Cold Snap (Warriors: S1B3)

Chapter 6

Earth date: 10/24/11, 16:37

After almost two months of knowing Daphne, I knew almost nothing about her. I'd asked her where in Ireland she was from, and she only said, "Cork." I'd asked her how long she'd been doing archery and she said "I started when I was 5." I had asked what had made her and her family move to the US, to which she hadn't said anything, only turned away from me and cracked open the book she was reading. 

But one point for her: she tackled me, knocking me onto the hood of a Sonata. 

Lying lengthwise on the hood of the car, I could see the trap. The gas caps on the cars were open, and there were semi-frozen trails of gasoline running down the sides of the abandoned cars onto the road. The Faukan had performed a deep freeze down the length of the bridge to hide the frozen gasoline among ice. Mixed in with the icicles hanging down from the wheel wells were frozen tongues of gasoline. They served as wicks, igniting from the fire on the ground, running up the side of each car and detonating what gas in the tanks the Faukan hadn't touched. 

Daphne scrambled to her feet. "We need to go!" she said. "Come on!" She ran up the windshield, down the back window, and leaped to the hood of a minivan. I jumped to my feet and followed her. 

The noise was like a war zone. As flames reached a car's gas tank, there would be a whoomp, like someone shaking out a blanket, followed by a bone-jarring boom as the car exploded and a great rumble as the car came back down to Earth. Debris would fly with each explosion. Daphne had to push me down as a chunk of metal as big as my torso sailed over our heads. Another time, we landed on the windshield of a Prius and a burning tire bounced off the glass inches in front of our feet. 

"Where's everyone else?" I yelled.

Daphne motioned around us. I struggled to see through the smoke and flames, but I saw something red leap in the air, followed closely by something black and something yellow. 

"Don't talk," Daphne said. "Smoke."

Now that she'd said something, I realized I was feeling lightheaded and was fighting to breathe. We continued leap-frogging, flinching in the middle of our jumps as the explosions got closer and closer. The end of the bridge was in sight, and that's when I saw we were headed for another trap.

When we had first gotten on the bridge, we had passed through a line of cars that were heavily iced over, with piles of slushy ice under each car. I had dismissed it when I first walked past it, but now I saw what the Faukan had in mind. The fireworks show on the bridge would conclude with the biggest explosions going off closest to the crowd. If the cars flipped forward, they would fall on us, and I'm pretty sure my armor wouldn't save me if 2 tons of flaming steel dropped on my torso. If they flipped backward, they would fall into the crowd. 

"Daphne!" I yelled.

"I see it," she said. Guys, we're headed towards another trap, she said in my head. A diagram flashed in my head, illustrating what I had been thinking about.

Blue, Green, where are you guys? Joey thought-spoke.

I'm getting people off the bridge, Max said.

I have eyes on the Faukan, Frazz said. 

Get to the end of the bridge. I have a plan.

I saw Max and Frazz standing at the end of the bridge as we got closer. Daphne and I did a flying leap onto an SUV and crawled onto its roof. The two of us stood above the windshield. "How do we know the car's gonna flip backwards?" I said.

"We don't," Daphne said. "Get ready."

I heard the roar of flames directly under us. I watched the wave of flames that had been following us down the bridge reach the car we were on top of. 

"Plug your ears," Daphne said. I saw her helmet shrink a half-inch. I followed suit, redirecting the metal of my helmet into my eardrums. Though I heard it with the same distance I would have if my head was underwater, I heard the whoomp of the gas in the tank catching ablaze.

"Jump!" I yelled to Daphne. We did.

And not a second sooner. The car exploded, and even with my ears plugged, the noise was ungodly loud. Our feet were inches off the car's roof, but the force of the explosion flipped the nose of the car up so the roof of the car met the soles of our feet. Unarmored, that probably would have shattered both of my legs, but armored up, I felt it as a resounding impact that made my teeth clack together. Daphne and I sailed through the air, and looking to the side, I could see Jay, Kristi and Joey doing the same. 

Max went into motion, running back and forth at super-speed. In running, he created a cushion of air that slowed the flight of the airborne cars. A few steps behind him, Frazz waved a hand and summoned a dome of green energy. There were a series of metallic crashes as the cars banged off of Frazz's force field and crashed to the ground. 

I lay on the pavement, catching my breath. Daphne got up before me and offered a hand. "Thanks," I said as I took her hand.

I heard the whoop of police sirens.

"Oh, fuck me," Frazz said.

The New York Police pulled onto the bridge. They leaped from their cars and pulled their guns. "Weapons on the ground, hands where I can see them!" one cop yelled through a megaphone. 

"You cannot be serious!" Kristi yelled.

"Hands!" the megaphone cop yelled back.

"Guys, problem," Max said.

"Thank you, Sherlock. We're about to get arrested," I said.

He looked my way, and even with a helmet over his face, I could visualize the deadpan stare Max sent my way. He jerked his thumbs behind us. "Guys, other problem."

I chanced a glance over my shoulder and saw that the Faukan had followed us. It emerged from the smoke rising from the burning Yukon Daphne and I had boosted off of. Ice trailed behind him: chunks of ice swiftly losing mass as the heat melted it away. 

"Eyes forward!" the megaphone cop shouted, but I heard a touch of uncertainty in his voice.

I looked at the ice floating in the air. "Oh no," I said as it came to me. The Faukan's eyes narrowed, as if it could smell the dawning horror on me.

"Get down!" I screamed.

The Faukan flicked his tail over his head, and the ice flung forward.

I've never been in a hailstorm, but Mr. Isotalo told my class about them in our weather unit for physical science. Hail, he told us, is made when water froze inside of thunderstorm clouds. Most hailstones were small, maybe as big as a pea, but in some cases, they could be as big as a grapefruit. What made them dangerous was that when they landed, they did so with several thousand feet's worth of momentum behind them. 

While the ice the Faukan had made lacked the velocity of hail, it more than made up in size. The smallest piece of ice I saw was the size of a fist. 

I was knocked off my feet by a microwave-sized chunk of ice and sprawled on the ground. 

The police cars were decimated by the Faukan's wave of ice. Slush balls cracked windows and windshields, which were then shattered by more solid ice balls. Strobe lights were smashed off the tops of cruisers, giving one last whoop as they bounced down the road. Tires deflated. Glass rained down on the road. 

And that was what happened to the cars. I still have nightmares about what happened to the officers.

I sat up and made eye contact with the Faukan. It growled and turned away. It hopped from one flaming wreck to another until it was at the edge of the bridge. It leaped over the edge of the bridge and disappeared out of sight.

The seven of us got to our feet. 

And looked over the carnage.

"Oh, God," Joey said.