It's A Bird! It's A Plane!

by Steve Beaulieu

  “Down there!” someone shouted from the window above. But the Paladin was already racing across the lawn, his hood blown back and his cape fluttering behind him. He was gone before the cops could converge on him.

  • • •

  Everything turned out differently than I expected. When the cops arrived, they found drugs and huge sums of money in the Deputy-Mayor’s kitchen. Apparently Dixon and his cronies didn’t have time to hide what they were doing because I kept everyone occupied until the police showed up. Everyone in the house was arrested, and now they’re all awaiting trial.

  Detective West showed up at my house the following day; he was smiling like he’d just taken a hit of Joker-gas.

  “You did a good job last night,” he said. “You know, there’s a lot more good you could do for Carmel. Just because we got the bad guys this time doesn’t mean there won’t be others. What do you think, kid?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about asking out this girl.”

  He winked at me, and I felt like punching him in the nose. “You’ve earned it, kid. But who knows, maybe I’ll be in touch one of these days.”

  I hope not.

  I wish I could tell you that everything has changed, but it hasn’t. I still think about Nick every day. I thought revenge would make my pain go away, but I guess the only thing that can do that is time.

  Now we’ve come to the end of the story, but I have one more thing to say before I go. When I got back to school, I asked Shannon White if she wanted to hang out sometime. I was about as nervous as I’d ever been in my life, and I was sure she was going to say no. To my amazement, however, she didn’t.

  She said yes!

  We’ve been seeing each other for a couple of weeks now. I’m sure our middle school relationship looks ridiculous to just about everybody, but I really don’t care. We may not end up getting married or anything like that, but what we have means a lot to me. When I’m with Shannon, I don’t think about what happened to Nick, or the way it felt to hold my own mother when she was crying. Shannon makes all the bad things in the world go away for a little while, and that’s why I like her so much.

  I had my fourteenth birthday a few days ago. Shannon came over, and, instead of playing video games or studying, we decided to go for a walk. We started talking, and before I knew what I was doing, I admitted to Shannon that I was the Paladin. I don’t think she believed me at first, but when I showed her the costume, as well as some yellowing bruises, she began to change her mind.

  It was her idea for me to write this essay. She thought it would be good for me—that it would give me a sense of closure. I’ve been working on it for a few days, and now that I’m almost done, I guess she was right.

  I’ve decided to retire from crime fighting, at least for the time being. I’ll never forget what I was able to accomplish as the Paladin, but I don’t want to live my life in the shadows. I hate what I was becoming. Putting on that mask gave me license to do things I never would have considered before. It scares me to think of what might happen if I ever did it again.

  I was hoping that everything would be different when I returned to school after Christmas break. No more bullies; no more drugs—but nothing changed. I guess that’s how it goes. It’s like what Shannon was trying to tell me about Batman. The only person you can change is yourself. I’m turning my back on all the stuff that’s making this world such a piece of crap. Popularity. Crime. Politics. Constant reinforcement of those things will only bring me down, and I don’t want to wallow in my own misery any more. I’m choosing to live. That’s what Nick would have wanted.

  A Word from Kevin G. Summers

  The story you just read, “The Paladin,” has been around the block a few times and this isn’t its first appearance in an anthology. It was originally featured in Lords of Justice anthology and then reprinted A Thousand Faces, the Quarterly Journal of Superhuman Fiction: Issue #13. I even released the story as a solo ebook and audiobook before Steve Beaulieu (pronounced Bowl-Your) asked me if he could reprint it in this anthology. Hopefully Jared Weiss has found some new fans as "It’s A Bird! It’s a Plane!" makes its way in the world. If you look closely, you’ll find that “The Paladin” is full of references to comics and pop-culture… hopefully you enjoyed finding them as much as I did including them.

  My first published fiction was the critically acclaimed short story "Isolation Ward 4", set in the Star Trek universe. After writing several other Star Trek stories for Pocket Books, I took the plunge into indie publishing with Legendarium, co-written with the well-known Michael Bunker. Rumor has it that there will be a Legendarium 2 someday, but I wouldn’t hold your breath, unless you can hold it until maybe Fall 2017.

  This anthology isn’t my first foray with Steve Beaulieu (pronounced Bo-Lew), he was also my editor on In Your Closet, In Your Head: A Monster Anthology. When I’m not writing for Steve Beaulieu (pronounced Bee-awl-E-you), I’ve also written a number of other stories, including The Bleak December, a tale of supernatural horror set in the Great North Woods of New Hampshire, and The Man Who Shot John Wilkes Booth, a weird western about one of the strangest characters in American history.

  I live on a working dairy farm, in a house built in 1910 by refugees from that time the federal government stole a bunch a land to make the Shenandoah National Park. I milk cows twice a day, every day, 366 days a year. When you’re still asleep in your bed, there’s a good chance that I’m out in the dark, milking cows and thinking about my next book, which in this case happens to be a space opera set on a starship called Gilead.

  You can write to me c/o The Crowfoot Farm, Amissville, Rappahannock County,Virginia, United States of America, Continent of North America, Western Hemisphere, the Earth, the Solar System, the Universe, the Mind of God; or you can visit my website: www.kevingsummers.com.

  CLEANVIEW

  BY HALL & BEAULIEU

  CLEANVIEW

  BY HALL & BEAULIEU

  Ernest groaned as he wheeled the cart down the hallway. Being a janitor wasn’t the most physically demanding job in the world, but after doing it for three decades Ernest’s body creaked and ached. His wife was always telling him to retire, that enough was enough. Ernest knew she didn’t really care that much, she was just sick of him complaining every day. Besides, his wasn’t a job you walked away from. He heard a story once about how all the secretaries and janitors at Google were millionaires. Ernest wasn’t a millionaire, but his six-figure salary allowed him to live more comfortably than most janitors. It allowed him to put a daughter through college. Even if that daughter never called and always seemed to be busy working on all the major holidays when families normally got together.

  Ernest paused as he passed a doorway, something on the floor catching his eye. He pulled a spray bottle and a rag off the cart and knelt. Something in his leg made a popping noise.

  He knew what the substance was right away, had cleaned up buckets of it in his time working here. As he sprayed and then wiped up the blood he was reminded that he didn’t work for some tech company. The janitors at Google may have billionaires for bosses, but Ernest had some pretty powerful bosses himself. And they’d had themselves a rough night.

  Satisfied that all traces of the blood were gone, Ernest stood, stifling another groan, and put the bottle back on the cart. He tossed the rag into a trash bag, then continued pushing the cart. He rounded a corner. Another massive hallway stretched out before him. The base was privately funded and shrouded in mystery. Everyone knew of it, but few had been in it. It stood as a beacon of hope and justice, located right on the outskirts of the San Fernando Valley, hundreds of miles south of Google. This was where the big boys took care of business.

  Ernest entered the first room on his right—a medium-sized cafeteria. It was his favorite room in the entire base. It reminded him of the little cafeteria in his elementary school. When he’d been a little immigrant boy struggling to learn the language and the culture, he’d never struggled to understand lunch. Life
had been simpler then. Before the world had met its first superhero.

  So many people idolized the supers, but soon after the first heroes came the first villains. Ernest didn’t blame the heroes—not in the least. He’d benefited from their presence far more than just the weekly paycheck. But much of the world hadn’t experienced salvation at their hands, only destruction as the villains emerged. Nonetheless, although Ernest wasn’t a man of notable intellect, he was smart enough to see what was right in front of him. The early heroes stopped bank robbers and put out fires and stopped cruise ships from sinking after they hit an iceberg. Twenty years later the heroes were fending off alien invasions, battling back reality-bending villains and trying to stop zombies from taking over South America. Something had changed in the world—intensified, exponentially. Ernest wasn’t smart enough to know what it was, but he was smart enough to know that it was.

  He remembered life without the superheroes. Tragedies happened from time to time back then too. Wildfires, serial killers, bad things. It all seemed sort of trivial now, though, compared to the sort of bad things that went on these days. Compared to the witch who just this morning had come back from the dead, put a death hex on an entire neighborhood, killing everyone who’d ever lived there instantaneously no matter where they lived now, before making her way into downtown and fusing together hundreds of cars on the highway, people inside and all, into a monstrous beast that had rampaged across the city, wiping out anyone and anything it came into contact with. The heroes killed it, eventually. It and everyone trapped inside the cars that made up its body.

  A lot of people had died. But in spite of it all, Ernest was thankful for the supers.

  Ernest reminded himself he was just the janitor and flicked on the light in the cafeteria. There were several pieces of trash on the floor near a trashcan. He bent down and scooped them up, then pulled the bag and replaced it with a fresh one. Turning to survey the state of the rest of the cafeteria, Ernest jumped as his eyes fell upon someone sitting at a nearby table.

  His heart was pounding in his chest. Even though he’d been cleaning their base since they were established a decade ago, Ernest had never once run into one of the superheroes—it was his dream to meet one, and today his dream came true in the most incredible of ways. It was him.

  Their identities, the sensitivity of what they discussed, the possible danger of just being around them, all of these had factored into the decision to restrict cleaning times to hours when the base was deserted. The security system wasn’t supposed to even allow Ernest to unlock doors if a hero was in the base, alerting him immediately if one arrived while he was already inside. Yet sitting before him, until a moment ago all alone in the dark, was the leader of the team. A hulking mountain of a man, his physique so perfect that perfect felt like an inadequate way of describing it. Normally wearing an inspirational outfit of white and gold and a smile, the hero known as The Royal was shirtless, stripped down to a simple pair of exercise shorts. But there was no mistaking, it was him. He had a bloody gash across his chest, with smaller cuts crisscrossing it. Seeing that kind of damage on The Royal told Ernest just how serious the fight against the witch and her car monstrosity must have been. Most people believed The Royal to be invulnerable.

  Realizing he needed to make a hasty exit, Ernest raised his hands and slowly started to back toward the door.

  “I’m sorry to have disturbed you,” Ernest said.

  As The Royal made the slightest of movements, Ernest realized that the hero hadn’t even been aware of his presence until this moment. His eyes had a faraway look in them as if he was still barely present in the moment. It looked as if the man hadn’t moved in hours, a now-warm soda sitting before him, unopened.

  “What?” The Royal asked.

  He blinked several times, then spoke again, this time more forcefully.

  “Who are you?”

  For a moment, Ernest froze. Visions of getting fired and having to explain to his wife how it hadn’t been his fault as she screamed at him, asking how he could’ve been so stupid, played in his mind. But his wife he could deal with later, right now there was a super man sitting before him that he needed to answer.

  “Ernest Altamirano.”

  He let it hang in the air for a moment, then felt silly. The name alone wouldn’t mean much to the most powerful man on the planet.

  “I’m the janitor,” he added, gesturing to his cart.

  The Royal’s head shifted slightly in the direction of the cart.

  “We have a janitor?”

  The same sentence out of the mouth of someone else might’ve been received as an insult, but Ernest just smiled politely. He pointed to multiple areas of the room that were dirty.

  “You do,” he said. “Normally the security system doesn’t allow me inside if any of the…if any of you are here.”

  The Royal was unreadable, never truly looking at Ernest—but for the briefest of moments, a look of annoyance passed across his face.

  “I disabled it. The thing kept—” He shook his head, almost dismissing the banality of what they were discussing. “It kept beeping so I blew it up with a mind pulse.”

  “Oh,” Ernest said, looking around the room to see if he could spot the inevitable mess such a move would’ve created.

  He didn’t see anything, and it was likely best left for another time, anyway. No matter what had caused it, his run-in with The Royal needed to be kept as brief as possible if he hoped to keep his job.

  “I’m going to come back and finish later. Once you’ve gone home,” Ernest said.

  He moved toward the exit, surprised when the hero's voice called after him.

  “That’s a stupid rule. You’re here now, no reason not to do what you need to do.”

  Ernest paused. His bosses weren’t going to be happy with him if he stayed in the base while one of the heroes were around, but saying no to The Royal didn’t feel like a wise decision. Besides, it was a stupid rule, there was clearly no danger to be feared here or secrets to be discovered. Just a dirty room and a janitor with a job to do.

  And a godlike being, staring at nothing, his mind a million miles away.

  The elderly janitor turned back and nodded politely at The Royal.

  “I’ll be quick.”

  The hero was already lost in his own thoughts again. He didn’t even seem to register that Ernest had spoken.

  The janitor hastily cleaned, uncomfortable in his current situation. After a few minutes, the silence was broken.

  “You know,” The Royal said, “the world was close to ending today.”

  Ernest looked up from his dustpan. The Royal was still staring ahead, not in the janitor’s direction.

  “Yeah?” Ernest said with uncertainty.

  “Not the first time either.” He shook his head. “Salem used to be one of us. Now, she is a nasty blotch in human history.”

  Ernest was surprised by the amount of anger he could sense in The Royal's voice. Salem was one of the newer members of the team, and her usage of the dark arts had made her one of the most controversial superheroes around. After what she'd done tonight, it seemed people had been right in being wary of her.

  “It never ceases to amaze me when a person can take the gift they’ve been blessed with and use it against their fellow man.”

  Since The Royal was still staring at nothing in particular, Ernest wasn’t completely sure if the superhero was even talking to him. He figured the only way to find out was to ask.

  “Are you…talking to me, sir?”

  “Yes, yes. I’m sorry—there’s something many people don’t know about me,” he said.

  Was this super man really about to divulge secrets to the janitor? Ernest couldn’t begin to answer that question, but he was suddenly very uneasy.

  “I am blind.” His head jerked toward the janitor and for the first time in their conversation, Ernest had enough wits about him to notice that The Royal wasn’t wearing his patented headgear. Ernest had always assum
ed it was just another way to conceal his identity, but the hero always wore a half face mask and crown. The mask had no eye holes, but Ernest, like everyone else, figured it was made from a special fabric that had allowed him to see through it—or that The Royal had x-ray vision.

  The revelation that the superhero was blind brought a new sense of wonder to the janitor. How had he done all the amazing feats without one of his senses? Much less, one as important as sight?

  “Do you know what I am not blind to?”

  Ernest realized after some silence that The Royal wasn’t going to continue until he received a response.

  “No, sir?”

  “I am not blind to the injustice—the inequality of it all. Why should some of us be trusted with gifts that make us gods? Why should I be any different from any other blind man who’s ever lived? Why should I be able to tap into a sixth sense? Be allowed to see without truly seeing? And why should Salem continue to be allowed to work her charms and spells when she is using them to bring destruction upon the world?”

  Ernest sat down at the table closest to him—several tables away from The Royal. He wanted to listen, but he couldn’t bring himself to sit at the same table as the hero. It wasn’t that he felt less than—but different from.

  “Thousands died tonight. We shed all that blood, and for what? In the end, it's meaningless.”

  The Royal's words were bleak. His voice seemed to defy logic, to drain some of the light from the room. The feeling of despair that settled on the cafeteria was simply too heavy, and Ernest felt as if he had to respond.

  “But thousands more would have died had it not been for you,” he said in a low voice.

  “It is my fault Salem went evil,” he said. “I pushed her. I drove her to this. It was me.”

  His fist slammed and sent a ripple through the hard plastic, cracking it in two.