“Evil?” I ask.
“Pain—very deep sadness and guilt,” he replies. “I believed he was too far gone—that was right to allow him to end himself and not attempt to save him. Even with everything he did to my family and thousands of innocent humans, I still don’t know how to feel about all of it. I know it’s a lot easier to deal with mindless monsters than something you recognize. I’m sorry for whatever good in him you lost, and I want you to know you have nothing to fear from us.”
“Thank you.” I exit the conference room doors and take a deep breath in the hallway. Fynn and Roebuck are waiting.
“You all right?” Fynn asks.
“I’m fine,” I reply, scratching my arm where it’s itching. I’m wondering if the burn scars are about to return and push up my jacket sleeve.
The trails of light are back.
A Word from Patricia Gilliam
I began The Hannaria Series in 2006 as a set of short stories about a young alien ambassador named Jernard and his family. I had no idea at the time that I’d be working on my sixth novel a little over a decade later.
The majority of “Anna” takes place during events in Book 2: Legacy, and I have plans for more episode-style stories featuring Anna, Roebuck, and Fynn. The main novels contain the perspectives of at least two characters, and as a reader you’re able to view the same events from different angles.
One of my favorite things about being a writer is getting to know people I wouldn’t have encountered otherwise. I’m grateful to be a part of this anthology with an awesome group of fellow authors, and I want to thank Steve Beaulieu for the opportunity.
My husband Cory and I live in Knoxville, TN. We have a deceptively adorable cat named Butterscotch, who assists me with creating alien names by sitting on my laptop’s keyboard.
You can find out more about me at my website: www.patriciagilliam.com. I’m also pretty accessible on Facebook and Twitter.
Thank you so much for reading! Have a great day!
THE ROACH RISES
BY RHETT C. BRUNO
THE ROACH RISES
BY RHETT C. BRUNO
I stared down at the soiled water at the mouth of the Hudson River. I couldn’t see my reflection—nobody had seen anything but brown in those waters since before the Dutch bought Manhattan for pennies—but I knew how I looked. Like a homeless, raving lunatic wandering the streets of New York begging for change. I spent a lifetime hiding in the shadows and now I could roam down the streets of the busiest city in the western hemisphere and go unnoticed.
As the river lapped at the concrete harbor beneath me in Red Hook, Brooklyn, I wondered what the tabloids would write when someone fished me out.
THE ROACH SURFACES ON THE HUDSON AFTER THREE YEARS.
MISSING VIGILANTE FOUND WASHED UP IN NEW YORK.
Or maybe would I keep floating across the country until my body was bloated and mistaken by some farmer for driftwood, never to be found again. Forgotten.
I rolled my wheelchair an inch further until my legs were dangling over the ledge. How far is too far? I'd been asking myself that question every second of every day for three years. One last push and I could finally know for good. Some people called me a monster for killing. Some a hero for whom I killed. Not one of them didn’t have it coming, that’s for sure, and I was no different.
One last life to be taken.
I’d waited until sunset so that all the shipping workers helping to keep the city bustling had gone home to their wives. So I could be alone. A gentle breeze kissed my cheeks and rustled my scraggly beard. My fingers gripped the worn tires of my chair tighter.
I closed my eyes and pictured the tears running down the face of Laura, the last person I ever saved. I imagined the man who forced her into an alley lying bloody at my feet and that rookie cop in the wrong place at the wrong time who put a bullet in my spine when I didn’t stand down.
My hands pushed slowly forward. I was inches from being free, and then I heard it. The familiar squeal of someone in trouble followed by the smack of skin on skin.
My eye-lids snapped open and I stopped. Don’t do it, Reese. I told myself. Don’t you dare turn around. You came this far.
Another cry rang out, followed the thud of someone hitting concrete. My wheelchair whipped around before my brain could tell it not to. My wretch of a foster-dad did always rattle on about how you can’t teach old dogs new tricks.
I raced across the small harbor toward the alley I heard it coming from, the shriveled husks I had for legs bouncing as I went over bumps. I rounded the corner of a work-shed on Ferris St. so fast I almost toppled.
Two kids were beating up on a scrawny runt who was probably famous in school for being bullied. He was no older than sixteen but the others had to be seniors. Legal Adults. Two future gangbangers and wife-beaters in leather jackets and with their hair slicked back.
“Just fork it over, Chris!” One of the bullies shouted before kicking their cowering victim in the gut.
“Yeah, Chris,” snickered the other. “Is it really worth getting your ass kicked over again?”
“Why don’t you two head on home!” I shouted.
They glanced up at me, and even after three years it surprised me when someone regarded me without trepidation. New York's dark corners feared the Roach. Me. I did what had to be done. Someone stole a purse from an old lady, they lost some fingers. Someone murdered, they lost their life. Someone took a young woman into an alley and had their way with her…they lost the part of them they held most dear.
Instead, the two bullies looked like they’d just heard a good joke. They turned away from their groaning victim, nudging each other and grinning like two idiots.
“Go home old man,” one said. He was obviously the leader. Taller, fitter, probably excelled at sports in school and little else.
“Yeah. This doesn’t concern you,” laughed the chubby one.
Of course, I rolled toward them. I knew how I looked wearing my old padded leather uniform. The red logo of the Roach on the chest used to instill fear, but it, like me, had seen better days. I looked like I’d been struck by a bus on my way home from a comic book convention. Like a joke.
“Back up old man,” the leader said.
“Yeah,” the other chimed in. “What do you think you’re some sort of superhero wearing that?”
I stopped a few feet away. Close enough to smell the body odor of a couple of pubescent punks. “What happened to make you two like this?” I asked. “Parents didn’t give you enough?” My gaze fell toward their nether regions. “Or maybe you inherited something too small from them.”
“Old man’s got a mouth on him, huh,” the leader said. “What, you think I won’t hit you because you’re in a chair?”
“Trust me,” I said. “This chair is the only thing keeping you from being sent home to your moms crying. Now leave the kid alone and beat it.”
“Or you’ll what?” He circled around behind me, cackling. “Run over my foot?” He shoved my wheelchair forward hard and his buddy caught it by the armrests.
“Yeah, what’re you gonna run over our feet?”
“I just said that, moron.”
“The next one of you who touches me is going to need a cast,” I interrupted. You were so close, I told myself. Now you’re stuck here listening to nitwits.
“Oh yeah?” the chubby one poked me in the side of the head. He beamed ear to ear afterward like he’d just accomplished some great feat. All I could muster was a sigh. I used to take down drug lords, pimps and murderers. I used to make front page news.
He went to poke me again. His finger never made contact. Before he knew what hit him I’d snapped his wrist and shoved him into the wall. Enough to give it a clean break. He wouldn’t need surgery or anything, but he’d damn sure learn a lesson.
“You crazy bastard!” he howled.
That was usually when things de-escalated. It took a special kind of dirt bag to hit back at a cripple like me, but I’d apparently
found them. The leader of the pack grabbed the push bars of my chair and tipped me over. His foot came screeching toward my gut. I caught it and flipped him, but he flailed like a wounded wildebeest and his steel-tipped boot caught me in the jaw.
My leg was caught on my wheelchair seat I couldn’t get out of the way. Three years ago I was as familiar with getting hit in the head as drinking, but now the blow dazed me. The friend jumped in while I was dazed. I took a fist to the head. A foot in the ribs. I blocked as much as I could, but fighting isn’t like hopping back on a bike. My muscles were weak. Untrained.
When they finally backed off the injured, chubby one said, “Dude, he’s not getting back up.”
“Good. Old prick.” The leader spat on me, then they scurried off. They had something to say to the underclassman they’d beaten on their way by, but my ears were ringing and I couldn’t hear.
I rolled onto my back. A bit of blood rolled over my gums and out of the corner of my mouth. That familiar tang of iron. My first instinct was to laugh. It made my sore ribs sting but I couldn’t help it. How insane I must have looked.
“Thanks a lot, mister,” the kid they’d beaten said. His voice still hadn’t dropped. My head lolled over and I saw him kneeling beside me. Instead of clapping and bowing at my feet, he looked like he wanted to hit me.
“You just going to stand there?” I grumbled.
“They’re gonna kick my ass even worse next time thanks to you. Why couldn’t you just stay out of it?”
“I’m wondering the same thing.”
He seemed fine in retrospect. A pair of dog tags hung crookedly from his neck. That was what the bullies were trying to take from him. A memory of a father or someone else who died back in Vietnam. They deserved worse than one broken hand between the two of them.
He put his hand on my arm to help me up and I slapped him away.
“Hands off, kid,” I said.
“You’re hurt.”
“My pride maybe. I already got my ass kicked by two runts today, don’t need a third helping me up like I’m a cripple.”
“You are.”
I glared at him and I could see the color drain from his cheeks. Now that was the look I expected when people came face to face with me. The one I longed for. He stayed quiet while I crawled across the pavement toward my chair. My head still rang, but I was able to flip it upright and position my body in front of it.
Then came the hard part. Lifting a body sculpted from wilting muscle and dangling legs. I got about halfway, arms shaking from the strain, before the kid helped me the rest of the way. I didn’t notice until afterward because he’d grabbed my numb feet.
“I said not to touch me!” I snarled, giving him a shove. Even weak as I was, it sent him stumbling.
“Fine,” he said. “Whatever. I just couldn’t watch that anymore.”
“Yeah? Do me a favor, kid, so I don’t need to roll in and save you again. Next time those two idiots try to steal that thing around your neck, hit ‘em in the nuts and run away. That’s the beauty of having legs.”
“My father told me never to back down.”
I eyed the tags hanging from his neck. “And look where that got him.” I started to roll away just as his eyes got watery and his cheeks flushed red. I wished I could take it back. Sometimes I snapped because I drank too much or was pissed at the world. The ungrateful kid didn’t deserve it, but good advice is good advice.
Some people aren’t meant to fight. Others, well, I’m still kicking… figuratively.
• • •
An empty bottle clinking along the floor woke me. My foggy eyes blinked open to see my empty palm where it had been. The next best thing to ending my life was getting lost in whiskey.
I rubbed my face and went to swing my legs off my cot. Only they didn’t move. Three years and I still wasn’t used to that. It was like having ghost-legs where they used to be. From time to time my brain would play tricks on me like I could still feel something. The human brain is cruel.
I rolled off the floor-cot, grabbed a hook hanging from the ceiling and used it to lift myself up onto my chair. I had no clue what time it was. My Roach suit was off and tossed haphazardly over the railing. Fresh, purple bruises covered my ribs, accompanying a smattering of age-old scars.
“Damn, kids,” I grumbled.
I rolled along the grated catwalk wrapping an abandoned underground tunnel. The Roach’s Lair, the press would’ve called it if they had any idea it existed. My control center. A wall of television screens and police radios rest in the center, unused for years. Covered in cobwebs. Behind them was a lit display case with a naked mannequin inside that was usually wearing my padded leather uniform when I didn’t take it out for a suicidal spin. The flickering bulb inside was the only light in the entire space. Behind me, the seemingly endless tunnel offering access into the NYC underground remained black as the ace of spades.
I ran my fingers along the control station desk. A layer of filth so copious peeled away that it turned my pale flesh brown. I glanced up at the newspaper clippings arrayed on the wall behind it and chuckled. Here I was, the infamous Roach, living among the darkness and the grime like a real cockroach.
All those headlines. If the authors could only see me now. It was like the sad trophy case of a high school scholar athlete who never did anything else.
THE ROACH BREAKS UP MAFIA DRUG RING ON THE LOWER EAST SIDE.
SUSPECTED PEDOPHILE MINISTER FOUND CRUCIFIED OUTSIDE SAINT PATRICK’S.
That one was a little too poetic. I always did have a romantic side.
MAYOR GARRITY’S DAUGHTER ATTACKED. VIGILANTE ROACH SUSPECTED.
Of all the false reports, that last one was the only to ever bother me. That the sheep who I spent so long protecting could think that I would hurt a young woman made my blood boil. I knew the author wrote the piece just to get under my skin, but that didn’t matter.
I swiped my hand across the page like I did every time I saw it. This time, the loose corner finally gave out and it folded over and tore across from the strip of tape in the bottom right corner. I’d posted every mention of the Roach in newspapers for as long as I can remember. The good and the bad. They weren’t trophies, though it may have looked like that. They were reminders of how people really were… The good and the bad.
I rolled into the rickety lift off to the side of the room. The grated metal door was rusting. The pulleys in even worse shape. Every night I spent down in the Roach Lair we had an unofficial contest of what would fall apart quicker. My body, or the rumbling, squeaking lift that sounded like a rat being strangled. It wasn’t easy to maintain a secret lift plunging illegally through NYC infrastructure without legs.
It stopped at the first floor of my townhouse with a moan. The grates folded open, and a switch signaled the hidden doorway built into a bookcase to slide open and reveal my study. I know. How original. But it isn’t my fault that sometimes movies have great ideas that any real person would never think to check in a million years.
“There you are,” a voice called from the kitchen. I recognized it instantly so I didn’t panic—not that it would matter if I was found out at this point. The sizzle and smell of cooking bacon basically pulled my chair across the room like a fish on a lure. Laura Garrity knew me too well.
She was by the stove with a spatula, looking every bit as beautiful as the day I saved her. Her form-fitting pantsuit didn’t fit the occasion, but she never was one to take a moment off. She may still have been the mayor’s daughter, but she was no longer a kid. A burgeoning lawyer, a mother—the kind of person that made being a hero worth it.
“You’re letting yourself in now?” I said to her, then coughed. My throat burned from liquor and cigarettes from the night before.
“I knew you were home,” she answered.
I pulled up right next to her, accidentally ramming the counter. “I told you never to go down there.”
“I didn’t. You left the front door open. Again.”
“I like the draft.”
She rolled her eyes, then leaned down to observe my face. I hadn’t passed by a mirror yet, but I’m sure it wasn’t a pretty sight. “Did you get in another bar fight, old man?”
“Something like that. Where’s Michelle?”
“In the living room watching TV on mute. She didn’t want to wake you.”
“Good. That’s the smartest thing I’ve heard in weeks.”
Laura rolled her eyes and returned her attention to the pan. The bacon was sizzling, probably already overcooked. Considering how busy she was, learning how to cook well wasn’t in the cards no matter how hard she tried.
“And you wonder why she’s scared of you,” Laura remarked.
“I never wonder.”
I spun and rolled into the dreary living room, curtains drawn over the front windows to keep the light and prying eyes out. As expected, tiny Michelle sat on my couch, which probably wasn’t sanitary enough for a child. She pulled a pillow close as I appeared and didn’t make a peep. I joined her in silence. I never was great with children, especially her. What could I say to her? Hey, Michelle, I was there when you were conceived by some serial rapist in an alley having his way with your mother. Oh, and I sliced the bastard’s favorite parts of himself off too, right before a cop took away mine.
I checked what was on TV. Good Morning America covered in grain thanks to a bent antenna. Poor girl. I’m sure my grubby townhouse in Red Hook was the last place she wanted to stop before daycare.
“You know, you really don’t have to keep dropping by,” I said to Laura as I rolled back into the kitchen.
“Well then who would make sure you eat?” she replied.
I stopped by the low counter where I kept my booze. I was down to my last bottle of Jack Daniels. There wasn’t much of a pension for retired Vigilantes, and the one for an NYC Sanitary Worker on permanent medical leave was barely enough to scrape by.
It's A Bird! It's A Plane! Page 6
