Just Cause Universe 3: Day of the Destroyer

by Ian Thomas Healy

  “That’s more like it.” Geno danced off toward the counter to a beat only he could hear.

  #

  “My sister’s in Just Cause,” said Harlan in a voice tinged with desperation.

  Gretchen’s mild pleasure at the boy’s crush had lasted several minutes, but it became apparent that he wasn’t going to leave her alone. Everything he did and said seemed intended to entice her further, and it had grown tiresome. His statement about Just Cause brought her attention back upon him in full. “Really?” She searched for any trace of dishonesty or guile in his face.

  “Yes,” he said. “Her name is Imp. She can shrink herself and other things.”

  “I never heard of Imp,” said Gretchen.

  “She just started today,” said Harlan. “Honest!”

  “Just Cause is the reason I came to New York,” murmured Gretchen.

  “I bet I can get you in to meet them!”

  “Meet who?” Shane wiped sweat from his face with a dirty bandana.

  “Just Cause,” Gretchen said.

  “Well, it’s Wednesday, so they should all be at their headquarters tonight.”

  “Why? What happens on Wednesdays?”

  “Wednesday Night Poker,” said Shane. “At least, they used to play poker. Now they mostly just have big parties. Crime rates dropped on Wednesdays because they got mad about their games being interrupted.”

  “So they’ll all be there tonight?”

  “Most likely.”

  “How do I get in to see them?”

  Shane scratched his jaw. “It’s a pretty exclusive scene from what I hear. Like getting in to Studio 54.”

  “I don’t know what that is,” said Gretchen.

  “I can get you in,” said Harlan. “I’m sure of it. I just have to call my sister.”

  “You’re sure?” Gretchen clasped her hand around his shoulder.

  “Yes, definitely.”

  “Can we meet you back here after lunch?” Gretchen turned to Shane. “Can we come back here?”

  “I guess so. Unless I get a service call,” he said.

  “I’ll go call her now!” Harlan leaped onto his bike and sped away, presumably in search of a pay phone.

  “That kid has a crush on you,” said Shane.

  “I think it’s kind of sweet.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Although he smells.”

  Shane laughed and lit a cigarette. “So, you hungry?”

  “Starving!” Gretchen’s excitement waned quickly as the reality of her situation set in. “But I’m kind of on a budget since I don’t have work yet.”

  “You’re in Harlem. Best soul food in the world right here. Lunch is on me. You’re nice company. That’s worth a plate of chicken and waffles.” He started the truck and pulled it back out onto the street.

  “Chicken and waffles?”

  “You’ll love it. Trust me.”

  Shane drove to what Gretchen thought looked like a seedy part of town and parked the truck outside a small restaurant. The smells emanating from the greasy wooden building made Gretchen’s stomach tie itself in knots. Shane led her inside. She noticed they were the only two white people in the joint, but the hefty woman behind the counter called out, “Hi, Shane, who’s the pretty girl?”

  “Myrna, this is my cousin’s friend. She’s visiting the Big Apple and I wanted to be sure she got the best food in town.”

  “Why’d you bring her here then?” cracked the short order cook.

  “Willy, I ought to take a spoon to your knuckles,” called Myrna. She turned to Gretchen and smiled. “I’m Myrna, honey. The jerk in the back is my husband, Willy. Any friend of Shane’s is a friend of ours. Welcome!”

  “I’m Gretchen, and thank you.” She looked around the small restaurant, packed with people. It felt homey, like somewhere in a small town. “It smells wonderful.”

  “Two specials, please, Myrna.” Shane found a small, empty table and motioned for Gretchen to join him. The smell of rich, flavorful food had Gretchen’s head spinning in olfactory delirium. She’d never heard of eating waffles and fried chicken together, but she was too famished to give it much thought.

  A few minutes later, Myrna set in front of her a plate stacked with three thick waffles loaded with butter and syrup, and two pieces of fried chicken stacked artfully on top. “You want a Coke or root beer, hon?”

  “Root beer, please.” Gretchen could barely speak around all the saliva in her mouth.

  “Don’t be bashful,” said Shane. “Dig in.”

  Gretchen tried to be prim and proper but she was so hungry that she was soon shoveling creamy waffles and crispy chicken in as fast as she could and not choke.

  Shane ate at a much slower pace and was only half done by the time Gretchen was sopping up the last of her syrup. “So, you’re looking for Just Cause. Why is that?”

  Gretchen wiped her fingers and lips with a paper napkin before answering. “It’s complicated.”

  “Are you a parahuman or something?”

  Hot blood rushed into Gretchen’s cheeks. The power longed to lunge out and protect her from a perceived threat, but she forced it back into submission again. She bent her head forward to hide her face with her hair, but it was too late.

  “Oh my God.” Shane lowered his voice and looked around. “You are, aren’t you? That’s so cool! What can you do?”

  “Shane, I don’t want to talk about it.” Gretchen’s feelings were spiraling into misery again.

  “I can dig it,” he said. “I’m not going to pry. But if you want to talk about it, I’ll listen.”

  His easygoing attitude and smile gave Gretchen an unexpected level of comfort, and she returned his smile. “Maybe later, okay?”

  Chapter Six

  July 13, 1977, 2:00 PM

  Cars and trucks blurred past as Faith tore along the shoulder in the breakdown lane. A rooster-tail of dust roiled in her wake. Her special boots thundered on the pavement in rapid staccato.

  She slowed to check the number on a bus, but it wasn’t the one she sought. No matter. It just meant the driver was a bit further than she thought. She poured on the speed until the lane dividers blurred into a solid white line. She was so inured to the rhythm of putting one foot in front of the other that she almost blew past her target bus. At the last moment, she caught a glimpse of it between two semis and skidded to a more manageable sixty miles per hour.

  Faith used standard hand signals and then merged into traffic. She’d begun the practice years ago and made every effort to let it be known publicly that was how she moved among vehicles on the roads to try to reduce panic braking among drivers. She hoped Dwayne had at least warned the bus driver that she’d be intercepting him as she pulled in alongside the bus and rapped on the door. The driver’s eyes widened but he pulled the lever to slide the door open. Faith took hold of the rail and climbed aboard.

  “Let me use your intercom,” said Faith. She felt movement at her hip as Irlene clambered out of the pouch and flew up to perch on her shoulder.

  “Damn, that was fast!” exclaimed the girl.

  “Do you need me to pull it over?” The driver, a heavyset black man with graying hair, mopped his face with a kerchief.

  “No, sir,” said Faith with a smile. “We’ll try to disrupt things as little as possible for your passengers.” She took the intercom and held it up to her mouth. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re Pony Girl and Imp of Just Cause. You are in no danger. We’re just here to speak to a passenger.” She consulted a small notebook in which she’d recorded what she learned from Dwayne. “Harry McMurtry?”

  The nervous passengers relaxed at her placation. A man in a rumpled Greyhound uniform shirt at the back of the bus raised a tentative hand. Faith smiled at the other passengers as she moved down the aisle. She knelt down beside McMurtry.

  “Mr. McMurtry, you drove a bus from Chicago to New York last night?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “Relax, sir. You aren’t in any kind of trouble. We need to as
k about one of your passengers.” Faith produced the faxed image of Gretchen Gumm. “Was this girl on your bus?”

  McMurtry stared at the picture and scrunched up his face in concentration. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m sure of it. Blonde chippie. Nice rack. Oh, uh. I’m sorry. Long night.”

  “That’s all right, sir. Give me as much description of her as you can, please.”

  McMurtry shrugged. “Blue tee-shirt, jean shorts, sandals. Straight blonde hair. That’s about it. She slept the whole way.”

  Faith nodded. “Go on.”

  “Can’t really think of anything else. Oh, wait. I think she had a black eye. She wore sunglasses, but you could still kind of see a shiner, you know?”

  “Somebody hit her?” asked Irlene.

  McMurtry jumped a little at the tiny hero. “Jesus, I didn’t even see you. Look at that, you look like a doll!”

  Irlene smiled. “Thanks, you’re real sweet to say so.”

  “Yeah, anyway, I been driving a bus for ten years. You get so you recognize people, you know? Not like individual people, but types. I’ve seen plenty of girls like her in my time. Girls whose husbands or boyfriends get a little free with their fists. Sure, they might say they walked into a door or fell down the stairs, but they ain’t fooling anyone. They all have a certain look about them. Like they’re afraid of everyone.” He leaned back in his seat. “She had that look.”

  “Do you have anything else?” asked Faith.

  McMurtry shook his head.

  “You’ve been very helpful, Mr. McMurtry. If you think of anything else, please call Just Cause and leave a message for me. We’re in the phone book.”

  Faith’s radio beeped as she headed back to the front of the bus. “Pony Girl, go ahead.”

  “This is the switchboard,” said the voice. “We have a caller holding who claims to be Imp’s brother.”

  “Hang on, let us get someplace quiet. Give me a minute.” Faith took the intercom once more. “Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for your cooperation. Enjoy your trip.”

  The two heroes ducked out of the bus, one on foot and one in the air. Faith crossed the lanes of traffic, careful to check behind her for inattentive drivers, and then skidded to a halt on the grassy shoulder. Irlene grew herself back to her full size as Faith retrieved her radio. “Go ahead, switchboard.” She passed the unit to the younger girl.

  “Hello? Harlan, is that you?”

  “Yeah it is. Hi.”

  Irlene covered the mouthpiece. “It’s my little brother. He hates me.” She turned back to the radio. “What’s shakin’?”

  “There’s this girl. Um, she’s in my class. I was wondering if maybe I could bring her to your headquarters sometime?”

  Irlene’s eyes widened. “A girl, Harlan? You? That’s great news!”

  “So I was wondering, uh, if you could get me a couple of passes to come in.”

  “I guess so,” said Irlene. “Or you could just come when I’m there and I’ll show you around.”

  “No, that’s no good. She’ll be more impressed if it’s just me.”

  “That makes sense,” said Irlene. She turned to Faith. “Is there some kind of entry pass?”

  Faith nodded. She always carried a few with her. It was good public relations to pass them out. Everyone on the team did, although most of those passes wound up in the hands of party guests. She pulled two passes out of her pouch and handed them to Irlene. “Give him these.”

  “Okay, Harlan, I’ve got a pair for you.”

  “Could you give them to me now? I’m, uh, at school.”

  Irlene glanced over at Faith. “He’s in Harlem. I can be there and back in less than an hour.”

  Faith shrugged. “Why not?”

  Irlene grinned. “Thanks. This is a pretty cool gig, being a superhero.” She tucked the passes into her own pocket and shrank back down to the size of a bird.

  “Since you don’t have a radio yet, meet me back at headquarters.”

  “Roger wilco.” Irlene laughed and zipped off into the summer sky like a pink and white hummingbird.

  Faith’s radio beeped again. “Pony Girl.”

  “Babe, it’s me,” said Bobby. “You better get back here on the double. The Feds are here about your mystery parahuman killer.”

  Faith couldn’t even see where Irlene had gone anymore. She made a mental note to make sure Lionheart issued her a radio as soon as possible. “I’m on my way. Irlene’s taking care of a family thing, then she’ll meet us back at headquarters.”

  She lit out for Manhattan.

  #

  Harlan lurked by the pay phones outside the school, keeping one eye out for truancy officers and the other for any of the kids who liked to bully him. Most of the worst offenders were also in summer school like him—no great surprise there. During the school year, he’d gotten used to the humiliation. However, fantasies about getting his revenge kept him warm on cold nights.

  As he waited, Harlan’s thoughts turned to Gretchen. He needed to get her away from the Con Ed jerk. Because of how excited she’d been to see his wind-up carousel, he knew she’d be beyond words when he showed her his giant robot. He wondered if he could hold the passes at his junkyard, so she’d have to come there to pick them up. Then he frowned. A beautiful, small-town girl like her wouldn’t want to come to an inner-city junkyard in Harlem of all places. It occurred to him that the only way he could get her there would be through a trick of some sort. He would have to stall. Gretchen was tied to the Con Ed truck. If he could keep it around, she’d have to stay too. He knew he could keep the Con Ed guy working in the area. All he needed was a few minutes in Gonsalvo’s Parts Room to build the device, which formed in his mind.

  “Hi, Harlan.”

  He turned to see a pigeon-sized Irlene perched atop the phone. The sight startled him enough that he jumped back and uttered one of the words his mother had forbidden him ever to let pass his lips. “Shit, Irlene! How long have you been there?”

  She pirouetted neatly in midair. “I just got here. Traffic is pretty light twenty feet over the ground.”

  “Oh. Hey, don’t tell Momma I just said you-know-what.”

  Irlene smiled from behind her raspberry-colored mask. “I won’t. I promise.” She looked around at the empty grounds around the school. “Where is everybody?”

  “Half-day today,” said Harlan.

  Irlene shook her head. “You didn’t get that filthy in class today. Harlan, when are you going to stop lying to us and ditching school?”

  “I ain’t lying.” He felt blood rushing to his cheeks and ears.

  “Oh, Harlan. You’re such a bright kid. I really hate to see you wasting yourself this way. You ought to be getting straight As so you can go to college. A real college, like M.I.T. or something. Someplace that’s for people like you who design and build things.”

  Harlan kicked the bottom of the pay phone post. “School is stupid. Everyone hates me. Even the teachers.”

  “Except your girlfriend?”

  “She ain’t my girlfriend. Well, not exactly.”

  “It’s okay, Harlan. I understand. I brought you two passes to come visit headquarters. Do you know when you want to come? I’ll see if I can show you around, even though I’m still brand new myself.”

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “I’ll have to see when Momma will let me go.”

  “She’s going to want to know about your grades,” said Irlene.

  “This is for extra credit. It’ll bring my grades up.”

  Irlene didn’t look convinced, but she said, “All right, Harlan. Just a moment.” She flew from the top of the pay phone and grew downward until she was her normal size. She fished two cards from her pocket and handed them to him. He seized them and looked carefully at the neat block printing. Just Cause Visitor Pass. Beneath that was a blank space for a name and at the bottom was Pony Girl’s signature. Harlan tucked both passes into his deepest pocket. These were treasures, worth more than gold or diamonds to him.

  Th
ey would make Gretchen like him.

  “Thanks, Irlene.”

  Irlene reached out and ruffled his hair. “You’re family, Harlan, and I love you. I’d do anything to help you that I could.”

  He ducked away from her touch. She lowered her hand, knowing she’d crossed a line somewhere. A hint of tears glistened in her eyes. He wouldn’t meet her gaze. “Thanks for the passes, Irlene.”

  “You’re welcome, Harlan.” She looked like she wanted to say more, but he started to glance around, hoping she’d get the message that he didn’t want to be seen with her. “I’d better get going. I might not be home tonight. Tell Momma for me.”

  “Okay.”

  Irlene shrank back down, circled Harlan once like a moth around a light bulb, and then flew off into the broiling sun.

  “So… Greasy thinks he’s good enough for superheroes, huh?” A voice like a crow cawing jarred Harlan out of his thoughts. He spun around to see four boys from the school approaching from across the street. They must have been lurking around the record store there and seen the whole thing with Irlene. They called him Greasy and Pig Pen when they felt like picking on him. They must have felt they needed some afternoon entertainment. He started to edge toward his bicycle.

  “What’s the matter, Greasy? Too good to hang out with us anymore?”

  “Maybe he’s gonna run home to his mommy,” teased another boy.

  “She ought to teach him how to take a bath.”

  One of the boys wrested the bicycle out of Harlan’s hands and hopped onto it. “Hey, look at me!” he called. “I’m Greasy Washington. I’m too cool for school because I know a superhero.” He leaped off the bike and swung it viciously against the curb. The old frame folded. The other boys’ raucous laughter echoed around Harlan. “Oh no, I done broke my bike! Good thing I’m Greasy, because I can just slide on home.”

  Rough hands shoved Harlan from behind. Another boy caught him, spun him around, and shoved back. “So you know a superhero, boy? You got parapowers too, boy? Can you fly? Fly, Greasy, fly!” A hard push knocked him to the ground and Harlan yelped as his wrist banged painfully off the cement.