by Baron Sord
WAAAAH! WAAAAH!
Matt stood with his fists clenched at his sides. “Come and get me, you piece of shit! I’ll fuck you up!”
WAAH! WAAAAAAAH!
The train’s brakes engaged and the wheels squealed.
It would never stop in time.
Matt’s entire life didn’t flash before his eyes, but fragments of it did. The first time he kissed Laura. God, she’d been hot then. The first time they’d had sex. She’d been even hotter. Fucking had never been so fucking good like it was with Laura. Another fragment: the day Matt Junior was born. His own son! His own mother-loving son! Matt had been so damn proud. And his daughter Mackenzie. Matt and Mackenzie. Two perfect peas in a pod. Mackenzie’s third birthday and her pointing at all three candles on the cake and counting them out loud, “One, two, tree!” before blowing them out with a giggle.
Matt didn’t wanna die!
He wanted his life back!
He’d do anything to get his family back!
Only thing he had to do was say goodbye to Jack and give up drinking.
That’s what Laura said every fucking time.
“It’s us or the booze, Matt! You can’t have both! Your family or your drinking! You have to pick!”
She was right about that.
Until one second ago, he’d picked wrong every damn time.
WAAAAH WAH! WAAAAAAAAH!
Now he was ready to pick right.
Fuck the booze!
Fuck drinking!
Fuck Jack!
Matt wanted his family back!
He turned to step off the tracks.
Tripped on his drunken fucking legs.
Went down between the rails, hands and knees smashing the rocks and ties.
WAAAAH! WAAAAH!
The train light grew bigger and bigger.
“No!” Matt shouted, pushing up to one shaky foot.
WAAAAAAAAAAH!
“FUCK YOU!” Matt stood up and wobbled.
The world spun around him.
He didn’t know which way was off the tracks.
It didn’t matter.
It was too late.
He screamed, “I WANNA LIIIIIIIIIIIVE!”
WAAAAAAH!
Precious seconds before his death, something slammed him from behind.
Matt went flying, landing safely in the gravel off to the side of the tracks.
Lady Liberty stood between the rails, the light blinding her, her hand up to shield her eyes.
WAAAAAAAAAH!
There wasn’t time for her to move.
The train was going to crush her where she stood.
—: o o o :—
Kristy would’ve shoved the drunk harder, but she hadn’t wanted to hurt him.
So she’d shoved him just hard enough to get him off the tracks.
That action had left her stranded where the man’d been standing.
Now the train was coming for her.
With her enhanced perception and reflexes, it wasn’t an issue.
But that train sure was coming fast, and it was the size of a building.
Instinct kicked in and she lunged away from the train.
Not off the tracks.
Away.
That was split-second instinct for you.
Her sideways dive hurled her down the tracks and away from the train at nearly 30mph.
The train was doing 60mph.
While she was flying sideways, the train’s snow & cow plow hit her feet at a relative speed of 30mph (13.4 m/s).
That was like jumping off a 3-story building.
A 30 foot (9.2 meter) fall.
For the average person, that was a tooth-shattering leg-breaker of a landing.
Not for Kristy.
To her, that was nothing.
For an unnerving split-second, the ground was no longer the ground. The slanted plow on the front of the train was pushing into her feet hard enough to out-shout gravity. Kristy’s instinct this time was to jump upward from the plow, which in this case was sideways with a slight upward angle, but an extreme outward angle that sent her flying off the line of the tracks.
No biggie.
She quickly saw the situation.
Next to the tracks was gravel, then dirt, then trees, then fences.
She was flying high toward the trees.
Trees had branches.
Branches were no different than uneven bars in gymnastics.
Kristy’d always loved the uneven bars when she was a kid. They were one of her strongest events.
Only problem?
She was flying through the air with a horizontal speed of 80mph, which was her jump, plus the train speed, minus a few mph lost to vertical. She didn’t know the numbers, but she felt them.
One thing about uneven bars?
You never flew at them at 80mph.
Not even spinning around the high bar for a big dismount.
Then?
Then you were going maybe 10mph.
Not 80.
Oh, and one other thing.
You didn’t travel 300 feet during a dismount.
300 feet of travel gave you all kinds of time to realize there weren’t any branches in the right places, and you couldn’t see branches because—
Leaves.
No leaves on uneven bars.
Here?
Everything was leaves.
Kristy put her hands out and hoped for the best.
Her forearms slammed into something.
If not for her super-reflexes, she wouldn’t’ve been able to grab the branch with both hands.
Grabbed hard with her leather gloves.
Spun around that branch lightning fast and—!
KRUNCH!
Tore it off the trunk.
She and it went flying forward at a greatly reduced 25mph.
Whipped past more branches, breaking some along the way.
The last one she hit startled her into releasing the broken branch in her hands, and she went spinning around and around until she slammed into the hard-packed dirt beneath the trees 20 feet below.
Landed hard on her back and banged the back of her head on a sharp rock.
What would’ve split open a normal person’s skull and killed them simply knocked the wind out of her.
She got her breath back fast and sat up, rubbing the back of her head.
“That hurt,” she snickered because it sort of didn’t.
Not really. She’d had much worse in gymnastics.
She laughed.
Watched the train shrinking into the dark distance.
Stood up.
Noticed her red, white, and blue Lady Liberty costume was torn in several places from the trees.
“Great,” she grumbled. “Now I have to fix it.”
Good thing she had’t been wearing her cape. It would’ve gotten in the way just now, and probably ruined from the trees. Not that she could’ve worn it. Doug still had it from the other day. She needed to make herself another one. Not to wear while out helping people. She’d need it for the next convention. Today’d been the last day of SDCC. Jeff was already talking about New York Comic Con. That was months away. She’d make another cape by then. And another costume. Obviously, she was gonna be tearing up her “working” costume on a regular basis.
Too bad she didn’t have her own seamstress.
At least Kristy could sew.
She saw the drunk guy tripping along beside the tracks.
He looked really drunk.
Kristy checked to make sure her blue masquerade mask was still on. It was. She walked over to the drunk, crossing over the tracks along the way.
“You okay?” Kristy asked.
“Did you save me?” Drunk Man asked.
“Uh huh,” Kristy nodded.
His eyes wide, he said, “Are you an angel?”
“No,” she grinned. “Lady Liberty. What’re you doing out here?”
“I’m drunk,” he nodded sincerely.
�
��I can see that,” she giggled.
“I need to get home and sober up.”
“Where’s home?” Kristy asked.
“I don’t know.”
“What’s your name?”
“Matt.”
“Does it say on your drivers license where you live, Matt?”
“I think so.”
It took Matt a minute to wrestle his wallet out of his pants and show her.
She asked if he lived at the listed address, he did, and she walked him home. It wasn’t far. She helped Matt inside his shabby studio apartment and put him on the bed. Pulled his shoes off, laid him down, and put the blanket up to his chin.
Matt said, “I’m never drinking again. I want my family back.”
“Good,” Kristy smiled. “I might not be here for you next time.”
“I’m done drinking,” Matt said. “I’ll go to AA tomorrow. I swear.”
“I hope so,” Kristy said, truly meaning it.
“They meet at the church around the corner. I never go in. I will now. First thing tomorrow.”
“You do that,” she smiled. “G’night, Matt. Take care of yourself.”
“You too,” he said sleepily, already drifting off.
Outside, Kristy jogged back to her Audi.
Unlike Doug Moore, who was a very linear and logical thinker, Kristy’s regular thoughts tended toward chaotic, vivid, and emotional. When she’d first heard in her mind the plaintive cries of people in trouble on Friday night, and had envisioned a few frightening images, she’d written them off as her vivid imagination and the exhaustion of working Comic Con.
Before that, after dropping off Doug in Bankers Hill Friday afternoon, she’d gone straight back to the convention center to keep working the Crash Comics booth, then to the Eisner Awards after to accept the Russ Manning Promising Newcomer award, then home to sleep, sleep, sleep and do it all again Saturday.
It wasn’t until tonight, Sunday, when the show’d been over for hours and hours, and she’d finally gone home and crashed in bed, that she’d been woken by a nightmare only two hours after going to sleep. It was about some man getting hit by a train in Encinitas, a man who desperately wanted to live.
So she’d put on her costume and driven down from Oceanside to save Matt Harper’s life.
He was the very first person she’d helped by herself since Doug and her’d saved those people in the cars at the convention center on Friday, but Matt wouldn’t be the last by a long shot. She was already sensing another person in trouble and seeing hints of images in her mind as she dropped into her Audi and drove away.
Heading toward the freeway and her next trouble spot, she thought she heard a loud motorcycle rumbling and farting somewhere behind her, but that might’ve been her imagination, and she was too busy thinking about Matt anyway.
If only she’d gotten to the train tracks quicker, things would’ve gone way smoother with Matt, and she wouldn’t’ve ripped her costume. Even a minute earlier, no even half a minute, and she could’ve walked Matt off the tracks instead of what happened. Every second counted when you were saving lives.
Kristy needed something faster than her Audi.
Something that could cut through traffic like a ninja sword.
She had just the thing.
It’d have to wait until tomorrow or the next day because more people needed her help right this minute.
Kristy sped north on the 5 freeway in her Audi, intent on stopping the next problem before it happened. Somewhere in San Clemente.
Trouble never sleeps, or whatever the saying was.
—: Chapter 15 :—
For the rest of Sunday evening, Arnold and I nearly killed ourselves stopping two brutal muggings in South County, a vicious carjacking gone wrong in Logan Heights, and a violent squabble between some hothead and his wife in Imperial Beach that almost went nuclear. If it hadn’t been for Arnold talking the couple down, it could’ve escalated into a murder-suicide. But he could do wonders with his words when my super powers didn’t make a difference.
And that was just the exciting distress calls.
There were numerous other ones not worth mentioning.
Throughout the evening, we stopped for food between calls wherever we could. I was constantly hungry and thirsty. We finally called it a night around 4:30am and headed home, both of us exhausted.
Arnold yawned, “You need to start putting this stuff in your own comic. We’re living the actual superhero life.”
“I know, right?” I smiled. “I just have to find time to write it all down and draw it.”
Back at the house, mere moments after falling into bed, I was asleep. Throughout the night, my dreams were trampled by frightful and vivid nightmares that were not my own, the real-life nightmares of people all over San Diego County and beyond. One nightmare followed on the hooves of another like a galloping army of fiery-eyed war horses, a black cavalry of terror, a procession of thundering pain and misery that blended ceaselessly together.
No matter how hard I tried to help the terrified people in my dreams, my dreaming self was powerless to stop their living nightmares in the real world.
My alarm stabbed me awake on Monday morning.
Time to go back to work testing software at YouDoIt.
I sat up on the edge of my bed and winced.
Note to self: do not fall off a 100 foot cliff the night after getting smashed up in a car crash. That said, it was the perfect excuse to call in sick for work. Didn’t mean I was spending the day in bed. I went into the main house kitchen and dumped a mountain of food down my throat while Arnold ate his breakfast sedately.
He said, “Dude, since your car is wrecked, you want a ride to work?”
I mumbled around a mouthful of food, “I’ll drive you. I need your car today.”
“What for?” Arnold said.
“Helping people.”
“Don’t you have to work?”
“I have to help people. Wanna help?” I offered a scowling smile.
Arnold rolled his eyes, “I would, but freaking Gabe. I’ve still got deadlines.”
“It’s cool,” I said. “I’ll handle things.”
“Okay, but come get me after work so I can help tonight.”
“Yeah,” I grumbled.
After breakfast, I drove him to the front gates outside the massive SPAWAR complex where he worked. It was across the railroad tracks near the San Diego Airport.
Minutes after driving away, I focused on the distress calls. At first, they were hard to hear. I cured that with a dozen doughnuts from Donut Star. The sugar brought the red devil bats of distress flapping in with a vengeance. Fortunately, there were fewer emergencies in the daytime and they tended to be less violent, which was a relief.
Mostly, I prevented accidents.
Saved an old woman from getting run over by a car while she was crossing the street. After, she thanked me profusely.
Prevented a young woman from slipping and falling down the staircase outside her apartment building. She was wearing high heels and would’ve broken her leg. Didn’t help she had her nose in her smart phone while rushing down the stairs. I caught her when she fell. When she took her nose out of her phone and saw me, her eyes lit up with desire. I set her down and she thanked me too. She was cute and I considered asking her out, but changed my mind when I saw she had a ring on her finger.
Stopped an old man from overdosing on the wrong heart medication. Turned out he couldn’t read the writing on his prescription bottles without his magnifying glass, which he couldn’t find without his glasses, which he also couldn’t find. But he could find the door when I knocked. I helped him find everything and take the correct meds. Not only did he thank me, he gave me a jar of strawberry preserves he said he’d made himself. Out in the car, I clawed strawberry jam out with my fingers, eating like a starving caveman and licking my fingers after. You better believe that brought on a fresh wave of distress calls. Sugar definitely agitated the red devil bats and h
eightened my senses like nothing else.
I handled another ten distress calls by the time lunch rolled around.
And that was for starters.
It was like that all day.
I had to admit, if I could’ve gotten paid to do this for a living, I would have gladly quit my job at YouDoIt. Sadly, after ten hours of helping those in need, I had zero dollars and zero cents to show for it. Problem was, I still needed to scare up enough cash to buy a replacement phone. Worse, I had racked up a $75 food bill along the way today, and had paid cash to gas up Arnold’s Prius. No, I never had time to stop and charge it. At any rate, altruism didn’t come cheap. On the plus side, I had earned about a million bucks worth of gratitude, and that was priceless.
Around 7 o’clock, I drove to SPAWAR and picked up Arnold.
“Drive,” he groaned as he fell into the car, his clothes wrinkled like he’d slept in them. “If they know I’m leaving this early, they’ll send out the Navy SEALs to track my ass down.”
“You up for another night of saving lives?”
“I need a nap first.” Arnold reclined his seat all the way and closed his eyes. Within seconds he was snoring.
We drove two blocks to the Lucha Libre Taco Shop and parked. “We’re here.”
“Huh?” Arnold snorted awake.
“I said, we’re here.”
“Yuh.” Eyes half closed, Arnold rolled out of the car and fell onto the sidewalk with a sleepy grunt.
“Maybe I should take you home, Arn.” I wasn’t nearly as tired as he was.
“Nope!” Arnold pushed himself to standing. “Not a chance! I’m coming with! The food will energize me!” After crossing Washington Street, Arnold put on a black ski mask and pulled it down over his face.
I asked, “Is that the mask you ordered Saturday night?”
“No. I got it from Dick’s on my lunch hour.”
“Ah. You should probably take it off before we go inside.”
“No way! Put yours on.”
“What? No, Arnold! I’m not wearing a ninja mask into Lucha Libre. Take your mask off. You look like you’re going to rob the place.”
“We get the Luchador discount if we wear masks. Put yours on.”
“We’re not Mexican wrestlers. And that’s not a Lucha mask.”
“Don’t be such a Rules Nazi. If I say it’s a wrestling mask, it’s a wrestling mask. You watch. They’ll give me a discount. You too. If you wear yours.”
