Horror, Humor, and Heroes

by Jim Bernheimer

  She looks at me for a moment before answering. “It’s an adjustment. The storms are pretty intense.”

  It’s a good thing she isn’t asking why I am still talking to her; I don’t have a good answer. “When I was a kid, I’d sit and watch the thunderstorms right up until the downpours started and the tornado alarms went off. That’s when I thought the worst thing Mother Nature could throw at us was an F-5.”

  Kelly laughs sadly. “Baltimore’s so far away from the quarantine zone. I was in college. We held fundraisers and bake sales and thought, ‘Oh those poor people out west.’ It didn’t really hit home until they started talking about a draft. You said you were from Kansas?”

  I don’t really talk about it often, but what the hell! Kicking a stone or two, I tell her about being on a wrestling scholarship to KSU and how the first stories coming out weren’t believed until TV crews started filming giant critters. Then there was the panic and the evacuation. Sometime in the middle of it all, she starts shivering despite the hot night and I put my arm around her. Something messed her up, a lot.

  Running out of things to say, I lean in and kiss her. She hesitates at first, but then joins in with reckless abandon. It’s emotionally raw and I get carried away. I push her back against the prefab wall of one of the buildings and lift her up to get our heads level. She wraps her legs around my waist and tries heroically to cram her tongue farther down my throat than humanly possible.

  We come up gasping for breath. “How did you almost die?”

  I answer, crushing her against me. “It’s not important. Some stupid Armchair ...”

  She couldn’t have gotten any stiffer if she was a cadaver. “What did you say?”

  There are moments in life when a sudden realization can strike like a ton of bricks. Kelly’s an “Armchair” and unless I’m mistaken, she’s my Armchair.

  Only one word can sum up the situation. “Fuck.”

  Her eyes lock with mine and I let her slide down the wall. “You’re Gibson aren’t you?”

  Growling, I answer, “And you’re the dumb bitch who damn near got me and Moses killed.”

  Her eyes widen with fear. She’s alone with a big, angry guy that she almost killed. Kelly’s getting a dose of my hostile vibe and looks like she’s going to scream.

  So what am I going to do? Everyone in the squad jokes we do if we got our hands on our CAO or any CAO for that matter. I always pictured Armchair as some kind of big glasses nerd who starches his boxers. Instead, I’m staring at the doe-eyed girl next door.

  “Oh quit! I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No.” I reach down and pick up another beer.

  “Why? I’ve seen your record.” Kelly has a point. There’s a reason I keep ending up on flamethrower duty.

  “Mom and Dad are gone, but they raised me right. Never hit a woman.”

  She deflates. “Great, saved by gender bias. I can even fuck up a one night stand.”

  “What now?”

  Kelly’s arms wrap around her chest protectively. “Protocol says I go back, tell them I’ve met someone under my command. They rotate me immediately and assign you a new CAO.”

  “How long have you been our CAO, anyway? We always try to guess when they swap.”

  “Three weeks, the Bennett’s pond mission. You’re my first unit ... were my first unit.” She sounds depressed.

  I sag against the wall. My voice is tired. “Why did you send us in against the bees today?”

  “I grew up in the inner city along the water. There aren’t many bees there. If it makes you feel better, the duty colonel jumped my shit for not backing you out and sending in an airstrike.”

  My nurturing side retreats into its shell. “Damn straight you should have! You don’t know what the animals out there are capable of? Jesus H. Christ! You’re broke up about an ass-chewing. I’m out here trying to forget that your bad day damn near killed my partner.”

  Kelly’s got the tears going again. “There was only one other combat operation in progress. Everyone heard every word you said to me, even the fucking janitor!”

  “Deal with it, or you will start burying people!” Great, I’m kicking her while she’s down and the tear pumps shift into overdrive. I should just walk away before it gets worse.

  Don’t do it! Don’t you dare do it! You’re better than this, Chris. Don’t throw her a bone. “Bennett’s pond, huh?”

  The snot bubbler next to me nods, chest heaving and not in a good way either. It’d be so easy to crush her fragile little ego beyond repair. Just a few words and she’d end up as some useless admin officer inventorying blankets.

  “Well, you haven’t killed anyone yet. Not for lack of trying, but we haven’t lost a squad member in eight weeks. If you get through another eight weeks without killing someone, you’re not doing half bad.”

  “What?”

  “Look, it’s a tough world out there. Maybe a lot tougher than you realize. I’ve been here going on eighteen months. The only other draftee left from my original squad is Simmons. Part of the reason we think they swap you guys around is so you don’t realize how many of us are dying out there.”

  “You could be right ...”

  “I know I am. One thing you have to learn is to trust the non-coms. We survived this long and know a little something about being out in the shit.”

  Kelly won’t meet my eyes. I’m turning into such a softy. Rachel would rip me apart if she saw this. She already thinks that I’m always on flamethrower duty to protect her.

  “You had a bad day. Big deal! If that’s the worst day you ever had, you’re in better shape than I am, Kelly. My bad day has lasted over two years! I’m the only one of my family to make it out of Kansas. I spent six months in a refugee camp before the draft caught up with me. Here’s a gun, good fucking luck, and God bless you all!”

  Armchair’s gawking at me after my little rant. She stops crying and hugs me tightly. I realize that I’m crying. My psych minor tells me that I’ve been repressing and this is actually a good thing. Oh great, I’m a whack job now too!

  Somewhere in the middle of all this, our lips find their counterparts once more and the passion starts all over again. Apparently, we get under each other’s skins in both good and bad ways. If I’m an M&M, my candy shell is pretty cracked right now. I don’t know if I can survive without it.

  Kelly breaks away and starts pulling me back towards NLN Territory.

  “What now?” I ask in a ragged voice.

  “Let’s go to the suites,” she says with determination. “I think we both need this.”

  “And protocol?”

  “You’re probably a guy from the motor pool who smells a little like gas. I could be a nurse who has seen one too many body bags. It’ll be our little secret. Besides, you haven’t lost a member in eight weeks. That does mean you’re good. I can do a lot worse. The next group I end up with could be a complete waste of sperm.”

  Despite my inner turmoil, I laugh getting a glimpse of the other side of the fence.

  We buy more alcohol and head over to the suites. “Sure you want to go through with this, Kelly?”

  Licking her lips, she whispers to me, “Yeah, but you’re gonna be disappointed.”

  “Not likely. Why?”

  Her reply is a husky laugh. “You must have said three or four times today how you wanted to shove something up my ass. I’ve got standards, Mister! Survive another eight weeks and I might consider it. C’mon draftee, let’s see if you’re any good without the flamethrowers!”

  #

  “Oh give me a home ...”

  I bathe what used to be a buffalo roughly the size of our Bradley in flames. Considering Fox One caught up to a small herd of them and their corpses littered the field, it was going to be a full day. Tiny maggots, merely the size of night crawlers, writhe and shrivel under the intense heat. The smell reminds me of simpler days, helping Dad outside on the grill.

  Blackwood, on his fi
rst day outside the safety of the armored vehicle, is skittish as hell and constantly looking around. “Easy there Dan, how do you like your meat? Well done, or burnt to a cinder?”

  “Keep the chatter to a minimum, Gibson. This is a mission,” the mechanical voice reprimands me.

  “Armchair, is that you? We were starting to get lonely out here.”

  “You’re a sad, sad individual, Gibson. I suspect you’re lonely all the time.”

  “Oh, we finally got one with a sense of humor! Do you know any good jokes, Armchair? Maybe you could bring a smile to my face.” We’d spent the entire three-day together and I hadn’t felt this good in a long time. In fact, she brought several smiles to my face. Her people definitely need to be kept out of the loop, but I told her if I started acting strangely, my group would be suspicious also. As long as it wasn’t obvious, I could sneak a few inside jokes in and no one would be the wiser.

  “Sounds like you need a hug.” Kelly gets a zinger of her own in before continuing. “Simmons, drive the pasture and give me a total body count. Gibson, I need to know how long it takes to torch each one and what your fuel consumption rate is. There’s only six hours of daylight left and you might not have noticed it inside your suits, but the wind direction is starting to shift. Whatever is northeast of you is gonna get a whiff of all this soon and come looking for its next meal. Going offline to see if I can get a Fox to sweep that grid clear.”

  Our three days together weren’t one continuous raunchfest, not even I have that kind of stamina. In between, I gave her a crash course in how to best keep my dumb ass alive so we could spend our next three-day in a similar position. To Kelly’s credit, she’s a fast learner.

  Rachel speaks up as soon as Kelly changes channels. “I’m calling a switch right now; everyone here agrees. If that’s not a new Armchair, I’m a damn carpet muncher! This one’s got his shit together. Congratulations on running that other loser off, Chris.”

  I enjoy a brief fantasy involving Rachel, Kelly, and little old me while replying, “I’m just taking one for the team and doing my part to make sure we survive. How long is this one gonna last?”

  “Four or five weeks, I don’t know. What do you think?”

  Under my flame retardant hood another smile appears. “I’m hoping at least eight.”

  Confessions of a “D-List” Supervillain

  by

  Jim Bernheimer

  Chapter 1

  I Went To New Orleans (and All I Got was This Lousy Prisoner!)

  They’re coming for me and I am no match for them.

  There’ve been dozens of times I’ve wanted to quit the supervillain business, but never like right now! Hell, I was in semi-retirement when everything went to crap, just delivering some orders to what few clients I still had.

  This janitor’s closet in a run down warehouse is where I’ll likely make my final stand. The alarms inside the armor warn me that power levels are down to twenty-two percent – not good. Below fifteen, the flight system won’t activate.

  I scan the walls looking for a power source, any electrical current that I can tap into. Nothing ... the building is as dead as I am about to be.

  If this was just the Gulf Coast Guardians, I’d have a shot. Of the four Guardian teams, they’re definitely the junior varsity squad. If it was the Biloxi Bugler, I’d kick his ass and mock him (and his sonic bugle) while I did it.

  It’s not. I’m not that lucky. I’m never that lucky. Instead, it’s the Olympians, the foremost hero team in the whole world and I’m a minor supervillain at best.

  Yeah, those Olympians, twelve college kids who disappeared on a cruise in the Mediterranean. A year later they returned with powers and training from the original Greek Gods. Against them, Calvin Matthew Stringel, reasonably talented, but hapless inventor currently known as “Mechani-CAL”, doesn’t stand a chance.

  #

  The power meter drops to twenty-one percent. Hermes is zipping through the main room, but if I stay still and conserve energy, maybe she’ll give up.

  Just because she is super fast doesn’t mean she’s super thorough! The lack of lighting in the building is hurting her and she’s making a good deal of noise out there. She sounds overly clumsy.

  Of course, those things controlling her mind haven’t quite mastered the operation of the fastest woman alive.

  Yup, the world’s been taken over and I missed it. All I know for certain is that The Evil Overlord was hiring geneticists like crazy late last year. Now these bugs, about twice the size of a grasshopper, are attached to everyone’s neck and society seems to be reorganizing into a hive mentality. Granted, it would probably make standing in line more tolerable, but I’m not quite ready to sign up.

  Given that it’s been two weeks since this started and there has been no worldwide broadcast from the megalomaniac, it’s a safe bet that this is an experiment gone awry rather than a plan masterfully executed. Good riddance to him anyway. The lousy cheapskate stopped using me as a supplier and stiffed me for two shipments of pulse cannons! Technically, I should thank him. Had he paid up, I probably wouldn’t have wasted any time on that penny ante jetpack sale in Montgomery and wouldn’t have been in my suit when the bugs came.

  The only reason I’m not already part of the “New World Order” is that I haven’t taken off my battle armor since civilization was forcibly reorganized. Things are getting a bit ripe in the old Mark II CAL suit. I’d ventilate, but the stench would be a dead giveaway.

  Laying low helped me up until yesterday, but it didn’t last. It never does, does it? Initially, I only had to deal with the normal folks and was more than a match for plain old policemen and the National Guard. Puh-leaze! I might be a washed up, unemployable electrical engineer, called a “petty, second stringer, wannabe imitator” by Ultraweapon (with his fancy multi-million dollar suit) but I’m not a pushover. I’ve got force blasters, enhanced strength, and a flight pack.

  Am I that much of a threat to the bugs? Maybe I’m all the threat that’s left? God! That’s a scary thought! Either way, the bugs trotted out the big guns. They didn’t waste time sending other super groups after me. I get to tangle with the Olympians! It hasn’t been much of a fight so far, unless getting my butt kicked from one end of New Orleans to the other is a “fight.”

  At least I hope it will be a quick death. I jettisoned my self destruct pod into Ares’s gut. He dived on top of it to protect his teammates and possibly that thing on his neck. The blast didn’t destroy his nigh-invulnerable body, probably just gave him a really irritating skin rash, but it did buy me enough time to fly a mile or so away before Apollo’s fireball sent me crashing into this row of warehouses.

  Wasting no time, I blew a hole into the next warehouse and the one following it. Hopefully, it would look like I ran into that one, so then I ducked back into the first warehouse to assess the damage to my suit.

  Hermes, a thin black woman, a one-time NCAA champion track sprinter, continues to look around. She just won’t leave. There’s no choice. I have to try and take her.

  Charge force blasters and set for wide area pulse dispersal. My neural interface issues the commands and I feel the suit respond. I’ll waste power that I don’t really have. She’ll come at me like a missile with that metal rod of hers in her hand. Screw up and she’ll give me the “Nancy Kerrigan treatment” a dozen times before I can blink.

  It’s not the first time someone’s tried this stunt with her and there’s no way it would work if she was “in control,” but it’s the best option I’ve got. Bursting out of the closet, I get her attention. Sure enough, she accelerates. In the dimly lit warehouse, I trigger a flash from my spotlight to partially blind her and immediately trigger the force pulse.

  The embedded scanners still functioning register the gust of wind behind me as she stumbles out of control, smashing into empty crates. My auditory sensors pick up her moans, but they’re fading as I sprint away. The rest will be hot on my heels. Normally, I’d be proud. I just took ou
t an Olympian! How come I feel like I’m going to wet myself?

  Screw it! Back out the way I came in! Activate flight system! I shoot right out the hole in the roof and directly into Apollo’s firebolt. Fire retros! Fire retros! They cushion the fall and I manage to land on the roof. Sixteen percent! Damn, that hurt! Don’t just lie there waiting to die, do something!

  Something smacks into the helmet and rings my bell. What now? Psionic blast, that means Aphrodite. There she is, leaping off her hover-sled. Sure, I’ve got her pinup, but I’ve never seen her up close before. Damn, she’s hot! But she’s not the most powerful, so maybe I can stop her. Shields almost down! Apollo’s next fireball will start melting the suit and I’m in it. Suck it up Cal; you’re not getting out of here alive. Might as well try to take one with me – maybe she’d even want me to?