The Gifted (16 page)

The girl who was left surprised us when she
opened up her mouth and out came a deafening siren sound. Then she
turned and ran away.

“Uh oh,” I said. “I guess that means we can
expect others soon.”

“Then let’s get moving,” said Brock.

Brock picked up the pace to a jog, and all
the men followed him, including the injured. It reminded me of the
days back at the training facility when our trainer would get us
jogging daily. I missed those days, mostly because I wasn’t scared
for my life back then.

We ran out of the room and into the hallway,
following Brock, who was taking cues from Tracy. It did not take
long, though, before we encountered more kids. One came in and
immediately closed his eyes in concentration, but our dog, Hayasa,
streaked up to him, ran right up his body, and bit him on the nose.
He yelled a muffled yell while the Hayasa was still hanging on to
his nose. I almost laughed. When Hayasa finally let go of him, the
paper man ripped the kid’s shirt off, tore it into strips, and tied
him up.

Brock said, “When we go fast, they don’t have
enough time to focus. Let’s keep up the speed!”

For the next two boys we saw, Hayasa, who was
the fastest of us, distract them. Then the paper man took care of
one and Brock took care of the other. Things were going smoothly so
far.

“Where do we go?” said Brock.

“We still have a long ways,” said Tracy. “Go
up ahead, then to the right.”

When we turned, we saw a group of kids, both
boys and girls. They looked like they were waiting for us. Many of
them already had their eyes closed. This was bad, very bad.

I heard a couple of our men in back yell
simultaneously, “Aggh!” and fall to the ground. One yelled loudly
to another, “Do you see that?”

“I see it,” said the other.

“How could they get that Elephant in here?”
He sounded scared. But they were staring at a blank wall!
Hallucinations.

Several of our men began to talk in other
languages and could not understand each other. A few soldiers
started to fight each other for no apparent reason. It was complete
mayhem!

How could we fight against all this? I felt
an uncontrollable itching on my stomach. It was so overpowering I
dropped to the ground and started scratching my stomach. I couldn’t
believe that I was going to die because I couldn’t control an
itch!

As we were all helplessly being affected in
one way or another, I heard an “Ouch!” from one of our tormentors.
“Thud,” he hit the ground. While scratching wildly, I heard another
kid fall. One by one, each of the kids fell to the ground for no
reason I could see. My itching stopped in an instant. Once they
were all down, I heard Guido yell up ahead, “Come On, let’s go!
Hurry!” He had saved us. While we were under their power, Guido
went totally unnoticed. Our enemies couldn’t affect what they
didn’t know was there.

“Our stealth hit man,” said Brock. “Good job,
Guido. Okay men, let’s get moving!”

We all got up. There were a few bloody noses
and other injuries, mostly from the men who had been fighting each
other. They apologized and shook hands. We were off again.

Jogging down the hallway again, we came to a
place where the floor fell away. Hayasa came near the edge and
backed away, his tongue hanging out. One moment there was a floor
and the next it was a bottomless pit.

“What?” I said. “How could this be?”

“I guess it was something built for
emergencies like this,” said Brock. “Is there another way over?” he
asked.

“None I know of,” said Tracy.

“Somehow we have to get to the other side,”
Brock shouted. “I’m currently taking ideas from any of you. It’s
probably 30 feet to the other side. There’s no floor but we have
the walls and ceiling.”

“But I’ve never seen this before,” I
said.

“You were only here a few days,” said Brock.
“Did you expect them to tell you all their secrets?”

“I guess not,” I said.

“I’ll give it a shot Captain,” said a tall
lanky soldier. “I do a bit of climbing back home.”

He tried getting finger holds on the bricks,
but there just wasn’t enough to grab ahold of. “If I had my
climbing equipment I could do it,” he said. “But freestyle, there’s
no way.”

“Paper guy could make it,” said Han. Then he
had the paper man climb up the wall and over to the other side. He
was safely on the ground. But no one else could follow.

The climber said, “We need handholds.”

“Oh,” said Brock. “Right. Do you mean like
this?” He pulled out his gun and I immediately covered my ears with
my hands. “This might ricochet a bit down the hall.” He pulled the
trigger repeatedly.

I remember one time when I was in the
mountains with a few friends and we saw a tree hit by lightening.
It was only a few feet away from us and the sound was so loud I
thought I was dead. This sound was like that. The sound drove my
eardrums through my skull. Again and again.

The bullets were so big that they blew big
chunks out of the wall. There seemed to be no ricochet. Some
bullets went all the way through so we could see daylight. Hayasa
whined in pain.

When Brock was done, there were hand and
footholds all the way to the other side, but Brock had to reload
twice to do it. Our experienced climber went first. He got safely
to the other side, showing us the right way to do it as he
went.

As soon as he reached the other side, I
thought I heard a sound like muffled laughter from far down the
hall, though it was hard to tell with so much ringing in my
ears.

“Did you hear that?” I asked. But no one else
responded. Maybe it was my imagination.

Next, other soldiers went across. It took a
while, but eventually all of us got over the drop-off. The last man
took Hayasa and strapped him to his back before climbing. Hayasa
whined, but didn’t resist. Once he got to the other side, I thought
I heard the sound of retreating steps.

“One of the soldiers said, “Look!” We all
turned around, and the bottomless hole was gone.

“What happened?” said Brock.

“I don’t know,” I said.

We all followed Brock. He was the kind of
leader we needed. A man of action who knew how to fight and would
do what it took to get us to where we needed to go. I was glad to
not have the responsibility of all these men.

“Up ahead take another right,” said
Tracy.

We went right and were surprised by a blaze
of fire in front of us from one side of the hallway to the other.
The fire reached to the ceiling and left no safe place to cross.
“They must have lit it when they knew we were coming,” said Brock.
“What is it, a gas fire or something?”

Hayasa was running up to the fire, barking
and then running back. He did this repeatedly.

“Do we have any flame resistant clothes?” I
said.

“Nothing like that,” said Brock. “We just
didn’t come prepared for anything like this. This is the strangest
military campaign.” He shook his head. “Give me bullets and
grenades any day.”

“So what do we do?” asked Tracy.

“Well,” said Brock, “it must have limited
fuel. I don’t see anything feeding it.”

“What do we do?” I said.

“In that case, we wait,” said Brock. “It will
eventually run out of fuel and burn out. And be prepared for any
kids who come from behind.”

We all sat down and just waited. No one else
came to fight us and all we could hear was the crackle of fire and
the smell of smoke. After a few minutes I heard stifled laughter
again. A thought occurred to me.

I walked over to Tracy. “I think I’ve got
it!”

“I hope it’s not catching” said Tracy.

“Can you create a fire, much like this one?”
I asked.

“I don’t know. Not as intense, but I could
make a fire that’s similar.”

“Great,” I said. “Put it right where that one
is.”

Tracy furled her brow, “But there’s one
already there.”

“Can you trust me in this?”

“Okay.” She closed her eyes and
concentrated.

I could see no difference, but then, “Ouch!
Ahhh!” A boy who had not been there a second ago ran away from us
down the hall, his pants smoking.

“That’s our fire!” I shouted. “Get him!”

Immediately the fire before us disappeared
and Brock took off like a bullet before anyone else even moved. He
tackled the kid to the ground knocking him unconscious as he did
so. Brock was no lightweight.

Tracy spoke up, “The fire was imaginary,
wasn’t it? He was hiding in it.”

I laughed, “Sometimes, Tracy, you’ve got to
fight fire with fire.”

We walked up to Brock who wasn’t even
breathing hard. “That was our bottomless pit too, I’ll bet,” said
Guido.

“What a waste of ammo,” said Brock. “Those
bullets are special made. So now we have to remember, we can’t
believe everything we see.”

Suddenly we heard the roar of a large beast
that sent a shiver up my spine. On the other end of the hallway was
a boy in the process of turning into a beast.

“Jeremy,” said Tracy. “I know him. And yes,
this is real.” Hayasa started barking up a storm.

“How many guys did you get to know, anyway?”
said Guido.

Tracy turned red, but didn’t reply.

“Great,” said Brock. “Just what we needed.”
Brock, pulled out his gun. “Well, there’s one way I know to stop a
charging animal.”

“No!” yelled Tracy. “Please don’t kill
him!”

“I won’t kill him,” said Brock. “I’ll just
maim him a little. Maybe give him a permanent limp.”

“In that case, fire away!” said Tracy.

Brock fired at the beast, but it bounced
off.

“Not good,” said Guido.

The animal, which looked like a cross between
a bull and a goat, was stamping its feet as though it was about to
charge. “Prepare for retreat, men!”

“I don’t think we can run from it either,”
said Tracy.

“Ideas?” said Brock.

Guido spoke up, “What are all animals afraid
of?”

“Fire!” yelled Tracy. “Han, do you have any
more paper?”

Han smiled again and reached into his back
pocket. He pulled out three folded sheets of paper. “Airplanes,”
Tracy said, in a panic.

Han commenced folding so fast I could hardly
see his fingers. “Impressive,” said Brock.

Then Tracy said, “And a man.”

While Han was working on it, the bull-goat
started charging. “To the walls!” shouted Brock as it approached.
Everyone lunged against the walls at the last second. But the
bull-goat turned its head just after Brock shouted and slashed at
Brock with its horns. “Aach!” yelled Brock, and the bull rushed on
by. Once it passed, Hayasa ran up the animal’s back and was now
seated just behind its head and was panting excitedly. He did this
for a moment, and then zipped back off the animal’s back and came
back to join us.

Brock was bleeding through his shirt about
belly button height. I must have looked concerned, “I’m okay,” he
said trying to smile at me.

Han knelt back down, working on his paper
man, like the first, except smaller. “I think he’s after me,” said
Brock. “Everyone else to the walls!” Brock stood his ground in the
middle of the passageway while the bull-goat charged from the
opposite direction.

Everyone else flattened themselves against
the walls. As the bull lowered its horns to attack, Brock leaped in
the air. The bull-goat lifted up its horns at the last second, but
Brock was already behind its head, coming down almost on the tail
of the beast while it rushed on by.

Han finished the paper man. Tracy shouted,
“Okay, everything goes to the bull!”

Han breathed on the planes and threw them.
Then he breathed on the new paper man and the new and the old one
starting running toward the bull.

The bull-goat looked confused. Tracy closed
her eyes and both planes ignited. Hayasa gave a yelp and now the
bull-goat’s eyes got large and it turned the other way, but just
stood there, staring at the planes, unmoving.

Tracy closed her eyes again and the heads of
the two paper men caught fire. At this, the bull creature began a
slow canter, but as they got closer it started to run in earnest,
with the paper fires following behind.

“Men!” Brock yelled, “Follow that fire!”

All of us began to run. Because we were
following the fires, and the bull was running from them, it looked
like we were chasing the bull. Tracy said, “This way!” She entered
through a door on the right and we followed behind. The last we saw
of the bull, it was snorting and running as fast as it could away
from us and the flaming paper men.

Once we got through the door, we saw cubicles
and small work spaces. The office. “Click!” We heard the cocking of
the hammer of an ancient gun. A man in a military uniform held the
gun leveled at Brock’s head. Then several things at once happened.
First Hayasa was the last to come through the door and he came as a
blur. The man, startled, said, “What?” Brock dropped to the ground,
simultaneously pulling out his much larger gun, and pointed it at
the man’s chest. Brock’s gun looked like a canon compared to that
of the other man. The man dropped his gun and ran out of the room
through the other door. Brock let him go.

Hayasa was happily panting and looking at us.
I gave him a pat on the head and said, “Good boy!”

“That settles that then,” said Brock. He put
the gun away and stood up. “Now where do we look?”

“I have no idea,” said Tracy.

“Okay, men,” said Brock. “I know we’re
soldiers, not paper pushers, but let’s see what we can find.”

“What are we looking for?” I asked.

“Something important,” said Brock.

“Right,” said Guido. “That really settles it.
I thought you were going to say something enigmatic, big guy.”

Besides the desks, there were filing cabinets
in several of the cubicles. Every desk had a computer. They looked
old.