Deciding to be proactive for a change, I went ahead and went offline; amused by the panic spreading through my fellow supervillains.
Wow, end of the world and everyone is trying to figure out their angle, but take away their internet and that’s cause for panic. What a bunch of idiots! As much as I loathed all the fake sincerity of all the heroes basking in the adoration of the public in general, my fellow supervillains annoyed me just as much in different ways.
I was actually relieved that it was bugs, as long as my suit was intact, I was bug-proof. I flipped around and began looking for channels that were still broadcasting.
It took three days before BBC Australia went offline, but that was the last English speaking station that I could find.
• • •
“...broadcasting in the clear on this frequency. Is anyone else out there?”
I’d broken out a beat up shortwave radio and was surprised to find someone still uninfected after almost two weeks.
Against my better judgment, or perhaps because I was starved for any kind of human contact, I flipped the transmit knob. “I copy. Over.”
“We’re running a sanctuary out of Louisiana. Are there more survivors with you? Over.”
“I’d prefer not to say until I know who I’m dealing with. Over,” I answered.
“Hold on for a minute and I’ll get our leader. Over”
The line went to static for a minute before another voice spoke, “This is Swamp Lord, broadcasting in the clear to the person identifying themselves as a survivor. Over”
“Swamp Lord!” I said. “Small world! It’s Stringel. Over.”
“Unfortunately, it’s getting smaller every day, Mechani-CAL. What’s your situation? Over.”
“Been sealed up tight for two weeks. Went out a couple of times, but only had to deal with some mindless cops and National Guard. They were searching through the area a couple of days ago, but I haven’t seen them since. No one else is with me. How have you been holding up?”
There was a pause before I realized I hadn’t said, “Over” and breached short wave etiquette.
“Those bugs don’t do so well out here in the bogs. We got a lot of hungry critters who think they’re tasty. Whenever I find them, I just suffocate them. I heard there’re some pockets in the Everglades too and up in the Great White North where things are too cold. Over.”
Swamp Lord’s gaseous form would keep him safe, but his powers started fading when he wasn’t in the wetlands and that left him kind of limited.
“That’s more than I’ve heard. How many people have you got? Over.”
“Three hundred and sixty two at last count,” he replied. “We’re starting to run low on supplies and could use you and your suit. Are you willing to do me a solid? Over.”
My first thought was to ask what was in it for me, but I thought it over. What else was I going to do here? I’d watched more movies and listened to enough music to drive me to boredom. I could use some company.
“All right, I’ll do it,” I said. “But only because you and I go back. What are you short on? Over.”
“Shit, Cal. You name it! Medicine and food are the priorities. New Orleans is a ghost town. The bugs pulled everyone out of there, but there’re still a bunch of the critters waiting around the city and we can’t go in. But you can. We’re about thirty minutes north of there. You should be able to get everything and anything you need there. Over.”
“Can do,” I answered. “I’ll be in the Big Easy tomorrow morning and will contact you then. Over.”
“Can your suit transmit on this frequency? Over.”
“I can modify it. Over.”
“Good deal, Stringel. You’re a real world saver. Over and out.”
Hardly, I thought and turned the radio off. It would take me a little while to button everything up here; who knew when I would return.
• • •
After a few hours of sleep I flew up to the hill where I’d spread Vicky and Joseph’s ashes.
“Sorry I haven’t been up here, lately,” I said, addressing them both. “Your employer’s latest plan seemed to have gone tits up and things aren’t looking good. Too bad neither of you were here to talk him out of it. I’m going to try and give Swamp Lord some help and see if I can do something useful with myself. I don’t know if I’ll be back, so this is goodbye for now. I guess I can’t keep complaining about how my life sucks anymore, since I’m still free. I reckon if you were here, Vicky, that you’d be proud that I was going to do something, but yell at me for doing it pro bono. Joseph, you’d probably point out that it took the end of the world for me to get off my worthless ass and do something. Naturally, you’d both be right.”
“Take care of each other and I’ll see you when I can.”
• • •
There’s a certain level of nervousness when pulling a solo job. I’m always looking over my shoulder and worried about what might go wrong. Looting a pharmacy in the empty city of New Orleans just didn’t seem like a challenge. Recalling all the pictures from Katrina, it was way different now. The cars abandoned in the streets, not even wrecked, made me feel like any minute a director would come out and yell, “Cut!”
My usual anxiety started trailing off and in its place were the beginnings of boredom.
That, in itself, should have told me that things were going to go horribly wrong.
I’d brought a pair of slings from my base attached to thick polymer bags. They’d hold five hundred pounds each without tearing and I was filling to capacity with canned goods. A glance over at the discolored, formerly edible goods in the non-working refrigerators warned me against opening those doors. True, I wouldn’t be able to smell it inside my suit and hell, it might even smell better than the less than fresh odor I was putting off, but it didn’t seem like a good idea.
If I ever got to that third version of the suit, I’d have to try and figure out how to fit a shower inside.
On my internal sound system I was rocking to the one and only Biz Markie when the bright flash outside illuminated the front of the store.
“Energy signature detected,” the robotic voice in the suit warned me.
Power to shields and weapon systems, I thought and felt the suit respond to my mental commands. Cautiously, I worked my way up the seasonal isle and wondered who might be out there.
Maybe Swamp Lord got hold of some other supers. Good! They can help carry some of this shit.
That was the glass half full reasoning that I held onto as I headed to the front door. Outside I saw Apollo’s Chariot, several hoversleds, and at least six of the Olympians. The glass went from half full to all the way to the top in a split second. Hurray! The heroes are here. It’s about time they showed up to start cleaning up this mess.
Aphrodite, in all her glorious beauty and looking better than that pinup over my workbench, had her fingers touched to her forehead and must be psychically scanning while Athena stood guard next to her. Her probes wouldn’t get through my shields, so I activated my chest mounted spotlight.
“Hey, guys,” I started and was unsure of what to say to them. “Fancy meeting you...”
As the Love Goddess’ head snapped up and I found myself drawn into her deep eyes, an energy spear smashed into the front of the store and sent glass everywhere. That knocked me out of my momentary fantasy all right.
“Capture him for the hive,” Athena ordered and that mental glass I was thinking about earlier; don’t ask what it was full of.
Shit! Shit! Shit! Fire force blasters! Maximum discharge.
My twin bolts of energy hit Ares head-on and did absolutely squat. Hermes had already circled around me and smashed my back with her rod with enough force to knock me into one of the bags I’d been preparing. Grabbing two ten pound bags of flour, I crushed them together as she drew close again. The cloud of flour would hopefully blind the speedster and give me a little cover. Something detonated on my shielding, an energy spear I guessed, or it could have been an arrow f
rom Artemis. Either way, my shields didn’t like it any more than I did.
Options! I need an option!
Hermes was a blur brushing her eyes clear and dispersing the cloud of flour like a dust devil. I was beating a hasty retreat toward the back of the store, firing wildly with my blasters as soon as they cycled through and trying to figure out if I should go straight through the roof or into the alley. Hermes would be on me like nobody’s business if I didn’t get off the ground, but up there Apollo’s Chariot could easily outfly me. Getting away from it would be impossible!
Ares just grabbed the aisles and started pushing. He was going to bury me in a pile and trap me.
My only shot at getting out of here would be to damage the Chariot and fly to the water. I tried to remember if I’d seen Poseidon in the group, but realized that I hadn’t stopped to take notes.
Activate flight system. Fire force blasters! I blew a hole through the roof and went out of it before the wall of debris Ares was pushing reached me.
There was only one thing in my possession that had any hope of damaging the Chariot.
Activate Self Destruct with twenty second delay.
I dodged one of Aphrodite’s psychic bolts, along with an energy spear, but the archer hit me again. Does that damn woman ever miss?
Apollo’s pillar of flame barred my way and the alarms in the suit warned me not to go any closer.
Detach self-destruct assembly.
I reached behind me and felt the weight of the class C powercell primed to explode and hoped it would be enough. I’d never played much baseball or football, so what I ended up doing was some half-assed combination of a fastball and a forward pass, but it looked like it would be close enough...until Hermes streaked in from nowhere and deflected it.
No!
The powercell bomb bounced to where several of the Olympians were positioned at the entrance to the pharmacy. Ares didn’t hesitate to pounce on it as the weapon detonated.
The others were scattered like bowling pins by the force of the explosion. I didn’t linger to see if I’d done any lasting damage to the Olympian and turned on the afterburners. They’d be after me in moments. Apollo was already heading for his chariot. Aphrodite and Zeus were mounting the hoversleds.
All I’d have to do is make it to the waterfront and do my swim to freedom. Just a few more miles.
“Energy signature closing rapidly,” the suit warned.
I tried to evade, but I only managed to avoid a direct hit from Apollo. It was enough to send me crashing into a warehouse. Silencing the master alarm and looking at my depleted energy levels, I didn’t like my odds, but was kind of in shock that I’d held on this long. Of course they weren’t in full control of their faculties, so it wasn’t exactly like I was getting them at the top of their game.
I fired my blasters and opened a hole in the wall, intending to go through it and stopped. Instead, I shot a hole into the next one as well and squeezed into a janitor’s closet and hid, hoping they would think I went out the hole and chase me that way. The minimal shielding I had left should keep Aphrodite from detecting me. Zeus was another matter, but my power levels were so low that he might also miss me.
Doing a quick diagnostic, I heard a death knell in my mind. There was a breech in the armor on the back of my leg that I only now noticed. If I went into the Gulf, the suit would flood and short out. I wouldn’t be coming out alive. I stuffed a wad of rags into the crack in my armor that would hopefully prevent one of those bugs from crawling inside and taking me over.
I heard movement outside, and peeked through the crack in the door. Hermes was rushing around the room and searching in a random manner. I gently shut the door and tried to figure out an option that got me out of here intact.
Nothing came to mind. I couldn’t even locate any power to recharge my suit. I didn’t want to go out like this, but even my self-destruct was gone.
I’m so screwed.
Cal Stringel’s adventure continues in the already released, smash hit, Confessions of a D-List Supervillain. Look for the third installment of the series in the fall of 2014.
About the Author
Jim Bernheimer is the author of several novels and the publisher and editor of three anthologies. He lives in Chesapeake, Virginia with his wife and two daughters while writing whatever four out of the five voices in his head agree on. Visit his website at www.jimbernheimer.com
Other Books by the Author
Horror, Humor, and Heroes Volume I
Horror, Humor, and Heroes Volume II
Horror, Humor, and Heroes Volume III
Dead Eye: Pennies for the Ferryman
Dead Eye 2: The Skinwalker Conspiracies
Spirals of Destiny Book One: Rider
Spirals of Destiny Book Two: Sorceress
Prime Suspects: A Clone Detective Mystery
and
Confessions of a D-List Supervillain
The best is yet to come!
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Object Lessons in the Mirror are Closer than They Appear
Chapter Two
ManaCALes is Not a Stupid Name
Chapter Three
ManaCALes Versus the Biloxi Bugler
Chapter Four
Crappy Escape Plans For the Win
Chapter Five
Of Better Guns and High Performance Vibrators
Chapter Six
My Mouth Tends to Get Me in Trouble
Chapter Seven
She Who Hesitates
Chapter Eight
The Kansas City Caper
Chapter Nine
Stops on the Cal Stringel Revenge Tour
Chapter Ten
A Familiar, Yet Unfamiliar Face
Chapter Eleven
Love and Other Clever Ambushes
Chapter Twelve
The False Promise of a Better Tomorrow
Chapter Thirteen
Banned from Vegas Through No Fault of my Own
Chapter Fourteen
A Pain in My ASH
Chapter Fifteen
HORDES Spelled Backwards is FAIL
Chapter Sixteen
Maybe the End of the World isn’t Such a Good Idea
Origins of a D-List Supervillain Page 25
