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THE TARGET
By Jason Bourne
In Greenwater, on the night of the third of June, thirteen year old Jerry Bachman was about to stumble upon his destiny.
2
Jerry was taking a walk down Forest Lane, where he frequented whenever his parents were not at home. His father and mother had promising futures as they were the President and Vice President of the Global Scientific Technologies Corporation, and were working hard to stay there. For the whole month, they were away on a business trip in Singapore; their first business trip, completely unaware of what was happening to their son back in America.
If you asked any student in the Greenwater School about Jerry Bachman, they would¡¯ve told you that he was an utter loser. All he did every day was act like everyone¡¯s servant. Whenever anyone needed, say, to clean up the classroom, all you had to do was look for Jerry and he would quietly oblige so you could go to recess and play.
It was because he had not ¡®obeyed¡¯ Butch Crandall¡¯s order to sweep two classrooms for him as a result of his (Butch¡¯s) punishment duty that he was about to get into trouble. Big trouble as Butch Crandall was a full-time bully and leader of his own gang.
Jerry was feeling very, very worried. He had seen all the other kids in school who had gotten beatings from Butch and they had not been pretty sights. He knew that Butch was going to beat the hell out of him the second he stepped out of the house to buy breakfast (Jerry¡¯s parents had left him eighty dollars to spend). Jerry was now facing a dilemma. If he didn¡¯t go out to buy food, he would damn well die of starvation, but if he did, he would damn well get beaten up by Butch.
He sighed in the quiet forest, where there wasn¡¯t any car around to make a noise, and tried to throw this problem away mentally and relax. The only sign modern things in this forest were the road and a large banner that said: THE GREENWATER ANNIVERSARY, 9TH OF JUNE, THE SUN CREEK TOWN SQUARE, SPECIAL GUEST-OF-HONOUR, MAYOR WASHBURN, JOIN THE CELEBRATION!
Tonight, it was particularly quiet. There wasn¡¯t even a single cricket audible. Jerry found this particularly disquieting.
Then, Jerry heard it, a rustling sound. Jerry, who was used to the sounds of the forest, froze. About four hundred times he had walked in this place, and nothing like this had ever happened.
(a cat? a stray? or a puma?)
An impulse drove Jerry toward the sound, where there was a bush. Jerry bent his head down and looked.
There were small drips of a red liquid on the grass.
By now, Jerry was terrified, but curiosity drove him, and he parted the bushes and looked.
A young man in his thirties lay there, clutching his abdomen, which was bleeding. The man looked up and smiled as if he had been expecting Jerry.
Jerry wanted desperately to run, to run away, but he couldn¡¯t.
The man reached into his pocket and took out a device. It was a small, box-shaped object with a clear plastic cover on it. Jerry could see a large red button on the device.
The man dropped it on the grass, smiled painfully, and whispered, ¡°Take it.¡± before he became still. Forever.
Jerry took the device and stared at it, and then at the corpse, before he ran away screaming in the dark.
In his terror, he hardly realized that the crickets were singing again.
2
Jerry switched off the television when Lost ended. Right now, he was feeling quite lost himself. The events of the last hour were still clear in his mind.
He took out the device and stared at it. The large red button on it was very tempting.
Go on, press it.
Jerry found his hand pulling out the clear plastic cover. That same hand wandered toward the button.
What if it¡¯s a detonator? What if just pressing this button would cause tons of explosives to explode in somewhere like, say, the White House? You could be executed for this, Jerry!
Nothing like that would happen.
Jerry sat in the bed, closing his eyes, taking a deep breath.
Press it.
No.
Jerry slipped the plastic cover back, tossed the device into his drawer, and then went to bed.
3
Jerry opened his eyes. He lay in the warmth of his bed for a few more minutes before getting up. He trudged into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror.
He wasn¡¯t an ugly person, it was just the way he customized himself. His long fringe hung downwards, making him look like a mushroom. He didn¡¯t look good in his thick glasses either. Sighing, he took out his toothbrush and started to wash up.
He later found that he was clean out of bread. He checked the refrigerator. Nothing there.
He slumped into the wall. Was it safe enough to go outside? He wasn¡¯t worried about Butch now; hell, he had something that looked so suspiciously like a bomb detonator, if the authorities knew about this, he would probably be charged with treason.
He turned on the radio and listened for about half an hour. No news about it. It could be safe to go out.
He wiped his lips fastidiously on a paper napkin, took the cup of coke, and walked out of the McDonald¡¯s restaurant. He looked around warily, expecting police officers to jump out of nowhere and arrest him.
Harrison William Bachman, you are arrested for involvement in terrorism. You have the right to remain silent as anything you say will be used as evidence against you in court.
Jerry shuddered. He didn¡¯t want that.
Jerry continued to walk on when he saw a kid, wearing a red so cap on his head crying and looking around. Jerry walked over to him.
He knelt down beside the boy and said, ¡°What¡¯s wrong, kid?¡±
The kid looked at Jerry and started to cry again.
Jerry waited patiently for the boy to calm down. Finally, the boy looked up.
¡°I-I l-lost m-m-m-my s-s-sis¡¡±
¡°What does she look like, kid?¡±
¡°S-s-s-she¡¯s tall a-a-a-and p-p-p-pretty¡¡±
Jerry sighed. Little kids could normally give terrible descriptions.
Just, then, a voice called out, a voice that sounded very familiar to Jerry.
¡°Timmy!¡±
The boy¡¯s eyes lit up. ¡°Sis!!!¡±
A pretty girl about Jerry¡¯s age ran over to them and hugged her little brother.
She looked up at Jerry, opening her mouth to say something when she paused.
¡°You!¡± she said.
¡°You!¡± Jerry said, recognizing the girl at once.
The girl¡¯s name was Rachel Gates and she was one of the more popular girls in Jerry¡¯s school. She had a perfectly shaped face, with large eyes, a small nose and lips that belonged on a lipstick advertisement. She had long, thin legs which were then well presented by a pair of denim shorts.
There was an awkward silence before she said, ¡°Thank you for taking care of Harold.¡±
¡°Any time,¡± Jerry said.
She smiled at him, making Jerry feel faint before leaving. Jerry looked on at her before remembering his situation, and he left.
Jerry had barely walked out of the mall when he saw Butch Crandall and his ¡®merry¡¯ band of three. Great, he thought. After the sun, there comes a storm.
Looking at Butch, you could tell that he was a punk very easily. He had a Mohawk, and was wearing a jacket with an eagle printed on the back. On the jacket were studs that spelled out: GET LOST. He was not a large person, but he was tall and intimidating and had very large muscles. His veins popped out like cables.
Butch and his gang had been chatting and laughing until they saw Jerry. The talk vanished instantly, and they stared at Jerry.
In an instant, Jerry turned away and decided to use the other entrance. They wouldn¡¯t dare beat me up in public. He thought.
Jerry walked out of the back entrance and toward the road, looking around his shoulder for any sign of Butch. They weren¡¯t there.
He had walked a good distance away from the mall by then, and Jerry was only a few streets away from his house.
Then, he heard the sound of bicycles behind him. Jerry turned around and saw four bicycles headed toward him. Oh, shit!
¡°Get him!¡± Butch cried.
Jerry ran. His eyes swiveled around in their sockets, looking for any passerbys. There were, to Jerry¡¯s dismay, none.
His legs pounding quickly against the ground, Jerry headed for the overhead bridge, which was two houses away.
He reached the stairs of the bridge and climbed them two at a time. He turned around and saw Butch and company dismounting off their bikes and heading straight for him.
He looked around and saw no passerbys; most people in Greenwater were quite lazy, waking up at about 10 a.m.
He climbed down the steps as quickly as he could, realizing that his house was only twenty steps down. He turned around. Butch and company were quite close now.
Jerry had a brainwave. He saw pebbles on the ground and picked a handful of them up. Still running, he turned around and threw them at Butch and his merry band. They all missed except for one. It hit Butch in the left eye.
Butch doubled over in pain, making strange gargling sounds as he gripped his eye. His friends surrounded him. Jerry heard an ¡°Are you all right?¡± come from one of them.
When Jerry reached the doorway of his house, he heard a shout that chilled him: ¡°I¡¯m gonna kill you, asshole!!! YOU HEAR ME?! I¡¯M GONNA FRICKIN¡¯ KILL YOU!¡±
4
Jerry slammed the door behind him, panting, his lungs searing. Good God, he couldn¡¯t afford to go out now. Butch, as he had said earlier, was going to kill him.
He sat on his couch, panting, occasionally looking toward the door, expecting Butch to smash his way through with a sledgehammer or something like that.
After about fifteen minutes, he calmed down and switched on the TV to watch ¡®The Fugitive¡¯.
At nine p.m in the Bachman household, the living room lights were switched off. In the dark kitchen is a dustbin in which lay a pizza box (evidently, Jerry had taken Butch¡¯s threat seriously and had not taken the risk to go outside for food.)
The only lights on were the bedside lamps in Jerry¡¯s room. Jerry was lying on his bed in his pajamas. Jerry¡¯s spectacles were propped on his bedside table with a glass of water.
In Jerry¡¯s hands was the device he had taken from the body of an unknown man.
Inside Jerry¡¯s head, two voices were arguing with each other.
It¡¯s nothing, it wouldn¡¯t do anything harmful.
No. Don¡¯t press it, Jerry.
Press it.
No.
Pressitpressitpressitpressit
The need, the urge to press, to press that button was oh, so large. Jerry found his hand straying to the button for the second time in two days.
GO ON, PRESS IT. IT WILL BENEFIT YOU!!!
No.
Jerry¡¯s finger touched the button.
NONONONONONONONONONONONONONO
Jerry pressed it.
For a second or two, the device did nothing.
Then, the room was filled with green light.
Jerry suddenly had a headache. The ache grew slowly, got worse every second until Jerry screamed.
Then the pain got so bad, Jerry couldn¡¯t scream anymore.
Before he blacked out, Jerry heard the same words Butch Crandall said to him, except that it wasn¡¯t his voice, but another one, cold and mechanical, screaming it to him horribly.
I¡¯M GONNA KILL YOU, ASSHOLE! I¡¯M GONNA FRICKIN¡¯ KILL YOU!!!!!!!!!!!
4
Jerry opened his eyes, feeling giddy as the comforting morning light filled the room. The room swam around him, looking like he was in a fishbowl. For two seconds, he didn¡¯t know who or where he was.
Then, the events of the past night came back to his mind, and he jerked out of bed, his vision clearing, becoming perfect.
Had it all been a dream?
Jerry looked at his hand.
The device was still in it.
Instead of dropping it like it was made of hot metal like he would normally do, Jerry put it into his drawer calmly and went to the bathroom to wash up.
When he looked into a mirror, he thought he looked different. Then he realized that the only difference was his eyes.
When people look at themselves in the mirror, they will definitely be able to recognize what their eyes look like, but Jerry didn¡¯t.
After staring at himself in the mirror for about five minutes, Jerry shrugged and brushed his teeth without realizing that he had subconsciously grabbed a bottle of hair dye, hair gel and a comb.
When he spat into the basin, he looked at the mirror again. With some shock, he realized that he had subconsciously changed his hairstyle completely.
The long jet-black fringe of his normally drooped downwards rather unstylishly, but now he had a crop of fine blonde hair, its fringe sticking out. Hair gel helped keep it in place.
He had stared into the mirror for about two more seconds before he realized one more thing: He had done all this without his spectacles.
He turned around and clearly saw his glasses on his bedside table; ordinarily he would¡¯ve thought it was a beetle, but not now.
His vision was now perfect.
The fear in him mounting, his eyes strayed to his arms with a final realization: His muscles, which used to be thin and weedy, were now larger, and quite changed in some way. If anyone who knew him had walked by, they wouldn¡¯t have noticed much change in them. But since no one knew his body more than himself, Jerry noticed a change.
Jerry could sense strength in his changed muscles, frightening strength.
Finally, Jerry William Bachman screamed in absolute terror.
1/26/2006 3:45:45 AM
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