Shattered Sky by Neal Shusterman Page B

Martin knew this would only get worse, because all three of them carried baseball bats. They smashed the windows and dragged the Briscoes out kicking and screaming. The men didn’t take anything—they didn’t want anything. They just swung their bats, and shattered his son’s skull, and smashed his wife’s spine. Then they pinned Martin down, as a fourth man approached. This one had a chainsaw.
    After leaving Chick’s Sporting Goods, Martin drove each street in his neighborhood, passing his house several times, then sat at the bar in T.G.I. Friday’s, drinking tequila shooters, and stuffing his gut with tacos al carbon. It was eleven o’clock at night when the place closed, and he left, heading back to his former place of business.
    Martin remembered very little once the chainsaw began to roar. He mercifully fell unconscious. When he awoke, he was in some sort of library . . . and he had no legs. There were just two stumps above where his knees would have been, crudely tied off with his own jumper cables. Around him were at least a dozen others in no better condition. His son lay sprawled, rasping an unconscious moan, his head a bruised, swollen mass of flesh the color of eggplant. His wife was there, too, slumped in a corner, most definitely dead. He wanted to panic—but there was something gripping his spirit, containing his emotions. At first he thought it was shock, but he quickly discovered it was something entirely different.
    Eureka Dental’s building only had one night guard, whose narcolepsy was well known. Still, Martin wasn’t taking any chances. He came from behind and struck him with the LouisvilleSlugger he had gotten from Chick’s—the same brand of bat that had shattered his wife’s spine, and son’s skull on the last day that the world made sense. Only the night light was on in Eureka Dental’s waiting room, the sign-in sheet waiting for the morning patients. On the wall was a framed poster of a popular comedian touting the merits of flossing. The glass shattered as the poster became the next casualty of the Slugger.
    The Library was filled with people clinging onto life, and there were only four standing. Teenagers. One boy was listening to an iPod in the corner, dancing to the beat, ignoring the pain around him. Then there was the blonde girl who pressed her hands on people’s sores. Another girl moved around the room wearing a beatific grin that Martin could swear was numbing his pain. Then the red-headed kid went to his dying son. “Don’t you touch him!” Martin screamed, but the kid ignored him. Just then the black teen named Winston came up to Martin, looking over his oozing stumps as if they were nothing out of the ordinary. “Welcome to Hearst Castle,” he said, then removed the jumper cables. Blood gushed instantly, and as weak as Martin felt, he became weaker, darkness closing in his peripheral vision . . . but the moment Winston touched his hands to Martin’s thighs, the blood stopped flowing. When he looked down, Martin saw flesh—his own flesh—folding out of the wound like the fabric of an inflating raft. He could feel the tingle of growing bone—actually felt his knee joint, then shin and ankle regenerate themselves. In less than five minutes toes sprouted from the end of his feet, and by the time Winston moved on to the next patient, Martin’s toenails needed a trim. Then he turned to see his resurrected wife and healed son standing beside him, just as awed and bewildered as he. After that, the men with the bats and chainsaws didn’t seem to matter.
    Eureka Dental had fifteen dental stations, each room equipped with cutting-edge equipment. Indeed, they did notskimp when it came to technology. All that money gleaned from rich patients and fat insurance companies went right back into their facility. He was amazed at how quickly the overhead lights and chairs broke