Screaming Eagles (The Front, Book 1) (20 page)

Something buzzed around in the back of his mind like an annoying fly. Strange. Victor was overcome by lethargy. No. Something was
talking
to him back there. Something--or some
one
--and it was genuinely bizarre.

Much to his surprise, the woman came toward him. Her step was tentative, and when she got closer, he saw that she was young and cute. If this was about to be his Mother Teresa, at least he was in good company. She had short, dark hair that covered one eye.
Must be weird having one eye always behind a veil
, Victor reflected.

"You okay?" she asked as she leaned over and looked at the blood. Her lips pulled back in a gasp.

"No, I'm not okay. Please call 911. Something's stuck in my shoulder."

She knelt beside him even though it was into a puddle, and touched his jacket. She slid the zipper down so she could slip the coat open, then pulled the left side open until she could see his wound.

"Nothing here. Blood," she said, and their eyes met.

"It must have come out. Christ, it hurts so bad! I don't guess you have some Tylenol or something stronger on you?" He tried to sound flippant, but he hurt too much to be in a humorous spirit.

The buzzing wouldn’t go away, and it was driving him crazy. He clenched his eyes and rubbed his temples. Was he dying? Was this how his world ended? Bleeding out on a sidewalk in Seattle?

She took a handkerchief from her pocket and looked at it. Oh no, if she was sneezing on that thing, he didn't want it on his flesh. She might be a looker, but that wouldn't save him from an infection.

She dug around in her bag and came out with a package of tissues. The girl pulled out a wad of them, then slipped her cold hand inside his shirt until she had the tissues over the wound. She pressed down hard enough to make him see stars.

"Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!" he gasped, again and again.

"Sorry," she said, and she did look sorry. She looked downright miserable as she took his hand in hers and guided it to the wound. "Hold here. Help comes."

"Thank you. What's your name?"

"Kimiko. I'm Kimiko. Nice to meet you."

"You're very kind, but I can't imagine this is in any way nice," he said.

She looked at him quizzically, but he didn't offer any follow-up questions. What was wrong with him? He’d been stabbed by something, left to bleed out, and all he could think about was being a smartass.

She glanced over her shoulder and up at the sky, worry etched on her face.

"You know, finding a guy on the ground with all this stuff going on overhead. It's just nice of you to stop. Thank you for helping me."

"You are welcome." She smiled and pushed a wet strand of black hair out of her eyes, leaving a streak of his blood across her brow.

"Oh no. I'm sorry," he said.

His words sounded hollow, and he had the urge to take the tissue from his shoulder and wipe her face. Then something lurched inside him, near the wound, and pain made him nauseous. It started in his shoulder and sent pulsing waves along his spine and sides. He tried to wave at her face, unthinking, only to find that his arm wouldn't respond.

Kimiko had her phone out, and dialed over and over again. She hunched over and used her jacket’s hood to keep the phone from getting soaked.

"Oh, oh! Answer," she said, and handed him the phone.

Victor gave her a tight smile, took the phone in his left hand, and slowly tilted his head to avoid straining the damaged muscle too much, but it wasn't enough: he saw stars. He wanted to bite down on his tongue. His teeth ached as the pain overrode all other senses.

The buzzing was still in the back of his head. It whispered to him, and tried to reassure him, but there were still no words, just the feeling of peace.

Something wrenched in his arm again and he cried out. He reached out and grabbed hold of the curb, squeezed, and wept as the waves of pain built and washed over his body.

Then the ache faded and he felt—better? Not better; he felt different. It was the same feeling he used to get when he'd been a runner. After the first few miles, he’d reached a state of mind that was almost like ecstasy. It was called "runner’s high," but that made absolutely no sense.

“Sir? Hello?” A female voice on the phone said.

"Ah crap, sorry, sorry. My name is Victor Barnes and I'm at the corner of..." He kept talking until he felt like he was going to pass out. Ten minutes later, the glare of flashing lights and the sound of a siren brought him out of his near-fugue state.

"Saved at last."

When he looked around, Kimiko was nowhere to be found, nor was the phone he'd been talking into. At least she'd stuck around until she knew help was on the way.

The Victor noticed that the small section of curb he’d been clutching in pain had been crushed into chunks of concrete and powder.

B
ryon had gotten away
with a free day at home yesterday, but now he was back at school and his morning had been a hair's width shy of being the worst of his life.

His report was due in second period English, and after blowing off school to spend the day gaming yesterday, he was going to have to scramble to keep up. His teacher had not been impressed that he'd picked a couple of comic book writers as his literary heroes, but he'd worked on his paper for weeks, and didn't think he should have to write about novelists.

Comic book writers were every bit as important to literature as some stuffy jerk who liked to spend pages on flowery speeches and anything but tight dialog that carried a story forward.

His
books were filled with action, sly looks, and
occasional
speeches, but only when absolutely necessary.

His class was probably going to be empty today. There had been talk on the news of an explosion or something in Seattle, but his mom was making him go to school anyway, because she had to work and didn't have a sitter available.

Bryon had argued that he didn't
need
a sitter. He was sixteen and would be taking driving lessons soon, but she had not relented. He hadn't told her that a few times a month he blew off school, snuck back home to play video games, and then forged an excuse letter to turn in to the front office.

"Mom, what if they send us home?"

"I'm sure they won't," she'd said. She'd zipped up the side of her skirt and smoothed down the sides.

His mother, Anne, could be very sweet, but not in the morning, and especially not before she'd had her first cup of coffee. She always looked harried, though, because she never managed to leave the house on time. She screamed out of the garage with a piece of toast hanging out of her mouth and a mug tucked into her car's drink holder. She worked at a stock firm, but she was a receptionist, and had to answer to five different bosses throughout any given day.

Bryon was pretty sure one of her married bosses was seeing her on the side, because she always cast furtive glances Bryon's way when she got late-night texts. Sometimes she had to run out for an "errand" that took an hour or more.

Bryon kept his mouth shut. As for his judgment he kept that to himself, but if she was sleeping with some old married guy and they got caught, she was going to lose her job.

"But what if the thing in Seattle is really big and they cancel school?" he'd whined. As much as he loved the subject of his report, he didn't relish getting in front of his class and being embarrassed when they made fun of him for his chosen subject.

"It's nothing. Eat your eggs and go,
shoo
," she'd said, and leaned over to kiss the top of his head like he was five again.

Jeez, mom.

T
he walk
to the bus stop was annoying, because rain had started up a minute after he'd left the house, and didn’t shown any sign of quitting. His hood had seen better days and kept getting blown off of his head.

He considered going back home, but it was risky to take two days off in a row. The chance of them calling his mother increased every time he played hooky, so he kept his free days to a minimum.

Bryon stood at an intersection and got splashed by an old blue Ford sedan rushing by. It might have even swerved to hit the puddle. Jerk!

The sky was getting brighter by the second, as if the sun was about to appear, but the cursed rain just would not let up! He hated it, hated school, hated the kids that teased him. He hated that he had to walk a mile to a bus stop because the district had to cut back on stops to save fuel.

He stepped off the curb, and something punched him in the side.

Bryon swung around, thinking that a bully had shot him with a rubber band or maybe even one of those airsoft guns.

He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and dropped his backpack. He put his cold hand under his shirt and felt around for damage. His hand rubbed over his back and butt cheek. He tried to look over his shoulder, keep his head down so rain didn't drench his hood, and turn all at the same time, and nearly ended up on his face.

He pulled his hand out from under his shirt and saw red.
Lots
of red. He was bleeding?
Jesus Christ on a jalopy!

That should've been the clue right there that this day would be a complete wash. First the news of an explosion near the freeway, then all the damn rain. His mother still didn’t believe that school would be canceled, or that his few friends had reported on Twitter with gleeful tweets stating they were "Off ‘cause Dad freaked about stuff blowing up. Snow day in September!"

Bryon dropped his backpack and lifted his shirt. He found red smeared across his back and some soaked into his shirt, but he needed a mirror to see what kind of damage had been done.

He wanted to freak out and return home, but when he ran his hand over the area that had been stung, he didn’t feel a wound, just a little bit of a bump, and then even the pain was already fading.

He was embarrassed by the fat that rode his waist like a tire's inner tube. He hated that he couldn't see his junk because it was under a belly big enough to stuff a rack of ribs and half a cake into, like he'd done on his birthday a few months ago.

Mom had said not to overeat, but Bryon hadn't been having any of that on his birthday, and had gorged himself with abandon. Then he'd felt sick for the rest of the night.

Bryon dug around, but there didn't seem to be any fresh blood. He was all too familiar with how even a little could spread around and feel like a gallon. He'd popped enough zits in his day to make a full coat of warpaint.

Bryon held his hand out and let water run over it, washing his blood onto the sidewalk. His eyes followed the flow to the ground, and then around his Nikes. By then, the crimson was diluted enough not to matter.

"Whatcha doin, fatass?"

Jesus! Rod Steckman was the worst of the bullies, and today of all days he'd decided to cross paths with Bryon.

Rod took any chance to pick on Bryon, any chance at all, whether it was slamming him into a locker--no mean feat considering Bryon's weight--or spitting in Bryon's hair. He had a group of cronies--on the football team, no less--and if it got any more cliché than that, Bryon didn't know what else would qualify.

They'd once surrounded Bryon and made him crawl around while snorting like a piggy. The guys had pelted him with food, books, paper, trash--anything they could get ahold of.

Bryon had lost it and cried until they'd left him alone. One of the guys had been unzipping his pants, threatening to piss on Bryon, but a teacher had intervened and chased the kids off. He hadn't exactly been nice to Bryon, either; more like a father scolding a child about being nicer to people if Bryon wanted to be treated with respect. The entire experience had left a sour taste in his mouth, and he'd stopped reporting the bullying to the school staff.

What he dreamed about was taking a bat to Rod Steckman and beating the jerk black and blue. He'd read articles on the internet that offered advice on how to deal with bullies. Some of them spoke of standing up to tormenters, because once you took a stand, they backed down.

He didn't want to just take a stand; he wanted to
hurt
Steckman and his cronies. The Vulture could handle this guy with one hand tied behind his back.

Bryon launched himself forward, pretending like he hadn't heard the bully. Rod picked on the guys who didn't fight back, just like a bully. Bryon had plans for him, someday.

He was going to stand up to him by delivering a line like Batman, something along the lines of: "I'll break you in half," even though The Vulture came up with better dialog. He'd be all menace and hate, then he'd throw a pair of haymakers that would put Rod on his ass.

He'd hit the jerk so hard that teeth would fly and Rod would slide across the school hallway--because all of his fantasy fights took place in the school hallways. That way the girls could see what a badass he was.

Today was not his day to have a battle, but he did intend to fight back, one day, after he'd lost some of his girth and learned how to actually throw a punch. Right now Bryon had to get his project to school in one piece.

"I was
talking
to you, fatass!"

Rod's voice was closer. Bryon pressed on, swinging his arms faster and faster as he launched into hyper mode. He only had another block to go before he could hop on the Metro bus so he could avoid the public school bus and the ridicule attached to riding the yellow behemoth.

More importantly, he would be at a bus stop where other commuters could be his silent sentinels.

A swish of air, and then Bryon was flung forward. Rod was on a bicycle, and when he was close enough, he grabbed Bryon's backpack and pulled.

Then Rod was past, with his close-cropped hair gleaming with rain water, his giant American flag sewn onto the back of his old Levi's jacket, his NRA patch on one shoulder and pot leaf on the other, his legs pumping as he howled laughter. Rod looked back as he pedaled away, and shot a middle finger in Bryon's direction.

Bryon had gotten his hands out as he'd fallen--that was instinct. He'd had his head up, but impact with the ground had never actually happened.