The Sovreign Era (Book 1): Brave Men Run Read online

  I knew she meant the government. Like a lot of kids my age I knew, I had a pretty strong distrust of Reagan. I carried around some righteous indignation about Central America, and worried about being drafted in a few years (if they’d have a freak like me). Now this guy comes around, tells the world all those old comic books are coming to life, and practically dares Reagan to do something about it.

  “I... guess not.”

  “I was worried about you,” she said. “I was afraid the school had kept you. That they had been told to because...”

  I wasn’t ready to really get behind what she was saying. I wanted to be like everybody else. I hated that I was different, I really hated it.

  I still had to ask the question.

  “Do you think I’m…”

  She put her hand on my cheek. Her palm was hot and wet. “I’ve always been proud of your gifts. I love you, and I love what makes you different.”

  I hated when she talked like that. It was hard not to pull away.

  She must have sensed it. She stood up. “We’re going to have to leave for a while. I’ll call Gran Louise; we’ll use the cabin.”

  My world was being rearranged on national television; my sense of who and what I was in disarray, but when I heard my mother say that, my mind went right to Lina. “We can’t leave! Not now!”

  She took me by the shoulders. “We can’t be sure it’s safe to stay right now. I’m not going to argue about it. No one is going to take you away from me.”

  “But I’m not like him!” I could hear myself yelling; I felt like a spectator, arguing with myself as much as with my paranoid mother. “I’m nobody! I’m just some freaky kid!”

  Her face darkened. Her eyes burned. “You are not a freak.” I knew she wasn’t mad at me. She was scared. “Go. Pack enough for a week.”

  I took another look at the television. Bill Moyers and some skinny old guy were talking about when comic books were banned back in the fifties. An old black and white cartoon of a flying man fighting robots flashed by. It made me wonder if people would start dressing up in leotards and beating each other up, like in Jason’s Japanese Gekiga books.

  “Go,” my mother repeated.

  I made for my room and threw clothes into my duffel bag. I heard my mother on the phone with Gran Louise. If I’d been in the same room and everything else was really quiet, I might have just made out the far side of the conversation. As it was, my mother’s tone told me they were arguing. When my mother’s voice dropped to a frantic whisper, I knew they were conspiring. At one point, I heard my mother say, “I do not blame Andrew, Louise.”

  Andrew was my dad. He died right after I was born. Why would they bring him up? I resolved to ask my mother about it. There would be plenty of time at the freaking cabin.

  The crazy events of the day suddenly caught up with me. I slouched, limbs heavy, on the edge of my bed.

  It wasn’t fair. This could have been an almost perfect day. Lina Porter said I have beautiful eyes.

  My mother burst in. “Hey. You can sleep in the car. Come on.”

  I grabbed my bag and trudged behind her. “What about your job?”

  “People will still be buying houses when this is over,” she said. “It’s not the end of the world. Not quite.”

  “Then why are we acting like it?”

  For a second she looked like she was going to answer me. Instead, she pushed me out the front door.

  Lester Brenhurst – Two

  Hours later, Brenhurst stood up from behind his desk and stretched. He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes tightly for a moment. He’d been working in the flickering light from a wall-mounted television since the sun went down, long ago.

  He looked up at the screen. Once again, the network played footage of Dr. William Karl Donner floating above a crowd of reporters and cameramen.

  The scene gave him a little rush of savage energy. His tired scowl twisted into a fierce smile.

  After a quarter century preparing in the shadows, how could he not almost welcome the war finally beginning?

  From The Journal Of Nate Charters – Six

  It was a two hour drive, five thousand feet up the mountains, to Kirby Lake. I slept nearly the whole way.

  I dreamed I was running through the woods. Lina kept yelling at me to wait up, but I never saw her. Through the whole dream, I was a mountain lion, but it wasn’t as cool as it sounds. The main thing crowding my feline brain was fear. I felt like I was being chased, and I felt ashamed for running, but I couldn’t stop.

  The slow crunch of car tires on the gravel driveway of Gran Louise’s cabin woke me up. I dragged myself out of the car while my mother unlocked the front door of the cabin.

  We hadn't been up here for a couple of years, the summer before I started high school. The cabin smelled like dust and pine needles, with a very faint, stale hint of my mother and myself. I wrinkled my nose.

  “Can we open the windows?”

  “It’s almost freezing outside,” my mother said, but I could see even she thought the air was stuffy. “Maybe just for a few minutes.” She zipped into the master bedroom, dropped off her bags, came back into the living room, and turned on the little television in the cabin’s small main room. It took a while to warm up.

  “Put your bag in your bedroom,” she said. “Then come back. There might be something new.”

  I went down the short hall to the same little room I’d slept in every time we’d come up here since I was six. Gran Louise told me my dad slept here when he was a little kid.

  Nothing had changed in the cabin since he had been here last, probably twenty years before. I used to think it was kind of neat, having his model airplanes and his old books and stuff there. I wasn’t sure why the sight of my dead father’s childhood things irritated me this time. Maybe it was because I didn’t feel like a kid anymore, myself. I just knew I wanted the last four hours to have never happened.

  Still, being there reminded me to ask my mother about her phone conversation with Gran Louise. I went back into the living room.

  “Hey, mom.”

  “Shh. Watch.” She pointed at the television.

  The caption on the bottom of the screen said “Live – New York City.” A news helicopter spotlight splashed across the rooftops. The light settled on something I couldn’t believe.

  These days, it’s pretty commonplace, I know. But this was the first time. I bet you were freaked out, too.

  There was a man on the edge of the roof. He had long, stringy hair. His shirt was off. His chest was huge; his shoulders, unnaturally broad. He wore a cape, but I couldn’t see where it attached.

  Then, the cape spread out, and up, and I saw, along with the rest of the world, that it wasn’t a cape at all. He had a pair of pale, pink wings growing right out of his shoulders.

  He looked up at the helicopter; right into the camera. The reporter said something, but I can’t remember a word of it. All I remember was the look on this guy’s face. He was laughing hysterically. He pointed at the camera, waved, and gave us all the finger before he jumped right off the roof.

  The camera and the spotlight kept up with him just long enough to see that he didn’t fall. He flew away.

  Of course I know now that he was Gary Chancellor. He was almost killed by an angry mob during the Pilgrimage, a year or so later. But right then, that night, all I knew was that he was proof.

  The television replayed Gary Chancellor spreading his wings. The caption changed to read “Sovereign of New York.”

  I knew I wasn’t breathing right. I was kind of gasping. I was shaking, too. My face was wet, but I wasn’t really crying.

  Sovereign.

  They were giving the freaks a name, the name Donner himself, maybe without intending it, had coined.

  Now there was a name for what I was. A label.

  It’s hard to explain how I felt about all that back then. I hated being different. All my life, all I’ve ever wanted was to be like everybody else. Be
ing different had screwed up my whole life.

  That’s not just me whining. That’s how it was.

  That night, though, I thought I wasn’t actually alone. Not if people were painting national landmarks with ESP and flying around major cities on bat wings. I was, apparently, a Sovereign. I was part of a group.

  Only thing was, that group, or at least their self-proclaimed leader, was making a big deal about being different.

  It was pretty confusing.

  My mother said, “It’s all right.”

  I sighed tremulously. “Oh yeah?”

  She shook her head at the television. “It’s not going to go well if they keep doing things like that.” Chancellor gave the bird to the world in instant replay.

  “Heh.” I sighed again and forced a smile. “Um, in case you were wondering…”

  “Hm?”

  “I can’t fly.”

  She didn’t smile back. “Do you know how serious this is?”

  “Um, like, duh, mom.”

  She crossed her arms on her chest. “That man – Donner – has sent the whole world into shock. There are… there are riots in most of the major cities, including LA. When the shock wears off, it’s going to be worse.”

  “What’s worse than riots?” I shook my head. “Why are people rioting? I don’t…”

  “There’s going to be a lot of fear,” she went on. “Do you know what happens when people in power get scared?”

  She didn’t wait for my answer, which is fine, because I knew she wasn’t looking for one. She was lecturing.

  “They attack, Nathan.”

  “How do you know?” I wasn’t being snide.

  “I remember Kent State… hell, I remember McCarthy, sort of.”

  “But that still doesn’t have anything to do with us,” I said. “We didn’t have to high-tail it all the way up here.”

  “No?” She raised an eyebrow.

  “No, we didn’t!” I huffed. “Look, even if I am… like that guy. I’m not, like, all crazy powerful, and stuff. Why would anyone care about me?”

  “Don’t assume,” she said.

  I felt like I was missing something. “I’m not in their league! I don’t threaten anyone. Even if there are more people like Donner, they’re gonna go after them, not me.” I shrugged and looked around at the cabin. “It seems stupid to go running off to the mountains, like this is so far out of the way there aren’t any cops or any…”

  She stopped me cold. “We… are… not running, Nathan. Do you understand me?”

  “Oh.” My face was hot. “Sure, mom.”

  “This isn’t a game.”

  “Then let’s go home!” Right then, the only thing that linked me to anything normal was Lina Porter, and the fact that we made a date to go out on Saturday night. The idea that I might miss that frustrated me enough to defy my mother, which was something I rarely did.

  “Not yet.”

  Something was wrong. The olfactory pathways that constantly brought information streaming into my senses carried the root of that wrongness on my mother’s perspiration, and if she was going to dance around it, I was going to dig it out.

  “You’re way more freaked out that you need to be. What’s going on?”

  I swear, I thought for a second she was going to slap my face, and I guess I deserved it. Instead, she kind of deflated. Her eyes were red.

  “You just have to trust me. You just have to go along with this for a little while.”

  I backed off. “How long is a little while?”

  She glanced at the television. The Washington Monument went from white to black to white again. She hugged herself. “I don’t know yet. We’ll see.”

  I sighed. “Like I don’t have a life, or nothing.”

  I wondered what Lina thought of my family, what with my mother being all rude to her. Probably made her wonder what I was really like, if my mother was such a case.

  Then I remembered. Lina had to have seen the TV. By now, I could guess what she thought.

  The more I thought of it, the more upset I got. It was bad enough being the freakiest kid in school. What was it going to do to my reputation, which was already way, way to the left of zero on the number line, if I didn’t show up at school the day after all this Sovereign stuff went down? Everyone would be talking about it, and, hey, where’s that freaky Charters kid, anyway? You think maybe..?

  Wonderful.

  My mother took another look at the television. It was continuous re-hashing of what had already happened and we’d already seen.

  “I’m going to bed,” she said. “Wake me if anything new happens, if you’re staying up.”

  “Okay.”

  Alone, I stared at the television. I switched channels, once around the dial. Everything had been pre-empted by the Sovereign story, even on public television and the Spanish networks. Turns out “Soberano” is Spanish for Sovereign.

  No one had anything new to say. It didn’t matter. I soaked it in.

  Tomorrow, William Donner would begin talks with President Reagan. That was wild. It made me wonder if what Donner had said was true, that our government was abusing people like him, or like me, or whatever?

  I was ready to believe it. It just figured.

  This one show had some commentators discussing the implications of Donner’s declaration on the Cold War. The “Nuclear War Clock” was moved another minute closer to midnight. The Russians and China put out independent statements denying abusive treatment of any Sovereign in their countries, but someone from the White House pointed out this wasn’t the same as admitting they did or did not have any Sovereign in those countries in the first place.

  One commentator brought up the potential of Sovereign soldiers in the service of the Soviets. Everyone pretty much agreed the whole world would be screwed if we started fighting wars with armies like that.

  It was depressing. It made me angry. Bad enough we had, like, a million nukes waiting to wipe us out. Now there were human bombs walking around. I understood why people were rioting.

  Would people start hating me? Hating me more?

  I’d had enough TV. I shut it off.

  The cabin was quiet in the way that told me my mother was probably asleep. I wasn’t anywhere near tired, not after sleeping in the car. Even if I hadn’t napped, my bad mood gave me agitated energy.

  I padded as quietly as possible into my bedroom. It was dark, but there was enough light for me to see. I have excellent night vision, another one of the little perks that made me, thanks to Donner, officially now, a freak. I grabbed my jacket and slid it on.

  My mother’s keys to the cabin were on the little counter separating the living room from the kitchen. I stuffed them into my jeans pocket and went outside.

  From The Journal Of Nate Charters – Seven

  The cabin is on a quiet stretch of road about a mile from Kirby Lake and the small village that surrounds it. There aren’t any streetlights, and everything’s all woodsy and overgrown. That night, the moon was barely a sliver in the sky, but that was plenty of light for me to see well enough.

  Once I was down the road a bit, out of sight of the cabin, I stopped and took a deep breath. The cold air was invigorating, and the scents of the forest filled me up.

  I know I’ve mentioned, here and there, what it is that makes me different from everyone else. My fast metabolism, my big eyes, my weird, never-growing hair, and my night vision. I guess I should run it all down for you.

  Basically, all of my senses, except for, I guess, touch, are way more sensitive than other people. I can hear a wider frequency range, and quieter sounds. My eyesight, like I said, is very sharp, and I can see in almost total darkness. The less light there is, the less color I can make out, but my mother says that’s the same for everyone. Difference is, to me a night-light is like a lit room, but all done in gray.

  Then there's my sense of smell. I remember once when I was a little kid, playing hide and seek with Mel and some other kids, I knew who was hiding i
n the room with me because I could track their scents. Sometimes, my sense of smell overwhelms everything else. This is bad when it’s a bag of rancid garbage, but mega-great when it’s something like Lina’s personal scent.

  Finally, I’m stronger than I look. I had a lot of tests done on me as I was growing up, and one doctor basically told me and my mom that my muscles can do more with less. The rest of my body, like my lungs and heart and blood, are hyped up to make that possible, but the cost is my metabolism. If I’m really active for a while, or if I’m too stressed out, I get tired faster than most people. Also, as I’ve mentioned, I need a lot of fuel to keep things moving.

  My mother says I’m gifted. You might think it all sounds pretty cool, too. Thing is, I’m just different enough to get singled out. When I walk in a room, everyone knows I’m different. I can’t hide it. I’d rather be just a nerd, or whatever, and still be able to at least say I’m normal.

  Still, up in the mountains, alone with the wind and the pine needles and everything all quiet, it’s actually kind of nice. That deep breath I took told a whole big story, all carried on the air.

  About seven feet away, under a pile of pine needles, a dead squirrel was decomposing. That’s not as gross as you’d think; just a musty, warm kind of smell. Down the road and off the left shoulder, in a little ravine, was some kind of small carnivore. I could smell the meat on its breath. Maybe a fox, or a coyote, or even a house cat?

  If I closed my eyes, opened my mouth a little, and just breathed through my nose, I could make a map in my head of the immediate area; a map of all the life. Bring in my hypersensitive ears, and I could hear the soft crinkle of vegetation under the paws of that little mystery animal. I could make out, very roughly, how tall the trees were based on the different tones of their leaves rustling up and down the trunks. Very faintly, if I really focused, I could hear the lake water slapping on a wooden dock, a couple of miles away.

  I don’t know. I might have imagined that last one.

  I stood there, I don’t know how long, in the middle of the road, eyes closed, and just let myself be who I was. I stood there long enough for the crickets to relax in my presence and start chirping again. I stood there long enough to forget about the television, and William Donner, and the flying man, and even Lina Porter and my life in Abbeque Valley. I was just, like, there.