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Luke:
My life flashed before my eyes.
Yeah, I’m a cliché like that. What else
was I going to do, pee myself? Well, it
wasn’t exactly my life that flashed before my eyes. But I did see an image in my mind, the image
of my mother. She was watching jeopardy
and yelling at the television like she always did. A nurse entered the room with her pills. My mom said something about the bunnies and the
nurse just smiled like she always did.
Mom had been seeing things for years.
“OH GOD!” Larry screamed. Glass flew everywhere; my spine hardly
survived the impact. I couldn’t see; a
cloud of smoke, dust, and steam was everywhere.
I don’t know what happened, but I had to get out of the car. I fumbled for my belt and reached up front.
It should have been Larry, the first one I reached for, but it wasn’t. I struggled to free Cartouche first. Larry
was in a car after all, Larry was in his element.
I made my way out of the car,
dragging Cartouche. She wasn’t moving. Larry’s
door opened and he spilled out, coughing for air. My eyes and lungs
burned. Larry’s head bled profusely, but
in his hand he held a flare gun. He
looked up to the sky and fired. We could
only see the shadows of the assailants as they made their way to us. Cartouche opened her eyes.
“Run …” she whispered. I prepared to move when Larry darted a glance
in my direction.
“I’ll work on the car; you protect
our friend.”
“Let’s just leave her here! They probably want her, not us!”
“Luke,” Larry growled, “Stop being
a spine-less bastard!”
“Take cover you
idiots!”
Cartouche
howled. Larry pushed me out of the way.
Cartouche sprung to her feet; she had great reflexes. Chunks of rock smacked into my legs and arms;
Cartouche smashed a boulder that was flying toward us. Larry, though bleeding from the head,
scampered over to his car. The wind
picked up, dust clouding our vision.
“I
need to breathe,” I thought, but if I opened my mouth I’d be asphyxiated
from the dust storm around us. Cartouche
grabbed me, picked me up and thrust me into the car. Larry, covered in dirt, pressed his hand on
the dashboard.
“COME ON!” He screamed.
Larry didn’t lose his cool often.
We were doomed. The wind around
the car howled, but something faint grew in volume. The engine revved. “Now how the hell do we get out of this sink
hole?”
“Elementals,” Cartouche muttered,
“they’re just sentinels, but the rest of the Elite will be here in a matter of
minutes. We have to get out of this hole
and evacuate before it’s too late.”
“WHO IS THE ELITE?” I screamed in exasperation. Cartouche just stared at me.
“You’re Luke Marconi right?”
“Why the hell does that matter?”
“Has your mother ever mentioned the
‘bunnies’?” Cartouche looked at me. I swallowed hard and tried to control my
breathing. It wasn’t every day a
stranger tells you about the thing your mother has been raving about for over a
decade. Larry was trying to pull the car
out of the rubble. Cartouche sat in
silence for a moment then looked at me with her piercing blue eyes. I shifted in my seat; damn she was
unsettling. My discomfort was cut short
by a sound piercing through the howl of the wind.
“Elevator
music…” Larry said, closing his eyes.
“It’s not them … it’s …” I
breathed.
“BOOM BOX BETTY!” Larry slammed his hand down onto the
horn. Suddenly the dust cleared. The ground shook. Cartouche jumped out of the car and motioned
for us to follow suit. The dust had
settled outside and at last we could see what was happening. Loud elevator
music emanated from nowhere, and in front of us were two women who squared off
against a man and a woman. We knew our
allies immediately; Boom Box Betty was a forty-something year old woman clad in
out-of-date punk clothing.
The ground trembled beneath our feet,
forming crevices. The man pairing
against Boom Box fell to his knees, holding
his head and screaming from the pain. The companion, the woman, was
still willing the Earth to shake and shift.
Boom Box’s partner, a woman who was dressed casually, rushed forward and
punched our mutual enemy in the face. Boom Box turned to Larry and called out;
we knew her voice would carry perfectly.
“Yo!
Mind lending us a hand?” Betty
grinned broadly. I gestured to myself in
confusion. Betty groaned. Cartouche, however, was already scrambling
out of the sink hole. She was back on
the surface and delivering the final blow to our assailants. There I was, totally useless, as the others
finished up the battle. Rope was tossed
down and Larry and I made our way out of the sink hole. We stood eye to eye with our rescuers.
“Saw your flare, thought you could
use a hand,” Betty laughed. “However,
our car is now clogged with all that dust; it looks like we’re all stuck in the
middle of nowhere.”
“On it,” Larry replied, strolling
over to the car. Cartouche eyed Betty’s companion with unease. Yup, they were on our side alright. Betty walked over to me and slapped me on the
back.
“Well kid, tell me, what does a
skinny thing like you bring to the cause?”
“Well that um … that’s kind of personal …” I muttered. I looked over to Betty’s companion. Where Betty was talkative and outgoing, her
friend was quiet and shy. The woman had
big, beautiful brown eyes, and long, raven-black hair. She looked to Cartouche and spoke for the
first time.
“Do I know you?” Her voice was strong, but soft spoken. Cartouche was about to say something when
Larry pulled up with the car and handed the keys to Betty.
“Boom Box Betty I presume; my name
is Larry, this is my cousin Luke, and I believe that err … delicate flower over
there is Cartouche.”
“I know her, I’ve got a coupla’
scars from her alright.” Betty took the keys and motioned everyone into the
car. It was a tight fit. I was crammed in the back between Cartouche
and the woman without a name. We drove
away as fast as we could.
“She’ll run about twenty miles per
hour faster now; I made some modifications when I was tinkering around,” Larry
said. My stomach churned, the burgers
from earlier were still making me queasy. Betty nodded as she sped through the
desert.
“I’ll take the complicated way
home. I have no desire to run into the
Elite again. Killed my crew and damn
near killed me back in 2008.”
“Who are the Elite?” I asked. There was silence in the car and the
raven-haired woman sitting next to me seemed to be the only other person who
didn’t know. Betty broke the silence.
“People with abilities, that’s all
we really are. It ain’t like the
comics. We’re not simply villains or
heroes. There were differences in
opinion about when we could use our strengths for personal gains or not. Factions formed, as you know. Even though we claim to be two sides, most of
us have dabbled in self-gain at some point.
There are times when using your powers to your advantage isn’t a bad
thing.”
“Not at all, got me a garage of
classic cars back home.” Larry grinned.
“Exactly, Larry can fix any car he
wants, so with his powers he can restore a hot rod which would have never run
again, but he doesn’t hurt anyone using that power.” Betty snapped her fingers and an infectiously
upbeat song began to play. “Myself, I
control sound; I adjust the frequencies of pitch allowing people with tonal
hearing loss to hear. I also use my
power to have the best tunes to groove to whenever I want, which I guess some
would consider the ultimate act of music piracy.”
“You’re Lars Ulrich’s worst
nightmare?”
“Nah, I wouldn’t play that crap,”
she smirked, “The point is you can dabble in a little self-gain without causing
any harm. Knowing when to quit is the
problem.” Her tone changed slightly, “The
Elite didn’t believe in boundaries, in any
boundaries. They think of our kind as
gods to rule over the mere mortals of this Earth. Ordinary people don’t know they exist; their
minds and memories are altered. The head
circle of the Elite is mostly composed of Psychics. They’re very rich and very dangerous.” Betty glanced to the back seat.
“I found Sonali wandering in the
desert a few years back. She didn’t know
a damn thing, just like a baby. I took
her in and helped her rehabilitate. I am
certain they did something to her. She’s
been indispensable to me ever since.”
I turned and looked to Sonali. She was gazing out of the window
silently. I barely tapped her shoulder
to get her attention. She flinched then
looked to me.
“Are you alright?” I asked softly, she was definitely beautiful.
“I’m fine. Betty just likes to hear
her own voice.” Sonali let out a hint of
a smile.
“Don’t let her fool you boy, Sonali
there is a real firecracker. She acts
demure an’ dainty, but damn, this
girl has the worst temper I’ve ever seen.
It’s all beneath the surface.
She’s a multi, very useful.”
“A multi?”
“Most of us have one general
skill. Sonali here manifests almost every
skill there is. Unfortunately, her
amnesia makes her a bit on the slow side at
times. We’re always discovering
something new she can do, just takes time.”
Betty swerved off of the road and continued along a rickety trail. The car bounced up and down as we drove. “Sonali and I, we’re the Saintly Sirens,
protectors of these parts. So, what is
your group?”
Larry went on to explain how we
came to work for Linus and wound up patrolling most of the Midwest. He then described how we expanded our patrol
region until we were gone for days at a time.
The sun was getting lower in the sky.
After driving around in the dark for about an hour, we pulled up to a
small trailer. It was freezing cold now
that night had fallen. Sonali handed me
a jacket without saying anything. We
ushered into the trailer. Seated at the
kitchen table was a lean man with thick glasses. His brown hair came down to his eyes. His chin sported light stubble,
uncharacteristic of him. His feet were
propped up on the table.
“Well, well, well, Boom Box Betty.” He chortled.
“Linus, get yer feet off of my
table you stupid son of a bitch.” Betty
growled.
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