Zephyr Box Set 1

by Warren Hately

  “Why don’t you just change into a cat already and stop fucking around?” I snap.

  “I’m just . . . don’t pressure me, Zephyr. Remember what you promised.”

  I grunt. My stomach rumbles. I fuelled up at a nori roll cart in Jackson, but I need more carbs given I haven’t slept in about sixty hours.

  “You better be right about this,” I warn. “I’m not fronting the media for you if it turns out this is just Raptor’s mom’s house or something.”

  We move to the edge of the ten-storey tenement and peer across to the top floor of the building opposite. Loud ghetto music thumps out, and true to Gary’s word, I catch a glimpse of gang-bangers in urban get-up toting Uzis and smoking joints as they patrol the roof and the lit-like-a-disco top floor of the apartment building.

  “So what’s the muscle-man for drug-runners need with a psi-proof helmet?”

  “He said something about trouble with some vigilante with mental powers. . . .” Gary says while scanning the other site.

  “So you’ve actually aided and abetted a villain against a fucking superhero?”

  “We didn’t really talk shop for long,” Gary snaps. “The guy has a Paralympics-grade lisp.”

  “Hey, don’t diss the Paralympics.”

  “Fuck you, Zephyr.”

  “Hey, fuck you, Ménage-a-Trois Boy.”

  Gary uses his famed powers to shake that one off.

  “What’s the plan with these creeps?” he barks.

  “Yeah I’ve been thinking about that,” I say with mock seriousness. “Just like in the good old days, while you change into a honey glider or a bat or a chimpanzee and sit here eating your own goddamn dick-cheese, I’ll go over there with my superpowers and kick their heads in. Solid?”

  “Jesus, you’re such an ass, Zephyr. What is it about personal growth that is so alien to you?”

  “If you are an example of personal growth, Gary, pass me the fucking shotgun. I’m ready to die.”

  I give him a dose of my moonlight-chiseled profile and suss the enemy fire escape over yonder as a big black guy in clown make-up, a red jacket and unlaced trainers clambers out carrying an honest to God WW2-era Browning Automatic Rifle.

  I push off.

  Zephyr 11.12 (Flashback) “Attack Formation Delta”

  SUFFICE TO SAY the bad guys find themselves caught in a proverbial contradiction. Having spent God-knows how long preparing for a possible siege by enemies or maybe even street-level punk heroes with psychic attacks, they are at the same time completely unprepared when I rocket across the gap between the buildings, hitting the big fat guy with my best cannonball and ploughing into the window and on into the small-time cartel’s lair, doped-up girls and startled ethnic youths in misappropriated streetwear flying left and right as I deposit BAR-boy in a tangle of stolen electrical goods and snap the big rifle in half over my knee.

  I turn slowly, surveying the scene as the gangstas pick themselves up, plaster and broken glass and tipped over furniture and a weird assortment of stuffed toys everywhere, a fine mist of cocaine and ganja in the air, the girls with freakshow make-up and the guys, several whom I appear to have caught mid-blowjob with baggy pants down, their expressions of surprise only slightly less lurid than the juggalo paint they wear on their faces.

  “Hey, what’s happening?” I say, tossing aside the pieces of snapped weapon. “Did I interrupt something?”

  A bruiser still with his pants on growls a command as he waves a white-gloved finger at me.

  “Kill him!”

  Several of these closest goons whip out Tec-9s and I guess they expect me to dive for it or something, because they hesitate about opening up when I simply stand there exhaling with a mild frown, glancing aside to see if any of these stupid girls are going to get cut down in the crossfire.

  “That’s right,” I say amid their hesitation. “The pointer finger goes on the trigger. Like this.”

  And I point and there’s a flash and the lightning bolt puts their leader into the dent in the wall next to where the guy from the fire escape is now laying, breath coming in whimpering, I-just-got-torn-a-new-asshole gasps, blood running from his nose from what I’d guess is punctured lungs (but hey, I’m no doctor).

  I move faster than they can track, grabbing two girls by their upper arms and slinging them to safety – even if it does mean they smack heads together and go down in a screaming heap – as the 9mm bullets crackle through the big living room expanded in days past by creative use of a sledgehammer. Once the girls are down I actually do that cool thing where I run up the closest wall and come down behind one of the gunmen and karate-chop him across the back of the neck. Unfortunately, there’s no one here to film how awesome I look pulling that move and it’s probably a bit much to expect the cannon-fodder here to appreciate it.

  That guy goes down on his keister and the one next to him turns, red-painted mouth agape, so I put my fist through his jaw like he’s one of those ping-pong ball-swallowing sideshow clowns I hate so much, and the hardware goes spinning off into space.

  I pour on the super-speed I save for special occasions because frankly it leaves me pretty wrung-out, moving from juggalo to juggalo who stand in almost suspended animation, pulling the guns from their hands and silencing their attacks with elbow and knee strikes. In about two seconds flat the room is quiet except for the rattling breaths of the unconscious and the cries of terrified hoes hiding behind the upturned sofas.

  “OK, I’m looking for Raptor.”

  As the deafening non-responses continue, it occurs to me maybe I should’ve asked this before knocking everyone out. quietly I curse and move from that room and into the next, the need for all the plush toys laid bare by the long tables with doggie bags of coke and teddy bears laid out like Santa’s pathologists are cranking up for autopsies after a massacre in Toyland.

  A scared-looking guy pops up from behind a stack of boxes, the Uzi in his hand shaking like a kid just pretending to spray caps. I scowl and Taser him and he goes down in an explosion of hot bowels. Another guy with a riot shotgun storms through a door and in the same move I zap him too. He goes down with the shotgun going off into the ceiling.

  *

  I KNOW THERE’S more goons upstairs, but figure they can come to me if they want to get fried that badly. With the initial sugar rush of taking out the living room, I’m literally starting to think about my lack-of-stealth approach when there’s a structural groaning noise overhead and I look up to see cracks racing across the ceiling and then an honest-to-fuck elephant crashes down across from me.

  Gary rolls in the plaster and detritus and stands awkwardly. He’s gone Asian for the occasion, presumably to give bad guys less ear to hang onto when trying to deal with his unique brand of stampede attack. Me personally, I prefer the hippopotamus, a far more lethal African who also shits like a wood-chipper, a fine spray of the stuff everywhere. Messy.

  The elephant turns and looks at me with a sarcastic eyebrow lift. I resist the urge to Tase him. As an elephant, Gary’s far more sympathetic. I motion to the two-foot wide doorway ahead of me instead.

  “After you, stealth bomber.”

  As the elephant shuffles around the room, ears wiggling, dislodging more dust and pieces of crap, I note the possibly deceased form of another juggalo in the rubble where he landed. I wince. Gary’s been doing his “attack formation delta,” which basically means flying unnoticed as a bat until over his target and then turning into a much bigger and gnarlier animal about fifty feet in the air. It also magically creates lawsuits. I think Gary’s in a place where he no longer cares. Me, I figure it’s not my problem.

  The elephant evaporates in a swirl of grey mist and Gary rolls briefly nude across the scene, throwing himself forward like the primate he instantly resembles. When he turns back, he’s a silverback gorilla with a touch of ginger in his genes. Can’t shake it, I guess. The Ginger Ninja. I think briefly about trying to sell Gary on the name and realize it’s probably not the time. The guy w
ith the pair of Glocks making like he’s Tupac back in action adds to the distraction.

  “Hey motherfu –”

  Gary turns whip-fast and his gorilla fist sends the clown into the door frame and on into Never Never Land.

  “The ape’s back in action,” Gary grunts in a much deeper and slightly occluded voice.

  “No monkeyin’ around,” I add with a certain droll enthusiasm.

  “Gorillas aren’t –”

  “Fuck off, you douche. I know that.”

  Beyond the door lies an apartment stairwell, the concrete littered and stained from a few years’ neglect and illicit drug traffic. I peer that way and nod my approval for the gorilla to go ahead. Gary gives a grunt and pees near my boots, probably a more effective way of getting me to take the lead than I’d really want to admit. Snarling still, I start up the stairs vaguely wondering why I should be bothering with the roof.

  I turn back to explete this to my erstwhile teammate and there’s a sudden rush and pain across my kidneys. I clutch myself and lose my position on the stairs, thuddering down the concrete as someone who resembles the green Power Ranger cartwheels over the railing and lands a series of kicks against Gary’s head and shoulders. The ape catapults back into the crime scene we’d just departed, leaving me to dry-heave in all the dust and hairballs and crap as I try to light the prancing little fucker up, who I have to assume is Raptor.

  He’s quick. Caged lightning crackles over the iron rail and attaches itself to an ancient light fitting that explodes, raining sparks and toxic gases over the scene like fairyland fireworks. Raptor himself is a blur, faceless wearing the helmet that brought me here. A small but iron-hard fist catches me upside the head, strong enough that my skull bounces back off the stairwell wall in a puff of plaster dust.

  “Fucker!”

  Again I try the blitzkrieg attack, unaware as Gary throws himself like a hairy human (or should that be primate) cannonball back into the stairwell and directly into harm’s way. He makes a noise like a microwave burrito might if it had a soul. The lightning makes his hair stand on end that would ordinarily have me doubled over in laughter if I weren’t so fucking perturbed by the super-fast little green-skinned snot-rag who backflips over me, slashing me across the cheek in the process.

  I turn, pouring on what little superspeed I have left, and throw my whole fist and shoulder into a building-wrecking punch that catches the little queef in the middle of the chest and slams him into the cinder-block wall. There’s a crunching noise – several crunching noises in rapid succession, in fact – and with a wheezy dollop, Raptor slides down the wall to the ground and his liquid metal helmet peels open and shrinks down until it is just a metal band about his throat.

  Reptilian eyes look at me. Hell, reptilian everything looks at me. I not so much sense as smell Gary lumbering in from behind as Raptor catches me in that yellow-eyed gaze of his.

  “Watch out!” Gary yodels.

  I move aside (frankly it’s more out of irritation with Gary crowding me than any effort at self-preservation) as Raptor hawks a foul-looking loogie that strikes Gary fair in the middle of the face.

  I growl and go to backhand him, but the third nailed hand attached to the elastic reptile tail I hadn’t yet noticed catches me by the wrist and next thing I know I’m push-pulled into another intimate moment with the masonry. I spit plaster and chips of concrete from my bleeding mouth as Raptor turns upside down and scales the wall and I only just manage to grab him in time by the tail.

  “Not so fast!”

  I yank and Raptor yowls and comes crashing to the ground, turning whip-fast and delivering a series of kung fu kicks to my legs and stomach that level me, but I retain my grip, Raptor twisting and rolling over me until he’s straddling my chest and he makes that disgusting noise again and fwoopt. I try not to inhale, eyes squeezed shut as I thrust out my other hand and my aim is true, grabbing Raptor by the collar and pulling hard enough that the metal band comes free.

  It’s just as well. It’s only a second or two more before the acid kicks in.

  Zephyr 11.13 (Flashback) “A Creature of the Old World”

  LOOKING BACK, APART from it making me super-vulnerable to further attacks, if I could bottle Raptor’s spit I think I could put on a pretty good party for the superhero fraternity. As I’ve whined a thousand times, there’s a lot of quality drugs and most the booze on the planet that has zero effect on me. Not so for Raptor’s throaty little home brew, which barely entered my system before I throw myself headlong into joining Gary in a crazy, all-out mindfuck of a session.

  That gangster crib becomes our demented playpen. We howl, minds bouncing off the blood-spattered, dented walls, those juggalos who can drag themselves out of there doing so in fine order. I can’t say Gary and I bond. God knows, it’s a unique experience. Raptor’s toxins wrap their gnarly little fingers around our brain-stems and squeeze – squeeze like a motherfucker – but in the end, Gary is Gary and I’m me. It is daylight when I come to, sprawled beneath a bullet-riddled grand piano I can’t remember even seeing under a painter’s tarp in one of the side rooms, one of my boots missing, pants stinking of sweat and Gary’s piss. The interloper himself is long gone. I find my boot in another room, a smiley face painted in some departed ho’s lipstick on the toe. My mouth feels like I’ve had the builders in. My eyes are glued shut in what I hope is just the drug-induced sleep deprivation.

  And I have the helmet.

  The metal band fixes about my throat like a bad-ass dog collar.

  Now I am ready for two things: kicking ass and taking names.

  First things first, though – breakfast.

  I wash my face and armpits in a bathroom ripped straight from a Bosnian war movie. The cuts are now scabs on my face. I have a tiny packet of KAAS healing cream in my so-called utility belt and I dab it on, pulling all those faces most of us won’t admit to making in the mirror and probably looking more like the Indian from the Village People than the tough-guy superhero the world knows and … well, that some love.

  The gang hang-out is quiet as a tomb. I guess I’ll never know what Raptor’s deal was or why he feared a psychic intruder. I don’t think Menagerie Man and I could be mistaken for that. There’s a pile of what look like animal droppings on the living room floor that I’ll take as Gary’s farewell. He confessed to me in those bleary hopeless hours that he could only function sexually while in animal form. Poor bastard, but I hope he keeps his distance.

  I move to the shattered fire escape and out, squinting against the daylight brightness of the city, life in full swing, the distant zoo noises of taxicabs, ambulances dopplering, traffic, people engaged in life and commerce.

  Up in the air, a freezing rain paints a different picture. The city seems calm and ordered, a facsimile, more like a cheap tourist painting than the real thing. Disheveled as I am, when I drop to a Mickey Ds in Grant and gorge myself on a lunch and two breakfasts, the stunned and disarmingly coquettish young girls at the counter refusing to give me the bill, and I feel as much a part of the city as I ever have. I sit eating, wolfing the ammonia-rich carbs down with only my reflection and the muted teenagerly giggles for company, trying not to make too much of a serious study of the scarred and stunted-looking shade staring back at me from the faux polished obsidian.

  “What the fuck would you know?” I mutter to myself.

  I burp. Napkin off. Drain my Coke.

  It’s hammer-time.

  I finger the neck-band and the sinewy metal snaps into place over my face, oddly permeable to my eyesight. Fast food bubbling in the metabolic cauldron of my engine room, I gun from the restaurant and into the sky, angling like a mad scientist’s misguided latest effort for the ruins of Old New York.

  *

  OLD PORRIDGE STOCKINGS already said he was staying at the Rosencrantz. If Central Park and environs is controlled by Freakasaurus, then Mentor is a creature of the old world, which means the southern tip of neglected yonder ruins. I thump down in Battery Park, th
e sphere gone, the carcass of a small jet liner jutting from the ground like an artwork in its place across from the crumbling edifice of the ye olde hotel.

  An eight-limbed mutant skitters spider-like from within the wreck. Ropes and great stands of treacly webbing hang everywhere from the wreck’s undercarriage. I open my palm and there’s a flash and the creature goes down without a cry.

  I start striding for the hotel and a brute the size and color of a small brownstone comes lumbering from a nap under a nearby elm. I turn him into the wreckage of the jet liner and he disappears amid the clanging chaos and I look about for more attackers, but there are none.

  I am dead to the susurrus harp-string plucking of Mentor on my mind. All I can sense is the growing assembly of mutants gathering on the periphery of the park. They agglomerate on the available scenery, dozens of the bastards, a veritable freakshow, one glowing uselessly like a light bulb, another shaking in and out of focus, a half-faced man-child with two left arms and two left legs growling from the pit of his throat as the more adventurous and zealous of Mentor’s followers advance in a broad flotilla around me.

  A girl with hyena muttonchops steps forward and gives a twitchy performance as Mentor overtakes her.

  “Prithee, Zephyr, how can I convenience you?” he asks in her voice.

  “I’ve brought a message,” I say, trusting the helm to shield my lie.

  “From?”

  “You know from who.”

  “Then what is it?” he asks in that stuttering girl-voice.

  “No.” I say. “In person.”

  The hyena-girl gives a glottal laugh.

  “It behooves me to treat anything you might say with skepticism, Zephyr,” Mentor replies. “Here is good enough.”

  I scowl, frustrated, and send a lightning bolt point-blank into her chest. Not a big one, as far as electrocution goes, but not one you’d be putting your hand up to taste in a hurry. The hyena-girl yowls and flips away and there’s a palpable sense of the lost connection to their psychic overlord as the mutant rabble bristle in the bulwarks of the tattered park.