Strangers

"The moon! The moon!" and staggered back several steps in surprise and fear; someone screamed…
        "The moon!" he gasped.
        He was down in the snow, driven to his knees by the shock of the memory-flash, and Ginger was kneeling in front of him, holding him by the shoulders. "Dom? Dom, are you okay?"
        "Remembered," he said numbly as the wind rushed between their faces and tore their smoking breath out of their mouths. "Something… the moon… but I didn't quite get enough."
        Beyond them, having cut a crawl-through in the chainlink fence, Jack switched off the acetylene torch. The darkness folded around them again like the wings of a great bat.
        "Come on," Jack said, turning to Dom and Ginger. "Let's go in. Quickly now."
        "Can you make it?" Ginger asked Dom.
        "Yeah," he said, though there was an icy cramping in his guts and a tightness in his chest. "But all of a sudden… I'm scared."
        "We're all scared," she said.
        "I don't mean scared of getting caught. No. It's something else. Something I almost remembered just then. And I'm… shaking like a leaf, for God's sake."
        

        
        Brendan gasped in disbelief when Colonel Falkirk ordered one of his men to open fire on the Jeep that was approaching Vista Valley Road from the hillside above. The madman didn't know who was in the vehicle. The soldier given the order also thought it was out of line, for he did not immediately raise his weapon. But Falkirk took a menacing step toward him and shouted: "I told you to open fire, Corporal! This is an urgent national security matter. Whoever's in that vehicle is no friend of yours, mine, or our country. You think any innocent civilians would be driving overland, sneaking around the roadblock, in a goddamn blizzard like this? Fire! Waste them!"
        This time, the corporal obeyed. The clatter of automatic gunfire hammered the night, briefly overpowering the voice of the raging wind. Up on the hillside, the headlights of the oncoming Jeep blew out. The two hundred hard cracks of two hundred bullets erupting in a murderous stream from the muzzle of the machine gun were augmented by the sound of slugs tearing through sheet metal and smacking onto more solid barriers. The windshield imploded under raining lead, and the Jeep, which had braked immediately after topping the crest of the hill and had been descending slowly, abruptly gained speed and rushed down at them, then angled left when its wheels jolted over a lateral hump that extended across most of the slope. Obviously no longer under anyone's control, it started to slow again, hit another bump, slid sideways, almost tipped over, almost rolled, but finally came to rest just forty feet away in the already drifting snow.
        Five minutes ago, when Ned had driven over the hill on the other side of Vista Valley Road and had turned south, only to encounter the colonel and his men waiting less than a half-mile south, it had been instantly clear that all the shot guns and handguns - and even the Uzi that Jack had provided - would be of no help. Considering that their lives depended on their escape from Elko County, they would have made a stand against a smaller force. But Falkirk was accompanied by too many men, all heavily armed. Resistance would have been purest folly.
        And Brendan had been filled with frustration because he had not dared use his special power to ensure their freedom. He felt he ought to be able to apply his telekinetic talent to the situation. If he concentrated hard enough, perhaps he could cause the guns to fly out of the soldiers' hands. He sensed he had that much - and more - power in him, but he did not know how to bring it to bear effectively. He could not forget how the experiment in the diner had gotten entirely out of hand last night; they had been fortunate that none of them had been hurt by the careening salt and pepper shakers, and the violently levitating chairs. If he used his power to wrench the weapons from the soldiers, he might not be able to disarm all of them simultaneously, in which case the ones still in possession of their weapons might open fire in self-defense. Or at his instigation, the guns might tear free of the soldiers' hands and go whirling through the air, out of control - firing until their magazines had emptied, pumping bullets into everything and everyone in sight. Sure, he might be able to heal the wounded. But what if he was shot?