“You get afraid?”
“All the time, son. But that’s when it’s most important to be brave.”
“But what do you get afraid of? Monsters?”
I shake my head. “Sort of, I guess. But not like you’re thinking of. Lately I’ve been afraid of getting old and not being a good hero. Not being a good dad.”
“You’re a good dad,” he tells me.
Though he’s smiling and sincere, I regret coercing my son into validating my fatherhood. Still, it doesn’t suck to hear these words. “Thanks,” I say. “I try.”
“Do you try your very very best?” he asks.
Nate’s eyes, huge and innocent, don’t blink as he awaits an answer. I decide to go with the truth. “I try my best a lot of the time.”
He nods, and on some level I realize he’s appreciating my honesty. He says, “I think you’d feel better if you tried your best all the time.”
“That’s good advice,” I tell him. And I think, If I get through this, I’ll try to follow it.
Not long after, we descend onto the fallow fields on Sheila’s farm. Between the valley’s natural protection and Ecklar’s camouflage screen, the massive ship will be all but undetectable here. I have Nate grab his backpack, and we head for an exit hatch on the lower level.
Outside, Thomas and Sheila are waiting for us. As we come down the ramp, she crosses her arms. “Vince,” she says. “This is hardly what I call distance.”
“I should have called,” I say.
“You think?”
Nate tells Thomas that he got to fly the HALO. Thomas says “Cool,” but throws me the same dirty look his mother is nailing me with. I say, “I need to talk with you two.” Their expressions don’t change. “Nate, go swing on the tire for a few minutes, OK?” My son hesitates for a second, gets a nod from his big brother, then charges up the hill. Once he’s gone, I turn my full attention to my first family. “You guys saw the news last night?”
“Bone Crusher,” Sheila says. “We saw.”
“Was that staged too?” Thomas asks.
I pull up my shirt and show a grapefruit-size bruise spreading across my ribcage, unhealed. “My acting isn’t that great. Listen, things are happening fast, and I don’t have time to explain everything—”
“Typical,” Thomas says to Sheila. She doesn’t scold him.
“Bottom line,” I say, “I need you guys to watch Nate for me. I needed a place where he would be safe, and I thought of you two. You’re the only ones I trust. I’m also going to need you to keep a secret.”
For the second time in an hour, I’ve spoken with absolute honesty, and again I can see its effect. The anger on both their faces melts a little bit. But it doesn’t go away. Sheila says, “We can’t go on like this. It’s not sustainable.”
“I know,” I tell her. “That’s part of why I’m doing what I’m doing today. I want things to be different, to be better. But I need your help.”
She turns to Thomas. “This is your decision too. It’s OK if we say no.”
Thomas glances up the hill at Nate, then back at me. “So what’s the secret?”
“I’ll leave the HALO here, cloaked, essentially invisible. Then I have to go take care of something. If it goes well, I’ll be back in a few hours. But no matter what happens, if anybody ever asks where I was, you need to tell them I was here with you the whole time.”
“We’re your alibi?” Sheila asks. “That’s what we’ve become to you?”
“Screw this,” Thomas says.
“You’re my family,” I say. And the words sound so strange. “The family I never would’ve lost if I hadn’t messed up so much. But I did. I made selfish mistakes as a husband and a father, and they caused pain to people I love. But here’s the thing—I can’t entirely regret those mistakes now, because without them, I’d never have found a second family.”
The two of them look at each other, not quite sure what to make of my rambling confession.
“So now we’re all on the same page—I failed you both. And now, Sheila, you love me like a brother. And Thomas, you’re done being a kid and don’t need a daddy anymore. I can’t go back in time. My chance with you two is over. I can’t get it back. But with Deb, with Nate, there’s still time. I know I can do better. But I can’t do it alone.”
Sheila can see Thomas is rattled, and she sets a hand on his shoulder. She says to me, “You think it’s right, putting that burden on us?”
“I think I’d do it for you. And I think I’m out of options.”
They turn toward each other, and I take a few steps away, give them a minute. When they break the huddle, Thomas strides over to me and holds out a hand. “Good luck,” he says. “With whatever the hell you’re doing.”
I shake my son’s hand. Studying his stoic face, I’m reminded suddenly of my father. He lets go and jogs up the hill toward Nate.
Sheila steps close. “All right, a few hours.”
“Later,” I say, “I’ll tell you everything.”
She closes her eyes and shakes her head. “We’ll drive off that bridge when we come to it. Anything I need to know now?”
I think for a second. “Nate really only had ice cream for lunch, so he’ll be hungry soon. If he uses the potty, he might need help.”
“Standard procedure,” she says. “That it?”
“Pretty much,” I tell her. “But bring the boys inside, and for ten minutes or so, keep them away from the windows. Same for you.”
“I thought you said we were safe.”
“You’re safe,” I assure my ex-wife. “There’s just something you don’t need to see. Trust me.”
There’s no good-bye hug, no kiss on the cheek even. Sheila turns away and heads up the hill, facing her home and my two boys. And I walk back into the HALO, ready to try and pull off my greatest stunt.
FOURTEEN
Trashing a Junkyard. Bad Intentions.
The Keys to a Successful Ambush.
Damaged beyond Repair.
The armor fits perfectly.
This is a fact that should upset me, that should suggest all kinds of things that make me doubt what I’m doing. Back on the Utah salt flats, when I first tried it on for Ecklar, the process took forever and was awkward as hell. Today it feels natural, like I’m slipping on a second skin. After I snap on the rocket boots, after I magnetically seal the massive red and black chest plate and slide my arms into the flexible metal-mesh sleeves, I stand with the helmet in my gloved hands, and I feel on the verge of a transformation. Earlier, I rigged up one of Ecklar’s proton cells, so energy courses now through the exoskeleton. The whole thing hums with power as if it were alive. I raise the three-horned helmet and lower it over my face. The mechanism locks into place, and my flesh is entirely encased in the ebony and crimson shell. There will be no way to guess that I am an impersonator. I will be Chaos.
Outside the HALO, on the side away from Sheila’s house, I emerge from a hatch into the open field. I remember how intuitive the armor’s operation was, and I know full well how the brain-scanning control operates. Even so, when I close my eyes and concentrate on one word, Up, I’m shocked as hell to bolt into the sky.
After all these years, flying comes naturally for me, and the suit responds to my every move. I remember after a few minutes that I don’t even need to picture the word. Seeing through the enhanced optical scanners takes some getting used to. Whenever I focus on something—a silo, a far-off airplane—a digital readout overlays and reports the exact distance. On top of that, the right eye port apparently has a thermal detector.
I don’t have a great deal of time. If Clyde sticks to his schedule—and he always sticks to his schedule—they’ll be moving Bone Crusher to the airfield soon. Once he’s airborne and headed for the Megajail, everything becomes a lot more complicated. If at all possible, I’d like to avoid aerial combat with international enforcement officials. I have to ambush my teammates while they’re on the way from St. Clementine’s. An added benefit is
that unless I’m wrong about Clyde, there’ll be press at the airfield. Though I don’t doubt he’s taking the threat seriously, Clyde is too media savvy to miss the chance. He’ll leak something. Action shots of one of the Insidious Six in custody—he knows the news networks will fall over each other to cover it live. What he doesn’t know is that I’m going to give them all a show they never dreamed of.
I have about an hour until they’re set to begin their operation, which means I have only the smallest window to give the suit a dry run. It’s risky to take the time to practice, but if I don’t invest a few minutes to reacquaint myself with the weaponry, all the wrong people might get hurt today. Using Chaos’s devices in the open salt flats is one thing, but engaging friends in close combat is another.
On the way west, I used the HALO’s scanners and found what looked like an abandoned junkyard in Potter County. It’s a sparsely populated area and should be perfect for my warm-up exercises.
With the armor’s onboard navigating system, finding the junkyard is no problem, but landing is another question. I streak in over the two acres of trashed cars and garbage and plow through the rusting carcass of a school bus. The impact crater is six feet deep, and when I climb out of it, I see the split halves of the bus. I pick up the rear end, toss it straight up into the sky the way you’d loft a tennis ball, then aim my right arm at it. I merely imagine it blowing up, and what looks like a thin flashlight unfolds from my forearm. There’s a burst of white light, and the school bus becomes a ball of flame, raining debris on the junkyard.
A few chunks clink off the armor, and the exhilaration washes over me. It’s not just that I felt no pain on the crash landing, though I didn’t. And it’s not just that the suit seems in perfect working order and reads my intentions, though it does. It’s that I feel young and strong, returned to my natural state: invincible.
Effortlessly, I jump fifty feet to a stacked pile of cubes beside a compactor. I lift one and look at the metal, twisted and contorted. With palms in on either side, I begin to press—and I do my best not to picture Clyde’s skull—but when the whole thing crushes inward, I can imagine the sound of his bones splintering. Other than his energy bursts and some superagility, Clyde is just like any other human.
These thoughts bother me, but just a bit. I start taking shots at distant targets with the palm lasers—a gutted refrigerator at 227 feet, an oven at 403—and I wonder if the brainwave reader in the helmet doesn’t work two ways. Maybe the feedback loop is causing evil thoughts. Maybe such power corrupts the mind and twists the soul. Could be Chaos started off as just another megalomaniac supervillain but gradually went insane.
I take to the air again to coordinate flying and offensive maneuvers. From the shoulder-mounted grenade launcher, I sink three proton bombs into the compactor, and it goes up like a box of TNT. Once my thermal scans confirm no one’s occupying the trailer office, a sonic pulse from my chest plate reduces it to quivering rubble.
With power like this, taking out the Guardians is well within my abilities. In the team escorting Bone Crusher, only Ecklar should prove a serious threat. And since he’ll be wearing his battle suit, I won’t have to be gentle. He’s tough, he can take it, and this scrapyard has given me an idea for an edge. If the second team responds quickly, I may have to engage them too, which will be tricky at best. No, my primary mission objective today is merely to put on a good show, blow up a few things, let the civilians and the cameras catch me in the act. Bone Crusher is one thing, but the fact that he was living as a harmless doorman, no matter how Clyde spins it, won’t have much long-term impact on the polls. The Tucker Commission will still go forward.
What the general public needs, what they’ve forgotten, is the genuine terror of a superhuman with bad intentions. Roughing up the Guardians—Clyde and Bigfoot especially—I confess, it’ll be fun. But before I let them chase me off, retreat before an inevitable defeat, I need to scare the shit out of this city. In this suit, that won’t be hard. These people have to be reminded about the existence of evil and violence in the world, and I’m just the man to do it.
The keys to a successful ambush are speed and surprise. Since I was part of Clyde’s initial strategy session, it’s not hard to see the gaping hole in his defense. The convoy is a parade of police cars, six armored vehicles, and a troop transport modified to be a mobile prison cell. Clyde himself will drive the transport, and Bigfoot will ride in the back with Bone; Ecklar and Ice Queen will provide air support. With as much of an advantage as the suit gives me in the air, it’s the only logical place from which to attack. Similarly, the best location for the ambush is obvious: the heart of the city, close to St. Clementine’s, before the convoy gets up on the interstate. The more civilians around, the more panic and distractions. But here, of course, is the difference between classroom battle tactics and the streets. Good villains never do exactly what’s expected of them.
So when the convoy leaves the hospital, I’m not lurking nearby. I’m flying into a drainage pipe in the wastewater treatment plant on the outskirts of Kingdom Town. And as the heroes scan the empty skies, I’m navigating the city sewers. While Chaos’s GPS directs me from tunnel to tunnel, I imagine my former teammates gradually growing more and more confident that indeed, Magus was wrong. Or at least that the attack won’t come today. I know human nature, and all that initial anxiety and vigilance will begin to give way to relief once they come off the interstate, especially for the ones who’ve never been in real combat. With the airfield in sight and no sign of trouble, the notion of victory will rise in their hearts, and their guard will come down. Clyde will order Ecklar and Ice Queen forward to secure the plane. That’s when I’ll strike.
The sewage is a foot deep at my feet, and I’m glad that Chaos didn’t install scent enhancers. Directly overhead is a manhole cover, four perfect dots of uninterrupted daylight. The streets are blocked off. While I’m waiting, I visualize the first few maneuvers I have planned, try to anticipate everyone’s response. So much depends on Ecklar.
Of course, I’ve considered the possibility that I’ll face defeat, or that things will go wrong and I’ll find myself unable to escape. Back in the interrogation cell at St. Clem’s, when I let Magus read my mind so he could know what I needed him to say, he must’ve sensed my whole plan. Dear boy, he projected, this seems a bit dangerous. And if things don’t go my way in the battle, that’s OK. For this too, I have a contingency that will mean a mission success. Today, I cannot lose. Thinking this, I wonder if all along I wouldn’t have made a better villain than a hero.
I hear the sirens almost a mile off, and less than a minute later the police escorts race above me, scattering the light. I don’t count the cars, but it takes a good thirty seconds before the heavy armor rumbles past. Then the big transport lumbers over me, and I wait for silence and the return of that light. I take a deep breath and plunge upward, exploding through the macadam and asphalt. In seconds I’m above the armored vehicle bringing up the convoy’s rear, and I activate the sonic disruptor in the horn protruding from the front of the helmet. Every person within a quarter-mile should be driven into a fetal tuck with nausea—though thanks to Clyde, who I was betting would cordon off the runway, the area is civilian free. Most of the convoy vehicles dart left and right, skidding into a cyclone fence or crashing into a drainage ditch. Three of the police cars near the front pile up, blocking the road, and the armored vehicles and troop transports come to a halt.
Bubba climbs out of the back and begins to inflate into a giant. I storm at him and blast his eyes with magna beams, blinding him and stunting his growth. He’s about thirty feet tall, strong enough to lift a tank, but freaked out by his inability to see. I launch a series of proton grenades around me, into the fields on either side of the road. This is mostly for a distraction, to rattle the younger heroes, make everyone wonder just what they’re up against. As the grenades explode, Bigfoot looks left and right, and I fly shoulder first into his gut. He doubles over, and I aim my magna c
annons straight up, delivering an uppercut with the force of a freight train. He spins, stumbles, and sits back on an armored vehicle, crushing it like a cardboard box. I’m worried about the driver but then see Clyde climb out, drop to his knees while puking his guts out.
In the sky ahead, three figures are clear. Ecklar’s out in front, followed by Ice Queen riding a frozen slab of ice. Above them both is something that makes me grin. It’s the KQEP news copter, exactly 1,123 feet away. Inside the helmet, I smile for the camera.
I fly straight at Ecklar, slipping past his barrage of stellar bullets and a poorly aimed neural net. He’s been in the lab for too long, and his battle instincts are rusty, aiming where I am and not where I’m going to be. I pass beneath him and launch a proton grenade his way. He dodges it as I expected, but when it explodes just above him, the ionic shrapnel bathes his suit. This should wreak havoc with his guidance system. Sure enough, he starts flying straight up, out of control on full burn, and I realize I’ll have to catch my friend to save him from going into orbit.
I don’t have time to play with the Ice Queen, so I knock her sideways with a thermal blast, and she falls unharmed into the stubbled field below. I rocket upward in pursuit of Ecklar, thinking Go go go in hopes the suit will translate my urgency into speed. This was one of my calculated risks, that this whole stunt wouldn’t endanger someone else. We pierce a bank of clouds, and as I close in, the curve of the Earth becomes clear on the horizon. Above us, the stars begin to emerge. Of course, he thinks I’m out to finish the job, so he launches a titanium torpedo down at me. I blast it with the palm laser, fly straight through the center of the explosion. From my hip, I pull free what I’d call my secret weapon, a chunk of an industrial magnet I swiped from that junkyard. I close in on Ecklar as if we were Blue Angels in synchronized flight, plow through another hail of stellar bullets. I slap the magnet onto Ecklar’s chest plate—in the same spot I knocked them from just before I put Nate in harm’s way—and all his systems just shut down; the flames from his rocket boots flicker and die. His battle suit, one of the most powerful weapons on the planet, becomes an impressive statue. The suit slows its upward ascent, rotates facedown, and plummets.
The Midlife Crisis of Commander Invincible: A Novel (Yellow Shoe Fiction) Page 22
