Eye of the Sh*t Storm by Jackson Ford (most romantic novels .txt) 📕

You would have heard the shot. Focus.

Quickly, I explain to Minnie what I want him to do, ignoring the violence being promised by his eyes, then use my PK to get a picture of the area around the shipping container. Three bikers outside, their rifles and pistols and piercings and wallets showing up clear in my mind. Inside the container, two more. Other objects too – a set of keys, a ring, a thin chain. Nic? Annie? Maybe… but none of those objects are moving.

I swallow, let out a breath, move the gun down to Minnie’s back, keeping it pressed tight to him. He can approach, and the other bikers won’t even know the gun is there.

“Yo,” he says, his voice distant.

One of the other bikers says something I can’t catch.

“Pop wants ’em. Get ’em out here.” He’s doing a solid job, his voice not shaking at all. Good boy, Minnie.

Another inaudible response. Then someone else says: “Why’d she send you down, bro? She’s supposed to call.”

Oh, thank fuck. They’re still alive. I made it.

“Beats me.” Minnie says. “She’s in with the other one. The one with the powers.”

Laughter. “That’s some wild shit.”

“Got that right. Anyway, let’s go, time’s a-wastin’.”

There’s the groan-clunk of a shipping container door opening up. More voices. I sneak a look over the top of the sleepers, but I’m at just the wrong angle. I can’t see shit.

I should move. Get a closer look. The objects in my PK field are moving though, the ones that I think belong to Annie and Nic starting to make their way out of the container.

Man. It can’t be that far to Compton, can it? Maybe Leo’s family will have some food for us when we get there. If they’re Vietnamese, then chances are somebody in the house has some pho broth socked away. Maybe I could ask them nicely to heat it up. Throw in some thinly sliced beef, some noodles, a few crunchy beansprouts. I can actually taste it – hot and sour, the fat in the broth coating my lips, the beef only just cooked, maybe even a couple of tendons in there, the hit of chilli sauce and lime as—

From somewhere near the shipping container, there’s the clatter of something falling to the floor.

My head snaps up – was I asleep? Was that a microsleep? Did I actually drift off, now, in the middle of—

One of the bikers says, “What the hell is that?”

Another: “Is that a gun?”

Ah.

Fuck.

“She’s here!” Minnie roars. “Kill ’em! Do it now!”

I do not let them do it now.

Here’s thing about microsleeps – and I believe I speak from experience here. When you snap out of them, you get a little burst of energy. Your brain goes, Holy smokes, that was close, I’d better be extra vigilant from now on.

It only lasts about a minute before you’re drifting off again, but that’s OK. In my case, the energy burst even gives my PK a little boost. And in one minute, either we’ll all be free, or we’ll all be dead.

“China Shop!” I yell. “Get down!”

And then I go to work.

I grab all the guns with my PK, rip them out of the hands of whoever is holding them, and hurl them away. Then I do the same thing for all the knives – and good Lord, do these people like their knives.

It’s not going to be enough. So I focus, grit my teeth, ignore the headache and the hollow in my stomach, and grab one of the railway sleepers I’m crouching behind. Yes, they’re made of wood, but they’re covered in convenient metal brackets and rivets. I lift one up, and send it whipping through the maze of train cars.

Imagine you’re an outlaw biker. You know you’re facing off against someone with psychokinesis, so you’re not totally surprised when you can’t hold onto your weapons. But you probably aren’t expecting to be suddenly attacked by a giant block of malevolent wood. In fact, if the sudden shocked screams are anything to go by, it would be safe to say that their gast is totally flabbered.

I don’t bother with precision. I just zip the sleeper into the area around the shipping container and start thrashing it back and forth. The air fills with shouts, yelps, the heavy thud of thick wood colliding with thick biker. Jesus, I really hope Annie and Nic heard me when I told them to get down. I stumble towards the fight, nearly tripping a dozen times.

Nic and Annie lie in the dirt. Nic is face down, and Annie has curled into a ball, knees to her chest. They are surrounded by bikers, most of them unconscious. Minnie is crawling away, dragging a broken leg. A guy with a fully tattooed face is literally trying to fight the sleeper, throwing wild punches at it as it whips past him.

It’s not going to be long before reinforcements arrive – there’s no way others won’t have heard this commotion. Then again, shouldn’t they be here by now? Of course, I took out a good-size group of them after Pop’s little interrogation, and I’ve wiped out an even bigger group here. There might be stragglers here and there, off in different parts of the depot, but this isn’t a videogame. Pop doesn’t have an infinite supply of henchmen.

Nic and Annie have their hands cuffed behind their backs. Not a problem. Snap.

The tattooed biker ducks under the sleeper and runs at me, arms outstretched, fingers hooked into claws. I raise an eyebrow, swing the wooden block around, and knock him on his ass. “Go to sleep,” I say. Which, all things considered, is actually a pretty good line.

Nic raises his head to look at me, and my breath catches. His face is a bruised, bloody mess, his lips split and bleeding.

And yet, despite everything, he manages to smile.

I don’t get a chance to return it. Because that’s when Annie, who has also gotten unsteadily to