Emergence (31 page)

Patty Park crouched behind a police barricade of scurrying SWAT, strands of her black hair strewn across her face, the light from her cameraman making her dark eyes shine like those of a terrified animal facing down a roaring Peterbilt.

“Mitch, historic Coronel Street Market was destroyed in the first few moments of Tantrum’s attack. We don’t know how many people lie buried in the rubble at this point. He’s moving up Hill Street in the direction of Roger Stadium. We’re right in his path. The police are attempting to rally with two armored cars from the Bulwark Division Station.”

“Patty, what about superhuman response?” Mitch asked.

An explosion caused Patty and the police in the background to duck down instinctively, and a fine white powdery mist descended on them, dusting them like a layer of sugar.

“Still no word from TCA hero A-Frame. He departed the charity ball he was attending up north in Port Haven with The Brown Thrasher and Pecos as soon as word reached them, but it could be up to an hour before they arrive and…”

“What about the LFPD’s new P.O.N.E. unit?”

“Word is they’re stuck in traffic on the southbound 504. You know, none of them are fliers, so…”

Two ugly, dark armored vehicles with mounted battering rams rumbled past the camera and Patty spun, gesturing frantically for the camera to follow their progress as the cops cheered them on.

“Get this! Get this!” she shouted.

The camera swung to track them as they tore down the deserted street. Hill Avenue cut through Chinatown and was part of the annual Chinese New Year parade route; everybody was used to seeing it littered with those paper cap wrappers and the remnants of streamers and red firecracker bricks, not rubble. The numerous businesses, eateries, warehouses, and junk shops selling battery-powered waving cats, cheap Japanese swords, and lacquered chopsticks to the undiscerning tourists south of University Street had simply ceased to exist. It looked like Hiroshima. Broken glass littered the streets, and here and there red, vaguely human-shaped splotches that were all that remained of the people who had run screaming from the leveled buildings blossomed on the pavement like Banksy-style street art. The block was flattened. Water from orphaned pipes spewed into the air, and plumes of black smoke spread across the dark sky.

In the center of it, advancing up the street, floating lazily ten feet in the air and slowly turning, was Tantrum. Bright, devil red, a huge, distended cranium filigreed with thick pulsing veins like a Telosian on
Star Trek
. Besides the huge bald head, he looked exactly like a weirdly floating buck naked infant, an evil version of the benevolent Star Child of Arthur C. Clarke’s, constantly wailing, screaming, a high, inhuman shriek.

And wherever that scream was directed, the masonry of buildings scattered, and flesh and muscle flew from the bones of unfortunate bystanders, until their skeletons collapsed and blew away to powder and ash.

Case in point, the two armored cars barreling at full speed towards the frightful
enfant terrible
.

The noise of the engines, or maybe the flash of their headlights, caught Tantrum’s attention. He looked at them and screamed, little dimpled fists trembling before his downturned, scowling face.

The pulse of psychic energy that emanated from that tremendous brain was visible as a heatwave distortion. As soon as the bar of the energy tide struck the two vehicles, the armor shed from them like sheep’s wool before the shears. The chassis and engine exposed, the bolts fastening them together hung suspended in the air for a moment before the whole affair clattered to pieces. It happened too quickly for the crews inside to scream. Their deaths were instantaneous, but terrible, and even the practiced hand of the cameraman flinched from the sight and returned to record Patty Park’s horrified reaction as a second fine mist rained down on her and the cops around her. This one dotted her skin and raincoat scarlet.

She wheeled aghast at the camera, tears mixing with the blood running down her cheeks.

“Oh my God! Oh my God!”

The camera cut back to Mitch Brenner manicured and coiffed safely in the studio, hand to his mouth in mock concern.

“Patty. Are you all right?” he asked stupidly.

“What’s
that
?”

The feed cut instantly back to blood-soaked Patty as she pushed the camera physically back toward the hellish Tantrum.

“Shoot, Bobby! Shoot!” she urged.

A figure descended quickly out of the sky. Small. Slight. No more than a child, really. The police spotlights caught the green of his strange costume. He was dressed like a masked Christmas elf, with a belted green leather tunic and gauntlets, some kind of green bodysuit, and a peaked, Robin Hood-style cowl. His appearance would’ve been ridiculous if it hadn’t been so unexpected.

“Hey, kid!” the newcomer shouted in a shrill pre-teen’s voice, as he stomped a heavy manhole cover with one foot, sending it spinning in the air. He caught it one hand and cocked it back like a Frisbee.

Tantrum revolved in place to face him, turning his destructive power from the barricade and from Patty Park and her crew.

The kid in green sent the manhole spinning. It collided with Tantrum’s forehead and the killer infant went flying head over heels, smashing through the front window of a Chinese restaurant.

“Get the hell out of here!” the kid yelled directly at the cops as the camera zoomed in tight on his beardless face, on the blue eyes flashing through the holes of his pointed cowl.

On his couch, in his home in Mogera Hills, Nico Tinkham sat bolt upright, knocking over his bowl of Cheetos and splashing Coke across his hardwood floor.

“Holy
shit
!”

Pan was in over his head.

This was comic book stuff. TCA, Alpha level, honest-to-God-saving-the-world-superhero stuff. He’d only ever fought one other chimeric, and the guy had been nowhere near this level of power.

He had been in Chinatown shaking down a couple of benevolent Tong guys from Frank’s Rolodex about a sex slavery operation somewhere down on Chung King Street when he’d heard the sirens and that awful wail. He had deliberated about what to do for a moment. How many had died while he’d pondered whether or not to respond? How many had died while he’d waited, hoping the P.O.N.E. squad or Hero or some other high-power chimeric would show up to take out Tantrum?

Supervillains weren’t Pan’s specialty.

Everybody knew about Tantrum. He was unchecked Id. Father Eladio believed a person’s Power was shaped by their mental state. Take an entitled, hedonistic, Harvard educated, ex-wolf of Wall Street power broker looking down an insider trading rap and a messy divorce with no pre-nup while on a raging overdose of cocaine, have him smash the window of his office and take a suicide dive. Tantrum was what had floated to the street. Pure fury and rage, given the caveman club of off-the-charts psychokinetic power to smash everything and anything he saw.

Tantrum maintained an instinctive shield of invisible willpower wherever his attention was directed. Bullets melted when they touched that shield. Even warheads pancaked. The only way to stop Tantrum was to get him to calm down. Put him to sleep. Knock him out. Nobody had been able to kill him yet, apparently. After his New York City rampage, everybody had assumed the DCD had executed him, or at least forced him into a coma until they figured out a way to nullify his powers. But apparently none of that had been true because here he was, on the other side of the country, doing more of the same three years later.

The only way to attack was with distraction. Then, while the distraction died screaming, you hit him from behind. But like all chimerics, he was tough. It took a lot to rock that big brain inside that reinforced skull.

The bricks of the Chinese restaurant separated from the mortar and each other and just crumbled around Tantrum.

At least the cops and the camera crew were running for it, as he’d ordered, although the latter was lingering.

Pan had never been seen publicly. Never been on the news. Might never be again if he kept thinking about it.

That devil baby came flying out at him, screaming, face a mask of rage, little pudgy fingers clawing at the air to get at him.

He dropped into the open manhole, into the sewer.

He stopped inches from the foul river beneath and flew down the dark tunnel toward a flicker of light he knew was sifting down from the manhole in the next intersection north, away from the police.

A red light shone in the tunnel behind him as he pulled up into a swift vertical ascent. He had seconds before Tantrum ripped apart the pipe.

He put his fists up and burst out of the sewer and didn’t look down until he was about sixty feet in the air.

Down below, the street crackled and burst like turf over a gopher’s passage.

He looked about. Where to take him? Away from Chinatown, if any of it was to remain standing. He saw the lights of Roger Stadium on the hill, the empty parking lot. It was the offseason. Nobody there.

The muffled scream rang out anew as the boiling mad baby rose from the ruined sewer, the broken concrete and steel tumbling away all around him.

“Up here, laughing boy!” Pan called down, shouting through his spread hands to be heard.

Tantrum glared up at him, eyes burning, face contorting.

He shot toward him, and Pan slipped north, going as fast as he could go.

What was Tantrum’s range? He didn’t know. He weaved and rolled as Father Eladio had told him, but mostly he just put his hands at his sides like a ski jumper and rocketed ahead, feeling the heat of Tantrum’s powers like a faint tickling of his heels that made the hairs on his body rise.

A rifle shot cracked out in the night. Pan glanced back to see Tantrum turn from his pursuit and direct his shriek against a low-flying police chopper with a ballsy sniper leaning out the door.

The sniper managed to leap from the helicopter as it crumpled like a can and tumbled from the sky.

Pan dove and caught the cop by his TAC vest in a blink and flung him through the lit window of an upper floor apartment, not stopping to see if he or the surprised occupants were okay.

A nearby Vulpes News chopper had drawn Tantrum’s attention.

Pan pulled up. He could see the pilot frantically gesturing to the man beside him in the bubble cockpit as he veered off.

Tantrum floated towards them.

Pan drew his knife and flung it.

It should have pierced the red infant’s bulbous temple. Instead the silvery blade splashed against his unseen thought shield like some kind of night-blooming flower and spattered the ground as liquid steel, molten hot. Tantrum turned towards him once more and Pan led him off toward the stadium.

He was faster, but only a little. He gained all the lead he could, then dove down to the baseball diamond, landing hard on the pitcher’s mound.

He looked up and saw Tantrum clear the rim of the arena and come screaming down at him.

Pan jumped forward and flew straight into the stands, ducking and cutting hard to the right past the upper deck concessions.

Tantrum lashed out, carving a deep furrow in the Bermuda grass, then blowing rows of seats apart in either direction in his fury.

He followed Pan’s flight path and the two superhumans orbited the concourse, Tantrum decimating everything in his path.

Pan glanced back. How to stop him? He had to lose him. But he was like an ant fleeing a hungry aardvark. Even if he got down into the structure, Tantrum would just tear everything apart to get to him. They blasted through the left field bullpen overlook bar and the team store in quick succession, leaving a wake of smashed liquor bottles, scattered jerseys, and broken bobbleheads.

Pan dove down into center field and made a beeline for the home team dugout, bursting through the elevator doors, punching through the floor of the lift itself, and down into the clubhouse.

Tantrum dropped down and raced right behind, shrieking the whole way, tearing up chunks of turf.

Pan flew down the corridor past the display case of Gold Glove and MVP awards, and smashed through the media interview room, followed the hallway turns, and burst finally into the clubhouse proper. He slowed only to snatch up a birch Louisville Slugger leaning against a locker and proceed down into the weight room, hearing the muffled scream of Tantrum as he reached the awards corridor and wincing at the smashing glass and shuddering noise of destruction.

The Rogers clubhouse had just been renovated, too.

Pan slipped quickly under the weight room stairs and huddled there as the heavy door blew off above him and crashed down onto the bench presses with a tremendous noise.

Pan held his breath and clamped his hands over his ears as Tantrum came down the stair, his power shriek annihilating the exercise room, smashing brick and sending fifty pound weights scattering like poker chips. The ceiling sagged on the far end and collapsed.

Tantrum ceased his screaming and drifted closer, peering at the destruction he’d wrought, looking confused.

Pan slipped quietly from under the stairs. Another scream from Tantrum and the whole infrastructure might collapse and bury them both.

He decided to take it out to the field once more.

He grabbed the railing, sprang to the top of the stairs, and whistled.

Tantrum spun and opened his mouth to scream.

Pan launched himself back through the ruined passage as fast as he could go.

Tantrum came flying behind, shrieking in rage.

As soon as he reached the broken dugout, he parted his legs and shot upward a few feet.

Tantrum passed underneath him, going too fast to see.

Pan dropped, bringing the bat down as hard as he could on the top of that bulging head.

The Louisville birch elicited a fine ballpark crack as it connected with Tantrum’s corona.

The baby was driven to the ground, bounced once in the air, and Pan brought the bat back over his shoulder and swung for the boards. This time the bat connected with the back of Tantrum’s head and broke into splinters.

Tantrum planted his face in the turf hard and somersaulted end over end. By the time he stopped somersaulting he was at first base, and a naked and ragdoll-limp Lance Lattimer once more.