The Serpent League

by Brendan Walsh

“That won’t happen,” Elder approached from behind. “I know what I’m doing. Don’t you know how many contingency plans I’ve got up my sleeve? I didn’t just whip this up after your son and his ragtag team of weeds beat me in Washington.” He leaned forward and whispered in her ear. “I’ve always had this.”

  She shoved him away and stepped back toward the door. “I can’t believe I once loved you like Gordon did.”

  His smile was instant. “Yes, you can.”

  Elder dusted himself off and straightened his tie. After putting on his bifocals and brushing his dirty blond hair, he threw on the first suit he saw in the closet and made for his business’s exit. But not before giving a passing pause at Mrs. Buchanan’s side.

  “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to have a chat with your husband’s legacy.”

  3

  Hibernation

  Everyone was already settled down on the couch when Patrick, Slate and Lindsey were fetched by Gary. It wasn’t a family sized sofa, so Patrick had to settle for the floor next to Edgar, who clearly would have preferred hanging upside-down over his awkward leaning forward with most of his weight on his unsteady legs. He prayed he wouldn’t need to catch his friend if he stumbled over a wing.

  Gary and Johnny took to the front of the room. A marked up white board stood cryptically between them.

  “What did you find?” Patrick asked. “Did you go through the envelope?”

  The two leaders reluctantly eyed each other.

  “We did.” Gary said. “But it wasn’t as informative as we would have hoped.”

  Jane raised her hand, and Johnny called on her.

  “Is there anything at all we can pin on Elder beyond a reasonable doubt?”

  “Let us explain,” Johnny uncapped a black marker and doodled on the board on his side. “Just to clarify everything for those who are just joining us; looking at you, Lindsey.”

  She replied: “Hey I’ve been with you guys for nearly-”

  “It goes like this:” Gary began constructing a series of circles. The words in between spelled so many sentences that it was hard to read anything. “We were at the party in San Francisco: Me, Patrick, Slate, and Johnny. We get into a drunken brawl and discover Black was murdered, a crime which we took the fall for and Elder sent his goons out to try to spook us, all the while knowing very well what we were up to, because he had a hapless sleeper agent.”

  Everyone looked at Edgar. He guiltily shook his head away.

  Johnny continued writing on his side. “Not your fault, dude. Elder had some kind of comic book tech in your brain. Anyway, we meet our blood-sucking friend and we did everything we could to find out who was framing us. Then we found out that Gary and Patrick’s parents were somehow involved in the mad scientist’s evil plan, and their deaths, which were both under uncertain circumstances, certainly were a result of their involvement in the plan.”

  “So,” Gary drew straight lines through large bubbles on the board. “James Frost, Gordon Buchanan, Samuel Elder, Jefferson Black, and the late Grant Patane are all connected.”

  Slate squirmed in his seat. “We know this already. What did the envelope tell us?”

  Gary resumed. “It told us we have to add another player to the list.” He circled another region of the board, pinning a cutout photo in the middle. “President Gregory Gear.”

  “No way!”

  “This is juicy.” Johnny drew several more lines. The board was now a giant game of connect the dots. “About fifteen years ago when the President was still a congressman, he spent much of his time representing the interests of Elder Inc. A report in this envelope details a proposal made by Elder and his friends. In it, he begs his favorite congressman to try to take his proposal to the highest level of government clearance there is. We don’t know if Elder ended up doing anything with it after, because Congressman Gear ended up refusing it.”

  Patrick sat up. “So what made Elder think that an average congressman could have access to that kind of intelligence?”

  “The report was an eye opener. Anyone in the upper echelons of our government would definitely make some moves if they knew something like this existed.” Gary replied.

  “What did the report say?” Patrick asked.

  “I’m not going to get too into the science stuff because I don’t understand any of it, but it went graphically into Elder’s plan to assist the US military in their wartime efficiency by constructing armies of, you guessed it, super-intelligent animals.”

  Patrick grumbled to himself. Despite all the lines and graphs that were constructed on the board, he knew vital information was still missing.

  “We need to think about the timeline here.” he started. Patrick rose from his seat and drew a long line on the bottom of the board from side to side. “Gary, how long ago did your father die?”

  “Fifteen years.” he replied.

  Patrick made a note of that on the board.

  “That was the same time this proposal was sent to Gear. And according to my research, that was also around the time that Elder’s wife and daughter died.”

  Smirking nods of understanding were worn on everyone in the room.

  Jane snapped her fingers. “And his experiments are all about making new life.” She paused. “Do you think he was going to use his technology to save his family?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You remember what he told us when we were imprisoned? His micro technology created the cure for every genetic disease. Maybe his family was dying of something that it could have cured.”

  Gary rubbed his jaw. “That makes a lot of sense. Do we know how they died?”

  “It’s all hush hush.” replied Patrick. “I couldn’t find that information anywhere, even with Edgar at my side.” The bat nodded in agreement.

  “That’s something we’re going to probably need to find out,” Lindsey said. “Because that’s not all that’s secret. Patrick and Gary’s fathers both died in sketchy situations.”

  Jane stood up to look at the board’s tiny writing. “There are things Elder still wants nobody to know about. In order to stop him once and for all, whatever his new agenda has morphed into, we need to figure out exactly how all this started.”

  “So where does President Gear’s connection to this project start and end?” asked Patrick.

  Gary stood there silently and clapped the cap of his marker back on.

  “We don’t know.” he said.

  “Figures.” Slate grunted. “What were the odds that Gear would give us incriminating evidence against himself?”

  Johnny replied. “Unlikely. But we do have one lead so far.” He turned over to the shuffled contents of the envelope, choosing several up at random. “Much of these documents don’t relate to each other in any obvious way, except for their connection with Elder Inc. However, there is one name that is signed on the bottom of each one of these slips.”

  He handed a different one to each person there. He gave a plain white, professional looking business report to Patrick who didn’t bother to read it. His eyes shifted immediately down to the bottom of the form to where Johnny had circled a simple phrase in black ink.

  It was three simple words. Patrick didn’t know why but the phrase nearly made his tendons twitch.

  The Serpent League

  Below the ominous signature was a stamped image of a coiled python with its jaws opened wide. Two giant fangs, all black with ink, looked like they were prepared to strike him out from the page.

  “The Serpent League?” he said quietly.

  “Spooky, right?” Gary nodded. “So this ‘Serpent League’ must be some kind of group involved in the genesis of this project. And I’m thinking we could make some good guesses as to who knows what exactly it is.”

  “Do we think there’s a chance this organization is still active?” Lindsey asked.

  “Not sure, but if they weren’t before, they’re probably active again right now. Elder certainly been trying to churn out another bi
g project, and the president gave this to us for a reason.”

  “We should do some digging with Edgar tomorrow.” Johnny yawned loudly. “Because I’m getting tired.”

  “What? I thought we were nocturnal heroes?” Patrick teased. “This is noon for us.”

  Slate smiled. “All the best heroes are active at night. You got Green Arrow, Daredevil, Moonknight, Batman-.”

  “And we’re the Batmen, obviously.” Gary added.

  “You guys,” Slate continued. “When we get out of this mess we can put together one killer cosplay.”

  “Imagine it!” Lindsey laughed. “We can provide the best Man-bat Comic Con has ever witnessed.” She gestured over to Edgar.

  Patrick turned his head to their flying pal. Based on the neutral expression from his jaw to his steady eyes, he either didn’t understand what they were talking about or did and wasn’t amused by it.

  “We should already start planning this now.” Jane continued with a chuckle. “I reserve Black Canary.”

  “No way,” Lindsey protested. “I had Black Canary planned since October. Slate was going to be Oliver Queen.”

  “So?”

  “We’re a couple, and so are they in the comics, ergo, you choose someone else.”

  “Has anybody called Iron Man yet?” Johnny asked.

  “He’s Marvel, Johnny.” Patrick replied. “We’d stick with a DC theme of course.”

  Gary sniffed the air, something strange started filling the room. “What is that smell?”

  “Oh no!” Johnny started to sprint out of the room. “I forgot about the food! Don’t worry I’ll save it!”

  It was at the time when everyone was amusedly watching Johnny sprint away like he was being pursued by a cheetah when everyone noticed Edgar was no longer in the room. Patrick’s head began to feel weighty with guilt as he rubbed a palm through his hair. He felt he should have known better than the childish remarks everyone was making.

  “How did none of us see him leave?” Slate asked.

  Lindsey paused, struggling to make any string of words. “He knew we were kidding around right? We weren’t being mean, were we?”

  “I don’t know.” Patrick said solemnly. “It’s a mistake to think his mind works anything like ours do. He’s not human. We need to remember that.”

  “What do we do?” asked Slate.

  “Should we find him?”

  Patrick hunched uncomfortably in his seat and rested his chin over his palm. “I think we should wait and enjoy some food. He needs time to himself, hopefully that makes him comfortable.”

  “I’ll talk to him.” Gary blurted, seemingly without a thought.

  Everyone looked up at him. Gary was still standing by the white board, awkwardly fiddling with the marker between his fingers. The quick jitter of his lips showed he was debating the idea in his head.

  “Are you sure about that?” Patrick asked.

  Gary’s eyes raised from the ground to meet Patrick’s, and a warm smile lined his lips. “For sure.” he started for the same doorway Johnny had just bolted through. “Save me a portobello sandwich, won’t you? I’ll be right back.”

  The weight of the back door caught Gary off guard. He awkwardly fumbled himself to the building’s backyard, his trench coat still slumped on his shoulder. He had lived in California his whole life. The only time he ever saw real snow was on the peaks of distant mountains. He often fantasized about snowboarding or throwing snowballs at friends, but the snow wasn’t so charming when it was below freezing and you didn’t have mittens or an insulated coat.

  He finished sliding his arms into the long sleeves of his rain coat and dug his cold hands in his pockets. The cold wind blew his floppy black hair to the side. He tried to fix it with a shivering hand but it was pointless.

  Edgar was sitting, as best as he could, around a pile of grass that the snow had left untouched. He didn’t seem to give the human any mind, but Gary knew he was aware of him before he opened the door.

  “Hey, buddy.” Gary said innocently.

  There was no reaction from the bat. Gary approached softly until his was only a few feet from Edgar’s shoulder.

  “Look, about anything we said in there, it was all just stupid fun.”

  The bat gave him a quick sneer. Irritation shown in his eyes.

  Gary momentarily felt helpless. “Boy, I could really use a smoke.” He took out a lighter and half empty pack of Camels, and set one ablaze on his lips. “I haven’t had one of these in a week.”

  He didn’t know what to say. What kind of thing could he say to speak to a unique creature like Edgar? He could tell that his friend was more sad than angry or irritated, so he wasn’t going to go back inside until he knew everything was resolved, even if it meant getting minor frostbite. He turned to the only medium of therapy that ever helped him growing up.

  “I’m not a psychologist, or a…chiroptologist, am I saying that right?”

  Edgar gave him an unamused squeak.

  “Sorry, irrelevant. What I was going to say was...” He cautiously paused, reciting something in his head. “I remember you looking through Gordon Buchanan’s big book of fairy tales. You know, the one you gave to me to read?”

  His question earned a nod of recognition from his winged friend.

  “I don’t know how much of it you read but I came across this story about a poor girl in Africa. She and her family were so poor. They lived in a cheap small house that would fall apart every now and then, and the family would all have to help put it back together. Anyway, she loved running. Since she didn’t have much to amuse herself with it became her main source of entertainment. Soon enough she became the fastest pair of legs in her village.”

  Gary noticed Edgar squinting his eyes at him, as if to ask him ‘What is the point of this?’

  “I promise there’s a reason I’m telling you this. So one day, to boost community spirit, some neighboring villages wanted to have a race to see who had the fastest runner. The winner would be graced by the leader of local communities with enough food to last a family a week. The big day comes and the girl is so excited. She ran as fast as she could, but was beaten by an older boy in the race. She was devastated. Her family was never going to be well off, and her dream of being the fastest was over.” Gary was so busy talking that he forgot about his cigarette. He gave it a few slow puffs before continuing. “But shortly afterwards, a charity group from the US came and provided clean water, clothes, and food to all the people of her area. She didn’t have to worry about not providing for her family anymore. Her village was lucky enough to receive the attention that she got when there were others somewhere else that were suffering. So, she knew that now, it didn’t matter if she even had won.”

  Edgar blinked a few times. He looked away, towards the ground between his feet and tucked his legs under his wings. Gary knew that the bat understood something about that story better than he could.

  “I’m not sure if the moral has to do with communal glory over the finite dreams of the individual, or if the story is trying to encourage us to try to make everyone happy. Either way, I do know this:”

  He took another few steps towards Edgar. When he didn’t show any objection, Gary wrapped an arm over his neck.

  “It isn’t so black and white. The gang may be a group of people all sharing one mutual goal, but that doesn’t mean we will put aside our own happiness if it means one of us gets to remain miserable. I usually think of my life as crappy but I could never begin to fathom what it’s like to be you. You surely have a harder time being happy than all of us combined. I understand that we are all you have, and that sucks. But let me tell you this, I am happy this whole Raven Gang got started, not counting all the awful things that have happened of course.” He back away from Edgar’s side and shifted himself to the left. He started to gently rub the back of his head. “I’ve become a better person out of this experience, and so much of that is your fault.”

  Edgar coughed out a few quick high sounds.
It was the same from when he scared Slate at the library. He was laughing. Gary couldn’t stop himself from giggling too. “It sounds bad when I put it that way, but you know what I mean. You are valued here. And all of us, together, are going to get out of this, and you can stay with us if you want.”

  The bat didn’t even give Gary another second to say anything. He promptly pounced out of his sitting position and pinned Gary to the snowy ground. Before Gary could pick himself up Edgar glossed his cheek over with his tongue like a giant Great Dane.

  “Ew...God, Edgar!” He grimaced and swiped the slobber off his face. “That’s it, I change my mind. You’re done here.” Seeing the new look on Edgar’s face, he couldn’t help but start laughing.

  The bat countered by digging his pink snout all over Gary’s coat. Gary playfully slapped him away while scrubbing the snow off the bottom of his pants. “I hope I helped you. Whether you like it or not, I’m going to be there to cheer you up every time.”

  Gary rubbed his freezing hands together. They had started to turn numb in the tussle with Edgar. “I’m going back to where there is warmth and food. Don’t stay out here too long. I can’t have you deciding to hibernate or something.”

  With a fleeting thumbs up, Gary Frost went back indoors, leaving the door propped open for Edgar.

  He didn’t follow Gary inside. There were still things he wanted to clear up in his head.

  Edgar hopped back over to the warmest stop to sit. It was an awfully uncomfortable position, and he wondered how the gang could tolerate it on the couch. Even with the obvious anatomy differences between he, a bat, and them, the humans, sitting was a position that didn’t offer much freedom. There wasn’t much you could do with your limbs in those cases.

  When he first arrived outside he looked around for a tree with thick enough branches to hold his weight, but there were none. Having been in his current physical form for so long he had gotten skilled at knowing which branches would hold simply by eyeing them. It was heavy times like these that he longed for another chance at his previous life.