Men of Steel

by Ryan Loveless

  “—untold destruction here in Midtown, as the ship that seems to have come from outer space lays waste to the city with weapons of unimaginable power.”

  Well, good for Gail, I thought with a randomness that bespoke my distraught state of mind. She was always bitching about not getting the same opportunity for gritty assignments as her male counterparts. This should make her happy… if she survived. That outcome seemed none too certain as she ducked to avoid a showering of debris that left her pretty face covered in superficial cuts.

  “We’ve received a report that the Air Force has deployed fighters against the spaceship.” She tilted her head upward, her eyes squinting as she tried to see what was happening overhead. “Yes, there they are!”

  Scurrying back to the window, I looked up as well, just in time to see a squadron of aircraft swarm towards the alien vessel. They were like mosquitoes harrying an elephant, and just as effective. Two fighters succumbed to the ship’s laser in the first ten seconds, and within a minute, all I could see was debris from the decimated planes raining down from the sky.

  “Wait!” I turned back to the TV at Gail’s shout. “I’ve been informed—” She put her finger to her ear, pushing the earbud in further. “Yes, I’ve been told that all of the fighters were destroyed before they could score a single hit!” The camera started to tilt upward to provide visual corroboration of her report, but a sudden flash abruptly whited out the screen.

  “Gail,” I whispered. “Oh, no.”

  I found myself taking back every uncharitable thing I’d ever thought about the acerbic blonde. Had that last blast killed her? I bit my lip, telling myself that I might even forgive her for trying to make out with Victor at last year’s holiday party if only she was all right. I was left wondering about that fact for several long minutes until the blinding glare died away, showing a crater in the background behind where Gail had been standing. My breath caught in my throat at the scale of the damage, but whooshed out in a sigh of relief when Gail climbed back into the camera’s focus. Both she and her cameraman had been knocked to the ground, but consummate professional that she was, Gail was clearly determined to stay on the air. No matter that her hair was a rat’s nest of tangles and that not even a bum would want the rags that had once been her prized Dolce & Gabbana suit.

  “Thank goodness,” Victor breathed, echoing my own sense of relief.

  “We’re all right! We’re all right!” Gail’s voice was shaky and breathy. “I think some of the people who were standing nearby have been injured, but I can’t determine the number of casualties. The smoke from the blast is still too thick.” She coughed, waving her hand in front of her face. Then something above her must have caught her attention because she was suddenly staring upward, her eyes red from the polluted air. “Frank, can you pan up? Oh my God, are you getting this?”

  Frank obliged, and Victor and I gasped as the camera revealed what was happening to the alien craft. I rushed back over to the window to see for myself what the camera was showing, but events were unfolding identically in real life. Whereas before the ship’s belly had been a solid surface broken only by the laser turrets, now it began to split apart like a pistachio nut. A large flat panel lowered from the opening, and once it was a few feet below the ship, it began to unfold like some sort of demented origami figurine. Soon, there were a bunch of smaller panels facing in every possible direction except directly up at the ship. My nose wrinkled, which it did when I was confused, as I tried to fathom the purpose of the contraption.

  Suddenly, the surfaces began to grow brighter, revealing that they were projection screens. The face that appeared on them made me glad that Victor had been so adamant about preventing me from encountering the monsters that had been attacking the planet over the past few months and even more glad that he had eaten the lion’s share of the casserole.

  “Eww,” I moaned, the sound barely audible over the growl that rumbled in Victor’s throat. No, now was not the time to think about how that sound went straight into my shorts. Not while I was staring at the ugly cousin of a Lovecraftian nightmare.

  Star Trek had it all wrong. Not everything in the universe was a variation of human with bad prosthetics. This thing had no discernable face. Rather, where its head should have been were a multitude of tubes that radiated from a central greenish-gray stalk. A virulent-looking slime oozed from gaping wounds that I slowly realized were facial pores. Each protrusion ended in a nictitating eye, allowing the creature to see around itself a full 360 degrees. I wouldn’t have been able to tell which was the front of the alien if not for the mouth, or should I say, the orifice filled with multiple rows of shark-like teeth—perfect for making a meal of a my fellow man.

  Victor had joined me at the window, and his tall frame was almost vibrating from the force of his anger. I couldn’t help but fear that a non-trivial portion of his ire was rightly aimed in my direction.

  The next second found me on my knees, screaming in pain as a deafening bass sound wave threatened to rupture my eardrums. I clasped hands over my ears, as much to keep the agonizing noise out as to keep my brains from leaking out.

  “People of Terra Prime.”

  The shrieks of the people on the street quieted as the creatures apparently found the translate button, though the staticky, grating hiss of the alien’s voice wasn’t much better.

  “What the fuck was that?” I was probably shouting too loud, but I could barely hear myself. I was dismayed to find Victor in the same posture of self-protection that I was in, his pain yet another reminder of just how badly I had screwed up.

  “It’s how they speak.” He lowered his hands and shook his head sharply as though trying to clear something away. Given the ringing in my ears, I could guess what was bothering him. “I never realized before how loud it was.”

  Of course he wouldn’t, not with his normal ability to control his extraordinary hearing. He had probably always understood the auditory assault as words. More guilt crashed over me, but I was saved from replying by the things that were so eagerly destroying my beloved city.

  “People of Terra Prime, this will be your only warning. Produce the criminal that has slaughtered so many of our brethren, or we will rip your puny planet to shreds.”

  My nose wrinkled unconsciously. “Criminal? What are they talking about?”

  “They mean me.”

  “What do you mean yo—?” Before I could finish the question, my gaze caught his, the deadly seriousness in his mocha eyes chilling me to the bone.

  Damn, he was right. The only person in the world who had actually done any harm to those creatures was El Magnifico. And right now, he was nowhere to be found.

  “Fuck,” I breathed.

  “I’ll go.”

  “Whoa, whoa, wait a minute!” I rounded on him and wrapped my hands around his arms as far as they would reach. “Go? Go where? Out there?” I tilted my chin toward the window and the flying menace hovering overhead. “And just what do you think you’re going to do when you get out there? There’s nothing—” I swallowed, my fear over his crazy talk stronger than my shame. “There’s nothing you can do. You don’t have any powers.”

  The building shook as the eerie voice boomed once more from the ship. “Produce the criminal or die, people of Terra Prime.”

  I looked back up at the screens and instantly wished I hadn’t when the alien’s mouth widened in what I could only guess was its version of a maniacal grin. “You have until the moon reaches its apex. After that, your world will be no more.”

  “The apex of the moon?” I repeated. “When the fuck is that?”

  “In fifteen minutes.”

  Figures he would know.

  “If I don’t surrender myself to them, Earth will be gone.”

  “Victor—”

  “My parents, you—” His eyes widened as his gaze grew wild. “Everything will be gone!”

  “Victor, stop!” The palm of my hand was stinging before my brain registered the fact that I’d slappe
d him in an eerie mirror of his earlier attempt to bring me back from crazy town. He blinked at me in shock, those farm-puppy eyes tacitly begging me to explain myself.

  “Just stop.” I laid my aching hand against his reddened cheek. “If you go out there right now, you’ll only get yourself killed.” I didn’t know that for certain, but if there was even the slightest chance, I would do whatever it took to keep him with me.

  “I have to protect you, Steve.” His voice broke on my name as a shudder racked his tall frame.

  “You have to protect everyone. That’s who you are.” I smiled up at him, feeling decidedly sappy. “You’re El Magnifico, the savior of the world.”

  A tear slipped down his face. “Not anymore.”

  “You can’t think that way. Those other times when you lost your powers, they always came back, right?”

  His brow furrowed as he tried to follow me, but he nodded. “Yes, after a time.”

  “Then we just need to figure out some way to stall.”

  He was shaking his head before I could finish the thought. “No, it took nearly a month for me to recover from that hand job. And this is different. I feel weaker now than I ever did those other times.” His jaw clenched in frustration. “Besides, even if they do return, there’s no telling how long it will take. We don’t have that kind of time.”

  Beating down my inconvenient jealousy at the mention of his youthful experimentation, I shrugged. “Well, maybe because it’s a food-based problem it will wear off faster?” That was me, ever the optimist.

  Victor looked less than convinced. “I can’t take that chance. There’s too much at stake.” He took a deep breath and squared his broad shoulders. I could see that he’d made up his mind whether I liked it or not. “If they have me, maybe they’ll leave.”

  “And maybe they won’t.” I was determined to derail his train to Selfless-ville. “Even if they do, what’s to keep them from coming back next time they’re feeling peckish?” I slid my hands up to his shoulders, allowing the sensation of the soft material of his shirt over the rock-hard muscles beneath it to steady me as I came to a crazy decision of my own. “I’ll go.”

  Victor’s wholesome, handsome features really didn’t do incredulity well. “Excuse me?” And that earnest voice was so not made for sarcasm.

  “You heard me. I’ll pretend to be El Magnifico. They won’t know the difference since all of the ones that saw you are dead, right?” I started talking faster, needed to get my plan out before I lost my nerve. “They’ll take me and leave, and then, when your powers return, you’ll be ready to face them when they come back. ’Cause you know they will, we humans being so tasty and all.” My laugh held not a small edge of hysteria. “Won’t they be surprised next time they see El Magnifico after thinking they’d killed him?”

  Victor stared at me for fully half a minute as his drill-like, chocolate gaze bore into me. His jaw worked silently until he was finally able to get past his shock enough to yell, “Are you fucking insane?”

  My disbelief over the fact that Victor had actually said a swear word had only about a second to mature. Without warning, a bright green light enveloped the building, streaming through the windows and penetrating even the microscopic chinks in the drywall. I winced as my retinas shriveled from the intensity and instinctively shielded my eyes, for all the good it did. My hand was useless as the ceiling of my condo suddenly rained down on our heads. Pieces of plaster, brick, insulation, and who knew what else fell on top of us, as though the building itself had decided it had a grudge and wanted to get even. There was nowhere to hide from the cascade of debris. It was only after I was half-buried in the rubble that the explosion from where the spaceship’s laser had hit, causing this localized Armageddon, reached my ears. The shockwaves from the percussive blow finished the job the laser had begun, assaulting the walls until they gave in and began to buckle. I caught a glimpse of the narrow sliver of open sky that wasn’t blotted out by the colorless hull only briefly before even that view was gone as the ruined building materials finished the job of entombing us alive.

  “Victor?” Cough, cough. “Victor, you all right?”

  Concern for his condition was my first thought. My second was, shit, I’m alive! How long had we been lying beneath what had once been the twenty floors above my condo unit? The fact that I was even able to think at all meant that the time on those alien bastards’ ultimatum hadn’t yet run out. If Earth had been destroyed, I wouldn’t know or care that my right ankle felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. The attack had come only a few minutes after the creatures made their crazy demand, but I figured they must have gotten tired of waiting. Or maybe one of them just accidentally leaned on the trigger button.

  I would have giggled at that thought except that something extremely heavy was pressing down on my torso, making it very difficult to breathe. It was only when the weight groaned that I realized it was Victor, which immediately returned me to my first thought.

  “Victor! Come on, man, speak to me. Are you okay?”

  “Ugh, yeah.”

  There was a tiny bit of light from the outside coming in through the chinks in the mountain of debris. Although I welcomed it, since it meant that we probably wouldn’t suffocate any time soon, it didn’t allow me to see anything more than Victor’s silhouette. Unable to verify for myself how honest he was being, I reached up and pressed my palm against the side of what I guessed was his face. I breathed a gusty sigh of relief when he nuzzled gently against my hand.

  “Really, I’m okay. Just a little winded.” He shifted above me, and I heard a large piece of something hit the floor with a loud thud. The pressure on my chest instantly eased, and I realized that whatever had been on his back had been keeping us pressed together. I half wished that he had been unsuccessful, no matter how good it felt to be able to breathe normally again. “How about you?”

  “I’m all right. I think.” A quick mental inventory of my parts confirmed my self-diagnosis though my ankle continued to throb. “My ankle hurts.”

  More rustling as Victor’s shadow moved a bit. I felt something wrap around my right ankle and squeeze, and I bit back an expletive as a hot shard of pain shot through the joint. “Yeah, it’s definitely twisted,” I grunted.

  “Sorry.”

  I was glad that he couldn’t see my smile, which I suspected was more of a grimace than anything else. “Not your fault.”

  If he heard the emphasis in my tone, he chose to ignore it. My eyes were adjusting quickly to the darkness, and I could see him better as he studied the wreckage. He pushed against a few pieces and they slid obligingly to the side—even without his powers, Victor still had the strength of a large, fit man—but after a few minutes, it became clear that there would be no escape. Beyond the smaller chunks of drywall and bricks, some of the load-bearing walls had collapsed, and budging them would require heavy equipment. So much for my brilliant, self-sacrificing plan. There was no way I could even get out of here to implement it.

  I saw Victor’s broad shoulders slump as he realized the futility of his efforts. Where’s a superhero when you need one? Leave it to me to make a joke out of the worst possible situation. Shaking my head wryly at the irony of my silent question, I reached out and placed a hand on Victor’s back. I ached to comfort him, all too easily able to imagine how helpless he must feel. It was like the sun had been reduced to a match that wouldn’t light.

  “We’re going to die in here, aren’t we?” It was more a statement than a question, spoken with a quiet resignation that tore at my heart. Feeling a sudden burst of grief, regret, and fuck-it-all determination, I reached over and grabbed hold of Victor’s shirt, using it to haul him close.

  “Steve, wha—?”

  Before he could finish asking whether I’d lost my mind, I laid one on those sensuous lips that I had been fantasizing about for so damn long. And, dear God, it had been worth the wait. How could such a physically imposing man have such a luscious mouth? My free hand delved int
o his thick hair, holding him close as I sank into the kiss. I groaned, losing myself in the incongruous mixture of firmness and softness that was the quintessential definition of Victor himself.

  Victor’s shock at my brazenness lasted just long enough for my arousal to begin to harden between my legs, but he soon regained his senses. Abruptly, he angled his head away before throwing me a wild-eyed stare that I could see only because his face was so close to mine. “Steve! What are you doing? You know we can’t—”

  “Can’t what? You’ve already lost your powers.” A stab of remorse shot through me as I once again confessed my part in this tragedy, but that didn’t stop me. “If I’m about to die, I don’t want to go without making love to you, if only just this once.”

  Victor blinked at me, and I felt a fleeting moment of shame. It was a ploy that every soldier had tried before going off to battle since time immemorial, only for me, there would be no fight. Despite his pessimism, I didn’t know if Victor could be killed, even in his current state. But whether I was the only one who was doomed, or we were both soon to meet our makers, I’d be damned if I died while the love of my life was still a virgin!

  Victor just stared at me for a long moment while I pleaded with him silently. I felt a shuddering breath raise and lower his chest an instant before he placed a large hand on either side of my face and pulled me in for our second kiss.

  It was even better this time around. The last kiss had been a surprise to Victor, but this time, he was a more than willing participant. His technique was crap—his tongue kept darting in and out of my mouth like he didn’t know what to do with it—but his enthusiasm utterly made up for his lack of skill. I eased my head back just far enough to disconnect our lips.