All American Rejects (Users #3) (14 page)

Carter felt his way across the meeting table in the center of the room. From there he followed the wall over to the handle of the door. Hacking from the smoke, he burst out into the hallway of a building floor filled with cubicles. Closing the door behind him, Carter rushed over and ducked behind the wall of a cubicle down the hall from the meeting room.

"Ahh!" Heath howled and suddenly the door was knocked off its hinges. It banged off the walls, hitting the cubicle Carter was hiding behind. The force from the door knocked a handful of trinkets off the shelf and more than a few of them hit Carter on top of the head, but he bit his lip to keep from making even the slightest sound.

"You bastard! You try and smoke me out!"

Carter held his breath, and listened hard for the sound of Heath's steps, but the scientist's soft soled sneakers were quiet as a cats paws on the Savannah right before it pounced on its prey, and that's exactly what Carter was.

Prey.

He was the prey of a far superior predator. He was now a rabbit hiding in its hole, and Heath was the wolf waiting him out. Waiting it seemed for him to show even the slightest tuft of fur from inside his hole and Heath would pounce.

"You can't hide from me," Heath said.

"Who's hiding?" Carter said just as Heath stepped past the opening of the cubicle Carter was hiding behind. Carter dove onto Heath, slamming him into the wall.

This was exactly what Carter needed. He needed to keep Heath close. Keep Heath from using his long range abilities on Carter. Heath may have been stronger, but in close, Carter could pound home his superior fighting skills. He could use his speed and agility to his advantage.

That's exactly what he did. Carter had Heath from behind, cramming his face into the wall. Heath tried to throw a backwards elbow at Carter, but he caught it and slammed Heath's arm into the wall. Carter used all his weight to pin Heath to the wall.

"You've really gotten on my bad side," Carter said, speaking right into Heath's ear. "You hurt me, you hurt Barber, and you killed my friends."

"Who gives a shit about any them? No one," Heath said. "No one is going to miss a bunch of junkies and vagrants. Their own families didn't even come looking for them."

Carter chuckled. "You're wrong. I came looking for them. And I am their family, bitch!" Carter got a handful of the back of Heath's hair and bounced his face off the wall. Heath's beak of a nose crunched under the weight of Carter's blow.

Heath let out a scream and the wave hit the wall and bounced back on the two of them. Together they were blown back, but Carter was behind Heath, and he hit the cubicle back first. Then Heath slammed into him, absorbing the impact for Heath, but again Carter was smashed against the cubicle wall.

"Mother fucker!" Carter pushed Heath off of him and onto the floor. He was dazed. He needed to get away from Heath. Carter kicked Heath once in the gut before turning to bolt for it.

There was a window at the end of the hallway, and Carter ran straight for it. As he approached, Carter let out a flamethrowers worth of fire from his raised palm aimed right at the window. Carter caught a glimpse of his own reflection in the window, running butt naked, covered in cuts and bruises, fire coming from his hand, and his manhood whipping up and down as he ran. It was quite the sight. He took solace in the fact that it was Saturday, the building was empty, and there was no one to see him at that moment, except for himself and the whack job that was trying to kill him.

The glass distorted as the fire melted away at its layers, but Carter knew he would never melt through the glass in time to make a clean getaway. Instead, he put his hands up to shield his face, and hoped that he had weakened the glass enough that it wouldn't be like running into a brick wall.

He plowed straight into the glass and in a fraction of a second, it bent, wobbled, and exploded outward into the sky. Tiny shards of glass rained down on the street below, but Carter lit the flames in his hands and feet just as he became air born and hovered in midair, what must have been a good thirty stories up.

He turned to find Heath already hot on his heels. The man was nearing the broken window and looked like he was going to follow Carter in jumping right out into the night sky.

Carter didn't wait around to find out. He let the flames pour over his body like a human torch and took off, flying between the buildings.

"Where do you think you're going?"

Carter flipped onto his back just in time to see Heath plummeting toward him, feet together, and leveled right for his stomach. With only a split second to react, Carter tried to dodge to the side, but he still got clipped by Heath's dive bomb and was sent into a barrel roll. The wind whipped past his ears as he twisted like a fiery corkscrew through the air.

Suddenly, Carter came to an abrupt stop. He could feel the grip of slender fingers wrapped around his wrist and ankle, and he was being bent over backward as Heath began to spin circles.

"Let go of me you bastard!" Carter shouted "I'm going to kill you!" But his threats seemed mighty empty at that moment as he was swung around and around by his arm and leg. Heath quickly gained momentum and the world became a blur to Carter. The world was spinning so fast, he thought he may be sick.

Then Heath let go.

Carter rocketed through the air. He tried desperately to grab on to something, but there was only thin air until he finally hit a concrete wall. His head snapped back and he thought he heard his skull crack off of the outside wall of the building. Black splotches showed on the edge of his vision, but when he tried to close his eyes bright flashes of pain assaulted his mind. He felt himself falling. Falling down fast, but could do nothing to stop it. Carter wasn't even sure if he was alive or dead until the splotches and flashes faded away and he could see clearly once again.

It was then that he wished his vision had stayed fucked up just a moment longer. Only a moment longer and he wouldn't even have realized that he was about to become a splatter of blood and guts all over the sidewalk.

Chapter 18

"Oh, fuck," he said and he blasted the fire from the front side of his body in one big burst. The fires exploded like a bomb going off just inches from the concrete sidewalk. The concrete imploded, leaving an indent in the street roughly the same size as he was.

Carter flopped down onto the broken concrete face first. He groaned as he got to his feet. He was running out of energy. Just lifting himself from the street was a chore. His arms and legs were rubbery. His head pounded.

Less than a yard away lay a dark alley. He limped his way into the darkness and ducked down behind a dumpster. It all seemed so surreal. Here he was, hiding behind a dumpster again, just as he had done months before when Fox had sent the assassins after him.

"You can't hide forever! I will find you!" Heath shouted as he passed over Carter from above. Carter went stiff against the cold steel on the side of the dumpster. He didn't breathe for fear of being discovered. Heath stopped where the darkness of the alley met the light from the open street and hovered for a moment. Heath's head turned right and then left, searching for any sign of Carter.

"Oh, you're close," Heath said as his head cocked toward the spot on the street where Carter had left a spiderweb of broken concrete.

Close, that was exactly what Carter needed. He needed to get close. Carter had tried to take away Heath's advantage by fighting him hand to hand, but he needed to get even closer. So close that Heath wouldn't be able to use any of his powers against Carter. He ignited the flames in just his feet and flew as silently as possible up behind Heath.

"I'm right here," Carter whispered into Heath's ear, and he threw a bear hug around the man.

But he didn't stop there. Carter wrapped his legs around Heath, and lit his entire body on fire. Carter knew that with the powers of a Scorcher in him, Heath was almost impervious to Carter's own fire powers, but he was going to put that to the test.

"What are you on about?" Heath thrashed about in an attempt to break free, but Carter hung on for dear life.

They were in an aerial wrestling match, and all the while Carter kept a steady stream of fire coming from his feet, sending them higher and higher into the night sky. Carter let his pores open up and the fire flowed from every inch of his body. His vision was red. Everything was fire. Lava dripped from his limbs like fiery red raindrops.

"Where are you taking me?" Heath asked as they passed the top of the highest skyscraper.

"Up," was all the explanation Carter would offer.

Heath let out a powerful scream, and they were thrown backward through the air, but they were too high now for Carter to hit anything. Carter quickly regained control and continued his ascension. The buildings looked like toys from their place on high. The people below were nothing more than tiny ants.

Higher and higher they went, and Carter continued to pour on the heat. The fiery red flames that normally came off of him turned fluorescent blue as he reached a new level of heat he had only reached one other time, in his fight with Alaric months before.

Heath growled as the pair reached the cloud line. "What do you hope to accomplish with this? You cannot hurt me."

"Maybe you're right, but I'd be a damn fool if I didn't at least try."

They passed through the thick clouds of night, Carter's illuminating glow lighting them up like a lampshade. The cloud cover was thick this evening, and Heath had ample time to kick and scream, and even throw a few wild backward head butts at Carter, but Carter kept his head low, tucked into the crook behind Heath's neck.

"There's no use in struggling," Carter said as a weird sort of serenity washed over him. "There's no escape for either of us. What's coming is inevitable."

"What are you blabbering on about?"

But Carter wasn't listening to Heath. He was focused on the past. More specifically, the past few months he had spent at the Compound. The great friends he had made. The good times, and the bad, that he had spent with them. He let it all wash over him. He was doing this, not for himself, but for them. He was doing it for those that survived. So that they could keep on living.

They came out through the top of the clouds and were exposed to the night sky. Millions upon millions of bright white orbs hovered high above them, burning eternally in the sky. Carter knew how those stars felt. They were the result of nuclear power. The power of a Sun, and Carter was going to join them.

He grimaced past the pain and effort as he continued to get hotter. His arms and legs began to shake uncontrollably and he struggled to hold his death grip on Heath.

"You're stamina is waining," Heath said. "You'll soon tire out and I'll be free."

"It won't matter," Carter said. "You'll never get beyond the blast in time."

"Blast? What blast?"

Carter's core was a fiery inferno. The pain was almost unbearable, but Carter did not relent. Everything had been leading up to this. He could see that now.

The fires turned from a neon blue to a vibrant blinding white.

"My eyes!" Heath shouted.

Carter kept his closed. He didn't need to see anyway. He just kept going higher into the sky and heating up his core.

Now Heath really thrashed about wildly. The heat must have been getting too him, because he screamed and kicked and flailed his whole body as if he were being tortured.

"Let go of me damn it!" Heath screamed. Carter's heart pounded so hard, he thought it would burst from his chest like that little monster in the Aliens movies. Something hotter than lava rushed through his veins. His entire body was one searing inferno of hell.

"AHHHHHHH!" Carter screamed uncontrollably as a pain unlike anything he had ever endured washed through his body. It must have been akin to what Fox felt when he had burned her alive, because the scream of pain was very much the same. It was the scream of someone dying. The pain was so incredible, he lost control of his limbs and motor function. There was only the pain and the screaming.

Heath, seeing his chance to escape, burst forth from Carter's grip, but it was too late.

Carter's body emanated a brilliant green glow, the color of nuclear energy.

Carter stopped the screaming and for a split second the pain was gone. For the first time in his entire life, he felt nothing, no pain, no anger, no pleasure, nothing.

"Now you die," Carter said.

The look on Heath's face was priceless. It was almost enough to cause Carter's lips to edge up into a little smirk, but what was to come next was no matter to smile about.

The energy within him exploded from his body. Carter's neck careened forward and then was blown back as Carter's entire body arched backward. His arms and legs were thrown back. His mouth was wide in a silent scream. His eyes were peeled open. Light shot forth from every opening in his body.

The heavens shook, clouds were blasted away for miles, and the explosion lit up the night sky like day.

Heath wore a mask of horror that was stripped away layer by layer. Carter caught a glimpse of Heath's skin flaking off, then peeling away, exposing the muscle beneath. In a split second, the meat on Heath's body roasted, charred, and fell off the bone as easily as a forgotten chicken in the oven. Heath's skeleton hovered in midair like the bones hanging on the wall at a doctor's office. Then they too were burnt by the nuclear reaction coming off of Carter. The bones blackened, burst into flames, and flaked away as nothing more than ash on the wind.

The fires within Carter subsided, his energy spent. He had given it everything he had, left nothing on the table. Strained beyond his abilities, the world went black, and Carter passed out.

And with no powers left to keep him aloft, he fell.

Chapter 19

He was surrounded by white. White walls, bleached white floors, and pasty white curtains. Surely, he must be in heaven. Although, Carter was unsure how he would have made it here. In life, Carter had been most assured that he was going to hell to pay for his sins. Perhaps his sacrifice for the greater good had atoned for much of his past transgressions, but if this was heaven it sure hurt a hell of a lot.