Zephyr Box Set 1

by Warren Hately

  I almost don’t quite catch what Soderbergh is saying, except his frightened tone makes me blink my way back to the present, peering at him, at his mouth, like I have suddenly been struck by some weird, Babel-like affliction.

  “That’s, uh, not an actor,” he says again. “That’s your old, well, you know, your old pal and, uh, nemesis . . . Negator.”

  I whirl about.

  “Negator?”

  “Uh yeah, hi Zephyr.”

  “That’s really you?”

  “Y-yeah.”

  He looks down. The swagger is gone, but he retains the same weirdly black eyes, however strangely the chin fuzz rests on his face.

  “What the . . . Aren’t you in the slammer?”

  “Three years are up,” Negator says dimly. “I’ve been out four months.”

  “Didn’t you . . . wait, I . . . how come. . . ?”

  I’m struggling.

  “Please, Zephyr, this is awkward as it is,” the villain says. “I really need this.”

  “You need this . . . hamburger ad?”

  “Hey, maybe it’s nothing to you, big-shot, but I gotta grasp for everything I can,” Negator says and swings around, still impressively tall and with his height inflated by the fins on his black mask. “Do you have any idea what I’ve been through?”

  “I seem to remember picking a bus full of kids from the Miskatonic,” I reply. “Lucky no one died.”

  “That’s right,” he snaps. “No one died. And I did my time. Or so they tell me. Like I’d know, right? It’s . . . it’s fucking lights out once you’re in White Nine, pal. They had to . . . they had to start stimulating my frigging legs with electrodes three months before they released me because the goddamn muscles atrophied.”

  “Jesus,” I say softly. “I can’t believe you’re whining about this – just like the last time I whipped your ass.”

  “Gentlemen, please,” the director says and quite bravely comes between us.

  Intentionally or not, Negator’s white-gloved fist is hissing with sickly-looking corrosive black energy.

  “Today, try and bury your differences, OK? Today we’re all just acting. It’s just a hamburger commercial, like Zephyr said.”

  “Tell that to the Frenchman,” I remark.

  “I will be trying to.”

  Soderbergh takes a stern look at both of us until we’ve settled and then he walks off across the set.

  I ignore the delicious Latina and turn slowly back to Negator, but find him already glaring at me.

  Zephyr 11.3 (Flashback) “The Formulaic Breeze”

  “ARE YOU GOING to be able to pull this off, fuck-face, or are you after a trip back onto the ice?” I ask.

  Negator scowls and adjusts his cape and the energy leaking from his gloves dissipates.

  “I spent a decade trying to steal a better life and now I’ve got nothing to show for it but this ridiculous fucking costume, Zephyr,” the villain says in a low voice. “The difference between me and you is I am standing here dressed like a prize fucking turkey because I have a goal in sight. You’re still here because it’s the only way you can get your rocks off.”

  I laugh at that and ignore him.

  “They’re paying you for this gig?”

  “Straight up. Ten grand,” he says. “My agent thinks he can get me a touring show. I just need to remind the public what a badass I was.”

  “Without landing back in prison.”

  “Relax, Zephyr,” he sneers. “You’re the one who taught me crime doesn’t pay, correct? Now we’re both in showbiz.”

  “Showbiz? I’m not in showbiz.”

  “Sure,” he says quite earnestly, deathly presence taking to the background in his efforts to justify his own decision. “I heard Ultimatum and Carnage are doing a house show in Vegas now. Hell, Captain Jackass and his crew are getting their own show on MTV.”

  “You’re kidding me?”

  “And you don’t even have a comic,” Negator says disdainfully. “And that action figure – I mean, what the fuck was that?”

  “Screw you, Negator,” I reply. “We’ve got a whole range of new PVC figurines coming. I’m relaunching the Sentinels, and we’re really gonna do things. Heroic things. And it ain’t just show business.”

  The key grip sticks his head into the lull and asks way too brightly, “You ladies about ready?”

  I give a grunt and catch Negator’s gaze. The subtlety is lost on him, unfortunately, as I scowl and say, “It’s showtime,” in my worst Austrian accent.

  And indeed it is.

  As the mobile pieces of the set swing into place I grab a copy of the tech script from a passing flunky and the girl with the impressive norks disappears off the stage as more techies attach the wires to the harness I didn’t know Negator was already wearing. They then guide him up one of the mobile mounds of wreckage just wheeled in. Back-lighting creates an apocalyptic atmosphere, and someone tests the fake thunder and even I feel a tiny thrill at the ersatz realism. I glance down and refresh my memory with the inanity of it all, the fight in the devastated city, bringing my foe down, then the girl running forward with the nonsensically attached hamburger. The punchline has me all but pushing the hottie aside and snatching the hamburger, growling, “That’s what I really want” into the camera. It’s the new Wimpy motto, though I can’t say I agree much with the focus groups.

  “Zephyr?”

  I snap my head around and find Janice with a phone to her ear, motioning for me to junk the script. I toss it aside and some stage hand disappears it. If only life were so accommodating.

  “OK Zephyr, Negator,” an amplified voice comes from halfway across the set.

  I turn around slowly, but I can’t find the director anyway. It doesn’t stop him talking.

  “We really appreciate you guys being here and respect your professionalism and if we can do this in the minimum time possible then we’ll all be happy and you can go on your way to do the undoubtedly more important things you have to do . . . uh, well that’s you, anyway, Zephyr. Negator, again, I appreciate you making yourself available. . . .”

  “Cut the crap,” the villain booms.

  “OK, right,” the director calls back. “We’ve already got the principal vision out of the way and it’s just the main confrontation and the, uh, hamburger aftermath we need to tackle today. You’ve read the script, uh, I hope, so we’ll take it from the top of the action when you’re ready.”

  The shuffling noises in the studio fall quiet and I look around, still pretty much standing in the same spot and in the same mode as when I was just dissing my old punching bag. I wait for a signal that clearly isn’t coming and then finally the director tells me they are recording already and I should just go ahead in my own time.

  I flex my gloved fingers and turn around slowly to look up the artificial slope to where Negator stands, cloak twisting slowly in the formulaic breeze. And I can’t help smile. Electricity crackles over my fingers, and while I dimly recall the lines of god-awful dialogue scripted for me, I approach the base of the tower and am just about to speak when somewhere close by, a Frenchmen cries out and the director yells cut and the house lights come up.

  “No! No! No! It’s a disaster,” the artist yowls and slams both his effete hands down on the card table where the actress and the hamburger are poised. The hamburger leaps into the air and splatters across the floor.

  “You stupid fucking prostitute,” the Frenchman roars and for a moment looks like he might back-hand her. “What possessed you to hold ze burger like that? You have torn the bun. Look at this! Incroyable!”

  “Power down, people,” one of the assistants calls out. “Take a break. Hamburger emergency.”

  As I look at the jaded faces of the crew as they swim into focus in the renewed light, it strikes me this is not the first hamburger emergency these people have faced.

  *

  SODERBERGH ACTUALLY CALLS “action” and my already numbed gaze returns by way of almost every other fixture i
n the studio to the spectacle of my former nemesis – or at least one of them – standing atop a pinnacle of man-made plaster, rubble and debris. Swirling blue energy fizzes in his black-gloved hand.

  “Zephyr,” the poster boy of villainy says, reading straight from the script. “Welcome to your doom.”

  “Give me a break, Negator,” I reply in what is close enough to my lines for no-one to intervene. My own power-up commences and I launch into the air to just above the same height Negator is poised, like some victorious mountaineer or one of the marines from Iwo Jima.

  “It sucks to be you!”

  Because he is playing by the script and I have just abandoned it, Negator looks up at me open mouthed as thousands of volts split the air asunder and strike him in about six different tendrils. It’s far from my strongest non-lethal dose, but it’s enough for the bad guy to make a noise like cats fucking and he arches his back and does that juddery dance thing I love so much before his twitching legs separate, spasming akimbo, and he tumbles down the man-made slope on what may be a slippery-slide of his own pee.

  He scuds free at the bottom and rolls over and moans some more and I can hear someone yelling for the scene to cut as Negator moves trembling to his knees and looks across at me from that supine position, power leaking from his eyes now like I know he’s really pissed and I can only grin, because it’s been a while, you know, and this is how we used to roll.

  “Game on, motherfucker,” he says with barely suppressed rage.

  We go at each other like a pair of mountain stags wielding the power of Asgard. Technicians and other scenery munchers dive for cover as our fists send thunder rolling across the lot. I get a good uppercut to Negator’s chin and those glowing eyes roll up to irradiate the inside of his skull for a moment or two before he gets me in a weird grapple, turns and tosses me like a midget across the stage and into more of the set, the background in fact, which blows a fuse and a huge part of the contraption piles down around me, me with my hands up over my head and sorry to say actually laughing as this carefully-scripted contrivance caves in on itself.

  Negator tries stalking me down and I unleash the output of a small coal-fired reactor and he collapses in a stinking puddle, whereupon I walk swaggering across the ruined set and put my boot on his steaming shoulder and do the Rocky thing, grinning for the cameras I assume should still be rolling. I have no idea if they can make something of this take or not, but the director isn’t so dim as to miss the opportunity and the delectable Cuban girl is all but thrust into the middle of the carnage, her inexplicably attached hamburger sufficiently mauled that the French guy must need to change trousers by now.

  “Z-Zephyr, you’ve saved the day,” the dark-haired hottie manages.

  This much of the script I can remember because it made such little sense. I grin wolfishly, dip the girl quickly for a deep snog and then, as she rights herself, flustered at my improv skills no doubt, I snatch the cheeseburger from her grasp and wink.

  “You must’ve read my mind,” I say and snap into the burger.

  No-one yells “Cut.” I gather this is because it was said thirty seconds ago, though the principal cameras kept rolling as they do. I wipe grease from my chin and my leather sleeve sticks to the model’s bare midriff and the people on the set may be staring at me like I am the reincarnation of Hitler or something, but god damn it is good to be alive.

  Behind me, Negator flops over like a shark with its fins cut off. I catch Janice’s horrified gaze and I give her my best leer, the incandescence of my own power confusing the poor lass probably, hard to interpret whether I am a god walking the earth or perhaps the most crazed and misunderstood serial killer the world has ever known, masquerading as a saint. At the moment it is enough to know that she is awed, whatever she might later do with it, and without condescending to slap the silly bitch or reduce myself to the same petty level as her, she now may remember who it is she’s talking to next time she wants to get uppity about scheduling.

  The director steps through the assembled non-players like a man trekking the post-apocalyptic earth. I think there is steam on his glasses. I take another bite of the cold burger.

  “You can use that?” I ask.

  “Uh, maybe. With an edit,” he says. “And some dubbing.”

  “Then we’re cool?”

  “Um.”

  He looks like he might actually say something else, so I cut him off.

  “Cool.”

  Someone conveniently cracks open one of the huge roller doors to what is basically a giant hangar, clearing the smoke created by mine and Negator’s theatrics. I bow my head and toss the remains of the snack onto a nearby trestle and scoot across the room at just half the speed of sound, my running feet lifting off the moment the doors are clear and the crisp afternoon sky presents itself.

  Time to put Mentor to bed as well.

  Zephyr 11.4 (Flashback) “Kinks In The System”

  I SOAR ACROSS the city on an endorphin high, the wind tugging at my grin enough to eventually make me give in, twirling and dive-bombing traffic like a rookie in a cape and bright red jockey shorts outside my long johns. I dodge the E! chopper and emit an electro-magnetic burst astride the Silver Tower that will put poor Chancel’s sensorium in a twist for half-an-hour or so, and a dent in that steady revenue he draws from having all those high-tech gadgets in the building’s crown and glory. Then I wing my way over the water and to Manhattan.

  The ruined island city looks like a movie set, all shattered skyscrapers and rusty girders, except the last time someone tried to use the place for a movie even the great purple patriot Everyman couldn’t defend the crew from mutant night attacks. In the end it was cheaper and almost as effective to film in Reno. Hard to believe our city fathers ever approved the decision to simply put the jewel in New York’s crown into the dustbin of history, but ’84 was a hell of a year and the recovery bill alone was in the gazillions. The giant coastal barricades with their immortal orange placards are an eyesore beyond all proportion, but I guess it’s not many New Yorkers who get the view I do when I head this way.

  And so in the shadows of our great new metropolis, a cancer flourishes.

  I have crossed paths with Mentor more times than I care to remember. Actually more times than I can remember, which is largely his doing. A psychic genius, it’s just the downside to his great mutation that keeps him from doing what he’s tried to do in earnest three or four times, which is taking over the planet. The only one to actually ever come anywhere close to him in terms of sheer mind-controlling gall is, in fact, my father, John Lennon the Preacher Man. The irony. She drips.

  I keep up high on my first approach. Like most great mentalists, Mentor keeps a psychic net around his domain and I am safer at the fringe, at least initially. Perhaps it is because I am so concerned about losing my mental reins that the Stinger missiles somehow manage to sneak up on me, snaking as they do from one of the innumerable wreck-littered canyons of this once great merchant state.

  A surface-to-air missile travels a hell of a sight faster than you’d reckon. It’s not like in Rambo VII. Sure I can go from zero to Mach three in just a few seconds, but we’re talking momentum, baby. Once those little fuckers are unleashed, well, like Shakespeare’s dogs of war, there’s not much more than a ghost’s chance in hell of doing anything about it.

  There are three of the missiles. Who is supplying the muties with this kind of munitions is a question for later, no matter how irritatingly it dominates my thoughts as I swerve and dive, skating across the water to dislodge the first in an enormous watery hiss, and then plough on the speed to give the second one the flick as its engine cuts out or something – I dunno, it goes tumbling down into one of those aforementioned junk-choked alleyways and explodes like a tac nuke – and then it’s just me and mister three, this thing like a dog with its wet nose up my ass, the scent for real. No matter what trick I try it just keeps on keeping on.

  *

  I DON’T KNOW why I don’t persist
with the speed. It’s as if it isn’t a sufficiently creative solution, although I’m not doing this thing for points. Instead of letting my pace pick up until even the best Soviet technology can’t stay in the race, I try this stupid tactic of a mid-air hairpin turn and all it takes for the missile is a miniscule correction and the fucking thing slams into me and it all goes black for two or three seconds. I come back to awareness with the windshear around me, my leathers in tattered strips and the fast-approaching ground looking less and less like something I once saw on TV in another life and instead a real threat to my livelihood. I didn’t even register the Stinger hitting me – for all I know they detonate on proximity, anyway – though I am aching all over. Fortunately, fresh air is everything my two mothers always said it would be, and I find a few more seconds of aimless flapping is all I need to separate up from down and dream from reality and get my metaphoric fucking boots on.

  My gentlest descent takes me to FDR Drive. At some point, many years ago, someone stacked the dozens of museum piece auto wrecks in a huge, eighty-foot wall, designed I’m sure to try and parcel out and make some kind of sense of at least part of the urban wasteland left behind. On the other side, with the roadway in pieces and grass and even small saplings sprouting across the landscape, it’s a strange feeling. There are gutted wrecks pushed up on the distant sidewalks and the shopfronts are caved in like old men’s faces. Those with grilles in place have been methodically hacksawed or jimmied open over the decades as the city’s most remarkable tenants fossicked for their survival. Like that Cormac McCarthy novel, there’s not much left to salvage in the city except scrap. From the whisperings I’ve heard, it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s not too much longer before Mentor and his freak army find it’s no longer quite so unprofitable or arduous to consider re-examining the Manhattan Problem, as it has become known.