Chapter 36

I wasn't sure what had happened. The last thing I remembered was Peter boosting the shield I had in place with the power he had been collecting and storing all day. I was sure he had said something to me but with what was happening around us, and me, trying to control what I had started, I missed what he had said to me and now his voice was quiet, gone from my head.

As to the time, I had no idea as I was still working through everything that had happened. Thinking about the shockwave, I wondered how long ago that had been as I remember being pummeled by another blast of air though the second one was nowhere near as intense as the nuclear one was but it had a longer duration. After that, there had been a rhythmic bouncing that had gone on for some time before I was jostled again.

When I stopped this time, I recognized the smell that was overpowering. It was the smell of a hospital or at least the chemicals they used for cleaning. Things became somewhat confusing once people stopped moving me around as there were voices shouting at each other and a few of them I recognized from somewhere but their names escaped me as I was still trying to piece together what it was that Peter had tried to tell me, I heard the words but now they escaped me. If I thought about them long enough, I was sure I would remember what he had said. Ignoring the voices around me, I concentrated on trying to remember what Peter had said to me.

I had no idea how much time passed since the last time I felt myself being moved and I did not care. Now the sensation of being moved made me think of where I was when Peter said what he did. I had just arrived at the stern of the boat after running up from below deck seeing four of my men lying on the deck screaming holding their eyes. The one closest to the stern was Thor and I moved to him first for no other reason than I knew him better than I knew some of the others. Looking around to see what happened I looked up at the horizon seeing a wall of air moving our way with a mushroom cloud rising behind it from over the horizon.

The wall of air coming at us was more serious than helping Thor along with everyone else, doing the one thing I could resigned to the thought that it would not be enough as the wave grew in height, as it got closer. Just before the wave hit my shield, Peter gave me the image of Yoda from Star Wars saying "No! Try not. Do, or do not, there is no try." The energy he had been holding was then being fed into my shield forcing it to grow larger. The shield I was holding was bigger than I had ever done before also allowing me to change the shape from the wall I had first put up and changed the angle to deflect the shock wave, to one covering the entire yacht in a the shape of a ship with a prow designed to cut though the largest waves. I wanted to change the shape even more but I was out of time as the wave slammed into the shield.

Feeling the shield starting to weaken from the debris embedded in the shockwave striking the shield Peter added more energy, more than I had ever held before. In my mind's eye, Peter was standing next to me feeding me power until I felt him weaken, then with a smile, he said, "I guess I will see you on the far side."

There was one final surge of power then everything went quiet. Looking around for Peter his voice was gone, even his presence was missing from my mind. For the first time in years, I was truly alone and the quiet was disconcerting. Putting the thought of being alone aside, I thought about what he might have meant saying he would see me on the far side.

Was he saying that there might be a god? If anyone were close to finding out that question, I would say that Peter had quite the lead in finding that out. I had no desire to find out if that was true for a number of years.

Maybe it was just the idea of the comedic value of the pictures. Who knows, maybe he had one that was a favorite of his and maybe gave him inspiration. I can say that I was inspired by several of the cartoons to the order of eleven billion dollars. There were no cartoons to depict surviving a nuclear blast, not that it mattered if there was, because I was alive.

Alive and rich, with islands around the world in which I could work on nothing but my tan. I laughed, the original white boy working on his tan, that was just way too funny and I laughed even louder. In my head, I could laugh as loud as I wanted and no one would care.

I was loud enough I could feel myself shaking inside my own head and it felt good. After a few seconds, I realized that I was not shaking from laughing but someone was intruding on my dream. Opening my eyes to see who would intrude in my thoughts I saw a face I had never seen before, the features were oriental, round, maybe Japanese. Not caring I reached out and grabbed her worthless neck, intending to squeeze the life out of her.

Before I could do much more than start to squeeze other hands were trying to pull me back, trying to get me to release her. After squeezing for what seemed like a short time of maybe ten seconds, I could see panic in her face as she realized she could not escape the hold I had on her neck, even the additional people could not get her free of me.

Then there was a voice, through the maelstrom of shouts reverberating off of the walls I recognized Sven's voice saying she was okay, that I could let go. The thought of letting her go took a second for me to realize Sven was talking about the girl who dared to touch me. The fear I saw in her face shocked me. Why did I want to kill her for touching me? For a second those thoughts warred in my head before looking at her again as she was starting to fade from lack of oxygen. Looking for Sven once again, I could see him mouthing the words to me to let her go.

There were other voices saying I had to let her go. Hearing Sven's voice among the rest I decided she meant nothing to me and let her go. I smiled as the people trying to save her from my grasp fell backwards landing in a heap on the floor. I smiled as everyone who had tried pulling the nurse from me now had to work to untangle themselves with the first one exiting the room in a hurry.

When he returned with reinforcements, bearing restraints, my smile grew bigger with the knowledge I could stop them with a thought if I wanted to. I never got the chance though as Sven along with the two other guards prevented them from approaching my bed stating no one got near me without permission and they certainly did not have permission. The standoff between my guards and the hospital's security continued for several more minutes before a supervisor arrived and the eight of them stepped outside my room to talk.

Now that I had my wits about me I thought it was strange the volume of noise coming from the hallway outside my door. When Sven returned, I asked why the hallway was so noisy. The answer of course was that those were the survivors from North Korea's nuclear attack. All the hospitals in Japan were the same receiving wounded as fast as they could be loaded on transport plans and flown to Japan.

Asking how we had arrived in Japan, Sven stated we had been adrift for more than a day, as the boat had been damaged with both engines being torn from their mountings and the captain along with six others were missing. Thinking about our missing and dead, I asked who they were and for some reason I knew Steve would be the first one Sven named. He was and although he was dead, I was glad he was not listed as missing, blown over the side and left to drown in the sea.

The list of wounded was longer than the dead and that list was entirely too long. As for my injuries, Sven stated I had none but after the shockwave passed over the yacht they could not wake me and I had been that way until the helicopter found the yacht and the more seriously injured had been taken off. Sven told me all of this then added it was another day until a ship came alongside taking everyone else off then once they were aboard pulled off a ways and sank the boat as a hazard to navigation. Fortunately, the ship that had found us were on was heading back to Japan with more survivors. So adding us to the other survivors transiting to Japan, meant I had been out for four days.