Elijah's Chariot (The Forgotten Children Book 1) (18 page)

The
group of dogs rounded the corner in a full run, their mouths spread open
widely, barking and snarling. Viktor heard a desperate whimper from his own
mouth as he felt the panic beginning to take over, driving him forward, raking
the buildings with his eyes in search of an open door. 

A
few feet ahead he saw one slightly ajar, leading into the stairway of an apartment
building. He lunged for the opening, dropping his crutch on the ground and
hopping entirely on his right leg. Viktor was mostly through when he felt the
first set of teeth clamp onto his dangling left foot. 

He
pivoted behind the door so that he could face the gray mutt that was holding
onto his leg, closing the door enough so that there was only space for his foot
to fit through. The other dogs were barking and leaping at the door and around
the other dog in a frenzy, trying to get their own piece of the escaping meat. 

Viktor
stared into the eyes of the scraggly haired gray dog, his teeth sunk into the
tip of the boot, not yet breaking through to any flesh. He saw the desperation
in those eyes and the stubbornness born of years living off the fruits of the
street, the undesirables that were left to him. The dog tried to step backward
in order to pull Viktor out of his hiding place and into the mouths of the
other snarling dogs.

The
cool, inky spaciousness of the empty stairwell behind him beckoned, a cold
draft tickling his neck. Deep barking and the creaking of the front door
against the weight of the dogs pressing forward echoed off the concrete walls.
Viktor could feel his leg inching forward, his foot trapped in the drooling maw
of the scraggly gray dog. The creatures’ hunger was almost palpable – he began
to wonder how soon he would start to feel the bites sinking into the rest of
his leg, his sides, his face. 

With
a savage screech, Viktor jerked his left hip, pulling his leg, and the gray
dog, a few inches forward. At the same moment, he edged the door open slightly
to allow the mutt’s head to fit in the space. The long fingers of both his
hands wrapped around the handle and he shoved, crunching the dog’s head between
the set of double doors. The animal immediately released the foot from its
mouth and pulled back just enough for Viktor to slam the door shut. 

Throwing
his weight against the door, he panted and choked down new sobs. The hounds
complained furiously on the opposite side, their heavy bodies beating the wood
in anger. Viktor leaned, hunched over, listening to the commotion outside and
the sound of his own whimpering in the darkness. 

Within
several minutes, the dogs quieted somewhat, but Viktor could still feel their
paws padding slowly over the pavement on the other side of the door. Just as he
began to wonder how long he would have to stand there holding the door shut
before the dogs eventually tired of the game and wandered off, he heard the
deep rumble of a truck motor coming up the street. Some of the pack turned away
from their trapped prey and started yipping at the approaching vehicle. The
deep hum of the diesel motor passed by the apartment building, but stopped a
little ways down the street. 

Viktor
quickly searched for any cracks between the doors or the ceiling, but was
unable to find any way to peer out at the activity in the street. Suddenly, the
air was split apart by the sound of thunderous explosions coming from the
direction of the stopped truck. Forgetting his duty of holding the doors
securely shut, Viktor flung himself toward the stairs behind him, banging his
knee on the concrete floor as he came down. 

The
sound of machine gun fire was punctuated by the panicked yipping of dogs as
bullets peppered the sidewalk and walls outside. Viktor kept his head tucked
under his arms, praying for the terrifying noise to stop. 

The
gunfire quickly subsided, with the ensuing silence only being disturbed by a
couple additional shots. Viktor thought he could hear the ragged panting of a
dog right outside the door, but was unsure with the sound of the truck motor
still echoing off the walls. Booted footsteps marched up to the door and
suddenly orange, afternoon light burst into the dank stairwell. 

“Holy
hell, it’s a kid! We didn’t get you, did we?” yelped Viktor’s rescuer – a boy
roughly his own age. 

Viktor
stared at him wordlessly from the floor, trying to allow his eyes to adjust to
the light and the quick change in circumstances. Furry bodies littered the
sidewalk at the boy’s feet. The scraggly gray dog was still alive – barely. Its
eyes stared ahead, flickering distantly as it counted the few remaining
heartbeats pounding in its chest.   

The
boy’s face was dirty and he wore an oversized military jacket and matching
army-issue black boots. He held a large machine gun casually in his hands as he
stared down at Viktor still cowering on the floor.

“Hey
– you hurt? You’re not any good to us hurt.”

Viktor
shook his head and began to arrange his limbs to stand. 

“Looks
like we got another one!” the boy yelled toward the truck. The teen, who turned
out to be a few inches shorter than Viktor, but obviously much more sure on his
feet, grabbed him under the arm and pulled him out into the street. 

One
dog was feebly limping away past the large military vehicle. The back was
covered by a thick wrapping of green canvas with a dark opening large enough
for only a couple of people. The boy pulled Viktor over to the step, which came
about to his stomach. 

“Come
on, move it!”

Viktor’s
eyes were still locked on the pile of canine bodies in front of the apartment
building doors. “They’re all dead …”

“Yeah,
we’ve started having quite a problem with wild packs lately. All their masters
are dead – no one left to feed ‘em.”

He
helped Viktor stretch his right foot up onto the step. Small hands from inside
the truck reached out and grasped onto his outstretched wrists, hauling him up.
The interior was dark, the only light coming from the opening. Two benches
lined the length of the truck bed, on which sat roughly twenty children of all
ages and sexes, staring numbly at Viktor. He stared back in wonder, before
being forced down in between a couple of ten-year old, thin-faced boys. None of
the children said anything to him, but just stared back at his questioning
face. The boy with the machine gun climbed in behind Viktor and plopped down on
the end of the bench just as the truck started forward. 

Sean
lay staring at the ornately decorated ceiling and multiple chandeliers hanging
above him in one of the conference rooms of the National Hotel. The faces of
the figures inhabiting the numerous Renaissance-style frescoes covering the
walls stared back at the boy in the bright yellow light from the dozens of tiny
chandelier light bulbs. He wondered how long the electricity that powered them
would last – with no one tending the power plants anymore, the lights would
have to eventually go out. Sean wondered how long they had before night would
truly become a dark time again. Currently, there were so many street, store and
apartment lights that had been left on that it often looked as though the city
was still largely inhabited. The strange silence that hung over the streets
everyday as the children trudged from building to building, searching for
secret treasures to add to Pyotr’s horde helped to remind them that Moscow was
largely a dead city. Except for their ever-growing Black Scorpions and a few
other rival gangs that mostly avoided them, they were alone – completely and
utterly alone in a strange, foreign city…

Sean
forcibly shook himself to chase away the gloomy thoughts. He concentrated on
the voices of the children playing around them. It was the end of another
grueling day and the kids were using the last bursts of energy that they had to
enjoy themselves before they finally collapsed in exhaustion on their
army-issue cots that Pyotr and Ivan had placed in the hotel conference room.
There were probably twenty or so kids here, most younger than Sean’s thirteen
years. Too young to be forced to work like this, he thought to himself. 

Things
should have become easier over the past couple of days since he discovered that
he was able to knock down doors just by thinking about it. Ivan had assigned
him as the official “door opener” – the crews would wait in the hallway as he
went door to door, tearing apart the locks and hinges with his mind. He’d
started to be able to actually unfasten some of the locks rather than
destroying them if he concentrated hard enough, but it was often difficult
because he couldn’t see them from his side of the door and wasn’t sure what
pieces needed to be moved where. After several doors, he still found himself
tiring, not from the previous exertion of physically smashing them in, but from
the extreme concentration and force of will that the process required. And now
that Pyotr and Ivan knew of his newfound ability, they expected the work crews
to operate a lot faster. 

A
large, rubber ball rolled across the room and bounced into the base of Sean’s
cot. He glanced down at it, then to the happily approaching face of Zhenya,
Svyeta’s six-year-old sister. She stopped several feet away and held up her
hands expectantly, her long, unkempt brown hair swaying with her nervous
excitement. Sean picked up the ball and was about to toss it to her, but then
stopped. Instead, he concentrated on the ball and Zhenya’s hands just a few
feet away. He imagined the billions of tiny particles that made up both objects
and began to concentrate on slowly attracting the two together. Even though
he’d done it dozens of times now, he still wasn’t entirely sure how it worked.
Slowly, the ball drifted out of Sean’s hands and floated gently through the air
toward Zhenya until she reached out and grabbed it with a squeal of delight. 

Seeing
the gleeful, young girl run back over to her older sister to continue the game
of catch reminded Sean again of Elizabeth. What was she doing right now, he
wondered. Was she still at home, living off the limited supply of food that
their mother had stockpiled for emergencies? Had she ventured out into the city
to look for other people just to confirm the terrible truth that she must by
now have realized? What if she’d been hurt or become sick somehow or had been
captured by some Pasadena gang similar to the Black Scorpions? How would he be
able to help her from so far away?

Again,
Sean had to chase away the disturbing thoughts to keep himself from becoming
overwhelmingly sad. It seemed so easy to do that nowadays – life had changed so
quickly. Before he could help Elizabeth, he knew he had to find a way to escape
from Pyotr, Ivan  and the other gang members. 

Sean
began to review the strange phenomena that he’d witnessed since leaving his
hotel room, hoping to find something that would help him find a way out. First,
there was the toddler in the hotel who’d made the pastry slide across the
table. Sean suspected that this was somehow related to his own ability to move
things in a similar manner with his mind. And then there was that strange
rushing or flowing sensation he’d experienced when the toddler had done it.
He’d felt the same thing when Svyeta had used her powerful scream in the street
to knock down Sergey and shatter the windows. And also when Pyotr had been
reading everyone’s emotions by seeing the colors around them – and when the boy
began leaking water all over the place. In fact, Sean recalled the same rushing
sound or sensation each time one of the other kids had exhibited another
strange and amazing ability. 

He
lay back down on the cot and exhaled slowly. He didn’t feel like he was ready
to actually test any hypotheses yet – he was still in the initial observation
stage of the Scientific Method, just as his father had taught him. Wondering about
his strange recurring dream with the forest and the light that had plagued him
almost every night since he began witnessing the other children’s strange
powers, Sean’s thoughts drifted back again to Jerry. That had to be the answer,
he thought. Jerry landed, all the adults started dying, we had the headaches,
these strange powers started happening – it all has to be related. He quickly
reviewed a mental list of theories about Jerry that he’d been making as they
worked over the past several days. So far he had: interstellar radiation, sonic
boom, poisonous gas, giant electro-magnet and alien bomb. He didn’t really have
much confidence in the last one, but he’d added it just because everything that
had happened was just so weird. 

The
double doors to the conference room opened and Ivan walked in, sub-machinegun
slung over his shoulder, and made a quick glance around before motioning to the
other gang members behind him. The rough-looking boys led in a group of about
fifteen new children that Sean had never seen before. They all looked
frightened, glancing around nervously as they filed into the large conference
room. The gang members gestured at some of the empty cots, barking commands in
their guttural tongue. 

They
were all ages, just as varied as the group of kids with whom Sean had been
working for the past several days. Alyosha, the thin kid who was usually
assigned to the same work crew as Sean, smiled at the group of youngsters and
started talking happily, showing them where to place their few meager
possessions and helping them take off their coats. 

Sean
noticed one boy a few years older than him with dark brown hair and bushy
eyebrows who limped heavily over to a cot and sat down quietly. As he watched
the boy’s large, brown eyes quickly taking in everything from the room, the now
familiar rushing sensation began to fill Sean’s mind and he relaxed, allowing
the powerful river of mental energy to wash over him, forcing out every other
thought. Within a few seconds, it ended and Sean again became aware of the
sound of children’s voices all around him. 

Ivan
and the other gang members carried in some boxes and began distributing
packages of crackers and tins of salted meat to the kids. Quickly, there was a
mob of children grabbing at the food, hungrily beginning to stuff it into their
mouths. Ivan shouted something to the group, rattling his gun for effect. They
quieted down and waited more patiently as Sergey and the others slowly doled
out the rations. 

Sean
walked over and picked up a couple cans and a few packets of crackers, then
glanced over at the new boy with the limp. He sat motionless on the cot, still
watching everything happening around him. Sean picked out a few extra crackers
and made his way over to the boy.

“Mozhno?”
Sean said, using the word for “may I” as he gestured at a spot on the cot
beside the boy.

The
dark-haired boy of roughly fifteen years nodded and moved over to make space.
Sean handed him a tin of meat and a packet of crackers and they both began to
eat. 

Sean
patted his own chest, “Sean.”

The
boy nodded, finished chewing his food, then said, “Viktor,” followed by a
phrase that Sean didn’t understand at all.

“Ya…
Amerikanetz… nyet po-Russkiy,” he said haltingly.

Viktor
blinked twice, then repeated the phase that Sean had just said, but with a few
extra words. Sean nodded, then smiled.

“Shto
eto takoye?” he said, saying the phase for “what is this” and holding up the
can of meat.

“Myaso,”
Viktor said, staring intently at the boy. Sean repeated the word slowly, then
took another bite. 

“Meat,”
Sean said in English, then repeated the word again. Viktor paused, then slowly
formed the word – it came out more or less correct. Sean wasn’t sure, but he
thought he detected some kind of speech impediment. Viktor’s words sounded just
a little different than the other kids’, like his tongue or mouth didn’t move
in exactly the same way. 

“Pleased
to meet you,” Sean said slowly.

“Pleezt
too meeth choo,” Viktor responded.

“Ochen’
priyatno,” Sean translated. Viktor smiled and nodded.