Apex 3: Shaylo Attacks (3 page)

Birthday Present

Molly walked into the kitchen saying, “I thought I heard voices in here. How are you guys doing?”

Melanie said, “We’re good. It’s
Jack’s birthday in a couple days.”

“No way? I need to b
ake a cake then. How many candles should I put on it?”

Jack
said, “I’m turning eighteen but I don’t need a cake.”

Dan clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re officially a man and men deserve cake.”

Dan placed a cutting board on the table in front of them with sliced cheeses and a variety of crackers splayed across its surface. “Eat up. We’ll be making dinner soon if you want to stay. It’s spaghetti night.”

“Sure. We should practice first though
to work up an appetite.”

“Destroy anything that you see out back. It’s all junk anyway.”

Molly said, “There’s about a thousand dollars worth of useless electronics out there that you can blow to smithereens thanks to flashy-hands here.” She smiled at Dan as she said it.

Jack
and Melanie wolfed down more than their share of the crackers and cheese and then went outside to practice.

The silence was refreshing.
Jack had been hounded by reporters for the past few days and the townsfolk treated him like a sideshow attraction so it was nice to finally be alone with people who saw him as a person rather than a freak of nature. It was good to be able to be himself for a change. Melanie had weathered even worse because she had stayed in Ault for the past three days. At least Jack had his missions to escape to.

Melanie went first, lifting an old tube style TV with a charred screen
off of the ground, with nothing but her mind and some willpower. It twisted awkwardly in the air, four feet from the ground, and then the screen shattered and the plastic casing crackled as she crushed it.

By the time she let it fall back to earth, it was no bigger than a toaster
oven.

Jack
had been practicing phasing objects multiple times the way he could with his own body. He was able to fly because he phased in and out of place thousands or millions of times a second, making it appear that he was defying gravity when he was really just phasing from place to place, midair. He concentrated on the broken TV and it lifted into the air.

Melanie clapped. “I didn’t know you could do that too.”

He said, “It’s different than what you do. I’m not really lifting it. I’m teleporting it in and out of position so quickly that it looks like it’s floating upwards. But if I can get some momentum, I can make it soar on its own.”

He took a deep breath and teleported it faster, making it accelerate upwards quickly. And then, as he focused all of his energy, it shot into the sky like a rocket.

“Holy shit!”

He
exhaled and said, “I’ve been blasting stuff out into space for the last two days. I doubt I’ll get lucky enough to hit the Grey ships out there, but it’s worth a shot, right?”

“Hell yeah!”

They both stared up at the blue sky, but the TV was long gone.

Melanie took him by the hand and said, “I’ve got your present back there.” She pointed behind the little shed at the end of Dan and Molly’s property and started leading him there.

“What the hell is it?”

“You’ll see.”

Once they were behind the shed, she put her hands on his hips and moved in closer, kissing him on the lips.

He was confused. Just a few days ago, she’d made it clear that they were just friends.
He’d only recently wrapped his mind around that.

Something had changed within her and he wanted to know what it was.

He delved deep within himself, to try and dredge up his new empathic ability. He had to know what she was thinking and why she’d had a change of heart. He kissed her back while also focusing on his feelings.

The empathic ability rose up in him. He let it do its thing. He hadn’t figured out how to direct it yet so he just let it wash over his surroundings.

He felt sorrow, mixed with desperation but those feelings were overshadowed by a healthy dose of giddy pleasure. But he felt something else from Melanie that troubled him: a cold sense of duty and selflessness. She was doing this for him. She thought it was what he wanted and she wanted to make him happy.

He pulled away
from her. He considered opening some type of dialogue regarding what he felt from her but that conversation could get weird in a hurry.

Instead, he said, “Thank you. I do appreciate it
but we should stay friends.”

She looked into his eyes. “We can be more than friends, even if just for today.”

“I’m looking for more than that. You’re my best friend. Let’s keep things that way.”

She smiled sadly and looked at her feet. “I’m sorry I’m sending you mixed signals.”

“You’re not. I know exactly how you feel now, and I’m sorry you felt you had to do something you didn’t want to do just to make me happy. You’ve got me all wrong. I’m already happy with our relationship.” He knew that last part was a lie but the last thing he wanted was for her to feel obligated to give more of herself to him than she wanted to.

She gave him a peck on the cheek. “You’re a good person,
Jack. Don’t forget that.”

He smiled wryly. He might have even believed her except that he couldn’t get the image of her naked body out of his head. He was the same pig he’d always been. He just had more information than before.

He pushed the thoughts away. He gave substance to his decision by convincing himself that it was idiotic and irresponsible to explore such personal distractions when humanity was about to be wiped from the face of the Earth any day now.

He walked around the shed and she followed after him.

The empathic ability was still working its magic. He felt a deep sense of relief from her that nearly broke his heart, and a sense of shame that made him angry at himself but at her too for putting herself through something she wasn’t comfortable with.

He realized he’d never understand girls. He wished more than anything that he could go back in time and stop that awkward moment from ever happening.

Phase

They ate with Molly and Dan and then teleported back to town.

Before they parted, Melanie said, “I’m going out to Scott’s grave tomorrow morning if you’d like to join me?”

Scott was Melanie’s first and only boyfriend and Jack’s best friend. He’d died during the first alien invasion.

Jack
shook his head. “I want to spend some time at home with my mom. Who knows how much time we have left, you know?”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about that too. That’s probably why I decided to kiss you. I don’t want to die with any regrets.”

He knew that was at least partly a lie, but he didn’t correct her. He decided against telling her that all he had left were regrets. It would depress her. He’d saved the world yet he felt empty inside. He thought he’d found a girlfriend in Melanie, but that was a lie he’d told himself. He’d lost his best friend just a month ago. He’d seen people killed on a massive scale and in some of the worst ways imaginable. The future was no longer uncertain and full of hope. Their end was written in stone and hope was for people who didn’t know any better.

He mustered up a smile that he hoped looked genuine and he walked away, a little more somber than before.

As he walked, he realized how much better off he’d be if his new empathic ability had never sprung forth. Sure, he’d be living a lie if he hooked up with Melanie, but ignorance was bliss.

Before
he made it up the path to his front door, he started to feel dizzy. He stopped in his tracks. He knew what was about to happen; he was about to phase out against his will. It had been happening to him lately. He’d start to feel funny and then he’d vanish and reappear somewhere else. His destination was always a surprise and rarely a welcome one.

He was tired of it though. He wanted nothing more than to gain control of his abilities but they were too enormous for him to contain.

He sighed as he felt his body vibrate, phasing in and out rapidly. He closed his eyes and waited. When he opened them again he prayed he’d be staring at his house still but he was in the damn desert again.

For some reason, he nearly always ended up in the desert during the day
, with the sun directly overhead. Maybe he was subconsciously punishing himself for the terrible things he’d done; his teleportation powers forcing him to suffer against his conscious will. Maybe this was a form of retribution or a way to burn the evil from his body. But he could think of about a million better ways to cleanse his soul.

He looked around to be sure he was truly stranded. He saw no signs of life besides brown weeds and a single, distant tumbleweed. He plopped his butt down on a rock and scoured the ground for
nearby snakes and scorpions. Even those jerks were too smart to be out in the middle of nowhere.

He tried to teleport back home but he knew it was a futile effort. He had to wait for his powers to strengthen before they’d be of any use to him.

In a way, he was glad he’d been dumped in the desert again because there were many alternatives that scared him half to death. What if he found himself on the moon, or in the corona of the sun? What if he ended up stuck hundreds of miles beneath the surface of the Earth, or in outer space? The only other place he’d been deposited against his will was the ocean and the desert sure beat the hell out of being stuck, treading water until his powers returned.

He couldn’t help but wonder how it would end for him. Then again, that hardly mattered when the second wave arrived. He
probably wouldn’t live long enough to see his powers get so far out of hand that they killed him.

Super Soldiers

Jack
felt his strength return. He was burning up beneath the desert sun, his scalp was tight and his nose felt like it might fall right off. Because he healed quickly, the sunburn would settle into a tan as soon as he got out of the sun, and then fade away altogether within an hour.

He teleported back home and his cell phone immediately vibrated. He
reluctantly checked his messages. He had three and they were all from Smith. He sighed and returned the call.

Smith picked up on the first ring. “We have contact in
Nevada at Creech Air force base. How soon can you pick up the super soldiers and be there?”

Jack
wanted nothing more than to curl up in bed for awhile. It had been a long day, the heat from the desert had sapped all the life out of him, and he’d already fought those same Greys earlier in the morning. He felt like he deserved a break but he had to help if he could.

“I’m heading to
Cheyenne now. Sally and Hank can debrief me further when I get there.”

He hung up. In a way he felt for the Greys because they were still trying to liberate their brethren even though they had all been executed earlier in the day. He wondered how they’d take the news.
But then he remembered all the death and destruction they’d caused and he decided he was wasting his sympathy on them. They all deserved a fate worse than death for what they’d done to the Earth.

He
made his mind up that he was going to eliminate them if only so he’d stop having to chase them around.

He focused on his stinking, sweaty body, and vanished.

He arrived at the Wyoming Mountains in the same moment. Standing before him was Watson, Hank, and Sally, and they looked pissed.

Hank sneered and said, “We’ve been waiting for over an hour for you. Were you too busy getting a pedicure or something?”

Sally jumped in before he could respond. “He was probably too busy buying tampons to worry about us.”

Watson said, “Shut the hell up, you two. Without
Jack, both of you are almost completely worthless. You can’t get to Nevada in time to stop the Greys without him teleporting you there.”

Hank muttered under his breath, “We’re probably
already too late.”

Watson
ignored him and said to Jack, “Where were you? Your handler said you’d gone off the grid.”

Jack
moved closer so that the super soldiers couldn’t hear him and whispered, “I phased out again against my will. I got stuck in the desert.”

Watson nodded slowly. He’d seen
Jack lose control once and vanish without warning so he knew he was telling the truth. “You actually do look like you’ve spent the past hour in a desert, son. Are you sure you’re up for this?”

“I’m fine.” He looked over Watson’s shoulder to the other two and said, “Let’s get going.”

They stepped forward and Jack grabbed each of them by the sleeve before teleporting to Nevada.

Just like always, even though he’d never been to his destination before, he was able to find it almost psychically. He wished he could find the Grey ships in space in the same way, but he just couldn’t.

Once they arrived in Nevada, Hank tried to free himself from Jack’s grasp but Sally stopped him. “We’re not there yet. He has to get close enough to feel where the action is.”

Hank asked
Jack, “You can do that?”

“Yeah, it’s a newer ability.” Then he felt the anguishing despair of loss of life and fear of death and pinpointed its source before vanishing again.

When they appeared, high up above the ground, all around them was chaos. Plumes of smoke dotted the landscape. Distant screams split the air. Laser fire and the sounds of explosive armaments were all around them.

Jack
looked at Hank. “Can you fly?”

Hank guffawed. “No I can’t,
” he said as he held onto Jack’s arm with a death grip.

“Then I need to put you down so I can get to work.”

Sally said to Hank as a reminder, “Remember what Watson said, don’t engage unless you’re sure no people will be hurt by your eruptions.”

Jack
put them down gently and then got into the thick of things. Sally rushed forward too. She’d been experimenting with hovering inside the protection of her force field. She’d erect it and then move the bubble around with her inside of it. She floated upwards slowly and then moved towards the fray. Hank crept forward cautiously; more afraid of what he might do than of what might be done to him.