by James Maxey
Pit rubbed his eyes, trying to get rid of the dancing spots. "Christ almighty," he grumbled. "You'd think I'd of learned by now to keep my eyes closed."
Sunday laughed, her voice only a few feet away. "My father told me you were a slow learner."
When Sunday vaporized a human being completely, it was a curiously soft sound, almost like a feather pillow being tossed onto a bed, a gentle "fumph."
Fumph. Fumph. Fumph. Fumph. And maybe a few he'd missed over the girl's shrieking.
He finally got his eyes working. The room was a lot emptier. The cinder block walls were painted with sooty human shadows, men running, mostly.
Root was still alive, on his knees, both hands missing. His eyes had burst, leaving a trail of red and white goop streaming down his cheeks. He was drawing deep breaths and looked like he was screaming, but only gurgles came out.
The girl was still alive. She'd dropped to her hands and knees. Sunday let the plasma surrounding her flicker out. Pit tried not to stare at Sunday's naked crotch, but found he really couldn't help it.
Sunday grabbed the girl by the hair. "Give me the money," she said.
"What?" the girl sobbed.
"The money in your underwear! Give it to me!"
"Oh god don't kill me," the girl whimpered.
"Give me the money!" Sunday screamed.
The girl's hands were shaking so badly she dropped half the bills as she pulled them from her panties. Sunday scooped them into a little pile and counted them, slapping the bills on the worn green felt of the table. Pit could see they were mostly ones.
"Thirty-seven dollars," Sunday said, shaking her head. "You'd sell your body for thirty-seven dollars?"
"No!" the girl protested. "They were just watching! They couldn't . . . you know, touch me for a couple of dollar bills."
"Then for what?" Sunday asked.
The girl sniffled. "I don't know. Maybe a hundred? Maybe fifty?"
Sunday bunched the bills into her fist which suddenly flared, singing the girl's hair. The girl tried to crawl away, but Sunday grabbed her by the face, smearing the dark mascara tracks that ran down her cheeks in an eerie echo of Root's fate.
"I don't know!" the girl cried. "I don't know how much to charge!"
"I'm not quizzing you on the proper fees!" Sunday screamed. Spittle flew from her lips. "No price! No price! No one should be commodity to be bought or sold! I've been fighting since I was no older than you trying to break the world free from its thinly disguised economy of slavery and here you are! Here you are, selling yourself! Why? Why?"
"I've got a little girl at home," the dancer sobbed. "I need money for her."
Sunday slowly released the girl's face.
"Was one of these men the father?" she asked.
"No," the girl said, wiping her snot from her face. "He's my age."
Sunday stared at the black mascara smudges on her fingers. She wiped them on the pool table.
She walked toward Pit. He made a show of hiding his eyes behind his hand as he held her jeans toward her.
"Oh, go ahead and look," she grumbled. "You think I didn't see you staring?"
"Sorry," said Pit.
"You're not sorry." She pulled on her jeans in one fluid motion.
"Naw, I'm not."
She pulled on her sweater without bothering with her bra. She sat on the stool to put her boots on. "I hate all mankind."
"There's always Monkeyland," said Pit.
She gave him a sideways glance, started to say something, then stopped.
Pit looked at Root. He was still breathing, still sitting up, and maybe, against all odds, still conscious."
"You going to put him out of his misery?"
"Not planning on it," she said.
"What about the girl?"
"I don't give a damn what she does," said Sunday, with a dismissive wave.
On hearing this, the girl rolled off the table and crawled toward the door. Sunday zipped up her boots as the girl slipped outside.
"There might be some food in the kitchen," Pit said, going behind the bar. The kitchen was little more than a sink, a microwave, and a small refrigerator. In the fridge, he found a pack of hot dogs. He also found a door to the gravel lot out back, standing open.
"You want a wiener?" he called out to her.
"Since you aren't smart enough for innuendo, I assume you've found hot dogs?"
"Yeah."
"I'm really not hungry now," she said. "We never did ask where we could find a hotel."
"Hey," said Pit, staring at the open door. "Did you kill the guy with the eye-patch?"
"Uhhhh, no. I don't think so. I think he bolted while I was focused on the guy with the gun."
Pit Geek sighed. "I bet he's called the cops by now."
"Why should we care?" asked Sunday. "Let them come."
She shook her head as she stared at the pool table. "Let them send the whole damn army." She looked down at her hands and let twin balls of glowing plasma bubble up in her palms. "I think . . . I think I've crossed a line, Pit."
"How so?" he said, coming back from the kitchen.
"I thought this was war," she said, so softly he could barely hear her. "I thought I was saving the innocent and ignorant masses from the machinations of secretive, powerful men who treated them like animals." She sighed. "But they were animals all along. Mad, bad, dangerous animals who need to be put down."
"Monday really screwed you up," said Pit.
"Monday gave me purpose. Monday gave me hope."
Pit shook his head. "Monday made you think that things were important. But nothing's really important. These folks tonight were just passing time as best they could until the Grim Reaper came for 'em. No one gets out of this world alive, so what's it matter how you spend your days? Just do what you like to do. If these guys liked looking at some girl shaking her ass, and she liked shaking it, why not let them have their fun?"
Sunday rolled the plasma around in her palm as she thought his words over. "That some kind of cowboy philosophy?"
"I dunno where I heard it," said Pit. "Maybe it's in the Bible?"
"I'm fairly certain it's not," Sunday said, chuckling. "Let's get out of here. I've never been so tired in all my life."
They stepped out of the bar and walked toward the Harley. When they were ten feet away, a large man in white tights dropped down from the sky and landed on the bike, flattening it. A cloud of dust rose from the impact. Pit and Sunday stopped dead in their tracks.
The man in white rose from his crouching position in the shallow crater as dust and shreds of pulverized Harley drifted down around him. He was tall and bulging with muscles, with a square jaw and close-cropped ink-black hair that made him look like he'd stepped out of a comic book. There was a large red S in the center of his chest.
"Pit Geek," the man said, in a deep bass voice. "Sundancer. You're under arrest. I'd advise you to surrender. Lethal force has been authorized for your capture."
"You've got us confused with somebody else," Pit said. "We're Devourer and Burn Baby."
"Baby Burn," said Sunday. Then she looked at the big guy. "You found us. Can you catch us?"
The man in white blurred. Before either of them could blink, he'd grabbed Sunday by the wrist.
"Not bad," said Sunday. "But can you hold us?"
Pit remembered to close his eyes this time, but even still the flash felt like lightning burning into the back of his skull. He shielded his eyes with his hands as he carefully opened them. Sunday was nothing but a glowing outline. The ground beneath her bubbled like a pool of lava.
The man in white still had hold of her wrist. Not a single hair on his head was singed.
Pit couldn't be sure, but it looked like Sunday smiled at her captor.
"You're going to be a lot more fun than an army," she said.
I found seventeen bullets. Nine left. Shooting a moving chicken ain't as easy as you'd think.
Chapter Seven
* * *
H
ounded by Heroes
PIT HAD TAKEN a few steps back when Sunday burst into flames. Now he jumped forward, mouth wide open, intending to bite the big man's arm off. However, before he'd closed the gap between them even an inch, he was kicked in the nose by a blue leather boot with thick rubber soles. The boot had come from above and as he hit the ground on his back he found himself gazing up at a woman in a sky-blue flight suit and dark-blue helmet, with her face hidden by a mirrored visor that showed the blood gushing from his nose. There was something dark behind him, and he turned his head to see he'd just missed bouncing his skull off the front tire of a Chevy El Dorado.
Before he could rise, a short black kid in red tights came out of nowhere and jumped on his left arm, pressing Pit's hand to the ground. The kid shouted, "Glue mode!" Instantly the kid's hands turned gooey, like his flesh had changed to paste as he ran his fingers all over Pit's knuckles. Pit's free hand reached for the kid's neck and grabbed hold, and began dragging the young hero's throat toward his mouth. The kid pressed Pit's gunked up hand against the truck tire and shouted, "Ghost mode!" Pit's hand suddenly slipped right through the kid and he wound up slapping himself in his already broken nose.
The guy in red bounced to his feet. Pit tried to rise, but found his hand thoroughly stuck to the tire.
"Shame we messed up your plastic surgery," the kid said. "As a fellow film buff, I appreciated the tribute."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Pit asked, still trying to yank his hand free.
"Hello?" said the kid. "Frank Macey? The Stick-Em-Up Kid?"
The woman in blue swooped down. "We're here to arrest them, Ap, not talk film trivia. Switch to foam mode. Servant's got his hands full."
"Foam mode," said Ap as the woman dropped behind him and wrapped her arms around his torso. "Sorry, Skyrider."
They shot into the air a hundred feet, which happened to be where Sundancer had flown, with Servant in tow. Pit shielded his eyes with his free hand as he stared up. Sunday was spinning in violent gyrations; she'd never been able to keep her balance with someone else in tow. However, her dizzying spirals turned out to be an effective strategy. Servant suddenly went flying off, leaving a trail of vomit.
Sundancer stabilized her flight, shaking her fist at him as he crashed into the forest below and started bouncing down the steep mountain slope. "I hope you break your damn neck!" she cried.
But, with her attention focused on Servant, she failed to notice that Skyrider and Ap were now hovering directly above her. Ap was completely coated head to toe in what looked like shaving cream. He opened his mouth and buckets of the white foam shot out of him, catching Sunday in the torrent.
"Son of a bitch," Sunday cursed as she began to tumble wildly through the sky. The foam boiled off seconds after it hit her, but the unevenness of the heat she was producing was messing with her ability to stay airborne. Skyrider did an impressive job of following the flaming woman's dizzying path through the air, and more and more foam found its target on Sunday's face. Sunday coughed and gasped and spit as she wiped her eyes, trying to rid herself of the goop.
"Keep foaming her!" Skyrider shouted. "She needs to breathe like anyone else!"
Pit was distracted by a loud whoosh to his right. He turned and saw a white blur flash up the road and enter the parking lot, skidding to a halt at the rear wheel of the truck Pit was glued to.
"This guy's going to need new tires anyway," Servant said as he put his right hand under the rear bumper and lifted the back of the truck. Servant ripped the wheel right off the hub, sending lug nuts shooting across the gravel lot.
"Naw, he won't," said Pit, thinking about the black shadows on the wall of the bar.
Servant wasted no time on further banter. He drew the tire back like it was a discus and let it rip. The tire caught Sunday right in the gut and she went flying, missing Skyrider and Ap by a whisker. Her body was limp, folded across the tire, as she cut a long glowing arc through the sky, her flames sputtering and dimming. They went dark completely as she crashed into the forest.
"Servant!" Skyrider shouted. "You nearly hit us!"
"But I didn't," he said.
"We almost had her!" she shouted back.
"I definitely got her," said Servant.
Ap spit out a few last cupfuls of foam, then wiped his mouth. "That tire couldn't even have touched her if I hadn't cooled her off!"
Servant shrugged and crossed his arms. "So it was teamwork."
"Let's just find her," said Ap. "Infra-eye mode!" He looked in the direction she'd flown.
Pit Geek looked toward the bar. He said to Servant, "You got some way of calling an ambulance?"
"You'll get all the medical attention you require," said Servant, watching Skyrider and Ap disappear into the trees.
"I was thinking about that poor guy in the bar."
Servant cocked his head toward the door. Smoke was still drifting from the building. Servant picked up a piece of what had once been the Harley's frame and started bending it. He crouched in front of Pit and twisted the metal around his face, covering from just below his eyes to just above his throat, crimping the metal behind Pit's neck. Pit noticed that Servant didn't have a single scorch mark or even any dirt on his costume after bouncing down the mountain.
Servant stood up, looking at Pit's immobilized hand, and probably thought he was being clever when he said, "Don't go anywhere."
Servant went into the bar. His white tights glowed in the darkened doorway. Servant stopped moving. For some reason, his tights turned dark.
"Dear God," he whispered.
He came out of the bar a moment later cradling Root in his arms. For reasons that Pit couldn't even guess at, Servant was buck naked. His muscular body was covered in thick black kinky hair over pale green flesh. His uncircumcised genitals were monstrously large. Worse, his face had lost its square-jawed comic book handsomeness and been replaced by a misshapen skull covered with leathery green skin. He revealed a mouthful of jagged fangs as he snarled at Pit, "What kind of monsters are you?"
"The bad kind, I reckon," said Pit, his voice muffled by his metal gag.
Servant pressed his lips tightly together. He took a deep breath through the gaping hole in his face where his nose should have been. Then, the air around him rippled and he was back in costume, his face once more human. Servant turned into a blur as he darted down the road, leaving a cloud of dust in the parking lot. Pit had no idea how far they were from the nearest hospital or even which direction to head, but apparently Servant knew.
Pit twisted his neck, pushing the metal gag tighter against his lips. Servant had apparently been under the misconception that Pit had to get something between his teeth to bite it. Instead, he puckered his lips and sucked. The metal gag spiraled down his mouth like it was vanishing down a toilet.
He was about to start nibbling at the rubber around his hand to free himself when Skyrider burst back above the tree line. She was carrying something in her arms, but it was too dark to make out what. A few seconds later, a large round shape like a balloon twenty feet across drifted into the air behind her.
Skyrider zoomed back to the parking lot, landing in the gravel in front of Pit with a soft crunch. She carried Sunday in her arms. Sunday was completely limp, her face and body flecked with baked on foam that looked like dark brown meringue. She was covered with a hundred scratch marks from where she'd fallen through the trees. Her face was spattered with red goop, as if she'd been lying on her back drinking a bottle of ketchup, then coughed it out. Her open eyes stared blankly toward the stars. The skin of her face was now the same pale shade as her restored leg.
Skyrider placed Sundancer in the bed of the pick up truck. There was a blue plastic tarp wadded up in one corner of the bed. She unfolded this, covering the body.
"She's dead," said Pit.
"Neither of you could really have expected you'd be getting out of this alive," said Skyrider, her voice strangely hollow, almost mechanical.
"No one gets out
alive," said Pit, looking up at the dark sky.
He spotted Ap bouncing along the tree tops. The top of the boy's head had swollen up into a balloon. It apparently left him buoyant enough to run along the very tips of the branches. Ap jumped out over the parking lot and drifted down behind the pickup that held Sunday's corpse. "End Airhead Mode," he said. With a sound like a whoopee cushion, his head deflated back to its normal dimensions in barely a second.
"Where's Servant?" he asked.
"The big guy remembered an appointment elsewhere," said Pit.
Ap looked ill. "Did you . . . did you eat him?"
"Naw," Pit chuckled. "He ran some guy we half killed off to a hospital."
Skyrider sighed. "Damn it. He could be anywhere."
"Just call him," said Ap.
"He doesn't carry a phone!"
"Right. What's up with that?"
Skyrider shook her head. "He doesn't have any pockets."
"Hello," said Ap. "That can't be that hard to fix. Our engineers can repair teleportation belts. Certainly they can master the technology of the pocket."
"Servant doesn't wear pants," said Skyrider.
"He just needs a utility belt," said Ap.
"Anything that doesn't slide off his force fields gets chewed up by his time flux. A belt wouldn't last half an hour on him."
"He could just tuck it into his tights," said Ap, sounding exasperated that Skyrider was making such lame excuses for why a teammate couldn't carry a phone.
She looked toward Pit, as if making sure he was still secure, then back to Ap. "I guess it won't hurt for you to know. Servant doesn't wear tights. All clothes just fall off of him. Luckily, he can make his force fields opaque and change their colors."
Ap grinned. "You mean Mr. Holier-Than-Thou prances around in public completely naked?"
She nodded. "And if something breaks his concentration, his fields go transparent!" She laughed. "Oh god. You can't know how much I was sweating through that press conference, praying that he wouldn't get a question that rattled him."
