Zak Raven , livre ebook

Markosia Enterprises Ltd - Darren G. Davis

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

26 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

Zak Raven, once the superhero Kid Ranger, is now just a typical fifteen-year-old boy living in Bluffside. But when most of his friends are playing video games or studying for their final exams, Zak is fighting real life robots, and defeating his arch enemy, Professor Dimitri Raine.

Sujets

Young Adult Fiction

Adventure

Action

Informations

Publié par	Markosia Enterprises Ltd
Date de parution	07 janvier 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781912700363
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

ZAK RAVEN
CODE ALPHA
Darren G. Davis
Zak Raven: Code Alpha © 2018 Darren G. Davis & Markosia Enterprises, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction of any part of this work by any means without the written permission of the publisher is expressly forbidden. All names, characters and events in this publication are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. Published by Markosia Enterprises, PO BOX 3477, Barnet, Hertfordshire, EN5 9HN.
FIRST PRINTING, November 2018.
Harry Markos, Director.
Paperback: ISBN 978-1-912700-35-6
eBook: ISBN 978-1-912700-36-3
Written and created by Darren G. Davis
Copy Editor: Diana Swartz
Assistant Editor: Emma Davis
Cover illustration by Sean Murphy and Blond
Book design by: Ian Sharman
www.markosia.com
First Edition
This book is dedicated to the person in my life who has made my life an adventure.
Thanks, Diana!
This book would not be possible without the following people: Jason Schultz, Zach Hunchar, Debbie Bishop, Steve Montal, Emma Davis, Ciara Sarver and Martha Davis.
ALSO PUBLISHED BY
MARKOSIA
THE THRONE ETERNAL
DORIAN GRAY
SINBAD: ROGUE OF MARS
SWANSONG
WORDS ON A WALL
PROLOGUE
Where do I begin? I guess I should start by telling you who I am. My name is Zak Raven, and I am from a small town in Southern California called Bluffside. It’s not the biggest town in the world, but it’s home. Bluffside is small, the kind of town where everyone knows everyone else’s business. There are block parties, church socials and everyone turns out to support the high school football team. Trick-or-treating is still an event. It’s a great place to grow up.
October is my favorite time of year. The weather starts to get cold, though by Southern California standards the coolest night is around fifty degrees. Last winter break we had a heat wave and I never got out of shorts. It’s kinda weird that my family back east is shoveling snow from their walkways while I’m getting a tan. Sometimes I wish I was someplace that has real seasons. Last year, on vacation in the fall, my aunt took me to Seattle and I got to see the leaves change color. It was amazing, but I could do without all the rain. Sometimes I run on about things, so I will return to the story at hand.
I’m a freshman at Bluffside High, your average high school. All the cliques are there: the jocks, geeks, drama freaks and the wood shop people, who are a category all their own. Myself, I am the outsider. You would think I could identify with one of the thousand cliques at school, but people view me either as the town freak or its guardian. I guess I should fill you in on the reason for this.
As a young kid, I had superpowers along the lines of Superman. I had the speed and strength of a train; I could even fly…. Geez, how I miss the flying. I was the pride of the town. Not even the local football team would get as much press as I did. I still look back at the press clippings that my mom cut out on my “super” career. I would come to the rescue of villains trying to take over the world. At age ten, I would stop bank robberies. The only thing I did not get is why superheroes had to wear tights. Sure, they were easy to hide under your clothes, but they were really uncomfortable. You might think they’d be warm, but a night I would freeze my bottom off. The cape was cool, I have to say. There’s nothing like the sound of a cape flapping in the breeze while you’re flying around the city.
I’ve always felt like a square peg in a round hole. As much as the town admired me for the deeds that I did, it was hard to find people like myself to understand me. I met a couple of superheroes in a time when the world was in crisis, Judo Girl and the 10 th Muse. We banded together and joined our powers to fight evil. We saved the world and formed the Society of Superheroes. Even though I was the youngest by ten years, it was great to have them to confide in and occasionally fight crime with. I still have a thing for Judo Girl!
Sometimes you have to laugh at some of the villains who made it to Bluffside. The Vermin – he tunneled into the sewers in an attempt at taking over the world. He infested a Bluffside monument, trapping twenty people in the town clock tower, and demanded twenty million dollars or he’d blow it to bits. Where do guys like the Vermin get these figures, anyway? Do they calculate in their heads how much they’re in debt, then account for the cost of living? Why twenty million dollars? Why not forty million dollars or even one billion dollars? After a stand-off of more than three hours, the police let me go in and do my thing. Within five minutes I trapped the rat. Sometimes I don’t understand the police.
The one person I still cannot catch with his hands dirty is the crime lord Genghis Cohen.
Then there was my favorite, the Rainbow Clown, not only did he hold up the bank with arsenic pies, he drove this goofy little car. I have to give him credit, though: He did mange to catch me with his balloon animals. Never underestimate the power of a balloon poodle. The problem with the old-school villains is they need to have some big plan to destroy you. I was caught in a giant, sand-filled hourglass with the sand running down. Of course the Rainbow Clown thought he had me and left to commit more crimes. What he didn’t know is that I had a sonic glare that busted the glass. Oh, yeah. Twenty minutes later, he was behind bars.
As I got older, my powers faded. A fallen movie star with a couple of flop movies, I eventually became a has-been. High school was tough enough without being a freak. Then I was picked on more than others were because I was different.
The part that really bums me out is not the glory and fame but the fact that I was doing good and helping people. Batman had no real superpowers, right? This is a good place for the story to start.
CHAPTER ONE
Torrance Raine is the prettiest and popular girl in the ninth grade. Not only is she the head of the Junior Varsity cheerleading squad, but she is in every club on campus, from the Interact Club to the French Club. She is the reason kids want to study French instead of Spanish. She has long brown hair that flows off her shoulders, and she always smells of vanilla… OK, I’m getting off the subject again.
Bluffside is not a big town, and Torrance and I have attended the same schools since preschool. Now we have four out of six classes together. Our names follow each other on the attendance roster, which means that I usually sit behind her in classes. The only time I get to interact with her is when we are passing class papers up and down our row of desks. You can learn a lot about a person from seeing tests and homework passed to you. She has amazing penmanship, but I’ve noticed her grades have lowered since her mother passed away two years ago. Her father, Dimitri Raine, is the head chemist for the Epic Shampoo Company and raised Torrance alone after his wife died. Nobody knows the real story of how she died, but the talk around school was cancer. Her mother was the librarian at our elementary school, so I knew her well. I was always spending time in the library, studying my foes and learning how to defeat them. I would read about solvents that could combat meringue from toxic pies or how to capture vermin. Sometimes I would be there after school for hours just looking up stuff. Mrs. Raine would always go out of her way to help me and offer advice and cookies. She was a wonderful woman, which I think is part of the reason I like Torrance so much.
We are sitting in science class when Mr. Brady is taking attendance. Since the loss of my powers, science has become one of my favorite subjects. I’m hoping to find a way to get back my powers with the aid of modern science, but something tells me I won’t learn it this week as we are learning about why cats have whiskers. Unless I turn into Catman, I am at a loss. But I did learn that if I trim my cat’s whiskers he’d have a heck of a time navigating his way around in the dark. They work as antennae, enabling a cat to identify things he cannot see. My superpower would be nothing more than lazily lounging on a couch all day only to wake for food and an occasional pet from my owner. Some of the villains I’ve fought were so clueless, even a super-lazy power could bring them to justice.
My grandmother could capture some of those guys, especially the Clutter King. He had an army of tacky figurines trying to take over the local jewelry store. That night my grandmother was driving her car to the local grocery store, when the Clutter King ran out and she backed into him. She did not know that she had him pinned against the wall. Her hearing is pretty bad. When I flew down to see what all the commotion was about, there were ceramic figures trying to break him free. With a big superbreath and a wall, the figures were history. The Clutter King looked up at me just as the cops arrived. My grandmother was a hero. She was in the newspaper the next day. It must run in the family.
I am siting three chairs from Torrance. In Brady’s class we get random seating, so she is sitting next to her friend Ciara Monet. I, on the other hand, am sitting next to Bad Body Odor Brian, who always smells really gross. Being the outsider of the school does not give one the option of sitting next to normal people. It makes it worse that he does not take a shower in gym class, which he has before this class.
All I can do is stare at Torrance, thinking about our life together. After college she is an accomplished author with her second bestseller and I am the head of a successful corporation. We have a big house in the country as well as homes in France, Italy and Big Bear, Calif. We have a bunch of dogs and horses. I always wanted horses. We pla