Steven Gould - Jumper:Griffin _s Story

"Besides-it's my birthday. I'm ten. I should be able to get my own stuff."

"I really don't think you shou-"

Didn't hear the rest but as I walked toward the flat from my jump site behind the school hedge, I felt guilty. I hope I hadn't messed up the living room too much. Sam had done nothing but help me and what had I done for him, besides the bag of beans?

The flat used to be just storage over the detached garage of a small house on Texas Street, but now the house itself was a separate rental property with a front driveway and the yard had been split with fencing. There was a narrow path back along the fence to the flat but there was a police car on the street, pretty much where one had been previously. The cop inside was reading by the dome light.

I backtracked and took to the alley, sticking to the shadows as I got closer to the house and avoiding the backyards with dogs. Fortunately, most of the dogs were inside and the one that wasn't, a big Labrador named Lucky, lived in the rental house in front and knew me. There was a gap in the fence at the corner of his backyard and I crouched and snaked my hand in to scratch Lucky's head. He panted and shifted, putting more of his body in reach. I was working on his upper neck when I felt his ears go up and his head shifted to the right, down the alley. He gave a halfhearted, "Woof!" but then shoved his head back into my hand. After a few more seconds of scratching, I heard the distant scuffing of feet on gravel.

Lucky's fence put me in deep shadow and I was also screened from that direction by an overdeveloped hibiscus growing into the alley from the corner of our yard. Peeking around the hibiscus at knee level I saw the outline of three men walking down the alleyway, backlit by the distant streetlight. One of them carried a shoulder-slung bag and they all walked oddly-lifting each foot from the ground and then putting it down heel first before rolling the foot forward to the toes.

I pulled my head back quickly, afraid they'd seen me, and, in fact, I heard someone say, "What's that?"

Then Lucky began barking up a storm, right by my head. I nearly recoiled out into the alley but realized it was the voice he was barking at.

Lucky's owner, Mr. Mayhew, came to the back door. "Lucky! Get your noisy ass in here!" Lucky went bounding to the back door. "What did you hear?" he said quietly. He put the dog in but stood there on the back porch for a moment, listening. I wondered if Lucky had been barking the night they killed Mum and Dad.

After a moment I heard the door creak again and light silhouetted Mr. Mayhew as he stepped back into his kitchen.

I leaned forward a tad, looking through the branches of the hibiscus. The three men had flattened themselves against the garage door in response to Lucky's barking, but when Mr. Mayhew went back inside they moved again, working quickly. The stairway from the flat descended toward the street, and at ground level it was visible from the patrol car parked in front. Instead of going that way, the one with the bag set it to the side, then stepped between the other two. They both dropped to one knee and grabbed his ankles, then stood abruptly, throwing him straight up.

He grabbed the railing above and got one foot on the landing with only the slightest noise, then swung over the railing and dropped to a crouch before the door. I presumed the door was locked but he had it open almost immediately. He stood up again and leaned over the railing. The men below heaved up the hanging bag, but he almost missed it, snagging it by the strap at the last minute. One of the men below said, "Careful, you blad!"

"Shhh!" the other hissed.

"Shhh yourself. The detonators would've made a lot more noise than me." I recognized the voice. It was the man with the Bristol accent.

On the landing above, the man disappeared into the flat.

The two men below stepped back into the shadow of the garage door. "What keeps it from blowing up someone else instead-the police, or the landlord?"

"The door sensor. People who come in normally, well, they're not gonna set it off. But if 'e pops in, the motion sensor trips when the door sensor hasn't-see? That'll do 'im a treat."

Like you did for my parents? I groped for a rock-a big rock I could throw or strike with. There was a line of bricks under the edge of the fence, to keep Lucky from digging out. I was able to pull one from the corner, a jagged half brick tucked in to complete the row. I wanted to heave it at them and jump away. Or maybe jump right next to them and hit them in the face with it?

My hands were shaking and I didn't know if it was fear or rage but I didn't trust myself to throw the brick and hit anything.

The guy from upstairs came out and dropped the empty shoulder bag over the railing, then swung over, lowered himself until he hung at arm's length and dropped.

Dammit!

I jumped to the middle of the street and stepped up to the police car. "Hey," I whispered.

The cop recoiled, surprised, his book dropping and one hand going down to his gun belt. "Aren't you-?"

"Yes! But the men who killed my parents are right there!" I stabbed my finger back down the brick path to the stairway. "Behind the garage."

Only they weren't behind the garage.

Projectiles shattered the passenger windows and slashed sideways and then the cop was bent over, his head halfway out the window, clawing at the thing sticking out of his neck, a thing with a cable attached to it, and I was in the Empty Quarter in a whirlwind of dirt and brush.

Oh god, oh god, ohmigod. Had they seen me jump? When I appeared at the cop car? But I was on the other side, away from them. I'm short-the car should've blocked me.

I still had the brick in my hand. There was blood on my shirt. The cop's blood.

I jumped back to the alley and peered up the path. The three were out by the car, weapons leveled, each looking in a different direction, but they all turned back toward me the instant I appeared.

They know when I jump.

They ran back toward the flat and I jumped again, but only down the alley, below my bedroom window. I heard their footsteps by the stairs and I heaved the rock up, hard as I could, through my window.

Fire, light, sound, and flying glass. I couldn't have stayed there if I tried, but I returned to the end of the block almost as soon as I'd flinched away to the Empty Quarter.

Debris was still raining down and the roof was gone from the flat and every car alarm in the city seemed to be going off. I walked carefully up the sidewalk as dozens of people came out of their homes to look wide-eyed down the street.

I backtracked and looked down at the mouth of the alley, where the men had come from when I first saw them. After a minute, two of them appeared, dragging the third with his arms across their shoulders. As they passed under the streetlight I saw blood on their faces-flying glass, I decided- and one of them smoked, literally, puffs of smoke rising from his hair and shoulder.

A car came up the street and stopped abruptly. They pushed the man who couldn't walk into the back and climbed in on both sides, then the car was moving toward me.

I stepped behind a tree and watched it go by. At the next block it turned right. In the distance, the blare of car alarms was replaced by the rising sound of emergency service sirens.

For a moment I thought about walking back to the fiat, to see if there was anything left, anything I could take away, but the neighborhood was well and truly roused and too many of them knew my face.

I jumped.

Grasshoppers and Charcoal When the bus stopped in La Crucecita, I thought it was just another stop in the journey. We'd been five days on second-class buses and ruteras-shared minivans in which the other passengers might include chickens and where I'd ended up with a baby or toddler in my lap more than once. We'd stayed one night in a hotel in Mexico City but otherwise it was nap as you could on the crowded, bouncing buses.