John Miller - Death Draws Five

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.

He drifted aloft, keeping a watchful eye on the unfolding landscape as he scudded about like an unseen cloud. After all, he could get lucky and stumble upon the boy by chance, unlikely as that was. He couldn’t afford to ignore that possibility, however slim. He couldn’t afford to ignore any chance, no matter how slight.

The country below him was quiet and peaceful. Houses were dispersed among acres of farmland or forest or clung together in small groups of half a dozen or so on single-lane county roads. He drifted at one point over a hillside that was being eaten away by a gravel pit, which appeared to be the only sign of industrial activity anywhere in his sight. Ironically, right across the road from the pit was a small country church, closed up and silent.

He was within a mile of the camp, but the terrain had changed. It was much more open, with tiny copses of forest stranded on isolated hills. The land generally sloped downwards to form a large, open bowl, like the bottom of a waterless lake. This area was squared off into fields planted with various crops. Fortunato could see corn and tomatoes, lettuce and cucumber, and, mostly, row upon row of onions sprouting from the thick, rich soil that was blacker than his own skin. In the near distance, less than two miles away, the silver ribbon of a small river ran through this rich black dirt.

He could feel the energy entrapped in the soil even from his vantage point thirty or forty feet in the sky. It was opulent, fertile earth, unlike the thin city dirt which supported the concrete and steel environment that he was much more familiar with.

Energy...

He dropped to the Earth like a bullet, coming to rest in a field that was planted half in cucumbers and half in onions. The soil was soft and crumbly, full of brown clods of organic material that also testified to its richness. It radiated energy it had drunk that day from the sun, and ancient, even more potent energy seemed to infest its every particle. Fortunato couldn’t feel the warmth it threw off, but he could see it dissipate into the air like shimmers off a mirage. The older energy seemed an integral part of the soil. Fortunato put his face into the dirt and saw the tiny pellets of power being drawn up the roots growing in it. He could see the dirt nourish the plants as they grew to their full richness.