Jackson Ford - Random Sh*t Flying Through the Air

“He’s not…”

“Just pull him up!”

“I can’t!”

“What do you mean you can’t?”

How do I explain it to her? That this isn’t about strength, or range? There’s just not enough for me to grab onto.

Annie howls, digs in even harder. She’s about a foot deep now, but the hole isn’t even wide enough to fit her arms. Africa shouts in my earpiece – I barely register his words.

If I can’t pull Paul up, maybe I can get down to him. And I can do it much faster than Annie can.

“Wait here,” I say, scrambling to my feet.

“Where are you going?”

It takes every ounce of strength I have to let go of Paul’s belt buckle, his keys. To leave him where he is. I’m coming, man, just hold on .

I run. Moving as my fast as my short, shitty little legs will carry me, stumbling through the trees, ignoring Annie’s confused, terrified shouts.

It takes me far too long to get to the stadium parking lot. Thirty seconds at least. How many minutes can a person survive after being buried alive? How long can Paul survive? I picture him at Annie’s mom’s house, sitting at her dining room table, holding Annie’s hand. He looked at home there. Comfortable. A man in his forties, not super-fit, probably in shock…

I stop thinking about it. Because if I do, I’m just going to throw up.

I send my PK out in a wide arc ahead of me, and find what I’m looking for even before I burst out onto the flat surface of the parking lot. A car – a fucking Lamborghini, if you can believe it, bright yellow. Somehow, it’s still upright, despite the parking lot’s wrecked surface. This might be the first time I’m grateful that some dipshit in LA bought themselves a supercar. Supercars have big doors.

I grit my teeth, grab hold of the metal. A headache flares at the base of my skull as I rip the doors from their hinges. I’m expecting more resistance than I get: they’re only attached with a single hinge, designed to open upwards. The term for them comes to me, and I wish it hadn’t. Suicide doors .

I flip them through the air towards me. It doesn’t look like there’s anyone watching – nobody in the parking lot that I can see, just choppers taking off and landing over by the stadium. Not that I care if people sees me doing this. Let Tanner sort it out later.

“—anybody hear me?” In my ear, Africa sounds desperate. “Teggan, you OK?”

Reggie: “Paul, come—” More static. “Paul, do you read me?”

I run back through the trees, the doors trailing after me. I’m so wired that I bounce them off tree trunks several times, scarring their surfaces. Not that it matters: they are about to get a lot more fucked up than they already are.

I’ve lost track of how much time has passed. I don’t know how long Paul has but I’m going to move as fast as I can, and get him out, and then everything…

Everything will be fine.

Annie doesn’t look up as I approach. She’s still on her knees, bent over now, arms deep in the dirt. “Move,” I say, bringing the doors up and over my head.

She doesn’t look round. Doesn’t even register that I’m there. Her shoulders are shaking.

“Annie! Fucking move !”

“Wha—?” She looks over her shoulder. Her eyes are unfocused, the dirt on her face lined with tear tracks.

I drive the first door into the soil. “Out the way.”

I’ve never used my PK to dig before. I have only the barest idea of what to do – it’s not like there’s a manual for this shit. I use the doors as scoops – something they are spectacularly unsuited for, thanks to their flat shape. Most of the dirt I get just slides right out again, falling back into the pit.

And Annie keeps getting in the way. No matter how many times I shout at her to move, she keeps darting back in, scrabbling at the dirt with torn fingers. I have to work around her, doing everything I can not to cut her damn head off.

I scoop dirt as fast as I can, throwing up huge piles. The headache has blossomed, pounding on my temples. Just a few more feet. Come on. Come on !

But it never ends.

No matter how often I plunge the doors into the dirt, there’s always more of it. He’s been down there for too long, far longer than anyone could survive. The thought must have made me slow down, because Annie yells at me to hurry.

I send out another wave of PK, trying to get a fix on Paul’s position. To my surprise, we’ve almost reached him. He’s no more than two feet away now. Annie seems to sense it, throwing herself down into the pit, ignoring my shouts to get out the way as she digs at the dirt. I rip the doors away – if I keep going, I’ll either cut her in half, or do the same to Paul. Then I jump into the pit to join her.

It’s not easy. The pit is seven feet deep now, cone-shaped, with uneven, sloping sides. As I skid to a halt at the bottom, Annie gives yell of triumph. Paul’s hand is poking up out of the dirt, Annie’s fingers clutching at it.

And it’s not moving.

Together, she and I attack the last few inches of dirt. Paul’s face starts to appear. Stark white against the black soil. His eyes are open, staring at nothing.

Annie shoves me aside. She gets her hands underneath him, and with a roar, heaves his torso, head and shoulders out of the hole. She starts giving him mouth-to-mouth, and I clear the rest of the dirt away from his chest so she can give him compressions, but…

I lean back against the wall of the pit, Annie a blur of frantic motion next to me. I keep seeing the kid, the sick, delighted look on his face as he sucked Paul into the ground.

“Baby.” Annie’s voice is husky, shredded. She hasn’t stopped pumping his chest. “Baby, wake up.”

I keep thinking he’s going to answer her. That his eyes will spring open, that he’ll explode out of the dirt, coughing and spluttering. We’ll go back into the stadium, and before long he’ll be laughing about what a lucky escape it was, how it’s a damn good thing he was in the Navy, because they taught him how to hold his breath, giving us shit for letting the kid get away. Then we’ll figure this out, rebuild the Boutique and before long Paul will be back to planning missions, while I sit on our couch and taunt him about his stupid whiteboard…

But no matter how hard Annie pumps on Paul’s chest, or how many breaths she forces into his lungs, he doesn’t wake up.

“Teagan, help me get him out.”

“Annie…”

“No.” She wipes her mouth. Her whole body is caked with dirt now. “We’ll get him out. Get him to a doctor. Call Reggie, tell her we’re bringing him in.”

It feels like a betrayal to say my next words. And it takes everything I have to do it. “He’s gone.”

“The hell he is. Baby, wake up. Please. Wake up. Wake up! ”

She’s crying again. So am I now. And then, as if our conversation didn’t happen, she goes back to pumping his chest. She’s doing it so hard now that she’s actually pushing him further down into the dirt.

I lever myself up, get my arms around Annie. She bucks me off, but I come back, refusing to let go. I’m not just doing it for her. I’m doing it for me. If I don’t grab hold of something, or someone, I’m going to be swept away.

Again and again she pushes me off, until her strength gives out and all she can do is lean on Paul’s body, hands still resting on his chest.

I wrap my arms around Annie and hold her tight as her words turn to sobs, as her sobs turn to screams, and her screams turn to a single, long howl, echoing out into the trees.

How are you supposed to feel when someone dies?

I should know. My parents, my sister… all dead. The ranch house going up in flames. Adam, my psychotic brother, laughing as it burned.