An Ex-Heroes Collection

by Peter Clines

  I shook my head. “I don’t know what any of that means.”

  “Of course. Sorry. Let me explain it to you like this. When you were very young, did you play a lot?”

  “What do you mean, sir?”

  “Play. Run around, jump, chase other children, that sort of thing.”

  “I was a tomboy, sir. I did all that and fought with boys, too.”

  “Did you ever do so much you collapsed?”

  “Probably. I mean, didn’t everyone?”

  “Everyone did,” he agreed. He paused to brush a piece of lint off his pants. “We ran and lifted things and burned through a day’s worth of calories in just a few hours. We pushed our bodies to their full potential. Except …”

  He paused again, as if he was searching for the right word. It was a lecture, I know that now. At this point he’d already given this speech a dozen times to other candidates as they woke up.

  “… we made ourselves sick,” he continued. “We got hurt. Maybe we even hurt one or two of our friends by accident. We learned it wasn’t always good to operate on those levels unless it was absolutely necessary, and often not even then. You see, everyone on Earth carries the seeds of superhuman ability within them.”

  I took another sip of water and flexed my feet back and forth under the bedsheet. No tightness or sore spots on my legs that I could feel. “You mean like mutant genes or something?”

  He shook his head. “No, I mean the things you’ve heard about your whole life.” He ticked off examples on his fingers. “People who lift cars with their bare hands to rescue loved ones. People who run their first marathon with no training or who can swim underwater for three minutes without taking a breath. Children who fall off ten-story buildings and only get scratched. Did you know a woman once fell almost two miles from an exploding plane and received only minor injuries?”

  I thought I’d heard the story before, so I nodded.

  “The human body is an amazing machine,” said Sorensen. “It’s powerful and durable all on its own, without much help from us. We rarely see that, though, because we all learned early on not to use our bodies to their full potential. Even professional athletes who train constantly are working under a system of automatic restraint. We hold back. We don’t push ourselves to our maximum limits because we instinctively understand how dangerous it can be, to others and to ourselves. And as we got older our bodies responded, getting slower and weaker because we weren’t pushing them to be their best. I’m sure you’ve heard stories of addicts on phencyclidine—PCP—who can fight half a dozen men or punch through walls.”

  I nodded again.

  “A similar principle. The drug high bypasses all those self-imposed safeguards. Of course, it also disables pain receptors, so it’s not uncommon for them to come down and realize they’ve broken several bones in their hands.”

  Inside the paper smock, I rolled my abs and shifted my hips and clenched a few female muscles. “So … you’re giving us PCP?” Nothing. Not even a numb spot where they’d given me a local. Just a bit stiff from lack of use.

  “No, they tried that before,” he said, crossing his legs. “It didn’t work for the reasons I just mentioned and no one could ever get any definitive results. It also doesn’t solve the real problem. We want to make you superhuman, not dependent on drugs that make you superhuman. You’ve felt jittery these past weeks, haven’t you?”

  I had. In fact, this was the first time I hadn’t felt on edge in days. I’d’ve noticed sooner if not for the headache and sore muscles.

  “The injections you’ve been getting for the past few weeks have boosted several processes in your body. It’s a compound called GW501516 paired with AICAR, which activates a metabolic—” He paused again and smiled. “I won’t bore you with all the technical terms. Your muscle tissues are developing faster. So are your skin and bone cells, which also means more red blood cells carrying more oxygen.”

  I frowned. “Isn’t that the same drug dependency, though, sir?”

  “Normally, yes. If we stopped the supplements your body chemistry would go back to normal in a few days. Which brings us back to restraint. What we’ve done is disable those safeguards. If you made a serious effort you’d create new pathways and learn to keep the body in check again. For now, though, you’re going to run at those optimum performance levels. Your mind isn’t going to tell your body to hold back. This is going to be your new normal, so to speak, and we’ve given your body a kick-start so it will change to keep up.”

  I drank some more water. My mouth was feeling better and flexing random muscles was helping the stiffness. As far as I could tell all I needed was a couple Advil for the headache and I’d be good to go.

  My splitting, painful headache.

  It must’ve shown in my eyes, because Sorensen was about to say something and stopped. Monkey-boy took a step back. They were both watching me.

  My free hand, the hand that wasn’t chained to the bed, reached up. The back of my head had been shaved. I brushed the wet threads in my scalp and winced. I put a bit of pressure on the raw skin and felt part of my skull shift underneath.

  “What did you do?”

  “It’s a shock at first, I know,” said Sorensen. “I’m cer—”

  “WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY BRAIN?!?”

  Looking back on it, I admit I lost it for a minute. Which I think he planned on. I lunged out of the bed. Monkey-boy tried to grab me and I knocked him halfway across the recovery room. I heaved the doctor out of the chair and his glasses fell off.

  “What did you do to me?!”

  Sorensen was very calm, even though I had his coat wrapped up in my fists. “That’s not the important question, Staff Sergeant Kennedy.”

  Name and rank was good. Chilled me down, made me stop. I almost cried, but girls cry. I’m a soldier.

  “The important question,” said Sorensen, “is how did you get out of the bed?”

  It took a moment to sink in. I looked away from his eyes, down to my wrists. One had a piece of surgical tape and some blood where the IV had torn loose. The other one had a single handcuff with two links of stainless-steel chain dangling from it. The last link was twisted apart. I could see a bruise forming where the cuff had bitten into my wrist.

  I looked over my shoulder. The hospital bed’s railing was bent a good four inches out of line toward me. The other handcuff swung back and forth in a deep gouge. Its last link was broken and stretched long. It looked more like a thick hook than a piece of chain.

  Oh, hell yeah. Look at me now, Dad.

  “HEY, ST. GEORGE,” someone called out. “You got a minute now?”

  A skinny man trotted toward Roddenberry, waving his hand. St. George settled back down to the ground and swung his jacket over his shoulder. It took a moment to recognize the young man at night. He’d never noticed how few lights there were around the central building and garden. “Cesar, right?”

  “Right.” They shook hands. “Look, I really need to … ummmm, confess something.”

  “You still haven’t killed anyone, right?”

  “No, dude, this is serious.”

  “Okay,” he said, “what’s up?”

  Cesar glanced around. “Can we walk or something?”

  “Why?”

  “Just feel kinda nervous standing right here, y’know? In front of her building? Especially at night.”

  St. George felt the corners of his mouth twitch. “Yeah, I know what you mean,” he said. “A walk around the garden work?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “that’d be cool.”

  He led them across the north edge of the garden. A few years earlier, when the Mount had been a film studio, the garden had been a gigantic pool that could be filled with water for movie shoots. The north edge was a huge mural called the Blue Sky. They walked along the narrow path between the base of the mural and the garden.

  Cesar took a breath and steeled himself. “Probably should’ve told you or Cerberus or one of you guys months ago, but …” T
he former Seventeen looked left to right and back, never meeting the hero’s eyes. “I’m the Driver.”

  St. George cocked his head and waited. “The what?”

  “The Driver.” He gripped an invisible steering wheel in the air before him, and the hero realized the young man’s fingerless handgear was a pair of cheap driving gloves.

  “The driver of what?”

  Cesar sighed. “D’you remember there were a bunch of carjackings and smash-and-grabs a couple years back? About a year before the exes showed up?”

  St. George nodded. “Down in the Wilshire District? Yeah, I always meant to look into those.”

  “That was me.”

  The hero raised his eyebrows and smiled. “As I remember, the cops caught the guy,” he said. “A big, fat white guy. Blew out the tires of his Mustang with a spike strip. He tried to run and the police laughed themselves silly.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Cesar, nodding. They turned the corner of the garden and started heading south. “Wayne. He was my partner.”

  “Partner?”

  “Look, what if I just show you, ’kay?”

  St. George shrugged. “Okay.”

  Cesar jogged ahead a few yards. The garden had a thick wall protecting it on the east side, and there was a small parking lot where they kept the scavenger trucks. Mean Green. Road Warrior. The twins were Big Red and Big Blue. Off to the side, against the back corner of the Zukor hospital, stood a few stacks of spare tires. Luke’s people had pulled them off other trucks on the lot, plus some they’d found in the other studios.

  The young man took a few more quick steps to put himself in front of Mean Green’s grille. He waited for St. George to catch up and gestured the hero to the side. “No one in the cab, right?”

  “Nope.”

  “No keys, right?”

  St. George pulled the door open and glanced under the steering column. “Nope. Should be in Luke’s office.”

  “ ’Kay, then. Watch this.”

  The young man pulled off his glove and held up his bare hand. The palm was covered with a flurry of half-faded scars. He pressed his fingers against Mean Green’s grille and the metal sparked. The flashes grew into long arcs that wrapped around his hand and twisted up his arm with electric crackles.

  Cesar vanished in a flash of light and Mean Green’s engine roared to life. A wisp of smoke spun in the air for a moment, and then it was sucked into the grille by the truck’s fan. Mean Green’s headlights came on. The engine revved three times in a row.

  St. George dropped his jacket. His eyes flitted between the empty space and the growling truck. “You’re kidding me.”

  The horn let out two quick blasts. The headlights flashed back and forth like winking eyes. The engine growled again and the truck’s front wheels shifted left to right. The hero took a few steps back and Mean Green rolled a few feet forward. He walked to the left and the truck turned after him.

  “Okay,” he said, “I believe you.”

  There was another crackle of electricity, a flash, and the engine cut out. The headlights faded and Cesar stood between the hero and Mean Green, his hand pressed against the grill. The young man swayed for a moment, shook his head, and grinned. “What you think of that?”

  “So,” said St. George. “The Driver.”

  “Damn straight.”

  “You possess cars?”

  “Not just cars,” said Cesar proudly. “Big rigs, jeeps, SUVs, anything that’s self-powered, y’know? I did a generator once on a bounce house. And a golf cart. Motorcycles are tough because I can’t balance that good in ’em.”

  “What about a walkie-talkie or a radio or something?”

  He shook his head. “Too small. I get … I dunno, cramped. I can’t fit inside.”

  St. George studied the young man. He didn’t have a scrap of green on him, but most of the former Seventeens went out of their way not to wear the old gang color. The ornate 17 on his left shoulder was the only sign he’d been one of the bad guys less than a year ago. “How long have you been able to do this?”

  He shrugged. “About four years.”

  “You’ve been part of the Mount for eight months now. Why didn’t you say something before?”

  “Dude, we were on opposite sides.” Cesar shook his head. “Even when I moved in here after Peasey was dead, who knows what Stealth would’ve done if she found out there was another Seventeen who had powers. Besides”—he jerked his head at the truck—“that was the first time I’ve done it since the night they grabbed Wayne.”

  “Your partner.”

  “Yeah.”

  “If you’re the one with the powers, why’d you need him?”

  The young man shrugged. “I needed somebody who could grab the cash. I’m in a car, it’s just a lot easier to stay there. Takes a lot out of me, switching back and forth.”

  “Okay,” said St. George, “so if he was willing to sit behind the wheel for a smash-and-grab, why’d he need you?”

  Cesar grinned. “Dude, d’you ever read Lowrider or Car and Driver? Fucking loved Car and Driver.”

  “Once or twice. In waiting rooms.”

  “Saw this phrase once—‘the car outperforms the driver.’ When you get those sweet, high-end cars with tons of torque that can turn on a dime. Rich jerks crash ’em all the time because the car is so much better than them. Moves faster’n they think it can, reacts quicker’n they think it will. Tweak the wheel this much and you’re doing barrel rolls down the freeway, y’know?”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “Well, not when I’m inside,” said Cesar. “When I’m inside, the car’s my body. Know every inch of it, what it can do, how well it can do it. If the car can do it, I can do it, and better than anyone sitting at the wheel ever could. I’m the greatest getaway-guy stunt driver in the world. I’m like ten times the fucking Transporter times Knight Rider.”

  “So how’d they catch your buddy?”

  He held up his hand again and showed the scars. “Like you said, man. Spike strip, right across Olympic.” He pulled the glove from his waistband and tugged it back on. “Cops arrested Wayne, took the Mustang to impound. I got out, my hands and feet were all messed up something bad. Limped home and Mama took me to the emergency room. Man, that sucked. Six hours in the waiting room at Hollywood Presbyterian.”

  St. George picked up his jacket and batted some dust off it. He looked at the truck again, then back to the young man. “How’d you get this? Were you born with it?”

  Cesar shook his head. “My cousin Tony, he was a gear-head,” explained the young man. “Worked on all the cars for the Seventeens. Tune-ups, rims, nitrous, whatever you needed. One day right after my sixteenth birthday I was helping him out, trading out an alternator and …”

  “And what?”

  “I got struck by lightning,” said Cesar. From his tone, St. George could tell he’d defended this point before. “Right there in the driveway, sunny day with clear skies. Burned my hair off and fried the alternator.”

  St. George drummed his fingers on Mean Green’s side. “You got struck by lightning while you were working on a car?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That has got to be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  Cesar glared at him. “What, how’d you get your powers? D’you get bit by a radioactive dragon or something?”

  “No,” said the hero, “I got … well, I got hit by a meteorite. And doused in some experimental chemicals.”

  The young man smirked. “And you’re making fun of me?”

  “There had to be something else to it. Thousands of people have been struck by lightning. It doesn’t give you superpowers.”

  “Yeah, but it did.”

  “But it can’t.”

  “But it did. Look, man, the important thing is, I want to join the team.”

  “What?”

  “You know,” said Cesar. “Start doing stuff for good and all that. I want to contribute something to the community.”

 
“How?”

  The other man’s smile faltered. “What d’you mean?”

  “I mean how,” said St. George. “I’m glad you came clean and told me about your powers, yeah, but … well, what can you do for us? It’s not like we have tons of open road to go speeding around on.”

  “Well, yeah, but—”

  “And at regular speed, well, Luke’s got half a dozen drivers for each truck past himself. Do the cars get better somehow when you’re in them? Do they stop using gas or … I don’t know, heal or something?”

  Cesar shifted his feet. “No.”

  The hero shrugged.

  “You saying I can’t join up?”

  St. George paused. “Look, Cesar, if things were back to normal, I’d say sure thing. But, honestly, what can you do that can’t be done by half the people in the Mount?”

  “But …” He looked confused. “But I’m the Driver.”

  “Yeah,” said St. George, “and there’s nowhere left to drive.”

  He reached the top of the stairs and saw her sitting Indian-style across from his door.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” said Lady Bee. She wore the same black tank she’d had on while they were in the Valley. Electric-blue bra straps peeked out from underneath it.

  St. George nodded from the stairwell. “So I see.”

  “The secret superhero meeting run late?”

  “Not exactly.” He shook his head. “You’re not here to tell me you’ve secretly had superpowers all this time, are you?

  She smiled. “Why?”

  “I just had to tell a kid his dream of being Optimus Prime was never going to come true. He took it hard.”

  “What?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. What’s up?”

  Bee stood up. “I was in the neighborhood. Figured I’d swing by and say hi.”

  “And camp outside my door?”

  “I’ve only been here ten minutes. None of the neighbors saw me.”

  He put his back against the door. “Seriously,” he said, “what’s up, Bee?”