Kinetics: In Search of Willow (25 page)

I closed my eyes and willed myself to
sleep. I would save no one if I was sleep deprived, and we were so
close to the second-to-last place on Marcus Grey's journey across
the States. The places that we were going… The people we were
meeting… What did it all mean in the big picture?

I don't know when I dozed off, but I
awoke to a loud crash. I jolted up and stared out the front
windshield. The whole front of the car was on fire. I looked to
Harry, but his door was already open and he was standing outside. A
huge wave of water flashed past him and hit the fire.

"Eugene! Get out of the car!" He
yelled to me.

I tumbled out and stared at the fire.
I could feel a cold sweat crawling down my back. In front of the
car I saw the guy hoodie standing in front of the car pulling water
from behind him in the ditch and putting out the fire. Behind him I
saw two people I had hoped to never see again. Napoli and
Joe.

They were standing back admiring their
handiwork and watching Hoodie put out the fire. Napoli reached out
for hoodie but stopped. His eyes widened and he looked back at
Joe.

Harry grabbed my arm and pulled me
along with him down into the ditch. We tumbled into wet grass and
the light from the fire couldn't find us. I looked up but Harry
pushed my head down.

"Don't move," he whispered.

What I could see from our spot in the
ditch, Hoodie was having an all-out fight with Napoli and Joe.
Water was flying everywhere and Napoli and Joe were yelling
obscenities at Hoodie.

Suddenly it was quiet.

I looked up again and they were all
gone.

"Where..." I began.

"Shh." Harry pushed himself up and
looked around.

He waved at me and we crawled up the
ditch onto the road. The pavement was soaked and the car was
charred.

"How did they find us?" I
asked.

Harry shook his head.

"Good thing Hoodie found us, too." I
said.

"Yeah, good thing," Harry murmured. He
popped open the back seat of the car to get our bags
out.

"I guess we're walking again." I
said.

"Yup," Harry said quietly.

I frowned. "Are you okay?"

"Later," he said and grabbed his bag.
I grabbed mine, but Harry was already walking down the road with
speed in his step.

I ran after him and caught up to
him.

"What's the matter?"

"They shouldn't have been able to find
us," he said.

"Well yeah, but..."

"I don't think we should stop again,
Eugene. I think they're playing with us."

"Why?"

"Haven't you felt it?"

"What?"

"The whole way, we've been followed.
They know where we are and they are just messing with us." He
didn't look anywhere but forward, his eyes were angry. "They're
just slowing us down. They could have taken us out already if they
really wanted to."

I looked around at the dark sky and
the tiny lights of the airport down the road. "Why would they do
that?"

"I don't know. This journey hasn't
made a lot of sense, Eugene. When we get to Hooverville, maybe we
can get some answers."

"What's different about
Hooverville?"

"Other than the burned out husk of a
building in Columbus, this will be the first place that's actually
run by the Alliance." Harry's face was a mask of fury, but that
didn't scare me. What scared me was that I didn't know why he was
so mad. Yes, we just lost our transportation… again. But usually he
was so ready to just keep going. Now he just looked
furious.

***

We were about thirty miles outside
Roswell. It was hot and the road in front of us swam in heatwaves.
The sky was cloudless and there wasn't a single square foot of
shade to keep us from burning alive. Summer was in full force. The
tiny towns and businesses we passed on the way offered nothing and
even Harry's uncanny luck had run out.

I was about to call it and ask if we
could sit on the side of the road for a bit when an ugly looking RV
pulled up beside us. The guy inside was an older guy with stringy
white and brown hair sticking out in every direction. He offered to
get us as far as Roswell and then we were on our own.

I was too tired to object to Harry's
quick acceptance and just followed along. We sat at the little
table that rocked every time the RV hit a bump.

The guy was quiet for a bit but then
began speaking to Harry. "You boys all alone out here?"

"Just had some car trouble," Harry
replied, giving me a look I couldn't read.

"Seem a bit young to be out travelling
alone," the guy continued.

"Uh, I'm older than I look," Harry
lied. "Turned 19 just last May."

The guy grunted and was silent again.
Harry gave me another look but this time shook his head.

What is
it?
 I mouthed.

Harry was about to say something when
the guy spoke up again.

"Hitchhiking is dangerous 'round these
parts."

Harry chuckled. "We've been alright so
far."

"Heh heh." The guy turned back to look
at us. "Lucky boys."

One of his eyes didn't move with the
other one. He grinned at us, flashing a set of blackened teeth and
then turned back to the road.

"You know, I lost my eye to
hitchhiking," he said, and put one of his hands up to his face. It
came away with a shiny glass eye pinched between his
fingers.

I looked at Harry with wide eyes. He
pressed his lips together and reached into his pack.

"Couple boys just like you if I
remember correctly." The hand with the fake eye pressed back up to
the guy's face and he turned to look back right at me. "Kids sure
are dicks these days."

"If you say so," I said, not sure what
to say to the stare from him.

The guy went silent and the drive was
quiet for almost twenty minutes. Then the RV pulled off to the side
of the road and the guy turned it off.

Harry scooted out from behind the
table and stood up. The guy got out of his chair slowly and stood
blocking the door out. "It really is dangerous to hitchhike. Didn't
your parents teach you better?"

"Look we can just go now," Harry said.
I started to get out of the seat when the guy shot forward and
pushed me back down.

"How about you stay awhile," he
hissed, hitting me with the smell of rot on his teeth.

"Uh..." I pushed him away just as
Harry pulled a flip knife from his pack and pointed it at
him.

"Back off," Harry growled.

"Oo, you brought a toy!" The guy
cackled and swiped out at the knife grabbing the blade with his
hand. I saw drops of red running down his arm. "I can play,
too."

He reached back with his
other hand and pulled out a freaking 
machete
 from behind the
driver's seat. I saw it a split second before Harry and reared
back, kicking at the guy with my feet. Harry let go of the knife
and spun around to uppercut the guy under the chin. The guy
stumbled backward.

"Move!" Harry said, and I jumped out
of the seat, grabbing my pack. Harry jumped over the guy's legs and
plowed through the door. It broke away, filling the RV with the hot
outside air.

I started to jump over the guy like
Harry had but the guy grabbed my leg making me trip on the steps
out the door. My chest hit the steps hard and suddenly I felt
something burn right next to my heart.

The guy, machete in hand, drew his
hand back to strike with the blade but without warning my
outstretched hands lit up with fire, exploding in the guy's face.
Harry grabbed me under the armpits and dragged me back.

-No!-
a voice inside my head screamed. I was too startled by the
fire to realize that it didn’t come from anyone around
us.

The guy began screaming, his hair and
face were on fire. He had dropped the machete. He stumbled out of
the RV and let out a howl. He started coming at us with searching
hands. I felt the burn in my chest again, and reached my hands out
toward the man. He was right in front of me when my hands exploded
again and a hot jet of fire engulfed the man.

He tumbled over and rolled to a stop,
writhing in pain on the ground. Even at this distance I could feel
the heat coming off his burning body. I started breathing hard,
hyperventilating. I hadn't meant to hurt him.

"Oh shit," Harry said, looking past
me. I followed his gaze. The RV was beginning to burn. It had begun
eating at the front of the RV, catching the floor, the curtains,
the seat, all of it on fire.

"We gotta go before it gets to the gas
tank!" Harry pulled me up and pushed me to start
running.

Cars began slowing down, watching the
RV glow brighter and brighter with fire. We didn't stop running
until we got to the sign that said Roswell City Limits no more than
a mile from where the RV had stopped. Fire trucks and police shot
past us toward the smoke rising in the sky behind us.

I wrung my hands where I could feel a
tingle spreading from the tips of my fingers all the way to my
elbows. "Let's not do that again." I said finally.

"Agreed," Harry replied, leading us
through a maze of side streets. The sun beat down on us even harder
than it had all day, and I could feel fatigue setting in. We walked
all the way into downtown Roswell, avoiding most of the major
streets.

"As much as I'd like to keep going, I
think we need to chill out for a few hours." Harry said. "Wait
here. I'm going to go see what we can do to get us a motel room or
something."

"Right," I said. He left me at an
outdoor café, but after about thirty minutes I was bored to death.
I had looked through all the papers Nick had given us a million
times and none of it made any more sense now than it did
before.

I picked up my bag and started
walking, looking in the windows of the shops and
businesses.

With not much else to do, I went into
a bookstore that had a cartoon alien painted in the
window.

The clerk yelled hello from behind a
book but didn't look up at me. I shrugged and started looking at
the book titles. I had never been much of a reader. That was
Jacob's territory. But here we were in Roswell, the city that most
everyone in the USA associated with aliens. The guy, Isiro, who was
going to make Willow his host--he was an alien. Maybe I could find
some information about him.

I looked through book after book, but
there was nothing on an alien named Isiro.

"Need help?" The clerk was behind me.
I jumped slightly and grinned.

"Uh, yeah. Would you know where I
could find information on an alien named Isiro?"

The clerk rolled his eyes and I swear
I heard him mumble the word "tourists" under his breath. "Yeah,
yeah, come this way."

He took me to the back of the store
where there was a single bookshelf pushed up against the wall.
There was an old woman sitting in front of the bookshelf
reading.

"Marla, kid's looking for
information."

She looked up at me. "On
what?"

"Alien named Isiro."

"Huh. Not many come looking for that
name."

"Really?" I wondered suddenly if I was
making a mistake.

"Hold on." She stood up slowly and
groaned as her bones creaked. She disappeared into the back, and
the clerk left to go back to his seat behind the cash
register.

I stood glued to that spot for what
felt like an hour. She finally came back with a very old book in
her hands. She smiled at me and handed the book over.

"It's yours. I've had it for fifty
years, and you're the first person to ask about him."

"Uh… but…"

"If I may ask, how did you come across
that name?" She tilted her head to the side while she talked,
watching my face. "It's nowhere else that I can find."

"Uh... My brother told me a bedtime
story once," I lied and looked down at the very old book in my
hands.

"Ahh…" She smiled. "Once upon a time a
man told me that he was real. Is he real?"

I flipped through the book while she
watched. I stuttered, "I dunno."

"There are many stories about aliens,
many that few believe and many that most believe in, but this is
one that I have yet to meet one who knows of him. The book is a bit
sad and tragic if you ask me."

"Why's that?"

"Read the book and you'll find out."
She patted my arm and went back to her seat in front of the
bookshelf.

I returned to the café, but Harry was
nowhere to be seen. I sat and began to read.

***

It is said, that many
thousands of years ago all of humanity possessed abilities beyond
the greatest imaginings. These abilities allowed humans to
manipulate, control, and even destroy the world around them. Some
even rose to become the gods and goddesses that we read about today
in mythology. But humanity lost those abilities in a battle that
shook all of the Earth and its people.