Don't Be a Hero: A Superhero Novel (37 page)

John didn’t look entirely convinced. Given the circumstances, she supposed she couldn’t blame him.

“You’re metas, aren’t you?” he said.

“See,” the Carpenter said, “told you he was smart. I’m the Carpenter, this is Spook. We’re looking for something that Quanta stole. Someone, to be more precise.”

The reporter licked his lips and sat up higher in the bed. “You’re not working with the police?”

“We just knocked one out. What do you think?” she said. Solomon gave her another look, and she shut her mouth before she could snap again.

“We have nothing against the coppers…” Solomon said.

Speak for yourself
, she thought.

“…but they tend to try to arrest us when they find out what we are, and we don’t really have time for that,” he said. “Anyway, here’s the point. Quanta kidnapped a boy, a kid named Sam, and we’re trying to return him to his family. Quanta’s in jail now, but we can’t find the boy. Do you know who we’re talking about?”

John stared at them for a long time. After what he’d been through at the hands of metas, she guessed his hesitancy was unavoidable. It didn’t make the seconds ticking away any less painful, though.

Finally, he seemed to make up his mind. He put the flowers on his bedside table and swung his legs over the end of his bed to face them properly. While Niobe ground her teeth, he poured himself a cup of water from a jug and took a sip.

“I never saw any boy,” he said slowly. “I heard them talking about him, though.”

The Carpenter went to the man’s lunch tray and plucked a couple of raisins from the opened box. “Them?” He popped the raisins in his mouth. “Who’s them?”

“Quanta, and….” He licked his lips again and took a long drink.

“And?” Solomon said.

She saw the fear on the man’s face, and it clicked. “Doll Face.”

John’s knuckles tightened around the cup, and he nodded, a small, jerky motion.

“Shit,” she said. “The coppers didn’t get him. He’s with Sam.”

Solomon’s face had gone tight, and he looked like he’d aged thirty years. “All right. John, we need your help. Where would Doll Face go if the warehouse was compromised?”

“I…I don’t know. I didn’t talk to the freak.”

“Did you get taken anywhere else aside from the warehouse?” she asked.

He shook his head. “It’s the only place I’ve seen since I got off the airship.”

The airship
. Their informant at Met Div had mentioned an airship. She glanced at Solomon, and she could tell he was thinking the same thing.

“Airships aren’t exactly stealthy,” she said. “It must’ve landed somewhere secluded.”

“It’s more discreet than you think,” John said. “It’s got some sort of camouflaging cloak. But I couldn’t tell you where we landed. They kept me locked in my quarters for the descent, and then they blindfolded me for the journey to the warehouse.”

Damn.
Still, cloak or not, an airship couldn’t land too close to the city. The population got spread out a few miles outside the city limits, so-called civilization giving way to farmland and forest. “Did they take you in a van or something to the warehouse?” she asked.

He nodded.

“How long was the journey?”

He put his hand to his chin and chewed his lip. “An hour, maybe longer.”

That was a big area to search. And in what direction?

“What time of day was it when you arrived?” the Carpenter said.

“I don’t know. Morning. Ten a.m., maybe.”

“Was there sun on your face while you were driving?”

“What?”

“The sun,” Solomon said. “What side of your face got hot?”

Of course. She watched while John chewed his lip again. Then he pointed. “My left.”

They’d come from the north. They would have had to circle the Old City on their way into Neo-Auckland. There wasn’t much left up north; few of the farms were still running. There’d been concerns over radiation in the soil since the bomb hit, and most people living there had moved somewhere less isolated.

Think
. There had to be something that would narrow it down. “Is there anything else? Anything else you can remember that might help us?”

“Uh…we went inside a building soon after we got off the airship. I think they were shifting supplies. They left me blindfolded in the corner.” He screwed up his eyes like he was trying to recall the place. “I could feel…grates or something on the ground in some places. Concrete in others. And it smelled.”

“Smelled?” she said. “Smelled of what?”

He screwed up his face. “Rotten meat.”

Meat? Most of the livestock had died or been shifted from the area years ago. What then? A butcher’s shop? Did butcher’s shops need grates in the floor? She could see the appeal a butcher’s might hold for Doll Face.

No. Not a butcher’s.
“A freezing works,” she whispered to herself. She looked at the Carpenter. “There’s a few old meat works up north. Most of them have been shuttered for years.”

“Just the place for the budding psychopath and his victim,” the Carpenter said while he wandered towards the window. “Still a lot of ground to cover.”

“You afraid of some old-fashioned footwork?” she said. She turned back to John, crossed her arms and leaned against the table. “Thanks for this.”

He ventured a small smile. “My pa was a reporter too, for a little local rag. Stories about local council members and the effects of the recent downpour on the local livestock, that sort of thing. But one day he got a tour of the Light Brigade’s Sun-base, and an interview with Kingfisher. He said it was the proudest moment of his career.”

She made a noncommittal noise. She didn’t want to tell him how distant those days were. “What did Quanta want with you anyway?”

“He wanted me to write a story about him.”

He did seem to like the limelight. “What’d he want you to say?”

“He’s dying. A brain tumour. But before he dies, he wants to make the world understand why he did all this. He’s insane. He’s hung up on the woman he murdered, his lover. He blames the world for turning her against him. I think he thinks he’s some kind of avenging god.”

She opened her mouth, but the Carpenter cut her off before she could speak. “Time to go, mate.” He turned away from the window. “Now.”

“Met Div’s here already?” She checked her watch.
Bloody public servants
. “How long have they been here?”

“Dunno. The cars are there but no one’s in ’em.”

Ah, hell.

“Hey, wait!” the reporter said, his voice rising. He pointed at the unconscious copper. “What about him?”

The Carpenter grabbed her by the arm and hauled her towards the door.

“If you can, give us thirty seconds to get out,” she said. “Then press the button to call the nurse. Tell them what you have to tell them.” She paused. “But if you can, keep the thing about Doll Face quiet. Met Div’s out of their depth here. If they go chasing him, a lot of coppers are going to die.”

He nodded and got back into bed. “I think I was asleep the whole time. I didn’t see or hear a thing.”

Solomon stuck his head out the door and nodded at her.

“See you round,” he said to John.

They ducked out the door, pulling off their masks as they went. She shoved the wig back on her head and they strolled quickly towards the lift bank. A pretty young nurse smiled at them, but they didn’t stop to chat.

Solomon pointed at the numbers lighting up above the lift doors. One of them was steadily approaching their floor. Heart thumping, she opened the door to the stairwell and ducked inside, Solomon close behind. She just got the door closed when the elevator bell rang and the doors slid open. She watched through the window as three uniformed officers came out and marched down the hallway towards John’s room.

Wiping the sweat and makeup from her forehead, she allowed herself to breathe. The Carpenter grinned at her from beneath his false beard.

“Road trip?”

24: A Drop of Blood

The Carpenter

Real name:

Solomon Doherty

Powers:

Telekinetic control of wood, limited communication with plants.

Notes:

One of the founding members of the Wardens. Relatively famous even overseas, but always preferred to stay out of the public eye. Instrumental in the defeat of the Nagasaki Horrors. His teammate Battle Jack once said in an interview: “Didn’t matter how many pricks were trying to kill you, didn’t matter how shit things got. You could always look back and see the Carpenter standing like a kauri tree in a thunder storm. If you had him at your back, you weren’t going down. No way.”

—Notes on selected metahumans [Entry #0165]

Niobe went into the petrol station to get a pack of smokes while Solomon filled up. It was an independent station, not one of the big chains, and it showed. The guy behind the counter looked like he’d had every bone in his face broken at some point, and he had a zit on his cheek that was ready to blow. She put a couple of bottles of Coca-Cola, two mince and cheese pies, and some potato chips on the counter. The Carpenter had picked the wrong place to stop if he wanted fresh fruit.

“Give me a pack of Pall Mall twenties,” she said, fishing some cash out of her pocket. The guy sniffed and limped away to the cigarette cabinet.

The Coke would be a godsend. They needed the caffeine. It was morning, 8:27 a.m. according to the clock hanging behind the counter, a good twenty hours after they’d left the hospital. Twenty bloody hours of searching. Well, they caught a few winks in the car when they quit at two in the morning. The sun came up at six, which put paid to any ideas they had about sleeping in. She’d tried to call Frank Oppenheimer before they left, but there was no one home. They had to do this alone.

The station attendant threw the packet of cigarettes onto the counter and sniffed again. “You paying for the petrol as well?”

“Yeah.” She handed him the cash, and he rang it up. She’d abandoned the wig. No amount of secrecy was worth the itch.

She pocketed the smokes, slung the fizzy drink and food under her arm, and walked out. The morning was cool and cloudless, so bright it stung her eyes even through the sunglasses. She tossed the supplies into the car and got in next to the Carpenter. He was starting to smell pretty ripe. She knew she needed a shower as well. But this wasn’t exactly the sort of place to find motels, not anymore. Plenty of bushes if you wanted to take a piss, though.

The Carpenter was poring over a map, stroking his stubble. He’d given up the false beard. The map was covered in pencil scratchings, mostly circles with crosses through them.

“How many we got left?” she said as she ripped open a bag of chips and offered him some.

“Three.” He pointed them out on the map, then took a handful of chips. “What if we’re wrong?”

She pushed her sunglasses out of the way and rubbed her eyes. That wasn’t something she could think about now. Getting Sam back was the one thing she was clinging to, the one thing in her life that still had meaning. She shoved a couple of chips in her mouth, but she could barely taste them. “Start the damn car.”

They rolled down the narrow roads, spewing dust into the air behind them. The roads were unsealed and bumpy as hell. The country was wild here, mostly farmland reclaimed by Mother Nature when the farmers left. A few towns still hung on, more like villages now. The petrol station they’d stopped at was the last one for miles. Occasionally, a car or ute would come winding along the road towards them, but for the most part the only vehicles they saw were rusted tractors and the odd motorcycle. A few miles to the east, the sun would be climbing above the South Pacific, but she couldn’t see the ocean through the hills and trees.

They were thirsty by the time they got through the first packet of chips, so they took turns swigging the Coke. It cleared the spiders from her mind, at least for the moment.

The first meat works they hit that day was another dud. It was much too close to the nearest village for any feasible use as an airship landing field, and half the roof had caved in. They got out and circled it half-heartedly, but it was clear this wasn’t the place. The Carpenter scratched it off on the map and they went on their way.

While he drove, Niobe checked her gun and belt for the twentieth time, taking stock of her armoury. Six rounds of live ammo and six stun rounds in the modified revolver, and another thirty-six of each in her belt. Gabby’s shield-breaker rounds were in the glove compartment, but they wouldn’t be any use against Doll Face. Four smoke pellets. A mini-stunner capable of delivering several thousand volts, but it required physical contact. If Doll Face got that close to her, she didn’t rate her chances. Might be useful if any more of Quanta’s minions were lurking around, though. She had a handful of other non-combat items: torch, modified lenses for her goggles, miniature first aid kit, plastic cuffs, a thin but high tensile strength rope. She might as well be going into battle naked.