[Ganzfield 2] Adversary (9 page)

Oh, my God in Heaven.

Ice flashed through me. I recognized her through Hannah’s mind and whipped my head around to see her with my eyes. She was a charm.
Alexis.
Her name was—had been—Alexis. She lay on her back like a discarded doll, wearing only a short nightgown. Her eyes stared sightlessly to the side. Blood from a wound in her abdomen stained the snow around her nearly black.

I felt Rachel’s twisting panic as she tried to locate Sean with new desperation.
Where is he? Sean!
Her terror overloaded her ability. It seemed to fizzle and crackle in her head, leading nowhere…as though there might not be anywhere to lead. A hoarse sob escaped her.

There were more bodies in front of the main buildings—dozens of them. I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. I couldn’t breathe.

A massacre.

The Ganzfield people had been collected in front of Blake House, and then gunned down. Contorted corpses sprawled in the snow. Many of the bullet wounds seemed small compared to the terrible final damage they’d caused. Others had exit wounds that had exploded from their bodies, spraying the trampled snow with blood and ripped pieces of flesh.

The van kept rolling forward. Drew seemed to have forgotten that he was driving. Trevor’s invisible embrace tightened around me, a futile attempt to keep the horror from me. Hannah moved to open the van door; she wanted to try to save someone.

But I didn’t think there was anyone left to save.

Seth! SETH!
I made my mental call as loud as possible, throwing as much energy behind it as I could. If Seth were still at Ganzfield, he’d hear me. He had a huge telepathic range and I was particularly loud to him.

I got no answer. Was he one of the bodies scattered in the snow? I had no idea what he looked like. I’d never met him face to face.

Rachel tentatively touched Sean with her ability.
Alive!
The huge weight pressing her chest dissolved, letting her breathe again. She rested her forehead against the dashboard and sobbed.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, God!

Through her vision, I saw several other people with Sean. They were fuzzy and indistinct; Rachel focused only on her boyfriend. Her golden thread seemed infused with her love for him, surrounding him and making him glow in her mind—an aura of sunlight breaking through the darkness.

As Rachel concentrated, more of the vision expanded and cleared. I saw Harrison and Ellen McFee. They both stared blankly into a huge fireplace in a large, high-ceilinged room. Their faces carried the marks of shock.

Survivors.

There were survivors. Rachel’s golden connection to Sean headed south.

Drew’s sudden, horrified thought for his brother jolted him into full panic. “Harrison!” He flung open the front door and jumped out. Trevor stomped on the brake pedal with his ability, then shifted the gear back into park and shut off the ignition. Drew raced across the field toward the sparks’ buildings, nearly tripping over several more bodies in the snow.

“Drew!” I called to him. “Drew! Harrison’s okay! He’s with Sean!”

It took Drew several steps to register what I’d said and several more for him to slow down. The rest of us climbed out of the van.
He’s with Sean,
I repeated.
Rachel’s seen them. I don’t know where.
Somewhere south of here.

More corpses lay between the field of bodies and the lake. They wore strange, metallic, hooded coveralls, like spacesuits from a 1950s sci-fi movie. These weren’t Ganzfield people. Wispy grey plumes of smoke filtered out of the seams by the hood and at the wrists and ankles where the gloves and boots had come loose. I felt Drew connect to the still-smoldering fires, sensing the damage they’d caused to the bodies within the metallic suits. Apparently, they’d been less fireproof in practice than their wearers might’ve hoped.

No wonder all of the survivors Rachel had envisioned seemed to be sparks.

I still couldn’t hear anyone beyond our little group, which now seemed pitiful and small. My chin began to quiver and I glanced quickly at the treeline. My telepathic range was so short! If anyone tried to ambush us now, I’d be able to give almost no warning.

Hannah bent to check for signs of life from some of the people lying in the snow, slaughtered in the place I thought of as home. Whoever the killers were, they’d attacked at night. The Ganzfield people all wore sleep clothes. No coats. No boots. The attackers must’ve been immune to charms. I recalled the earpieces that Trevor had crushed in the car yesterday. The healers could knock someone out with a touch—would the metallic suits have worked against the healers, as well? I took a shuddering breath and looked for them. Matilda. Morris. Lester.

Lester was dead. Hannah cried out when she recognized him. Zack started a body count. Forty. Forty G-positives lay dead on the grounds, with another fourteen corpses in metallic suits. Rachel still focused on Sean; she tried to identify the other people around him. They were almost all sparks. Except for the ones who’d been with us, all of the charms and RVs of Ganzfield lay dead at our feet.

My brain didn’t seem to be working right. Between my own shock and the overflow from the group, I couldn’t focus. I felt a rolling hollowness within me that might turn into a scream. The thoughts of the others barreled into my mind and back out, unprocessed. I tried to detach myself from it all—to rise above it and see it as a problem to be solved. We needed to figure out what to do next.

Oh, my God. There’s Grace!

A sob escaped as I covered my mouth with my hand and fell to my knees.
Oh, Grace. No!
Her eyes were closed, as though she was sleeping. It looked like she’d seen her killer take aim and, knowing she couldn’t stop it, had simply shut her eyes and hoped it was a bad dream. She’d been a strong person, a fighter. Somehow, I’d expected her to look angrier. I felt a hot tear escape my eye, leaving a wet trail down my cheek that quickly turned cold.

Frank. Oh, no. Not Frank.

Bullet holes riddled our trainer’s once-white t-shirt. Three metallic-suited corpses lay around him. Despite the fact he was missing his prosthetics, Frank had gone down fighting. They hadn’t expected a man without legs to fight back as fiercely as he must have.

Dammit, Frank. What are we supposed to do now?

Frank would’ve expected us to handle this crisis the way he’d taught us: figure out the problem then generate ways to solve it. I squeezed my eyes shut. I had to stop letting my emotions—and the emotions of the others—cloud my ability to think.

Easier thought than done.

Next to me, shock and pain emanated from Trevor’s turbulent thoughts.
Their families—the people who loved them—they’ll never see them again. They’ll never know why—never know what happened.
Ganzfield—our home—had been attacked.
Violated.
It was a primal association, as though our nest had been disturbed or someone had declared war on our tribe. This was wrong. Deeply, viscerally wrong.

Evil.

I forced myself to focus. We needed to clean this up and we needed to keep the police out of this. A secretive enclave—which many locals thought was a cult—filled with the massacred bodies of dozens of teenagers would draw media attention on an unbelievably massive scale. We had to keep this from going public. We were obviously vulnerable, and now half of Ganzfield had been wiped out. Where were the rest? Where were the older G-positives who no longer lived and trained here? We needed to find the living, go to them, find out what had happened, and see what we could do next.

Regroup.
That would work for now.

Let’s clean this up, and then go find Sean and the other survivors.
I still couldn’t make my voice work.
Rachel, do you know where they are? How to get there?

Rachel nodded silently. Her expression had turned stony and her mind seethed with anger and the desire for revenge.

Tears traced down Hannah’s face. She did the only thing she could for the dead—filling line after line on a sheet of white paper. Names. How did she know all of their names? I’d always considered her shy and not very social.
Please, Jesus, help me to be strong,
she thought, over and over.
Please, give me strength.

Drew started dragging the scattered corpses together, dislodging them from the mix of blood and partially-melted snow that’d iced up beneath their bodies. He brought them away from the houses and out into the field that led down to the now-frozen lake. The bloodstained corpses screamed out their obscene presence in vivid contrast to the peaceful white and grey of the wintry world. As he worked, Drew stripped off the metallic suits from those wearing them. He placed the dead in a pile—a pyre. Trevor joined him, moving the bodies with his ability. The lifeless shapes seemed to float, two at a time, in a macabre dance.

Do we need wood?

Drew shook his head at me. The flames burned white-hot and the bodies turned to ash and charred bones after less than an hour. I thought it normally took much longer—Drew must’ve burned them at an extremely high temperature. I’d known he was strong, but I hadn’t known he had that kind of power. Heated air pushed against us as the snow melted in the surrounding area leaving a circle of bare earth, scorched black near the flames. The foul smell, sizzle of flesh, and popping cracks of bone added to the sickening ambiance.

We’d known these people. They were
our
people. This should
not
have happened. This could
never
happen again.

The pain, the anger, and the nauseating horror of the others mixed with my own as we watched the fire swirl like a fiery tornado, twisting toward the sky. The black plume of smoke tilted toward the lake, thinning and dispersing as it rolled away from us. A few flakes of snow began to fall, as though the entire sky was turning to ash.

Hannah said an enormous silent prayer as we stood there, unspeaking observers to the destruction of our little world. After the flames had turned the remains to grey cinders, Trevor’s unseen hands dug a pit in the newly-thawed earth next to the pyre. He swept the ashes in, and then covered them with freshly-turned dirt. The remains of the metallic suits filled a second pit. Trevor’s thoughts were steel-grey with cold anger.

Ugly work.

We scavenged for supplies from the infirmary and the kitchen. Little remained; the survivors must’ve done the same. Cabinets hung open and empty drawers lay scattered on the infirmary floor. The electricity was off and the main building seemed especially dark in the tepid light that came though the windows.

Trevor and I went to our church. The front door creaked on its hinges as we approached. Our private sanctuary had been violated. My jaw quivered as I stumbled on the path.

If we’d been here last night…

Trevor and I silently gathered up our belongings and clothing. We didn’t know when—or if—we’d be coming back. Trevor’s mind churned—sick, grief-filled, and angry in turns.
What if we’d been here? What if we hadn’t let the four men go yesterday? Did their report of killing us trigger this attack?

I felt a hot flush wash up through my chest and into my head. I couldn’t swallow.
Oh, no.
Had this been our fault? Had we set this massacre in motion?

No. We couldn’t start thinking like that. The Sons of Adam had to’ve been planning this for a while. What had happened to our security systems? What had knocked out the power? We were off the grid here; our wind turbines occupied one of the hills above the valley. Could that have been the weakness in our defenses?

As we looked back from the double doors into our now-empty home, Trevor gathered me close. I wrapped my arms around him and we stood there in the dark, cold church, comforting each other—drawing strength from each other—as a torrent of emotions passed between us. A primal protectiveness built within Trevor, but I was feeling uncomfortably weak. I kept seeing lifeless eyes staring up from the snow. How frightened had the victims been as faceless, armed intruders herded them from their beds? Had they felt much pain when they died?

Oh, God.

I felt like curling up somewhere, making myself as small as possible, as though I could avoid the overwhelming emotions by making myself too insignificant to hold them. I’d never felt this powerless before—this helpless. I wanted to get angry, to feel a sense of energy, of purpose.

Righteous wrath
.

I knew it was there, but it was like Trevor and I had switched reactions—he felt the anger that I usually did.

Trevor carried our bags as we returned to the van. The snow fell more steadily now, swathing the world in a grey-white silence, covering the frozen bloodstains in the snow with a pure layer of white. The others also held bags filled with their belongings. We silently piled into the van. The intense emotions washing into me from everyone else made me want to scream.