Apex (9 page)

The device hummed electronically and then it transformed before their eyes. Several spindly legs emerged from the body. A few people thought that it might start to run around on those legs, but instead, the legs jammed into the road and stuck. The legs moved but only to reposition the arrow shaped device into a perfectly upright stance.

The unmistakable sound of metal on metal signaled the first car crash just up the block. A window of one of the nearby jewelry stores smashed as looters eager for just such a perfect opportunity took advantage of the confusion. A woman was knocked to the ground by a man trying desperately to escape whatever this alien machine was about to do to them. A single bullet ricocheted off of the metallic body and hit a teenager on a bike, who then cried out in pain and peddled away as though his life depended on it.

Dogs barked and people mumbled.

Then the contraption moved again. A single metal rod, about a foot long emerged from the body about two feet from the ground.

Before anyone knew what to make of it, it spun around the cylindrical body slowly. It picked up speed like a miniature helicopter rotor.
Then the legs that had stuck into the ground began to gyrate up and down wobbling the cylindrical object so that it spun around, tracing out a cone shape in the air.

Suddenly, a bright ray of light,
like a laser beam, came from the spinning rod. The rod spun around for several seconds and then stopped abruptly. The laser light turned off. The metallic legs stopped pumping up and down and the cylinder stood stock still. The confused faces of the spectators quickly turned to panic as they realized they’d been cut in half. Then their expressions fell as their bodies fell too.

Building crumbled and crashed to the ground burying a population that never saw this coming.

The Rocky Mountains rumbled from having just been cleaved through several times. Landslides subsided as the great mountain range settled once more, an inch shorter than just a minute ago.

Unleashing their Powers

The teenagers weren’t hopped up on sugar but the adrenaline
surge more than made up for that inconvenience. Jack teleported a trooper away. If anyone asked him later where he’d sent him, he’d lie. The truth was that he didn’t know where he’d sent the man, and that scared him half to death. What if he’d teleported him into the corona of the sun, or onto Mars, or into the center of the Earth?

Scott used his force field to cut another soldier in two. It was far more gruesome than any of them had anticipated and the man’s screams only fueled t
he fury in his fellow soldiers as he bled to death, his lower body having been deposited thirty feet away from his torso.

Scott tried to rush forward and help the dying soldier. He was panic stricken. Clearly he hadn’t meant to actually hurt him. But Jack held him back
until Scott regained his senses. Rushing into the line of fire would be certain death.

Melanie disarmed a man with her telekinesis but it wasn’t as easy as it looked in the movies. His trigger finger was yanked off violently as the gun whipped away from him with exaggerated force.
Blood gushed an arc in the air before the soldier realized what happened and got behind cover, holding his injured hand to stave off the blood loss.

Jack got hit in the thigh
with a round. The pain was far more intense than he imagined it would be, given the fact that he was super tough. He rubbed it vigorously, trying his best to keep from screaming out in pain.

Melanie stood in between Jack and the soldiers and redirected every bullet that came their way. One of the bullets hit a soldier right in the eye socket and he fell away from view behind the hedgerow he had taken cover behind.
He didn’t reemerge so that could mean only one thing.

Scott had a guy sealed inside a force field. The guy was shooting wildly, wondering why all of his rounds were pinging off of an invisible barrier just a few feet in front of him.
But despite the futility of his hail of bullets, he kept it up, desperate to kill one of the teenagers.

And then the general came into view. Jack stood erect at the sight of the man. His angular features no doubt inspire
d respect in his men, but they inspired hatred in Jack. The general was an uncompromising, unthinking fool with murder on his mind. He had traveled to their home town with armed men, harassed people he knew and loved, just so he could kill Jack and his friends. The general was the worst human being Jack had ever met.

He
consciously decided to teleport him somewhere awful. He would teleport him ten thousand feet up and then watch him fall to his death.

B
ut before he was able to do anything too drastic, one of the general’s men yelled out, “Cease fire. General, you’re going to want to hear this.” He held out his radio for the general to take.

The general did a doub
le-take at his soldier but he relented, saying, “Weapons down, men. This had better be good.”

Jack concentrated on the general now. This was the perfect opportunity to be rid of him once and for all, now that he was distracted.

Jack’s vision magnified as he focused on the general’s face. It was like he was standing an inch from his nose with blinders on. He could see every blemish and pore and nothing else. He felt like he could smell the man. This was going to be good.

Everyone turned on Jack, but he barely noticed. The air around him crackled with menace. The general’s eyes went wide with terror. Jack was about to do the unthinkable.

When Melanie put a hand on his shoulder and whispered, “Don’t do it,” he realized he had been just seconds from intentionally killing a fellow human being. That would’ve made him no better than the general. It was one thing for them to defend themselves but it was something altogether different to go on the offensive and attack a defenseless man, no matter how much he deserved it.

His focus dimmed, returning to normal. He was breathing heavily and his hands were shaking. Then the pain in his thigh returned and he had no choice but to take a seat
on the ground to take a closer look. The fabric of the costume was torn but there was no puncture wound.

Molly and Dan ran over to them. Molly looked furious. Her muscles were bulging with veins. Dan’s hands and forearms were glowing.

Melanie said calmly, “They stopped shooting at us. Something happened. I think they got called off.”

Dan said, “The doctor’s dead. They attacked me and my wife in our own home. They’re all going to die today.”

The air crackled as Dan’s hands sucked the moisture out of it. Black smoke trailed behind him as he took a step forward.

Molly stared into his eyes and said, “We aren’t killers, sweetheart. Let’s not be so hasty.”

Dan’s face softened and his hands dropped to his sides, singing the fabric of his suit. Then his hands returned to normal as he regained control over his powers.

News

The general pleaded with them. “Please stand down. We have more urgent matters to deal with.”

Dan yelled back, “Like what?”

The general asked, “Do you have a TV in that house?”

“Of course.”

“We all need to watch it. If what was just reported to me wasn’t some kind of twisted hoax, then we’re under attack from an unknown foe.”

The general and his depleted force of five men came out with their weapons over their heads as a sort of half-assed attempt at a truce. Jack could’ve teleported all six of the bastards into a volcano but he had a feeling the general was telling the truth. His face was wrinkled with worry and it wasn’t a ruse to get them to let down their defenses. Whatever had just happened had altered the general on a deeply fundamental level. Instead of operating in attack mode, he was defensive and frightened.

The teenagers made sure to keep their powers at the ready just in case
, as the soldiers all filed into the farmhouse behind Dan and Molly.

The threat of violence still hung in the air but it was only coming from Jack and his friends. When the soldiers had been ordered to stand down, they obeyed. Their ferocity was left behind and their determination evaporated away instantly. For the time being, the soldiers were at their mercy, but only because they’d allowed it to happen.

When Dan turned on the TV, a gruesome and unfamiliar image shone on it. The White House was destroyed. There were a few fires burning within and thick smoke was rising out of the rubble. Then a picture of the Washington Monument appeared, but it was sliced in two. The uppermost part was in pieces at the base. There were several dissected bodies strewn across the lawn, the grass was dark with blood.

Then a grainy shot showed
on the screen. At the top of the screen it said:
Dallas, Texas
. The video was taken with a cell-phone camera or a really outdated camcorder but that didn’t take anything away from the menace it portrayed.

It showed a tall cylindrical device standing upright. It was held up like a tripod by three thin metal legs.
The legs started to gyrate and the cylinder swayed in a controlled way, like a spinning top that had slowed down enough to wobble.

Then a foot long rod
protruded from the cylinder a couple of feet off of the ground. The rod spun around the outside of the cylinder and then a blinding light issued from it. The beam of light moved like a wave, up and down as it spun around. The girl holding the camera screamed and dropped it. The ground that showed on the TV screen was lit up as the beam circled and then it went dark again as the beam apparently shut off.

The screams
of the bystanders were too painful to hear so the general changed the channel. That did little good though.

The next station had a news anchor with several shots of mayhem
showing on screens behind him. He was sweating and his voice cracked as he yelled past the camera, “Someone find out if my wife is ok!”

When he rushed from the set, a picture of
New York appeared to take his place. It was a still shot but it was almost too devastating to fully comprehend. Manhattan had been reduced to rubble. It was a bone yard of smashed buildings and smoldering vehicles. A few of the skyscrapers were still standing, leaning in to each other, but they were doomed.

When the image didn’t change and no replacement anchor arrived, the general changed the station again.

This time there was a reporter on the scene in Denver. It looked to be a live shot of the aftermath of an attack too immense for any of them to fully comprehend. She was standing beside a device that looked exactly like the one from the grainy footage. It stood there beside her, threateningly but still as a grave.

She said, “This weapon is reported to have fired
for several seconds in a circular path, cutting down anything in its way. There are now reports of eight of these in the city of Denver. All of them have already fired but that doesn’t mean the threat is over. No one knows how many times each of these things can be operated. No one knows where they came from. If anyone has any information, we urge you to come forward immediately.”

Then the reporter looked up as a shadow fell over her. She screamed, “Run,” right before a building collapsed on her and her cameraperson. The feed went dead.

A dark eyed anchor appeared now from the Denver studio. He was crying as he said, “We urge everyone to move away from all structures in the city. Get to the mountains. Get away from the fires and the smoke.” To someone on set he said, “Someone get down there and see if Cynthia is alright.”

The general reached out to change the channel again but Molly beat him to it. She yanked the plug and chucked it on the floor disgustedly. “We’ve seen enough.”

Status Report

C
ommander Davok yawned. “How many casualties so far?”

“About one third have perished
because of the Mowers. Should I send in the troops?”

“Not yet. Let the chaos take hold first.
Let the fire and smoke choke the survivors to death. Let the buildings fall around them and then let them kill each other before we move in and mop up what’s left.”

“Yes sir. So far so good.”

“It would appear that way.”

“The troops are eager for action.”

“They’ll just have to take their aggressions out on what I leave them.”

“Of course, sir.”

The Enemy of my Enemy

Two of the soldiers carried Doctor Henshaw’s body out back. Jack doubted there would be any kind of ceremonious burial. They’d probably just dump him in a ditch somewhere and kick dirt on him.

He didn’t know how to feel about that. The doc turned out to be a decent man, despite the fact that he’d helped imprison them. But Jack hadn’t developed a relationship with him since then so he wasn’t as upset by his death as he otherwise would have been.

And he wasn’t the only one who felt ambiguous about his death. No one was talking about it. It had been trumped by what was happening with the world right now.

Scott asked the general, “Who do you think attacked us?”

“No one knows. But it was a worldwide series of attacks that commenced at exactly the same time, according to reports out of Fort Carson. Terrorism was at first suspected, but more and more that doesn’t seem like a good assumption. Dubai was hit and Warsaw as well as Hong Kong and Buenos Aires. All of those cities don’t share a common enemy that we know of.”

Jack had a sort of epiphany.
He asked, “Do you know how we got our powers?”

“You wouldn’t tell us.”

“We got them from a metal sphere that came out of the sky. It released a mist that knocked us all out. Then it must have disintegrated because it was gone by the time we woke up.” He was inferring that the sphere was extraterrestrial and that maybe the attacks were as well.

The general connected the dots. The idea that aliens were attacking them might have seemed far fetched except for the weird nature of the attacks. “But why would an alien race give you
amazing powers and then attack us?”

“I don’t know.”

Melanie asked, “Why haven’t we seen these attacks near us?”

One of the general’s men offered, “It seems like they’re only attacking densely populated areas. Maybe they’ll work their way down to attacking backwoods crap-holes like this eventually. But for now we should count our blessings.”

The general nodded and stared at each of them in turn. “We may be more blessed than anyone realizes. If your powers can be properly harnessed with some real life firepower behind them, as back-up, we might just be able to defend ourselves if we come under attack.”

Jack didn’t like the sound of that. The general was a monster without conscious but that didn’t mean he was wrong.

The thought of fighting an unknown enemy scared the crap out of him.

Jack’
s Loss

The general had been out by his Humvee for five minutes on the radio while everyone inside the house tried to make sense of what was happening to the Earth.

When the general returned, he looked grim. “
Fort Collins wants me to bring you guys in. They didn’t come right out and say it, but it seemed pretty clear they don’t trust you, and they might even think you had something to do with the attacks.”

One of his men raised his weapon and poised it on Dan but the general waved it off.

“They know I’m here hunting you because you pose a huge threat to national security. It didn’t matter to them that I vouched for your whereabouts during the attacks.”

Jack frowned. “How stupid are these people you work for?”

“Their conclusions aren’t that dumb. They don’t know what kind of powers you possess but they were afraid enough to appoint me personally to put you all down, so they do know that you are extremely dangerous. Not to mention that within a couple days of your escape, the entire world got attacked. It’s too much coincidence for the military to accept.”

“Are you going to take us in?”

“I’m still thinking about it. Once they see that there’s no way you had anything to do with the attacks, they might very well back you with the full might of their forces.”

Dan said, “I don’t trust them to make the right decisions. I hope you reconsider trying to bring us in.” He made sure to emphasize the word
trying
.

“
I disagree with their decision too.” He paused for a moment, deep in thought and continued with, “I think our only option is to wait for the enemy to show itself, and then evaluate their might and our options.”

Jack
changed the subject. He said, “I’m going into town. I need to see my mom. None of you can stop me.”

The general whispered,
“Son, stop right there.”

Jack turned on the general slowly, curious why the older man’s demeanor had changed so abruptly.

The general looked at his feet and said, “Your mom was staying at a hotel in Denver. She thought you were still in quarantine.”

Jack looked around, trying to avoid the truth. He said hopelessly, “What does that mean?”

“Denver was destroyed, son.”

“No. She wasn’t supposed to
be there. She was supposed to be safe at home.” Jack’s voice cracked and he felt a tug in his guts. He screamed at the general, “This is your fault!” His vision blurred at the edges like he might faint, but then the swelling anger brought everything into focus.

He vanished from the room. The last look any of them saw from him was one of betrayal and fury. He looked murderous.

Denver 

Jack teleported to the quarantine building that he’d been held in against his will just days ago. The idea was to look for all the nearby hotels and find his mom, alive. He had no idea why teleporting had been so easy to do this time. Maybe it was because he was angry? Maybe his anger had helped him focus? He just didn’t know.

But the quarantine building
he was standing atop was a smoldering pile of rubble with splintered furniture and hribar jutting out of the broken cement here and there. The building had been cut to pieces by whatever the hell those laser beam devices were that had been activated earlier.

Aside from a few still standing
structures, jack had the high ground and was able to see all around. What he saw was amazing. Denver was in flames. The sun was dim from all the smoke rising into the atmosphere. People were screaming in the distance. Gunshots rang out with regularity. It was the apocalypse.

He immediately realized his folly. He should have asked general
Parsons which hotel his mom was staying at. But if he stayed around the general for a second longer, he’d have killed him.

He hadn’t
planned to teleport, but he was glad he did it. He’d only just barely reigned in his powers before they erupted, and for that he was thankful. The last thing he needed was to jump to outer space again, or worse.

He’d never felt so much anger mixed with such grief. If he’d stayed, he wasn’t sure how it would’ve physically manifested, but he was pretty sure it would have been through violence.

But now he was lost. Denver was a big city and he didn’t exactly know this area inside and out. He decided that rather than go back and risk losing his temper and killing the soldiers, that he’d ask for help in the city and hope to get lucky in his search. Plus he could teleport if a foot search took too long. He immediately climbed down from the rubble and got to work.

The General’s Stripes

Scott and Melanie both asked if their folks were in
Denver too. They were relieved to find out that they weren’t. But that relief soon turned to remorse. Jack’s mom was dead. They’d assumed he had gone to Denver to try and find her. They hoped he wouldn’t find her body. That would be too much to bear.

Melanie said, “We need to help Jack. We need a ride to
Denver.”

When general Parsons
told them no, she said, “We can get there on our own with our powers.”

“From what I saw, it’ll take you longer to get there that way. I think you’re stuck with us until we figure out what to do next.”

Melanie shook her head, but the general was right.

Dan looked the general in the eye and said seriously, “You’d better hope that boy, Ja
ck, doesn’t come back here. He blames you for his mother’s death.”

Parsons
shook his head sadly. “I deserve whatever punishment he deems fit. I should have told her that her son was ok and that he was on the loose before I came here looking for him. That is on me.”

“I think he’d agree.”

Molly smacked the general in the chest with her open palm and said, “You’re a bastard and we won’t follow someone like you. Show us that you can be trusted and we might listen to what you have to say. Show us that you can change.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible. But I may just be your last hope.”

Scott laughed at that. “If you hadn’t called a truce earlier, you and your men would be in bloody chunks at the end of the driveway right now. I think you’ve got it all wrong, buddy; I think we’re your last hope.”

The general averted his gaze. “You might be right about that. Let’s
stop this bickering and get ready for whatever the hell might be coming for us.”

“If you don’t know who or what it
is, how can you prepare to defend against it?”

“We can’t. All we can do is to make sure we’re as capable as humanly possible when it gets here.”

Melanie said, “I think you mean superhumanly possible.”

The general nodded. He was clearly outside his comfort zone.

They were all abundantly aware that it wouldn’t take much of a nudge to convince him to try and take them to Fort Collins, just to be done with the headache.

But that was easier said than done.

Aftermath

There were people wandering around the streets of Denver, like zombies. They were shell-shocked, or maybe just unable to comprehend the extent of what had just happened to their city. They were a lost people wandering the memory of their ruined city.