Son of Tesla

SON OF TESLA: Chapter 32

THE IDEA OF FEAR never entered Brodham's head.

The second the blue hand reached out from the backseat and did whatever it did to make Vickers unconscious, Brodham swung the steering wheel to the right as hard as he could. The vehicle shuddered off the road, bounced over a drainage ditch, and flew head-on into a thick spruce tree.

A splintery crack shot from the tree as the corners of the sedan's hood crumpled around it like the mandibles of a beetle closing around a stick. The windshield shattered in a spray of glittering crumbs. Brodham lurched forward with the impact and slammed face-first into the ballooning white airbag. Beside him, Vickers's limp arms flapped crazily.

A dark form shot from the backseat and barreled right through the broken windshield. It connected with the tree trunk with a crack. Fell onto the crumpled hood. Brodham could see a twisted shard of hood metal, black paint peeled from the sheering friction of the tree, embedded in the man's leg where he'd fallen on it. Blood seeped from the wound and found a meandering course through the dented maze of metal. The man thrashed beneath his cloak. Brodham caught a hint of blue flesh.

Dazed but awake, Brodham shouldered off his seatbelt and slid out of the car. A chill swept over him. He hadn't checked to see if Vickers had been wearing his seatbelt before steering the car off the highway. He could have killed him. Stupid, dumb luck that he hadn't. He walked around the steaming hood. The Blue stopped thrashing and turned towards Brodham's approach.

A green Ford pickup pulled off the road onto the shoulder about twenty feet behind them. Skewered to the hood, the Blue watched Brodham with depthless black eyes. Brodham carefully stepped closer. They were darker than a demon at midnight.

A slamming door forced Brodham to look back. The driver of the Ford was running up the shoulder, shouting to him.

"Get back!" Brodham yelled, waving his hands.

"Anybody hurt?" shouted the man, still sprinting.

"I said get ba-AHH!" Searing pain sliced across Brodham's ribs. He fell to his knees. Gripped his side. Looked up at the thing on the hood. The Blue was holding a jagged section of fender, its silver edge dripping red. It swung again at Brodham's neck. He rolled, felt the whistle as the fender sliced past his ear.

"What's going on here?" the man pulled up short next to Brodham. Noticed the Blue twitching on the car. "What the..." He never finished. The fender piece swung through the air in a blinding arc and pierced his eye. He crumpled to the leaves next to Brodham, the shard of metal standing straight up from his oozing eye socket.

Still holding his ribs with his left hand, Brodham pulled his sidearm and leveled it at the Blue.

"Freeze! Federal Agent!" Piss in the wind. The Blue wrenched its whole body sideways and came free of the metal wedge with a sickening shlurrp. Chunks of flesh and black fabric clung to its edges.

Brodham squeezed off two shots in quick succession. Both hit their mark, but the Blue never slowed, never uttered a cry. Silent as the grave, it lept to its feet on the car hood and descended on Brodham, arms outstretched. Brodham fired again and watched a thin blue finger disintegrate in a spray of blood and white chunks of bone. Simultaneously, the side of the Blue's neck erupted as the bullet passed through.

The body collapsed on top of Brodham in a cascade of coarse black fabric. Hands gripped feebly at Brodham's throat. It was still alive. Brodham's round had pierced its carotid artery. Thick, bright blood spewed from its neck in a fountain. But it was still trying to kill him.

Brodham shoved the Blue off and rolled to the side. Twigs and dry leaves clung to his hair and jacket. As he lurched to his knees, he saw the Blue put a hand to its neck. He aimed his pistol at it with both hands, waited for it to die.

What happened next shook Brodham to the core.

When the Blue's hand came away from its throat, the gaping wound had become a gruesome, boiling strip of skin. As Brodham watched, the bubbling subsided and the gash fused into itself. Mere seconds later, it was nothing more than a huddled mass of white scar tissue, streaking the blue neck like a bolt of lightning.

Brodham swore, blindly fired off a salvo of shots, and lept for the still-open door of the sedan. His hand scrabbled for the radio handset. It left dark red smears wherever it touched, on the gray upholstery and the smooth plastic of the cupholder, reminding Brodham that he'd been cut by the Blue. Adrenaline was holding off the pain, so he had no idea how deep the wound penetrated. It didn't matter.

The thing couldn't be stopped.

He'd be nothing but a corpse by the time anybody arrived.

But he still had to warn someone.

His fingers curled over the rounded button on the side of the handset.

"Agent down off Birtram Road. Persistent threat. Request backup. Repeat, agent dow-"

By the time he felt the iron grip on his ankles, he'd already been dragged halfway out of the car. His cheek scraped across the acrylic seat cushion, then jarred painfully against the running board at the bottom of the open door frame, then crunched against the brown, sun-withered grass running along the side of the road.

Leading with his shoulder, Brodham twisted, broke one ankle free, and kicked up at the Blue. It flicked its head back and Brodham's shoe swung past harmlessly. From the car, Brodham could hear the crackle of a reply over the radio. Asking for clarification. Part of Brodham hoped that his distress call hadn't been clear enough. That he hadn't just summoned more men to their deaths.

With Brodham's body fully laid out on the grass, the Blue crouched and leaned over him. Its eyes were penetrating. Its mouth a thin, flickering line. The black cloak had been torn by the car's twisted metal, and tatters dangled down and tickled Brodham's chest. Its hood had been flung off in the moment of the accident. Its cheek must have been torn off in the crash, too; it now dangled below its jawline like a flap of chicken skin, exposing a curved section of yellow molars. Several were missing. Brodham saw one tooth dangling by its root through the yawning hole in its cheek. Another was stuck on the bloody front of its cloak

Around the ghostly mass of scar tissue on its neck, cobalt streams glowed under the muddy skin. The glow intensified, steadied. The eyes didn't physically change, but Brodham got the impression that they were retracting, lengthening, morphing from spheres into endlessly long tubes that stretched through the Blue's skull, out the back of its head, and past the fabric of space and time.

They sucked at Brodham, pulled him into their rip-tide flow. Their current was magnetic. A prickling sensation spread over the back of Brodham's head, seemed to tickle his brain. He tried to push it off, but it reached deeper. Brodham gasped. It felt like ice shards stabbing through his skull, cold and slippery.

Thanks for reading my story! Please VOTE and let me know what you think of it so far, then check out Chapter 33!