XGeneration 1: You Don't Know Me (16 page)

Don’t talk to me. Ever again.

Scott was wondering if he would come to regret those words, when a cadence of chanting broke up the thought. Scott squinted. The sound was coming from a part of the field away to his right, hidden from view by the tennis courts. Scott hiked up his backpack and trekked over, craning his neck. When he reached the corner of the fenced-in courts, he peered around.

Whoa.

The dozen or so chanting cheerleaders pumped their fists, rose into human towers, rotated, and disassembled. And all of them wore midriff-baring tops and short shorts, muscled legs glistening in the sun. Scott allowed the stunning sight to bombard his retinas—until he realized he was gawking in plain view.

He slinked along the chain-link fence to its far side and entered the empty courts. Just as he’d hoped, the green windbreak covering most of the fence was opaque enough that it was easier to see out than in. Inside, he was all but invisible. Scott glanced at his watch as he hurried across the courts toward the chants. He still had fifteen minutes until his dad arrived.

He slung his backpack over the end of a pole that stretched the farthest tennis net, and he reclined against the pole itself, one knee pulled in. The cheerleaders pumped their arms in unison.

“WHO ARE WE? THE MIGH-TY TITANS!”

This, my friend, is the life.

“WHO CAN BEAT US? NO ONE CAN!”

The cheerleaders broke off into leaps and high kicks, then clapped their hands as they reassembled. For Scott, it felt like even more of a shame that he wouldn’t be going to the Jamboree that Friday. Maybe he could—

Metal rattled behind him as the gate to the tennis courts latched closed. By the time Scott turned around, Jesse Hoag was nearly to the center court, Creed and Tyler Bast not far behind.

13

Jesse Hoag was even more massive than Scott remembered. Or maybe he only appeared so because Scott was still sitting against the post, unable to draw his feet underneath himself. The asphalt court trembled with each of Jesse’s closing footfalls. Scott’s gaze shot from Jesse’s fists, which swished at his sides like wrecking balls, to his face. Gobs of grease held his dark hair out of his eyes—sober gray eyes that appeared at odds with his sinister smile.

That got Scott moving.

He sprang up and promptly tripped over his own feet, stumbling backward into the fence. While he struggled to right his splayed legs, the cheerleaders launched into a new chant:

“THAT’S OUR TEAM! GO, TEAM! GO!”

Jesse stepped onto the last of the three tennis courts—Scott’s court. Tyler had lingered behind, standing guard near the gate, the only way in or out. Creed circled around the other side of the tennis net, ensuring that Scott had nowhere to run.

“We were starting to think you’d left Dodge,” Jesse said. “We’ve got some unfinished business, you and me.”

I don’t know about any business.

Scott heard the words, but he only managed to mouth them, his tongue flicking around a bed of desiccated flesh, like a beached fish. It was the calmness with which Jesse had spoken, the coldness, as though he was just there to do a job and by God he would get it done. Scott knew what that job was. He seized the place where his right forearm bent. The lump of healed bone had begun to ache as if someone were needling the marrow with a shard of ice.

Jesse’s eyes shifted toward Creed, who in the next instant appeared at Scott’s shoulder, his hand locked around Scott’s upper arm. When Scott turned, he was staring into a pair of blue-tinted John Lennon glasses.

How in the world did he move so fast?

Scott tried to shake him off.

“Don’t make me get nasty,” Creed whispered.

And now Scott felt the rim of Creed’s bowler hat against his temple… and something else, something thin and sharp against his neck. Scott froze. Moving only his eyes, he tried to see where Creed’s hand disappeared beneath his chin.
A knife?
The idea almost made Scott giggle because any other sound would have made him lose it.
He’s holding a knife to my throat.

“WHO ARE WE? THE MIGH-TY TITANS! WHO CAN BEAT US? NO ONE CAN!”

Scott’s eyes shifted toward the chants.

“One peep out of those pipes, fuck face,” Creed whispered, “and they’re as good as diced.”

Scott looked up to where Jesse had stopped two feet in front of him. His eyes, deep set and gray, were assessing him, taking measurements, particularly of his arms. Scott could almost hear the slow, clanking cogs of Jesse’s brain. He was calculating breaking points.

“Do you remember what I said?” Jesse asked.

“About whu-whu-what?”

“‘Do it again, and it’ll be both arms.’ Do you remember me saying that?”

Scott started to shake his head before remembering Creed’s knife at his throat. “I didn’t do it,” he murmured, trying to hold his Adam’s apple in. “God, I swear—whatever it is, I didn’t do it.”

But he had done it.

Maybe it was having to spend last summer in a plaster cast. Or maybe it was lying to his mother about what had happened and seeing the sharp lines of disappointment around her mouth and listening to her huff as she drove him to the Emergency Care Center.
A klutz,
she’d probably been thinking.
A sorry klutz like his father.
Or maybe it was knowing that he hadn’t been able to stop them, had been too chicken to even try. Maybe that’s what had driven him to what he did.

“Ever been beaten by a tire iron?” Jesse asked.

“No.”

“Do you know what that feels like?”

“N-no.”

“The old man thought it was me making all those long-distance calls, running up the phone bill. I told him it wasn’t, but he didn’t believe me. Called me a lying sack of you-know-what. Said if I couldn’t come up with the money, he was gonna take it out on my hide. A few hubcap jobs, a few trips to the pawn shop, and we’re good, you follow? We’re square, me and my old man. Everything’s cool. ’Cept the thing was, it happened again the next month. This time, the bill was twenty pages long. He caught me coming home. It was at night. I’d just parked the car, and he was waiting by the garage door in the dark.”

Jesse pushed up the sleeve on his black Metallica T-shirt. A brown blotch stained the meat of his upper arm. “That was his first good shot,” Jesse said. “The second one caught me here.” He mashed away his upper lip with a hammer-sized thumb to reveal a missing molar. “Third one got me in the skull. Here.” He rapped his knuckles hard against the side of his own head.

Scott had heard about Jesse’s father, about the drinking. But he had no idea…

“I’m sorry,” Scott managed and then began sobbing, “but it whu-whu-wasn’t me! G-god, it wasn’t m-me!”

“And Creed and Tyler here,” Jesse continued in a calm voice, “well, the phone company hit them with a delinquency. Cut their service. Their mother about lost it. Wouldn’t come out of her room for days. Isn’t that right, Creed?”

“Fuckin’ A,” Creed whispered.

Scott remembered hacking the central office that day last summer, remembered taking over Jesse’s and Creed’s phone lines. He had started dialing country codes and phone numbers, one after another: South Africa, Australia, Japan, Nepal—calls where the connection fee alone was worth a prime cut of steak. Over several days, Scott had kept a running tab in his head. When the dollar amounts climbed into the hundreds, he made himself stop, figuring they were even.

Apparently, Jesse figured differently. His hand swallowed Scott’s wrist—the left one this time.

“Good thing is, you know what to expect.” A hint of a grin returned to Jesse’s face.

Jesse’s thumb, which was almost as thick as Scott’s forearm, bore down. A deep ache bloomed beneath the pressure. Scott winced, lips pressed together, determined not to cry. He imagined the latticework of bone—cortical bone, he’d heard it called,
his
cortical bone—beginning to collapse where Jesse pressed. At any moment, it was going to snap, just like that. He would hear it. And that seemed to Scott the worst part of all: that he would hear his own bone snap. Again.

“Holy shit!” Creed cried. “He’s pissing himself!”

It was true, Scott realized. His bladder had just bailed, turned to Jell-O, said, “The hell with it.” Nothing was contracting to hold anything in. Scott felt the urine matting his pant leg, soaking inside his sock. When he glanced down, he caught it seeping over his right loafer. Creed tried to dance away from the spreading pool. Jesse scuffed back a step, his grip faltering.

That was all Scott needed.

He wrenched his arm down at the same time he shoved Creed, propelling himself into the first gangly steps of flight in the other direction. Jesse lunged, but Scott had enough prescience to arch his back. The fingers that sought him raked his shirt.

Scott turned toward the gate. Tyler, who had sauntered a short distance away, scrambled to get back into position. A cigarette fell from his mouth, and he stumbled for a moment, arms flailing inside his dusky jean jacket. But he regained his balance and closed the distance to the gate in four scampering steps. Scott veered toward the court’s baseline, arms pumping, his paisley tie streaming over his shoulder.

Behind him, Creed swore, still down. Good. But Jesse was chasing him. Scott could feel his footfalls rumbling through the asphalt, gaining momentum. Scott sped past the baseline and straight for the fence.

C’mon, legs. Don’t fudge on me
now
!

And he leaped.

He rattled against the fence and latched on. But his grip on the chain linking was shallow because of the windbreak. And only one of his shoes had a toehold. The other slipped against the fabric.

“Help!” he cried. “Help!”

The chanting from the field to his left continued unabated.

Scott clawed and pulled, stabbing the toes of his shoes inside the chain-link diamonds like crampons. Upward movement! Craning his neck back, he found the top of the windbreak nearly within his reach. The bar along the fence’s top lay only another two feet beyond that. Scott stretched until his fingers curled over the windbreak, and he pulled himself up. The fingers of his other hand grasped chain linking.

Creed grabbed one of his ankles.

What the—?
Three seconds ago, he’d been halfway across the court on his backside. But Scott knew Creed’s grip, thin and steely. And when Scott peered down, he saw the curtains of his dirty blond hair thrashing like Saint Vitus. Creed had always been fast, but that was entering the realm of super speed. Scott jerked and kicked. Behind Creed, Jesse pulled up to the baseline, chest heaving.

“Hold still, goddammit!” Creed shouted.

Metal glinted in Creed’s other hand but not from a knife, Scott saw. The blades belonged to the studded leather glove Creed wore. One long blade extended from the index finger, a second from the thumb. Creed drew the glove back, but with Scott’s next kick, Creed stumbled backward holding an empty loafer.

Humming with adrenaline, Scott pulled with both arms. He heaved his legs up frog-like until his feet perched atop the windbreak, out of reach. His eyes cut up and down Titan Terrace, where there was…

(
crap
)

…absolutely no one.

“Help!”

The fence pitched backward. Jesse had two of the fence’s poles inside his fists. Scott watched the pole to his left uproot from its foundation in a burst of cement.
Great. Super strength and super speed on the same team.
His own power? Navigating telecommunication lines while his body remained behind, limp and defenseless. Hardly an equalizer.

Scott clamped the top bar of the fence under his armpit and threw a leg over. If he could just roll over the rest of the way, fall into the lawn, stumble toward the practice fields…

Jesse ripped the other pole free. Its conical base of cement and earth scraped over the green asphalt. The fence leaned inward. Scott had to contract even the tiniest muscles in his fingers and toes to maintain his hold.

Creed’s reedy laugh pierced the afternoon heat.

Scott closed his eyes in resignation. And he’d been having such a good day: the lunch with the Gamma pledges; The Pact; Janis in her Standards, the Alpha A there but hidden away; the growing feeling that he, Scott Spruel, belonged at Thirteenth Street High. Now, here he was, clinging to the top of a fence, being pursued by three future convicts, marinating in his own urine—and drooping.

Jesse’s hand clamped around his neck. “Let go,” he ordered.

Stale tobacco breath broke against Scott’s face. He opened his eyes and stared into Jesse’s huge nostrils. Warped chain linking billowed around them. Jesse’s other hand seized the bar to which Scott clung.

“I said, let it go.”

When Jesse squeezed, the bones in Scott’s neck crunched together, and his body went numb. He had been clasping the top of the fence snugly to his ribcage, but now he could hardly feel it. Was it slipping from his hold? Scott cried out, but not from that thought. Something was spiking through the numbness.

“Ow!” Jesse hollered.

The fence vaulted up several feet and bobbed. When Scott looked down, he found Jesse clenching his hand. Scott squirmed over the fence top, his neck sore, but sensation prickling back into his body like little electrical shocks.

“You’re dead!” Creed yelled.

Anticipating his escape, Scott held up his fist to Creed, thought about it, and then popped out his middle finger. Suicidal? Maybe, but man, it felt good. And with one leg over, he was already halfway home. It was just a matter of—

A jag of metal snagged the crotch of his pants. Threads popped as he strained, but the fence wouldn’t release him. Scott looked toward the gate, expecting to find it swung wide, Tyler running around to intercept him. But Tyler was still at his post, withdrawing his arm from beneath the windbreak for some reason. When the fence beneath him shook, Scott didn’t have to look to see Creed climbing toward him. Scott wriggled and whimpered, a fish on a hook.

“You’re mine now, you little shit,” Creed whispered from inches away.

Make that a fish fillet on a hook.

The door to the courts banged open. A tall man in blue coveralls and a flat-topped hat appeared. In two steps, he had a wad of Tyler’s bleached hair and most of his ear inside his thick hand.