Prepare to Die!

by Paul Tobin

  “Probably nothing in here that’s going to fit you, Steve,” Laura said. “And, even then, unless you like embroidered kittens…?” She shrugged. She blinked. Dust had gotten into her eyes. The parking lot was dusty, and the wind was flinging the particles here and there, like a suburban sand storm.

  I said, “I’m good. Regular temperatures don’t affect me.”

  “Regular temperatures don’t affect me,” she repeated, in a mocking grade school voice. “Because I’m Steve Clarke and I have…” She stopped when my phone beeped at me. I took it from my pocket and peered at it. Laura tried to peer at it, too… but Apple stayed respectively distant. Of course, she could have been relying on Laura to relay the information.

  It was a text message from Adele. It read, “I’m planning such a great surprise for you that you should definitely kiss me.”

  Laura, reading it (damn… she read it fast) said, “Oh, sis. Dummy. It’s not a surprise when you tell people it’s a surprise. Where’s Mistress Mary when you need her? She’s still in town, right? She could order Steve to forget he ever read that message.”

  Apple said, “Mistress Mary’s command powers don’t work on Steve.”

  “Really?” Laura said.

  “Really. Don’t you read your sister’s own writing? She wrote, like, four articles on it.”

  “Not much of a reader. I mostly sit and paint. Or stand and paint. I have body paint. We could lay down and paint.”

  I said, “If you two want me to leave…?”

  “You have to carry the groceries,” Laura said.

  “And buy them,” Apple added. “You’re still the only millionaire here. At least until Laura starts selling her paintings at Sotheby’s.”

  “I’ll pencil that in for next Tuesday,” Laura answered, trying to tug a shopping cart from about thirty of them in a corral, all of them stuck into each other like a sexual conga line of metal-framed rabbits. I thought about telling the two girls about my shopping cart metaphor, but didn’t want to get them started.

  We moved down the store aisles. Apple mentioned her substantial employee discount. It made buying foods easier. It’s hard to try new foods when the prices are as towering as Leviathan. I noticed, not for the first time, how many store advertisements used superhumans to sell the product. We were assured of Stellar tastes. A Siren’s call of savings. It wouldn’t take Mistress Mary to convince us that Super Eight is #1 in customer satisfaction. Other signs proclaimed similar messages.

  There were other customers in the store who began following us around, trying to stay on the opposite ends of aisles, trying to pretend that they were looking at canned spaghetti, fresh bagels, jars of olives, anything besides what they were really looking at. Four people (a young couple, a plump housewife, and a young man with, “I’m all for anarchy if that’s okay with you,” written on his shirt) all had the guts to ask me for an autograph. Normally I would have turned them down. I didn’t. Nothing felt normal anymore. I signed a sketchbook (full of competent drawings of grizzled old faces) for the young couple, and I signed the young man’s shirt. The plump housewife (Eva, her name was Eva, mentioned four times) had me sign her arm, and then I posed for a picture with her, which Laura took, and afterwards Laura told me that Eva (Eva… Eva… Eva… Eva) would probably masturbate to it, at some point.

  I said, “Not everything has to do with sex.” I was a little irritated, frankly. Eva had seemed nice enough, and had said that she appreciated what I do… the parts where I put my life on the line. Her father (she mentioned this twice) had been a police officer. She knew it was a burden on him, and she couldn’t see how it would be any different for me.

  “Not… everything has to do with… sex?” Laura repeated, as if she were rolling the words around in her mouth, trying them out for sound, trying to understand what the words could possibly mean.

  My phone beeped again.

  I reached for it, but thought better of it. Laura’s eyes were a bit too curious.

  “Mind kissing her?” I asked Apple, pointing to Laura.

  Apple said, “Huh? Sure! Why? You want to watch us, or…? Oh. I get it. Pucker up, girlfriend.”

  The two of them kissed (Apple took off Laura’s glasses, first, with a wink at me) and I took the opportunity of their distraction to look at my phone message. It was another text from Adele. Laura, even while locked to her girlfriend’s lips, swiveled her eyes towards me, but I’d been a couple steps ahead of her and there was no way she could read what it had said.

  She asked about it.

  A lot.

  She asked about it when we were buying cake (apparently it was needed for a surprise party for an unnamed superhero they knew… though by that time I could guess).

  She asked about it when we were buying stuffing. And bananas. And grapes. We bought red grapes and green grapes because none of us could decide which was best, and then we added in wine because it seemed like we should complete the theme.

  Laura asked about the message again (earning her a pinch from Apple) when we were grabbing pasta and shrimp and the makings for a sauce that Apple swore would taste exactly eight times better than Siren’s kiss.

  Laura asked about the text a few more times, but I kept quiet about the truth of it, dropping red herring hints that it had been from Octagon challenging me to a tennis match, or hints that it had been from Commander Bryant, saying that a 30-foot cockroach was on the loose, and dropping further false hints (or I guess, more accurately, false statements) that it had been from the head of the United Nations, appointing me as ambassador to an incoming alien fleet, and I even dropped hints that it had been from Mistress Mary, ordering me to tell Laura Layton to be quiet.

  But what I didn’t say was the truth.

  It had been from Adele.

  And it had said, “I’ve been thinking about my earlier text, and… Steve… seriously, I do think you should kiss me. I think you should do that.”

  It was… pleasant to see it, right down in real words, where I could read it, again and again. I kept taking my phone out. Looking at the words. There were still there, every time.

  When we paid for the groceries, and went outside, the wind was howling.

  Howling.

  ***

  The first time I ever met Tempest (which is also the first time I fought her, because the number of times that we have met exactly matches the number of times that we have fought) was when Paladin and I, some time after leaving the Minnesota cabin, travelled to Ecuador in order to try to root her out of her growing cult, which was centered near Guayaquil, along the coast, drawing converts from the wealth of banana, cacao, and coffee plantations.

  Paladin had been earlier negotiating with Tempest, trying to coax her into surrendering herself for the crimes she’d committed in the United States, but she was not only insane (even Paladin should have realized this) but had done an admirable job of inserting herself as a local goddess, Misevályue herself, reborn. Misevályue had been a mythological weather goddess, and the mother of all dancing and singing. Tempest could easily play the part of a weather goddess (it could even be debated, theologically, that she was one) and the members of her growing cult were taking care of all the dancing and singing aspects. There were a few sacrifices involved. Goats. Chickens. Foreigners.

  When Paladin received SRD word that I’d been killed (as the initial reports said) by Stellar (and how she had dropped me from space) he’d left Tempest behind and flown to Virginia to find me, to pinpoint the spot where SRD tracking satellites had placed my descent. He’d been astonished to find me alive (I’d been no less astonished) and we’d forgotten all about the feud that had divided our partnership. I’d recovered in the Minnesota cabin, aimlessly hiking, watching wildlife, and swimming beneath the lake (I can’t breathe water, but I can hold my breath for… oh… an hour or so) in order to let the bemused indifference of the fish ease what was already becoming, even then, a somewhat melancholy heart.

  Of course, Paladin’s departure from Ecuad
or had been taken as a sign that the old gods (which Tempest was considered) had defeated the new gods (as led by Paladin) and by the time he (now with me tagging along) returned to the jungles near Guayaquil, Tempest’s cult had grown considerably. Christian churches had been torn down, or else had their roofs removed (often with less than surgical precision) so that the goddess’s flock could be in constant communion with the sky. Tempest (I watched one of the “sermons” while in disguise) would float down from above, and she would (somewhat) talk of the importance of nature, with her pure white naked skin and flowing red hair transporting her adherents to various types of rapture. When her words were finished (the devout found them enigmatic, while in truth she was simply raving) she swept two members of her congregation up into the sky along with her, carrying them away. It was supposed that she was transporting them to heaven, to a better place, but of course the truth is that she was carrying them to a nest (made of nearly solid winds) in the clouds, a place where she would have sex with them, and then kick them out of bed. That last part was problematic for her partners, because the floor of the “bedroom” was a long ways down.

  I can’t say that it probably mattered much, though. Tempest was about twenty percent lightning, and her own orgasms were nearly always fatal to her partners. Still… some went willingly. Paladin blamed me for standing by and letting her take two of her flock, but I’d told him that if you piss on an electric fence (or, more aptly, stick your dick into a electric socket) then you deserve the shock of what you get in return. He hadn’t calmed down until I told him (being only somewhat honest) that I’d had to make a hard choice of letting the two men go… or else endangering the rest of the congregation.

  We’d defeated Tempest. Whisked her off into proper custody.

  The battle had been fierce, and I’d punched her a few times, and Paladin had done his part… keeping her on the ground and within my range, even with lightning playing all over his body… pushing her to the earth, where I could be Reaver, doing what I do.

  It hadn’t seemed like she’d aged much (I must have punched her thirty times) but some of us have elongated life spans, now, and that probably played a factor. It had certainly affected her, because she began to scream, and in her screams (witnessed by masses of her worshippers, several of whom died while trying to move closer to the site of our battle in order to help their goddess) she began to pray, and she prayed to the Christian god, the popular one, and his son Jesus, and his Virgin Mary, all of which was heresy according to her cult. Why pray to Misevályue (meaning, of course, Tempest) when she herself was praying to another god? Nobody likes a second place divinity.

  Paladin healed a few of the injured before we left.

  That got them started again.

  ***

  The second time I met Tempest was very brief. I happened to be at SRD (we were studying if it was possible to reverse the effects of my punch, which it wasn’t, for those who keep track of such things) when Tempest broke free from the holding cell where we’d stashed her. It had been thought that she needed to be conscious in order to control her powers. We (even Checkmate, oddly) had been wrong about that.

  She’d frozen some of the circuits that held her in stasis, dropping her free from the time field. She’d never hit the floor, only hovered (held up by winds) in the holding center, slowly recovering from the drugs. The whole base had scrambled. Full lockdown. Red alert. Lights and sirens. Two soldiers had gone into the holding cell in order to attempt to administer further drugs (it was a mix of quinine and strychnine and, I believe, prussic acid… a mixture that would have killed a thousand or more normal people) but they had been frozen in blocks of ice (they actually survived, which shows Tempest was off her game) and by the time I reached the facility there was a gaping hole in the roof, the dying remnants of Tempest’s laughter, and a cloud formation that even a porn star would have considered vulgar.

  She was gone.

  Escaped.

  Three days after that, she was a member of Eleventh Hour.

  ***

  The third time I met Tempest she was teamed with Macabre and they were tearing down satellites from space. We all remember this one. We all remember how Earth’s atmosphere, for an hour, expanded nearly to the moon, so that there were suddenly a quarter million miles of storms in what had been the dead of space.

  I’d battled her briefly before she soared into the skies (and then into space, and then into space that became the skies) and was out of my range.

  Octagon took her down that time. Unauthorized rampage… he’d said. Interference with some of his key investments, he’d said.

  Tempest and Macabre had suddenly fallen from the sky as if a switch had been thrown. I’d have given my left nut to know how Octagon accomplished that. Even if I hadn’t known for sure, being who I am, that my left nut would grow back… I’d have served it up on plate to knock Tempest out of the sky.

  ***

  The fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh times I met Tempest had all been battles. All of them. Most of them with Eleventh Hour involved. We had each survived the battles, though that particular statistic was dicey from both sides. In fact, it could be argued that the seventh time had been fatal, for me, since it was only by delaying my death, by convincing Octagon to give me a chance to prepare to die, that I’d been allowed to walk away.

  ***

  The eighth time I met Tempest she was hovering above the parking lot at the Super Eight Grocery Emporium, watching Laura Layton and Apple, her girlfriend, taking groceries from my hands and putting them in the back seat. The three of us, below, looked up and saw the woman hovering in the winds above, and then cars all around us were being sucked into the skies by the tornadoes.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It’s never been made public why Paladin and I had our falling out. The truth of the matter is that it has a lot to do with the creature that the media liked to call Devil Mole. If you remember, the Mole had been one of Octagon’s genetic experiments, and had grown beyond what Octagon had planned. Word was (this was from Siren, who was dating Octagon at the time, and sleeping with me at the time) that the Mole had grown into nearly human form. I’d originally (before I fought him) pictured some sort of were-mole (which sounded terrifying and hilarious, both) but in reality, when I finally encountered the creature it was more along the lines of a teenage boy with extensive boils.

  What happened (again, according to Siren, who, it must be remembered, never lies to a man) is that Octagon had created the creature, trying to turn the animals of Earth into beings we could all converse with. For what purposes I wasn’t sure. An animal army? A vegetarian crusade? Skilled and unobtrusive spies? I have no idea. Octagon’s brain operates at levels I don’t understand. His reasons are his own.

  What Octagon hadn’t planned upon was that Devil Mole’s abilities to converse went far beyond speech; Octagon had created a telepathic creature… one that could link his conversations directly, mind to mind, and could even control another’s thoughts to some extent, and to know what people were thinking, and so on and so forth. We’re talking about extensive mental abilities, here.

  A hundred thousand moles gathered beneath the lab where Octagon was keeping Devil Mole. This was before the public was aware of his existence. This was before he’d shut down New York, and before the mass destruction in St. Petersburg, or the animal uprisings in Africa and, well… everywhere.

  This gathering of moles was even, of course, before Octagon discovered Devil Mole’s plan. Discovered them a little too late, as it proved. Siren has told me of Devil Mole’s escape… the battle with several of Octagon’s other genetic manipulations… the griffins (the ones later dubbed the Flying Tigers) and the giant insects and all the others. Siren said (she was difficult to pay attention to, at the time, because she was writing some of the key words on her naked body) that one hallway… the one down which Devil Mole made his escape, was littered a yard deep in thousands of bumblebees the size of a man’s fist. That image has always st
uck with me, partially because that’s a lot of bumblebees, and also because, telling me of all this, Siren wrote the word bumblebee on her stomach, with an arrow pointing down.

  Devil Mole announced himself to the world, shortly after… maybe a week after his escape. By then half the burrowing animals of the entire world were under his control, or at least on his side. My SRD psychiatrist (we all of us, us superhumans, have our own individual SRD psychiatrist, and I’m not sure if that should make the public feel better, or very much worse) told me that I should understand that all of the moles and voles and earthworms and groundhogs were going to see this as their first ever religion, their first ever god, and to think in those terms when I was dealing with them.

  I said, “Are you really going to tell me how to best go about debating theology with an earthworm? That’s really why I’m here today? To learn how to best facilitate a groundhog’s conversations about its personal beliefs?” My psychiatrist (Eleanor Rackham was/is her name… that’s a freebie for the tabloids) had said something else, but by that time I wasn’t listening anymore; I was only waiting for a moment to tell her that we were through talking. We were. I haven’t spoken to her since. The whole thing was ridiculous.

  Most of what happened above the ground is known. Most of what happened below the ground is not. Paladin and I were chosen (and chose ourselves) to go down into the tunnels. Warp guarded the entrances and exits for the first few hours, until he had one of his incidents, and then it was Dark Mercy (grabbing all the headlines) and Tattoo. This was, of course, before Tattoo’s disappearance.

  The tunnels alternated between rough hewn (and barely passable) tubes, to stone corridors that might have been manmade before Devil Mole was ever around, but mostly it was natural systems of caves and caverns.