It was fully light by the time they pedaled all the way to the hospital. Charlotte didn't have a bike of her own, so she borrowed Michael's, and he used his dad's. It was an uncomfortable ride, and not because of the cold or the terror of being found and abducted by Mr. L's force of evil. Mostly it was that he couldn't get his butt up on the seat, and he couldn't settle the cross bar on his crotch without severe pain. He had to remind himself over the several mile journey, that Charlotte was more comfortable on his bike, and she was the linchpin to the whole plan. Eventually they stopped as BH Obama Hospital appeared in the distance.
“Alright,” he said. They pulled over the bikes and stashed them in someone's backyard. Michael made a mental note in case of sudden escape: maroon house.
“Okay. So far so good. Now we just find an opening in the fence, sneak over this completely open ground for like half a mile, over the enormous parking lot, and into the emergency room.”
“Where there are most likely going to be armed security guards.”
“Yeah, that.”
“Easy as pie,” she grinned.
“You need to stop being relentlessly cheerful. The glare is blinding me.”
Her dial-a-smile went up another few notches. Michael told himself that, after this was all over he was going to ask her out, like on a date. If he saved his mom's life, she would definitely probably take he and Charlotte to the movies. Then he shook his head and got all that soppy stuff out. If this went the way he thought it would, he would probably be burnt to a crisp, cut into a thousand pieces, shot, stabbed, stung with poison barbs, and maybe even eaten. There were a couple of Actives who turned pretty beastly when they put their abilities on. He’d seen it on the Discovery Channel once upon a time.
But the sneak over to the hospital proved uneventful. They approached the emergency room without any trouble, waited for the sliding door, and went inside.
“You're sure you can do this?” Michael asked her.
She grabbed his hand and squeezed. It did not help his distracting date fantasy at all.
“All right then. If this doesn't work...”
“It's going to work.”
“But if it doesn't, because any number of things could go wrong and we could be dead in a few minutes.”
“Always the optimist,” she chuckled.
“Anyway if it doesn't work, it was, I mean, you...I like you.” A fluttery burning sensation went up his chest. It was always something that had been there, whenever she was around. Only now it was a lot more... distracting.
“I like you too,” she said.
“Like a lot!” he blurted out. He continued to burn, and he realized his ears and cheeks were probably cherry red.
She winked at him. “You're a sweetheart Michael.” Then she faced forward, and Charlotte was gone. In her place stood Archibald Lansing, town terror, in all his five feet eight of bald, bespectacled, smirking glory. Complete with beer gut.
“Well if it isn’t the infamous Michael Washington,” Mr. L said, and smiled his lopsided smile.
“You do that way too well,” Michael muttered.
“Now get in there so my minions can tear you limb from limb.”
“Very funny.”
But a dozen people had spotted them by now, and were all making their way out. Every single one of them had that slightly dazed, how-did-I-get-here look about them, like they’d just woken up from a particularly bad dream and couldn’t figure out how they weren’t in their beds.
As one, they moaned. Michael was sorely tempted to do the same. Their moans were all one, all at the same time, and all very zombie. Michael’s was pure horror.
The emergency room looked untouched, for the most part. If it was a real zombie movie, this place would be full of blood and screaming. This hospital was sterile, smelling sharply of antiseptic. None of the soft, welcoming colors were coated in blood. It was just another peaceful day in Mr. L-town. In the middle of the emergency room reception area were a group of five doctors, all staring around at the others just like Michael was. Michael figured Mr. L couldn’t mess with their minds in case of an emergency.
“It’s him,” twenty people said all at once. “The Michael.”
“Oh that is creepy. Creepy creepy,” he muttered.
“I have him,” Charlotte said from his side, only it was Mr. L’s voice speaking the words.
“The Michael must die,” they said. As one, they began to shuffle forward. Some of the older zombies weren’t quick about it. In fact, they weren’t quick about anything. The younger people darted from their positions, people his mom’s age jerked forward, and the older people practically dragged their bodies toward him. They seemed more like zombies every second, and here was Michael just calmly standing in front of them.
“Not just yet,” Mr. L replied.
Several of them paused and cocked their heads.
“The Michael must die,” they repeated.
“You listen to me, isn’t that right?” Mr. L said, sneering. “That’s your job, so listen to me now. The Michael isn’t ready to die yet.”
Several people jerked their heads to the side, like they were trying to shake loose some of their orders. Some of the younger people, high schoolers and anyone under maybe twenty five, started pulling their hair. Michael saw blood starting to flow from noses. Whatever Mr. L had done to them, it had been quick and dirty. Their minds were really starting to lose it in the face of these strange orders.
“We can kill him later, all right?” Mr. L shouted. “No problem killing him, just not right now.”
That seemed to settle them down. Michael shuddered, and not with the cold.
“First we have a problem,” Mr. L told them. “Listen carefully.”
It was an hour’s march with all these people. Michael had only been to the high school a few times in his life. One of those was when his father took him to a state championship basketball game, and he’d been five. The gym, like everything else at the time, had been completely titanic. He had trouble understanding how they could make walls or a ceiling that encapsulated the entire universe. The players on the court had seemed like giants. Even the basketball was enormous.
It had shrunk in the last eight years, but not much. The high school was still at least twice as big as LADCEMS, and maybe bigger. He couldn’t see all of it. What he could see was the gymnasium and pool, both huge brick structures reaching toward the sky, both with huge ‘Fighting Eagles!’ banners. Not far off was the Olympic-sized running track with dual sets of bleachers.
“Remember!” Mr. L shouted from beside Michael, “Your lives are at stake here. The imposter wants to destroy all of you, he wants to kill you and take your children and grandchildren. He wants to break down every home, every business in your town. He is a nasty liar, and he has no taste in music.”
Something in Charlotte’s words seemed to ring with the assembled wounded, and most especially the elders. Before, they’d fallen behind, they’d walked stiffly and jerkily. Now they seemed to wake up. It was the first time Michael saw something like life in their eyes, and he understood something: Mr. L hadn’t just chosen the high school for the size, for the ability to see everyone under his command easily.
He’d also come for the new Actives, the young ones who were easiest to control.
“Are you ready for this?” Charlotte’s voice whispered.
“Not really,” he said. He shifted the backpack in his hands, and tried not to think about what was inside. Clouds had started their lumbering move in while he and Charlotte were in the hospital, and now the first thick flakes drifted down.
“It’s already snowing outside.”
“Time to make it snow inside,” he said.
“Alright, let’s do it,” she said.
The gym had several entrances, one of which came in from the locker room and another two from hallways. The locker room was probably the sneakiest way in, but he had no idea how to get there. He went the long way around the pool, slipped a mask out of his backpack, a
nd put it on. Then he went into the school. Far off already, he heard Charlotte’s Mr. L battle cry.
There was a patrol just coming out of the entrance, but they ignored Michael. He forced himself to calmly walk into the school, and observed the comings and goings of the zombies through the hall. There weren’t many. He wanted to linger. Every bit of his body and mind screamed at him to stop, not to go through with this. But Charlotte…
Another part of him calmly replied that Charlotte, while wonderful, was completely nuts. She believed that their little group from the hospital was going to last against Mr. L’s thousand or two thousand or whatever, and give him the time he needed.
The original part of Michael, the terrified and wide-eyed part argued that Charlotte was wonderful, and she was sticking her neck out for him. His mother was in this gym, and Grandpa too. As soon as his dad got home from wherever in the world he was, he’d be in the gym too.
He opened the door, slipped inside, and immediately wished he hadn’t.
The gym wasn’t just as big as it had been before, it was bigger. He’d never been down on the floor with a few hundred pairs of eyes on him. He swallowed.
All the bleachers were pulled out, and every single seat was full. The floor was similarly full. Down there, two Mr. L’s were shouting at one another, pointing. People were staring at them, unsure of what to do.
“That man is clearly an imposter!” they both screamed at the same time.
Michael looked up, far above him. There was a sort of balcony, a smaller court with netting, where more bleachers were pulled out, and above that, gleaming metal nozzles stared down over everybody, like silent snakes just waiting to uncoil from the pipelines overhead and snap up everybody watching the spectacle below.
But the bleachers were completely full. There was no way he could get up there, unless…
“Kill that imposter, right now!” Mr. L shouted. Michael’s stomach dropped into his pants, and he started up the stairs to the upper level. When he got there, he flattened himself to the wall and made his way under the bleachers. Now he was confronted by a jungle of black metal struts reaching up fifteen, twenty feet in the air. He began climbing.
He shut his ears to whatever was happening below, and kept repeating to himself. It was an awkward climb. These metal bars were flat, not sharp, but still not made for climbing. He slipped several times and banged his arms against them, but bit his tongue against crying out. Zombies did not cry out.
“They don’t recognize me,” he whispered. “They don’t recognize me. They don’t... and I’m definitely not looking down.”
He reached the top and started the delicate process of worming his way back above the bleachers. If he thought the climb had been hard, he was wrong. Banging his body parts was a leisurely stroll through the neighborhood compared with hanging twenty feet in the air, trying to loop his leg over something all the while avoiding kicking zombie watchers in the stands.
By the time he pulled himself up, the shouting match was over. He risked a look down, and found Actives moving through the crowd, some huge, some glowing, some hissing, but all creating instant pathways.
They were looking for him.
He checked above his head. He could reach the stupid nozzles, but it would mean exposing his position. Oh well. Even a super fast Active couldn’t get up here instantly, they’d have to push a couple hundred people out of the way.
But no reason to do it just yet. He snapped the trigger on the camping lighter and adjusted the flame to its highest. He didn’t know the foot high flame trick that smokers did with their lighters, this two incher would have to do. Then he bound the whole thing in wire, so he had perma-fire.
Then he stood up.
“There he is!” someone shouted. It might not have been Mr. L. Right, and Michael might be a super-telepathic Active inside, just bursting at the seams.
Life wasn’t fair. If it was any consolation, he was surrounded by the oldest people in town. This was really kind of cruel, when you thought about it. What kind of monster made old ladies with walkers climb up to the nosebleed section on arthritic knees and bad hips?
Michael got more of the wire, flipped the camping lighter upside down, and started winding it around the only nozzle within reach. It was instantly hot, like blistering hot, above the lighter and he nearly dropped the whole thing before it was fixed on the fire suppression nozzle. He’d just finished with it when a sea of hands came out to snap him up off his feet.
Mr. L smelled like old people. In actuality, he knew now it was the smell of coffee that had been burned and saturated and drip-dropped into coffee pots for generations. Still, coffee or not, he smelled awful, and he was almost close enough to bite.
“There he is, ladies and gentlemen, the cause of all our problems here today!” Mr. L shouted.
“I’m not even going to tell you how really stupid you are, kid,” Terrance Jackson said from not far off. He looked halfway to becoming a duct tape mummy in his wheelchair. “Someone says get out, so you sneak in. He sneaks in!” He started laughing, then grimaced and cried out.
“Quiet, peanut gallery.”
“Where’s Charlotte?” Michael demanded. He had no idea where the bravery was coming from, since his body felt like one big sweaty block of ice.
“Touching,” Mr. L said, basting him with coffee breath. “I think you should be more worried about yourself.”
A sudden burst of inspiration hit him. “You told my grandfather to substitute in the note from Charlotte.”
Mr. L just smiled. “I knew you were going to cause me trouble, kid, just as soon as that lightning kid failed to kill you. But like I said, you shouldn't be worried about any of that.”
“Why? Because you’re going to talk at me for another twenty minutes, and I’m going to disappear just like last time?”
Cold rage glinted in Mr. L’s eyes. A bright hot spear of pain erupted somewhere in the back of Michael’s skull.
“Pain’s the first thing you learn when you steal Mr. Jackson’s power,” Mr. L said. “It’s the only trick that works on you telepaths.”
He tried not to scream out, and failed.
“Now you’re going to die, but you know what, I want you to watch this first. Bring her over here!”
Michael’s chin was gripped painfully, and he was lifted up by his head until he could see his mother. She looked like she was paying for all of Michael’s mistakes while he’d been gone.
“Don’t,” Michael said.
“Or what?” Mr. L suddenly screamed. “Who’s going to ride in here and stop me? Your dad going to suddenly come bursting through the door with the Alphas? How long you think they’ve got before I have all of them? They don’t even know what’s going on here. They’re too busy fixing the problems of the baselines, Michael, to care about what happens to their own sons and daughters. Look how easily this place fell apart. Look how many of us it took to blow down this house of straw.”
He stretched out his hand toward Michael’s mother, and Susanna shrieked. Michael had never heard her make a sound like that. It was something out of a horror movie, only real and five feet away. It hurt his ears, but more than that it hurt his guts.
“Stop it!” he screamed.
“No,” Mr. L said, and to Michael’s amazement, the scream got worse. “You don’t make a fool of me and then strut around gloating about it.”
Michael looked up at the blackened nozzle, high up above the heads of the town’s old folk.
“Actually,” Michael said, “I do.” As Mr. L followed Michael’s gaze up to the ceiling, Michael pulled a three by five note card from his pocket and showed it to Mr. Jackson, just out of sight of the furious Mr. L. His face registered confusion, and then shock moments before the whole place went periwinkle.
Chapter 19 - A Periwinkle World