Big Superhero Action (12 page)

His tattoos bled across the darkness in a spinning blur, his ice-frosted dick stabbing the air. Her arm went numb then the grenade then her body hit the floor.

She tumbled into a flip back onto her feet, started blocking his strikes. He was powerful but slow. She hit him with bolts of attack, turned his face into hamburger. A flying snap kick took him off his feet. He hit the floor, got up before she could blind him. She went for his left leg. Her right leg bone snapped. He was slow because he was that good. His hands had fingers like solid wood. The floor tipped upward until cold steel stuck to her face. Then his fingers found her throat.

She awoke in the trunk of a moving car, wrists bound to her ankles. Time passes slowly in the trunk of a car. The pain of her broken leg located and caressed every pimple of road surface. At least the trunk was empty. And the bone was regenerating by the mile. That was the upside. The downside? She could still get jacked-up badly by a massive psycho with free time. She could always be killed. That still didn’t make this shoe shopping on Fifth Avenue.

Eight years later the car stopped on uneven ground. The trunk opened, she was yanked out, dumped onto sand. It was still daylight. Coast rolled in to her right, forty yards from the car. The beach was secluded, hidden by high rocks.

The tape binding her was like steel, barely parting with a wrinkle after flexing every muscle in her body against it for miles. Still naked, his nudity spattered with blood, Mafia 9 began circling her body. Closer to her view were his thickly-veined feet.

She said, “Why bring me here?”

“A mermaid gangster should die at the beach. How’d you find me?”

“I’m a Siren. Sirens can smell
psycho
. It was on the bodies you left. On the severed dog parts.”

“I didn’t kill the dogs.”

“I know. The victims did. Made them fight in cages.”

“The client is a vet too.”

“A vet who wanted other vets killed off?”

“Yeah. The backstory will be revealed in his videotaped suicide. I won’t spoil it.”

“We followed the smell of
psycho
right to you.”

“Suck my cock, I’ll let you live.”

“Fuck off.”

One of his feet left the sand. A thousand-foot needle pierced her neck. His foot returned to the sand.

Through the pain, the words whimpered past her lips. “Fuck off.”

“Suck me off and live.”

“I’m a superhero, loser.”

He stomped her, kicked her stomach. He kicked her face, bloodied her mouth. Her blood painted his toenails.

“My cock would break your teeth.”

He kicked sand into her face. She needed to keep him talking to her instead of killing her.

She said, “Join AXIS.”

“I’m a clone.”

“You’re a tool for the OSD.”

“Hey retard. I’m a fucking clone. I was made to be a tool.”

His words made her more comfortable. He was talking to her instead of killing her. Her brain relaxed enough to let neurons move around again. She worked her way up to her knees. She looked up into a stare that flickered across stretches of vast remoteness the way the farthest star point flickers.

“So you have no mind of your own,” she said.

“Right.”

“Get with AXIS. We can take out the OSD.”

Mafia 9’s sand-gritty foot curved into a striking blade, the knobby little toe carefully measuring off the distance to her neck. The outside edge along the foot was inhuman-looking, the skin calloused into a bone-white ridge as though from years of training on brick walls. He stepped back ten inches, started flexing his striking leg for the kick.

“My foot’s built up the striking edge of an ax,” he said. “Three strikes will take the head clean off. Done it once before. I plan to take off your head and send to Dr. Playground in a box.”

Her brain shrunk to the size of two thoughts: she was wondering if he could actually do it. She was wondering how to stop him. He flexed the leg some more, measuring the shortest striking distance to her neck. She was running out of conversation.

“You’ll never do it.”

“What?”

She said, “You’re too soft.”

He stepped over her, yelled until his spittle hit her. “Fuck you! I am that hard! I am that cold! I am so cold I fuck ice!”

“You’re a pussy,” she said.

“Fuck conversation.”

She dropped onto her right shoulder, into a slant of incoming tide. By now the tape around her wrists had been stretched barely enough to snap a muscle freeing one hand. Mafia 9 grabbed her shirt, pulled her back up onto her knees. He popped one striking foot out of the wet sand. He saw a foot spattered in blood turning underwater colors, blues and greens. The blood of a siren was poisonous but it took too long to work. Had to talk to Girlfinger again about that.

He was dead before hitting the sand.

Her heart started again. On the sand before her lie the body of Mafia 9. Warm puppies, Alpine sunsets, and autumn forests had nothing on the sight of his dead body. His dead body could’ve had its own calendar with the same photo for each month. She drove the car over his face leaving.

The cuts and broken bones were regenerating but they still smarted like fuck. She took out a cigarette, lit it. It was stale. But she was still alive. The cigarette tasted fresh like she was twelve again.

W
hen Captain Madame X picked up her own death squad she decided to kill two birds with one avalanche.

According to the AXIS debriefing, the last six Motorchrists in existence were now OSD enforcers with an edict to find and kill AXIS members. Captain Madame X had picked them up on the Brutalia Freeway. From there they clung to the paisley Siren cycle like chopped metal shadows, looking for the chance to pop her. It took work, a Siren cycle was faster than a chopper and it projected a visual distortion zone of thirty feet.

Captain Madame X decided on a tactic and its location, led them twenty miles to the spot. Apple Gotti had been tracked to a house pirated and occupied, isolated in deep woods one quarter-mile outside of Brutalia. The Captain passed the Limit, slowed the cycle for the wrong moment. The Siren cycle stopped. It was now a toy motorcycle. You had to travel prepared for crossing the Limit, keep non-super tech for emergencies. The Siren guns were toys. She pulled the two 9mm semi-auto pistols.

She left the Siren cycle in the woods, continued to the house.

There it was, woodsy as a tree house. Exterior spotlights were on. Chopper roar grew behind her. Here, she was a twelve year-old girl with no edge going for her. No regeneration here, any hit she took was for good. All she had was what Siren training remained in her reflexes.

She was counting on the plan she envisioned. It went like this: Apple Gotti would already be watching. She would see a girl in the uniform of Captain Madame X, see the Motorchrists after her. She would go to her weapons collection, to the wall of firearms, to the shotgun rack, pick the sawed-off one. It would be already loaded. Through a camouflaged emergency exit Apple Gotti would slip outside, be unseen in the woods, moving soundlessly. She would raise the shotgun and take out the Motorchrists from the darkness, splattering their heads over their choppers while Captain Madame X took them out with her twin semi-autos. The bikers would be crossfired, taken apart in one minute. The last six Motorchrists in existence would be dead, the M.C. starting its total extinction.

Captain Madame X stepped over the bodies toward the house. She went in guns first. When Apple Gotti came back she would be waiting. She was halfway through the first floor when Apple Gotti came in from the deck shotgun in hand, hands ringed with fading scars. The scars were a product of her porn career and a spinal cord condition that gave her the inability to feel pain. Wearing black bunny ears, she was in a black leotard, bare legs down to black ballet shoes laced over her ankles. Apple Gotti was the closest thing to a Siren a non-super could have been. An actual grown woman, years back she had mentored the first generation Siren Syndicate, taken them to target practice. But she so had a fucking screw loose.

Apple Gotti said, “You’re back, huh?”

Captain Madame X said, “The Syndicate is in effect. Second generation.”

“Six little girls in Mom’s clothes playing with lipstick and guns. Good for you.”

“Don’t hate, liberate.”

“What’s with the biker gang?”

“I didn’t want to show up without bringing something.”

“You think dead bodies get rid of themselves?”

“Maybe you can use them. Find somebody who hates bikers.”

“Meaning what?”

“You went OSD,” Captain Madame X said. “Doing hits on order for the Customizers. Between you and Mafia 9, you killed eight strippers for the client Sonny Ditlow. Sonny got busted, got the credit he paid for; but he didn’t get the suicide; poor guy now has to do eight life sentences. For your next client, Mafia 9 moved on to hitting Iraq War vets. Looks like you went on hiatus. Nice hideaway you have.”

Apple Gotti’s stare twitched. “Guess I forgot about Gingiri. Stop scaring me with your super mind reading powers. But then that’s in Brutalia. Here, I could spank you and send you home.”

The Captain raised her guns. “Spank me.”

Gotti aimed the shotgun. “Never killed a child until now.”

“You kill more people, don’t you?”

“That’s my life’s work.”

“Killing people is your life’s work?”

“I kill people who will live longer than me.”

“Right, I heard. Large category.”

“I plan to put a dent in it. Insane, huh? Subtract the pain, what’s left is a short-ass life. I think my mind is going. I remembered something yesterday. When I was little, I used to play pain. You know those tests of the Emergency Broadcast System on TV? Whenever those came on, I used to pretend I was a superhero and the noise was a Kryptonite ray sapping my powers. Arrgghh…then sink to the floor. I have no reason to let anyone live longer than me.”

“You’re unbelievable. You wouldn’t live longer than me, anyway. I can tell.”

“I never killed a lover.”

“Then don’t. OSD is bad. AXIS is good. Join up.”

“Got no time to be good. I’m pushing it, already past the limit. I know when it’s over. I’m a tool for the OSD. You’re back with AXIS? You’re a tool for AXIS. We’re both tools.”

“I’m a tool for good.”

“Good? Evil? I saw them on TV once.”

“Pick your side.”

“I did. I don’t betray it.”

“I had to try, though,” Captain Madame X said. “You’re always true to Apple Gotti.”

“I’m a natural. Born with a super power. Yet I’m technically an amateur because I can’t fucking fly. But I pass the Batman test. What do we do now, Captain?”

“One of us has to fall.”

“Pink Roulette?”

“You can’t be serious. I’m a twelve year-old girl.”

“That makes it a little pervo but it is what it is.”

A staring awkward silence stretched out between them. Captain Madame X felt her blood flow change direction to empty the blood vessels in her brain, confusing the guns in her hands.

It was a whisper breathed out: “Shit.”

“I know,” Apple Gotti said. “Me too. For one of us this will be the last time. Yours.”

“Great.”

“Put yours down.”

Captain Madame X didn’t put hers down.

“I don’t feel pain. I don’t feel pleasure much, either. Maybe this is something I can feel? Intense life-and-death thrills. Sex and violence. You? Yeah you. We always had more fun, Captain X.”

“You never change.”

“I have. I’ve changed a bunch. I’m older. Time is shorter.”

Apple Gotti slowly lowered the shotgun to the coffee table, left it there.

Captain Madame X put her guns on the table. “Okay. But make it fast.”

“Keep your shirt on,” Apple Gotti said. “It isn’t done fast. Time is too short. Take your shirt off.”

Captain Madame X set her boot on a chair, unclipped a garter strap. “What rules? Italian or Russian?”

“Russian.”

Russian rules: after climax the first one who gets a gun wins.

J
KM said, “Forget that useless crackhead.”

The Halo: “Meth.”

“Whatever. Forget her.”

“We can save her.”

“She’s a pig. Pigs aren’t worth saving.”

“She is a pig. But you have to look at her childhood.”

“Fuck her and her transphobic shit.”

“What do we care what comes out of her mouth? We’re heroes.”

“Right, we’re heroes, not intervention counselors.”

“Did you ever think we were meant to save her?”

“I decided what our task will be,” JKM said. “We stick to the list. Shutting down the meth lab. Cleaning up Perv Town. Looking into the households of two battered children.”

“We will do those too. You can never do too much good, can you?”

“Then do it without me. And make it fast.”

The Halo’s tiara went dark.

“Take that as a sign,” he said.

“What?”

“Your halo went off.”

She rolled her eyes at him.

The Halo crossed the street. The street was a blur. She walked into the club. The club was a blur. Mostly empty. Club music.

Where was Remy? There she was, at a table. Remy Rocco, porn burnout, recovering street hooker. Sucking a filter king, her lipstick crooked, blonde hair in her face. But still hot, a wrinkled mini dress clinging to her huge implants. She was with a man. The man was a black dude in black leather. The Halo hated this shit already.

The Halo walked to their table. Cristal in an ice bucket. Unhip as she was, even she knew that was a cliché. On the table: a gold credit card with a different woman’s name on it. The man stood, put out a hand with gold-blinging fingers outstretched, telling the Halo to keep her distance. He flashed gold uppers.

“No autographs,” he said. “Walk.”

The Halo said, “Remy.”

A stoned eye peeped up through the hair. It frowned with confusion. Her crooked lipstick cracked dead porn star breath.

“Whuuut?”

The Halo said, “You’re not back in business, are you?”

“It’s cool.”

“You almost died.”

The man said, “You ignoring me, dude?”