Sundancer lit up the inside of Shea Stadium like her namesake, twirling in the air like a ballerina. Tommy used gentle puffs of air to encourage fans to work their way out of the seats. When folks tarried too long, maybe to get one more eyeful of Sundancer’s lithe, nude form, John provided less-subtle encouragement by bellowing at them in his stentorian tones.
“Hey, you guys,” called Sundancer toward the Mets players who loitered in the dugout. “You could at least comp my tickets for the free show!”
“Far as I’m concerned, you can have free tickets for life,” shouted Joe Torre from the bench, to much laughter.
Tommy saw Faith and the new girl Irlene arrive at the stadium entrance. John waved at them and bellowed for them to come on inside, as Sundancer couldn’t safely leave without plunging the stadium back into darkness.
The five heroes congregated at the pitcher’s mound.
“How bad is it?” asked John as Faith passed out the radios and handed costumes to Tommy and Sundancer.
“Bad,” she said. “The entire city’s gone dark. Nobody knows anything. Phones are sporadic and we can’t get through to Con Ed. What we do know is we’ve got people looting and rioting all over town.”
“And starting fires too,” said Irlene.
“Christ,” said Tommy. “Why would people do that?”
“People are assholes,” said Sundancer. She pulled on her white and yellow fireproof leotard without modesty. After spending a good half hour floating naked over the crowd at Shea Stadium, she had nothing to hide.
“It’s getting worse,” said Faith. “Somebody took a shot at me while I was running. Obviously, he missed, but it’s chaos out there. Cops can’t get around because of traffic jams.”
“Which leaves us where?” Tommy shucked out of his shorts and gratefully pulled on his costume. He felt weird using his powers without the cape billowing around him.
“Under-staffed,” said Faith. “Tommy, you and John stay here in Queens. Gloria, head to Brooklyn. Do what you can. Check in with Bobby.”
“Wait, that’s it? We’ve got Queens? What the hell are the two of us supposed to do with a whole borough?” Tommy gaped at her.
Faith shrugged. “Your job. Be a hero.” She looked worried. “And we’ll see you later.”
“Where are you going?” From the sound of John’s voice, he’d also picked up on Faith’s concern.
“Harlem.” She sped out of the stadium with Irlene following close behind.
“Jesus Christ,” said Sundancer. Over the smell of stale popcorn and the grass of the outfield, all of them could smell the greasy soot of burning structures in the air. She flared up to brilliance. “Good luck, you guys.” Tommy felt heat wash across his face as she went incandescent and hurtled into the night sky like a living meteor.
John watched her fly away, and then turned to Tommy. “I’ll probably have to stay in the immediate vicinity. I’m just not quick enough to cover a lot of territory.”
Tommy snapped his fingers. “Subways. There will be people trapped in them. You’d be best at getting them out.”
“Good idea,” said John. “But I’ll be out of radio contact underground.”
“Well, just be sure to pop your head up once in awhile to check in,” said Tommy. He darted in like a hummingbird and brushed his lips against John’s cold stone cheek. In the darkness, nobody would see. “Be careful, my friend.”
John spluttered, surprised. “What was that for?”
“For luck,” said Tommy. His cape inflated like a parachute and the winds lifted him up and out of the stadium.
He circled once, looking for spots indicative of trouble. A few fires stood out in the darkness, but none looked very large and fire crews were already battling two. Tommy’s powers weren’t very effective at controlling or stopping fires. Wind tended to worsen a conflagration.
Looters, on the other hand, he could handle. He descended upon a block rife with broken storefronts. Shadowy figures rushed into the buildings and emerged with whatever treasures they found within.
Tommy floated over the intersection, high enough not to be struck by any passing vehicles, raised his hands, and concentrated.
Air pressure built in a column around him. Breezes swirled around his wrists and ankles. He forced the wind up the street. It gathered speed as it pushed outward from him, picking up accumulated grit and soot from weeks without rain. He increased the wind speed by gradual steps until a veritable gale tore up the street, sandblasting parked cars and people alike.
Looters shrieked and ran for cover. Tommy drifted along the street, pushing the wind before him like a snowplow. When he saw potential looters running into a shop, he used a concentrated air burst to knock them off their feet.
“Go home,” he shouted at people. “Stop destroying your neighborhood!”
Anyone who yelled back at him received a blast of air to the face, often sending them head over heels. Tommy had a lot of frustrations to work out and it felt good to cut loose with his powers. He swept the entire street clean of dust and debris, drifting back and forth to target any diehard looters. He knew the anarchy would start up again as soon as he flew away, but for a few minutes he felt he was doing some good by protecting this one stretch of street.
Since saving the whole city was beyond his abilities, he thought perhaps he could save one store, one life. That made him think of Miranda. She was the only person he knew who lived in Queens. He’d already made a difference in her life.
Maybe he could again.
#
Shane held Gretchen as she sniffled. The exhaustion of the day had finally caught up with her and her emotions were running wild.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not usually so weepy.”
“It’s all right,” said Shane. “You’ve had a rough day.”
“You’re so sweet.” She tilted her head back to kiss him. As their lips parted, she felt the day’s stresses melt away.
“I’d tell you to get a room, but it looks like you already did,” said an accented voice.
Gretchen jumped and spun around to see a leering Javelin leaning up against the doorjamb with his helmet tucked under one arm. “Don’t stop on my account,” he said. “I like to watch.”
Disgusted at Javelin’s lewd behavior, Gretchen leaned away from Shane. If she’d been back home, working the Diner, she’d have told him off like any other rude customer. But she didn’t feel like she could do that here, so she stayed quiet.
Javelin laughed. “I’m just playing with you.” He strode into the room. Despite his bravado and attitude, Gretchen could see he wasn’t feeling well at all. His skin had the pallor of sickness beneath the natural tan and his eyes were bloodshot . As he passed by Gretchen and Shane, she could smell the stink of alcohol on him even though he didn’t act at all like he’d been drinking. She knew people like that back in Dyersville, who’d spent so many years drinking that they seemed to sweat alcohol like they really had pickled their insides.
He flopped into a chair and threw his booted feet up onto the tabletop, marring the surface with his armor plating. “So,” he said. “You’re the big bad parahuman killer Bobby told me about.” He sniffed in disdain. “I thought you’d be taller.”
“Now wait just a goddamn minute,” began Shane.
“What are you going to do, pretty boy?” asked Javelin.
Gretchen put a hand on Shane’s chest. “Leave it. He’s just an asshole.”
Javelin smiled and held out his hands. “Guilty as charged. I guess I’m stuck watching you while the rest of the team is out saving the city. I’m Javier.”
“Gretchen. He’s Shane.”
“They tell me you killed some guy back in Iowa.” Javier inspected one of his armored gauntlets.
Shane bristled. “You’re not being very sensitive.”
Javier looked at him. “Fuck you and your sensitivity. So this asshole, did he deserve it?”
Gretchen shuddered at the memory, but somehow Javier’s r
ough speech and dispassionate attitude lent her a new reserve of strength. “Yeah he did.” She felt ready to take him on in an argument.
“Good.” Javier slipped off the gauntlet and pulled a small toolkit from his belt.
“Good?” repeated Gretchen. “You approve?”
Javier popped a plate off his gauntlet with a screwdriver and started to fuss with some of the intricate machinery and electronics underneath. “I got no problem with one less asshole in the world.”
“What is that you’re working on?” asked Gretchen.
“Technical,” said Javier.
“I see,” said Gretchen in her best frosty tone, but it didn’t encourage the hero to expound further so she changed she subject. “What’s it like, being in Just Cause?”
Javier set the glove down and leaned back as he considered the question. “Boring as shit,” he said at last. “The parties are good, and you get laid a lot, but besides that there just isn’t much to do.”
“What do you mean? You’re superheroes. Don’t you go out and fight crime?”
Javier snorted. “It’s been years since we had any parahuman criminals. Except you, of course, and you aren’t exactly worth calling out the entire team for.”
“I’m not a criminal!” Gretchen felt her cheeks grow hot.
“You killed a guy. That’s murder. Still a crime the last time I checked.”
The power yammered at Gretchen, begging to be let loose upon the man in the burnished armor. She forced it back down. “I was being raped,” she growled through clenched teeth. Javier had her mad enough to spit nails, as her father liked to say.
Javier shrugged. “You already said he was an asshole. Good that he’s dead. Doesn’t change the fact that you broke the law. That’s why you’re here.”
“Why are you here?” Shane asked Javier. “You said it’s boring. You’ve got sharp technical skills. You could probably make a mint in the private sector.”
Javier grinned. “In the private sector, I’d be just another engineer. Sure, I’d be rich, but foxy young girls don’t get all juicy over engineers. Here, I’m like a movie star. I’m famous. We all are.”
“That’s it?” Gretchen was incredulous. “You’ve got powers and all you do is use them for sex? That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. What a waste.”
Javier shrugged. “I busted up a drug deal this morning. Got to stay sharp in case anything ever gets out of hand.”
“Well, I guess that’s something,” said Gretchen.
“Then I went back to my place and had a threesome. It’s the price of stardom.” His face clouded. “Bitches ripped me off while I was sleeping.”
Gretchen shook her head. Javier lived in a different reality from her. She doubted she’d ever qualify to be a superhero, but she told herself that if she ever did, she’d act like one.
Chapter Fifteen
July 13, 1977, 11:00 PM
Harlem was like a war zone.
After a few minutes, Faith and Irlene realized they couldn’t stop every looter or douse every fire. At first, Irlene would shrink looters down to the size of G.I. Joe dolls, which was enough to keep all but the most motivated thieves from continuing. She assured Faith it wore off after several hours.
Faith had appropriated a hefty socket wrench and used it to open fire hydrants near burning buildings or cars. With Irlene’s help in shrinking heavy items and then returning them to normal size, Faith could direct the outflows towards the blazes.
Eventually, though, there were too many people in the streets and too many fires burning for the two heroes to do much more than just save those in immediate danger. Whether it was Irlene flying a shrunken family to safety through a fourth-floor window or Faith scouting out a tenement block to search for more trapped victims, they were running themselves ragged.
Finally, Irlene couldn’t do it anymore, and she sank down onto a rooftop sobbing. Faith put her arm around the frazzled, exhausted teenager and tried to console her. The four years’ age difference between them felt like a vast gulf to Faith.
“I don’t even know if my family’s okay,” Irlene said between sobs.
“How far away are they?” Faith stroked the girl’s hair.
“I don’t even know what street we’re on,” cried Irlene.
Faith told her the last street sign she remembered seeing.
“Maybe a mile, mile and a half.” Irlene wiped her eyes. She’d already discarded the raspberry-colored mask as impractical, complaining it interfered with her vision.
Faith pulled out her radio. “Then there’s no reason we can’t go check on them. We’ve been running at top speed for close to two hours now. I’m calling a break.”
Irlene sniffled. “I thought that’s what we were doing up here.”
Faith shook her head. “Bobby, are you there?”
“Yeah, babe. How are you guys doing out there?”
“It’s bad, Bobby, really bad. I don’t know how much of this side of town will even be left by the morning.”
“Things are bad all over. People are acting like animals. I’m afraid of what the death count will be when this is all over.”
“Listen, we’re going to go check in on Imp’s family. We’re not far from them.”
“Ten-four. Hey, what’s that noise?”
Faith stopped and listened. She heard the crackle of flames, people shouting on the street below, and glass breaking. “Just normal rioting sounds, if there is such a thing.”
“No, beneath that. Deep, almost subsonic. Rhythmic. It almost sounds like—”
Faith still couldn’t hear what Bobby was describing. “Like what?”
“Like Godzilla,” said Bobby.
Faith didn’t laugh. Over the years, she’d learned to trust Bobby’s parahuman hearing without question. “I wish you were here so you could pinpoint it.”
“I wish we were both in Aruba,” said Bobby. “It’s getting louder. Or closer. If I can hear it over your radio, it’s got to be close enough you could hear it any second.”
Just then, Faith felt a vibration in the building’s rooftop that tickled the gravel against her ass. It repeated, accompanied by a low thud.
“I’ll call you back,” she said and tucked away the radio.
“What is it?” Irlene leaned in close.
“Do you feel that?”
“Yeah.”
It came around a corner like a Detroit engineer’s fevered nightmare. People on the streets screamed at the twenty-five-foot-tall fire-breathing monstrosity. One woman dropped an armful of looted clothes, turned, and ran face-first into an overturned car to fall unconscious beside it. Other people ran past her to save themselves. A dog ran out, yipping and barking at the giant until a heavy mechanical foot stomped the animal into pulp.
Faith stared at the behemoth in frank disbelief. Her brain tried to resolve what she could see in the reflection of street fires. Four massive articulated legs carried two huge Peterbilt semi-tractor cabs stacked atop each other. Two arms lay flat against one cab while two others spread out to foment destruction. One arm rang like a bell with a huge rotary saw blade. It screamed and threw a cascade of sparks as the machine sliced the roof off a car and the heads off its occupants. The other featured huge hydraulic claws that snipped off streetlamps as if they were tulip stems. Every few steps, it released a blast of liquid fire to set a car or building on fire. Headlights ringed the upper cab and displayed the results of the machine’s destructive path.
A burning man leaped from an ignited car and rolled on the ground, screaming in pain. Overturned cars, buildings going up in flames, and people screaming in fear, panic, and pain all competed for Faith’s attention.
“Jesus,” whispered Faith. She realized Irlene stood beside her, staring with equal shock down at the hellish intruder below. “Can you you shrink it down?”
“Oh, hell no,” said Irlene. “It’s too big. Look at it. I don’t want to get anywhere near that thing.” The machine used its huge pincer to reach up
and pull down a darkened rooftop sign for Wendell’s, bulbs shattering amid the wire frame and glass raining down onto the pavement. It flung the sign across the street through the unbroken panes of a diner and then sprayed the front of the building with more napalm. More screams erupted from within the diner as those who’d sought shelter there were crushed or burned.
Faith grabbed her radio again. “Bobby, come in. Oh God, are you there?”
“Faith? What’s the matter?”
“It’s some kind of giant machine. It’s destroying Harlem. I don’t think we can take it down. We need help. Send everyone.”
“Everyone?” With a roar of hydraulics and Diesel engines, the behemoth hurled a telephone pole like a spear. It smashed through the side of a three-story building and out the roof to burst open a water tank in an explosion of mist and debris.
“Yes, everyone!” screamed Faith into the radio. “Get us some fucking backup!” She was shaking in fear. The machine punched a tenement building and knocked the entire brick facade down about its ankles. People cried out amid the wreckage as bricks rained down onto them.
“I’m dispatching them now. Where are you exactly?”
“Just follow the fires,” said Faith, and shoved her radio into her belt. She turned to Irlene, who had curled up into a fetal position on the rooftop. She hauled the frightened girl to her feet. “Irlene, don’t freak out on me now. I need you, girl. You’ve got to save people. Forget the machine, forget the buildings and cars and fires. You’ve got to save lives. You’re perfect for that job.”
“Why, what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to try and stop it.”
#
Harlan floated in a glorious rapture of destruction as he guided the suit down the street. Outside, people screamed like panicked ants and buildings crumbled under his onslaught, but Harlan only heard the roar of the Diesels and the hiss of hydraulics. Blasts of flame ignited stunted trees, parked cars, and storefronts, but Harlan was cool in air-conditioned comfort.
The suit felt like an extension of his body. He moved his legs and it walked. He reached for things with his right hand and the great claws closed around them. Pulling a trigger rewarded him with a burst of his junkyard-made napalm from the pressurized tanks below him. The saw blade on his left hand sliced through brick and metal like a hot knife through butter.
Just Cause Universe 3: Day of the Destroyer Page 19
