***
“I didn’t know you had flowery bedsheets,” a quiet voice said next to him.
Michael couldn’t help it, he screamed like a girl. In an instant he went from lying on the bed to doing the butt shuffle until his back was to the wall.
Charlotte just smiled.
“I’ve never been in your room before,” she said.
“This…” he stammered. “What... I... huh?”
“Sun’s coming up.”
Yes, the sun was coming up. Michael could see her, a vague outline in the darkness, with her eyes twinkling. They headed to the kitchen, where she helped herself to some bread with spinach dip. It reminded him of the hummus dip he’d devoured a few hours before. There was a great big splotch of black all over the ceiling, like it had been smooched by a giant smoker, but all the color was slowly coming into the world.
“Where have you been?” he asked.
“Surviving,” she said, as if this was nothing much, really. “I got my mom and the twins in a car and out of town for a few days. I have no idea where they’re off to, and they’re not happy that I stayed behind, but there it is. It’s a good job they did, too.”
She told him about a few other cars that had tried to get out a bit later, only to be fried to nothing by one of the zombie Actives. Mr. L had gotten to all the major ways out of town, and there were enough fliers that he could monitor all the little ways out of town too. Unless you were going on foot with a backpack full of camping gear, you weren’t getting out. And since it was winter, you’d have a rough go of it.
Michael explained how he had tried to get his mother to listen to him, but she wouldn’t.
“I went straight home,” Charlotte said. “I had to.”
Michael thought about how he’d sat under cover and watched the whole town get hypnotized. He could have been back at home, saving his mother. A blast of regret dropped into his rumbling stomach. What a jerk he’d been, and how stupid too! If only he had thought a few minutes, his mother could be safe. Maybe he could have gotten Grandpa too. He was too busy watching and not acting.
It was just like with Trent. Instead of doing something, he’d just stood there like an idiot. It was so hard to do something when the whole world was spinning out of control. You didn’t even know really what was happening, much less what to do.
“I’m sorry about your mom and your grandfather,” Charlotte said.
“Yeah.”
“Not your fault though,” she told him.
“How you figure that?”
She grinned. “You really think it’s your job to protect your mom and grandfather? It’s their job to protect you, silly. You haven’t signed up for the instant adult course. You’re not even supposed to have a job yet.”
“Well yeah, but I do.”
“That doesn’t make you responsible for saving peoples’ lives, Michael. I know you took on that girl when she started pulling apart the school, and you took on Trent, but that wasn’t your job either time. You were very brave, but it wasn’t like someone put a sword on your shoulder and said ‘hey bucko, whenever something goes wrong, you’ve gotta fix it.’”
“If I didn’t, what would’ve happened?” he asked. “Some other person would get hurt. Maybe killed.”
“Could be, but you don’t know. You put yourself in that position anyway. So you change the outcome. After you’re there, the only thing that can happen is you get hurt. Maybe killed.”
He sighed. He just wanted his mother. He wanted his father, for what good that would do.
“Well,” she said. “Looks like we’re it.”
Yep. Even if they searched the town, and even if they found other stragglers who were ready to take on Mr. L, it wouldn’t help. He had so many Actives right now that any sort of assault would be suicide. You couldn’t attack a force like that. Look how well all the Actives had done so far.
“We need to find out how heavily they're fortified in the gym,” he said.
“What makes you think Mr. L's in the gym?”
“It makes sense,” he said. “If I was an evil mastermind and I wanted to see everything, that would be the place I'd pick.”
“Huh,” she said. It wasn't a question.
“What?”
“Well, I did some scouting around, and they were all going to the high school. You're right, he's set up his base in the gym.”
“I knew it!” he said. That faint smile was still drifting over her face. “What else did you find out?”
Mr. L had surrounded himself with a bodyguard of Actives. Not just the plain old 'I can change radio waves into light waves' sort of Actives, but the sort who hurled around fire, who could paralyze you with a touch, or Mr. Springfield. All the most powerful, dangerous Actives you could find. Which meant that, not only did he have them controlled telepathically, he also had a buffet of different abilities to hijack.
“Okay, but they don't want to work for Mr. L,” Charlotte said, “They're definitely not gnarly dudes normally.”
“Not gnarly dudes,” he agreed. “But it doesn't matter. He's messed them up so bad that they'll probably try to protect him even if we take him out.”
She shuddered.
“I know,” he said. “I don't want to kill anybody.” He was a thirteen year old boy for pete's sake. He couldn't just kill somebody. He could hardly even fight a kid who was two years older than he was.
“If we knock him unconscious, it'll give his powers back to Terrence,” she said.
“Do you think Mr. Jackson could be that quick?”
“Well, he doesn't really have to be,” she told him. “If we cover his eyes, you know, he won't be able to use his power.”
Which excluded the fact that the zombies would most likely still be under orders to attack anyone who went after Mr. L. They would still try to protect him.
“So all we have to do is get through ten thousand people, into a heavily guarded gym, past the most powerful people in town, attack a guy who can control anybody's mind, and then put a blindfold on him while we're being attacked by gravity girl or fire guy. Then we hope that Mr. Jackson can put everybody back together again before Mr. L gets the blindfold off.”
“Or we tie up his hands,” Charlotte said.
“This is impossible,” he said.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “If only you were really psychic like Mr. L thinks you are. Then everybody would listen to you. You could, you know, break down their funky mind control issues.”
“If wishes were fishes...” he mumbled.
An idea was slowly pushing out of the dense soil of his stupid brain, and slowly spreading out its leaves. It needed more sun.
“Wait a second,” he said.
“You've got something.”
“Yeah, wait...I saw something. My grandfather was holding out against Mr. L for a long time. I mean, he still got him in the end, but the younger people just snapped, like, instantly. And then, wait, and then, one of them got hurt at McDonald's, and she started walking to the hospital.”
He started to explain, slowly at first. Then, as the sunlight reached his idea, Charlotte started adding water. The idea sprouted lightning fast, and before long had blossomed into a flower. An ugly, dangerous flower sure, but a flower nonetheless.
“You think it'll work?” he asked her.
She smiled. “Well let's see...your grandfather and the town forefathers are in some nasty juju, and all the Actives in town too. Probably the keepers of the Keys are down there in the basement of the library turning all of their little sticks from green to red. So I'd say our plan's got a better chance than anything else.”
“That's just because there is nothing else,” he said.
“Well yeah,” she grinned.
But, since Charlotte was a positive force of nature, and because there really wasn't any other plan in town, they were going to go ahead anyway. At this point, dying wasn't the worst thing that could happen to them.
Chapter 18 - The In Crowd