Big Superhero Action

by Raymond Embrack

  And if she had turned so would the sirens out there somewhere be turning at the same time, freaking and pinking and growing for the first time in two years. They would know she was back in town. But there was something different this time. She could share their bodies now. She shared their transformation so it was six times the transition. She covered her mouth with both hands. She was Mermaid Gangster rising from her spike heeled boots.

  She jumped into Mom’s psyche. She could do that now. It was like putting on her clothes and shoes when she was five except today it wasn’t oversized high heels it was being age forty, the decades longer of being a grown up. She was in the kitchen holding a skinny bottle of Chardonnay, tipping it over a plastic glass, pouring over two ice cubes. The background: the TV running. It was a movie. Michael Jackson onstage. The movie was his post-death concert movie. Mom was a huge Michael Jackson fan. But she wasn’t paying attention to the TV it was only on for company. There was a twinge somewhere between pain and wonderment. It came from having a child taken from her to somewhere beyond her control or her imagination. Leaving a strange hole inside her heart and her brain. The child now returning to become what wasn’t her child but still her child. She had gotten her out of that city but now she was coming back. There was nothing she could do about it either way. God couldn’t speak louder with a clearer voice but the voice of God was not something we were ever meant to hear directly. She went to the living room window, peeked through the closed blinds at the wall of the next apartment building, felt a gratitude for the sheltering darkness of night.

  Nicole shed the blanket, uncurled herself into uprightness. No one would notice she was no longer twelve, had grown three inches and was now an adult. Now she was Gingiri again. To be or die, this was her natural state.

  The plane was full. Every flight was full today even flights to Brutalia. She waited for the assholes to clear the aisle before making her exit. She had no carry-on bag, no luggage, had left Atlanta in Atlanta. Then she left BIA, hit the late winter east coast cold dressed for mild Atlanta weather. She could see her breath. She could feel the cold but here it had no effect on her. Temperature had no effect on Sirens. The sign said it was 30 degrees but she was in a wifebeater top and jeggings. She needed her Siren costume again.

  The irony was the $$$ she had to spend to fly to the only place where she had the superpower of flight. She needed no taxicab or rental car to cross the city. She took to the air. When Sirens did it there were no corny shots of them flying like Superman, Siren flight was less visible, too sudden to follow with the eyes, seen as a streak of blue crossing the sky. Then they landed Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon style upon imaginary pink wires that elegantly landed them on their spike heels.

  It was weird being back in a place that for two years had been more dream than reality. Gingiri toured above the vastness of a city twice the size of NYC. She flew over the freeways, the factories, their spires and smokestacks, the coldwave power plants, the sky scraping skyscrapers, the Brutalist architecture. Brutalia Way ran the city from end to end, southwest to northeast, lining up the major locations along its course. The KM Building, AXIS headquarters. The canals. The Pegasus Building with the marble winged horse on top, now OSD headquarters. The Brutalia Post Building with its 24/7 headline crawl. The buildings were all big and square for blocks and blocks that looked color coded, blocks of blue, grey, red brick, brown, white…blocks and blocks of unoccupied office buildings, apartment buildings, the city a crowded Monopoly board. The Brutalia Forest, the one place inside the city where trees existed. Stretches of urban blahhh, graffiti-tagged streets patrolled by amateur superheroes. She knew where the Sirens were now, homed in on them. They were together and waiting for her at their hangout.

  Megatalia Mall was the largest mall in the U.S. It had every chain operating in North America and a number of chains from Europe. It had luxury car dealerships. It had a White Castle and a cosmetic surgeon. It had stores that weren’t chains making those their only satellite stores. Southeast corner outside the Mangamaxx. There they were like when they’d been twelve, the five loitering outside. They all looked old enough now and were in full splendor. Gingiri looked like a loser as her Keds ambled her their way toward them.

  They all had the stylish little S on their foreheads, Gingiri too. Siren wear was a fusion of Goth, sailor manga, ‘90s kinderwhore and the movie Sucker Punch. They were pierced and tattooed between the bangs and the spike heels.

  Girlfinger was the scientist of the Siren Syndicate. She wore the lab coat. She had invented Siren Six, upgrading the recreational drug every six months. She handled the beakers, drew the montage of spinning nuclei and chemical compounds, ended with the seawater-green powder that became the end product.

  Kafka Kardashian invented the weapons, the Siren guns, the Siren explosives and laser grenades, the Siren sword and handbag-sized samurai blade. With Girlfinger she had invented the compound that turned the blood of Sirens when spilled into a poisonous weapon. Mermaid Gangster always had her working on a faster-working compound.

  Captain Madame X specialized in vehicles, engineering and design, built the Siren cycles, did the maintenance on the Hummers. On her drawing board were the Sirenwing and the Sirenmarine.

  Sailor Star was the Siren sensei who invented Siren martial arts and trained the Sirens until they could spar in their sleep. She believed a martial art should first look sexy.

  Gingiri was the psychic Siren. She could read guilt or innocence. She was the one with the superpower of flight. She was the one with her own connection to the city. She was the one who translated the city for them. The city had a language and she could hear it and it told her where to find any person within the city.

  Mermaid Gangster had the fastest regeneration powers of the six. A Siren could take a .357 in the chest and it would be three days of breakfast in bed and daytime TV. MG, in one minute it was a sunburn. She was the head of Siren operations. Her name was more than a sense of style it was both her psychological profile and her resume. In her child state she had turned shoplifting into an operation where she delivered whatever the client ordered to order. She had specialized in top designer labels swiped from the top showrooms or off the trucks from New York. In the fashion trade the extremely hip knew to talk to her first. She had a wardrobe that was ahead of the curve for NYC runway models.

  Mermaid Gangster started the Sirenitude.

  “Six girls in six pools. One shockwave, six shocks. Six girls in one coma for six months…”

  Gingiri picked it up, “…Six girls sleep, six sirens wake…”

  “…Six sirens wake as super sirens …”

  “…Super sirens wake with six super powers…”

  “…and six are one as one is six. We waited.”

  “Here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Every night?”

  “Since you called.”

  “I just flew in.”

  “We know. The moment you entered Brutalia air space we turned back.”

  “Me too.”

  Mermaid Gangster said, “How did you stand it?”

  Gingiri: “I don’t know.”

  “You still scared of the city?”

  “That wasn’t it and you know it. It almost killed me.”

  “Nobody’s ever seen or heard of any little yellow war. It must be in your head.”

  “Fucking duh. I’m a psychic. That’s the point.”

  “Nothing will happen to you. We will kill your enemies.”

  “Whatever,” Gingiri said. “I’ll take my chances.”

  “See? Once you go super you can’t go back.”

  “Guess not.”

  “Meanwhile we spend two years being twelve again. Fuck you, Gingiri.”

  “Not my problem, MG.”

  “Your head is wanted.”

  “Except you can’t have it. So say hi to tampons again and shut the fuck up.”

  Mermaid Gangster took a handful of Gingiri’s face, shoved her back against the brick
mall wall. “You have to earn your way back.”

  “Then forget it,” Gingiri muttered around black leather glove. “I’m not on the team.”

  Mermaid Gangster let go her face. “Don’t be stupid, stupid.”

  Gingiri heard that, laughed.

  That made Mermaid Gangster laugh. The tension broke and the others landed on Gingiri with shoves and hugs until they were all wet-eyed and pink-nosed.

  MG said, “If you leave again I’ll kill you.”

  “Maybe I will, maybe you won’t.”

  “Better not.”

  Kafka Kardashian said, “You need clothes.”

  Sailor Star: “You must be starving.”

  “Now we can eat,” Mermaid Gangster said, “and never gain weight. Miss that, bitches?”

  They took Gingiri to where their camo pattern paisley and coral pink Hummer 3 was parked across two spaces, where mall security and everyone else kept their distance.

  6

  Midtown into Alphaland then through Alphaland into Little Hell.

  Condemned buildings grew like jungles, rolling black vistas beyond Brutalia’s dead industrial core. They flew above dark narrow streets in a decrepit white 1975 Delta 88 convertible. When twice they passed the same KM frozen foods billboard, Martian Justice knew they were lost.

  “We’re lost.”

  Heroes Man said, “It’s a tricky area. I got this.”

  Martian Justice was crouched atop the hood like a giant malevolent ornament. If he could have found the Motorchrists without the assist he would have. Heroes Man did the flying, his gloved hands on the wheel, David Bowie’s “Heroes” playing in the cassette deck. He waited for the billboards to change.

  “In Little Hell,” Heroes Man said, “you have to feel your way around. You see that graffiti on the wall? That marks Motorchrists territory. See it’s all around this street.”

  Most of the graffiti was the stenciled emblem of a skull & crossbones on a cross. Up ahead down there was a wall of sound, death metal shit ripped by chainsaw massacre vocals. Parked choppers lined the street, ape hanger handlebars atop evil-looking choppers that looked like they drank the blood of their riders.

  “There they are,” Heroes Man said. “The most psychotic outlaw biker gang in the hemisphere.”

  The street ended at an open lot strung high with light bulbs, a cloud of white smoke flowing from a long black grill. The blackened smell of whole chickens almost made the air edible. The strung lights formed a square above tables and chairs facing a platform hung with a smaller square of light bulbs where an underage girl danced nude. From her hairline to her toes, her skin was covered in green makeup of a pistachio shade.

  “They paint the dancers. Look at those guys, right out in the open, strapped, smoking dope, nude dancers out in the open, telling the people they own this territory. Cops are afraid to roll on them. Roll on the Motorchrists, you’re rolling into a shootout.”

  Motorchrists were at the tables, hanging out at the grill, the cinder block-and-wood saloon. Head rags, shaved heads, leather vests and chaps, more Medieval lettering. The main tattoos were the skull on the cross. Among them were biker sluts in bikini tops and cut-off jeans, none over twenty, each with the gang logo tattooed above the word “property.” One was shaving a biker’s head, two more working the grill.

  Martian Justice: “How do you know so much about them?”

  Heroes Man: “I know how to get around, find the evil and get up close to it.”

  “And you have lived this long?”

  “I’m a superhero.”

  “The premise of your super power is insipid.”

  “Yet I’m a pro.”

  “You can fly. That does not make you a superhero.”

  “Why not? Can you fly?”

  Martian Justice almost gave him a look. “I need to reach them.”

  “They don’t take visitors.”

  “What if I went down there?”

  “They’d kill you. Then maybe eat you.”

  They watched as awareness of the two strangers high above watching them spread through the bikers, turned heads up their way.

  “They might kill us anyway for just being here,” Heroes Man said.

  “I’ve been killed before. You learn to live with it.”

  “There. You are so deep into your guy. No trace of alter ego. Your dialogue is stilted, your delivery stiff, yet you have a vibe that shrivels my nutsac. You create dread. It’s like you project an aura that fucks with the psyche. You are convincingly alien. Is that why you have the name Martian Justice?”

  “No. It is my name because on this planet justice is an alien concept.”

  Martian Justice stepped off the hood, dropped 68.9 yards. He landed on his boot soles twelve inches into the concrete. To him concrete was a dense version of Styrofoam. He climbed out of his footprints to the street.

  Sparks blew from the oil drum fires. In a place with no walls, it was wall-to wall Motorchrists. No one within a half-mile of hell was sleeping, the massive speakers blasting. The temperature from the street to the lot rose twenty degrees. Even the heavily stoned and drunken stared at Martian Justice walking through them and their biker chicks, saw him walk directly to the leader Motorchrist, who was getting a blow job.

  Motorchrist said, “You want a bitch?”

  Martian Justice said, “I assume they are property of the Motorchrists.”

  “You’re in the Motorchrists now.”

  “When did I become a Motorchrist?”

  “You know how you get into the Motorchrists?”

  “No.”

  Motorchrist climaxed with a sneer. There wasn’t much cuddling after. With a hand, he nudged the biker chick away, zipped-up.

  “You gotta kill a member,” he said. “You killed one already. Blew off his head.”

  “He is not dead.”

  “His head exploded, motherfucker.”

  “That is a short term way to look at it. You say one must kill one of you to become one of you?”

  “And whoever kills the most is leader.”

  “So you killed the most Motorchrists?”

  “More than anybody. So I’m your leader now. You follow me. I am the return. I am the word and the light. I will lead you to eternal life.”

  “Therefore you are the ancient Earth prophet known as Jesus Christ?”

  “I am the form by which he is human.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “His will made itself known to me in Attica.”

  Motorchrist’s hand rubbed the crucifix on his bare chest. “But what matters is the killing itself. Because the one who kills the most of us is our leader. And the ultimate leader will be the one who kills all of us except him. Then he will be a club of one. And that is the state of perfect grace.”

  Martian Justice observed the unraveling of Motorchrist’s mind. He watched the outlaw biker make up his theology from one tequila-soaked brain wave to the next, smelled the psychosis coming off him. He watched how far Christianity was stretched by inexactitude. A more precise religion wouldn’t leave itself open to interpretation by every nutcase to walk the Earth since beards went out of style. On Mars no such ambiguity was permitted. There, a prophet had to survive the Pit of Dead Prophets and telekinetically move the Stone of Serenity to earn worship.

  Motorchrist told him, “Gimme your money. You renounce all worldly possessions and give them to me.”

  Martian Justice saw bikers cutting off his exit. Except he wasn’t exiting. He turned back to Motorchrist.

  Motorchrist’s hand slapped Martian Justice in the face like a whip. Bikers laughed.

  “You obey me like you obey God!”

  Motorchrist slapped his face the other way, rocked his head.

  “Get on your fuckin’ knees and lick my fuckin’ boots!”

  Martian Justice remained immobile.

  “I am your savior! I want you licking my boots! Or we will make you.”

  Blood and teeth exploded from Motorchri
st’s face as the fist of Martian Justice snapped back from it, he tumbled off his feet backward. Before he hit the ground, Martian Justice nailed his chest with a boot, sent him sideways across a table clearing the top of empty liquor bottles.

  There was a frozen moment where the bikers stared in amazement and Martian Justice’s boots were turning him to face the street, a dark cool place two million miles past Saturn with Motorchrists on all sides. Then it was on.

  Martian Justice held his position. They kept coming. They became a mass of bodies. Then there was only a mass of tattoos burying him until he was out of sight under a rain of stomping boots. There were more boots than target area, the swarm getting in its own way getting at him. They chopped him with machetes. Three of them shot him. At some point, there was so much blood he was blowing it out his nostrils so he wouldn’t choke on it. Then gasoline splashed over the blood. A bloody-faced Motorchrist stood over him pouring it from a gasoline can. Motorchrist lit a match, dropped it onto him and he watched blue flames burst and spread over his body.

  Martian Justice needed the rest. The power cells were recharged and absorbing the group hostility directed at him. His green blood spilled was recycled by his surface units. His sensors counted seventeen Motorchrists. In flames he rose to his feet. Two green firearms armed with regeneration disruptor cells slid out from his hip pods. From his cargo pod he pulled the Phobosian kendo blade, took his stance, became a killer-shaped torch.

  With the blade he took apart the ones too close to shoot, regeneration cell-tech laser-sharpened Martian steel with single strikes severing heads at the neck. The guns slid down his arms and into his hands and he shot the rest of them, head shots only. One made it to his chopper, took off. When his head splattered he drove headless for two blocks before taking a spill.

  No more Motorchrists.

  That night Martian Justice went off the carousel. The wait began for next month’s issue.