“Yeah,” said a third, sprawled out with his back against a tree. His automatic rifle leaned against the tree-trunk as well. “That means nobody gets to drink anything.”
“You could have brought the water,” Angelo riposted.
“All right, all right,” the fourth said. He was the oldest of the group. Dark, Hispanic looking, and very hot and very uncomfortable. Ray was happy to note that his suit was looking a lot worse for wear than Ray’s own, even though the chump had known that they were going to be traipsing through the goddamned woods like a pack of Boy Scouts. He was also the only one of the five who wasn’t armed, though he could have been packing in a shoulder holster or belt rig. “I don’t want to hear any more of this shit. Yeah, we’re thirsty. Yeah, we’re hot. But we got to find this Fortune kid. The sooner we walk our section, the sooner we get back to the car and some cold beer. Tony, how’s it looking?”
Tony was looking at what appeared to be a U.S.G.S. quadrant map. Looking confused.
“Jesus, Jesus,” he pronounced the second ‘Jesus” as “Hay-seuss,” “it’s hard to figure out where we are with all these trees all around us.”
“We’re in the frigging woods, Tony. There’s going to be a lot of trees.”
The fifth was lying flat on his back, rifle by his side, eyes closed, panting like a horse who’d been run too hard and too long.
It was Angelo, Ray decided. He was the one to watch. He still had his hands on his rifle. He was young. He was annoyed. He’d be the one. Fortunately, he was the closest to the clump of bushes where they were hiding.
Ray, standing between Yeoman and Ackroyd, glanced at them right and left, then gestured towards the clearing. Yeoman gave him a sardonic, be my guest look. Ackroyd looked at him like he was crazy. Ray nodded, knowing he was foolish for relying on a man he didn’t know and a man he didn’t really trust, but he was getting tired himself, and mostly he wanted answers. And there were five walking, talking encyclopedias in the clearing before them. He slithered though the bushes with amazing agility, though truthfully he was more concerned with snagging his suit than making noise.
He stepped into the clearing, smiling. “I’m looking for some scumbags who’re trying to kidnap a kid,” he said conversationally. “Seen any around here?”
The five men looked at Ray as if he were a lunatic escaped from a near-by asylum, and when they started to move Ray was already among them. Angelo, as Ray had suspected, would the first to react, and the fastest. He started to lift his gun and shift into a comfortable firing position, but that was one action too many.
Ray was on him, still smiling, as Angelo lifted his rifle, and Ray plucked it from his hand like taking candy from a baby. He threw it back over his shoulder into the woods as Angelo started to stand, muttering, “Loco motherfucker,” and reaching for his back-up piece snugged down in a belt holster in the small of his back. Ray took his arm and he broke it just like that, still smiling, and Angelo howled as Ray swiveled in one continual motion and kicked him in the chest hard enough to lift him off his ass and propel him into a tree across the clearing. In the same motion Ray reached out and snagged the gun from the guy who was lying stretched out on the ground and tossed it into the trees alongside Angelo’s.
The guy opened his eyes and sat up to see Ray standing over him, still smiling, and Ray’s fist came down once and the guy went back down again, no longer interested. The one who had bitched to Angelo about the water was swinging his gun around but an arrow came from out of the bushes, shining like silver as it tore through the sunlight, and pinned him through his shoulder to the tree he’d been leaning against.
Tony looked up with his mouth hanging open, the map still spread across his knees. Then he was gone, an audible “POP” sounding above the wounded man’s screams as air rushed in to fill the vacuum that had been Tony, his map, and a layer of the dirt he’d been sitting on.
That left Jesus, who was smart enough not to draw his weapon as Billy Ray stepped towards him. “Who are you?” Jesus asked. “What are you doing?”
“I told you, Jesus,” Ray said. “We’re looking for some scumbag kidnappers.” Ray got close to him, so close that he stumbled back a step or two. “That just happen to fit your description.”
“You a cop?”
Ray’s smile broadened. “If I was a cop,” he asked, “could I do this?”
He slapped him stingingly, left, right, left. Jesus stumbled back again.
“Come on out,” Ray called. “I think we’ve got it all under control.”
Yeoman and Ackroyd stepped out of the shrubbery. Ray turned his smile to them. He was genuinely happy, if somewhat disappointed in the short duration and easiness of the fight.
“You know, Ackroyd, you were right.” He nodded at Yeoman. “I do like this guy. Good shooting coupled with a nice sense of timing.”
Ackroyd shook his head. “You’re as crazy as he is.”
“Maybe,” Ray said. He looked at the groaning man. “Get rid of him.”
The man looked up, fear in his eyes. “No—no don’t kill me—”
“Wait a minute,” Yeoman said, as if knowing what was going to happen. “Let me retrieve my arrow.”
He strode over to the tree, grabbed the shaft and pulled hard as the man cringed. His victim screamed as it came out of the tree trunk and through his torn flesh. Yeoman looked at the shaft critically, wiped the blood off it on the man’s shirt, and put it back in his quiver.
“Maybe I can salvage it,” he said to no one in particular. He stepped aside. “Okay. Do your stuff.”
The man moaned again. He looked at Ackroyd, pleading in his eyes. “No. Please. Don’t hurt me no more. Please.”
Ackroyd gave him a tight smile. “Sorry.”
He clenched his right hand into a pistol shape, his forefinger pointing at the target, his thumb pointing straight up at the sky. There was another “POP” and he was gone.
“Jesus Christ,” Angelo said, panting for breath as he crouched on the ground clutching his broken arm. “What’d you do to him, man?”
“I sent him to a far better place,” Ackroyd explained. He looked at Ray and Yeoman. “What do you think? Him next?” He indicated Angelo with a gesture of his cocked fist.
Ray knew that Ackroyd had probably popped his first target off to the holding pen at Riker’s Island, or some other similar location. That was how his power worked. He was a projecting teleport who could send anyone, or anything small enough, any place he was familiar with. The gun that he made with his right fist was the mental crutch he leaned on to make his power function. He’d probably sent the second stooge to an emergency room somewhere.
Of course, the stooges who were still their captives didn’t know that.
“Hey man,” Angelo pleaded. “I’m hurt. My arm’s broke and I think you broke a couple of ribs too.” He grimaced convincingly.
“Is that all?” Ray asked in disappointed tones. “I was trying to crush your spleen.”
“My spleen don’t feel too good, either,” Angelo said placatingly.
Ray shrugged. “Waste ‘em.”
Ackroyd turned to him. Angelo tried to scuttle away, but he moved gingerly as if he did have several broken ribs. Ackroyd popped him away without any difficulty, as he did the fourth man, who was still lying unconscious on the forest loam.
Ray, Yeoman, and Ackroyd turned to Jesus. Jesus swallowed, audibly.
“What do you guys want?” he asked.
They advanced on him. “Answers,” Ray said.
New Hampton: The black dirt
The afternoon heat had come, though in his astral form Fortunato couldn’t tell if it was a delightful seventy-five or a humid ninety. His insubstantial body was beyond all such considerations. He was worried that he’d been gone so long from his physical body that he might have trouble reintegrating with it, but he thrust that worry away as best he could. Other concerns took precedence.