Other People's Heroes (The Heroes of Siegel City) (39 page)

The real Doc was gone. That was the only part of the whole mess that still ate at me. Sometime between me laying him prone and Lionheart being gutted, Noble woke up and managed to stagger away from the park. We couldn’t find a trace of him, anywhere on Earth, and the fact that there was somewhere he could hide from people with our resources bothered me for a very long time.

The two surviving Five-Shares had left Siegel City, probably for good, and gone home to their mother. The woman lost four children in a blink of an eye; the two she had left were refusing to put their lives on the line again, for her sake. Nobody blamed them.

The remaining members of the Spectacle Six, now four strong with Deep Six’s return, did not take on any new members right away, even though Morrie urged them to. In memory of the fallen, they would go on and accomplish the fantastic on their own.

Things weren’t all gloom and mourning, though, as those of us touched by the silver power knew something no one else could possibly believe.

Lionheart was alive.

We didn’t know
how
we knew, but we knew. That blast when Gunk tore through him had expelled almost all of his power, but more than that, it had ripped a hole open to somewhere else. For a second, I even caught a glimpse of it -- a vast field of trees and pools filled with the same sort of silver water I thought fell from him as blood. He was out of there somewhere, weak, helpless and perhaps in grave danger.

But he was
alive
.

To say Morrie made a big deal out of the LightCorps’ decision to look for him would be a criminal understatement. There were bands and celebrities and the mayor gave each of the “intrepid explorers” keys to the city. Hotshot, the Defender, Condor and Oriole were all making plans to head out and find Lionheart, wherever he was.

The Tin Man, however, was staying behind. He’d elected to head up an all-new LightCorps back in Siegel, consisting of Nightshadow, Mental Maid (who was a lot less mysterious and a lot happier with the Gunk gone), Aquila and the Conductor. There were also two “probationary” members, former Masks who’d been zapped by the aliens and whose reversion to the Cape side seemed to be permanent -- Copycat and Turnabout (formerly known as Miss Sinistah). Together, we announced our plan to clean up the city once and for all. The Battle of Simon Tower had convinced us to tighten security and hit the bad guys like never before. A couple of groups, as would be expected, started calling us Nazis and fascists and insurance agents and the like, but public opinion was on our side – over 85 percent, and that was
without
Morrie fudging the numbers. We could do this. We could make this work.

Annie said she was going to try to keep up her “bad girl” image, even as a Cape, but personally I didn’t believe it would last. Capes all wind up as media darlings at one point and as scapegoats at another -- once the press got a hold of Turnabout and realized how sweet she really was, everyone in the city would love her as much as those of us in Simon Tower already did.

Tom’s mother was absolutely manic about her little boy running about all night, but Annie eventually managed to quell the inevitable storm, feeding her a story about a car accident (explaining her bandaged arm) and needing Tom as a blood-type match. A little nudge from Morrie got her to believe it.

Tom kept calling me up, asking me if I wanted a sidekick, and finally I made a deal with him -- if he’d stop bugging me I’d put in a good word for him when he turned thirteen. It at least calmed him down for a little while.

Animan recovered nicely, and was a lot more enthused about seeing
his
place torn apart than I was by mine (whoever had been looking for my notebook had really ripped the place to shreds and had even, for no apparent reason, stolen my spare Copycat uniform). When Animan heard that half his totems had been destroyed, he bubbled up like Santa Claus getting a huge order for tin soldiers. “Hell, bro,” he said as he helped me move my stuff into Simon Tower a few days after he’d healed up, “half the fun of having this power was researching the animals and crafting a character to go with ‘em. Now I get to do it all over again. Fix some glitches, you know?”

“Like the glitch your bat-guy has?” Ted chuckled.

“What glitch?” Animan asked. “There’s nothing wrong with Flapper.”

“Whatever.” Ted snickered, slitting open a cardboard box. Rather than trying to restore my apartment to livable conditions, I’d just decided to move into the apartments in the Tower, which had suffered some water damage, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed in a couple of weeks. If anyone would still have been prejudiced against me or bothered by the notebook thing, seeing me fighting with Lionheart seemed to have cured them of that.

“Hey Josh,” Ted asked, “are you still going to see your friend Sheila now that you quit working at the magazine?”

The job had just been far too time-consuming to keep up with, especially if I was going to be in the new LightCorps. “Are you kidding?” I laughed. “If I stopped hanging around with her she’d track me down and neuter me like a cat. Why?”

I thought about Sheila’s longstanding on-again/off-again infatuation with Spectrum and wondered if her sudden, violent introduction into the underside of Siegel City might have cured her of that. “Not
exactly
...” I said, then I just shrugged. “Good luck, man.”

Sheila wasn’t the only one whose love life was as confusing as hell these days. Annie and I had become closer than ever after Lionheart’s powers connected us all, and there were definite sparks whenever we saw one another, but after everything she had been through I wasn’t about to make a move until I knew she was ready. Unfortunately, if there’s one thing even super-powers can’t help a man with, it’s understanding women. Unless she started wearing a sign sometime soon, I didn’t have the first clue how to tell if she’d be open to anything.

I expressed how I felt about that in a long, positively Olympic-level sigh as we stood on the roof, watching the sun burn the sky. Annie gently touched my arm with her good one.

“What’s wrong?”

“Just thinking,” I said.

“Well don’t think
too
hard, Josh,” Hotshot said. “I won’t be around to put a stop to that for a while.”

“I’ll do okay, old timer.”

He put his free arm around me and we embraced like two brothers as the elder went off to boot camp. Once we let go, he turned his attention to Annie.

“Where
are
you rookie?” asked a female voice with a distinctly Bostonian accent: “Wheah
ah
yew?”

“Saying good-bye to some folks.”

“Well shake a leg, huh? We’re waiting over here!”

Hotshot smiled. “Lightning,” he said to Annie and me. “That woman is going to still call me ‘rookie’ when I’m ninety years old in a rocking chair.”

“Lightning?” I said. “Where did
she
come from?”

“She wanted in on the rescue mission,” he said. “She’s got some unfinished business of her own.” He stepped to the edge of the building, then turned back for one last look at us. Even through his mask, I’m pretty sure I saw his throat quiver as though he was forcing himself to swallow a baseball.

“I’ll see you later,” he said, and I’m certain the reason he turned away so fast was so we wouldn’t see his eyes watering up. Then he stepped off into the sky and drifted away.

Annie and I took a seat on a bench and watched as he floated off. I felt myself sighing again.

“
What?”
she asked, her voice a mixture of teasing singsong and genuine concern.

“So what if it
did
?” She patted my stomach. “I think it’s kind of cute. And it suits you... makes you look jolly.”

I laughed. “Right. It’s just a little sobering, I guess. Lionheart comes out of the Soul Ray perfect and I come out as... well... little ol’ me.”

“Oh come on. Perfect gets real boring
real
quick.” She threaded her arm through mine and rested her chin on my shoulder, staring up into my eyes. “So you didn’t come out perfect,” she said. “
I
still think you came out pretty damn good.”

She gave me a dry, tender kiss on the cheek, placed her head on my shoulder and we sat there, watching Hotshot become nothing more than a mote on the horizon. I felt the weight of her, smelled her hair, I was warmed and electrified by her. If I could have made that moment last forever, I would have.

It wasn’t everything I wanted from her, but it was a start.

BONUS CONTENT

Lonely Miracle

Shortly after I finished the first draft of this novel, I happened on the idea of crafting a new short story every year as a sort of “Christmas Card” to my friends and family. I was still very much in the mindset of Siegel City when I wrote it, and it should be no surprise that my first attempt at a Yuletide tale took me back there. From a historical standpoint, this story takes place the Christmas immediately
before
the events of the novel you just finished reading.

Thanksgiving dinner again consisted of a cold turkey sandwich and a glass of milk at the diner down the street, the same as it had for three years now. She used to be quite a cook -- probably still was, she supposed -- but Nancy Drake never had an excuse to cook for anyone anymore. She didn’t let herself think about that. She just sat there, idly playing with her sole piece of jewelry -- a sparsely-decorated charm bracelet -- and finished off her milk.

A waitress was coming between the red-upholstered booths carrying a tray laden with coffee and a club sandwich for the only other customer, an old man who looked like Nancy, at least in that he was spending Thanksgiving in a diner because he had no one to be with. The fluorescent light had a cold flicker, making the waitress appear as though she was walking through a lightning storm.

Right as the waitress walked past Nancy's stool, her feet slipped away and she pitched forward. Her tray fumbled from her hands and the coffee fell out into the air. The sandwich, in four segments, tumbled off the plate and a spray of potato chips followed, spinning in space.

Where everything hung.

The coffee appeared frozen in place, the sandwich hovering as though gravity had suddenly changed its mind about claiming it. It wasn’t just the food, either. The waitress was motionless and frigid, the fluorescent light stopped flickering and the other customer was idly looking out the window at cars in the street that were not going anywhere. Even over the grill, jumping grease bubbles stayed in the air instead of falling back down to the steel surface. Nancy got off her stool and physically shoved the waitress aright, plucking her tray from the air and re-balancing it in the woman’s hands. She took the sandwich segments and the potato chips and replaced them on the tray as well. The coffee was a little trickier, it had already begun to spill, but by dragging the cup at angles through the air she managed to scoop up most of the liquid. A few drops may still find their way to the linoleum, but no more. Nancy sat down and repositioned herself the way she had been sitting when everything stopped. Then, with a blink, everything began again. The waitress staggered for an instant, but kept her balance.

“What... I thought I tripped...” She looked back and forth between Nancy and the old man. “Didn’t you see that?”

“Nice car,” the old man said, paying no attention. Nancy just shook her head and lay a five-spot and three singles on the countertop. She got up to leave.

“Um... Happy Thanksgiving, ma’am,” the waitress said, still trying to figure out why the floor wasn’t covered in coffee and sandwich.

“Same to you,” Nancy said, stepping outside. A shadow passed over her and she looked up to see a man in red, white and blue with a flowing cape flying across the sun. The Liberator, Boston’s resident superhero. The Capes couldn’t take holidays off, after all. Nancy knew she never had.

She only made one stop on her way back to her apartment, at the greeting-card store where Christmas ornaments and decorations had been on display since September. She made this stop once a year, and if it ever occurred to her to cease the tradition, she dismissed the thought. The line of figurines was expanding, each a happy pair of children with round, cherub faces, arms locked or hands held, each holding a little sign that read “Our 1st Christmas Together,” or whatever year was appropriate. Nancy had always been impressed at how thorough this particular shop was, the figurines went all the way up to year 25. She didn’t think it cynical of them to not go any farther. If you were lucky enough to make it to 25, you didn’t need figurines. She shuffled through the figures and picked out the little ice-skating pair that designated year number 13.

“Hey, don’t I know you?” asked the girl at the counter as Nancy went to pay. For a moment, Nancy’s blood chilled. Oh sure, she’d worn a mask up until ten years ago, but it was just a small one, and her long mane of blond had stayed essentially the same since her early twenties. At 35, she occasionally thought about cutting it, but Edward always liked it this way. Ten years... this girl must have been about nine the last time Nancy was in uniform, but she was always half-afraid of some anonymous person coming up to her on the street and saying, “You’re
her
, aren’t you? You’re
Lightning
.”

“Know me? Oh, I don’t think so...”

“No, it
is
you. I’m sure of it.” The girl bent down under the counter and produced a small, pink paperback volume with a blue bookmark hanging about at page 250 or so. The title was
Matilda’s Waltz
, and the picture on the back undeniably familiar.

“You’re Nancy Drake, right? I
love
your books, I’ve read them all.”

Nancy let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“Oh
wow.
You’re so great... how do you come up with all those
ideas
? I mean... I’ve read Jackie Collins and like that, but the people in
your
books are so
real
. I mean you can
feel
their hearts breaking, you know? How do you do that?”

“Practice,” Nancy said. She managed to escape what threatened to be a long and tedious conversation by means of a quick autograph and a hastily-imagined social arrangement, which the clerk was more than willing to accept. Then she headed out of the store and went in the direction of her apartment building.