Free Just Cause Universe 3: Day of the Destroyer by Ian Thomas Healy Page B

thought. She knew a couple kids like him back in Dyersville; kids whose fathers liked to drink and got violent when they did; kids who showed up to school with bruises and haunted expressions.
    “What’s your name?” asked Gretchen.
    The boy looked around as if seeking an escape, and Gretchen had just decided he was probably going to run away when he replied, “Harlan.”
    “Hi, Harlan. I’m Gretchen.” She stepped from the truck and extended her hand in greeting.
    Harlan looked her up and down, from her Keds to jean cutoffs to blue t-shirt. His eyes lingered on her chest before he shook her proffered hand. “Nice to meet you,” he mumbled, as if the words were unfamiliar.
    “Harlan, are you messing with that truck?” The older Hispanic man who’d first talked to Shane hurried up. Harlan’s face tensed up.
    “No, it’s fine,” said Gretchen. “We were just talking.”
    “If you say so.” The man turned to watch Shane work atop the telephone pole.
    “What were you looking for?” Gretchen asked Harlan.
    “Just stuff,” he said. “I build stuff, and I need parts sometimes.” He bowed his head like he was embarrassed.
    “What kind of stuff do you build?”
    “Maybe I can show you sometime.” Harlan glanced up at her to see if she was looking.
    Gretchen realized in surprise that the boy had developed a sudden crush on her. She felt flattered and a little embarrassed—she was much too old for him, but she didn’t see any harm in letting him imagine.
    It was refreshing to have innocent attention for once.
     

Chapter Five
    July 13, 1977 1:00 PM
     
    “At first we thought a bomb went off in it,” said the fleet service manager at the bus station, whose embroidered name tag read Dwayne . The air inside the shop was smoky and made Faith’s throat sore. A fine black film of sooty grime covered everything in the building, and Faith made every effort not to brush against any of it. Dwayne’s hands and face were smudged with it, and decades-old oil was ground into his pores, giving all his exposed skin a stippled appearance. He gave Faith and Irlene a tour of the bus in question. “But there’s no sign of fire or explosion. The seats aren’t even damaged. Whatever it was just blew in the windows.”
    “Excuse me,” interrupted Faith. “Blew them in ?”
    “Yeah. We didn’t find any glass on the street at all. I’d have suspected kids with rocks, except there isn’t anything inside that looks like it was thrown.” He shrugged. “I heard when it happened. Sounded like thunder. I thought maybe the heat was going to break and we’d finally get a little rain.”
    “Maybe it was like those Memorex commercials,” said Irlene. “Some kind of loud noise busted all the windows.”
    “The problem with that is that it affected the bus on both sides,” said Faith, deep in thought. “A loud noise would have only caught one side of the bus, and probably damaged other things on the street too.”
    Dwayne motioned for Faith and Irlene to look inside the bus. Irlene shrank herself back down to doll-sized and zipped in past Faith’s head like an eager sparrow. The manager jerked in surprise but then managed to keep his cool. “We already started to clean it up. We didn’t know Just Cause would want to see it.”
    Faith saw a pile of broken glass swept into the middle of the aisle. She marveled that every single side window was shattered. Cracks marred the windshield in a radial pattern, which intrigued her. The way the safety glass had cracked made it look like someone had hurled a bowling ball at it from outside. “Everything was pulled inside,” she said. “What could do that?”
    “And ‘phyx-u-ate someone’s lungs, if it’s the same person,” said Irlene.
    Faith snapped her fingers. “Vacuum!”
    “What?” Irlene landed as softly as a butterfly on Faith’s shoulder and perched there.
    “This girl can create vacuums. She created one in that boy’s lungs and killed him. She created one