The Subatomic Kid (20 page)

Whereas others may scream, or shout, or curse, John’s subconscious mind had free reign over his atomic structure. It was capable of displaying his feelings visually for added emphasis. But the subconscious mind is far more powerful and ingenious than the conscious mind; its imaginary inventions cause devastating consequences, as the security guard discovered when John’s subconscious mind responded to his tomfoolery.

Besides, John’s mind was still a child’s mind. His imagination roamed over wild ranges, and through jungles of fantasy. There was no telling what kind of response it might have when confronted with any minor daily surprise, and if he were revealed, and the scientific world got hold of him, the jig was up.

He would be examined and pushed and prodded and tested. He would be charted, x-rayed, measured, and weighed. He would be visited, browbeaten, psychoanalyzed, and coerced by an army of white-coated, humorless technicians who cared nothing for his feelings, and that was if he decided to go along with it.

If he didn’t decide to go along with it, he would be hunted down. His life would never be his own again. He would be moving from place to place trying to hide his identity. It would be simple for him to take on another form, but imagine the mental stress of never being allowed to be yourself. It would have devastating consequences that might even kill him.

“He needs us,” Cal proclaimed sincerely. “He needs us badly.”

“He’s powerful, but he’s just a baby,” Kate added softly.

“Without us, he’s lost,” Tex warned in his take-charge voice. “We’re the only ones capable of understanding him. To anyone else, he’s a monster.”

The realization slowly dawned on them. Their lives too had changed; nothing would ever be the same again. They had been thrown together by fate, and now they were bound by loyalty to a common cause—John.

***

Doctor Leitz had become a complete contradiction. On the inside he was fuming as he watched all his precious work going up in smoke. But on the outside he was the happiest he had ever been as he danced around the laboratory creating havoc and chaos.

“Confuse, confound, bewilder, befuddle, muddle, puzzle,” he sang deliriously. Every so often he would stop and listen to the sane part of himself as it voiced its extreme displeasure at what he was doing. But then he would dissolve into a flurry of giggles and prance off to another part of the lab to put things in motion for the floorshow he was planning.

“Addle, fluster, bewilder, perplex, befog,” he declared dramatically. The words helped to drown out that other insistent voice, the voice that never had any fun, and the words also helped to keep in mind his intention, because he felt like his brain had shrunk to the size of a pea.

“Skidoo, poo poo, lalou, shoo shoo, ga goo,” he trilled as his tall, slender body moved rhythmically. He wasn’t sure if they were words or not, but it didn’t really matter; he was his own audience. If his hands hadn’t been busy programming the finale of his extravaganza, he would have given himself a standing ovation.

He stood back and surveyed his handiwork. He had pushed all of the buttons in the way he had remembered them being pushed before; there was only one thing left to do—a test before he put everything on autopilot. And then he planned to dance; dancing was fun, having legs was fun, what else was there if you couldn’t have fun? He leaned over and pushed the button, and as the machinery howled and moaned, he waited and watched.

***

Hunter crept slowly down the corridor, stabbing the shadows with his gun. Having his gun in his hand felt like overkill, but he consoled himself with the thought that it only took one bullet to snuff someone’s lights out, and his candle still had a lot of burning to do. It was better to be safe than sorry.

For a large man he moved with surprising grace and skill, part ninja and part ballerina. If it weren’t for the drone of the machinery coming from the open door at the end of the hall, there would have been no sound at all. His martial arts training had taught him to hug the wall like a shadow, and he had a chameleon-like way of blending into his surroundings so that no one was aware of his presence until the very last moment.

Everything in life added up to the last moment; the moment the train left the station, the moment the bus left the stop, or the moment the plane left the ground. Everything up to that point was just preparation for being there; the last moment was the moment you revealed yourself, and the last moment was the moment you were most vulnerable.

The light spilled out into the darkness from the door at the end of the hallway and splashed across the floor. It was like someone had left a massive television set on; he could hear snippets of voices talking and singing and he could hear peals of half-crazed laughter. He slowed to the speed of a snake; this was the moment he had prepared for. He needed to peek inside and he needed to keep his head attached to his shoulders.

***

Doctor Leitz stood in the middle of a sea of computer printout paper and watched in awe as the MOLECULAR ACCELERATOR slowly turned to fire on its own equipment. In his head he was listening to the wonderfully evocative tango rhythms of Carlos Gardel, accompanied by piano and violins. It reminded him of home; white sand beaches, blue seas and skies, and moonlit nights on the terrace sipping sparkling champagne with a beautiful woman, while listening to soft guitars.

It was a fabulous memory, but it wasn’t his. He’d been born in upstate New York and had never even left the country. But still, who cared at this point? It was the tango that mattered—the tango with its seductive looks and its suggestive moves, tight dresses and even tighter pants, and its dramatic poses. They were not to be forgotten: a hat strategically dipped over one eye, and a rose between the teeth: a red rose, red lips, and black, black, black clothes.

“Can we please stop this drivel about tangos and save my laboratory from destruction?” he heard himself ask.

There was that pesky nuisance of a voice again, always trying to ruin the moment, but it was becoming less and less insistent as time went by, and pretty soon it would have nothing to say at all. He glanced up at the MOLECULAR ACCELERATOR as it came to a stop. It was trained on one of the computer printers, a printer that was not long for this world.

He leaned over the control panel and absentmindedly picked up his gun with one hand, as his other hand fought to reach for the firing button. It was a struggle of momentous proportions; his hand became both an irresistible force and an immovable object. Under any other circumstances, it would have been considered as the age-old struggle between good and evil. But good had long ago shrugged its shoulders and left the scene in disgust.

“You cannot win,” he shouted, as his arm inched slowly but surely toward the button. “I am in control now!” he wailed, and with a superhuman effort he fought off the challenge. His finger shot down like a laser-guided bomb and hit the target, square in the middle. The MOLECULAR ACCELERATOR exploded into life, and a white hot energy beam flashed across the room, seeking to suspend and reconfigure the atomic particles in the printer.

The printer seemed to explode into a giant puffball of teeny tiny, sparkly shiny points of light. It was his favorite sight in the whole world; he could watch it over and over again, and he planned to. Next, he hit the button that sucked the suspended atoms back into a new form, and the giant cloud reversed and snapped into the shape of a giant sunflower in a big red pot.

He was just about to congratulate himself and admire his wonderful new plant when out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of a dark head sporting a crew cut poking around the frame of the door. He lifted his revolver hurriedly, aimed as best he could, and fired.

“Begone!” he howled, and he fired again. “Scram!” And again, “Vamoose!” And again, “Skidaddle!”

The room suddenly reeked of cordite, and there was a chorus of bells ringing in his ears. He knew from the shape of the head and the haircut that it was Hunter, that party pooper. Well, he would show him. He reached down and opened a drawer beneath the console; it contained another gun and boxes of ammunition. He watched the doorway like a hawk, grabbed a handful of ammo and stuffed it into his pocket.

***

Hunter yanked his head back as plaster dust sprayed into the air, and he ducked down low as bullet after bullet thudded into the wall above him. It hadn’t worried him that Leitz had fired at him; that was just part of the job. He kept his eye on him all the time he was surveying the room, and when the Doc had lifted the gun, he knew it was time to duck.

What had struck him as odd though was the Spanish accent. Doctor Leitz sounded like the bandit who terrorized the town in “The Magnificent Seven” movie. Hunter lowered his muscular frame to the floor and sat down, leaning his back against the wall. He needed a tear gas grenade and a gas mask, but they weren’t the kind of thing he carried around in his pockets.

He wondered where that kid was, and exactly how he fitted into these shenanigans as he listened to the giggles and shouts coming from the room. The MOLECULAR ACCELERATOR charged up and fired again, and he imagined the laboratory slowly turning into a greenhouse. It was an alarming vision; it was going to be a long night.

HOMEWARD BOUND

Tex stood up from the improvised powwow behind the door and offered a hand to Cal and Kate. They grabbed hold, and he pulled them up from the floor in a swift and assured motion that brought them all tightly together.

Tex telegraphed a roundhouse right and swung at them, but it was so obvious they both ducked underneath it and ran out of the door laughing. Outside in the crisp moonlit night they stopped and looked around the deserted schoolyard.

“Where’d John go?” Kate asked.

Tex walked up behind Kate and Cal as the restless wind lifted and dropped the branches in the trees, rattling the leaves with a long slow hiss.

“Maybe he left, because he thought we were ragging on him,” Cal theorized.

The three of them stood still, squinching their eyes to see in the dark and straining their ears to hear.

“Uh, oh,” Tex warned, as off to their right a pair of car headlights crawled around the corner of the building and came straight toward them.

They shivered from head to toe as the long black limousine crawled to a halt in front of them. Instinctively, Kate grabbed Tex’ and Cal’s hands, and in their heads each of them saw their newfound freedom disappearing again. They glanced at their moonlit reflection in the smoked glass window as it slid down to reveal the driver’s head.

“What’s to do?” John shrugged confidently. “You put it in drive and put your foot on the gas, and when you wanna stop, you hit the brake.”

“She’s got a point,” Tex argued. “There are other cars out there; lot’s of ‘em.”

“Look, it’s been a long hard day,” John said, “and we’re a long way from home. Now, do you wanna ride in style, or do you wanna walk?”

“Well, if you put it that way!” Cal chimed in.

“No contest,” Kate affirmed.

“The kid’s got a point,” Tex agreed, and they all scrambled for a door. Kate climbed into the front seat with John, and Cal and Tex clambered into the back.

“Where’d you get this from?” Kate asked.

“Around the front of the school,” John replied. “It was just sitting there, with the keys in it and everything. So I took it.”

John slipped the car into drive, pushed his foot down on the accelerator, and the car leapt forward. Suddenly flustered, he hit the brake as hard as he could with his other foot. Kate, Cal, and Tex sailed through the air and hit the first solid object in front of them. As Kate bounced off the glove compartment, and rolled into the space underneath it, Tex poked his head up over the back seat.