The Strike Trilogy (5 page)

The pale man frowned. “Aw, dammit.”

Susan reared back and kicked Jonathan in the groin, causing him to fall over with a grunt. In a panic, Susan ran to a phone and dialed 9-1-1.

“9-1-1, what is your emergency?”

“Please!” she cried into the phone. “Somebody’s here and he’s going to—”

But, the phone was ripped away from Susan and thrown across the store. Slowly, she turned around.

“That,” Jonathan said, “was not smart.”

The pale man pushed the terrified woman into a corner, trapping her there. As he talked, he flexed his fingers, open and closed, open and closed.

“I was having a good day,” he said. “There hasn’t been one of those in a while, and I was starting to enjoy it. But now…now it’s happening again, and it’s all your fault. You ruined everything.”

With wide eyes, Susan watched Jonathan’s fingers. They grew into twisted claws—long, bony, skinny claws with translucent talons on their ends.

“I have my good days, Susie Q, and I have my bad days. But you just turned this into a very, very bad day.”

Jonathan pulled her close and opened his mouth. Suddenly, it was filled with snake-like fangs—disgustingly yellow and dripping with saliva.

Susan screamed. “Somebody please help me!”

Glass shattered. Thunder boomed. Lightning lit up the night. Jonathan spun around. Susan stopped crying.

There, in the dark shadows, was Tobin. He was standing in the broken picture window frame, with his clothes soaked and pressed against him. As he stared at the floor, with his fists at his sides, his chest was rising and falling with deep breaths. Another lightning bolt lit up the darkness around him.

Jonathan was transfixed by the boy in the window. He pulled Susan nearer as she tried to get away.

“Wait,” he said. “Wait.”

A thunderclap rumbled. Tobin looked up. His white, swirling eyes looked like they were dead.

“Let her go,” he said.

“No,” Jonathan said back, amused. “No, I don’t think so.”

Tobin jumped down and walked toward Jonathan. The pale man grew nervous.

“You—you really think I’d do this alone, Tobin? No, I always save this kind of stuff for my friends. They enjoy it much more than I do.”

With a snap of his fingers, Jonathan summoned Nelson and Miller from the shadows. The towering duo was made up of two huge men in their early thirties, with the bodies of weightlifters, purple suits like Jonathan’s, and white, zombie-like faces. As they stood on either side of Jonathan, the pale man looked to Tobin with a smile.

“Plus,” he said, “I’d just hate to ruin another suit.”

Tobin was calm. His fists were raised, and his eyes were now glowing with a blue, electric light. Lightning streaked across the sky.

Jonathan pointed at the boy. “Take him down.”

Nelson and Miller started toward Tobin. Miller took the first swing, but the boy grabbed the goon’s fist, swung him around, and used his own momentum to toss his huge body into a bookcase. The shelves came tumbling down on top of the goon, sending books and shards of wood scattering across the floor.

Lightning struck and thunder boomed.

Crouched in the corner, Jonathan was watching the fight with Susan. She shouted and tried to get away from him, but he held her wrists tightly, and then took a small cloth bag from his pocket.

“When you awake,” he said, pouring sand from the bag into his palm, “you’ll have no memory of me, the kid, or anything that happened tonight. Now sleep.”

Jonathan blew the sand into Susan’s face and she dropped to the floor, her eyes fluttering.

Near the bookcases, Tobin heard the woman fall and was distracted, turning around. In that instant, Nelson tackled him and they tumbled to the floor. Struggling, they awkwardly—but violently—exchanged several brutal punches, until Tobin felt Nelson push off of him and stand. When the boy looked up, he saw the goon looming over him.

Nelson smiled. Reaching to his waist, he removed two shining knives from his belt and held them in between his fingers. Then, snapping his wrists, he flung the knives down at Tobin.

The boy’s first instinct was to close his eyes and turn away, but then he stopped: he saw that the blades were tumbling toward him through the air ever so slowly, like they were traveling through gelatin. Reaching across his body, Tobin grabbed a book from the floor and held it in front of his face. He heard two
THUNKS!
in the book, one right after the other, and then everything returned to normal speed.

Tobin turned the book over and looked at its front. The two knives were sticking in its cover.

Nelson was stunned. “What the...? How did you...?”

Tobin stood up. His thoughts suddenly returned to him; they were fast, confused images, like somebody was replaying everything that had happened over the past ten minutes in fast-forward. The boy was shaken, his knees weak and his arms trembling. His eyes were no longer glowing blue.

“Neat trick,” a voice said from behind him.

The boy turned around. Jonathan was there.

“But I bet you can’t beat this one.”

The pale man smiled. As his mouth stretched into a grotesque crescent moon across his face, his teeth once again elongated into yellow, snake-like fangs. White, patchy fur sprouted from his hands and arms in bursts, and as he moved his head around agitatedly, bat-like wings ripped through his suit and stretched out across the room, measuring six feet long on each side of his body. Finally, when he looked to the ceiling, his nose flattened into a disgusting snout.

Tobin stared at the bat-creature in front of him. It was gazing at the ceiling, panting and growling, until suddenly it snapped its head down and looked at him. Its eyes turned yellow.

“Boo,” it said.

Tobin backed away, panicking and swinging his fists. But Jonathan dodged every swipe. Taking a coiled whip from his belt, the bat-creature then snapped it at Tobin, wrapping it around the boy’s legs. When Jonathan pulled on the whip, Tobin fell, crashing awkwardly against a chair before hitting the ground.

Jonathan pounced, landing on top of Tobin and pinning him to the cold floor with his hind legs. Laughing and growling, he slashed at Tobin’s chest over and over, tearing at his shirt with his long, clawed fingers. The boy screamed, the pain unbearable, like his skin was being lanced with a fiery knife.

Finally, Jonathan jumped off, and Tobin looked down. The boy’s chest was now sliced open and bleeding, and there was a white acid sizzling on the wounds. He tried to stand but fell back down again, his limbs suddenly feeling as if they were not there. As he clutched his chest, all he could feel was the burning. The burning, the burning.

As Nelson and Miller stood over the fallen boy, Jonathan crouched down and spoke to him.

“I’m sorry, Tobin, but the bit of pain is necessary. We knew you wouldn’t come quietly, and we couldn’t take our chances with you…acting up. But, in just a few more seconds now, it’ll all be over. Don’t try and fight it.”

The pale man reached down and grabbed Tobin’s face, forcing the boy to look out a window, pressing his cheek against the glass.

“Your world out there is on a timetable, Tobin, and one that is not in its favor. Earth has been on this course for decades, centuries, maybe even eons, and now we are finally coming to its end. It’s my job to help that end happen, and—unfortunately for you—that means erasing you, your name, and any trace that you ever existed.

“You should know that it has to be this way, Tobin. We have no choice. We have to break you.”

Looking out the window, Tobin suddenly thought of his mother. Somehow, in his mind, he could see her: she was standing on the front porch of their house, waiting for him to come home.

The boy’s eyes flashed open. They burned bright blue. He had one more moment of clarity.

Tobin stood up and pushed Jonathan away. Amazingly, stunningly, lightning bolts screamed out from the boy’s hands. The streams of raging, blue-and-white electricity threw Jonathan across the store and he smashed into the cash register, his body contorting around the wooden counter before falling to the floor. As he lay there, unmoving, smoke rose from his body, and little dashes of white electricity jumped across his chest.

Lightning struck and thunder boomed.

Nelson and Miller ran to Jonathan, the both of them very afraid.

“Oh my god, Jon, are you okay?” Miller shouted. “C’mon, man, we gotta get out of here! C’mon! C’mon!”

After helping Jonathan to his feet, the two goons ran out of the store. Jonathan followed them, with his arms across his ribs, his body still smoking.

Tobin fell to the ground. His mind and body were completely drained—he felt nothing except a dense, numbing tingling in his hands and fingers. Hearing a police siren outside, he slowly crawled to a window and pulled himself up to it. Through the glass, he saw that three police cars were speeding across the Chapman Bridge, and the rain was falling harder than ever. A faint ringing entered Tobin’s ears, and his eyesight began to go blurry, fading away.

Pushing off the ground with his numb hands, Tobin stood up on his shaking legs and stumbled across the room. He was weak and unbalanced; the store around him was nothing but a swirling mess of red-and-blue lights from the police cars outside. When the boy finally reached Susan’s body, he lifted her up and placed her on a couch against the wall, away from the window.

There was a mirror above the couch. Tobin looked up at his reflection in it, but the face he saw was not his own: it was drawn and pale, and its milky white eyes were staring back at him lifelessly. Red-and-blue lights were dancing around the face like fireflies.

This was the last thing Tobin saw before everything went black.

CHAPTER SEVEN

T
he morning after the thunderstorm in Bridgton, Vincent Harris was standing in the security center of his skyscraper, watching a news broadcast on a large monitor. Onscreen, a young female news reporter was outside of Jackson’s Bookstore, while police were investigating the area behind her. Yellow crime-scene tape crisscrossed the broken picture window.

“Police were unable to apprehend the three suspects as they fled into the surrounding streets,” the reporter explained, “and upon entering the building, they found no items or cash missing from the register. One of the officers reported seeing a bright red flash as he was approaching the store, but saw no other signs of anyone inside when he—”

Vincent turned the security monitor off. After standing in front of it for a moment, tapping the remote controller against his chin, he left the room and stomped down the hall. When he reached his office, he passed by his bodyguard.

“Rigel. Here.”

Rigel followed Vincent into the office and closed the door.

“Orion has gotten involved,” Vincent said, walking to his desk. “This will cause a delay in our plans, to say the least.”

“Allow me to take care of it, sir,” Rigel said. “I will have no trouble finding Orion, and when I do, I will take care of him and the boy. Leave it entirely up to me.”

“No,” Vincent said. “You’re much too important—I need you here with us.” He looked out at the city below him, through the massive, floor-to-ceiling window that made up the wall behind his desk. “I had thought that Jonathan was more than capable of handling this part of the plan on his own, but obviously I was wrong. Where are he and his two friends now?”

“They came here immediately after abandoning the plan, sir. They were not followed.”

“Good. And what did we do with them?”

“I placed them under arrest. They’re waiting for you there now.”

“Good.” Vincent turned around and mindlessly flipped through a file on his desk. “It’s too bad Jonathan never really committed like you did. I had high hopes for him. But, I guess everybody is wrong sometimes. Even us.”

Rigel chuckled. “What would you like to do now, sir?”

“Well, let’s send out the air division. If they aren’t able to get the job done, at least make sure that they can track Orion and report back to me. We still have plenty of time, but we can’t allow them to slip away any further.”

“Yes, sir,” Rigel said, before turning and exiting the office, eager to carry out his orders.

Sitting behind his desk, Vincent looked down at the files scattered in front of him. One of the files contained various blueprints and documents, along with a photograph of Tobin.

With his finger, Vincent slid the photograph of Tobin away, moving it across the desk. Underneath Tobin’s photo, there was another photo—this one was of Orion, wearing his long, red coat.

Vincent studied the two photographs.

With his eyes closed peacefully, Tobin was lying in a quiet, grassy field, asleep. It was beautiful, with the sun shining and the birds in the nearby trees chirping.

Then there was a low rumbling. Tobin rolled over, groaning, and felt the damp grass underneath him. Confused, he opened his eyes and reached out to touch the grass.

The grass was blue.

Tobin stood up. He looked around, his forehead furrowed.

The sky was yellow. The clouds were a light shade of pink. The leaves of the dense trees around him were blue, and waving from a slight breeze. A bird—a tall, skinny crane at least seven feet tall—flew from one of the trees to the next.

In front of Tobin, the rumbling came again. He turned toward it, to the trees that surrounded the quiet clearing. The leaves in that area were shaking. Faster and faster.

Suddenly, a blood-colored dinosaur burst into the clearing with a thundering
ROAR!
The massive, tyrannosaurus-like beast had leathery wings on its back, a body covered in bumpy scales, and a hideous head the size of a Winnebago. As it lowered its neck, it eyeballed Tobin, snorted, and then charged, its feet hammering the earth.

Tobin screamed, paralyzed with fear. The furious dinosaur closed in on him, roaring, its heavy tail whipping back-and-forth. It was so fierce, so giant, so angry. But then…

BOOM!
A blinding, green explosion erupted against the dino’s face, causing it to crash to the ground. Its massive body skidded across the wet grass, and its lifeless head, mouth slung open and dripping with blood, came to a stop inches in front of Tobin’s feet. The boy looked down at it, with his eyes wide and his heart racing.

Then, something grabbed Tobin’s arm. He spun around, looking there to find a six-and-a-half foot tall, blue-and-white Siberian husky. It was standing like a man, and wearing a cowboy hat, a brown leather jacket, and blue jeans. It was also wielding a very large gun.

“We need to run,” the dog said to him.

The dog pushed Tobin in front of him and they ran across the field.

“What—what is going on?” Tobin gasped. “What are you?”

“I’m a talking dog,” the talking dog replied. “Head towards that sky-ship.”

Tobin looked ahead and saw a gleaming silver jet parked in the grass at the other end of the field.

“Why are we running?” he yelled to the dog.

“Take a wild friggin’ guess.”

ROAR!
Another winged-dinosaur emerged from the forest, shaking the trees with its deafening bellow. Luckily, though, the boy and the dog were only a few yards away from the silver aircraft, and they ran into a door that slid open on its side.

Inside the craft, the dog ran into the cockpit, leaving Tobin behind in the cabin. The boy was surrounded by three rows of empty seats.

“What is going on?” Tobin yelled. “What the hell is going on?”

The dog sat in the pilot’s seat, pushing a series of buttons on the control panel. “Recognize that guy?” he asked.

Tobin turned and saw Orion sleeping in a chair. “Yeah?”

“You came here with him. You’re lucky I found you before they did.”

“They who?”

The dog turned around.

“You serious?”

The sky-ship shook violently. Tobin looked out a window; the maroon-colored dinosaur had now grabbed one of the ship’s wings with its jaws.

“Ah, krandor,” the dog snapped, spinning back to the controls. “Hold on tight, kid.”

The dog pushed a big red button, and a burst of blue fire shot out from the ship’s wing, surrounding the dinosaur. The beast roared and let go of the wing, allowing the ship to take off.

Tobin fell backward, knocked over into a chair as the craft zoomed upward into the sky. Nearby, Orion was awakened by the commotion, sitting up and looking around at the shaking, trembling sky-ship. Then he noticed Tobin.

“Stay there,” the old man said. “Don’t move.”

Gripping the armrests of his chair, Tobin watched as Orion walked to the cockpit.

“What’s happening?” the old man asked the talking dog.

“I got your call, and as soon as I got here, two blood birds were approaching. One of them is on our butt right now.”

Orion looked to a monitor in the cockpit; the dinosaur was flying through the air and following them.

“Send me up,” the old man said, walking to the back of the ship.

“Are you sure?” the dog asked. “You’re pretty wiped out, O, you should probably just—”

“Send me up,” the old man repeated.

The dog shrugged. “You got it.”

Walking past Tobin, Orion took a quiver of arrows from the wall, put it on his back, and then stood in the center of the cabin. As he crouched down, he pulled a series of metal straps across his boots. The straps were attached to a silver plate in the floor.

“Tobin,” the old man said, “this is my friend, Keplar Costello. He’s the pilot and owner of this ship we’re in, the Sky-Blade. Keplar, Tobin. Tobin, Keplar.”

The dog stopped manning the controls long enough to throw Tobin a peace sign. “Hey, how’s it goin’, bro?”

Tobin had a death-lock on the armrests. “Oh. Okay.”

Orion finished strapping his boots to the silver plate and stood up. “Tobin, I’ve got a hell of a lot of explaining to do, I know, but I can’t really get into it right now.” He took an arrow from his quiver and strung it in his bow. “I’d just really rather not start explaining everything while we’re being chased by a dinosaur.”

The old man looked into the cockpit.

“Keplar, send me up.”

“All right, you’re going.”

Reaching forward, the dog pulled on a lever, and suddenly a hatch opened in the ceiling above Orion, sending cold air rushing into the ship. The old man was then raised upward by a hydraulic lift, which pushed him and the silver plate right up through the open hatch and out onto the ship’s roof. When the old man was outside, the hatch closed.

Tobin stared at the ceiling. He had no idea what was going on.

“Hey, bro,” Keplar said, “you can come up here and watch, if you want to. It’s pretty sweet.”

Shaking with fear, Tobin walked into the cockpit. On a monitor on the dashboard, he could see Orion; the old man was strapped by his feet to the top of the Sky-Blade, bracing himself in the wind.

He could not believe he once did this for fun.

With his old knees buckling, Orion stood atop the Sky-Blade and tried to keep his balance. When he felt halfway confident, he finally looked up and aimed an arrow at his target: the gigantic, blood-colored dinosaur flapping its wings above him.

The lizard looked down at the ship and let out a tremendous
ROAR!
, and Orion had to duck when it swiped its spike-covered tail at him. Crouching, he restrung his arrow, but his fingers slipped, and the arrow went flying away.

“Dammit!” he spat. He reached for another arrow, but then saw the lizard roar again. This time, a wave of fire burst from its jaws, and Orion had to fall forward to avoid the flames.

Lying on his stomach and already breathing heavy, the old man grabbed a pipe on the ship’s roof for support and looked up, carefully watching his enemy. The lizard was swooping upward now, readying itself for another attack. The old man was running out of time.

He stood and steadied himself. He turned his eyes skyward and pulled back an arrow. The arrowhead erupted with red fire. After carefully aiming the weapon, the old man let go of the string and let it fly.

BOOM!
The arrow exploded against the underbelly of the dinosaur in a bright red flash! Roaring, the lizard flew downward, losing speed, its wings flapping erratically. Orion fired another arrow and another and another, in three perfect motions:
SWISH! SWISH! SWISH! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

With its bloodied, enormous jaws clenched and growling, the blood bird’s body dropped, its head bowed. Soon, its leathery wings stopped flapping altogether, and Orion watched as the giant beast whistled past the sky-ship and plummeted toward the ground. It crashed there at a violent speed, sending up a plume of dirt and rocks and grass into the air. When the debris cleared, Orion saw the dino lying there in a crater, hundreds of feet away, never to flap its wings again.

The old man sighed. After he put his bow into his quiver, he and the platform were lowered back down into the Sky-Blade.

“Yee-ha!” Keplar shouted, as Orion and the platform arrived in the cabin. “That was awesome, O! I haven’t seen a blood bird fall like that in years! That…was…the…krandor!”

Orion unlatched his boots from the silver plate, collapsing into a seat. His arms trembled as he placed his bow on the ground next to him.

“It might have been the ‘krandor,’ but it took a hell of a lot out of me. Dammit, I’m getting old.”

As Orion laid back and brought his arms across his stomach, Tobin was shocked to see that the old man’s fingers were curled and smoking.

“Keplar, take us back to my place,” Orion said weakly. “We can’t stay there long, but there’s some things I need to get before we go. They’re already looking for us. We have to keep moving.”

Keplar set the course on his controls. “We’re on our way, O. Get some rest.”

Lying in his chair with his eyes closed, the old man reached for his bow, so Tobin picked it up and handed it to him. The old man turned and looked at the boy.

“I’m sorry, Tobin. I’m sorry this has happened to you. I tried so hard to stop it. I’m sorry.”

Tobin was confused. The old man then turned to the wall and closed his eyes.

“You’ll be fine,” he said. “I know you will. I just hope one day you’ll be able to forgive me.”

In the cockpit, Keplar laughed uncomfortably. “Okay, Orion, go to sleep. You’re freaking the kid out even more than he already is, which I didn’t think was possible.”