Chapter 4: Like Rape Being The Light Beer Of Bad Shit That Can Happen To You

"Wake him up!"

"What are you doing?"

"Hurry! Jewel and Ashley have been gone for a half-hour!"

"Stop that!"

"Miguel ... Miguel!"

"I said cut that shit out, bitch!"

"Fuck you, asshole!" Bianca's voice sounded angry. Scared! Bianca was scared? The blonde went toe to toe with werewolves! Granted, with a shotgun in hand, but the werewolf had teeth and didn't go down from one well-placed bullet so same difference.

"Stop it!"

"Stop kicking her!"

Joey!

Someone shook me. Someone kicked me in the head! Not hard, more like they were trying to wake me up.

"I'm up, Robert! I'm up! Fuck, stop kicking me, asshole!" Damn it! My foster brother wasn't going to like being called by his true name.

I rolled away from the kicks, trying to put my hands up to protect my head. Trying? Why was I only trying? My hands wouldn't come up; something kept them behind me! I opened my eyes. A guy was standing over Bianca. He spit down at her face. She grimaced as she tried to pull away.

Where were we? What happened?

"As soon as the boss is done with those two cunts, you're mine!" He spit at Bianca again.

My hands were handcuffed behind me!

"Miguel!" Joey's voice again.

I lay on my back and looked around. Joey was leaning against the wall. Fear touched her face, more fear than when she told me about the cancer. Her eyes opened wide as I stared at her.

"Get up, Miguel!" she screamed. "We need you! I need you! Please!"

"What the fuck is this little shit supposed to do, cunt?" The guy laughed. "Maybe I'll fuck you first so you can die knowing what it's like to have a real man between your legs."

Everyone in the room heard it! The guy stopped laughing; confusion crossed his face as his mind tried to process what the sound could be.

Throwing Rob around the kitchen with my mind was only one form of my power. Close to my body, I could give a physical shape to the Push. Since it lasts no longer than a normal Push, it had very little uses outside of a fight.

Small is easier to practice. Small is easier to hide. Small can be explained if you're caught. A small Push--small in focus, not power! A Push directed by my finger, laser-fine, focused on the chain between the cuffs. My power taking solid form! Everyone heard the sound of steel snapping!

The motherfucker had to be practiced at doing bad things. He recognized the danger as soon as I got up to my knees. His eyes moved from my left wrist to my right. His mind did not have time to understand the impossible before his hands came up to point the rifle at me. He fired! He was fast, but he had plenty of opportunities to kill me. I would not give him another! My hands were in front of me. I Pushed, not at him or at anything, but in a circle around my palms. The bullet impacted against my power. He had already fired again! I felt the second touch of my Push against a moving bullet.

"What the fuck!" he yelled. It was a mistake, giving me enough time to think.

I Pushed him! He hit the brick wall behind him at over a hundred miles an hour.

"Miguel!" Bianca shouted. "They'll come up the steps. Hurry!"

She leaned forward, touching her forehead against the ground and extending her arms up. They had cuffed her too!

"No!" Brandi screamed.

A guy ran into the room, leading with a handgun.

All the credit should go to my mother. She understood! I needed to use my power; let it guide me down the path of the impossible. Movies helped. Kung-fu movies. Sci-fi movies. Horror movies. Other people's visions shaping how I tried to Push, but even they couldn't imagine what it meant to be my mother's child.

The gang member shot at me!

Right hand up. Push. Spin. He shot again. Left hand up. Push. Spin down. Push another bullet away. Spin. Left hand. His aim was bad. Push farther out. The bullet hit the ceiling. Spin. Right hand up in a wide Push. I could only hold the Push-Wall for an instant, long enough to direct a more focused Push at Bianca's handcuffs.

She sprang forward as the chain split. Grabbing the first man's gun, she opened fire into the second guy's chest. Fire creased across my back! Bianca jumped to her feet. On the way to the door, she reached down and grabbed the gun out of the man's hand. Bianca threw herself out the door and down. She opened fire into the stairway!

"I can't hold them for long," she yelled between shots.

I looked around the room. "Where's Jewel and Ashley?"

"Downstairs!" the Professor yelled. "They were going to rape the girls. Ashley ... she and Jewel said they were willing to take on real men. They're downstairs, Miguel!"

"Whatever the fuck you're going to do, Miguel," Bianca shouted. "Hurry!"

"Against the wall," I said. "Everyone against the wall behind me."

Crushing wouldn't be instantly fatal. I could save the girls if they got caught in the avalanche. I didn't need to drop the whole floor either! Jewel and Ashley might already be dead; I had to think about the people behind me.

I Pushed the floor.

"Jesus!" "Holy shit!" "Fuck!" "Yes!" Whispers. Screams. Shouts. I could hear everything through roar of the floor collapsing beneath my feet.

I rode the rubble to the floor below. Unlike where they kept us prisoner, there was no wall between the room I stood in and the stairway. I could see one guy's head as he ran up from the floor below. Bianca must be out of bullets! I Pushed at an angle--the stairs, floor, walls, and the guy flew away from the building. More than one scream! Several guys had been running up the stairs.

The floor I landed on had no connecting rooms. Ashley and Jewel had to be on a lower floor! How far up were we? I Pushed the floor. Nothing in those rooms either. I Pushed again!

"What the fuck are you?"

I turned around. He shouldn't have spoken. His bullet was too late. I Pushed it aside.

"I'll kill this bitch, motherfucker!" His words came out pig squeals. He held a naked Ashley in front of him. He wrapped his arm around her throat and put the revolver to her head. "I will waste the whore!"

I couldn't see Jewel as I looked around. He didn't take the bait, keeping the gun against Ashley's head. Shrugging, I Pushed them both! They flew backwards. His body protected Ashley from the impact against the wall.

Recovering before he could, Ashley grabbed the gun out of his hand.

"My turn, BITCH!" she screamed before shooting him in the face. "How does it feel, BITCH? You like it! You like it, don't you? A real cock inside you."

She shot him until the hammer clicked on a spent shell. Ashley knelt on the asshole's chest and slammed the butt of the gun against the remains of his face.

I don't know how much time passed. I had to fight the nausea. I NEEDED but had to hold on! Bianca and Kellie ran by me.

"Miguel!"

Bianca tackled Ashley, "Enough! That's enough!"

"Miguel!"

Where was Jewel?

I walked into the other room. Jewel was huddled against the wall. Kellie had her arms around the Asian woman, rocking her back and forth.

"Miguel!"

"What?" I screamed. "What the fuck do you want from me?"

The heads of the women snapped in my direction. Kellie and Bianca were scared. Scared of me! Ashley looked ... I'd never seen that look on a woman's face. Jewel's eyes were rabid, not crazy but something else. She saw some of what I did. I knew that look--I felt it a few times. I was feeling it now! Something was crawling out from inside of Jewel!

"Miguel, I need you!" It was Brandi yelling at me from upstairs. "Joey needs you."

Pushing past the section I threw off the building, I ran up the stairs. How did Bianca and Kellie get down?

Brandi must have ripped Joey's shirt open. Someone had shot Joey!

"I didn't Push a bullet at her!" I said, looking at Brandi.

"They shot her when she rushed to you outside the supermarket," Brandi said.

"The Professor carried her here," Bianca said from behind me. How did she get up with no stairs? "They let him because it looked funny to them. An old man struggling with her weight! They kept calling him her hero."

All four of the women were back in the room. God damn it! How had they made it up the stairs? Ashley and Jewel were still naked.

"Get out," I told them.

"What the fuck are you going to do, freak?" Stephen was angry.

I did not give a fuck anymore. "Get out! Get the fuck out or I will throw you all the way to Metro City. The landing will kill you, fuckhead!"

Stephen, Danny, and Tara were the first ones out of the room.

"Give her to me, Brandi," I said.

"I can help you." She placed Joey into my arms carefully. "I know you did something to her cancer, Miguel!"

"Don't let them come in here," I said. "Especially the women! Do not let them come back in, Brandi."

Her eyes met mine. Regardless of Doctor Brandi Larson wanting to know what I had done and what I could do, she blinked.

"No, Bianca!" She yelled at the door. "He'll save her. You have to leave him alone. Please! He can save her!"

The people staring didn't help any as I tried to deal with the pain.

"I must have forgotten how to count," I said to the Professor. "Are there more people?"

"We have a problem," Bianca told me, pointing at one of the new guys. "That's Jack Valence."

"Oh!" I said, as if I knew what the fuck she was talking about.

"The mob enforcer," Professor told me.

"Ohhhh!" I studied the gentleman. He certainly looked like a mob enforcer: swarthy, a bit of a tan, and sporting a wicked leather jacket. I really liked the jacket! He must have felt my eyes on him; he returned the study.

"Don't worry, I'll take care of it," Bianca said.

I didn't like how she squared her shoulders. Bianca was a force to be reckoned with, but this guy looked like he reckoned quite well. "Can we get back to the apartment building?"

"Are you okay?" Brandi put the back of her hand on my forehead. "You feel hot."

"Yeah, hot!" I whispered. "How many new people?"

"Ten," Bianca said. "New people? So we're taking them back with us."

"Whatever, Bianca!" The new people stared, but the original people in our group made everything sound like a question. I didn't like either! "I'm going to go sit in the truck. I can't believe they brought it."

"They laughed about us loading it for them," Bianca said. "They knew the werewolves had staked the area so they came in force to get supplies. We dealt with the weres and nicely packed the truck."