Prepare to Die!

by Paul Tobin

  “Sisters,” Adele said, in a tone of sympathy.

  “Interruption,” Laura said. “Two demerits.”

  I said, “I honestly don’t want to tell this story.” The three of them went silent. Looked innocent. Or at least tried to look innocent. I thought about it, and then I thought… what the hell… some stories need to be told… or at least some people need to tell some stories.

  Kid Crater had two brothers and two sisters. The sisters were older. The brothers were younger. His father had died while fighting a California wildfire… dropped in from above to eke out a firebreak with six other men. The wind had shifted and they’d been trapped in a canyon. Only one man (and it wasn’t Kid Crater’s father) survived the fire’s speedy descent into their position, though he looked only remotely human after the flames had kicked him around. Paladin, when Kid Crater told the story, wrote the man’s name down in a book he sometimes carried, a book listing people that he wanted to search out and heal. I’m not sure if he ever got around to it in this case. We lost track of each other, for a time.

  There were rumors that Firehook had started the California wildfire, but of course there are always rumors of that type.

  Kid Crater’s mother was an insurance saleswoman and, because of that, the father had been insured in twelve different ways and his death had brought in twelve different kinds of money, all of it in large shares. There was enough money that she paid for all of the funerals, for each of the deceased firefighters, herself. There were no flowers for any of them because (as Kid Crater had related) she had broken down when choosing the flowers, looking at a flower display, all the oranges and the reds, and she thought they all looked like flames. A thousand dancing flames. There was no way she could have them so close to the coffins.

  Kid Crater was eleven years old when his father died. He spent the next two years studying flames… the science of fire. He loved to talk about the flames, even if it was in a haunted way, speaking of blackbody radiation and spectral band emissions and other things that sounded somewhat like science and also somewhat like the occult. He was a whiz kid about flames, a true genius, knowing more about fire than almost anyone on Earth. Knowing, in fact, so much, that he created a science fair project centered around flameproof suits, and also possible ways to take down Firehook, presented in a satisfactorily animated science thesis/snuff film.

  SRD had gotten word. Had been intrigued. They had brought in Kid Crater (who, of course, wasn’t Kid Crater at the time) and had persuaded this thirteen-year-old boy to present his findings to some of the finest minds on Earth, including Checkmate, who had sat silently and seemingly inert in his armor, until finally mentioning (this is actually a compliment) that he was not offended by the child’s staggering lack of intelligence.

  But Kid Crater was, for all of this, still a teenage boy, and teenage boys are not known for their incredible abilities at staying out of trouble, and so he had wandered into sections of SRD where he was not authorized, and had strayed near a burn chute (SRD had, at the time, used burn chutes to drop hazardous materials into a Checkmate-designed furnace that burned at temperatures most scientists didn’t think could exist) that was emitting the gases from a previous burn. Checkmate had designed the chutes to absorb even the gases, but budgetary concerns had nixed all of the safety devices inherent in Checkmate’s designs. In SRD’s defense, they were fighting a war at the time, as Stellar had declared herself sovereign of the planet, and even the combined forces of SRD (as foot soldiers, of a sort) and myself, and Paladin, and Mistress Mary, and Red Blade, and Warp (on emergency parole) had been fighting a losing battle against her. It was Octagon, of course, who finally took her down. I have the deluxe book/video box set of the event… the one purportedly signed by Octagon himself. It was provided to me in the hopes that I would scrawl some sort of endorsement for the regular edition. I didn’t. I don’t do those types of things. It was tempting, though; Octagon, whatever his reasons, had saved us all.

  Anyway, the point is, Kid Crater (not quite yet Kid Crater) had inhaled a combination of gases that were leaking from the burn chute at SRD, and then, after that, he was Kid Crater.

  After that, he came looking for me and Paladin.

  After that, he became an unofficial sidekick, and we fought the good fight for a time.

  After some of that, he convinced us to search out Firehook, who, at the time, was on a hiatus of sorts, having not appeared for well over a year… not since my battle with him in the arena. I was able to later find out the hiatus was enforced, that Octagon had tossed Firehook into an Eleventh Hour holding cell, a prison for powered criminals who had challenged Octagon’s authority. A should-be inmate was running the prison, so to speak. When the prison was finally uncovered (during Leviathan’s devastating raid on Seattle) it unleashed a torrent of bad guys who hadn’t ever made any public appearances… ones that Octagon had nabbed up as being unwilling to follow the criminal status quo even before the public (or even SRD) had known about them. That said… there were a few white hats in that prison, too. That’s where Dark Mercy came from, incidentally… not from the “ebony clamshell” she claims in the press packages released prior to her movies.

  Kid Crater was nearly invulnerable when in flight.

  He (as far as anyone knew) actually was invulnerable during impact from his dive bombs.

  He was unrelentingly enthusiastic and had a sense of morality that was (putting aside his changing teenage hormones and their omnipresent demands to rut) as keen as Paladin’s own.

  But he was still a kid, and he still couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

  I sat him down a hundred times and told him to never… never… NEVER… give any clues about who he was in real life.

  I should have sat him down that hundred and first time. I should have. I was caught up in my own problems (which are apparent, and too numerous to list) at the time.

  In his post-fight interview after defeating the Blast Brothers, he said, “I’ve got two brothers, and I dedicate this fight to all the times they gave me wedgies.” It was funny. A good line. Not smart, though.

  When being questioned about how he would resist Mindworm’s abilities if the situation ever arose, he said, “Listen, I have two sisters, and I lived through their mental manipulations. Mindworm doesn’t stand a chance.” Another good line. And now… he’d established he had two brothers and two sisters. Not that big a deal. A lot of people do.

  “I have a personal beef against Firehook,” he said during a brief interview on the red carpet for some teen music awards ceremony, where he was dating (only for publicity purposes, but he did get a handjob, according to his own not-very-trustworthy report) Lili Queen, that seventeen-year-old singer who had a string of viral videos.

  “Why is that?” the reporter had asked.

  “My dad was a fireman. He died in a California wildfire. It might have been Firehook that started it. That’s really all I should say.” Lili, hanging from his arm, gave him the sort of sympathy look that a girl gives when she’s considering lending credence to handjob stories. Paladin and I, catching the interview an hour after it was broadcast, just a snippet on the nightly news, scrambled to try to protect the family that our young sidekick had just uncovered.

  We were too late.

  ***

  “I remember this,” Laura said. “I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s look at the list again. Let’s talk about something else on the list.”

  Adele said, “I researched this. I’m a little embarrassed, sitting here, telling you that I wrote articles and books about you. You sure… you sure this is something you want to talk about?”

  “I think he has to,” Apple said. “Like… therapy.”

  Adele said, “Steve?”

  I said, “It’s okay. Maybe Apple is right. Maybe this is shit I need off my chest. Is there any better way to ruin a picnic?”

  “Orgy,” Laura said.

  Apple said, “Reaver said ruin a picnic. Ruin.”

  Adele, in a
scolding tone, said, “His name is Steve. Not Reaver.”

  I said, “It’s both. And Kid Crater’s name was Nile Brakes. He always wished that he could make it public. He said it was fitting. Nile Brakes. No brakes. Kid Crater.”

  ***

  Kid Crater’s real name was Nile Brakes. His sisters had an apartment together, just a block from their mom, testing out living in the real world. It was close enough that Nile’s mom could pop over, from time to time, to make sure there weren’t any unauthorized parties or penises on the premises. The visits were frequent. The mother was, in fact, at the apartment when the storm broke.

  It wasn’t a natural storm.

  It was Tempest.

  It had already been cloudy. Then it grew cloudier. Then the clouds transformed into a woman’s face and some people (some citizens of Winchester, Nevada) stood and looked at this in wonder, and other people (primarily those who had seen the reports of Tempest’s “goddess” time in Ecuador) ran for what shelters they could find. They needn’t have worried too much. Tempest was there for a specific reason. Because Kid Crater was a hero. And she wasn’t.

  Tendrils of strong wind, like a sentient tornado’s tentacles, came down from the sky. They pierced an apartment building’s windows and reached inside, searching out their specific victims. Rachel and Tally Brakes were swept out from the building, along with their mom. Mrs. Brakes collided with the windowsill during her violent exit. Most of the SRD investigators agree that she died there, at that moment, considering the amount of blood she left behind.

  The two girls and their very-probably-dead mother were carried up into the sky. They were subjected to personal hailstorms, individual lightning strikes, cold that was chilling, and heat beyond measure, but always at a low enough levels that a screaming member of the Brakes family could endure the punishment and plead for their lives in voices that were carried (quite purposefully) to the witnesses below. Those voices even further carried for miles and miles, tens of miles and hundreds of miles, spreading out across the United States, from coast to coast, borne along by strands of wind as thin as telephone lines, heard by bewildered and frightened individuals who happened into these streams. There were hundreds of reports of mysterious calls for help. All across the nation.

  By then, the two girls and their mother had been tossed aside by the storm’s tentacles, cast away to speed to the streets of Winchester, far below.

  They died on impact.

  Or maybe they’d died shortly before.

  But they were dead just the same.

  A hundred miles away the two brothers, Kid Crater’s brothers, were on a camping trip with a family friend. They were found (after an extensive search with a base camp erected only a few feet from their bodies) in a tin coffee can that had been roasting over a flame. The brothers and their friend were inside the coffee can. Only inches tall. Finely roasted. Macabre had gotten to them.

  It was no damn wonder that Kid Crater went crazy.

  ***

  Adele was holding my hand. I didn’t even remember her taking it. Apple was crying and saying she was sorry, and Laura was stroking her hair and telling her that I’d probably needed to talk about it anyway… that she hadn’t done anything wrong by goading me into talking.

  I wasn’t very good at picnics.

  “Maybe we should look at some of these other items on your list?” Adele prompted, holding my “to do” list up in front of her chest. It flapped in a slight breeze. I wondered if any of the three, Adele or Laura or Apple, were thinking about that breeze. About what might be behind it. The breeze was probably normal… of course… but Macabre had already sought me out, and Tempest was still out there somewhere, and she was far crazier than the magician had ever been.

  “I’m glad you killed Macabre,” Apple said. “I never heard about that campsite. Never knew about that.”

  “Not everything makes the news,” I said. “SRD tries to keep a clamp down on most of the bad things. Best that way. It avoids a general panic.”

  Laura said, “I, for one, am panicked right now. Let’s look at this list again.” She took it from Adele’s hands and said, “Number one. Be with Adele again. Seriously? That’s why you came here? You dated each other for a few months, and that was a decade ago, and you… what… miss her?” The questions seemed serious, but Laura’s wry smile wasn’t treating them as such. Still… they actually were serious questions. No avoiding that.

  I said, “Adele, I missed you.” I said it to Adele. Not to her sister.

  There.

  It was out.

  As close to an admission of love as the picnic could handle.

  It wasn’t as gutsy a move as it sounds like. If it all went to hell, I was standing at only nine days before my promised appointment with Octagon. I could make it through those nine days. Hell… I’m bulletproof.

  Adele said, “I noticed you went through my bookshelves so I’m assuming you saw some of the articles I’ve written about you. Even the books. I’ve done a lot of superhero research. I mean… not just about you,” she blushed, here. “I researched a lot of others as well. Because we… we were together… because of that… people will talk to me. Anyway… I mean to say that the topic of Steve Clarke is… well, I missed you too, Steve.” A thump hit me around my chest. An internal one.

  Laura and Apple had taken the appearance of children at the adults’ table. I felt bad for them. They were whispering to each other… looking at us. I hate being on display. I hate it. I was glad that Laura didn’t let the separation last for long.

  “Aren’t you… aren’t you worried about us?” she asked. Her finger did a loop that included the whole group. Maybe the whole park.

  “He kept away from me for a decade,” Adele said. “Of course he was worried about us. About me. That’s why he stayed away.”

  I said, “That’s why I stayed away.”

  “But now you’re back?” This was from Laura. “You… umm… horny or something?”

  “You always put things so nice, sis,” Adele told her.

  I said, “The thing is, I’m not going to stay long.” Adele made an eye flutter. I all but ignored it (outwardly) and went on with, “And then it’s not going to matter much after that.”

  “Enigmatic,” Adele said. “Go on.”

  “Can’t. Not yet. Secret, SRD-related confidential top secret classified information. Suffice to say, in about ten days time, nobody will bother much about my friends or family.”

  “Holy shit,” Adele said. “What’s going on?”

  But I kept silent. Their faces registered expectation, but I didn’t say a word. Laura was amused, thinking I was teasing about something. Apple had a look in her eye that said, maybe, possibly, she was worried. It was nice to think that someone I’d just met could be worried about me… nice to think I was that charming a figure. She looked to the note in Adele’s hands. Bit her lip. I noticed her the most because I was adamantly trying not to look at Adele, because Adele could have read the truth in my eyes, or at least she could have read the first couple sentences of the truth, and dragged whole story out of me afterwards. So I didn’t look at her eyes. I didn’t. I didn’t want her to know, yet, that I was dying from a disease called Octagon.

  ***

  Kid Crater flew into the sky. Then down to the ground. Impact was registering all over the United States… maybe all over the world. He would go up. Come down. Paladin tried to calm him, flying along with him on the way up (arms around him, hugging him, trying to pull him away from his course, to get him to listen to reason) but even Greg had to bow out of Kid Crater’s downward strike… the blast into the rocky soil of the Blue Mountains in Oregon, shattering sections of the slope, crawling out from the debris, screaming that he was an idiot (for giving away his family’s identity) and that he would kill Tempest and Macabre and everyone else… everyone else… because the world was a horrible place full of sickness and evil, of hate and horror, and he was soaring up into the sky and down again and again, with SRD he
licopters and airplanes nearby, including one wasp-y helicopter with a single front-mounted weapon, a pointed lance of Checkmate’s unmistakable design. God knows what that thing could have fired. It made me nervous, then, to be so close to something that could probably kill me. I’d grown comfortable with moving through a world that was ultimately harmless.

  I yelled, “Whiskey store!” when Kid Crater was going up into the skies. I was holding a bottle of whiskey. Waving it about.

  I yelled, “Whiskey store!” when Kid Crater was coming down onto a ridge, sending boulders the size of mini-vans dancing down the slope. One rolled close enough to me that I could have reached out and touched it as it passed. I didn’t. It might have broken the bottle I was holding.

  I yelled, “Whiskey store!” as Kid Crater was climbing out of the rubble. This was the best time to approach him, before he’d built up any momentum. Paladin was trying to hold him (and was glowing that healing glow of his… but he couldn’t heal the type of sickness that had driven its claws into Kid Crater) but the kid was taking to the skies again, and I threw the bottle after him, hoping he’d grab it, but it just arced into the sky, four or five hundred feet into the air, then came down a quarter mile distant, making a slight puff of near-disintegration when it landed. By then I’d raced to our liquor cache (we’d been prepared for Kid Crater’s sorrows, but not as prepared as we’d hoped) at three times the speed of a normal man, and I was holding up a bottle of whiskey in each hand, shaking them at the blurs in the sky and screaming, “Whiskey bottle! Whiskey bottle,” and probably sounding like some pet-owner trying to call home an errant dog. It wasn’t an apt analogy, but it wasn’t so far away from one, either.

  This went on for five, ten minutes. Maybe a half hour. The SRD were growing increasingly unsettled, knowing that they could have (could they have?) taken down Kid Crater right then… put a Checkmate-designed bullet in his forehead… and called it good. If they did this, they were assholes. If they didn’t do this, then what kind of assholes would they be if Kid Crater got it in his head (after he’d been so long in SRD’s gun sights) to whisk over to Seattle and start making craters there, all over the city, instead of on the side of a mountain?