“But how, dad?”
Candace inserts herself in the scene like a human metaphor – or perhaps a metonym, representative of some greater, intangible whole that I am still not really able to explain, much like the rest of my life, really.
“It’s her,” I say to Tessa, motioning to the other teenager. “She’s got some link. She’s keeping her alive.”
I turn and nod to Candace.
“Good work. You handled yourself pretty good back there, for someone who just wanted to tap her shoes together and go home,” I say. “Ready to get out of here? Loren’s waiting for us.”
Candace clears her throat, the anxious waif again.
“There’s some bad news,” she says.
By this stage I don’t say anything. My throat’s constricted and the words, the ones I know are coming, seem inevitable.
“It seems those aren’t the Amari.”
She gestures to the sky and makes a pained face.
“Those are just . . . drones. Vehicles. We still have to face the real threat. Up there.”
Hope, like the breath escaping my lungs, seems to just ooze out of me. Tessa has her expectant face on beneath the mask and Candace flicks her gaze between the two of us, like someone waiting on an introduction – which she probably is. Into that awkward silence, Windsong clears her throat and motions to my shirt.
“New symbol, huh? Pretty cool.”
I close my eyes as Sting and the other Brit supers materialize around us.
*
“WHAT’S THE SITUATION, old man?” St George asks from behind a dapper plum-colored cravat with a diamond stick pin. He’s carrying a cane, too, like he’s one-upping the dandyesque affectations of his past.
Sting, the DJ and Shade descend the pile of rubble closest to us, and being British, somehow instantly affect the mien of survivors of the Blitz. Ali nods his head in time and it takes me several seconds to realize he’s wearing enormous silver headphones on the sides of his head. Shade nods and winks, jet black with her powers, but she keeps her distance. By contrast, Sting, clean-shaven, smiles handsomely and passes homo-erotically close wearing just a tight white singlet and black leggings, barefoot and muscular amid the rubble.
I look up, a pained expression aimed at the sun, and when I look at Candace, her expression’s equally fraught, even though I can’t kid myself it’s for the same reasons. She shrugs to show she understands my frustration, even if she’s not a partner to it.
“They’re the Amari, apparently.”
I am taken aback by the voice, Stormhawk, the purple guy with the white Mohawk, stepping in close while consulting his blackberry.
“How do you know that?”
“They have a Facebook page.”
There’s a few gasps, not the least of them mine. Stormhawk laughs.
“It’s not real. A tribute page. Just shot up in the last fifteen minutes. Six-hundred likes to the latest post: ‘Human beans. Nom nom nom’.”
“Jesus,” I say, disgusted. “What the fuck is wrong with people?”
“If there’s an ants’ nest, someone, somewhere’s gonna put their dick in it.”
I nod in agreement even though the speaker is Twilight, walking through the hanger-on heroes like a true god among men. He stops when across from me and practically shoulder-to-shoulder with St George.
Stormhawk gestures again with the wireless device in his hand.
“CNN’s reporting live from City Hall. How can they estimate three thousand dead already?”
He looks around and of course there are drained-looking corpses jutting through the rubble almost everywhere. An awkward silence gathers.
“Where are we at, Zephyr?” Twilight asks.
“You still talkin’ to me?” I reply in a brief spurt of gangsterism. “I thought I was the Antichrist?”
George and Sting chuckle and I see Shade raise a barely visible eyebrow, but Twilight’s grey-masked face remains stony and almost expressionless.
Voice barely audible to anyone else, he asks, “You’re cut up about that?”
“Maybe you lovers can have your tiff another time?” Sting says, cheerily enough. “Maybe this young lady can fill us in on what all the trouble’s about? She seems to be the one they were seeking out, after all.”
“Funny, that,” I say and almost yawn with the inevitability of my own comments. “Sting, this is Seeker.”
Sting smiles and not exactly bows, a mock gentleman, but his response is colored with confusion.
“I thought Seeker was a lovely big, um, well, tall girl?”
“I’m Candace,” the new Seeker replies with a teenagerly wince. “I’m sort of new at this.”
“Up to the job though, obviously,” George says.
His voice is impatient, cutting through the idle chatter.
“So what’s next? What’s the plan?”
For some reason, the others are looking at me. I cast my eyes over the playing field, shielding them against the sun setting in slits through the canyon of distant skyscrapers. The New Sentinels are here, along with the Brit heroes who want me to be one of theirs. Twilight. Windsong. Coalface. The Lark. A guy in a silver bodywrap that may just be his skin, and another mask all in blue, his face a blur whenever he catches someone looking.
I give a cheap laugh and think of my lover in a sterile cage at White Nine. And then my eyes fall on Candace and she’s looking at me and there’s something expectant in the poise of her barely pubescent lips that tells me I’m not going to like how this plays out no matter what the ending.
“Up?”
She nods, shy and afraid as the others look on mystified. And with that resolved, I grin again and pat St George on the shoulder, my drawl exaggerated as I draw him into our plans.
Zephyr 8.12 “Stillborn Physics”
SMOKE THAT SMELLS of corpses drifts across the city from the direction of the so-called children’s park in downtown Jackson. As Candace briefs St George on what’s required, the two of them standing apart like an old man with his granddaughter, I stare up through the grey veil at the chromium sun hanging in the sky like a distended rectum all pink and angry. Mastodon argues with his teammates. I am glad to be free of that. Windsong perches on a chunk of rock, going all Breakfast Club on me with her knees under her chin. The authorities stream about like worker ants into the canyon of destruction we’ve wrought, manifestations of the resilience of mankind.
St George and Seeker return to the fold, him serious, her with one hand clutching her opposite arm. She shoots me a nervous smile.
“It’s now or never,” she tells me.
“Some choice, kiddo.”
“Don’t call me that,” Candace says, hand light as gossamer on my shoulder as she slips past. “You owe me, remember?”
Her comment’s charged with about as much sexual tension as frog larvae.
The old dandy manages to get us into the mother ship. You know, teleporting. The air is humid and bacterial, like we’ve gone caving inside some giant vagina, protrusions covering the floor and the roof high enough overhead it might as well be some disgusting alien sky. Everything is moist and organic despite the rigid structure of the place, with honeycomb-like catacombs branching away up various heights of the vast chamber walls. The membranes themselves glow weirdly red, angry, lit from within, a gelatinous sheen over everything, a feminist’s nightmare. Or maybe my own.
I’ve seen enough techno-organic interiors to last me a lifetime. God help me if I ever have to renovate. I’ll need a psychiatrist as well as an interior designer.
St George didn’t think he could teleport everyone across eighty thousand miles of space, which suited the majority of the New Sentinels just fine. We’ve brought Mastodon and Stormhawk as well as Twilight and Seeker. It only took one look for Windsong to agree to stay behind. The Lark has some kind of disappearing abilities he put to good use. I never got the silver guy’s name, but the other one’s Blue Streak, apparently. Speedster. Not much good in confined space, he said
.
“What are we thinking?” Sting asks in a false whisper.
“Is that a general question or are we talking strategy?” Twilight says.
“Why? You having flashbacks?” I ask him.
“Just remember Pulp Fiction,” he replies.
I smirk, but have to scrape it off my face as Seeker begins to gently overwhelm the lava lamp ambience with her own phosphor glint.
“Sorry to say I think the plan’s pretty simple,” the girl says.
And sure enough, it’s only moments later before the creatures come pouring down from on high.
*
OVER THE SOUND of a thousand wings and chittering things fluttering and being destroyed, Candace yells again that these aren’t the Amari either. I’m beginning to grok that these alien invaders are either camera shy or masters of biological wizardry. The giant insect plague is just another of those subtle ways that have of dealing with the unknown, seeking to terraform the bejesus out of anything that poses a threat to their way of existence.
“Dig in, guys, unless you want to find out what pure alien headspace looks and feels like,” I jeer, only half comprehending what I actually mean as I lower the tone enough to simply revel in the current running over my fists, me punching great sloshing holes in the first wave of things flapping and scratching at us.
It’s a veritable light show. Twilight has the blazing green blobs and Stormhawk and Sting have their own electric-looking attacks. Candace’s otherworldly essence swirls around her like a living thing, a curtain of power blowing in an invisible breeze as she gestures and moves and flings her arms out and the shadows of the giant wasp-like attackers flit across the cavern like a Balinese puppet show from Hell. Thankfully, the swarm perish in their droves and I am reminded of the last time St George and the gang and I danced this particular tango.
“What ever happened to good old fucking supervillains?” I bellow.
“There’s plenty of them around, if you’d make the time,” Mastodon says, swollen to his full nine-foot height as he rushes past me and slams two more sting-laden things into a sweating wall.
“And there was me thinking it was you who had a hard time coming down from your tower,” I mutter like some sad bastard who always has to have the last word.
And then there’s another staccato from nearby, Stormhawk’s powers blazing like a flash from the eponymous weather condition, and the last of the creatures explodes coating Shade and the DJ in flecks of brittle alien poop.
“Steady,” Ali says, the headphones still in place. “Me is keepin’ this big mother-humpin’ vessel happy wi’ da Bob Marley. Let’s get a move on, aiiiight?”
“He means we only have so much time,” George Harrison tells us with a completely straight face, perhaps the only man in the room who actually needed the translation.
“What do you say, princess?” I ask Seeker, feeling all Han Solo again.
Candace shrugs. “Is there anyone who can’t fly?”
Somehow I’ve ended up standing next to Mastodon again and I grunt and he looks abashed and wipes a fleck of alien shit off one of the ridiculous tusk-things jutting from the harness-like collar of his blue costume.
“You know the drill, Lemmy-boy.”
“I told you never to call me that,” Mastodon mutters.
I snicker and he closes his eyes a moment and shakes the hands hanging by his sides like a man desperately trying to relax despite the incipient fire-fight.
“Come on –”
“Shut up,” he hisses.
Stormhawk takes the ‘Don by the other arm and we watch as Seeker leads the way, a glowing vapor trail of fairy lights as she ascends up the central chamber of the ship’s heart, headed straight to her doom and leading us with her. Twilight, Shade and the others follow and we go last, our heavy burden cursing and kicking his legs between us.
*
“THINK OF THE ship as an ecosystem,” Seeker calls as we flit through the grand atrium of the vessel.
“Then we’re in the bowels,” Mastodon says, dangling inert between Stormhawk and me. His legs kick periodically like a little kid.
A noise like a killer whale with flatulence draws our eyes higher up and its Stormhawk maybe who remarks, “Then here comes the shit.”
The air becomes thick with small bitey things the size of raisins and with the attitude of a pissed off pygmy marmoset (trust me – an early trip to the zoo with Tessa, but it’s a long story). I forget for a moment I’m carrying my one-time teammate Mastodon and light up, current dancing over my skin sufficient to incinerate the airborne pests, but Mastodon yowls, bats at me and falls free, tumbling back down the shaft.
“Fuck!” Stormhawk yells and the air currents swirl around us, throwing the tiny attackers against the walls as the purple-skinned newcomer turns beside me like a synchronized swimmer and then the fetid atmosphere under his control shoots now downwards after Mastodon – but not in time.
The rest of us are still going up. Shade seems largely immune to the ship’s fierce parasites and Sting and St George have their own methods. Twilight is now bathed in the green fire he trades in and Seeker, like a beacon always ahead of us, also seems unaffected by the gnats.
Up and up we vroom and finally the space opens up and there’s a platform of some type. At first I am genuinely terrified because it appears open to the total lack of atmosphere, big windows of deep space visible beyond the cloaked figures commanding our attention. But membranes of some sort contain the atmosphere and I can relax enough to assess the new threat.
There are five of the beings. I call them cloaked, like Star Wars villains or something, but each one contains a crowd of disparate figures that wink in and out of existence at the flux of some weird alien physics. The creatures are bipedal, but their legs hit the floor and continue on behind them in a manner that only makes me think of snakes, pythons or some such. There’s an air of unreality about their presence and they are sepia-tinged, like holograms fighting over the same small space into which they can be projected beneath the black folds of the theatrical hoods.
The closest holds an enormous blue metal staff and the tip glows, high above its “heads”.
“So these are the Amari, right?”
Candace is in the lead and yet she appears so ridiculously vulnerable. The first Amari barely moves and a coruscation of blue-white energy explodes from the staff in an outward rushing globe that blows Seeker to the ground and pushes the rest of us back. I steady myself against a pylon, sticky resin clinging to my fingers, and Stormhawk appears from behind us with Mastodon semi-conscious and back-to-normal-size in his arms.
“What’d I miss?” he asks.
Shade rises from beside me and makes a fist.
“No sunlight, Zeph. We gotta make this quick, yeah?”
In a crouch, I survey the field. The five iconic figures move slowly apart on the platform, effectively moon-walking sideways with their snakey legs. There’s a definite sense of a pattern, a strategy in their maneuver that I know we’re not going to like.
“You’re right. We’re gonna have to do this fast.”
“Actually, no.”
St George stands in front of us and Candace, rising to her feet again, stands even further ahead. She turns her head, a brave little soldier, and nods once to the ex-Beatle with her face set in her best manga girl frown.
“What are you talking about, Harrison?”
The chamber starts filling with light. It’s Seeker. She has her back to us and steps slowly into the invisible concentric pattern the Amari are weaving.
The air is shimmering – locked into a silent scream of stillborn physics, it strikes me. The shimmering turns into a wobble and I realize it’s not them – it’s me.
Or us.
Seeker’s whiteness explodes, filling everything, pouring through us. But we’re intangible, decohered. And then simply not there at all.
Zephyr 8.13 (Coda)
THE TOWERS OF old New York rise around us. It is early mornin
g, the streets grey-lit, garbage men and delivery vans the only things still working apart from us, gaudily-dressed heroes and heroines standing as useless as shopping trolleys in an Idaho farm field.
“Look,” says Sting.
We crane our heads and stare into the weakening sky and its spangle of disappearing stars. Except there is one burning bright – too bright – white and not so distant. I am speechless, and as we watch, the emission peaks and fades and draws away and then there’s nothing.
Sunrise is less than an hour away.
“What the fuck happened there?”
Sting turns to me and he’s beaming, the bastard.
“You still haven’t given us your answer, Zephyr,” he smiles. “We make quite a team.”
The others are talking at once – except for St George. I push past Sting’s restraining hand and shirt-front the old guy. It’s only his somber, respectful expression that stills my sudden and not entirely inexplicable anger.
“I’m sorry, Zephyr.”
“She planned this?”
“We discussed it. Yes. She said it was probably the only option.”
“Probably?”
“The moment we saw them, I thought she was right,” Harrison says.
I have nothing else to say so I drop away, letting the almost gossipy tones of my comrades flow around me as the bin collectors stop to stare and a police cruiser turns the corner and there are National Guard with a half-track further down the street disassembling a road block.
“Shit. I’m sorry, Candy.”
Twilight has a good six inches on me and when I turn angrily to stride away, I almost collide with his expansive, grey-upholstered chest. He puts a glove flecked with alien fanny batter on my shoulder and practically forces me to look up at him.
“What?” I snap. “You want a last laugh? Go ahead. Then we can finish what you started.”
“I’m sorry, Zephyr.”
“You’re sorry. I’m sorry. She’s fucking sorry. Great.”
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