Street. Boulevard. Avenue. Drive. I was an hour into my second run when I saw him.
He was an old guy. His clothes were dark and a bit ragged. Probably homeless, staggering down an alley. His skin was the color of ash and his face was blank. Not emotionless, it just looked like he’d forgotten how to make any sort of expression. A quick check at either end of the street told me we were just north of Beverly between La Brea and Detroit.
I zipped back to hover over him, and a full minute passed before he twisted his head up to look at me. It usually doesn’t take people long to notice the white-hot man-shape sizzling like a sparkler.
His eyes were cloudy. I thought he might be blind. He was staring right at me and not blinking. Something looked very wrong about him, and I couldn’t figure out what.
Good evening, citizen , I said, careful to enunciate each word. Are you okay?
Still wide-eyed. Still no blink. Had I seen him blink once yet?
Sir? Are you feeling okay? Do you need any help?
His mouth opened, showing off an impressive collection of half-rotted teeth, and then he clacked them together again and again and again. It sounded like those little wooden things Mexican dancers wear on their hands.
A fun little trick the magazines and television shows never figured out. I can see all the electromagnetic energy in the air, including radio waves, television broadcasts, and satellite transmissions. I knew there were seventeen GPS devices within three blocks of me, and I could tell you the codes for each one. And if I had to, with a little concentration, I could duplicate them or override them.
Which is why it had been second nature to see the cell phone built into Stealth’s cowl and memorize the number. Focus on that and I could feel the signal a phone would translate into an audible ring.
“Who is this?”
“It’s me, Zzzap.”
“You do not sound like him.”
“I’m transmitting to your phone. You’re hearing my voice as I hear it, not how you do.”
“Where did we first meet?”
“On top of the Capitol Records building a few hours ago. Listen, I think I’ve got one of your infected people here.”
“Where are you?”
I described the alley and she said she’d be there in six minutes before hanging up. The old man was reaching up for me, his hands clawing at the air. It reminded me of a mission I’d visited in Brazil, and all the people who thought I was some kind of angel or something.
I settled down a few yards from him, inches above the ground. Sir, there’s a chance you may have a contagious disease, I said. Someone’s coming to help you, but I need you to stay here.
As soon as I landed he began to shuffle toward me, his arms still out. I flitted back and let off a gentle burst of light and heat, just enough to be felt. His teeth were still chattering.
It’s dangerous to touch me, sir. You should keep your distance. Then I remembered what Stealth had said about language and damage. He probably hadn’t felt the heat or understood me.
More clicking came from behind me. It was an older woman in tattered layers, showing all the infection signs. She was five yards away, also reaching for me. As I glanced at her I realized why she and the old man looked so wrong to my eyes.
Like I mentioned, I can see the whole spectrum. I try to limit myself so I don’t get overwhelmed, but there’s a bunch of stuff I just always notice, like infrared. Neither of them was warm. They looked weird because they were at room temperature—or alley temperature—-blending into the surrounding brick and pavement. Also, normal people have an electromagnetic halo, and on both of them it was just a dim glow.
That’s why I hadn’t noticed the woman until she made a noise. I didn’t see her because, in my eyes, she didn’t look like a person. Hell, how many others had I missed while I was flying around the city? And how were these people still walking when they were corpse-cold?
Of course, it only took a few moments for all this to go through my mind, but it distracted me. Long enough that the man tried to grab my arm and sink his teeth into my biceps. Or what passed as a biceps.
A lot of my friends are physicists, which is how I got a handle on the Zzzap thing when it happened to me. When I’m in the energy state I have no physical form. I’m just a big ball of raging electromagnetic energy given shape and motion by my force of will and consciousness. In simpler terms, although it’s not as accurate, I’m a very tiny G-class star that can think. Jerry thinks if it was possible for me to fall asleep in this state, I’d just lose cohesion and explode like a bomb.
End result, as I mentioned, I am dangerous to touch.
His hand charred to the bone in less than a second. There was a horrible crack as his teeth overheated, boiled inside, and shattered. A whole mouthful of teeth bursting apart at once—-there’s a sound you don’t forget too soon. I leaped away from him, sent out a 911 signal, and tried to survey the damage.
The old man was burned. His mouth was ruined, just a burntbacon hole in his face filled with bone shards and dark blood. And he didn’t seem to notice. What was left of his jaw was still moving up and down. He and the woman had their arms up, reaching for me, as if neither of them had just seen the damage touching me could do.
What the fuck had Stealth pulled me into?
At the end of the alley a young guy in black yanked his Goth girlfriend in from the sidewalk and up against the wall. She swore at him and wrapped her legs over his hips. They didn’t even notice me. Or the two infected people. Nothing like a quick dry hump between clubs.
The old woman was facing them. She lowered her arms away from me and started stumbling in their direction. As she passed the old man, he turned and shuffled after her. They were slow, great-grandmother slow, but I was between them and the couple in the blink of an eye.
I let the light and heat flare up around me, and heard the two kids gasp. The homeless people kept shuffling forward. The woman’s teeth chattered like she was freezing to death.
Stay back , I said. Medical help is on the way.
Behind me I heard the Goth couple scamper away.
They kept lumbering toward me. I flew up and behind them. They followed, twisting their heads and arms so far they almost fell over. I’d seen this behavior before. Creature Double Feature out of Boston. Late night movies on the Sci-Fi Channel.
Okay, enough’s enough , I shouted. I want you both down on the ground now! I raised my hand and let the energy build. Sparks shot off my fingertips, and I knew looking at my palm was like looking at the sun. The shadows in the alley vanished. They didn’t blink. I don’t think I’d seen them blink yet.
Get down! This is your last warning.
The man banged his ruined teeth together with a noise like crunching glass.
In front of my hand the air superheated and did a trick everyone else on Earth needs a supercollider and a magnetic bottle to pull off. An arc of raw plasma scorched its way through the alley, a millimeter wide but igniting everything within four or five times that range. It could burn through concrete like the proverbial hot knife through butter, so searing the old man’s thigh to the bone was no challenge at all. I lost it, and if this had been a normal man, I would’ve killed him, or crippled him for life at best.
As it was, he didn’t notice. His stagger swung a little to the left, but he kept moving toward me. I don’t know why I thought a leg burn would slow him down when having his teeth and tongue burnt out of his mouth hadn’t.