And It Arose from the Deepest Black (John Black Book 2) (17 page)

7

I pressed my forehead against Holly’s.
Hi, sis. Missed you.

“Johnny!” Holly said.
You’re home!

It was mid-morning before I woke up, but still, I was exhausted. I mean, I’d had a pretty exhausting week, wouldn’t you agree? “Yep — I’m back.”

I saw what you did. And… I felt it, too. You know?

The sunburn feeling? It changed.

Yeah. Part of it turned off.

What about the new one? Alpha? Didn’t that make the feeling increase?

No, Johnny. I could feel her all along.

“Oh,” I said aloud. “You never mentioned that.”

Sorry.

It’s okay, Hol.

But, Johnny?

Yeah?

The sunburn is getting worse.

What does that mean, Hol?

I don’t know. It’s like I’m closer to the sun, or something.
Holly curled her arms in, using one hand to scratch at the opposite forearm.

I’m not following you. Like it’s warmer?

She considered it for a minute.
Maybe? I’m not sure.

What do you think it means?

I’m afraid, Johnny.

Why?

Because I think it means they’re coming closer.

* * *

The next morning, I went back to school. Having been “sick” for four days, I got a lot of attention. Some people were happy to see me again. Others tried to gauge if I was still hideously contagious. For those jerks, I gave a few fake coughs to send them running.

After second period, I ran into Carrie. I offered a sheepish little wave. “Hey, Carrie.”

She smiled and came right up to me.
At least she doesn’t think I have the plague
. “Feeling better? You had me
worried
.” She squeezed my arm to emphasize her concern.

Now, look. I have faced down 200-foot monsters. But girls are another story. I nearly fainted. “I’m okay, a lot better now.” I faked a little cough. Very little. A cough that said,
I really was sick
, while at the same time saying,
You don’t need to back away from me
. It’s tough to pull off just the right fake cough, but I think I managed.

“Oh great, the sicky John Boy is back,” a sneering voice called out in the hall.

Jesus, really? John Boy? Why are the stupid so predictable?
I turned to see who it was, although I was pretty sure I already knew.

Lawrence.

The same empty-headed bully jackass who dumped a bottle of beer and ash and spit on my head. Who made me lash out on that awful day.

In a way, this was the kid who made me kill my father. In the pit of my stomach, a fire, that fire, the thing that was maybe consuming me… it started to burn. “Oh, hi, Lawrence.”

Dark and hairy and meaty and stupid. Those were good words for Lawrence Blatnik. Looking at him, I thought only of the car accident. My dad, killed.

“Carrie, you should wash your hands,” he said, looking contemptuously at Carrie’s fingers wrapped around my bicep. Lawrence curled his lip in disgust. “He’s carrying something.”

“Oh, shut up,
Lawrence
,” Carrie said.

And here’s where things got bad.

Lawrence
leaned in
to Carrie. And he said, in a low and serious voice, “You watch your mouth with me,
Carrie
.”

And that was it. The full-blown feeling returned. In force. Maybe worse. I mean, against the Gorgols, I had other feelings. Fear, worry, confusion. Against Lawrence Blatnik, there was just one: bloodlust.

So I hit him. In the jaw.

Normally, a guy my size hitting a guy Lawrence’s size, well, it would have an effect, sure, but probably a limited one. But my hand
solidified
.

And Lawrence was sent flying down the hallway, like he’d been hit by a semi truck.

I didn’t smile — mind you, I wanted to, but I didn’t. Man, did that feel good. I mean, I was
proud.

“Oh my God, John, what was that?” Carrie said, not knowing what to think or do. She seemed… concerned. Impressed? Maybe sort of? But also concerned. Then
concerned
won out and
impressed
disappeared.

My pride fizzled, a firework fading to black in the night sky. “Nothing, Carrie. Um… Sorry — it was an accident. I didn’t mean to hit him so hard.” I tried a sheepish smile. It felt like a snarl.

“Whoa…” Carrie said, scrunching up her face, taking in the scene. Then she looked at me, a lot like that time in her room, where we kept those fish we killed.
Shit, I’ve done it again. Carrie just thinks of me as a freak. Again.
I wondered if I could use
double-jointed
as an excuse a second time. It didn’t seem likely.

“What exactly is going on here?” a stern voice called out.

Oh crap.
I’d been back in school approximately two hours, and I’d already become the focus of administrative attention. And that meant possible detention. Or expulsion. I turned to head to my next class, hoping to fade into the crowd.

“He was just defending me,” Carrie said, loudly.

No, Carrie. Shhhh. No need to say any more.

“What? Who?” the stern voice asked. I saw her out of the corner of my eye. Mrs. Rice. Chemistry. She wasn’t someone to trifle with. I tried to flee, willing Carrie to be quiet.

“John,” Carrie said, even louder. “John Black. He was just standing up for me, really.”

I felt a warmth on my back. The kind of warmth that signals the presence of a high-school teacher. The kind of warmth that doesn’t soothe or calm. The kind of warmth that isn’t really warm, but more like a precursor to heat. The feeling you get just at the moment you realize you’ve been in the sun too long, but no amount of shade or sunscreen can help. Mrs. Rice’s eyes were on me and there was no longer anything I could do. “John, come here,” she said in a tone that left no room for debate.

“Yes, ma’am?” I said.

Mrs. Rice looked toward Lawrence, sprawled out on the hallway floor. You know, they buffed those floors, probably nightly, but did that make them clean? I doubted it. Buffed filth, sure. Maybe he landed in a slightly clean spot. But
really
clean? No way. That thought made me happy.

“Did you punch this boy?”

Boy
? Lawrence was large, adult-sized. He was 50 pounds or more heavier than me. A boy? That was a joke. “Well. Um…” The mix of emotions over what I’d done was strange. First pride, especially having defended Carrie. Then a bit of shame, embarrassment. Then…

For good measure, Lawrence rolled in toward the lockers, making it look like the effect of my punch was even more severe.
Clever, jerk
, I thought. Looking at him, I got angry again.

“John?” Mrs. Rice asked.

I said nothing. Seething.

“John?” Mrs. Rice asked.

The fire. I felt like it could overcome me. It did.

In a low voice, I said, “Yeah. But if I’d been
trying
, Lawrence would be in the hospital right now.”

“John?” Carrie said, confused.

“John!” Mrs. Rice said. “I heard that! Come with me.”

So there. In just about two hours, I went from “welcome back” to “the principal will see you now.” This day was going great.

You can probably guess the rest. The long wait in the office, the serious conversation with the principal, who warned me about “going down the wrong path.” Inside, I laughed.
Wrong path? You wouldn’t believe the path I’ve taken, buddy
.

I was suspended for three days. Mom came to pick me up. She did the mom thing, angry and embarrassed and apologetic to the school staff. But in the car, her tone changed. “You should have thought of this when we
needed
an excuse to get you out of school.”

I looked over, but she wouldn’t meet my eye. Still, was she making a joke? Was that a little smile I saw?

8

Once again, my family became TV-news junkies. Not targets — thankfully — but junkies. Even Holly this time. Previously, when I couldn’t communicate with her, I assumed she’d rather we change the channel. Now, with our mostly mental connection, Holly told me she wanted to know everything there was to know about the Gorgols and the man they called Ranger.

Of course, I told Holly and Mom that his real name was Jake Weissman, but it’s hard not to start to refer to things the way everyone else does. When the talking heads on TV say
Ranger
every five minutes, your mind begins to think
Range
r
.

Which must have meant that people were calling me
Black Sword
. Did my own mother or sister start to think of me that way? I had to believe that, to them, Bobby and I were the same as we’d always been. Holly probably thought of Pip as Pip because of their past together. But Mom? I bet she thought of Pip as
Red Hope
. And so what? Why did labels make things so… strange? Probably because
we
didn’t choose the labels. If the entire rest of the world started calling you Purple Wombat, you’d probably think it was odd. Right?

But then again, we didn’t choose any of this, so maybe what people called us was the least of our worries. Maybe we needed to think about the future. Was it really possible to stay in hiding forever? If not, then what? What would change about us if the world knew who we were and everything we could do? For that matter, how would that change the world?

My head hurt.

So I just watched TV with my family. Not that it made things any better, once I heard the news.

“…Ranger appears to be guiding the Gorgols east, creating a nearly straight line of destruction across the country…”

Air strikes were called. Tanks deployed. Blockades set up. You can probably guess that they were ineffective. Sure, the Gorgols winced when they got hit, but they were tough, especially Alpha. She was a force of nature, and it’s not nice to shoot rockets at Mother Nature. That may not be the original phrase, but it’s applicable. Meanwhile, Sigma spent a lot of time zipping around in loopy circles, breaking through defense lines and hitting flanks. Alpha just stomped into the fray and destroyed everything.

When the going was particularly tough, Ranger disappeared. I wasn’t surprised. Jake was like me, and I didn’t think I could take a cruise missile to the forehead, so he stepped out of the way and let the Gorgols do their thing.

But
their thing
had changed. It had turned angry. This wasn’t the random movement, the seemingly inadvertent trampling that Omicron and Sigma had done on the western shore. It was a willful destruction, particularly amid any cities they encountered. Buildings were collapsed for little to no reason, even ones out of their way. Either Alpha had a significantly more offensive agenda, or something was changing their behavior. No longer were human beings just ants, stepped on by accident. This was different. Alpha and Sigma destroyed with intent.

Why?

Was their true nature coming out? Or was something — or someone — changing them?

Jake.

Despite the fact that they were coming for my sister, I’d begun to feel like Jake was right about the monsters. That they weren’t really monsters. That they could be reasoned with. Now, seeing him in action, I had to wonder if he was even sane. I mean, these were giant creatures of unknown origin, big fighting and killing machines. But Jake balanced on Alpha like she was nothing more than an oversized carnival ride.

So came the darkness of evening, and with one (partial) day of school under my belt, I was absolutely confused about what to do next. Thanks to the principal, I had a weekend to sit and think, then three more days to do the same. Five days free. Hmm.

I knew what I
really
wanted. I wanted to have nothing to do with all of this nonsense. Maybe just play video games and watch old TV shows.

Yeah, right. I knew the days of endlessly, aimlessly playing while staring at a screen were, well, if not over, darn close to it.

All of this is to say, sitting there that night, getting our news fix, we saw the line on the map. The line they drew between “where the Gorgols are now” and “where they were headed.”

That line ran through a lot of things. Two or three larger cities. Countless smaller towns. A national wildlife refuge. (Maybe they were going to live there!) The blah-blah people on TV had a lot of opinions, none of which made any sense.

I looked at the line. How it extended across the country. Some news anchors wondered if the Gorgols were headed to the opposite ocean. But why? West-coast beaches not to their liking?

No, the line was purposeful. Only now it wasn’t just Holly’s words that explained it. It was right there on TV for us to see.

The line they followed led directly to us.

To my sister, still in jeopardy.

One side of me said,
Make peace
. The other said,
Make wa
r
.

I got both of them ready.