Jackson Ford - Eye of the Sh*t Storm

There’s a metal gate at the top of the ramp, next to a card reader, but that’s no more barrier to me than anything else I’ve used my PK on today. As we drive up the ramp into the blazing, muggy afternoon, I wind down the window, casually lean my arm out. The chips filled a hole all right, but I’m going to need something more substantial. Fried chicken, maybe… yes, definitely fried chicken. With slaw.

And you know what? I freaking earned it. We freaking earned it. I’m still seriously pissed at whoever decided to mess with us by telling the bikers who we really were… but we turned a bad situation into a good one. We didn’t die, and we severely disrupted the Legends’ shit. And the best part? We’re getting away. They don’t even know we’re down here.

The ramp comes out onto the sidewalk, on the east side of the hotel. As we crest the top, I glance to my right, and find myself looking straight at Robert the biker.

He, Alan and half a dozen of their leather-clad friends are walking in our direction. They come to a dead halt. Eyes widening, mouths parting in stunned surprise.

Which quickly turns to blazing, barely controlled fury.

“Um,” I say. “Shit.”

“Africa, fucking drive !” Annie yells, as Robert pulls a gun from out the crack of his ass. He fires, the bullet going wide. Alan and one of his buddies bolt for a black SUV parked on the side of the road, but Africa is already reacting, spinning the wheel and jamming the gas, the Sprinter’s tires squealing as we hit the tarmac.

You can probably figure out the rest.

And now I’m trapped under a collapsed bridge, in a burning van, having just taken a faceful of meth, while a biker gang shoots at me and my friends with automatic weapons.

We’ve all been there.

The slabs of concrete crushing the van are huge, truck-sized, multiple tons each, way too heavy for me to manipulate with my PK. The only thing I can do is reinforce the roof of the van, making it stay in place as the huge weight from the collapsed bridge tries to crush it. And it’s not going to last for ever – it’s taking every bit of energy I have to hold it up, and it’s already starting to buckle.

It’s almost completely dark, with only the van’s puny interior light on. We’re all on the floor, down where the air is cleaner. Africa and I are down in the footwells, our sleeves over our mouths, Annie out of sight in the back. My throat and sinuses feel like they’ve been scoured with lye. I can’t stop coughing, and I’m lightheaded. It’s making it very, very difficult to keep the focus on the roof. And the big, blaring thought running through my terrified brain is: meth you just did meth oh shit oh shit .

“Teag—” Annie’s voice dissolves in a hail of coughing.

“Yeah, I know!”

“Wait, I will get us out.” Africa lifts a giant leg, starts kicking at the door. I help, putting some of my PK into the metal. But that takes my focus off the roof, which gives a threatening groan.

“Hang on.” Annie’s hand appears over the edge of the passenger seat, flailing, as if she’s trying to answer a question in class. “I think I can—”

A rumble from above drowns out her voice – more of the bridge collapsing, the slabs settling, putting even more weight onto the car. From somewhere in the real world, there are distant shouts. The Legends, still out there.

And in the background: the crackling hiss of flames. It would be really nice if the rubble we’re trapped under could have smothered them, but apparently there’s still air down here.

Both of you focus on that door. I’ll hold up the roof . That’s what I want to say. Those are the words in my head. In reality, I get out the word “ Both— ” before my lungs seize up and my throat seizes up and I dissolve in a hacking burst of coughs. The smoke is everywhere now.

I’ve been buried alive before. Literally buried alive. Matthew Schenke, the four-year-old with the power to cause earthquakes, dropped me into the ground. Somehow, I got out of that mess, my PK going into overdrive and moving organic matter for the first time. I’ve had some bad nightmares since that day, nightmares where I can’t move the soil around me no matter how hard I try and I’m stuck down there for ever. I’m feeling the same panic now – the same scrabbling, wide-eyed terror. Only this time, my PK isn’t going to do the job. There’s just too much concrete, too much weight, too much to focus on. We’re going to die in here, we’re go —

Oh.

Ooooh shi

i

i

i

i

iiiiit.

There’s a trick you see on videos where they start with a shot of someone’s face, then zoom out to show that face surrounded by other faces, then keep zooming out further and further until it turns out all those faces make up a colour-coded map of the United States.

That just happened to me.

And my psychokinesis.

I feel… everything .

The storm drain surface. The vehicles. The burning wires in the chassis of our van. The broken bridge slabs. The metal railings. The dust particles in the air. The bikers’ guns. The hip flask one of them has in his pocket. Their vehicles.

Holy fuck. It’s more than that.

I can feel the bikers .

Normally, my PK only works on inorganic objects – metal, plastic, glass. It’s a limitation I’ve had my entire life. When Matthew Schenke buried me, my PK kicked into overdrive, and I managed for the first time to manipulate an organic substance – the soil I was buried in. It was the loosest grip possible, and it took every ounce of effort I had. I haven’t been able to replicate it since.

Not any more. The meth has taken a look at my PK limits, cocked an eye and blown them away.

The bikers. A bird, whirling above the storm drain. Three rats, skittering up the sloped side. The cars parked in a lot nearby. The bystanders pressed up against the chain-link fence at the edge of the storm drain, watching the chaos below with open mouths. The water – holy fuck, I think I can feel the water in the drain’s concrete channel, silky and quick and dark.

I can move all of these things. I know I can. I have never been this clear, this focused. My heart is going insane in my chest, my skin bathed in sweat, my face and throat on fire… but I am as calm and clean as if I just stepped out of a hot spring.

Africa and Annie are yelling. They sound very far away. Tiny photos in the mosaic, part of a larger whole.

“It’s OK,” I hear myself say – and this time, my lungs and throat comply. “I got this.”

The people at the top of the storm drain – the onlookers. They have phones. They’ll see me. Video me. I can’t use my PK here, not in public, I —

Sure I can.

I can’t believe I never thought of it before. It’s so simple .

I reach out. Grab every single phone I can find. Thirty or so – some in pockets, some already held in clammy fingers, filming the action. My range must be half a mile now, way further than I’ve ever gone. I gently grip every phone with my mind, feeling their smooth surfaces, the texture of their power buttons, the fingerprint oil on their touchscreens…

And then I squeeze .

Dive deep into each and every phone and crush the chips.

The phones die instantly, bricked. The outsides unchanged, the internals a mess of broken silicon. There are a few security cameras on the buildings surrounding the storm drain, and I take care of those too. A thought tugs at me: our little pinhole cameras, the ones broadcasting back to Reggie. I break them, too, although it comes with a little guilty twinge. Sorry,Reggie. Can’t be too careful .