You might notice this, but this is not a direct continuation from the first
chapter. Still, I promise it has something to do with the storyline.
I'm back to original characters. (I do own these characters, ha ha!)
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Fred Small did not live up to his name. That was why he was so scared when he was thrown through the glass wall next to him. He had been walking along, whistling to himself, when the whole building had rocked so hard he had crashed through the glass. He stood up slowly, and when he was on his feet the sprinklers started to go off. That scared him again. There were no earthquakes in New York, but there WERE terrorist attacks.
He ran for the stairs. Pain shot through his left arm and the side of his head, but he didn't have time to worry about that. As he ran he glanced right and saw Pam, a nice girl he didn't see often enough in the course of his job, scooping things up off of her desk.
"Forget that, idiot! That was an explosion!" He didn't stop long enough to see whether she would actually pay attention to him. He also saw others, many of whom he knew but also many of whom he didn't. Almost all were making for the staircase, just like him. One woman, though, was on her knees on the ground. Without stopping to think about it, Fred lifted her up by the arms and put her on her feet. As he did he felt a sharp pain in his right hand, one that had nothing to do with being thrown through a glass wall. He took a step back and looked at the woman, who was sobbing and waving her hands around. He noticed what looked like blood on the tips of her fingers, so he caught one of her hands. It was horrible; something had stripped away all of the skin off of the ends of all of her fingers. He saw pearly white bone sticking out. Sharp pearly white bone. He put one of his fingertips to one of hers, and felt a prick of pain. Her bones were sharp enough to cut flesh. Just then he felt another stab of pain in his left arm. She had grabbed onto to him with her free hand. He let out a yell and knocked her hand away then held onto her wrist, such that he had control of both of her arms.
"We have to get out of here," he said, dragging her along.
The woman screamed. It was a scream of pain.
Even so he didn't let go or even loosen his grip. He wanted to help, but not if she was going to cut him up.
Just as he was taking the first step down the stairs the building shook again, though luckily Fred was able to fall sideways against the way instead of down the stairs. Others were not so lucky, and he heard more than one scream of terror or yell of pain. He jumped up, still aware of the woman's hands, and started down the stairs.
When they got to the first landing and rounded the corner to start the next set of stairs the woman let out another cry of pain. "My hands!"
As they stepped down onto the first stair of the second set he held up one of her hands again. There was even more bone visible now. It was almost as if the bones themselves were cutting away the surrounding muscle and flesh.
There were no more blasts, but that didn't stop Fred and everyone else from making it to the bottom as fast as they could. As they shoved their way to the front doors and safety Fred started to feel like there was something wrong, something just out of the range of his senses. Seconds after he had the thought he realized his head hurt. It was a kind of an all-around throbbing, as if someone had put a bucket over his head and hit it with a hammer. Then it got worse. Screams became more common all over the lobby area, and Fred felt like he was going to vomit. The woman in Fred's arms let out one last shriek and fell unconscious. He was having trouble walking straight, and all around him he could see people falling over. But he continued to push through, and it was then, when he was most of the way to the door, that he remembered the wave of white energy from the day before. At the time he had wondered whether it was something wrong with the building. Now he wondered what it had done to cause all of what he was seeing now.
When he finally fought his way outside he was so shocked that he could hardly keep his feet. There were people everywhere, not all of them on their feet or even whole. There was also debris everywhere. So it had been a bomb after all. He looked up at the side of his building and found that there was a large chunk of it missing, and at about his level at that, although on the opposite side of the building from his own office.
A man with a gaping wound in his chest ran past Fred. "How? How? How?" he scream-chanted, loud enough to hurt Fred's ears.
On the bright side, his head didn't ache anymore. Maybe it was something about being out of the building; he would have thought it was the fresh air if the air hadn't been a brown sludge of particles from the explosion.
Still, his lack of headache didn't make the woman he was carrying any lighter. He saw a row of parked card across the street and lurched toward them, thinking he could make it over and put the woman down on top of one of them before his strength gave out entirely.
He was right, barely, but that didn't mean that everything went as planned. As soon as he plopped her ungracefully onto the hood of a nice family-sized car he heard a kind of fearful intake of breath and felt pain shoot through his stomach region at the same time. She had woken up when he had put her down, and now her arm bone was lodged in his stomach. He gasped in pain. There was actually a bone extending six or seven inches out of her elbow and into his stomach. It couldn't have been true; there was no way it was even possible.
He reached down, grasped the bone, and pulled. It came free with a twinge of pain that couldn't possibly have been fake.
The woman shrieked again and Fred watched as the bone shrunk visibly back up into her elbow. Within three seconds there was nothing there at all; the extra bone had vanished.
Fred lurched backwards, clutching his wound. It made hadn't made any sense before, and now it was just too much. He overloaded. He tripped and fell over backwards, and his large body made a nice loud thump on the pavement.
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When Maria finally woke up she blinked once or twice, remembered what had happened, and jumped up. She looked around and was horrified to find no less than three bodies on the ground around her. She squirmed around them carefully and ran away. She rounded the corner and found herself on a busy street packed with cars. Many of them were honking.
Where was she supposed to go now? Where could she go where she wouldn't touch anyone?
"¿Qué haces?" yelled someone behind her. She knew - she could tell - that he was directing the question at her and no one else. "¡Nos atacan!"
She whirled around and saw a young guy staring at her intently. Scared, she backed away from him. It didn't help that at the moment she couldn't remember how to speak Spanish, even though she could understand it.
He leapt at her. "¡Dije que están atacándonos!"
"¡No, por favor!" She tried to fend him off, but it was no use. He put his hand on her arm and it was over even before she could close her eyes. It was like his entirely body poured out through his hand, into her arm. He slumped over. His clear brown eyes were open but they had no signs of life in them. She screamed, fell over backwards, scrambled to her feet, and ran again. No matter how hard she tried she couldn't forget the images of his dead, open eyes.
Several times she came close enough to someone that she panicked. She was quickly tiring herself out, but there was little she could do about it; how was she supposed to stay away from everyone?
As she continued her pace started to slack, and finally she calmed down just enough to start to think rationally about what she should do. Could she go to the hospital? Or least call 911? Would they have any idea what to do about her? Maybe they would at least know where she could go so she could avoid touching anyone.
Now all she needed was to use a telephone. She kept jogging, if not really running, and when she rounded the next corner she saw it her opportunity.
It was a car crash, one where it didn't look like anyone was too hurt but they weren't about to drive away either. The driver from one of the cars was sitting on his hood talking into a cell phone, while the other driver was lurching around as if drunk. As long as she could get the one with the phone to give it to her without either of them touching her she would be fine.
"Please, sir," she said as she approached the man with the phone ever-so- cautiously. He didn't say anything or even look at her, so she tried again. "Sir, if you're on 911 I need to talk to them!"
That got his attention. He locked onto her with his eyes and stopped talking into the phone.
"Sir, something horrible has happened to me. My...body." A tear leaked out, followed by another. It had been one thing to live through it, to kill all those people, but to acknowledge it by saying it out loud? She couldn't bring herself to do it.
The man blinked once or twice, frowned, and took his phone away from his ear. He pressed a button, followed by four more, then extended his hand and the phone in it to her.
"Please. I can't touch you."
The man looked at her with suspicion.
"Just please put it on the ground."
Without taking his eyes off of her he slid off of his car, placed the phone on the ground, and took a couple of steps backward.
She moved forward, picked up the phone, and backed off as fast as she could.
"Hello?" said a woman on the other end. She sounded frantic.
"Hello. Please, you have to help..."
"You'll have to hold. I'm sorry." She heard a beep and the line went silent.
Maria held out the phone and stared at it. The 911 operators were making people hold? Without even asking if it was an emergency first? There was no way that was a good thing.
"Well?" asked the owner of the phone.
"I'm on hold."
The man was as shocked as she was.
"Don't you know," said the other man, the one who looked drunk, "we're all going to die."
Both Maria and the phone man stared at him.
"I just heard it on the radio! Biological weapons! Turns out that energy wave yesterday wasn't quite as harmless as you said, Lauren Honey!" He gave a high-pitched, insane-sounding laugh.
Phone Man glanced questioningly at Maria, who felt obliged to say, "Don't ask me!"
"Hello?" came the voice of the 911 operator again.
"Hello, I..."
"Is this an emergency?"
"Yes! I...I've already injured several people. Whenever I touch someone...they are seriously injured."
"Excuse me?"
"Ever since the energy wave yesterday. Someone would touch me and it's like all of their energy would pour out into me. I don't want it to happen to anyone else!"
"This...Are you serious?"
A sob burst out. "Yes." Another sob came, and she held her breath to stop the rest.
"Ma'am, I...You'll have to stay away from other people."
"I know, but how?"
"I'm sorry." The phone line went silent again, and this time she wasn't just on hold.
When she looked back at Phone Man, thinking of thanking him, he was staring at her with wide eyes.
"You what? When you touch people?"
Maria knew it was time for her to leave. She placed the phone on the ground and started to back away. "Sorry."
"What's the point?" asked the other man, the insane man, startlingly close to her. She jumped away from him then he spoke again. "Where are you going to go? You might as well stay here, since we're all dead already."
"Please," she begged, putting out a hand toward him in warning, "please don't come any closer."
"Biological weapons!" was the man's response.
She turned and ran. It was only once she had put three or four blocks behind her that she was sure that he hadn't followed her, that she hadn't killed him.
Even so her problems were far from over. What she needed was to find somewhere she could stay, somewhere no one else would go, where she could sleep without having to wake up to a pile of bodies. Where was that?
An hour later she was about ready to give up her search. Still, she had to have something, some way to warn people not to touch her. She found a dumpster, opened it up, and poked through it until she found a suitable piece of paper. She was a little less sure what to do about a writing utensil, but she realized that she had to do something, so she turned back to the dumpster. After ten minutes or so she came upon a pen with ink leaking out of one end. She wouldn't be able to use it like a normal pen without getting ink all over herself, but if she were to turn it around she could use it almost like a quill pen. She put the paper down and started to write. It was a little harder than she thought it would be to use the leaking ink, but she managed well enough. When she was finished it said, "Caution. Don't touch me. Cuidado. No tocarme." At least now if she did fall asleep like last time people would be able to tell not to touch her.
She got to her feet one more time and started walking, but this time she wouldn't have been able to run even if someone had been about to touch her. Her feet were dragging, and she could feel her eyelids starting to droop. Still, she had to keep going. Her mind started to wander. How had she ended up like that? How was any of it possible? More importantly, why did it have to happen to her? She sighed. Maybe it was all a bad dream, and she would wake up soon. Just as long as there weren't any dead bodies around.
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After the white energy wave had swept through the office and swept over them Kevin had seriously considered not coming into work the next day. But, he had reasoned, if anyone came to work under those circumstances it would be the man in charge of editing MSNBC's news footage. How else would the public know what had happened?
When he had arrived that morning he had seriously regretted his decision. They suspected biological terrorism, he had been informed. He had turned around and had started to walk straight out the door. Unfortunately, Bob himself had walked out and stopped everyone. They had a job to do, he had said. It was their responsibility to the public, he had said. Besides, the energy wave had already passed; what would going do to help it? Kevin had pointed out that at least he would have been able to spend his last day or two with his wife. But it was no use; when Bob told them to stay, they would stay.
That was why it really wasn't that terrible of a shock when Kevin found himself blown through a window and out into the open air by the bomb blast.
The fall was relatively peaceful. An image of his wife Angela bubbled up in his mind and he felt a strange kind of almost detached regret. His fate had been sealed the moment he had decided to leave for work that morning.
After an unbelievably long time he had to wonder why he was still conscious. It wasn't that far-fetched for him to have survived the blast and being thrown through the window, but shouldn't the fall itself at least have knocked him unconscious? He only had just enough time to fear that he would actually feel his body being crushed before he landed.
He didn't know what to think. He had landed, right? He certainly wasn't still falling. So why wasn't he dead? Or was he? He tried to open his eyes, but they stung too badly. Presumably that meant he wasn't dead. Could it somehow be that he had not only survived but had stayed conscious, and he couldn't feel any pain in his body because he had been paralyzed? He experimentally wiggled one foot, and found that there was nothing wrong with it. He was out of ideas. There was just no explanation. Determined to find some sort of answer, he tried opening his eyes again. They stung again but he blinked them rapidly and wiped them out with his hands and it improved. It was only the dust he had kicked up during his landing. He blinked several more times and opened them again, just in time to see something large and metallic flying straight for him. He had no time to do anything but gasp and close his eyes again before it hit him. He felt something on his chest and neck, but it certainly didn't hurt. He opened his eyes once again and found that a large shard of metal was lying on top of him. It was wickedly sharp, but it was also bent and thankfully the point was not toward him.
He grabbed the shard of metal and stood up, and when he did he was absolutely shocked to find what he did: his clothes were almost shredded, especially the back. As he looked at them he realized that the only way they would be that damaged was if everything he had thought happened had really happened. He HAD fallen thirteen stories. He HAD been hit by a large piece of shrapnel from the blast, judging by the large chunk of material missing from the front of his shirt. He looked up at his building, and saw a crater in the side of it. The center of it was his office, he estimated.
"Mister?" asked someone behind him. It was a teenage girl.
"Hi."
"Uh, are you okay?"
"Well, I'm Superman. So yes, I guess I am."
She blinked at him, confused.
"Don't worry; I'm as confused as you are." He paused. "If it makes you feel any better I apparently only have the bullets-bouncing-off-me part, though, and not the flying, laser eyes, and all the rest."
Now she was suspicious.
"Thanks for asking, but I'm fine."
She backed away from him, her eyes never leaving him.
"Oh, one thing: do you have a cell? Mine's up there." He pointed at the crater.
She looked at him without answering for a few seconds, then reached into her bag and pulled out a tiny little pink cell phone. She dropped it into his hand as if she was afraid of touching him. And when he thought about it he didn't blame her; who knew what his Superman skin would do hers? He took the phone, dialed Angela's work number, and held it to his ear.
Something about holding it there just made him laugh. Some Superman, using a miniature pink cell phone.
"Hello, this is Angela McBale speaking."
"Hey, Honey," he said. His voice sounded thin, as if he were exhausted. Which wouldn't be that hard to believe, considering.
"Kevin! What is going on? What's wrong?"
"Where should I begin?"
"What is it? Tell me!"
"That energy wave yesterday? It was a biological weapon, they're saying. And..." He stopped. Suddenly he put it together. They were hit with a biological weapon, and now suddenly he was Superman. That wouldn't make any sense, unless the changes were less specific than that. "Honey, whether it was a biological weapon or some kind of radiation I don't know, but either way it turns people into mutants."
"What?"
"I...I don't know how to tell you this but I've become a...a mutant. I'm a mutant."
He could hear her crying. "Wh...what? What do you mean?"
"I just survived a 13-story fall. I didn't even get hurt. Not a scratch."
"Thirteen stories?"
"There was a bomb. It was a follow-up to the real attack yesterday." He had no way of knowing that, but it made perfect sense. And whoever the terrorists were they had to be after publicity, right? And in that case wouldn't they target the news networks, just to get attention?
"A bomb? Oh my god! Are you...is everyone else okay?"
Kevin sighed. He hadn't put much thought into it, and the reason was clear. Everyone else was NOT okay. Most likely everyone from Bob to the temps was now flying with the angels. It was a bad day to have been a temp.
Of course there was always hope. He had survived; why couldn't a few of the others have survived also? Just because his kind of invincibility wasn't even common enough to have appeared on the supposedly exhaustive list of mutations he had studied four or five months before; that didn't mean it was impossible.
"Oh, Sweetie," said Angela. She knew what his silence meant. "What now?"
The question caught him entirely off guard. He really hadn't thought about the future at all. What would happen? They wouldn't exactly be able to continue as if nothing had happened, especially not if everyone was suddenly going to turn into a mutant. Who knew what was happening? "We have to get out of New York. We have to get far away. Don't even bother to tell your boss. Just leave. We have to get out of here."
"What about everyone else? If that wave was a biological weapon won't we be spreading it?"
"I don't think we will." Actually, that was a flat lie. He didn't see any reason to believe that they wouldn't spread it. But he didn't care. They had to get out.
He hit the end button without bothering to say goodbye. There wasn't time for that kind of thing anymore. He handed the phone back to the girl, whose eyes were so wide they had to have been drying out.
"Thanks. And if I were you, I would get out of here also."
I'm back to original characters. (I do own these characters, ha ha!)
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Fred Small did not live up to his name. That was why he was so scared when he was thrown through the glass wall next to him. He had been walking along, whistling to himself, when the whole building had rocked so hard he had crashed through the glass. He stood up slowly, and when he was on his feet the sprinklers started to go off. That scared him again. There were no earthquakes in New York, but there WERE terrorist attacks.
He ran for the stairs. Pain shot through his left arm and the side of his head, but he didn't have time to worry about that. As he ran he glanced right and saw Pam, a nice girl he didn't see often enough in the course of his job, scooping things up off of her desk.
"Forget that, idiot! That was an explosion!" He didn't stop long enough to see whether she would actually pay attention to him. He also saw others, many of whom he knew but also many of whom he didn't. Almost all were making for the staircase, just like him. One woman, though, was on her knees on the ground. Without stopping to think about it, Fred lifted her up by the arms and put her on her feet. As he did he felt a sharp pain in his right hand, one that had nothing to do with being thrown through a glass wall. He took a step back and looked at the woman, who was sobbing and waving her hands around. He noticed what looked like blood on the tips of her fingers, so he caught one of her hands. It was horrible; something had stripped away all of the skin off of the ends of all of her fingers. He saw pearly white bone sticking out. Sharp pearly white bone. He put one of his fingertips to one of hers, and felt a prick of pain. Her bones were sharp enough to cut flesh. Just then he felt another stab of pain in his left arm. She had grabbed onto to him with her free hand. He let out a yell and knocked her hand away then held onto her wrist, such that he had control of both of her arms.
"We have to get out of here," he said, dragging her along.
The woman screamed. It was a scream of pain.
Even so he didn't let go or even loosen his grip. He wanted to help, but not if she was going to cut him up.
Just as he was taking the first step down the stairs the building shook again, though luckily Fred was able to fall sideways against the way instead of down the stairs. Others were not so lucky, and he heard more than one scream of terror or yell of pain. He jumped up, still aware of the woman's hands, and started down the stairs.
When they got to the first landing and rounded the corner to start the next set of stairs the woman let out another cry of pain. "My hands!"
As they stepped down onto the first stair of the second set he held up one of her hands again. There was even more bone visible now. It was almost as if the bones themselves were cutting away the surrounding muscle and flesh.
There were no more blasts, but that didn't stop Fred and everyone else from making it to the bottom as fast as they could. As they shoved their way to the front doors and safety Fred started to feel like there was something wrong, something just out of the range of his senses. Seconds after he had the thought he realized his head hurt. It was a kind of an all-around throbbing, as if someone had put a bucket over his head and hit it with a hammer. Then it got worse. Screams became more common all over the lobby area, and Fred felt like he was going to vomit. The woman in Fred's arms let out one last shriek and fell unconscious. He was having trouble walking straight, and all around him he could see people falling over. But he continued to push through, and it was then, when he was most of the way to the door, that he remembered the wave of white energy from the day before. At the time he had wondered whether it was something wrong with the building. Now he wondered what it had done to cause all of what he was seeing now.
When he finally fought his way outside he was so shocked that he could hardly keep his feet. There were people everywhere, not all of them on their feet or even whole. There was also debris everywhere. So it had been a bomb after all. He looked up at the side of his building and found that there was a large chunk of it missing, and at about his level at that, although on the opposite side of the building from his own office.
A man with a gaping wound in his chest ran past Fred. "How? How? How?" he scream-chanted, loud enough to hurt Fred's ears.
On the bright side, his head didn't ache anymore. Maybe it was something about being out of the building; he would have thought it was the fresh air if the air hadn't been a brown sludge of particles from the explosion.
Still, his lack of headache didn't make the woman he was carrying any lighter. He saw a row of parked card across the street and lurched toward them, thinking he could make it over and put the woman down on top of one of them before his strength gave out entirely.
He was right, barely, but that didn't mean that everything went as planned. As soon as he plopped her ungracefully onto the hood of a nice family-sized car he heard a kind of fearful intake of breath and felt pain shoot through his stomach region at the same time. She had woken up when he had put her down, and now her arm bone was lodged in his stomach. He gasped in pain. There was actually a bone extending six or seven inches out of her elbow and into his stomach. It couldn't have been true; there was no way it was even possible.
He reached down, grasped the bone, and pulled. It came free with a twinge of pain that couldn't possibly have been fake.
The woman shrieked again and Fred watched as the bone shrunk visibly back up into her elbow. Within three seconds there was nothing there at all; the extra bone had vanished.
Fred lurched backwards, clutching his wound. It made hadn't made any sense before, and now it was just too much. He overloaded. He tripped and fell over backwards, and his large body made a nice loud thump on the pavement.
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When Maria finally woke up she blinked once or twice, remembered what had happened, and jumped up. She looked around and was horrified to find no less than three bodies on the ground around her. She squirmed around them carefully and ran away. She rounded the corner and found herself on a busy street packed with cars. Many of them were honking.
Where was she supposed to go now? Where could she go where she wouldn't touch anyone?
"¿Qué haces?" yelled someone behind her. She knew - she could tell - that he was directing the question at her and no one else. "¡Nos atacan!"
She whirled around and saw a young guy staring at her intently. Scared, she backed away from him. It didn't help that at the moment she couldn't remember how to speak Spanish, even though she could understand it.
He leapt at her. "¡Dije que están atacándonos!"
"¡No, por favor!" She tried to fend him off, but it was no use. He put his hand on her arm and it was over even before she could close her eyes. It was like his entirely body poured out through his hand, into her arm. He slumped over. His clear brown eyes were open but they had no signs of life in them. She screamed, fell over backwards, scrambled to her feet, and ran again. No matter how hard she tried she couldn't forget the images of his dead, open eyes.
Several times she came close enough to someone that she panicked. She was quickly tiring herself out, but there was little she could do about it; how was she supposed to stay away from everyone?
As she continued her pace started to slack, and finally she calmed down just enough to start to think rationally about what she should do. Could she go to the hospital? Or least call 911? Would they have any idea what to do about her? Maybe they would at least know where she could go so she could avoid touching anyone.
Now all she needed was to use a telephone. She kept jogging, if not really running, and when she rounded the next corner she saw it her opportunity.
It was a car crash, one where it didn't look like anyone was too hurt but they weren't about to drive away either. The driver from one of the cars was sitting on his hood talking into a cell phone, while the other driver was lurching around as if drunk. As long as she could get the one with the phone to give it to her without either of them touching her she would be fine.
"Please, sir," she said as she approached the man with the phone ever-so- cautiously. He didn't say anything or even look at her, so she tried again. "Sir, if you're on 911 I need to talk to them!"
That got his attention. He locked onto her with his eyes and stopped talking into the phone.
"Sir, something horrible has happened to me. My...body." A tear leaked out, followed by another. It had been one thing to live through it, to kill all those people, but to acknowledge it by saying it out loud? She couldn't bring herself to do it.
The man blinked once or twice, frowned, and took his phone away from his ear. He pressed a button, followed by four more, then extended his hand and the phone in it to her.
"Please. I can't touch you."
The man looked at her with suspicion.
"Just please put it on the ground."
Without taking his eyes off of her he slid off of his car, placed the phone on the ground, and took a couple of steps backward.
She moved forward, picked up the phone, and backed off as fast as she could.
"Hello?" said a woman on the other end. She sounded frantic.
"Hello. Please, you have to help..."
"You'll have to hold. I'm sorry." She heard a beep and the line went silent.
Maria held out the phone and stared at it. The 911 operators were making people hold? Without even asking if it was an emergency first? There was no way that was a good thing.
"Well?" asked the owner of the phone.
"I'm on hold."
The man was as shocked as she was.
"Don't you know," said the other man, the one who looked drunk, "we're all going to die."
Both Maria and the phone man stared at him.
"I just heard it on the radio! Biological weapons! Turns out that energy wave yesterday wasn't quite as harmless as you said, Lauren Honey!" He gave a high-pitched, insane-sounding laugh.
Phone Man glanced questioningly at Maria, who felt obliged to say, "Don't ask me!"
"Hello?" came the voice of the 911 operator again.
"Hello, I..."
"Is this an emergency?"
"Yes! I...I've already injured several people. Whenever I touch someone...they are seriously injured."
"Excuse me?"
"Ever since the energy wave yesterday. Someone would touch me and it's like all of their energy would pour out into me. I don't want it to happen to anyone else!"
"This...Are you serious?"
A sob burst out. "Yes." Another sob came, and she held her breath to stop the rest.
"Ma'am, I...You'll have to stay away from other people."
"I know, but how?"
"I'm sorry." The phone line went silent again, and this time she wasn't just on hold.
When she looked back at Phone Man, thinking of thanking him, he was staring at her with wide eyes.
"You what? When you touch people?"
Maria knew it was time for her to leave. She placed the phone on the ground and started to back away. "Sorry."
"What's the point?" asked the other man, the insane man, startlingly close to her. She jumped away from him then he spoke again. "Where are you going to go? You might as well stay here, since we're all dead already."
"Please," she begged, putting out a hand toward him in warning, "please don't come any closer."
"Biological weapons!" was the man's response.
She turned and ran. It was only once she had put three or four blocks behind her that she was sure that he hadn't followed her, that she hadn't killed him.
Even so her problems were far from over. What she needed was to find somewhere she could stay, somewhere no one else would go, where she could sleep without having to wake up to a pile of bodies. Where was that?
An hour later she was about ready to give up her search. Still, she had to have something, some way to warn people not to touch her. She found a dumpster, opened it up, and poked through it until she found a suitable piece of paper. She was a little less sure what to do about a writing utensil, but she realized that she had to do something, so she turned back to the dumpster. After ten minutes or so she came upon a pen with ink leaking out of one end. She wouldn't be able to use it like a normal pen without getting ink all over herself, but if she were to turn it around she could use it almost like a quill pen. She put the paper down and started to write. It was a little harder than she thought it would be to use the leaking ink, but she managed well enough. When she was finished it said, "Caution. Don't touch me. Cuidado. No tocarme." At least now if she did fall asleep like last time people would be able to tell not to touch her.
She got to her feet one more time and started walking, but this time she wouldn't have been able to run even if someone had been about to touch her. Her feet were dragging, and she could feel her eyelids starting to droop. Still, she had to keep going. Her mind started to wander. How had she ended up like that? How was any of it possible? More importantly, why did it have to happen to her? She sighed. Maybe it was all a bad dream, and she would wake up soon. Just as long as there weren't any dead bodies around.
................................................
After the white energy wave had swept through the office and swept over them Kevin had seriously considered not coming into work the next day. But, he had reasoned, if anyone came to work under those circumstances it would be the man in charge of editing MSNBC's news footage. How else would the public know what had happened?
When he had arrived that morning he had seriously regretted his decision. They suspected biological terrorism, he had been informed. He had turned around and had started to walk straight out the door. Unfortunately, Bob himself had walked out and stopped everyone. They had a job to do, he had said. It was their responsibility to the public, he had said. Besides, the energy wave had already passed; what would going do to help it? Kevin had pointed out that at least he would have been able to spend his last day or two with his wife. But it was no use; when Bob told them to stay, they would stay.
That was why it really wasn't that terrible of a shock when Kevin found himself blown through a window and out into the open air by the bomb blast.
The fall was relatively peaceful. An image of his wife Angela bubbled up in his mind and he felt a strange kind of almost detached regret. His fate had been sealed the moment he had decided to leave for work that morning.
After an unbelievably long time he had to wonder why he was still conscious. It wasn't that far-fetched for him to have survived the blast and being thrown through the window, but shouldn't the fall itself at least have knocked him unconscious? He only had just enough time to fear that he would actually feel his body being crushed before he landed.
He didn't know what to think. He had landed, right? He certainly wasn't still falling. So why wasn't he dead? Or was he? He tried to open his eyes, but they stung too badly. Presumably that meant he wasn't dead. Could it somehow be that he had not only survived but had stayed conscious, and he couldn't feel any pain in his body because he had been paralyzed? He experimentally wiggled one foot, and found that there was nothing wrong with it. He was out of ideas. There was just no explanation. Determined to find some sort of answer, he tried opening his eyes again. They stung again but he blinked them rapidly and wiped them out with his hands and it improved. It was only the dust he had kicked up during his landing. He blinked several more times and opened them again, just in time to see something large and metallic flying straight for him. He had no time to do anything but gasp and close his eyes again before it hit him. He felt something on his chest and neck, but it certainly didn't hurt. He opened his eyes once again and found that a large shard of metal was lying on top of him. It was wickedly sharp, but it was also bent and thankfully the point was not toward him.
He grabbed the shard of metal and stood up, and when he did he was absolutely shocked to find what he did: his clothes were almost shredded, especially the back. As he looked at them he realized that the only way they would be that damaged was if everything he had thought happened had really happened. He HAD fallen thirteen stories. He HAD been hit by a large piece of shrapnel from the blast, judging by the large chunk of material missing from the front of his shirt. He looked up at his building, and saw a crater in the side of it. The center of it was his office, he estimated.
"Mister?" asked someone behind him. It was a teenage girl.
"Hi."
"Uh, are you okay?"
"Well, I'm Superman. So yes, I guess I am."
She blinked at him, confused.
"Don't worry; I'm as confused as you are." He paused. "If it makes you feel any better I apparently only have the bullets-bouncing-off-me part, though, and not the flying, laser eyes, and all the rest."
Now she was suspicious.
"Thanks for asking, but I'm fine."
She backed away from him, her eyes never leaving him.
"Oh, one thing: do you have a cell? Mine's up there." He pointed at the crater.
She looked at him without answering for a few seconds, then reached into her bag and pulled out a tiny little pink cell phone. She dropped it into his hand as if she was afraid of touching him. And when he thought about it he didn't blame her; who knew what his Superman skin would do hers? He took the phone, dialed Angela's work number, and held it to his ear.
Something about holding it there just made him laugh. Some Superman, using a miniature pink cell phone.
"Hello, this is Angela McBale speaking."
"Hey, Honey," he said. His voice sounded thin, as if he were exhausted. Which wouldn't be that hard to believe, considering.
"Kevin! What is going on? What's wrong?"
"Where should I begin?"
"What is it? Tell me!"
"That energy wave yesterday? It was a biological weapon, they're saying. And..." He stopped. Suddenly he put it together. They were hit with a biological weapon, and now suddenly he was Superman. That wouldn't make any sense, unless the changes were less specific than that. "Honey, whether it was a biological weapon or some kind of radiation I don't know, but either way it turns people into mutants."
"What?"
"I...I don't know how to tell you this but I've become a...a mutant. I'm a mutant."
He could hear her crying. "Wh...what? What do you mean?"
"I just survived a 13-story fall. I didn't even get hurt. Not a scratch."
"Thirteen stories?"
"There was a bomb. It was a follow-up to the real attack yesterday." He had no way of knowing that, but it made perfect sense. And whoever the terrorists were they had to be after publicity, right? And in that case wouldn't they target the news networks, just to get attention?
"A bomb? Oh my god! Are you...is everyone else okay?"
Kevin sighed. He hadn't put much thought into it, and the reason was clear. Everyone else was NOT okay. Most likely everyone from Bob to the temps was now flying with the angels. It was a bad day to have been a temp.
Of course there was always hope. He had survived; why couldn't a few of the others have survived also? Just because his kind of invincibility wasn't even common enough to have appeared on the supposedly exhaustive list of mutations he had studied four or five months before; that didn't mean it was impossible.
"Oh, Sweetie," said Angela. She knew what his silence meant. "What now?"
The question caught him entirely off guard. He really hadn't thought about the future at all. What would happen? They wouldn't exactly be able to continue as if nothing had happened, especially not if everyone was suddenly going to turn into a mutant. Who knew what was happening? "We have to get out of New York. We have to get far away. Don't even bother to tell your boss. Just leave. We have to get out of here."
"What about everyone else? If that wave was a biological weapon won't we be spreading it?"
"I don't think we will." Actually, that was a flat lie. He didn't see any reason to believe that they wouldn't spread it. But he didn't care. They had to get out.
He hit the end button without bothering to say goodbye. There wasn't time for that kind of thing anymore. He handed the phone back to the girl, whose eyes were so wide they had to have been drying out.
"Thanks. And if I were you, I would get out of here also."