Random Sh*t Flying Through the Air (The Frost Files) Page 16

  “Good call,” I tell her. “I could really use some beach time.”

  “Say what?”

  “… Some beach time? I’ve been under a lot of stress lately. Just, with the quake and the whole… You know what? Never mind.”

  “I don’t understand,” Africa says.

  “Just trying to lighten the mood.”

  “We can’t go to the beach now, yaaw.”

  “It’s a dumb-ass joke, man.” Annie shakes her head. “T makes them when she’s nervous. Thought you’d have that figured out by now – you guys known each other long enough.”

  Africa looks away, and I flip Annie a middle finger. She doesn’t even notice.

  “What about the big waves?” Africa asks, squinting into the rain.

  I look over at him. “The… what, the tsunamis?”

  “Ya ya. I thought earthquakes made them happen.”

  “San Andreas fault is inland,” Annie tells him. “Tsunamis only pop up when a fault is underwater. Paul said—”

  She stops abruptly, her mouth snapping closed.

  “He’ll be OK,” I tell her. “I’m pretty sure he’s not gonna die. He’s way too smart for that shit.”

  Annie is about to ask me to stop being an insensitive dumb-dumb – I can tell just from the look on her face – when a very scary man walks around the corner of Olympic.

  He’s tall, six-five or six-six, with the broad shoulders and chest of a bodybuilder. He wears a blue and yellow Warriors starter jacket, zipped all the way up, over jeans that have been absolutely torn to shreds. The skin underneath is dotted with grazes and scabs, the denim bloody. Despite the wounds, he’s walking – well, limping would be more accurate. He’s got a facial tat, a dark scribble on pale skin that I can’t make out at a distance. His mouth is twisted in what he probably thinks is a friendly smile.

  “Where y’all headed?” he says. His voice is higher than his body would suggest.

  Annie says nothing, eyes locked on his. A line of water trickles down my back, making me shudder.

  Beside us, Africa is silent. The man notices him, looks him up and down, but doesn’t back off.

  “I said, where y’all—”

  “Heard you.” Annie’s voice is calm, non-threatening.

  “Y’all ain’t answer, though.” His chin twitches, like a rat’s. “What’s in the backpacks?”

  “Nothing.”

  The smile gets wider. “Come on. I can tell y’all from around here. We gotta look after each other, you know?”

  There’s the sound of a very soft footstep at my five o’clock. Two – no, three more. Lining up behind us like a firing squad. They’re not as big as the dude in front, but they don’t look friendly. One of them wears a Rams football jersey, and there’s even one guy in a suit, tie pulled down.

  Come on, man.

  “That’s how it is?” Annie says, fiddling with something on her handlebars.

  “That’s how it is,” says the big one. And just like that, he has a gun in his hand.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Teagan

  I see the pistol before I feel it, my PK registering the shape in his waistband as he reaches for it. If I wasn’t so goddamn freezing, I might have picked it up earlier. Behind me, one of the others draws a second gun.

  “This ain’t gotta be hard,” Warriors Jacket says, sauntering towards us. “Just redistributing the wealth, that’s all.”

  “Redistributing the wealth?” Annie glares at him.

  He shrugs. “Saw it on CNN once.”

  “Eh, eh, eh,” Africa says. It comes out like an animal growl, a bear clearing its throat. But his eyes are wide, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his thin neck. “Go away, yaaw?”

  “Look at you, man.” Warriors Jacket tilts his head, appraising Africa. “You their bodyguard, right?”

  “Hey, Teagan,” Annie says. “You got us covered?”

  “What, her?” His gaze lands on me. “She packing?”

  “Yeah, we’re good,” I say. I hate guns. Fortunately, they are made of metal, with lots of moving parts. Like safety catches, which can be held in place. Like firing pins that can be twisted and bent.

  I’m not planning on revealing what I’m doing. The last time I used my powers in self-defence, Moira Tanner ended up sending a black-ops team to bring me in. I only escaped because they didn’t realise how powerful I’d gotten – and if I hadn’t taken out the other psychokinetic who had framed me for murder, she would have made them keep at it until they succeeded. But a locked safety won’t arouse suspicion, and really, what the hell else are they going to do?

  Footsteps, behind me – and then there’s cold metal against the back of my neck. “Off the bike. Now.”

  Slowly, I raise my hands. “Buddy, take it from me. This isn’t gonna work out well for you.”

  “I said, off the bike,” the man behind me growls.

  Ugh. I’ve already got his gun locked down, so this is just a waste of time. I’m kind of tempted to do something stupid, let him hear the impotent little click as he pulls the trigger. See that stupid look in his eyes.

  Which is when Africa throws his bike.

  He just launches it. Yells like a goddamn banshee, and hurls the damn thing. It careens through the air, peddles whizzing. For a split-second, everybody just stares at it.

  Then it hits the guy in the Warriors Jacket, sends him sprawling ass-first into the mud.

  The guy holding the gun to my head pulls the trigger.

  I admit it: I flinch. You would too. Fortunately, I’m good at my job, so the safety catch stays locked. The dude doesn’t even realise it’s on, because he’s been wandering around with the safety off. He’s lucky he didn’t shoot himself in the dick. He pulls the trigger again – just as Africa crashes into him.

  “No!” Annie yells.

  I may have mentioned that Africa is a big dude. The other guy doesn’t know what hit him. The only thing he can do is try to get his arms up to protect himself from Africa’s flailing telephone-pole limbs.

  Which doesn’t stop the man in the Warriors Jacket from stepping forward, cocking his arm back, and pistol-whipping Africa across the face.

  He’s smart. Smarter than the others maybe. He’s figured out something is wrong with his gun, and he’s adjusted. Africa happens to have his mouth open, yelling furious Wolof curse words into his victim’s face, when the gun hits him. His head snaps sideways, a spray of blood arcing through the air.

  All of this happens in the space of about three seconds.

  The blood spatters onto the rain-soaked pavement, Africa going down like a felled tree, face screwed up in agony, more blood gushing from his mouth. Annie takes a step towards him, only to be stopped by one of the others. Warriors Jacket tries to grab Annie’s backpack, darting out of range, laughing as she takes a swing at him. She’s exhausted, haggard, not nearly as quick as she normally is.

  That does it.

  Every rational thought I have about not revealing my power is pushed to one side by a blinding, furious rage. No more subtlety. No more keeping my ability under wraps. Moira Tanner is a very long way away. I am cold and tired and worried and pissed off and ready to wreck something.

  I take their guns away. They don’t even resist when my PK rips the weapons out of their grip. It takes their blown minds a full second to catch up, to understand that the guns they’d previously been holding in their sweaty palms are now floating on either side of my head, barrels to the grey sky.

  I release the clips, pull the slides back, eject the rounds in the chambers. The confusion in their eyes, the dawning horror, is sweet, sweet, sweet.

  “Holy shit,” says one of them. I don’t even bother to register which one. In a few seconds, they’re going to be nothing more than specks on the horizon.

  “You’re doing it wrong,” I tell them. “Let me show you how to pistol-whip someone.”

  I spin the gun on my right at the nearest dude’s head. It crashes into his temple, and I catch it on the re
bound, send it swinging in a long arc towards Warriors Jacket. The second one follows, both moving like big metal pinballs, bouncing between targets. It’s a goddamn festival of ouch. And in that instant, I don’t care about the consequences. My city is hurting, my friends are in trouble and these fucks – these assholes – are trying to take advantage.

  In seconds, they’re running – or limping anyway, all four of them yelling in terror, hightailing it the fuck out of there.

  “Mic drop,” I mutter. Then, with a thought, I hurl the guns into the air, in opposite directions, as hard as I can. They vanish against the dark grey sky, whirling out of sight.

  Africa is up on his elbow, blinking, one hand to his mouth, Annie on her knees next to him.

  “Jesus, bud.” I skid to my knees too. “Are you OK?”

  He spits. A huge glob of blood. One of his front teeth is gone, snapped off, and his top lip is already ballooning.

  “He look OK to you?” Annie says.

  “M’good,” Africa murmurs. “Just… just some blood. I have worse before.”

  I decide not to tell him about the tooth. He’ll find out soon enough, anyway.

  “The hell were you thinking?” I say.

  “Huh?”

  “With the bike. We had it under control.”

  “He was gonna shoot you.”

  “No, he wasn’t. I had the safeties locked.”

  “Huh?” His eyes are rolling around in his head like pachinko balls. What if he has a concussion, like Paul? Bleeding on the brain? What do we do then?

  “The safeties,” I tell him. “They couldn’t use the guns. We were fine!”

  Those wild eyes focus on me. “Then what you make them fly for?” He waves a hand around his head, like he’s swatting a fly. “The guns.”

  “Um. Because we were about to get our asses kicked? Because you decided to play hero?” Christ, I can hardly follow this conversation.

  “I was trying to make it so you don’t have to show them,” he mutters.

  “Africa, what—?”

  “You not supposed to tell people what you can do, yaaw? So I try and fight them off first. I didn’t know you…” He coughs, hacks a gob of blood and phlegm onto the pavement.

  “So… wait, hang on.” I get unsteadily to my feet. “You started a fight so I wouldn’t have to use my powers, even though I was using them already. And then I ended doing the exact thing you tried to stop. And you got your ass kicked for it.”

  Annie puts her hands on her knees, like she’s just run a marathon. “Y’all both need to work on your communication.”

  Slowly, the reality of what I’ve just done settles across me. I revealed my ability. At least four people now know there’s a psychokinetic in LA. I flaunted it, showing off exactly what I could, purely out of anger. If this gets back to Tanner… if she finds out…

  Annie’s eyes meet mine. “What’s wrong? They’re gone, OK?”

  “It’s not that.” I swallow. “Annie, I… Please don’t tell Reggie. Maybe Tanner won’t find out – maybe nobody’ll believe them.”

  “The fuck you talking about?”

  “Annie, they know what I can do.” The panic starting to crystallise now, jagged and brittle. “They saw. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

  “Yo.” She reaches across, grips my shoulder, very tight. “Be cool.”

  “But they—”

  “But nothing. Tanner isn’t gonna give a fuck.”

  “Yes, she will.”

  “Look around you, baby girl.” She sweeps her arm out, taking in the ruined street, the torn tarmac and wrecked buildings and burning cars. “Do you think that shit even matters any more?”

  I gape at her. “Of course it does.”

  “Wrong. The rules changed the second the quake hit. If you gotta use your powers, then you do it. You don’t even ask questions. OK?”

  Somehow, I can’t see Annie’s argument working on Moira Tanner, or the horrifying agency that employs her. All the same, I can’t help but like her for trying.

  Man, what a mess.

  “Did you see my tooth?” Africa says.

  I grimace. “Yeah, but I think one of those dickheads stepped on it and broke it.”

  He makes a face, spits another gob of blood. “S’fine. I think maybe I needed a filling in that one anyway. No more dentist visit for me!”

  “Pretty sure that’s not how it works, dude, but you do you.”

  He gives me a disgusting, bloody grin, picking up his overturned bike.

  People are fucking weird, man. Drop someone in the middle of an earthquake and they will freak the fuck out, even if they suffered nothing more than a few scrapes and bruises. Pistol-whip them, knock a tooth out and they’ll walk away like nothing happened.

  I expected the Santa Monica Pier to be wiped out. But it’s there all right, windswept ocean water clawing at it. Even the Ferris wheel is still upright, although the rollercoaster isn’t. Neither are the buildings and restaurants that dot the pier. We take a hard left, heading down the beach path away from it, just three people out for an afternoon bike ride. Cold wind whips off the ocean, driving rain into my already-drenched face.

  By quarter to four, we’ve hit the Venice Boardwalk. Or what’s left of it. The strip of shitty stores, overpriced bars, bike rental places and henna tattoo shops is torn to pieces. The palm trees that line the strip between the beach and the boardwalk have been ripped up by the roots.

  It’s the wrecked trees that gets me more than anything. I’m sure I’ve already seen some today – there are plenty of palm trees in LA, all across the city. But this is the first time I’ve really noticed them, and there are so, so many.

  More people, too, in the same dull groups as before. None of them bother us. Most don’t even pay us any attention. A couple have shopping carts loaded with their belongings. That makes me think of Harry, the homeless guy who hangs around Leimert Park. I hope he’s OK. He has to be, right? He’ll have been out in the open, surely?

  No point trying to guess. I’ll just drive myself crazy. I’m already working overtime on not thinking about Moira Tanner, black site labs or spec ops teams with my name on their briefing board.

  There’s a road in Venice called the Speedway, which is a stupid name, because it has an average top speed of four miles an hour. It’s even slower today: there are two troop carriers, parked at an intersection and surrounded by rifle-toting guardsmen. They don’t look as we pass them, too intent on loading people inside.

  “Sir, if you could just stay calm,” one of the soldiers is saying to an irate man. “They’re sending in vehicles as fast as they can.”

  “You still haven’t told us when that’s going to be!” the man yells back. His tie is pulled down, his upper lip crusted with blood.

  “Just stay in the vicinity.”

  “I don’t see why we have to use the big trucks. Why can’t we drive there ourselves? I got family at the stadium…”

  “Sir, the APCs are the only vehicles that can get through the streets right now.” A trace of annoyance enters the soldier’s voice, but there’s desperation behind it, too, as if he badly needs the man to understand. “Just stay here, OK? We’ll send more as soon as we can.”

  “Where were you ten minutes ago?” I mutter, as we pass them. Africa, riding next to me, doesn’t reply.

  We turn left, zigzagging up past Pacific Avenue, heading for the little alleyway the office sits on. Paul’s Boutique.

  Earthquake-proof, he said. Tanner and I fixed that up – we didn’t want Reggie in a situation where she couldn’t get out. I have no idea what that means in practice – how do you protect a small house when the ground beneath it goes insane?

  Still, I trust Paul. He’s a pain in the ass when it comes to the details, but it’s saved us more than once, and it looks like it might have saved Reggie too.

  As we approach our end of Brooks Court, right where it crosses 7th Avenue, I see my Jeep. The goddamn Batmobile.

  It’s not overt
urned. It’s not damaged – well, one of its tyres is popped, the rubber blown out, but that’s it. The ground beneath it is cracked and sloping, but my shitty-ass car is just fine. Sitting there like it’s a normal day, like I could hop in and take a drive.

  “Yes!” I point. “Takes a lot more than a little quake to—”

  Africa sucks in a horrified breath.

  “Oh, fuck,” Annie murmurs.

  “Jesus, guys, what’s with you?” I say. “It’s not like I can’t change a tyre.”

  Then I see it, too.

  Paul’s Boutique.

  The ground around the office has all but dropped away. It’s fallen three or four feet. The house, and all the houses around it, have just dropped into the earth. The Boutique has collapsed in on itself, the top floor imploded, the walls ballooning outwards into what’s left of the yard. The garage is gone. Wiped out.

  “Reggie.” Annie’s voice comes out as a horrified whisper. She abandons her bike, sprinting for the Boutique. “Reggie!”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Teagan

  Paul was wrong.

  The words run on repeat through my mind, like a song I can’t shake. He was wrong about the Boutique, about it being earthquake-proof. The stupid fucker was wrong, and Reggie is under there, under the collapsed roof and bowed-out walls and broken glass and—

  I don’t know who gets there first – me, Africa or Annie. But within seconds all three of us are pulling at the rubble, yelling Reggie’s name, scraping the skin from our hands as we dig. Annie vaults to the top of the pile, bracing herself against what used to be part of the roof, digging in with both hands.

  The chunk of wall I’m trying to lift is too heavy, my feet unable to get a purchase on the slick, sloped concrete I’m standing on. “Help me with this,” I snap at Africa – only for my mind to clear, like a camera lens snapping into focus. “Actually, forget that – just stand back.”

  “What?”

  “Annie!” I gesture at her to move. She’s quicker on the uptake, skipping off the roof and skidding to a stop on the muddy ground. I send out my PK, not giving the tiniest fuck who’s watching, wrapping it around the chunks of roof and drywall. They’re crazy heavy, but I’ve got to get them off. It’s 4 p.m. now, which means it’s been, what, four hours since the quake? Four and a half? All that time under the rubble…