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 b
lows 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 morning, 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.”
I huff and puff for a moment and the big guy says nothing.
“Some kid is dead and I helped kill her and so did you, and we blew my chance to fix everything else in the fucking process,” I say.
“But the world is safe.”
“But the world is safe,” I ape back at him. “You know what, Twilight?”
“What?”
“Fuck the world.”
I shake off his restraining hand and walk away.
A street cleaner turns the corner and spotlights the shadows of our exchange. Damned if I know how, but somewhere I hear a rooster’s call.
Zephyr 9.1 “A Light At The End Of The World”
PUT IT SIMPLY, I don’t know what the fuck I am doing. But I am ravenous.
Hard to believe you’d want to eat when you don’t know if you’re deep in mourning or experiencing the world’s greatest hissy fit. All I know is it’s hours – hours, hell, days – since I ate a proper meal, and since then I’ve had my old powers kick-started and Christ alone knows what my body’s been using for fuel except I feel about ten pounds lighter as I march past the barricaded glass windows of department stores and there’s a light at the end of the world coming from a small Greek diner and I am in through the out door before anyone can say otherwise, propping myself up at the counter in my grimy leathers and goo-spattered tee.
“Coffee?”
“All of it.”
The older woman smiles and starts pouring as I dig through my belt and pockets and have the sinking realization I don’t have any money.
“Fuck.”
“You OK, honey?”
“I’m, uh . . . You better stop pouring. I’m broke.”
The woman only chuckles and finishes what she’s doing.
“You’re Zephyr, right?”
I look away and so do the other fifteen customers on that side of the café. I make a duck face and sigh, hairy forearms resting on the spotless counter and the underside of my reflection sneering up at me.
“Yeah.”
“So sign a few menus for me. Want some eggs?”
“Eggs would be . . . unbelievable.”
“Bacon? Flapjacks?”
“Anything. Please.”
She disappears a moment to convey my order and is back before my face can sink completely into my hands.
“Pretty rough night last night?”
“You wouldn’t believe,” I say.
“Oh, I’d believe.” Again she has that chuckle that would’ve been cute twenty years back. “I live here, remember?”
I nod soberly as if I’ve just received ancestral wisdom and force myself to adopt some kind of composure as well as better posture and sit up, a hand rubbing the frown from my face as I try the too-hot coffee and sigh and spoon in three sugars.
“Thanks,” I say and tip the mug in acknowledgement. “I don’t know how you people do it.”
“What’s that?”
“Live here. Through this craziness. It must drive you. . . .”
“What – crazy?”
“Yeah.”
We laugh. I catch her eye and she winks, amused, flirtatious. I grin and shake my head and she gets the signal and moves off. In seconds there’s a steaming plate with eggs, sausage, hash browns – you name it. When no one’s looking, I pour maple syrup across the whole thing and add pepper and abandon the pretext of being anything other than a wolf as I devour the whole sloppy mess and belch and down my third coffee and pass wind and hang my head, elbows on the bar and the image of dead women in my head.
The city doesn’t even pretend to have been asleep as I step back into the street and a few cars honk me and a pile of newspapers slap down on the corner and there’s a newsstand close by which I mosey over to examine. I’m an unemployed superhero without a tie in the world. I may as well linger over last night’s reviews like any good actor.
But the headline sets me off immediately.
ZEPHYR RETURNS, ANOTHER SEEKER DIES.
The byline?
Nate Simon.
*
I AM IN the air and smashing through the wall of the Post building before I can really think better of it. I know Sal Doro’s office is on the fourth floor, so I go through the window at the end of the hall to the lifts, tipping over a Coke machine and breaking the faucet on the water cooler. Paper cups and cans roll about on the carpet as several reporters dive for cover. I remove myself from th
e indent in the plasterboard and stomp to the next intersection and turn into the main editorial bullpen, not as glamorous as you might expect, a few monitors nailed up high and otherwise a messy sea of cubicles and office dividers and print stations with the big glass boxes of the copy subs and section editors at the far extreme of the building.
More office workers stumble out of my path as I advance up the strip in the middle of the office, bellowing unwisely.
“Nate Simon!”
A biggish guy with a crew cut briefly blocks my path. I introduce him to the photocopier. Close by, one of the over-achievers is snapping away with a digital SLR fast enough there should be smoke coming from it. I don’t care. My thoughts are fixed on the name, the insult, my anger at the whole world descending on one stupid soul who’s gone too far.
“Simon! Nate Simon! Get out here.”
I stop in the middle of the office where the cubicles make way for a long formica trestle. Birthday cards, office noticeboards and a row of framed, crooked, fake front pages are pinned to more carpet-board. There’s a coffee machine and more faxes and photocopiers and a stack of defunct computer parts probably long part of the topography. Letters hang from Christmas tinsel faded from yesteryear, the fringed squares re-arranged to spell DEPARTURE LOUNGE rather than whatever cheery seasonal message once accompanied them.
A woman in a burgundy pencil skirt and pumps is crouched shivering beneath the table. I flip it over, crashing it into more furniture, making her office Darwinism seem as ridiculous as it should be.
“Nate Simon. Where is he?”
“I dunno, mister.”
“Zephyr.”
I whirl, but it’s only Sal. He stands with his hands open, palms indicative of a man trying to talk down a suicide, an unlit cheroot at the corner of his grumpy old mouth that now looks more persnickety than anything.
“Sal. Where is he?”
“What’re you doin’, Zeph? Sheesh. You’re surrounded by the press.”
Zephyr III Page 6
