The Hunt: The Oakmont Saga, Book 2

Before we’d made it far from the building, seven of the twelve kids caught up and joined us. We were now a group of ten, when I originally thought I’d be alone. I stopped abruptly, as an idea came to me.

Turning back toward the huge building, I sent more probes than any of the kids had ever seen from a single telepath. I didn’t hide my strength either. In that moment, they all knew, without any doubt. I was the strongest telepath they’d ever seen. They knew what that many probes meant, and the strength of every one of them was evident, even for a telepath that couldn’t sense strength. I could feel all of that radiating from them, and I didn’t need to penetrate their minds for it.

They wanted a monster...they got one. They just didn’t have control of it. I suddenly thought of an old adage that applied. “Be careful what you ask for. You might just get it.” They were definitely going to get it.

As I felt my probe enter the minds of almost everyone in the building, I knew something was odd. Not really caring, I sent an alert to them all. “The building is about to collapse. Get out while you can,” I told them. Once I knew they all had the message, I sent the images to them that I’d sent to Mrs. Trulin and the twelve kids, in the hospital. As with those twelve, I didn’t hold anything back.

Once I was certain everyone was moving, I sat down to wait. The kids that were with me, including Richard and Chelsea, were looking at me as if I was crazy.

“We need to go,” Richard said, trying to help me up.

Not yet, I said, a smile forming on my face. Everyone in our little group was included in that message.

“That smile doesn’t look nice,” he acknowledged. Unable to stop myself, I began laughing. Even I knew it wasn’t a normal sounding laugh. I was truly crazy...certifiably so.

Let me know when everyone is out of the building, I told them, when my insane laughter finally subsided. A giggle still made its way out, every so often. All of the kids looked at me, as if I’d slapped them, or maybe they looked at me with concern. I wasn’t sure, and didn’t care.

“That was fast,” one of the kids exclaimed. That kid was a younger boy, maybe 11 years old. He had short cut, dark brown hair, and was a bit gangly in body. I couldn’t tell what color his eyes were in the predawn darkness, only broken by the large street lights which were everywhere. They didn’t provide enough light to see eye color, though.

“What was,” another asked. This was a girl that had similarly brown hair. Her hair was in a ponytail, but it was very wavy, and bushy. Her skin was paler than the boy’s, and she was just as skinny, although a tiny bit shorter. I suspected that she was a little older, though, maybe as old as 14.

“Everyone’s out, including the adults, even though the grownups don’t know why they’ve evacuated,” the boy remarked.

At his reply, I closed my eyes and concentrated. I sent something that was similar to telepathic probes, but different, to several pillars within the center of the building. I hadn’t thought this would be easy, but it was way harder than I expected. With those probes, I grabbed the posts and began pulling on them, expecting them to give easily like almost everything I did with my powers was. That wasn’t what happened though.

It was as if I was trying to pull them with my bare hands, which, of course, wouldn’t do anything. Although I was scared of it, I reached into that pool of energy and poured it into my effort, allowing the wonderful feel of it to course through me in an ever increasing torrent. My concentration, and strain, deepened with the increased effort.

The feeling of that energy was what scared me so much, and I was in ecstasy as it washed through me. The warmth and sheer pleasure of it infused every inch of me, every pore on my skin, each and every hair. I felt myself giving into it more and more, as the energy continued to flow into and through me.

After a long time of straining, and feeling a rapidly growing pain in my head and all over my body, I heard, rather than felt, a groan emanate from the building. Without any more warning than that, there was a great clap kind of noise and then several huge cracks formed in places along the outer walls. A moment later, a huge billow of dust poured out of the building. From the outside, the building looked normal, other than the cracks, the dust still floating in the air and everything outside having a fresh coating of that dust.

The energy stopped pouring through me without me trying to stop it. The world very suddenly became plain, blank. I felt somewhat disoriented, but thought I could continue walking, even if I knew I couldn’t use my powers for a while.

Oops, I said, glancing over at Richard and Chelsea, with no emotion on my face. They were staring at me with their mouths partially open, as if they wanted to say something, but didn’t know what to say.

“What did you do,” Richard finally asked, his face transforming to a look of maybe surprise.

I may have pulled the center columns out of the building, I told him.

“What!” Chelsea and several of the kids all exclaimed together, almost in perfect unison.

It’s time to go, now, I said as I started to get up. I had no idea where it was I wanted to go, but they’d been wanting to go, so I was willing to. I didn’t think about the possibility that my mind was not working properly.

As I was about to stand up completely, my legs gave out and I fell hard to the ground. I felt the blood coming from my nose and running down my cheeks from my eyes, as I was kneeling where I’d tried to stand.

I think that hurt, I kind of mumbled.

I’d never understood why we bled when we overexerted ourselves. It didn’t make sense to me. That was totally in our mind, and the blood vessels that released this blood weren’t connected to it, other than as any other system is connected to the brain. Yet, whenever we did too much, we bled from our eyes, nose and ears.

I was unable to focus my eyes on anything, my vision actually beginning to go black. Unable to even focus my thoughts anymore, I felt several sets of hands lift me up. I really didn’t remember much for a long time after that. I’d way overdone it. Actually, it was good to know I had limits. I could be defeated, if someone got me to push myself too far.

When I finally opened my eyes again, feeling like I’d only closed them a few minutes ago, I was surprised to see bright light all around me. There were trees everywhere, which meant we were in the woods.

Where are we? I asked.

“In the woods near the school,” a voice replied. Looking over, I saw a very young looking girl with a wet cloth sitting beside me. The cloth had red in it, which meant I hadn’t been out too long. I felt very weak, though.

The girl was somewhat small, kind of like me, but she was still very young. Her hair actually looked about the same color as mine, but with a stronger hint of red in it, although it’d still be considered blonde. She had the slightest hint of freckles across her nose and barely onto her cheeks. It was very cute. Her features were very fine, and delicate looking. However, I could see strength behind those delicate features.

What did kind of confuse me though, was that I didn’t remember her being one of the seven that joined us when we were leaving. Of course, my mind wasn’t working as well as it should, which could account for that.

Has anyone scouted the area, to see if they’re after us? I asked, deciding to figure out who she was later.

“They did that several days ago, and they watch the road all the time, night and day,” the girl replied.

How long have we been here? I asked, very confused with her reply.

“Today is the fourth day,” she nonchalantly replied.

What!? I exclaimed.

“We couldn’t move you, and we didn’t want to leave you. You’re our leader,” she stated, as if it wasn’t any big deal.

How have you survived out here? I asked, gathering my thoughts and trying to make sense of it all.

“We’ve scavenged from the ruins of the building. There was a lot that we were able to get to pretty easy, but we’ll need to leave soon. It’s almost gone now and we don’t know how far it is to the nearest town,” she said.

Maybe six or seven miles, once we get to the highway, which I think is less than three miles, I told her. She smiled beatifically in response.

I started trying to stand up, but she pushed me back down. “You aren’t ready yet.” I tried again, with the same result. Although she was relatively small, even to me, it didn’t take much effort for her to hold me down.

“Give it a little while, and I’ll help you, but you’re not ready yet,” she said, giving me that same beatific smile. This one was a little more patronizing, though.

Knowing I couldn’t fight her, I gave in and sat there. A few moments later, a teenage boy brought me a bowl with some kind of soup in it.

“We hope you like it. It was hard to get the ingredients I needed, so it could probably be better,” he said, handing me the bowl, almost reverently.

I’m not a god or something!, I exclaimed, frustrated at the hero worship that they seemed to have for me.

“No, but you saved us and you’re the strongest telepath ever,” the girl replied.

I didn’t save you. You saved yourself. All I did was destroy a building, I told her.

“If you hadn’t done that, they’d have come after us and got us,” she stated.

“We would never have left, in the first place,” the boy said, as he turned and walked away.

I continued to eat, as we talked, me trying to convince her I wasn’t great and her insisting I was. Finally, I stopped trying, knowing that we were at an impasse.

How long before I can get up? I asked.

“Let the food settle in, and then we’ll see how you’re doing,” she replied.

You ever thought about being a nurse? I asked.

“Yeah! How’d you know?” she asked, her eyes kind of scrunching together, in suspicion. I knew what she was thinking.

I didn’t read your mind, I promise.

“I didn’t think you did, but there are some telepaths that can sense intent or simple thoughts, without actually entering someone’s mind,” she told me.

That’s not one of my talents, I said, only a little sarcastically.

“Melanie!” I heard Richard exclaim, as he bounded toward me. He was looking a bit dirty and dishevelled, but otherwise, pretty good. Chelsea was sedately walking up behind him, but even she was smiling as she saw me sitting up with a bowl of soup in my hands. Although I couldn’t be certain, I thought that might have been the first time I saw her smile.

“You gave us a bit of a scare,” Richard said, as he sat on the ground in front of me. It was actually more that he plopped on the ground, going from standing to cross legged, as if he was a machine. Chelsea slowly sat down, one knee up, with her arm resting on it.

“Richard didn’t think you were going to wake up. He figured you’d fried your mind,” she told me, her typically subdued manner in full form.

I’ve been through worse than that, I replied, bringing about several raised eyebrows.

“Richard, are we ready to move?” she asked him, obviously deciding he needed to get our small troop together.

“It’ll take about half an hour to get everyone ready, but shouldn’t take any longer than that,” he assured her.

Chelsea, have you gotten an idea of what skills our new recruits possess? I asked her. She raised her eyebrow at my assumption, but then smiled.

“You’re thinking like a leader, finally,” she said and paused. “Yes, we have at least seven very strong telepaths, if not closer to ten. Of our entire group, there are at least twelve that can sense people, and four of those are adept at sensing other telepaths. We have five that have been trained in mental combat, and of course all of us take martial arts, as you know. What you may not know is that there are probably eight that have arms training,” she told me.

What she said didn’t make sense though. Including her, Richard and me, we only had ten people, at least two of which were relatively young. The numbers didn’t work, in my mind. She was still smiling at me, though, which meant she was waiting for me to figure something out. Then it hit me.

How many do we have?

“We had seven join us on the first day, which you might remember, or might not. Not sure how much you lost in that. Anyway, the next morning, once the dust had settled, no pun intended, and the program people began to get everyone back into some kind of order, a decent number of the kids defected. They found us very fast, but we aren’t that far away. In all, 34 joined us that morning, another 22 the morning after that and then another 27 today,” she told me, obviously waiting for my reaction.

How are we going to feed this many kids, much less find shelter for them?

Her smile actually grew at my questions. “We have some ideas, but you might not like them,” she told me, looking a little concerned, but not overly so.

Alright, give me everything, I finally urged her.

“Considering our situation, our first priority is to get food and shelter. Several of us think we should just take it. We can alter people’s thoughts, like you showed us, to get what we need. I know you won’t like that, but we don’t have much choice, with things like they are, and us being a bunch of kids. Like you said, there are too many of us to survive the way you and Aliyah did, not to mention we don’t have any people helping us,” she said, to which I unfortunately had to agree. I finally nodded, after trying to come up with an alternative that eluded me, if it even existed.

“Good. Regardless of how we find food and shelter, we need more protection than we can give ourselves. Just like what happened to you, they’ll eventually chase us down and capture us again, if there isn’t someone to protect us. Someone with a lot of power, or at least powerful friends,” she continued.

We need a cell phone! I exclaimed.

“We’ve already thought about that. We haven’t gotten one, and probably won’t until we can get to a town,” she said.

Any chance we have a map? I asked.

“Nope,” she replied.

How about a compass? I then asked. She shook her head, but I didn’t think the situation was that bad, even without one. The sky was clear, which meant we could see the sun. Follow the sun’s path and we’d be going west, at least west enough to find the highway. Also, although it was approaching winter in Montana, it had so far not gotten really cold. It hadn’t even gotten cold enough for snow, yet.

“Let’s get ready to move,” Chelsea declared, as she got up.

“What’s the plan?” the little girl, who was my nurse, asked.

“Don’t really have one, other than to find food and shelter, away from here,” Chelsea replied.

Where did everyone else go?

“They’re on the other side of the building. They leave us alone and we leave them alone. Not sure why they aren’t trying to take us, but they’re not,” she informed me.

I can’t go, I said, after digesting what she’d said, and trying to figure out a way out of my predicament. I hadn’t come up with anything so far, and I knew I wasn’t good enough with my force field manipulation.

“Why?” Chelsea, Richard and several others all said at the same time.

There’s a device they stuck inside my head that’ll fry me if I get too far away from here.

“You sure it isn’t broken now that the building’s messed up?” my little nurse asked.

I’m surprised it didn’t do the job already.

“There’s gotta be a way to fix that,” Richard exclaimed, frustration in his response.

Unless there’s a neurosurgeon around…, I began, and then stopped, staring at him, my mouth open a little.

“What?” he asked.

I was thinking about something before they made me mad, but my ability with force fields is too weak. You’re stronger, I replied, looking directly at him. His brow furrowed, but he didn’t say anything, waiting for me to continue.

I was trying to wrap the thing in a force field, so maybe I could get it out. The tricky thing is, the force field needs to be so close that you could barely get a molecule between them and it needs to cover the entire thing. I was worried about accidentally getting brain stuff with it, which I’m guessing would be bad for me, I said, a small smile on my face.

“You have a very pretty smile. I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen you smile, without being scared of it,” Richard said, surprising me. “Anyway, I’m not good enough to do that,” he then blurted out.

Then I can’t leave, I replied.

Everyone sat there, staring at me for a long time. No one said a word. They knew I couldn’t leave, not with the thing in my head. However, they needed to go, before the program regrouped and recaptured them.

You need to go, I finally said, mentally voicing what I’d been thinking.

“We won’t leave you,” Richard declared.

Yes, you will, I commanded, drawing him up short. Both he and Chelsea looked like they were about to argue, along with a number of the kids standing around. I preemptively cut off their argument, though.

If you stay much longer, they’ll get you back, and I’m betting they won’t be nice when they do, I told them. Every one of them flinched when I said that, having seen what I’d gone through.

“What do I do?” Richard suddenly asked, his face downcast, and frightened. That look reassured me, because it meant he was worried about messing up. If he was worried, then he wouldn’t do it deliberately. I had still had doubts about him, in spite of everything else. I was paranoid, after all.

Rather than tell him, I sent images of what I’d been doing, and how I’d been trying to do it. His face got more and more intense as we went back and forth, him asking questions about different little things I’d been doing. The entire question and answer session was in our minds, and probably didn’t take more than a minute.

Coming out of our trance, he picked up a rock and tried it, having a very similar result to all of mine. He repeated it, with a little better result, but not enough. He did this over and over, finally throwing one of the rocks on the ground in frustration.

You need to go, I told them, my mental voice soft, but determined.

As my words ended, his face lit up.

“I think I have a better idea than what you’ve been doing. You’re forgetting simple physics, by trying to compress the air inside your field as well, which is probably making it way harder,” he said, his brow furrowed in thought. Chelsea was watching him like a hawk as he walked away, totally oblivious to her piercing gaze.

“Raughlin, what the hell happened?” the red faced chairwoman of the House Committee on Domestic Intelligence demanded.

“We’re still trying to ascertain what happened to the building, but it collapsed, at least in part. It seems that the central supports were not as strong as they should’ve been and finally gave under the stress of the building’s weight,” he replied.

“That’s a cop out and you know it. How did everyone get out before the collapse? It’s incredibly convenient that everyone escaped. In addition, you’re now missing 93 subjects, including the Brager girl,” she stated, using Melanie’s name, rather than her numeric designation. That in itself was an indicator of how angry she was.

“They used the chaos of the disaster to make an escape, but we’ll recover them. They can’t survive long without food and shelter, and she can’t get far away from the transmitter, regardless. She won’t survive,” he said.

“I think that was the feeling during her first escape, yet she did exactly that...survive,” was her retort.

“And she didn’t have 92 other children with her. Two are much different than 93, and there is still the restraint in her,” he said in return.

“You had better hope you’re correct. Get those children back, ASAP,” she all but yelled at him.

“And to correct the record, madam Chairwoman, there were ten agents killed in the disaster, along with four scientists. Everyone did not escape,” he corrected her, if very respectfully.

“You know what I’m referring to, you imbecile,” she said, her face getting redder. For the first time since she had been on the oversight committee for the Oakmont program, Headmaster Raughlin displayed irritation, and a hint of disgust toward his supposed bosses.

“I will inform you if there are any further developments,” he told them and hung up, without waiting for a reply. Through the entire exchange, Senator Riley remained completely silent, as if he was simply an observer.

“I want that idiot off this program,” she told Senator Riley, her irritation painted on her face.

“There is no one else that’s as capable of running it. You need to get control of your emotions. Remember your position and the status it affords you, and also remember our strategic goal with this program. That man is needed, but it is our task to keep him under control,” he rebuked her, the first words he’d spoken that evening.

“You’re right, Senator. Thank you for the reminder,” she replied, visibly getting control of herself.