Super (14 page)

T
he van skitters
to an abrupt halt on gravel. That sound is unmistakable.

I hear both of the rear doors open and then the voice of Gordon, the SALCON commando in charge. “Get that pile of cow dung outta here,” he says. “Watch him, though.”

They don’t remove my black hood, but I can hear the sound of the chain jangling as someone unhooks the electro-bar from the floorboard. Next, I’m being dragged to my feet and marched to the rear of the van. “Step down, shitbird,” says Gordon.

I decide at this point, a little shock is worth the reward, so I process the general area where his voice came from. I whip my foot out in a hard forward kick and feel the toe of my boot connect underneath his chinstrap. Immediately, a harsh blast of voltage wrenches my body into an awkward contortion, but it’s slightly satisfying to hear Gordon hit the ground, spitting and cursing.

The two commandos holding me get a dose of the shock, too, since they had their hands wrapped around my arms, and I can feel them shaking on the floor of the van beside me. Maybe they’re dead. Who knows? Who cares?

Gordon groans again, and a string of curse words
ratta-tat-tat
out of his mouth.

The shock of the electro-bar passes, and I feel more sets of hands on me, dragging me out of the van. I’m guessing it’s Gordon getting his revenge, because the next thing I know, there are repeated shots from a rifle butt jamming into my stomach.

He has to realize that it’s not doing any good, right? I’ve taken a horn to the gut from the Purple Rhino that felt like a feather’s tickle.

Ah, well, let him have his fun. If I keep him agitated, maybe it’ll keep him off guard, giving me an advantage.

When the barrage stops, I cough and whimper as if it had done some damage and then act like it’s painful to straighten myself up. I groan and say, “Is that all you got?”

Pop!

Rifle butt, right to the nose. Okay, that one actually hurt a little bit, and my eyes begin to water. Superhuman or not, a good shot to the old honker can be effective. Could be that Gordon has studied the strengths and weaknesses of each of some of the superhero heavies, in case a situation like this ever arose.

He laughs as the multiple sets of hands squeeze tighter around my arms. “All right, shitbird. How’d that one feel?”

“Your sister hits harder.”

Pop!

Ouch. Damn it.

Pop!

Son of a—

Pop!

“Enough!” bellows a voice to my left. That, too, is unmistakable. I’ve only heard the guy on television. Never met him in person, nor had any desire to, but if I were blind, truly blind, I could pick that voice out of a thousand screaming fans at a rock concert. It’s high-pitched and rough, like someone took steel wool to harp strings.

It’s The Minion, which is ironic, since he’s actually the Supreme Leader of SALCON.

And it’s funny because he was second in command to Mischief, who used to be the leader. Rumors have swirled for roughly a decade that The Minion knocked off Mischief to take over his spot.

Do I give a crap who is running the damn thing? Nope.

My eyes are watering so badly that when the black hood is snatched off my head, I can barely make out the black shapes of the skittish commandos. I blink, hard, trying to squeeze the water clean, like a set of windshield wipers, and believe it or not, I taste a drop of blood on my upper lip. Damn. The dickwad actually bloodied my nose.

That hasn’t happened since, what, 2005 when I fought Eradicator in Kansas City?

I’ll have to give Gordon credit. He’s stronger than I expected.

By size and shape, I can make him out in the blur. He’s standing at my twelve o’clock, along with the entire horde of SALCON commandos. Deke Carter, the only one in the crowd not wearing black, is at my eleven, and off the left side, The Minion strolls toward me so slowly that it actually gives my vision time to fully clear.

We’re in the forest, at the end of what looks to be an old logging road. Fog hangs heavy. It’s gray and moody out here, wherever we are. Brown, rotting leaves cover the forest floor. Three more vans, the ones that transported the remaining commandos and Deke are parked at odd angles off to the side.

I can only hope that we’re not in the middle of a dead zone and the GPS still works on my cell. Maybe that’s why they didn’t bother taking it. They knew it wouldn’t help.

The Minion is short, like maybe five-foot-three in boots with thick soles, and he looks exactly like I expect him to look after all those appearances on television debating President Palmer over equal rights for superheroes. Insurance policies, right to life, you name it, they battled over it, metaphorically, during the election process. The Minion wasn’t running for office, but he’d challenged both candidates to national debates in an effort to sway the vote one way or another. In the end, Palmer put on the best showing and made the most promises. He received The Minion’s endorsement, and as far as I know, Palmer hasn’t lived up to a single one of them.

Hmm. Should’ve thought of that before. Palmer made promises to SALCON that he hasn’t kept, and, he initiates elimination procedures against its members. Double reason enough for The Minion to team up with George Silver.

The story behind The Minion is, he used to be a supervillain that supposedly “saw the light” and stepped over to do battle with the good guys. Could be true, because the guy has done a lot of good in the world for the superhero community, getting legislation passed, laws pushed through D.C. and whatnot. I can’t say for certain if he’s a double agent, but it seems to me that a lot more bad people fighting for the good side started showing up when he took over the office.

Regardless, I don’t plan on trusting the guy to do anything for me, considering the fact that he’ll likely try to murder me within the next few minutes.

The Minion saunters up, smiling, shaved head and a goatee rounding out the distinguished professor of bullshit look he’s going for. His superpower is highly critical thinking—a brain so advanced that he once beat a supercomputer in chess in eight moves—and I seriously doubt I’ll be able to outwit him in any mind games that he may try to play.

His dark blue suit is suave, and he looks like he stepped out of a Wall Street meeting where a bunch of fat rich dudes were laughing about controlling the world’s economy.

“Leo,” he says. “Good to see you in person. Do you mind if I call you Leo, or are we to stick with formalities? You know, I never really did like ‘Patriotman’ all that much. It rather tumbles off the tongue, wouldn’t you say? Like a cinderblock inside a dryer.”

“You can call me Susie, if you want.”

He squints and shakes his head slightly. “Why would I do that?”

“Seems like it would be more appropriate for one little girl to get invited to another little girl’s tea party like the one you got here.”

The Minion clasps his hands behind his back. “I appreciate the attempt at humor, Leo, but you had to stretch entirely too far for the joke.”

“Whatever. Look, Minion, what’re we doing here? You got Deke Carter working for you, these goobers show up and take me for a ride in their party bus, and here we are. The only reason all of you bastards are still alive is because I’m curious.”

With that, he cackles and howls with laughter. So do the rest of the SALCON commandos. That’s fine. Let ‘em laugh. He who laughs last, blah blah.

“I’m stumped, man. I’ve been pulled in so many directions over the past four weeks that I don’t know which way is up.”

When The Minion stops laughing long enough to answer, he says, “I have a hunch that you’ve figured out quite a bit of it by now.”

“And how would you know that?”

“Once you really start processing things, it’s easy to see that you’re here for a purpose. You’ve had plenty of time to think it over, I’m assuming, yes? You knew Mr. Silver was lying to you, which is why you faked the death of Patriotman. You had to have figured something out, which is why you were at the home of our fine NSA leader. Rest his soul, he was a good man. Deluded, but I liked him for the character he showed. He made decisions and moved before they got cold.”

He steps away from me, turning his back. “You recruited Polly Pettigrew or Kimmie—whatever her name is to help, so you had plans to do something, but I haven’t figured out what just yet, and that usually means that you didn’t have
anything
planned. Inaction, confusion, those are the only things that stump me, because if you have plans, then I can figure out where you’re going before you do.”

I don’t say a word. I stare and let him keep talking.

“Now, the question is, which one of my two options will you choose, Leo?”

“What two options?”

“Oh, come now, you have to know that I have options available. Why waste a good resource?”

This is getting old. “Seriously, man, I’m not a mind reader.”

His voice grows stern. “Do
better
, Mr. Craft. Challenge me! Show me you’re worthy of being my opponent!”

I roll my eyes. “Here’s where I see the game going, doucheface. One, you brought me here to kill me because you know that I hung up the tights as Patriotman, and I’ve been dropping the dirtbags that you’ve been enabling for all these years. And you want to know why I did it? You’ve let shitty, horrible people hide behind masks of justice while they go home at the end of the day and rub one out to snuff films.

“And don’t give me that line about does it matter if the guy doing the deed is awful as long as the results are for the best. I don’t agree with it, and I’m not buying it. Be good, be true, and fight with honor. Bad people do not get to say they’re good just because they helped a little old lady across the street, and somebody had to do something about it. In fact, a bunch of us are—which I assume you already know—and that’s exactly why Eric Landers is dead. Probably Joe Gaylord. Probably Conner Carson. There’s a bunch of us out there cleaning up your mess, and it won’t be long before your goobers here will try to take out the rest of them.”

“Good, yes. Go on.” He nods, smugly, and I’d like nothing more than to toss him into a burlap potato sack and sling him off to Jupiter.

“Two, I figure you plan to use me as a pawn. I don’t know how you’re going to go about it, exactly, but you’ve got your little lap dog Deke there helping George Silver inside of DPS. From what Deke says, one of their people, Charlene, she’s gonna kill Palmer in a few days and somehow, you’ll manage to lay that on me along with the death of Patriotman. Some nobody, like Lee Harvey Oswald for example, manages to kill two of the most powerful people in the world, and it’ll be caught up in scandal and conspiracies from now until the end of time, and the government will feed the public some crap about how I was a loony that got too close. You know, for once, I’ll be proving my own point wrong that it’s usually the simplest explanation, not some grand conspiracy, because nobody will ever think to point fingers at the quote-unquote
good
guys. Sound about right?”

“Very excellent,” he says, elongating the word in amused praise, the way a kindergarten teacher tells a student that his drawing of a tree is fantastic, and it doesn’t look anything like a piece of poo like the other kids say. (No, that didn’t happen
at all
.)

He adds, “My, my, my. I should’ve recruited you a long, long time ago. We should have, right, Deke?”

Deke crosses his arms and says, “For a meathead, he’s pretty smart.”

“Remind me next time to not be so…transparent.”

The Minion steps closer to me. He smells like pepper and fabric softener. He leans in and examines my face uncomfortably close. I can feel the warm air from his nostrils cascade over my lips. This is how people must feel when they go to the optometrist.

I say in a hushed tone, “It doesn’t matter what you do to me. I lost. I fell right into your brilliant little trap and you won. Pull the trigger and get it over with.”

“All very good, Mr. Craft, and that’ll come in due time, but you forgot one simple thing.” He pats me on the head and yells, “Bring them out!”

I
’m actually not surprised
when I see someone emerge from the back of a SALCON assault van wearing a light gray suit with a red power tie, and the mask of a Doberman Pinscher. Frankly, I had been a little thrown off when George Silver, a.k.a. Suckerpunch, hadn’t been hanging out with The Minion.

I’m floored, however, when I see that he’s dragging Kimmie by her hair in one hand, and my poor mom in the other. Immediately, I lunge forward, and The Minion darts to the side, and this time, wisely, the SALCON commandos let go of me and allow the electro-bar to do its job. I make it about a step and a half before the most violent shock I’ve ever experienced—even when I fought The Zapper it wasn’t this bad—sends my body convulsing to the gravel road. I’m completely and entirely aware that I’ve lost all control of my bodily functions, but I’m unable to do anything about it as I lie here writhing. Thank the Good Lord, the only thing that happens is a stream of urine soaking my pants.

Whatever. Humility went out the window eons ago.

A deep, guttural, “
Uuunnngggh
,” escapes from my mouth when the shock stops vibrating through every atom in me. I gasp for air, listening to Mom and Kimmie scream in pain as George Silver yanks them around.

Damn, I can barely lift my head to watch. I groan and manage to get to my feet. “Oh, that’s gonna leave a mark.”

The Minion looks at my wet crotch and giggles like a kindergartner. “Looks like it already did.”

Deke, who should probably change his name to
Dick
, stares at me with a pained expression on his face.

“What’re you looking at?”

He shakes his head and glances away without a word.

Gordon looks so pleased with himself, I bet he has a boner.

George Silver shakes both my mother and my ex-wife. Mom is crying, and Kimmie looks like she’s about to chew through bullets, but I can tell she’s in pain. She’s a damn superhero too—stubborn, mule-headed—but she knows that trying to fight back against so many goons isn’t wise.

George Silver shakes my mother by the hair, and she yelps in pain.

I am so seriously, violently, all-encompassingly pissed off right now that for about thirty seconds, I can’t focus on any of the words that are blathering out of The Minion’s mouth. What I’m doing is sizing up my competition. Rage has blinded me to the point of eliminating all practicality. Before, I understood that going up against forty-five SALCON commandos by myself wasn’t a viable option, but now, I’m thinking that if I can break this electro-bar quick enough to prevent too much damage, I might actually have a chance.

In truth, I’ll probably get shot but I have to try.

Some of them are wearing helmets with goggles resting on top. Others wear balaclavas showing only their menacing eyes, staring me down, daring me to make a move. Kind of like The Minion, I can see a number of moves ahead, and I see a number of different options, yet the problem is I don’t see a pathway to victory. There are simply too many enemies to mount an attack.

A sigh leaves my chest empty.

I feel it in my heart that this might be the end, and since the last time I’ve known defeat was almost thirty years ago, it’s a dull, suffocating sensation that I’m not familiar with, and it only makes me angrier.

Mom and Kimmie are here for a reason. Leverage, I guess, and there’s no telling what I’ll have to do for The Minion to keep them alive a little while longer. I wonder how Phil’s death has affected her. Does she know? Does she care? She better, damn it.

The Minion snaps his fingers in front of my face, bringing me back to clarity. I glare at him, blood boiling, and grind out a pissed off, “What?”

“I said did you hear me?”

“No, numbnuts. If I heard you I wouldn’t have said, ‘What?’ And I thought you were supposed to be a super-genius.”

Deke laughs at this. Good guy or villain, he’s always gotten my sense of humor.

“Amusing,” The Minion says, though it’s not really, because I can tell that he’s annoyed by my wit and Deke’s laughter. “Sergeant Gordon, if you don’t mind…”

This time I’m ready for the butt of his assault rifle. I duck my head to the side and feel it graze my ear. He shoves it at me again, and I dodge to the right. The minor jostling sends small jolts of electricity through my arms. It’s not enough to hurt, however, and I continue to juke, dodge, and duck each of his attempts. He eventually growls and gives up, much to my amusement and even some of the tactical-suited goobers standing around me.

The Minion, annoyed and pretending to hide his agitation says, “At ease, Sergeant. Save your energy.” He moves back to my twelve o’clock position again, and he’s smart enough to stand out of my reach. He’s small, rat-sized, and he knows that all it would take is for me to get my hands around his throat and jostle the electro-bar for him to be a goner. I can take it, but he’ll melt like the Wicked Witch.

The commando to my left sniffles, and for some reason, it makes me hate him beyond reason that he gets to have something as
normal
as a cold. Oh, you’ve got a runny nose? How ‘bout I snap your neck to help you out you son of a—

The Minion disrupts my mental murder by saying, “Here are your terms, Mr. Craft. First, I’m aware that Deke explained the plan to you, and I trust that you’ll find it satisfactory for your colleague Charlene Templeton to assassinate President Palmer?”

“Go fu—”

“I’m not finished! She’s quite capable, and once the deed is done you will accept your defeat and be branded as the man who murdered the President and one of the most beloved superheroes in history, Patriotman. Also,” he says, beginning to pace back and forth, “you will have forty-eight hours to eliminate every single superhero assassin in your pathetic little support group.”

“What? You’re insane.”

“Your people have been killing our people, you moron, and you should be ashamed of yourself for participating! How dare you, sir! How dare you kill your own kind!”

“And how dare you, you son of a bitch, for allowing perverts and murderers and thieves wear the masks of heroes! What is wrong with you—no, what is wrong with
society
when all you have to do is put on a nice face and you’re worthy of an action figure that looks like you, huh? It’s about character, you evil bastard. Be good
on
the field and
off
the field. You’re only as good as your heart. A mask doesn’t change that.”

The Minion scoffs. “Oh, don’t be so naïve. We don’t live in black and white. It’s not good versus evil. It’s a hazy shade of gray that moves the machinery of life and people with antiquated ideas like yours are falling under the axe of progress. We can stand here and debate all day but it won’t change a thing. The choice is simple; you eliminate the remaining superhero assassins, face a lethal injection for your part in the deaths of President Palmer and Patriotman, Eric Landers, Joe Gaylord, Conner Carson…the list goes on. You don’t know it, but you’ve been busy. You do this, and your dear mother and this little pixie might see a few more sunsets.” He steps over to Kimmie and runs the back of his hand down her cheek.

Kimmie, awesome possum that she is, hocks a loogie and spits it in his ear when he turns away. Sometimes I miss her feistiness.

He wipes it clear with the hankie from his lapel pocket.

I say, “And if I refuse?”

The Minion shrugs and frowns. “It won’t change much. You’ll still be blamed for it all, and they’ll die right here. Sergeant!”

Gordon spins around, as does Lewis, and one blink later, the barrels of their assault rifles are resting against the temples of Mom and Kimmie. Both scream. George Silver, who has remained eerily silent behind the Doberman mask, shakes their heads again to silence them.

“Okay, okay. Put the guns down.”

They don’t put their guns down.

“Put them down, I said. I’ll do it.”

The Minion starts to speak, but Deke Carter interrupts him by saying, “Nah, that won’t be necessary, Leo.”

What happens next is one of the most insane, diabolical, crafty, unbelievable double-triple-quadruple crosses in the history of history.

I can’t make this shit up.

D
eke Carter
, agent of DPS, traitor to humanity, friend of The Minion, surprises all fifty people standing there, including me, when he pulls a white and lime green mask from inside his suit jacket and slips it over his head.

I recognize it immediately. The mask belonged to one of my childhood idols, and my God, I thought he’d died in 1973 when he fought Gargantuan underneath the Eiffel Tower.

Deke Carter is General Justice? You have
got
to be kidding me.

I don’t have time to think about this or process it in any way, because he reaches around behind himself, pulls out a small baton and with the quick push of a button, it extends outward, metal wrapping around metal, clinking and clanking until it forms a colossal gavel the size of a warhammer. That must be some kind of nanotechnology insanity because that thing was no bigger than a hotdog a split second ago.

I think we’re all in shock, because nobody reacts.

This happens within a couple of heartbeats, so maybe everyone is waiting to see what comes next, and it briefly occurs to me that Deke could be preparing to smash my head in and end it all right here. I don’t flinch, not normally, but I do this time when he lifts the mighty gavel of General Justice over his head and swings downward…

…smashing right through my electro-bar, snapping it in two.

He’s either saved us, or killed us both, and holy shit, he’s not a traitor after all.

What the hell is—

I stand there, excited and perplexed as he bellows, “NOW, LISA!”

Huh?

Who I thought was George Silver in a mask responds by slinging my mother and Kimmie both to the ground and then in the same motion, reaches underneath the suit jacket and removes two semi-automatic weapons, crossed-arm style, and then slings them outward.

Two dull thuds later, Gordon and Lewis crumple to the ground.

What the—

Chaos.

Deke, now General Justice, swings his monstrous warhammer gavel and takes out four goons at a time.

Gunfire chatters as some of the SALCON commandos turn on their own kind.

Traitors amongst traitors. Friends or foes, it’s hard to tell who is who.

I swing once, twice, three times, crunching the ones standing beside me. Knocked out, dead, doesn’t matter, just as long as they’re not shooting back. I turn, frantically, making sure my mother and Kimmie are out of the way. I can barely hear over the screams, the gunfire, and the sickening thuds emanating from chest cavities whenever General Justice lands a solid blow.

Mom is in the fetal position, head covered, and in no immediate danger. Kimmie crawls, scrambling over to her, and flings her body across my mother as a shield. Beside them, a hand reaches up to remove the Doberman mask, revealing Lisa Kelly.

Then where’s the real George Silver? Dead? Captive? Where?

I’m so thunderstruck that I’m distracted long enough to feel a bullet part the air next to my ear. I swing wildly, taking out everyone within reach, grabbing a falling commando, using him as a shield. Bullets ripple through him, and I use his gun to return fire.

To my left, I see The Minion sprinting through the woods.

I drop low, assault rifle to my shoulder, and I aim.

I squeeze the trigger, and it’s almost as good as an orgasm.

He goes down, grabbing his right butt cheek.

That’s not where I meant to hit, but it’ll do. He’s not going anywhere. Not in a hurry, anyway. We’ll catch him.

I’m up to my feet again, firing back at anyone firing at me, swinging fists and delivering thunderous kicks. I see Deke wrench to the right and grumble, taking a bullet, but who knows what kind of armor he’s wearing under that suit or what kind of adrenaline he’s running on—he’s a superhero, after all—because he grunts, howls, and resumes dealing out justice.

Lisa fires and fires, spinning, twirling, dropping, and rolling like a ninja in a politician’s suit. She’s good. I have to give credit where it’s due.

Soon, the SALCON commandos who are on our side have subdued the remaining soldiers. Deke buries his war-gavel one last time and stands up, holding his lower back and stretching. He’s out of breath.

Agent Lisa Kelly rights herself, wiping the sweat from her forehead.

Kimmie rolls off my mother and stares up at the sky, breathing heavily, then she gets up and brushes the dirt from her cutoff jeans. She rushes over to me, arms out, relief on her face.

Mom peeks out from underneath her hands and sits up. She stares at all the insanity around her and…and, well, she grins, too, which is just crazy because she seems a little maniacal and silly, like she either enjoyed it too much or she’s gone off the deep end.

Everybody sort of looks at each other, bewildered that we’ve done it, that we were outnumbered and outgunned, and we survived. We don’t need words because this is awesome.

Until it’s not anymore.

As Deke strolls toward me, he glances over my shoulder and his eyes go wide in the cutouts of his General Justice mask. “Move!” he shouts.

Instead of getting out of the way, like he suggests, which would’ve been a smart move, my instinctual reaction is to spin around to see what he’s looking at.

One of the SALCON commandos, who we thought was dead, is on his feet and bringing his weapon up to his shoulder. The voice that comes out doesn’t belong to a man. “You really were kind of a prick, Leo. How does that make you feel?”

I can’t quite place the voice, not behind the balaclava, but it’s familiar.

Oh, Jesus, is that Dallas? I knew I shouldn’t have—

And then the mask comes off.

It’s Charlene. My mind has a second to process that she’s yet another double agent.

She pulls the trigger as Kimmie steps in front of me.