Horror, Humor, and Heroes

by Jim Bernheimer

  “It looks like something a rapper or a bull rider would wear.”

  “Armor will slow you down, but this belt has a base charge and as you move it will recharge. Mind touching her, Athena?”

  They touch and there’s a decent electrical shock that both shrug off. “Big deal, I’m a human joybuzzer.”

  “You’re an Olympian. That’s more than enough juice to kill any bug landing on you. The wires going up to the rubber gloves, they carry a bigger shock that you can use without zapping yourself.”

  My self-appointed cheerleader jumps in, “That’s pretty clever, isn’t it?”

  The Cyber Dudes seem to like it and Andy helped me flesh out the design. He and I actually get along. Considering my other idea was putting her into some kind of giant hamster ball and turning her into a human pinball, I thought this one was more workable. Plus, I didn’t have enough plastic to make one.

  I’m also working on a pair of electrified brass knuckles to use on the Cyclops suit. The synth-muscle can only amplify my punch so much, so I’ll have to cheat the next time I encounter a strongman and I can cheat with the best of them.

  Athena renders her judgment, “It’s usable. Good job, Stringel. As soon as you finish those weapons for the androids, we can try to get some of the others liberated. Alright, has anyone come up with an idea to get rid of the bugs?”

  Andy speaks up in his digitized voice, “I have completed my analysis of their physiology from the carcasses we brought back when I was rescued. The creature is fairly resistant to both radiation and chemical attacks. To be effective, we would be forced to use them in quantities that would result in death for the host. That option is not the optimal solution.”

  It’s sobering news. I look at it logically, “Why don’t we try to go to the Overlord’s base? He’s bound to have something that lets him control these things.”

  “We can’t. Ultraweapon destroyed his base. These things escaped when that happened. If there was something there to control them, it’s gone now.”

  “You’re shitting me! Lazarus Patterson is responsible for all this?” A tiny part of me delights in that news.

  Stacy speaks trying to defend him, “That’s the report we got. Anyway, I can kill them easily enough, but my range is too limited, I could probably do a football field in size, maybe a square mile if I went all out.”

  Athena ponders the idea. “If we could boost your power some, it might be more effective. What about that throne thing that General Devious uses? It boosts her power. Do you know where her current base is, Stringel?”

  She’s obviously mistaken me for someone higher up on the food chain. “I’ve got a vague idea, but it’s not like there’s a Supervillain’s edition of the phonebook.”

  Hermes, still looking over her belt, cuts off the fight before it starts. “Don’t we have one of the old versions in our vault at Mount Olympus?”

  “They’ve changed our codes by now. Do we really want to try to attack our headquarters? No one’s ever succeeded.”

  “You got a better idea?”

  I’m a little more practical, “What other goodies do you have stashed in your vault? If we’re going shopping for gadgets, why don’t we figure out if it’s even worth going there.”

  Taking notes, I’m treated to the greatest adventures of the Olympians as they talk about all the villainous paraphernalia in their headquarters. I’m surprised how many of these adventures I’d never heard of. Then again, we villains don’t exactly get together and talk about how badly we just got our ass handed to us. I start asking questions about the capabilities of the devices they have in their base.

  Hours later, I’m standing alone in my workshop looking at dozens of little note cards spread out on the table. It’s a jigsaw puzzle of how to save the human race. The only problem is that I’m not sure I have all the pieces. Crenshaw has already stopped by to see if I had anything, only to be turned away disappointed. What was she expecting? I don’t shit out miracles on demand! I scribble two more note cards, one for mind control and the other for power boosting and start sorting all over again.

  Assuming we get our hands on The General’s throne, and it works, it’ll give Stacy a big boost – maybe five or ten square miles at a time. The next problem would be protecting her as we travel all across the world. That would be in addition to trying to care for all addicts that were suddenly missing their fix.

  “Are you doing okay, Cal? You haven’t come out in hours.” Stacy knocks on my doorframe.

  Smacking one of my hands on the table, I sigh. “I can’t come up with anything that’s going to work on the scale we need it to.”

  “No one’s expecting you to solve it all by yourself. Why don’t you take a break?”

  “Has Athena said we need to start targeting Lazarus and his scientists yet?”

  “Um, no.”

  “You’re not a very good liar, Stacy.”

  She shrugs. It’s incredible just to watch her do it. “Okay, she has, but don’t let that get you down. You’ve done an awful lot here, but Lazarus is an organizational genius. This kind of thing is up his alley.”

  “Of course there’s one hitch, where in the world is Lazarus Patterson? The bugs are probably using his creative genius rather than his Ultraweapon suit.”

  “We’re thinking we could track him with his Blackberry if he’s still carrying it. You know, figure out what cell phone tower his phone is responding to and then track him down.”

  The thought of him sitting in a cubicle somewhere, for sixteen hours a day, designing weapons that no one is going to build amuses me. Still, I’m about to be kicked to the curb. Obscurity, it’s just a phone call away.

  Wait a damn second! “Cell towers! That’s it!”

  Aphrodite is confused. “What are you talking about?”

  I fish around through the cards until I find the combination. “I’ve only been focusing on the things in your vault. The delivery system is already in place. I just didn’t think of it until now. The General’s chair will boost your power right?”

  “Well yeah, but we’ve been through this before. It’s not enough.”

  “Unless we use The Wireless Wizard’s dead zone gear and use the cell phone towers all across the world to carry your signal. His stuff would use the cell towers and people’s own mobile phones as weapons. We don’t have to lug you and the chair all around the world. We can just have a big old bug killing teleconference! There’s The Overlord’s Mindwiper too. The energy might not be able to go through the Wizard’s gear, but if we hit the heroes with the ray and wipe out the last three months worth of memories, they’ll still have the cravings and feel like shit, but won’t remember why.”

  She runs it through her mind. “It’s brilliant! I’ll get Holly.”

  Of course, there is the small matter of breaking into the Olympian’s headquarters – the most secure location in the world. It’ll be just like a big bank job, a piece of cake, right?

  #

  “So, are you ready for tomorrow?” Stacy asks as I watch her using the diagnostic scanner on her suit.

  “Ready as I can be, I guess. It’s nice that you’re really serious about your armor. Crenshaw just wants her suit to work.”

  “I’d watch Lazarus working on his when we dated. Anytime I’d ask questions, he’d get really possessive. It was kind of strange considering he usually had an entire team of techs working on it at any given time.”

  “You weren’t on his payroll. Either way, his suit is a corvette and mine’s a dump truck. Plus, I’m used to people giving my stuff the once over. It’s generally haggling over the price that irritates me.”

  Rolling her eyes at me, she chuckles. “Given any thought to what you’ll do after all this is over, Cal?”

  “Well, I’ll have to get a new base. Everyone knows where this one is.” I don’t bother mentioning that should we lose, I’ll be welcoming my insect overlords with open arms.

  “You could always play for the good guys. I’d vo
uch for you. The Guardians pay their heroes.”

  I pick up a piece of metal on the bench and flex it in my hands nervously, and say, “Me? Punching the clock and picking up a paycheck, bankrolled by Uncle Sam and Promethia? I don’t see it. Plus, there’s some bad blood between me and the guys here on the Gulf Coast.”

  She’s trying to rehabilitate me. “Give it some thought. You keep saying how no one’s ever given you a fair shake.”

  “We’ll see how it plays out. What about you? If we win, you’re going to be stuck on that throne playing ‘Miss Twelve Step program’ to a few billion people all going through withdrawal at the same time. That’s going to be thrilling.”

  “Yeah, I’m trying not to think about it, but it’s going to be even worse for you guys. I’ll be safe in Headquarters and you’ll be out there dealing with all the depressed and suicidal people. I’ll take being inside over riot duty any day.”

  “Riot duty?” I check the list of things I’ve signed up for, that isn’t on it.

  “I’m guessing Athena hasn’t spoken to you about this yet.”

  “That’s a fair assumption.”

  “We’re going to be so shorthanded after this that we’re going to need everyone to pitch in.”

  “So you’re recruiting me?”

  “I figured you might need a bit of persuasion.”

  I mull it over. “I don’t have any other plans. I’ll do it, but only because it’s you asking.”

  Stacy smiles at me and disconnects the scanner from her armor. “Good. I’m glad that’s settled. Now, I’m going to go take a long hot shower and get cleaned up. Mind if I use the one in your bedroom?”

  As I fumble for an answer, she sets the scanner on the workbench and laughs. “Funny, that’s basically how we met isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, if I hadn’t turned on the camera in the bathroom to record it we’d both be little drones right now.”

  Her voice acquires a husky tone, “Do you have cameras in these showers?”

  Inside my armor I gulp, “No, just in the main rooms and the cells.”

  “That’s a shame. You could always bring a camcorder in and do it old school.”

  The world stops for a moment as I try to process what she just said. My climate control inside the suit seems to be failing. All I can manage to squeak out is, “Are you serious?”

  “Yes. Tomorrow, we could die or worse, be turned into slaves. I want to do one last thing that’s my choice, of my own free will, and I’m feeling the need to work off the pre-battle jitters. How about it, Cal?”

  There’s absolutely no arguing with that logic. Count me in!

  Chapter 5

  War Dialing FTW

  This morning, I’m still trying to rationalize what happened. It couldn’t have meant anything to her. It was just a diversion, merely something (or someone) to do. I try to push it aside and focus on the task at hand.

  “Listen, you two are essential to our plan to raid Promethia. We can’t pull it off without you.” I say trying to sound sincere.

  Toadspit and Squirrel King are lapping it up, just looking for a way out. They’re nowhere near cured and that’s exactly the point.

  “Our team here will head out to Promethia’s West Coast offices and our other team will assault the West Coast Guardians' base. We’re certain they have a weapon there that will stop the bugs there. Squirrel King, we’ll need lots of your furry creatures and Toadspit, we need you to ... to start making mucus.”

  I finally came up for a use for these two losers – decoys. They will “escape” shortly and waste no time finding the nearest bugs. The bugs aren’t deep thinkers and are probably bigger suckers for lies than the heroes. With any luck, most of their super-powered drones will be hours away on the west coast when we attack New Mount Olympus, outside of Washington DC. That’s good, because we’re going to need time to get this all to work.

  One of the perks about being a bad guy is that I’m not above using people. It’s doubtful that any of the heroes would’ve come up with this one, except Stacy. She's probably had a lot of experience using people. I’ve recently been added to that list, or maybe I'm jumping to conclusions. Either way, I need to stop thinking about her!

  The reality is that we’re stealing one of the Gulf Coast Guardians’ planes and heading east.

  Smiling inside my helmet, I give them the key code to open the outer door and say that we’ll be letting them out of the cells shortly.

  Returning to the control room, I say to the rest of the team, “It’s done. All that’s left is to set them loose.”

  Andydroid, Aphrodite, and I have the technical part of the mission, making the Wireless Wizard’s equipment work with the throne. The rest have to protect us using whatever they can for as long as possible.

  #

  Amidst the hordes of Type “B” guard-bots, I fire my Gatling mini-gun wildly. Blasts of energy and concussion grenades strike my opponents indiscriminately. There is no shortage of targets. The Type “B”s aren’t even humanoid, they’re just rolling balls with heavy stun guns attached on rotating gyroscopes. The bad guys usually equip them with something much more offensive, but the Olympians make up for it in quantity.

  I use my jetpack and strafe them, swooping through the masses, cutting a path, and drawing fire away from my teammates. It’s weird being part of a team and I’m trying to adjust to it.

  Athena and Aphrodite are struggling with Poseidon. The Sea Lord’s dense skin allows him to soak up their best attacks like a sponge. Super strength and high-pressure blasts of water keep them busy. Once Stacy killed his bug, it sent him into a berserker rage. She’s probably regretting that now.

  Hermes is holding her own against both Demeter and a squad of robots. Andydroid and the Cyber Dudes help me with the robots and the gun emplacements rising out of the ground. Landing, I feel the ground shake as a pair of Type “D” Warbots step out from the faux Greek columns surrounding the headquarters. The “Death Dealers” are coming up next. They’re going to need massed firepower to beat and we’re too spread out at the moment.

  If we don’t turn the tide soon, we might not even make it inside. This is the part where I usually run away – except I know that there’s nowhere to left to run. I toss the mini-gun to Andy and trigger my jetpack. Accelerating into the backside of the Poseidon, I slam him into one of the sculptures, trigger a full electrical discharge, and give him a helmet-mounted force blaster noogie. The power levels in the suit immediately begin dropping at the continuous release of energy.

  It’s everything I’ve got and I know it might not be enough. Pulling him into a full-nelson, I trigger my flight system and drag him skyward. If he can survive the crushing depths of the ocean, a big drop out of the sky shouldn’t kill him.

  I manage only about a few hundred feet before Poseidon breaks my hold and nearly dislocates a shoulder. He twists and wraps an arm around my neck. I’m staring into his enraged face as his other arm cocks back a fist. Oh shit!

  Activate sonic generator! Fire force blaster! Earmuffs clamp down a millisecond before the high decibel wail begins. It takes a second blast from the helmet gun before he lets go – my own version of “catch and release”. I’d like to say that his plunge into a Type “D” Warbot was completely planned and perfectly executed, but it wasn’t. It was luck, pure and simple. Either way, it’s what we need.

  I dive bomb the giant robot as Athena and Aphrodite hammer away at it. My weight hits its upper back, driving it down to the ground as its servos and gyroscope adjust to my sudden weight. I go right for the Poseidon-sized dent in the shoulder and start ripping armor plating away and firing into the inner workings. Sending my last two concussion grenades down the hole, I fly off and let the primary and secondary explosions rip it to pieces.

  My shields protest against the blasts of the remaining turrets and the other Warbot. I’m swatted back down to the ground and rise out of a freshly made crater, already checking my diagnostics and firing my Cyclops blaster. I hurl
chunks of the destroyed robot at its companion and play kickball with a Type “B”.

  That’s strange, Athena and Hermes are still standing, but the Warbot is attacking me. Must be a glitch in the threat selection programming.

  Faulty subroutines or not, it’s one of the last things standing between us and the exterior of the Olympian’s Headquarters. I reach for my sledgehammer and find it missing – lost during the fight somewhere. It doesn’t matter.

  Hermes zips up next to me and shoves the mini-gun in my hands. I feel her popping a fresh clip of twelve grenades into the launcher. Her face is bleeding and her voice is ragged, “Take it out and we’re in!”

  Backed by energy spears, force blasts, rockets, and a kitchen sink or two, I take flight and advance on the ten meter tall machine. Other than Ultraweapon’s suit, it’s the pinnacle of Promethia’s technology. It’s the next best thing to fighting Patterson himself and I’ve never been more eager in my life.