Run, Elan, Run!

Chapter 8
Zero to Sixty

Elan Owen - Part 8: Zero to Sixty

by Jesse Rabbit

This Chapter dedicated to my mother, who though we argue all the time, I still know she will always love me, and who keeps telling everyone to read her child's work. Love you mom.

Do you know the wonderful thing about adrenaline? It delays pain for later. Diamond had a rock hard grip on my shoulder, his fingers sinking in deep, deep enough that I was sure that he would have draw blood if not for the leather of my jacket. I would have screamed, but the next instant he had clamped a hand over my mouth, a hand that smelled ten times worse than the rest of him, a hand that reeked of urine and greasy hair and hot dogs and other things too nasty to think about let alone describe. I fought back my revulsion long enough to sink my teeth into his hand, biting down so hard I felt the skin break and sickening warmth cover my lips and tongue. I thrashed against his hold, drumming my heels against his thigh as hard as I could. I even managed to hit him square between the legs once or twice, but I guess he was too stoned cause nothing worked. He just wouldn't let go.

He dragged me back out of the crowd into the tiny park next to the theater. It was dark there, among the trees and stone benches, the lights from the theater filtering only slightly through the late autumn leaves. The distant murmur of the crowd and the occasional crunch of dry leaves under Diamond's feet were the only sounds aside from his hot wheezing breath, that demented little laugh, and the sound of my heels impacting on his thighs and crotch.

I felt tears running down my face and although it was becoming harder and harder to think through the rising panic inside of me I couldn't help wondering if they were tears of rage, pain, or fear. A moment later and I knew the answer as he flung me away from him hard, sending me crashing into one of the stone benches. I felt a snap and sharp pain in my side as at least one of my ribs snapped from the impact. I bit my lip and grunted, too winded to scream as I fell against the bench.

I looked up at the dark shape that was my tormentor and glared, pain and outrage having driven any thought of fear from mind at least temporarily. I lunged at him, hitting him in the belly with my shoulder and heard a grunt, but that was all. I was simply too small and Diamond simply too large, stupid, and stoned to be moved.

He grabbed me, pulled me back and smashed his fist against the side of my face, sending me back again against the bench. I tumbled backwards over it, felt a sharp pain in the back of my head as I hit something, and the word went grey-white for a while. I shook my head slowly, trying to clear it as Diamond loomed over me. The pain was nauseating and my chest hurt from how hard my heart was pounding. I raised my left arm to ward him off and that's when the sleeve of my jacket slipped down far enough to show Grandpa's Watch.

Diamond hunkered down in front of mye, laughing and saying something in a mocking tone, but I was too dazed to understand him. He grabbed my wrist and pulled on it, pulling it up to his face so he could get a better look at The Watch. He chuckled and said, "Pretty snazy ticker, girly. Should buy me a few Slaps of Hex," and then he tried to pull it off.

There was a flash of electric-blue light and when my sight cleared Diamond was not in it. The scent of ozone hit my nose, a scent that often fills my house at times, and I felt like retching. I pulled my wrist close and examined my watch. The face said something but I couldn't read it, my vision was still to blurry, so I just activated the panic mode, hoping that the authorities would get there fast cause I felt like DOS, if you'll forgive my language. Then I heard a groan and saw Diamond sit up, looking stunned. He shook his head and growled, "I'll make you hurt for that, you little bitch!" That's when the tingles started again.

For a moment I was stunned, had I activated the wrong panic mode? No, I couldn't have. It wasn't 11 o'clock in the evening on the Pacific coast, so I couldn't be turning back into a boy. The Watch beeped and I heard in my head, "Healing Mode Initiated." I felt ill as the tingles concentrated in my side, my cheek, and the back of my head. I spasmed as a bolt of agony shot through my head, my scalp simply grew back together, the concussion I almost certainly had set itself, and the bone fused whole once more. I also watched in sick horror as Diamond slowly got to his feet, obviously assuming that he had plenty of time and that I wasn't going anywhere.

As soon as the pain in my head faded into a memory I heard the watch beep again and announce, "Healing Mode Completed. Initiating Danger Mode." I felt a tingle like when The Watch changed me, and my body trembled like I was having a seizure. I felt the muscles in my arms and legs tighten and I knew at that moment what a bow must feel like when its string is pulled taut. I scrambled to my feet as Diamond lurched forward at me.

He laughed "Going somewhere, little girl?"

I nodded and without a moment's thought I took off. Now, even under normal circumstances I should not have been able to out distance Diamond. He was almost three feet taller than me, certainly stronger than me, and knew the area. These weren't normal circumstances. He was on Hero X, which sounds a lot like Heroics, and for a reason. The news reports about people on Hero X - or Hex - doing insane things are becoming almost routine. Things like taking twenty shots from police tazers or jumping thirty feet across the gap between buildings or flipping over an old ground car. He should have caught me in less than a hundred paces, but a hundred paces would have put me at the corner of the building, in shouting distance of the crowd, and that was what I was counting on.

What I wasn't counting on is that he wasn't gaining ground, in fact in those hundred paces he lost at least a length on me. So I kept going, figuring that maybe he had stumbled or been caught off guard by my sudden bolting. I kept running, right through the crowd, hoping that he would lose me in the press of people. I dodged and ducked through the people dressed as the Terminator and Sarah Conner and Kyle Reece and Ginger and the rest, feeling very much like Sarah Conner at that moment, and then I was out at the street.

I tried to jump up onto the hood of a aerotaxi, figuring that the more people who could see me the less likely Diamond was to kill me, but I missed. Now I don't mean I misjudged the jump and landed to the side or didn't jump far enough and landed in front of the aerotaxi. No. I jumped right over the damn thing and landed on the hood of the Landrover in the first lane of traffic, which thankfully was stopped at the light. Mentally shrugging I kept going, running from car to car stopped at the light, easily clearing the distance between lanes. After clearing a crowd, a taxi pickup lane, five lanes of one-way traffic and another taxi lane I figured it was safe to stop, so I did and turned to look back.

I screamed, partly in outrage and partly in fear 'cause Diamond had clearly smashed everyone in the crowd who was too slow to get out way in time to the ground, climbed up on the taxi and continued the chase. What were good-sized jumps for me were long steps for him and he was only two lanes away, his face a reddish mask of anger in the digital neon glow of the street.

I stumbled backward into someone, heard a grunt and a Russian curse word, was pushed off, spun around and dashed off again, zigging and zagging through the crowd. At the corner I ran through a corner grocer and a second later heard the crash as Diamond smashed tight through a display of bananas that I had leapt clear over. I skipped round a corner into an alleyway, sure that I had at least one second where Diamond couldn't see me in which to disappear.

I hoped that the police arrived soon, hoped that he would spend a critical few seconds looking for me and thus allow me to get back to the theater and my family. I pounded down the dark alley; my feet whisper quiet on the rough pavement I noted at the back of my mind, at the same time marveling at the fact that I wasn't even a little bit winded. See told you adrenaline was a wonderful thing.

It was then that I made my critical mistake. I turned my head back to see if Diamond was following me and breathed a sigh of relief as I didn't see him. That was when I slowed down, but in doing so I lost my balance on the slick rough stone and skidded sideways at was must have been close to twenty miles an hour I later calculated. My skip was abruptly stopped when I collided with a trash bin, or actually, just after I had collided with and been impaled on the three metallic rods protruding from it.

I fell back, reeling with the impact and collapsed onto the ground, a quarter inch thick rod stuck through my side, a second two inches below that and the third right through my thigh, entering the hole that Karen had made earlier. For a second or two I couldn't understand what my eyes were telling me and then I laughed, at the hysterical thought that at least the pants had already had a bloody wound hole to start with. Then I realized what I was seeing and screamed. And screamed and screamed and screamed.

Distantly I heard The Watch say, "Please remove foreign objects," so the tiny logical part of my mind began to do so, even though I later learned that under normal circumstances it's not a good idea to remove things that are sticking into you yourself, and that you really ought to go to the hospital to have someone who knows what the poxy hell they are doing do it. 'Cause it hurt, it hurt a lot, pulling those rods out of my side and I was feeling sick again; sicker in fact than I had earlier, but less dazed, thanks to the lack of head wounds.

I had just pulled the second one out of me when I heard that laugh again, this time from in front of me. I looked up.

Diamond was there, grinning down the alley at me. "Don't go dying on me before I have my fun, little chica. It wouldn't be fair to old Diamond, now would it?" he drawled, sounding completely psychotic, which I guess he was at that point.

I felt such anger then. Here I was in pain, alone, in this stinking alleyway, on what had already been a spectacularly stressful day - although the musical had been awesome - bleeding, holding a steel rod covered in my own blood which I had pulled out of my own side, the wrong bloody gender, and this stoned junky moron was laughing at me and threatening God knew what kinds of torments and abuses, just cause I was smaller than him and he figured he could get away with it. I had had enough.

I threw the rod at him as hard as I could and yanked the other one out of my leg, nearly falling over at the sudden throb of agony. I heard him cry out in pain and then I lunged at him, rod held high like I was a samurai or a knight or a nun or something. After an eternity it seemed someone was pulling me off of him and telling me something in a calm voice. I was pretty out of it at that point, and I nearly hit whoever it was that was pulling me back from Diamond, who was huddled against the wall of the alley, arms covered in dozens of slash marks from where I had hit him over and over again with the rod. Seeing Diamond like that kinda snapped me out of it, 'cause I realized that it wasn't Diamond who was grabbing me, so I went limp. The rod dropped to the ground with a clang and rolled against the wall with a clatter.

The policelady sat me back down and, turning me round to face her, kneeled and asked, "You okay, kiddo?"

I nodded and then broke into tears, threw my arms round her neck and sobbed. I sobbed out all the things that had gone wrong today, all the terror, all the stress, all the fear and pain and anger and rage. I sobbed for dog knows how long and when I was done I sobbed a bit more, just because I felt so icky and gross and cause I had to. Then my parents were there and the lady cop lifted me up and handed me to my mother, who hugged me close.

***

When the lady cop - whose name was Leslie McBride - told my parents and I that I would need to be checked out by the medtechs I was a little worried, I mean, how could I get through an examination without anyone finding out my secret? It turns out I needn't have worried. Kim Kale - the medtech - examined my limbs closely, looking for cuts or scrapes, checked my head for the same, found none, asked me if I was hurting anywhere and when I said no, probed my abdomen gently until I giggled. She asked if the man had touched me sexually and I shock my head, so she asked me again and I said no. She turned to the lady cop and said "The kid's fine. Just a little shook up and scared." I would have protested but I was scared, and for more reasons than Kim suspected.

Twenty minutes later, after the medtechs had told my parents that I was completely unhurt and that all the blood was Mister DeLuca's - which turned out to be Diamond's real name, Leonard Simon DeLuca. The medtech gave me an antibiotic lollipop just in case I had gotten exposed to anything in Diamond's blood and then let me talk to the cops. Officer McBride was there and she sat next to me with an arm round my shoulder as I gave Detective Marco Antonioni my vid statement. He had this really cool mustachio, it looked like two sideways exclamation points under his nose. He then told my dad that he would be in touch if they needed anything, but since the law had been changed to protect kids from having to face their attackers in court I wouldn't have to appear at the trial, if there actually was one. Then Detective Marco gave me a little cloisonné NYPD badge pin for being so brave and said we could go.

So that was that. My dad asked if I was okay and I nodded and asked if we could go to Better Than Sex for desert and he said sure. So I had this ludicrous fudge, ice cream, and cake thing called Chocolate Suicide which was two triple fudge brownies with two scoops of cho1oclate-chocolate fudge ripple ice-cream drenched in like a cup or two of hot fudge and sprinkled with cocoa and chocolate fudge jimmies. It was soooooooooo good. And I had a strawberry shake to go with it, so that was like ten times more sugar than they ever let me have.

Karen had this raspberry peach parfait thing with fresh fruit and loads of whipped cream and hot cocoa. Dad had the Cheese Cake that Ate New Orleans, this spicy creamy chocolate thing which melted about a foot from your tongue and was transmitted directly to the pleasure centers of the brain where it proceed to do the cha-cha. Mom had the Cheese Cakes of the World Sampler which was eight little cheese cake tarts. Sam had the, "So good you cannot believe it's diet" Black Forest cake, which has like only twenty calories, no fat, and no sugar. Sam claims it must be magic cause it tastes almost as good as their non-diet stuff. (And it does, I had a taste) Pig had what I had, and some of mom's and some of dad's and some of Karen's and some of Sam's and I know that she had half a dozen giant cookies at the theater during intermission. See why I call her Pig? She even stole a few bites from mine.

So after that we were all totally buzzed on sugar and giggling like fools as we piled back into the aerotaxi and headed home. It had been a full day and Karen and I both nodded off at some point along the way. The next thing I knew dad was shaking me gently awake and telling me that we were home. Then he gave me some great news. Because of everything - that he knew of - that had happened, it was okay for me to stay home the next day and - this made it even better - he had called Karen's moms and arranged it so that she could skip with me, too. I heard Pig complaining that she didn't get to miss school and then heard Mom tell her that if she got attacked by a lunatic she could skip, too. But by that point, me and Karen were whooping with joy as we ran up the steps to the house, then ran up the stairs to my room, locked the door and collapsed onto the bed, giggling and smiling madly at the idea of a free day, all to ourselves.

Mom and Dad came up to wish us good night and to collect my now blood-stained clothes that I had dumped into the hamper which can be reached from outside in the hall and inside in my room. They told us through the door to be good and not stay up too late and we cried out in harmony, "Why Not! NO SCHOOL TOMORROW!" and then we danced around the room naked, singing the no school tomorrow song.