Big Superhero Action (3 page)

“We’re lost.”

Heroes Man said, “It’s a tricky area. I got this.”

Martian Justice was crouched atop the hood like a giant malevolent ornament. If he could have found the Motorchrists without the assist he would have. Heroes Man did the flying, his gloved hands on the wheel, David Bowie’s “Heroes” playing in the cassette deck. He waited for the billboards to change.

“In Little Hell,” Heroes Man said, “you have to feel your way around. You see that graffiti on the wall? That marks Motorchrists territory. See it’s all around this street.”

Most of the graffiti was the stenciled emblem of a skull & crossbones on a cross. Up ahead down there was a wall of sound, death metal shit ripped by chainsaw massacre vocals. Parked choppers lined the street, ape hanger handlebars atop evil-looking choppers that looked like they drank the blood of their riders.

“There they are,” Heroes Man said. “The most psychotic outlaw biker gang in the hemisphere.”

The street ended at an open lot strung high with light bulbs, a cloud of white smoke flowing from a long black grill. The blackened smell of whole chickens almost made the air edible. The strung lights formed a square above tables and chairs facing a platform hung with a smaller square of light bulbs where an underage girl danced nude. From her hairline to her toes, her skin was covered in green makeup of a pistachio shade.

“They paint the dancers. Look at those guys, right out in the open, strapped, smoking dope, nude dancers out in the open, telling the people they own this territory. Cops are afraid to roll on them. Roll on the Motorchrists, you’re rolling into a shootout.”

Motorchrists were at the tables, hanging out at the grill, the cinder block-and-wood saloon. Head rags, shaved heads, leather vests and chaps, more Medieval lettering. The main tattoos were the skull on the cross. Among them were biker sluts in bikini tops and cut-off jeans, none over twenty, each with the gang logo tattooed above the word “property.” One was shaving a biker’s head, two more working the grill.

Martian Justice: “How do you know so much about them?”

Heroes Man: “I know how to get around, find the evil and get up close to it.”

“And you have lived this long?”

“I’m a superhero.”

“The premise of your super power is insipid.”

“Yet I’m a pro.”

“You can fly. That does not make you a superhero.”

“Why not? Can you fly?”

Martian Justice almost gave him a look. “I need to reach them.”

“They don’t take visitors.”

“What if I went down there?”

“They’d kill you. Then maybe eat you.”

They watched as awareness of the two strangers high above watching them spread through the bikers, turned heads up their way.

“They might kill us anyway for just being here,” Heroes Man said.

“I’ve been killed before. You learn to live with it.”

“There. You are so deep into your guy. No trace of alter ego. Your dialogue is stilted, your delivery stiff, yet you have a vibe that shrivels my nutsac. You create dread. It’s like you project an aura that fucks with the psyche. You are convincingly alien. Is that why you have the name
Martian Justice
?”

“No. It is my name because on this planet justice is an alien concept.”

Martian Justice stepped off the hood, dropped 68.9 yards. He landed on his boot soles twelve inches into the concrete. To him concrete was a dense version of Styrofoam. He climbed out of his footprints to the street.

Sparks blew from the oil drum fires. In a place with no walls, it was wall-to wall Motorchrists. No one within a half-mile of hell was sleeping, the massive speakers blasting. The temperature from the street to the lot rose twenty degrees. Even the heavily stoned and drunken stared at Martian Justice walking through them and their biker chicks, saw him walk directly to the leader Motorchrist, who was getting a blow job.

Motorchrist said, “You want a bitch?”

Martian Justice said, “I assume they are property of the Motorchrists.”

“You’re in the Motorchrists now.”

“When did I become a Motorchrist?”

“You know how you get into the Motorchrists?”

“No.”

Motorchrist climaxed with a sneer. There wasn’t much cuddling after. With a hand, he nudged the biker chick away, zipped-up.

“You gotta kill a member,” he said. “You killed one already. Blew off his head.”

“He is not dead.”

“His head exploded, motherfucker.”

“That is a short term way to look at it. You say one must kill one of you to become one of you?”

“And whoever kills the most is leader.”

“So you killed the most Motorchrists?”

“More than anybody. So I’m your leader now. You follow me. I am the return. I am the word and the light. I will lead you to eternal life.”

“Therefore you are the ancient Earth prophet known as Jesus Christ?”

“I am the form by which he is human.”

“When did this happen?”

“His will made itself known to me in Attica.”

Motorchrist’s hand rubbed the crucifix on his bare chest. “But what matters is the killing itself. Because the one who kills the most of us is our leader. And the ultimate leader will be the one who kills all of us except him. Then he will be a club of one. And that is the state of perfect grace.”

Martian Justice observed the unraveling of Motorchrist’s mind. He watched the outlaw biker make up his theology from one tequila-soaked brain wave to the next, smelled the psychosis coming off him. He watched how far Christianity was stretched by inexactitude. A more precise religion wouldn’t leave itself open to interpretation by every nutcase to walk the Earth since beards went out of style. On Mars no such ambiguity was permitted. There, a prophet had to survive the Pit of Dead Prophets and telekinetically move the Stone of Serenity to earn worship.

Motorchrist told him, “Gimme your money. You renounce all worldly possessions and give them to me.”

Martian Justice saw bikers cutting off his exit. Except he wasn’t exiting. He turned back to Motorchrist.

Motorchrist’s hand slapped Martian Justice in the face like a whip. Bikers laughed.

“You obey me like you obey God!”

Motorchrist slapped his face the other way, rocked his head.

“Get on your fuckin’ knees and lick my fuckin’ boots!”

Martian Justice remained immobile.

“I am your savior! I want you licking my boots! Or we will make you.”

Blood and teeth exploded from Motorchrist’s face as the fist of Martian Justice snapped back from it, he tumbled off his feet backward. Before he hit the ground, Martian Justice nailed his chest with a boot, sent him sideways across a table clearing the top of empty liquor bottles.

There was a frozen moment where the bikers stared in amazement and Martian Justice’s boots were turning him to face the street, a dark cool place two million miles past Saturn with Motorchrists on all sides. Then it was on.

Martian Justice held his position. They kept coming. They became a mass of bodies. Then there was only a mass of tattoos burying him until he was out of sight under a rain of stomping boots. There were more boots than target area, the swarm getting in its own way getting at him. They chopped him with machetes. Three of them shot him. At some point, there was so much blood he was blowing it out his nostrils so he wouldn’t choke on it. Then gasoline splashed over the blood. A bloody-faced Motorchrist stood over him pouring it from a gasoline can. Motorchrist lit a match, dropped it onto him and he watched blue flames burst and spread over his body.

Martian Justice needed the rest. The power cells were recharged and absorbing the group hostility directed at him. His green blood spilled was recycled by his surface units. His sensors counted seventeen Motorchrists. In flames he rose to his feet. Two green firearms armed with regeneration disruptor cells slid out from his hip pods. From his cargo pod he pulled the Phobosian kendo blade, took his stance, became a killer-shaped torch.

With the blade he took apart the ones too close to shoot, regeneration cell-tech laser-sharpened Martian steel with single strikes severing heads at the neck. The guns slid down his arms and into his hands and he shot the rest of them, head shots only. One made it to his chopper, took off. When his head splattered he drove headless for two blocks before taking a spill.

No more Motorchrists.

That night Martian Justice went off the carousel. The wait began for next month’s issue.

N
othing ever changed.

“Guess what, AXIS faggot. It doesn’t get better.”

Waiting outside the private school for the limo, Chase kept his head down, his arms folded. Again Finley and his two droogs were giving him crap. Where was the limo?

“You’re both gay and a fucking AXIS nerd.”

“Cock-blowing faggot.”

“You probably gave Kieran AIDS”

Chase said, “Oh fuck you.”

“Fuuuuck you!” Finley mocked him.

The droogs echoed “Fuck yooouuu!”

“Chase speaks. Like you got any balls, faggot. You got a pussy.”

Finley slapped his face. Cheek stinging, Chase stood there arms folded. This was it. It was too late for the limo to show up now.

“Look, he’s gonna cry. AXIS guys are fags.”

“Then cry like an AXIS faggot, faggot.”

Chase started walking away. They followed him. By now more kids were watching, having fun with the fag. Somebody kicked him in the pants. Another slap to the back of his head.

“Think he might kill himself after this?”

“Then the TV news comes here and shit. Stars might show up here then they do videos for gay kids.”

“Cool. Kill yourself, little faggot. Go fucking kill yourself.”

Just like that it became all too clear. There would be no stillness again until this was dealt with. Chase could not always hide in his warm bubble. Not every kid like him had his stillness. They needed the protection he did not need. Finley was crossing the flavor horizon and Chase was drawing them all into his world.

Chase decided to turn on his iPod, hit PLAY, talk to the music. He pencil-diagrammed the move. Turn, with both hands grab Finley by the shirt just as his feet left the ground and he took to the air straight up taking Finley with him. Finley would shriek, grab onto him but his weight would drop him down his shirt, have him hanging bare-bellied. He would take Finley up ten, twenty, thirty feet in the air. Then he would raise one foot and Sparta-boot Finley in the chest. Finley would plunge screaming thirty feet to the cement. Two broken legs at least.

Chase stopped, touched the iPod button.

The kids started screaming.

Chase turned to look. The droogs of Finley and the other kids were shrieking and bolting anywhere that was else. Finley was pinned to the ground by a blue dragon standing over him barking with blue-flaming fangs three inches from his face.

There was a woman with a bespectacled face of British ivory, long periwinkle hair in locks. She was in a white shawl over a blue crushed velvet dress that reached pointy-toed white stiletto boots. The woman yelled after the kids, “Nobody fucks with Chase! Fuck with Chase, you die!” The woman had a British accent.

Chase stopped and watched what was happening. This was a superhero sighting up closer he’d ever experienced. The blue dragon was a hypno-projection.

The woman looked down at Finley. She said to him, “Nobody fucks with Chase. You fuck with Chase, you die. Say it.”

Finley said, “Nobody fucks with Chase. You fuck with Chase, you die.”

“I didn’t hear you.”

“Nobody fucks with Chase. You fuck with Chase, you die,” he repeated.

“Say it like you mean it!”

“
Nobody fucks with Chase! You fuck with Chase, you die
!”

The blue dragon backed off from Finley. Finley sprang to his feet, bolted.

“My lawyer will fuck you up!” he yelled back.

The dragon took off, strafed him, the boy ran faster, the dragon above him. The blue dragon vanished. Finley kept running until he was out of sight.

The woman turned to Chase, said, “I apologize for the horrible language.”

Chase was speechless.

The woman said, “I am Her Blue Majesty.”

Chase said, “I am Chase Hayward Juniper.”

She ran a hand through Chase’s hair.

“You’re a beautiful boy,” she said. “With a beautiful name.”

“Thank you for the help,” he said about to cry. He was like the biggest girl but that couldn’t be helped. He was on an emotional seesaw somewhere between arousal and an anxiety attack.

She squatted before him, took him in her arms. He held onto her tightly. He got over the tears quickly and was enjoying the closeness and touch of a beautiful woman. He heard her voice behind him.

“I will always protect you from the OSD,” she said. “You have superpowers.”

“You know that? How?”

“We have a special connection. It’s a psychic connection. I have a psychic sense that led me to you. My psychic sense tells me much about you, Chase.”

“Really? Like what?”

She pulled back, gave him a deep gaze. She was so beautiful.

“This is weirdness but it’s good weirdness,” she said.

“Okay.”

“We need to heal your alienation. Agreed?”

“Yes,” he said.

“We need to be together to do this,” she said. “We have a special connection. Have you ever felt it? Have you ever felt me?”

Chase tried to think. Was she a stranger like they always warn you about? Strangers were men, though, not beautiful women. Beautiful women don’t hang around schools looking for little boys. They don’t rescue you from assholes. This was more like a dream.

“Is this like a dream to you?” she said.

Chase nodded.

“You’re inside our connection,” she said. “It’s only us now. All we have is each other. Please help me. Be with me. We have to heal the dark place together.”

“Dark place?”

“The source of our suffering. It is all psychic. It is like a storm over us. All of a sudden. We need more time together. Now. Come with me.”

She leaned forward, kissed his lips.

“Be with me?” she asked.

“But…I’m really gay.”