Prepare to Die!

by Paul Tobin

  And Paladin and I fought every inch of the way through. Thousands of animals. Not just the burrowing ones. Other things. Darker ones that maybe Octagon had created, or maybe they came from somewhere else. That was one of Devil Mole’s big messages: not everything comes from human intervention. When you tally up the score sheet, in fact, most things don’t.

  I was using a Checkmate-designed flashlight (of some metal that even I could barely dent) and Paladin was good all by himself, because that shimmer of his emits a glow that’s bright enough to make do.

  There was so much blood that my flashlight was in need of constant cleaning, and all of the caves and caverns and corridors were tinged red by its light, and green by the glow of my wounds. Paladin, of course, remained as pure as when we’d been jackass enough to enter the tunnels. Nothing stuck to that shimmer of his. Nothing.

  I was sliding on the uneven surfaces. At no previous time in my life had I ever considered how damn slippery blood could be. Half the time, down there in the tunnels, I couldn’t get any goddamn traction.

  Paladin wasn’t having any such problems. He was floating through the corridors of stone. Flying, even beneath the Earth’s surface. There were several times that I lost my footing and only Paladin’s outstretched hand kept me from sliding down some forsaken offshoot tunnel to who-the-fuck-knows what fate.

  I was lost.

  He knew which was to go.

  It was that vision of his. He knew which direction had the worst of it… where the nastiest of the evil was at… where the worst of the problems were lying in wait. So… that’s the direction we went.

  It took days, weeks, years, it seemed, before we reached Devil Mole in what amounted to his underground lair. I was shocked, later, to find out we’d only been down in the tunnels for six hours. I couldn’t believe it. Literally couldn’t believe it. There’s a video, I’ve seen it, where I’m making a jackass of myself by calling a reporter a liar. He’d said we’d only been gone for six hours. I couldn’t believe it.

  The media has taken some of my words, the ones relating to what we saw down there, into meaning that we found Devil Mole atop a throne made of thousands of bones. That’s not true at all. That’s making it all sound too human. There wasn’t any throne. There wasn’t any culture. I’ve seen tabloid depictions of the underground chamber that made it seem as if Devil Mole’s lair was the throne room of some baron or count or a princeling aspiring to the crown. In reality, it was dank, and earthy, and bloody, and caked with feces. It’s true about the bones, though. There were thousands of bones. Most of them were human, as far as I could tell. Most of them accounted for the hundreds of missing person reports that had come in from all over the globe. Paladin has recounted that all of the bones were stripped bare… that there was no flesh, no stench… just bones.

  Paladin was wrong about this.

  Paladin always had such focus. From the moment he saw Devil Mole, that was all he saw. He didn’t see the side rooms… the adjoining chambers, where there were hundreds of bodies strewn all over the floor, impaled on stalagmites or hanging from stalactites, even fused into them, somehow, as if some of the citizens of New York (in particular, the block that had been pulled under on that dark night of October 3rd) had been in the caverns for tens of thousands of years. It didn’t make any sense. Nothing we saw made any sense. Maybe I hallucinated. It could be argued that I’d gone a little mad by that time. In fact, it can’t be argued that I hadn’t.

  And there was a stench.

  There was a horrible stench.

  Devil Mole was not sitting on a throne made of bones. He was scurrying over a huge pile of them, and his words were thrusting into our minds.

  The rats, the moles, the groundhogs and a thousand permutations of monsters related to these creatures, they all fought our entrance into that cavern. Even the lichens were against us, somehow, whispering things to us, warning us away, screeching that we would be killed, that it would be our blood, in the end, that stained the walls. Soon, the screams of the earthworms and the lichens turned from taunts into a chanting sort of pleading. This happened, of course, at a time when it became clear that Paladin and I could not be stopped. That we could, at best, only be injured, and we were both of us men who could heal from any wound.

  Devil Mole’s creatures died in waves. Like the rats in Octagon’s arena, these creatures were short-lived, for the most part, and two or three contacts with my fists would end their show, steal away the lives that they had dedicated to Devil Mole.

  And finally, the waves of our foes receded and Paladin and I were standing in front of Devil Mole.

  Negotiations for his surrender began.

  I was not a part of them.

  I could not, in fact, believe these negotiations were even taking place.

  This was a creature that had shivered a frightened world into a standstill. That had made each of us, every human in the world, acutely aware that we were on the edge of a mass extinction, an overthrow of the dominant species. The two of us, Paladin and I, were amidst the corpses of a million dead bodies (I’m not positive of the real number, but I’m sure that my perceptions were skewed, as it is still hard to believe we were only in those tunnels for six hours) and it had taken two of the most powerful superhumans to even gain an audience with the creature that had orchestrated the whole show. What happened if, next time, the two of us were gone? What happened if, next time, we were on his side? The last bit sounds unthinkable, but, standing so near Devil Mole, the pimply near-human creature, his mind was working on my mind, making me question things that had no question.

  Considering this, considering all of this, I was shocked when Paladin began to dictate Devil Mole’s terms for surrender.

  Surrender?

  There couldn’t be any surrender.

  There could only be death for Devil Mole.

  So when Paladin was talking about his negotiations, about the terms of surrender, I moved as quickly as I could (at three times the speed of a normal human, taking even Paladin by surprise) and I slid past my friend and drove a fist though Devil Mole’s skull and into his brain.

  As Devil Mole’s corpse dropped to the ground, sliding against the wall and ending up crumpled against stones caked with blood and bones, Paladin just stared at me.

  As the creatures there in the cavern shrieked, as they were suddenly bereft of their communal mind, their collective voice, they began to scatter, to escape, to quiver in panic, to fight amongst themselves, and as all of this was going on around us, Paladin just stared at me.

  He stared at me as I closed my eyes (I could feel him watching me, still, because that’s who he was) and tried to search through my brain in order to make sure, make positive, that all of the various voices (guilt, accomplishment, disgust, etc.) in my brain were mine and mine alone… no longer spoken or tainted by Devil Mole.

  Paladin stood aside, slightly, as I knelt on the ground (brushing aside a mass of earthworms to make room for my knee) in order to make sure that Devil Mole was dead.

  Finally, Greg Barrows said, “I was talking to him.”

  “I wasn’t. That’s not why I came down here.”

  We were silent for a time. I could feel him wanting to speak, but not wanting to say whatever words were on his lips. I won’t, here, pretend that I knew what he was going to say… that I had any premonition of the upcoming rift. Yes… he had surprised me with the talk of surrender, but I honestly felt, at the time (and even more, now) that I had not only done the proper thing, but the only possible thing.

  Finally, Paladin said, “You know I see the world differently, right? Not just… morally… but I see… it’s hard to explain… I see intent. In simple terms, and this isn’t quite right… but in the simplest terms I see good. I see evil.”

  I said, “So?” There was probably a lot more to say, but that’s all that I said. The animals, all of the creatures, for the most part, had escaped into tunnels, or ran off down stone corridors, but the stench of the cavern remained. It w
as a presence. It was immense.

  Paladin said, “So… Devil Mole… he wasn’t evil. He just… wasn’t like us. We can’t expect him to live, to survive, by our own moral code.”

  “That’s all we can do. That’s exactly what we have to do. That’s how we survive. That’s how anyone survives.”

  It could have stopped right there. That could have been the end of it. Paladin and I were different people, and we already knew that. We could have stopped right there. Instead, we said some more words, and then after that we went up into the open air, and to the media and the crowds, and we pretended we were both friends and we pretended we were both heroes. But we weren’t, and we didn’t talk for months afterwards. Not until Greg, misinformed, thought I was dead.

  Down below, in those caverns, standing next to Devil Mole’s corpse, I’d been fool enough to say, “So… you can see evil, then? Really?”

  Paladin said, “Yes. Essentially. That’s true.”

  I’d asked, “Then… what do you see when you look at me?”

  And Paladin had said, “When?”

  ***

  One by one, all around us, all of the cars were sucked into the sky until the parking lot was nearly empty. What remained was only myself and Laura Layton, and her girlfriend Apple, and our car, and all the groceries spilled around. Above us, a hundred cars were whirling in the air. Centered around a woman.

  Laura said, “Is that… is that Tempest?” As if there was any doubt.

  Apple said, “That bitch!” She picked up an orange and threw it into the sky. It didn’t hit anything. It didn’t come back down. It wasn’t much of an attack, but it was all we had, so I emulated it as best I could, substituting Laura’s car in place of the orange.

  I can’t throw a car very far. A block at the most. They’re unwieldy… that’s the problem. And a car isn’t the most accurate projectile ever devised, either. An arrow is shaped like an arrow for a reason. For the same reason, an arrow is not shaped like a 2011 Lexus. But… it was all I had.

  It missed, of course, as I knew that it would. It was just a distraction. I won’t pretend that I wasn’t hoping it would soar into the air, aided by the very winds that Tempest was creating, and smash into the completely naked near-goddess, knock her from the air, send her crashing to the parking lot pavement where I could once again make my way into the headlines as not the most morally sound of all the heroes, with websites screaming that I could have saved her (she was beautiful, after all) and moreover that I should have tried to save Tempest, instead of making her into the Very Big Puddle in the grocery store parking lot, amidst all the cars that had fallen from the sky.

  But… none of that mattered. I missed.

  I missed, as I knew, in my heart, that I would. The distraction was only so that I could gather up Laura and Apple (tucking them under my arms) and make a play for the safety (ha ha ha) of the grocery store. I can run at maybe seventy miles per hour. Hopefully that would be enough.

  Winds, of course, can move a good deal faster than seventy miles per hour.

  I hadn’t gone very far before I knew that I wasn’t going to make it. The winds began tugging at my back, trying to take me into the air and to wrest the two women from my grasp. Laura and Apple were both screaming, but their words were lost in the chaos of the tornadoes that were playing all over the parking lot, and the crashings of the cars within them. Debris was raining down from above, falling from the sky and impacting all around, like a flock of metal birds brought down from the skies. These metal fragments were almost immediately gathered back up by the scouring winds, lifting them into a sky so black and so roiling with motion that it looked as if it were a pit of black lava, one that was above us, one that was erupting, one that we were falling into.

  I wasn’t going to make it to the grocery store.

  I wasn’t fast enough.

  If I was going to make sure that we weren’t sucked into the skies, I was going to have to escape in another direction. I was going to have to go down.

  I began stomping on the parking lot’s surface, driving my feet down into the pavement, sending concrete shards flying all around us, hating myself for trying to run away when I should have been trying to kill Tempest… when I should have been bringing down the woman who had killed Kid Crater’s family.

  But being a hero isn’t about getting revenge. It’s not even about staying alive. It is, and always has been, as seen in countless ballads and stories and movies throughout the ages, all about saving the pretty girls. I did have Kid Crater to think about, but I had Laura and Apple to think about, first. So, I did what I could to burrow. It’s not something at which I’m overly adept.

  I was hoping for an underground parking lot, even a sewer system, anywhere that the three of us could hide… could work out a strategy for the fight. One of my stomps sent soil and concrete tumbling down, rather than being flung aside, and I knew there was some sort of sanctuary below, if only I could reach it. I could hear Tempest laughing above, her voice sounding out even past all the chaos. She did not sound like a woman who would allow an escape.

  Two things went wrong. Or, at least, two things happened.

  The first was that Apple broke free of my grasp and began running across the parking lot.

  The second was that Mistress Mary rose up from below, ghosting up through the ground, through the hole I’d been creating, looking almost as angry as I was.

  The woman has a myriad of powers. I’m not sure anyone has ever catalogued them all. The thing with her voice, the one that gives everyone an irresistible compulsion to do as she says, that’s the one that gets all the press. But there’s the ghost form. Intangibility. Walking through walls. Invisibility. She projects a force field. She doesn’t need to eat, drink, breathe, sleep or anything like that… though she does them all, now and then, either for pleasure or to feel more human, whenever she’s in that sort of mood. There are other powers as well. Some of them she keeps secret, I think, in case she ever needs a trump card. Her powers are as tricky as Octagon’s.

  Plus, now she carries a gun.

  She floated up out of the hole that I’d been stomping into creation (unaffected, it seemed, by the murderous winds) and looked into the skies, shaking her head, like a mother who’s looking at a report card that not only has another line of “F’s” in place, but also a scribbled note from the school principal that her child is the educational and social equivalent of gonorrhea.

  Into the winds, she yelled, “Tempest! Knock this shit off!” I felt the tug of the command in my own mind… the desire to do as Mistress Mary says… and she wasn’t even speaking to me and her powers don’t work very well on me anyway. I can’t imagine what it’s like for a regular person. Paladin always said that was one of my problems… that I couldn’t imagine what anything was like for a normal person. He, himself, always kept trying to think of himself as a normal person. Look where that got him.

  The winds dipped down. The larger, heavier cars began plummeting from above. They hit the parking lot looking like no more than wadded pieces of paper (albeit metal ones) that had been discarded by a giant. I held Laura protectively underneath me, dodging these cast-off vehicles, all the while scanning the parking lot... looking for an escape… looking for Apple, hoping I wouldn’t see her sticking out from beneath some fallen car like the wicked witch of the east. A couple rays of sunlight began making their way through the clouds. The chaos had lowered to a point where I could understand Laura’s screams.

  “Apple!” she was screaming. “Where’s Apple? God damn this! Save her!” I wanted to save her. I wanted that more than anything. But… I didn’t know where she was. I couldn’t see her. I hoped she was safe. It didn’t seem possible.

  The winds began to pick up again.

  Mistress Mary was yelling, “No. Don’t even think about it! Cut off this storm! Cut it off! Tempest! This is Mistress Mary! I command you to cease this attack!”

  It was lightning that answered. Lightning answered with a hundred
bolts arcing down from the skies, lancing into the (fortunately very intangible) form of Mistress Mary and the (unfortunately) very tangible form of me, Steve Clarke, Reaver. I was hunched over Laura, having cast her down into the hole, covering her.

  The lightning hurt.

  I was getting really mad.

  I’ve mentioned that I get mad.

  I’ve mentioned how I feel about the death of Kid Crater.

  His death, truthfully, wasn’t where it all seemed to go wrong. That particular veering moment was long before his death. But… when he died… it put the lid on things. It made it clear that things were wrong. It made it clear, in particular, that Tempest was wrong, and even if I couldn’t make things right… I could make Tempest dead.

  That had to count for something, right?

  Mistress Mary was still yelling into the skies, screaming about calming down, then about goddamn ceasing the attack, and then onto, “I will slit your throat if you don’t knock this shit off!” A few years earlier, she’d found it erotic that I didn’t obey her commands. I guess times had changed.

  I asked Mary, “Can you turn other people intangible?”

  “I don’t reveal my powers. But, yes, maybe. Why?”

  I handed her a screaming writhing Laura Layton and said, “Because she’s important to me. Don’t let her be hurt. Stay here. I’m going to kill a goddess.”

  Mary took Laura from me, but all the time she was looking me in the eyes, making calculations, thinking the thoughts of whatever someone like a person who’s one step away from having the voice of God thinks of at a time like that. I couldn’t tell. I didn’t care.

  “Just do what I say,” I snapped. I didn’t have time for minds moving in mysterious ways.

  “Yes, sir,” she said, making a joke of it, but, I could tell, a little scared, too. Laura, in Mistress Mary’s arm, turned a bit milky white, a shade invisible. I knew she was safe. Nothing could harm her.

  Unfortunately, it seemed like nothing could harm Tempest, either. At least nothing that I could do. The shit thing about fighting a weather goddess is that they don’t commune with the ground all that much, and that’s pretty much where I stand. I can’t fly, and though I can jump pretty high it wasn’t going to do me much good against a woman who could fly much higher than I can jump, and who could make the winds do her bidding.