No Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  Behind me I hear a rustle of movement, like a thousand petticoats all moving out of sync, yet together. And then, as I let out a grunt of pain and surprise, a woman’s voice says, “Hush.”

  I get my right arm working. Lever myself onto my back, and lie facing up. The sky is a dead, dull gray. It was blue back in Oxford.

  Back in Oxford?

  Yes. I don’t know how I know it, but somewhere deep in my bones I can say for sure that, Toto, this is not Kansas anymore.

  A woman stands at the end of the alleyway, framed by steel fire escape stairs that stretch up to the swatch of cloud-choked sky above us. She’s beautiful. An incredible softness of features. Large, pale, gray eyes framed by thick black lashes. Hair held up by an architecture of jeweled pins, a few loose curls spilling free to hang around her ears.

  She wears something like a princess’s dress, though that phrase makes it sound gaudy, and she is to gaudy as matter is to antimatter. She’s wearing the dress that every other princess’s dress echoes—layered cream fabric, lace, and silk. She’s as out of place as Halloween in the middle of July, yet somehow she seems to make the rest of the world seem out of place. There is something utterly genuine about her in a way I cannot quite describe.

  To be honest, I’m rather impressed with my own subconscious. Who knew I could summon these sorts of images? I’m going to have to get knocked out by giant monstrosities more often.

  She puts a finger to her lips and again says, “Hush.”

  I open my mouth to explain that I hadn’t said anything and she gives me a benevolent yet reprimanding look. I feel like a naughty child.

  The princess, the vision, takes two steps toward where I lie, crouches down with the rustle of fabric and crinkle of crinoline. She leans forward like a conspirator.

  “She is not what you think she is.” Her voice is soft and melodious.

  I let that percolate a moment.

  “Who?” I say

  The woman pulls back sharply.

  “Hush!” The word is a demand now. Then she softens. She steps forward again, comes to crouch beside my head. It feels as if light radiates from her dress.

  “You do not want to wake me up,” she says. She lies a cool finger on top of my forehead and—

  COWLEY ROAD

  —Kayla is lying next to me. She is wide-eyed, breathing shallowly, close to hyperventilating. Not unconscious but caught in the grip of something.

  More unfair thoughts rise up. She bailed on us. When she took the punch. Why did she—

  “She is not what you think she is.”

  No. Obviously not. That’s just subconscious burbling, just me letting my thoughts run away with me.

  The ground shakes. Footsteps—slow and ponderous and inevitable. I look up. The student is advancing on Clyde. I try to get up. I don’t. My arms barely even twitch. My chest aches. Each breath burns. I taste blood and gravel. A stone is embedded in my lip.

  Clyde pops AAAs like Alka-Seltzer. His cheeks bulge with them. Hardly a threatening image. Still, he musters some power. He flings his hands out, as if throwing air, and with each movement the student visibly reacts to some impact. But it’s not enough. The student keeps walking.

  “Tabitha!” Clyde shouts. There’s an edge of desperation in his voice.

  “Not getting anything.” Tabitha’s voice is thin and reedy, a sense of hysteria slipping through the rising static. “Databases are blank.”

  The student pauses, looks from Clyde to me, a bored expression on his face. Clyde sees the hesitation and throws both his hands forward, like some mad shot-putter hefting a leaden beach ball.

  The student’s head snaps back. Something gives with a sharp crack. The remaining cheekbone. The student twitches its head back, stares at Clyde. The other side of its face sags. The leer is mockery now. Lips droop, cracked yellow teeth exposed. The student grunts. He moves toward Clyde. Fast now. The air of boredom is gone.

  “Tabitha!” Clyde is almost shrieking.

  “Just buy time! Anything! Trip it. Bind it. Blind it. Just slow it fucking down!”

  Clyde spits out a mouthful of batteries and shoves in a nine-volt. He closes his eyes. His mouth moves but I can’t hear the words.

  Blackness. A cloud of darkness. It’s as if night has descended on one tiny corner of the world. The student’s head disappears inside an inky cloud.

  One massive foot snags on a partially collapsed streetlamp. The student stumbles. One knee crushes a car; a hand only just stops it from face planting.

  The student howls. A sound so loud my vision blurs. I’m about up to my knees but that takes me down to all fours again. The student flails. Objects fly through the air. A postbox. A street sign. Then the clawed hand hits a telegraph pole and it stops. The hand grips. The hand pulls.

  Wood gives way with a crack. Splinters explode outwards. Wires twang and snap. The monster wields the pole like a staff, sweeping it round and round in great circles. A car is totaled. A shop window vanishes as the thing blunders forward.

  The collateral damage is insane. On and on goes the dervish of destruction. The student clears a path for himself in great arcs. He doesn’t stumble. There’s nothing for him to stumble over.

  I’m close enough to Clyde now to hear him as he feeds information to Tabitha.

  “Well, it’s blind.”

  “Nice.” Tabitha sounds satisfied.

  “Not totally convinced that’s working out as well as we planned.” The student stops, focuses on the voice. “Oh pants,” Clyde adds.

  “Any chance the student just heard you?” Tabitha says. “Worked out where you are?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Then shut your hole, you idiot.”

  But her advice comes too late. The student is moving with purpose again.

  I’m so focused on the destruction that at first I don’t notice Kayla moving beside me. I miss her breath slowing, coming more regularly. I miss her getting to her knees, to her feet. But then she moves. A blur of limbs, a glint of shimmering steel. And I see her then.

  She hits one car roof, then another. There is no stealth to her approach. There is grace, certainly—something of her ungainly figure becomes fluid in the attack—but in her own way she is as blunt as the creature she’s attacking.

  She’s fifteen yards away when the student hears her. He careens around as her feet smash down on the hood of a car. He flings the telegraph pole in a wild arc, smashing at everything he can.

  He misses. Of course he misses.

  Kayla is just ten yards away. She leaps.

  The student swings again. And somehow, through some fluke, some piece of chance, the blow is wickedly accurate. Babe Ruth swinging for the bleachers.

  But the balls thrown at the Babe never had swords.

  Kayla catches the pole with her free hand. She twists in midair. The dive becomes a pirouette. Her blade arm juts out at a sharp right angle to her body. The sword tip buries itself in the monstrosity’s arm, even as Kayla spins. She unpeels flesh, as if skinning an apple. A great peeling swath of skin. Muscles suddenly exposed. Gouts of red. Kayla completes her spiraling circuit of the pole. Her body whips out in a sharp diagonal. Her blade leaves a doodle in gore across the blinded student’s chest. And then, finally, its trip completed, Kayla’s sword smashes into the car battery still nestled in the monster’s hand.

  I feel the explosion first, a soft wind over my face, a light lifting of dust that gusts in my face. Then the shockwave hits me. Air kicks me in the face. It lifts me up off the ground and dumps me a yard down Cowley Road. My head cracks. Limbs smack. More gravel grates against my face.

  And then the sound. Not the great bloody kaboom of Hollywood, but just a short bark and then silence, slowly, slowly replaced by a high-pitched whine. The death shriek of nerve fibers in my ear. A tone I’ll never hear again.

  Eventually I pry myself off the floor. My knees shake hard. Clyde sits on the crumpled wreck of one of the monster’s projectiles. He shakes beads of collision
glass from his jacket with a trembling hand. And Kayla—

  Kayla stands in a mess of blood and bone, the epicenter of some explosion. Gore spatters her—chunks of flesh plastered to her shirt, her jeans, her face, her hair.

  Jesus. I mean... Jesus. I’ve seen dead bodies before, but this is something different. This is like a warzone. The body... The pieces of the body... of the inhuman body

  Slowly my mind starts to parse what just happened, what I just saw. And it was real. Not some Hollywood effect, not some post-production computer wizardry. Flesh warped here. Reality broke here. And this is the world in which I live. This is my home. Fucking Oxford. Dreamy, sleepy, little Oxford. The best minds of the next generation pickling themselves in alcohol. It’s stupid and small and calm and quiet. And I’m standing on Cowley Road with a woman who breaks the sound barrier. A woman with a sword.

  It’s unreal. It’s too much. I don’t understand. I don’t understand anything.

  One answer. I’ll take any answer. Just one answer to one question.

  And Kayla standing there.

  “Why?” I ask her. “Why did you stop? I don’t understand. You stopped and then you—” I point to the corpse.

  Kayla turns her back on me. Starts to walk away. “No,” I say. “Please. I just want to... I need to understand. I mean, you let him hit you. And he was huge. I mean, that’s got to hurt. That hurts you, right?” I’m following her as she keeps on walking.

  “Shut up, Arthur.” Tabitha’s voice is clear in my ear. I ignore her. I really need an answer right now.

  “You’re... You’re like me, right?” I persist. “A person, right? No...” I shake my head. “That sounds wrong. I didn’t mean... Shaw said. You’re not Progeny. I know that. But the things you do. They’re... You’re...”

  She is not what you think she is.

  “Shut up, Arthur.” Tabitha is insistent.

  “Why?” I ask Kayla’s back. “Why would you stop? Let him do...” I sweep my arm around; try to encompass the entirety of the destruction. It feels futile. Still Kayla ignores me. I catch the arm of her shirt.

  “Please—”

  Suddenly Kayla is inches from my face. I can feel her breath on me when she speaks.

  “Shut. The. Feck. Up.”

  She walks away and I stand there. I sit down. On the tarmac. Alone. Confused.

  After a while Clyde come up. He limps slightly.

  “Bloody idiot,” Tabitha says into my ear. Clyde hears it too because his voice twists into a grin.

  “She’s talking about the student,” he says.

  She’s not, but I let it slide. There’s a chance I was being a little needy, but, well, I’ve been through a lot recently.

  I close my eyes. Try to focus. “The student?” I ask.

  “Didn’t even know to let go.” Clyde says.

  “Let go of w—” I start to say and then balk at uttering the interrogative. I give a quivering look at Kayla’s retreating form. But just one answer. Surely that’s all I need.

  “He interrupted the power source,” Clyde says. “Electricity is the universal lubricant between realities. No electricity, no lubrication. Inter-reality friction. Rapidly generates a vastly exothermic reaction.” He looks at me, at my expression. He tries again. “If you don’t stop casting a spell before the electricity runs out, everything goes boom.”

  “Ah,” I say. But it’s another explanation that doesn’t help me understand anything.

  I look at the devastation, at the wrecked cars, at the smashed blacktop, the shattered shop fronts, the downed telephone wires. Around us, people start to pick themselves up off the ground, start to look at each other, to sob hysterically. People start to look at us.

  Something dawns on me. Witnesses. Oh shit.

  “We screwed up,” I say.

  “Oh, did you guys screw up.” I decide to pretend that wasn’t just glee I heard in Tabitha’s voice.

  “Big time.” Clyde chews his lip.

  “Shaw’s going to tear us new ones,” I say. She doesn’t seem like the sort of woman who’d take this well.

  “Could be worse,” Tabitha says. And this time I can’t ignore the audible smile. “You could be the cleanup crew.”

  10

  “A complete and utter shambles. A disaster. It stretches the limits of comprehension that such a thorough display of incompetence could have been managed without willful bloody intent. Such a f—” Shaw trips over the curse word, swallows it back down. “Such a damned disaster.”

  She is white-lipped, wide-eyed. Every muscle in her face seems tensed. Two red spots stand out on her cheeks like a clown’s make-up.

  To my right, Clyde and Tabitha shuffle their feet. To my left, Kayla stares intently at one corner of the room, as rigid as the moment the monster hit her.

  Shaw’s stare is a frosty searchlight. Someone needs to fess up. Someone needs to take charge.

  Oh bugger.

  So, I clear my throat and everyone looks at me. Everyone except Kayla. My mouth is very dry. “I think,” I say, resisting the urge to look at my hands while I talk, “that the problem is—” and here goes nothing “—teamwork.”

  Tabitha’s eyes narrow. Kayla’s head twitches momentarily toward me. Apparently not a popular play on my part.

  “Look,” I say. “I mean, mea culpa. You asked me to take point on this one—” I nod at Shaw “—and evidently I blew it. Teamwork is my responsibility, I get that. But,” I permit myself a brief shoe shuffle, “well, I hate to play the new guy card, but, well, I’m the new guy. And it’s not a very good excuse, and I apologize deeply, I should have been more familiar with things, and I wasn’t.” Which may be pushing the humble pie thing a little far, but I want to buy as much goodwill upfront as possible.

  “And,” I say, “I think individually everyone did their jobs great.” I can’t help but flick my eyes to Kayla, but it’s not time for that yet. “Clyde really came through with... what he does. Tabitha was on the research. Kayla put the student down.” I don’t say the word: eventually. “It’s just, when we had the hiccup. When Kayla... Well, I’m sure there’s an explanation—”

  She is not what you think she is.

  I need to shut that little voice down. Get my fears back in my subconscious where they belong. Still, I’d love to hear the explanation.

  “But it was... When Kayla... stopped, well, then it became pretty apparent that we weren’t entirely comfortable playing together. Everyone seems to have a very specific role. If someone has to back someone up then we fall apart a bit. With one leg of the chair knocked out, to use a metaphor, the other three couldn’t really take the weight.”

  I try to gauge Shaw’s reaction to my little monologue. Her face is a mask. Her eyes are jumping from face to face.

  “That’s your assessment, Agent?” The title doesn’t sound quite so awesome all of a sudden.

  “I mean...” I say, “only one day on the job, but...” Her face is still a mask, but I think this isn’t leading to a good place.

  “And what do the rest of you think?” Shaw snaps her head around the room.

  There is a very pregnant pause. I think I even hear its water break.

  “Honestly?” I’d expect the comment to come from my left, but instead it’s Tabitha who speaks. I look at her. She seems unhappy. More so than usual.

  Shaw nods at Tabitha.

  “Bullshit,” says Tabitha. “This is. Turned into a bloody monster. Bit of an advantage on us. But we stopped him. Could have torn up Oxford. Rampage. But we were there. We did good.” She looks at me. “’Cept what the fuck did you do?”

  Ouch. And it hurts most because she’s right. Lay there. Mostly. In a lot of pain. I did jump off the hood of a car wielding a crowbar which might have looked momentarily cool, but it was about as effective as throwing wet pasta at the bastard.

  “We did good,” Tabitha repeats. And then she turns and pushes out the door. All done.

  Not a resounding endorsement of my point of view,
I admit.

  Shaw chews her bottom lip.

  Silently, Kayla follows Tabitha. Shaw closes her eyes.

  I look at Clyde, wait for him to follow suit. But he just shrugs. I can’t tell if it’s an apology, condemnation, commiseration.

  “Right then.” Shaw sighs. “Spectacular.” She’s not really talking to us. “We’ll wrap this up later then.” She picks up a pile of folders, exits stage left.

  “Oh balls,” I say and sit down in one of the chairs around the conference table. What a colossal cock-up. I put my head down on the table with a dull thunk. It’s cool against my forehead.

  “I wouldn’t take it so personally,” says Clyde. “Tabitha, obviously, well, she disagreed with you. Probably can see that. Binoculars not required for that one. Not like bird watching. Which I never enjoyed. But...” There’s a pause. My head’s still down, but I can imagine him shrugging furiously. “I’m trying to say... She’s loyal is Tabby. Doesn’t like a word said against her team, her people. That’s all. It’s nothing personal. Well, except that part where she asked what you did, which might have been taking things too far, really. Just like you said, really. First day and all. And your first day is a Tuesday. Terrible days, Tuesdays. Bane of the week if you ask me.”

  I manage to prise my head up off the table. “Thanks, Clyde,” I say. And I mean it. Support from one out of three. That’s not... well, actually that is quite bad. Piss poor in fact. I put my head back down.

  “Chin up, old man,” says Clyde. There is quite a long pause during which I don’t comply. “Well then,” Clyde says eventually, “best be off then. People to do, things to... no wait, other way around. Anyway, I’ll...” And then the door swings shut and cuts him off.

  THREE HOURS, A BEER, AND AN ICE PACK LATER

  I almost don’t answer the door. I’m still deep in my funk. I screwed up. Not the team, but very specifically me. And not just because I didn’t lead on Cowley Road, but because I didn’t lead in that conference room. Kayla leads. Without even saying a word. Which makes sense of course. Sociopathic killer though she might be, she can actually do something. She can actually fight the Progeny. She can make a difference. I can get knocked out and summon pretty hallucinations. Which is of limited use when you’re trying to save the world.