38

 

“EMERY!” ADAM’S VOICE SHOOK the hall. “We have to go now!” He nearly broke the door handle to the bathroom off when he opened it, his slick body snaking back and forth toward her.

Emery was still in shock that he had darted out the door naked. “What happened?”

“I felt it. Something’s not right. They’re coming!” Adam spoke with interrupted breath, his eyes drifting like fog over her. She followed him to the bedroom, but innocently looked away until he threw on a pair of boxers and jeans. When she turned toward him again, she saw a red sliver near his ribs.  

“I should’ve known. I walked right into it. This is where they wanted me. This was so stupid. I didn’t think.” He paced back and forth, his face, arms, and forehead dripping with sweat or water from the shower. It was all probably mixing together now. His chest didn’t stop moving. “This was a trap. And I played into their little game.”

Suddenly, Adam stopped speaking, nearly frozen in place. His jaw hung like a tortured Slinky, and his knuckles were bent unusually. Torment was written across his eyes.

“Adam, don’t do this. Please, what’s wrong?” A panic quickened Emery. She ran to his side.

“No. Ahh! It stings so much. There’s something there. Something inside. Feels like it’s moving.” He grabbed his side, not wanting to let it go. “I think I know what it is.”

“Spill it, buddy, ’cause I’m on the verge of having a serious panic attack here.”

“I overheard them talking once, about a tracking device they started to use on animals. Some African thing that didn’t make sense to me then. I think they put one in me.” Again, he felt it, this time stronger. And this time, it wasn’t only in his ribcage; he felt it in his neck and face, and it grew every time he moved.

“Adam!” Emery watched him fall to the floor. The veins on his face bubbled the way a child’s do when he holds his breath. Would he turn blue, black? Spit slipped down through his teeth, and the carpet drank it up. A coldness bled in him, knew him by name, like it was calling to him. His lips peeled the more he toiled in pain.

“That son of a—”

The window to their right instantly shattered. And a small metal ball smacked hard against the floor. In seconds, the ball made an explosive hissing sound and a thick gas clouded the bedroom. The stench and fog was nearly blinding.

“They’re here.”

Emery’s voice shook with fear. “They’re gonna take us back.” Each stuttered breath slipped out quivering lips.

Adam read the terror coming out of her, the fear these monsters below thirsted on. He couldn’t let them have it.

“Let them try! Hold your breath, Emery, as long as you can. This gas can knock you out.” Adam felt the pain, the stinging, vibrating, relentless misery coursing through him, and stood anyway. Clenched teeth. Stiff knuckles. His eyes were shifting colors. He lifted himself and stared down at the bodies surrounding the house. The vehicles sandwiched between one another. The earth their meaty tires destroyed. His focus was Krane, broken and bruised up.

“Come-c-come down, Adam,” came the doctor’s request. “We know you’re in there. And we’ll come for you.”

Adam was very quiet. He listened for the sound of the wind, the sound of the world. He listened for bullets or grenades. He counted all of their heartbeats in his head because he could hear them ticking like bombs ready to go off. Exit the fear. Exit the horror. Exit the quiet.

Adam raised his open palm, and in an instant his veins became electric, hot, burning the tips of his fingers. Each knuckle pulsed and gave way to a fiery reckoning. Beams of energy and flame showered down over the vultures, with their weapons and their metallic security. Again, he released it, the power draining him more and more.

“Enough!” he screamed, lowering his hand.

He didn’t need to look down to see that human beings were burning. Their whimpers and cries floated toward the sky and died there.

“Adam. We w-wo-won’t hurt her if you come quietly. I promise.”

“Liar!”

“No more lies, son. I’m telling the truth.”

Another voice shattered through. “Sooner or later that smoke’s gonna fill your lungs. Real nasty. You won’t be able to breathe and ask God to stop me from finishing her nice and good.”

“Lamont, shut your trap. I won’t have you ruining this. Now sh-shut-shut up!”

Lamont backed down as black spit crept out his mouth.

“Adam, come home,” Krane pleaded, “where you belong.”

“I don’t belong wi…you,” Adam struggled, the violent mist crawling into his bloodstream.

“Yes, you do. Come with me, and you will become what you were bo-b-born to be.” With a nod, Krane ordered several men to sweep into the house. With his two-way radio, Lamont commanded a second group to swarm toward the back and break in.

Adam grabbed Emery’s hand and raced across the upstairs hallway, where a man in a SWAT outfit waited. Around the corner, Adam saw three more bodies, hidden before by the darkness, sweeping into the rooms. He let go of Emery’s hand and slid down the hardwood floor, beneath one of the attackers. With the heel of his hand, he struck him in the groin and brought him to his knees. In less than a second, Adam was standing over him, snapping his neck. But before finishing, a hand swallowed his shoulder. With one fluid motion, he clutched tightly to the hand and swung the almost weightless body into another enemy at the end of the hallway.  

Emery went back to the bedroom and searched the bed and underneath the mattress, the corners of the room, and the closet for the gun Adam had brought out of Salvation. But she couldn’t find it.

Adam continued to war. He held a uniformed soldier with a tight grip until the man stopped squirming, stopped breathing altogether. The thought of controlling weak flesh felt so enlivening, so enveloping. They were weak, easy. A nuisance, really, that he had to be rid of.

Grinding his teeth, he held on, not letting go. He could feel the heat transcend his bones, the pain in his ribs and all over seeming like nothing more than a bee sting when compared to the rage pumping into his blood. His fingernails burned into the man’s neck, singeing flesh and throat, long after the man was gone. Adam finally released his victim. The floor absorbed a loud thud. 

His eyes dropped briefly, and he listened for the feet of more soldiers coming to take him back to their cold prison. The footsteps rising from below began to mix with the footsteps on his level, confusing sounds he thought were certain. Was that Emery or another body trying to hurt her? More glass shattered.  “Eme…” he tried. Was she all right?

A sound like hammers clamored in his eardrum. The doom edged closer. He shifted his weight toward the noise as black mist seemed to hover near him. As it moved closer, he realized it wasn’t hovering at all. In fact, the mist was a series of bodies, and those bodies had weapons. Red lights sought him out in the fog and confusion.

With a scream, Adam let loose a wave of energy, a paralyzing force that knocked many back into walls, unconscious.

“I’ll end you all!”

Darts hissed past him, so close to his face he could almost taste the poison dripping from the tips. One sting from the venom might knock him out. If he could stay strong enough for a little longer, then he could beat this swarm. He had to get to Emery quickly.

Before his brain could calculate another strike, Adam was falling, crashing down against the floor. Someone held him by the ankle. The smack of his bones against the hard surface sought to shatter his mind. But he couldn’t let that happen. Stay strong, he thought, cursing at the thought that this might be the finisher.

Adam let his imagination rule the moment. In the dark quiet, his subconscious drifted. The grip on his ankle in seconds got weaker, and he knew the reason.

It was because of his thoughts. He created what he wanted to occur. What he thought in his mind was pain, unimaginable pain, and that pain was visiting his attacker now. She was no match, no matter how tough she seemed, how loud she grunted. Each new imagination came to life when he wished it. Adam pictured the agony beginning in the woman’s ribs, where his own anguish now dwelled. From there, it leapt to her bones and fiercely spread, crawling throughout her weak, empty flesh, hollowing her, punching a hole right through. No, tearing her in half.

Before Adam’s next breath, the pulse he’d felt seconds earlier deadened, and as he moved, the entirety of the woman’s upper torso disconnected from the rest of her body and moved with Adam. He’d ripped her in half with a few thoughts. Shaking the dead flesh off, Adam opened his eyes. It still wasn’t over.

His hearing was growing. He could hear Krane’s words. “Come home, son. Do not f-f-fight it. Come back where you belong.” He couldn’t see him, but Adam knew that though Krane whispered those words from nearly fifty feet away, somehow they got misplaced in the pandemonium and the violence, and he could hear them.
 “No. Noooo!” Adam felt a burning in his chest, his hands. He controlled it. It wasn’t the pathetic ball of fire he had toyed with in the shower. This was fiercer, deadlier. He flung himself back to hug the wall, and with a scream, released his fury upon the bodies climbing to take him away. Upon his next blink, he heard the gasps, the empty promises some made with their Creator to welcome them into paradise in spite of the lives they’d lived. The curdling of blood, the stopping of heartbeats.

He emptied his breath and filled his lungs again.

“Adam!” he heard Emery scream. She was terrified by what he’d done. Standing there, in the smoky hallway, their bodies ready to collapse, their hearts like lost ships in search of a harbor, a sea of horror set to overcome them.

Running to meet her, another jolt shocked his ribcage, and he could hear the whispers of the doctor inside him. “Don’t fight it, Adam. I am stronger than you know.” Adam didn’t know how it was possible. But the whispers didn’t stop, and the unfathomable vibrations didn’t either.

Tilting his head, he lay on his back, hoping Emery would come to him. He needed her warmth, her hope, if any still remained. With the edge of his fingernails, Adam dug into his side and created an open wound. Blood dripped out onto his hands and slipped into the floor. Deeper it went, the hole in his side growing wider. His fingers drifted, cold and slimy. His body nearly convulsed. Emery stared, bound.

“I have…to get…it out of me.” It hurt so much he cried. Tears hot with hate bled down to his chin as the tips of his teeth crunched into dust. His entire hand was inside, up to the wrist. Another red puddle spilled out of him, washing over her hands now too.

“Adam, stop. Please stop,” she begged.

“There, there it is,” he said, his body jittering then shaking. He choked on what seemed like vomit, but there was no way to be sure. It was hot trying to come up. He looked into her eyes and pulled his hand out. In his palm was a piece of metal measuring just a centimeter in length with teeth on the edges and an unreadable symbol at the center.

Emery swore in shock when she saw it.  

Adam prayed she wouldn’t faint. He needed her strength, especially now. He shivered.

Emery bit her lip, and sweat drenched her cheeks. The smoke nearly choked them both.

“Adam…it isn’t over.” Krane’s whisper haunted as more powerful shocks pulsated within him.

“Make it stop!”

“C’mon, Adam, they’re outside. What do we do?  What are we going to do? We can’t stay.” Her tears multiplied. “They’ll take us back, and we’ll never get out.”

“He wanted us to get out,” Adam said, almost choking again. “He wanted to test me. I get it…now. Make sure I still…had my abilities. Dam—”

“Save your strength, Adam,” Emery said, limping with his hand swung over her shoulder. They walked down the stairs, over torched bodies and abandoned weapons. Emery stopped to get one.

The horrifying scene unfolded. The bodies so real and yet lifeless now. Some torn, others burnt black. Certain bones jutted out and were snapped. But the terrible carnage was necessary. This was war, and these deviant enforcers brought it.

“I’m going to be sick, Adam,” Emery coughed. “I think I’m going to be sick.”  She vomited. “They’re still out there,” she said, wiping her mouth with her arm, the gun shaky in her grip as she noticed the wound on his side widening. “What are we gonna do?”

“Walk out the front door.”

“Are you insane? They’ll kill us.”

“No they won’t.”

“If they bring us back, I might as well be dead,” Emery spat.

“Adam!” Krane called, his puny voice reaching a height Adam had never before heard. “Adam!” A chainsaw was cutting through him, he swore. “It will only increase if you refuse me.”

Adam counted the number of bodies on the lawn. Five. Krane, Lamont, and three others were left alive. They were armed. He heard them cock their weapons. Swallowing hard, he turned his imagination on. The weapons all aimed at Krane. No, not all. Just one. Blinking, Adam pictured the other three armed soldiers lifting their pistols to their own heads. Fearlessly, they pulled their triggers. From behind the door, Adam and Emery listened for the gunshots.

“What just happened?” Emery asked, wincing slightly, no doubt afraid the bullets had been aimed at her.

“I controlled them,” he whispered.

Panic filled the two souls that remained. Adam heard Lamont’s shock, waited for Krane’s. It soon came. Cursing at one another, the two men drew back, exactly as Adam had decided.

“A diversion. That’s right. Freak out. Only two left. This should be fun.”

The door finally opened with a whine. Adam was now able to stand on his own, or dared to. His side was stained red. His hands were encrusted black, and a deep pain swelled beneath his skin.

“What’s he doin’, Doc?” Lamont asked, the dip swishing between his gums. He couldn’t keep still. He was being pulled toward Krane. Meanwhile, the doctor walked backwards, and neither stopped until they were drawn together in the middle of the road, Lamont in back, Krane in front. Adam knew they were bewildered. He looked over at Emery while he controlled the scene. Lamont screamed.

“He’s compelling us, Jeb. Using his powers to make us do what he wa-w-wants. You won’t get far, Adam, I pro-promise.”

The wind dragged through hair and jacket and fear. Cut down to the marrow. Snow littered their faces and the cars. The cold dropped from above and breathed over all of them.

“Was it like you remembered?” Krane asked. “Henry and I l-lef-left your home as it was when you stepped into your destiny. But this block was getting rather cr-c-crowded, don’t you think?” A horrible cackle intensified the doctor’s voice.

Adam exhaled, and as he did, he compelled Lamont to bring his weapon toward the doctor, simultaneously shifting Krane’s body around. Face to face, they stared at one another.

“You can feel it, c-can-can’t you? The sharp stinging under your skin. I used it to help me find you. To take you back to your real home.”

Adam ignored the doctor’s threat. “Jeb hates your guts, Emanuel. Wonder if he wouldn’t like to squeeze that trigger. It’d be quick and painless, isn’t that what you always said?”

“Adam…” Emery began, stepping out of the shadow of the porch and into the icy, morning light.

Lamont swore in confusion and said, “Her face. It changed.”

“You did what I could not,” Krane said, almost defeated.

“You’re not like us, Emanuel.”

“She’s qu-qu-quite beautiful, but will she be strong enough to s-s-survive it all? The more time I spent with her, the more I began to realize how unique you are, son.”

“Don’t call me that!”

“We’ve searched and studied and created. But you are a m-marv-marvel, Adam. You are pure.”

“And you made me a monster! You used me. You promised me the world, but you took my life away from me! I was just your experiment! But I won’t be your puppet anymore.”

“You were never a puppet. You are so much more, to me. You were meant to f-f-fix this world. It is the future we all want. A per-p-p-perfect world.”

“One for you and your sick species to rule,” Adam seethed.

“If I am strong enough.”

“None of you could ever be strong enough. I am the most powerful being on this miserable planet, you weak insect!”

“Then m-ma-make us like you. Fix us. Return. We will r-run-run the trials again. We will make humanity complete. Your blood can save us.”

“Like it saved Frances? Your bodies will ruin. Mankind could never be what we are.”

“But there will be more. You know this. We can change this world. We wish to rebuild it, Adam. It is such a flawed, p-p-pathetic excuse for a home. This race is tired. From the womb to the grave goes man. But we c-c-can purify it with fire and ashes.”

“I am more than fire and ashes.”

Krane shivered. “I know.”

“All their blood will be on your conscience!”

 “Our conscience, A-Ad-Adam. You are darkness. And you are the life we crave. This world will fear you as a god. The way it was always meant to be. I believe you were intended, b-b-born-born, to destroy. Born to create again. We will start fr-f-fresh, as a new race. Like you.”

Adam laughed. “You will die, Doctor, before the end of all of your dreams.” With the pistol digging into his forehead, Krane turned pale, his neck moving to face Adam and Emery. Lamont grabbed him suddenly by the throat and clenched his grip. “The world will turn, brother against brother, mother against daughter, son against father!”

“But the diseases and famines and wa-w-wars will not last. Even if you refuse us. We are strong as well, Adam. We can adapt, if we must. Can you smell it in the wind? Can you t-t-taste it on your tongue? The evidences of our new order. It is coming without mercy. Why don’t you co-c-c-come back and finish what we have started together?”

“No!” Adam screamed. “I will not save you.”

“Your faith in what we’ve accomplished doesn’t matter. I do not much matter. This world will become with or without me. You ca-c-cannot stop it.”

The snow melted on Adam’s face. He had missed so much. The cold wrapped itself around him and wouldn’t let go. Emery moved closer, held his hand, the blood from both now stained on their skin. Adam guided her toward the vintage Firebird parked on the lawn. They stepped over the body that had undoubtedly driven the car and searched for keys.  

“How far do you think you can get?” Lamont said, his mouth soaking in poison. “I’ll find you again, swear to God, I will. I’ll tear your eyes out o’ your skull, and do her just to make me feel nice.”

Adam scanned the two men. Squinting, he compelled Lamont to draw the gun on himself. With the pistol pressing against the agent’s fat neck, Adam made Lamont pull the trigger. A bullet chewed through the meat in his throat and shot out the other side. Blood splattered against Krane’s cheeks and clothes, some soaking his lips.

Lamont held his throat, falling to the ground.

“Can you taste it, Doctor?” Adam said.

“I’ll…kill him!” Lamont said, gurgling, struggling just to breathe.

“You were stupid to come against me. Open your eyes, Emanuel. Your kind is a hand on a ticking clock. You’re dead, and you don’t even know it. I should kill you right now.”

Krane practiced a sardonic laugh. “But you are human. You a-ar-are one of us.”

“We are not the same!” Adam shouted. With a twist of his wrist, he caused Krane’s ankle to snap. The doctor dropped to the pavement, smacking his head, his glasses breaking.  

Emery unlocked the car door and sank inside the passenger seat. She then tossed Adam the keys and shut the door, grasping the weapon ever tighter.

Adam stepped into the driver’s seat, straining as he gunned the engine. For a second, he looked back at the frail lives sprawled out helplessly on the blacktop. The doctor and his dog really were weak. Not much of a scare at all as they lay there, crying to the winter sky. He watched them shiver and crawl until the image of the men got smaller, eventually disappearing as the Firebird abandoned the past he once knew and sped toward an unknown future.