny, John. You be careful.
Both
of you. No,
all three
of you. And watch each other’s backs.”

“We will, Mom.”

“Thank you for this. For your sister.”

I didn’t say anything. We both knew what the other felt.

“And John, remember. I can’t keep fooling people that you’re home sick forever. School isn’t waiting on us. Too much longer, and people will start asking questions.”

“Okay, Mom.”
Hurry up and kill the giant monsters, son. It’s a school night
. But I knew what she meant. We wanted to stay anonymous, and we were about to do the most public thing possible. Still, a part of me wanted to be public — had wanted to be public for a long time. But I knew instinctively that being public with powers like we had would only lead to unwanted attention. The paparazzi would look tame in comparison. “Love you. Tell Holly I love her, too.”

“I love you, too, John. Come home safe, soon.”

I didn’t reply. Well, I nodded. As if she could hear that. I just didn’t want to promise anything.

* * *

“So how’s your mom?” Pip said with a smirk.

“Don’t mock,” I replied.

“I’m not. It’s, I don’t know — kinda sweet.”

“What about you? You’ve got a mom somewhere, too, after all.”

I could tell right away I had said something wrong. “That’s not always true, you know?” Pip turned and walked into the yard, then faced us again, raising her sword. Her face looked cold, hard. “It’s time to learn the last trick I have for you, boys. Attack me.”

Bobby looked at me, shrugged, and then immediately leapt toward Pip. I started to follow, but before I took even two steps, I saw Pip lash out with her sword. No, it was something different. A staff maybe. But where did it come from? Bobby took a blow to the side of the head, even as his body tried to sluice away from it. The force redirected his energy and sent him tumbling to the ground in a heap. “What the hell was
that
?” he said, already reaching for his head.

Pip pulled back and stood straight. In her hands was the same sword she’d been holding a moment before. “That, lads, is what
we
can do with a sword.”

“But something changed,” I said. “You weren’t holding a sword when you hit Bobby.”

Pip smiled, enjoying knowing more than we did. “But I was. I just made it
more
than a sword. Well, technically, that’s wrong, since it seems to be the same mass. I just reconfigured it into something longer.”

“How?” Bobby stood, more curious than hurt.

Pip held her sword with both hands in front of her, angled upward. Then, as we all watched, the sword slowly grew longer while it simultaneously got thinner. “It’s like the way our bodies shift, only you’re telling it to happen. I’ve seen you two shift your bodies on purpose — I was watching you spar in the orange fields, and I’ve seen it here in training. And because the sword is in your hand, you can make it do what you want, too.” She paused, glancing back and forth at us with just a bit of a haughty look. “Before you even ask, I tried doing this with things I wasn’t holding and it never works. But in my hand, I can turn a three foot sword into a sharply pointed six foot metal rod, maybe bigger.”

“That’s incredible,” I said. “But… is it enough to beat something 200 feet tall?”

There was a long moment of silence. “It’ll have to be. But I want us all to try something. Follow me.”

* * *

She led us down the street, to where an old wooden fence blocked the way. Turning, she followed the fence before finally stopping at an unremarkable section. Reaching out, she pulled at the wood slats and they moved aside, making a hole large enough for us to enter.

Inside we saw a parking lot. Most of the spaces were empty, but a few cars and trucks were scattered about.

“We’re stealing a car?” Bobby asked.

“No, of course not, doofus,” Pip said. Something about how she talked to him… I couldn’t figure out if she thought nothing of Bobby, or an awful lot. “See that rusted red truck, in the last spot?”

“Yeah? What about it?”

“This is a commuter lot. That’s why it’s mostly empty now. But that truck,” she said, jabbing a finger toward the old rust bucket. “That truck has been here for weeks. It’s never moved. I’ve noticed.”

“So?” I asked.

“It’s abandoned.”

I waited a moment, still trying to grasp the importance. When I couldn’t, I repeated: “
So
?”

“So, we’re going to slice it to pieces with our swords. It’s the best thing I could think of to emulate the Gorgols’ armor. If you can use a basic sword to slice apart the metal of a truck, well, that’ll be a start.”

Bobby and I both shrugged.

We walked toward the truck, slowly circling it. On the far side, I saw a long, thin gash in one of the doors, and another on the rear panel. “You’ve been at this before.” Pip nodded. “Okay, so how do we do your little trick?”

“Clear your mind, raise your weapon, then reach
through
it with your mind. That’s about the best way I can describe it. Stretch it with your mind. Like you’re a little kid trying to reach the cookie jar on a high shelf. Reach as high as you can.
Stretch
.”

Bobby and I raised our swords, as Pip did the same. Pip’s sword stretched easily out in front of her, growing longer. After a few moments, Bobby’s began to slowly extend as well. Mine, of course, was stubborn.

“John?” Pip said. “You okay?”

I nodded. “Sure, I’m okay, but I’ve never been the one to learn new things fast. Not with these powers. Not like Bobby.”

Pip’s sword shrank back to its normal size and sagged toward the ground. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

I shook my head. “Nope.”

“He’s not kidding,” Bobby added.

“You beat Sol, somehow, and you can’t do
this
?” Pip was dumbfounded.

“Hey,” Bobby said, stepping between us. “Just give him a minute.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m bad at learning new things. I accept that.”

Bobby turned back to me. “But that’s not true, Johnny. Sure, you seem to struggle with the things the rest of us master fairly quickly…” I was hideously embarrassed, but Bobby just shrugged with an inaudible
sorry
. “But you
create
these things — these
solutions
— none of us ever even dream of. You destroyed Petrus, and Sol. I have no idea if I could’ve done either of those things.”

“I’m not terribly proud of killing people,” I said, my own sword dropping.

Oddly, it was Pip who spoke words of encouragement. “But sometimes, you have to.” After a moment, I nodded, knowing it was true. “Try again,” she said.

I raised the sword a second time, and concentrated.

Nothing.

Nothing.

It would never work. I could never make it work. There was no point in trying.

I gave up.

And the sword suddenly stretched into a thin metal beam, at least 15 feet long, razor sharp along its edges.

Finally, Pip spoke a word that encapsulated the thoughts of all three of us. “
Whoa
.”

19

“Well, I think you’ve got the basic idea down,” Pip said after we’d finished slicing the rusty red truck into about 6,000 small parts.

Bobby lowered his sword, allowing it to shrink back to normal size. “What do we do now?”

Pip eyed us, back and forth. “We take down some monsters.”

* * *

“Um, where do we go? How do we do this?” I said.

“You just have to follow me. It’ll take nearly an hour to walk there, but the Gorgols have been along the shore. Unless they suddenly left, they’ll be there.”

“You mean unless they suddenly decided to go pay Holly a visit?” Bobby asked.

Pip nodded and shrugged at the same time. “I don’t think that’s happened yet. They keep returning to the shore. It’s like they want to head east, but something keeps drawing them back.”

So we walked. We walked forever in the heat.

Did I mention we were carrying swords on our backs and wearing large, hooded masks? If there was one way to make a warm day feel like a blisteringly hot day, it’s to cover your head with a mask and lug around a heavy metal object. At times, I felt like I couldn’t breathe from the heat inside the mask. But we didn’t dare take them off — we were walking into a place saturated with media, and we were wearing swords. The three of us wouldn’t remain unobserved for long. So I kept my black hood up, Pip wore her red, and Bobby had his yellow one.

We walked, and walked, and walked. We nearly collapsed.

Okay, we walked for maybe 45 minutes. It was warm, but still, it was autumn, so the heat could’ve been much worse. As we crested what amounted to a rise in the flat lands near the western sea, Bobby spoke. “Where the hell are they?” he said.

Pip scanned back and forth across a land that looked like it had been utterly devastated by the monsters. “I have no idea.” Below us, houses, buildings, cars, telephone poles — anything that normally would stick up from the ground — had been trampled down. The Gorgols had been very thorough. Whatever the town used to be called, it wouldn’t need a name anymore. This town was gone.

“Maybe they went back into the sea,” Bobby offered, with a hopeful tone. Pip tugged her sword from its scabbard. Bobby tried again: “Maybe they don’t want to bother with us people anymore.”

Pip turned, raising an eyebrow. “Cold feet, Bobby?”

Bobby flushed. “’Course not.” He pushed past Pip, over the ridge, and led us into the desolation of the Gorgols.

“Hold on,” Pip said, raising her voice to stop him. “We need to fan out. No use making it so that one measly swipe crushes all of us.” There was only so much she could teach us in a few days, so we just had to accept that we were pawns waiting to be shifted on a chess board, ready to go where Pip directed. We formed a wide triangle, with her in the center, out in front leading the way. Bobby was behind and to her right, maybe separated by 50 yards. I took up a similar position off to the rear left. Then we slowly walked forward, picking our way through the rubble toward a tall cliff that edged the sea.

“You know,” Bobby shouted from his side, “it might have been smart to turn on a TV or check online this morning, to figure out where the Gorgols are.”

“I did,” Pip yelled back. “They’ve been circling into the sea, sometimes underwater, sometimes making a wide arc on land. I’m guessing they’re in the water now, since I don’t notice any giant monsters around, do you?”

“Negatory, mornin’ glory,” Bobby replied.

“Look!” I shouted, pointing at a helicopter racing toward us from the northwest, on a vector that was about halfway between Pip and Bobby from my angle.

Even from far away, I could see Pip sigh. “Get ready, boys. You’re about to become famous.”

Famous
. The word was exciting and terrifying at the same time. But who was I kidding.
I
wasn’t about to become famous. Some masked superpowered guy was.
Oh God, the nickname thing. Please please don’t make it lame.

The chopper zipped toward us, then made a wide circle overhead, a large camera locked on us the entire time.

Pip turned back to us, pausing our march to the sea momentarily. “No names now, boys. Go by color.” I nodded as Pip looked my way. “Spread out a bit more, Black.” Then she turned to Bobby. “Yellow, ready?” He also nodded, then Pip continued to lead us toward the cliff.

It was the slowest, most surreal march of my life. From afar, the landscape looked flat as a pancake. Up close, it was littered with all sorts of debris that we had to work around, over, or through, some of it much taller than us. All the while, the helicopter circled overhead. We were no doubt the ratings magnets of the day for the 24-hour news channels. After a short while, two more helicopters joined the first.

“I don’t like this, Pi— I mean, Red,” I said. “I feel like I’m in a fishbowl.” I looked up at one of the choppers. “And I get the feeling that everyone knows what we’re walking into except us.”

“Feeder fish,” Bobby yelled, so I could hear him over the
whump whump
of the rotors.

“What’re you talking about, Yellow?” Pip replied, still inching forward. The edge of the cliff was getting close.

“When you have a predator fish as a pet, like an oscar or even a piranha, you drop feeder fish into the tank from time to time. To keep the predator fed.”

“You think
we’re
feeder fish?” I asked.

Bobby walked silently for a moment. “Well, I really hope not.”

Ahead of us, Pip reached the cliff and stood looking down into the sea. She raised her sword defensively, ready for anything. Bobby and I instinctively paused, swords mirroring Pip’s. Almost all of our focus remained on her, but I noticed that one of the helicopters was peeling away to race back toward the northeast, behind us on Bobby’s side.

Pip turned around, sword lowering. “Nothing. So I guess we wait until the monsters show up.”

Be careful what you wish for
.

I didn’t even have time to think that, as the tightly tucked, rolling form of Omicron smashed into the cliff below Pip, flipping over the edge and directly into her. Pip’s body sluiced, but I couldn’t tell if it was enough. Omicron rolled over her and cut between Bobby and me like a giant bowling ball leaving a 7-10 split.

There was no time to think about Pip as Omicron unrolled behind us, wheeling his massive form around. Bobby and I spun, swords up. I can’t speak for him, but for me, the few days we’d spent training disappeared completely from my mind. I felt like I’d brought a butter knife to a bazooka fight, and I didn’t even know how to butter bread.

Up close, Omicron was terrifying. All teeth and claws and stone-like scales.
Oh God. What exactly were you thinking, John? You’re going to get yourself killed.

First puffing up, then pushing down upon itself, the monster gave its cry, and where before the sound had been like hell unleashed through our TV speakers, now the blast was directed at me. A wall of sound crashed into me, making me flinch back. With the deafening roar came a foul wind, the breath of the beast, like seafood left in the trash for days on end. It was almost enough to turn my stomach. Somewhere in the back of my mind I realized that even Omicron’s breath was too much for me. I could see the sword shaking in my hand. I was frozen and shivering, facing my doom.

The monster was incredible. There was no way we could beat it. Gorgol Omicron towered over us, even when he was hunkered down. Looking up toward his tapered, stone-like head was like staring at the sheer face of a tall building. Omicron’s back was even worse, scaled with massive, pointed, rocky armor, but that didn’t matter at all. I would never even consider attacking from the back. Besides, he was facing me. And having his attention was enough to instantly make my blood turn cold. His massive underbelly towered above me, framed by his outstretched forearms with their spiked fingers. Remembering the dragon movie from the plane, I knew the underbelly was typically a monster’s soft spot, so I scanned Omicron for any sign of weakness. Instead, I came away with the feeling that his armor was flawless and impenetrable. His underbelly looked like the chest plate a baseball umpire would wear, if that plate was made of solid, brownish-black stone. Maybe there were soft spots, the underarms perhaps, but how could I get to them, when they were behind Omicron’s powerful arms and claws, ready to rip me apart and crush me to death?

It was utterly hopeless.

Just then, a yellow blur zipped in toward Omicron’s far leg. There was a flash of something — Bobby’s sword — and suddenly the Gorgol’s voice changed from rage to pain. The big creature swept its claws toward where Bobby stood, only to tear into the rock. Bobby had sluiced away.

He’s actually fighting it
, I thought. Dimly, another idea came to me.
I could actually fight it, too. Maybe, together, it won’t be hopeless.

We can do this!

I raced in to join my friend. And like the hapless first wave of infantry in every war movie I’d ever seen, I became cannon fodder. I was immediately sent flying through the air by a single well-timed swipe from Omicron. My consciousness picked up its punchcard, slipped it into the time clock, and checked out. It was quittin’ time.