Meteorite Strike (20 page)

She turned off the radio.

“Hey, do you hear that?” Robert cried, running over and pointing up the high street.

Nestor and Sarah listened carefully. A low humming sound grew from the north. A helicopter approaching.

Quick, get in the truck!
Sarah ordered the others.
Nestor, get us moving!

Nestor checked they had Louise and Wei on board before jumping into the driver's seat. He turned the key and pumped the accelerator. The engine turned over once, sending a judder through the truck. Then it died. Nestor turned the key again and again with the same result.

Robert stuck his head out of the open door of the cab.

“It's getting closer!” he cried. “They're looking for us!”

“Yes, I know!” Nestor replied through gritted teeth as he tried firing the engine once more. He looked round at Sarah. “What are we going to do?”

Sarah scanned the deserted high street through the windscreen. The road was built on a slight incline. Reaching down, she released the handbrake of the truck.

The massive machine began to roll forward, ever so slowly.

“We're going to drive out of here,” she told Nestor, pointing ahead down the street. “But first we've got to get moving. You'll have to get out and push, all of you.”

Nestor nodded, grasping her plan immediately. He jumped out of the driver's seat and ushered the others out onto the street while Sarah took his place at the wheel.

I hope you know what you're doing,
he said as he went through the door and ran to the back of the truck.

So do I
, Sarah thought back.

Even with the four others pushing, the truck made painfully slow progress down the street for almost a minute. Sarah wished that Daniel was awake to put a little muscle into the effort. But then they hit the part of the road which sloped downwards more steeply.

Now the truck moved quicker, generating more speed as its own weight began to add to the forward momentum. The numbers on the speedometer began to tick upwards. Sarah turned the key again. The engine turned over, threatening to spring into life this time. Then it spluttered and died. Sarah slammed her fist onto the wheel.

“Where are we going?” shouted Wei, who was running closest to the cab door.

“I'll tell you when we get there!” Sarah shouted back, a little irritably. Her sixth sense began to send her a mental image of the impending danger: a sleek, black helicopter moving through the sky in their direction. In the cockpit, two sets of eyes scanned the countryside for them.

The truck was really moving now, so she tried starting the engine again, with the same result. Through the windscreen she saw that they were fast running out of shops. The end of the high street was basically the end of the town. Once they were out in the open they would be even easier for the searchers to spot. A new idea occurred to her.

Sarah scanned the last few buildings lining the street as they approached. A dentist's office. A grocery store. A florist's with a large, open window at the front. Perfect.

Watch out!
she sent to the others urgently.
Get away from the truck!

Sensing them scatter, Sarah turned the wheel hard to the right, sending the truck on a collision course with the glass front of the florist. The vehicle mounted the pavement and smashed through the window, ploughing into the building, scattering tables and shelves in its path. She slammed on the brakes at the last possible second to avoid hitting the back wall of the shop.

“Wow!” cried Robert from the smashed front of the shop as Sarah jumped out of the cab. “That was mad!”

“Don't just stand there, get inside!” she ordered the others.

They piled into the shop, stepping over broken glass, wood and bricks. Something in the roof groaned and Sarah looked up, worrying that the damage she'd caused with the truck might cause a collapse. Thankfully, the noise stopped and the building held up.

Nestor ran to the front of the shop. He reached up to the top of the window and pulled down a metal roller screen. It came down stiffly, but got stuck halfway.

Help me!

All of them ran to the screen, pulling down on the bottom. With a screech of metal, it went down fully. The interior of the building was thrown into a half-darkness relieved only by rays of light streaming in through slits in the metal. Sarah put her face close to one of the gaps, looking out onto the high street and motioning for the others to be quiet as she did so.

For a moment the high street was silent.

Then a strong gust of wind sent dust and dead leaves flying along the pavements in its wake. The buzzing of the helicopter engine grew louder, causing the whole screen to vibrate.

The machine appeared, flying up the street alarmingly close to the ground. It was smaller than Sarah had expected, but she saw machine guns mounted on either side of the cockpit. The helicopter was only large enough to seat two and she made out a pair of mirror-masks scanning the town. The masks they wore were the same, but she noted that their suits seemed slimmer, more lightweight than those she had seen at the base. Combat models.

Sarah became aware of Louise standing at her side, staring intently through one of the slats at the machine. She started to raise her hand with the same intense look on her face she'd had when she broke the mirrors at the HIDRA base.

Louise, what are you doing?
Sarah demanded, placing a hand on her arm.

I can stop them,
she replied, eyes fixed on the helicopter.
I can make it crash. I feel it.

No,
Sarah ordered.
More of them will come. Besides, do you really want to hurt the people in that machine?

When Louise looked round at her, Sarah saw tears in her eyes.

They said they could make my dad better,
she explained, throwing her arms around Sarah.
But they took him away somewhere. They just wanted to get my power.

Sarah stroked a hand through her hair and gave her shoulder a squeeze. She felt the anger coursing through the younger girl. It almost scared her.

It's okay, we'll get to the city and find your dad,
Sarah told her.
I promise.

Louise thought about this for a moment and once again Sarah could sense the turmoil in her mind. Finally, Louise nodded and rubbed away the tears.

Okay, Sarah.

Sarah smiled and turned her attention back to the screen.

The droning sound of another helicopter joined the first and a second machine appeared at the other end of the street. The two helicopters faced one another, their black and gold Special Forces colours making them look like two giant wasps. Some kind of silent communication seemed to be going on between the machines. After half a minute, they floated up and turned in opposite directions to continue their search.

Sarah's senses told her that their pursuers had been fooled for the time being and passed on, but she and the others still waited an hour before they risked moving out into the street again.

Now what are we going to do?
Nestor asked. The screen door of the florist's was jammed down, trapping the useless truck inside.

Sarah weighed the options in her mind. Find another vehicle that worked. Hide somewhere in the town and hope that somebody found them before HIDRA. Give up… She thought about Daniel lying in the back of the truck. He needed medical attention now the fall virus had put him into a coma – the kind that HIDRA could easily provide. Maybe it would be for the best if the helicopters did find them.

She became aware of the others standing around, waiting for her to say something. Nestor. Louise. Wei. Robert. They stood in a little semicircle by the side of the road, each looking tired and unwashed in the morning light.

They need me to tell them what's next,
Sarah realized, feeling the weight of their expectation. Somehow she'd become their leader. She thought for a moment before speaking, remembering her conversation with Louise in the shop.

“We fight,” she said.

The others looked at one another.

“If we run, we'll never escape those helicopters,” she explained. “So we're going to make a stand here.”

Wei gave a laugh.

“What, fight HIDRA?” he said. “All their soldiers and machines?”

“We did it before,” Robert shot back at him, defending his sister. “They're afraid of us. I could tell back at the base.”

“Me too,” agreed Louise. “We can do it.”

They all looked at Nestor, who had yet to speak. He shook his head.

“They're too strong,” he said quietly. “There's too many of them.”

“Please, Nestor,” Sarah said. “We can do it. It's either that or give up now. Because we'll never make it otherwise.”

He met her eyes, suddenly defiant.

I'm never going back to that base.

Sarah smiled and nodded. She sensed the resolve in the others.

“Okay,” she said. “We don't know how long we've got, so we'd better get to work.”

29

The first job was to search the buildings around the high street and find a safe place for Daniel.

In the end, they settled on an apartment above a shop selling tourist souvenirs and pieces of local art. It took the combined strength of Sarah, Nestor, Robert and Wei to carry him out of the truck, across the street and up the stairs to the bed they'd found. Louise held doors open for them. Along the way they dropped him a couple of times and one of his hands dragged along the ground for a little while before they noticed, but generally Daniel made it in one piece.

Sarah made sure Daniel was well tucked up before they left him. It was several hours since he'd succumbed to the virus, but she knew he would need medical attention within a few days if he was to survive. She didn't intend to be stuck in Esperinka that long, and Colonel Moss's forces were bound to find them before then anyway.

With Daniel sorted, they walked to a café across the street. The electricity wasn't working, but the large oven in the kitchen ran on gas. Sarah turned on one of the rings and reached for a box of matches on the workbench – it was empty.

Let me,
a voice said at her side.

Sarah looked round to see Wei standing there. He pointed a finger at the hob and a single spark of fire ignited the gas. Wei held his fingertip to his mouth and blew on it with a grin.

“Thanks,” Sarah said, putting down the empty box. “Your name's Sikong Wei, isn't it? Where have I heard that before?”

Wei cocked his head to one side and looked at her. “My dad is the manager of the McKeever–Sikong oil refinery. It's my grandfather's business.”

“We were there,” Sarah said slowly. “There was a massive fire. Do you know anything about that?”

She studied Wei's face, but he gave no response. Finally he said, “When the virus struck, someone must've had an accident.”

With that, he turned and walked through to join Louise in the front of the café. They sat down at a table near the window and began talking quietly together.

“What was that about?” Nestor asked as he walked into the kitchen.

Sarah shrugged. “Possible fire hazard.”

Nestor looked round at Wei and Louise. “You think he can't control his power yet?”

“I don't think any of us can,” she replied, pulling a catering-sized tin of baked beans from the shelf and handing it to him. “Make yourself useful.”

They set to work preparing the best meal they could. Twenty minutes later, they served plates of beans and tinned sausages. The five of them sat around the large table in the centre of the café and tucked into the food ravenously – it had been almost twenty hours since they'd last eaten.

As she wiped her plate clean with a piece of stale bread, Sarah looked round at the others. “Okay. Let's talk about how we're going to fight off Colonel Moss's men.”

In turn they suggested how their powers might be used against any mirror-masks entering the town. Louise's telekinetic ability – breaking glass, plastic and even metal – was an obvious choice against any vehicles they brought into town. The whirlwind that Nestor could conjure would provide a strong line of defence, especially when combined with Wei's pyrokinesis – the wall of fire had certainly worked back at the dome. Sarah was confident that her power of suggestion could be used to confuse or frighten away individual enemies, but she was unsure how effective they would be against two or more of the soldiers.

They talked for the best part of half an hour, each contributing ideas. As well as fighting off HIDRA, a clear priority was to find another vehicle that could get them out of the quarantine zone.

“Perhaps we could steal one of their helicopters!” Louise suggested.

Nestor raised an eyebrow. “And who's going to fly it?”

“Daniel showed you how to drive a truck, didn't he?” she said indignantly.

“Right,” Nestor said, “I'm sure the controls are very similar.”

At times they laughed and joked about some of the ways they could get the better of the HIDRA forces, forgetting that they were planning a war against the well-equipped task force heading their way. It almost seemed like a game.

But it wasn't a game. Sarah tried to remember that as she looked around the others.

Only Robert had been quiet during the discussion. She poked him in the arm and smiled in his direction.

Hey, are you okay?
she asked so the others couldn't hear. Nestor had explained that by focusing on just one person, it was possible to have a conversation without the other mind-readers being able to pick it up. Telepathic instant messaging, Robert called it.

Yeah,
he replied.
I mean, no. I'm the only one here without any powers.

We're speaking using only our minds, Robert. What kind of powers do you want?

I mean, I don't have any extra-extra-special powers. I can't make windstorms or break stuff.