by Logan Jacobs
Then we drove straight onto the tarmac to meet our waiting plane. Dynamo slung Bernardo over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and Aileen carried a few pieces of our luggage with critical electronics that I didn’t want to leave unattended. We had left most of our stuff at the rental house, since we had more of everything we needed at home. We boarded, and within two hours, we were back in Pinnacle City.
One of my longtime chauffeurs came to pick us up from the airfield. I couldn’t just hire a taxi, because a random taxi driver might have certain questions about the disgruntled, red-faced bearded man who was clearly reluctant to be traveling in our company. Ernie, however, had been driving for me and collecting paychecks from me for long enough to have decided that he had no further questions.
“Smells like home,” Norma said as she rolled down the car window and stuck her head out to take deep, happy breaths like a dog.
“You mean, lung-damaging particulate matter and carcinogenic industrial pollutants?” Elizabeth asked dryly.
“Yup,” Norma agreed cheerfully.
When we got home, we carried our unwilling guest straight down to The Cellar and strapped him into the same chair that a razor blade-handed supervillain’s henchman named Jonah Clarke had occupied not so long ago when I was just starting out on this new career path. The chair had automated shackles that detected Bernardo’s presence and extended out to lock his wrists and ankles into place.
“How are we supposed to interrogate him, if he doesn’t know anything?” Norma asked.
I was about to say that that wasn’t my intention. I intended for Norma, who had the capabilities of an average physician, to measure Bernardo’s vitals and see what observations she could make that might relate to his brain function.
But then Bernardo himself straightened in his chair, his previously unfocused eyes locked onto my face, and he said loudly and clearly, “But you don’t want to talk to this poor slob, do you? What you really want is to talk to me.”
“Mayhem?” I asked.
“In the flesh,” he replied. “Someone else’s flesh, that is. Does that creep you out?”
“Not at all,” I said. “So, what’s your game with these mind control devices of yours? What’s the ultimate goal?”
“It’s all in the name,” he whispered, and then added a cackle for good measure, which came out rather melodically I guess since it was in Bernardo’s voice.
“‘Mayhem’ is not a motive,” I said. “Not in and of itself, anyway. Of course it can be used as a means to an end. So, what is it you want?”
“Mayhem is the nature of the universe. A universe which is devoid of the ultimate meaning that you so vainly seek,” the opera singer said. “I am simply manifesting that in my artwork.”
“So you’re not just a murderer, you’re also a pretentious twat,” Norma grumbled.
“You’re no better than me,” spat the youthful Santa Clause. “You just think you are. All of you do. That’s an illusion like everything else.”
“Okay, why don’t I ask you a more concrete question?” I sighed. “These control chips, how do they work? Right now, it seems like you’re using this one as a portal into poor Bernardo’s mind and body. It’s like you’re possessing him. But it’s not always like that, is it? When you’re not… ‘present,’ shall we say… your zombies are just mobile vegetables. Or they’re on autopilot, continuing to follow whatever were the most recent instructions you gave them. Right?”
“Why would I tell you anything?” Mayhem demanded.
“Why wouldn’t you?” I countered. “You said yourself that the universe is meaningless. That you have no ultimate purpose for me to thwart. So why does it matter?”
“I believe in entropy,” Mayhem replied. “It is the one true law of the universe. And I am its humble servant.”
“Yeah, I imagine prison must be a pretty humbling experience,” I said.
“Prison?” Mayhem started cackling. “That was half an hour ago. I am free now, free as a bird, my friend.”
That was news to me. But not exactly surprising news. Then it occurred to me that it could be useful. I winked at Elizabeth, who looked infuriated at the thought of Mayhem running amok again.
“Free to do what, exactly?” I asked. “Pick on more small children and opera singers? Your choice of targets so far doesn’t reflect very well on your character, you know. Ever consider tangling with a superhero? You know, someone your own size, so to speak?”
“That’s for me to know, and you to find out,” Mayhem shrilled.
“If you won’t tell us anything useful, I’ll just have to dissect this man’s brain,” I warned. I had no intention of doing that, not while there were still so many less villainous courses of action open to us, but I wanted to see what Mayhem’s reaction would be, and I wanted to keep him talking.
“Slice and dice away, I have many others like him, and I can make hundreds more,” Mayhem laughed.
I made a motion to Norma like pulling a hood over my head. She looked confused, then she seemed to understand and nodded. She went to a cabinet and pulled out a thick black hood, one of several that we had purchased after our run-ins with supervillains whose abilities depended upon being able to see their targets. Then she came up behind Bernardo and pulled the hood over his head.
“Just because I can’t see you doesn’t mean that I don’t know you’re there, don’t know what you’re up to,” Mayhem singsonged in Bernardo’s voice. Which confirmed that the hood idea had worked to obscure his vicarious vision. “Don’t know you’re about to chop an innocent man’s skull open… just… like… meeeee… ”
“You chopped someone’s skull open?” I asked as I typed a text message to Norma.
“No, but I had someone chop someone else’s skull open, at the opera,” Mayhem said in a tone of disappointment. “You didn’t see that part? It was classical entertainment.”
“It wasn’t classical,” Elizabeth said disdainfully. “In a gladiator ring, people had the chance to fight back. They had the chance to win glory and their freedom. But this evening you were controlling both the executioner and the victim. They weren’t even themselves. There’s no honor or justice or excitement in that.”
“Life’s not fair, pretty lady,” Mayhem sneered.
After reading my text message, Norma ran off to another cabinet and returned with a signal scanner that she held above Bernardo’s hooded head.
“Maybe your life has sucked so far because you suck,” I suggested to Mayhem to keep him talking. Actually, it sounded like he’d had a pretty unfortunate childhood with his toxic mother, but his actions since left me with no sympathy for that. “Maybe it wasn’t unfair at all.”
“My life is beautiful now,” Mayhem gloated. “I have all the power!”
Numbers ran across the face of the signal scanner as it triangulated the location from which the control chip inside Bernardo’s skull was transmitting. Then it calculated a final number, and the screen stopped on a set of grid coordinates.
“Well, better enjoy it while you can, buddy,” I replied. “Dynamo, will you carry our guest to the bathroom, please? We really should build a prisoner holding cell down here, but in the meantime, that seems like an appropriate location.”
In case Bernardo somehow got the hood off, which I really didn’t think he could do, I didn’t want Mayhem to be able to see any more of my operations center. Not that he’d be likely to understand the purposes of most of my machinery anyway.
After Elizabeth had effortlessly carried Bernardo still in the heavy metal chair into the Cellar bathroom and shut the door behind him, I announced to her, Norma, and Aileen,
“It’s time to go back to Grayville.”
“Now?” asked Norma. “It’s past midnight.”
“No, we can stay the night here,” I said. “We need to make a plan, anyway. But now we know exactly where to find Mayhem, or at least his lair. My hope is that he’ll still be there when we show up tomorrow.”
Using the c
oordinates from the signal scanner, Aileen projected a map of that neighborhood of Grayville onto the nearest big screen and zoomed in until images of faded colors and twisting tubular contraptions came into sight.
“What is that?” Norma asked.
“An abandoned amusement park,” I said when I realized. “Of course that’s what he would choose for his lair.”
“What was it called?” Dynamo asked Aileen.
“Wacky Wonderland,” Aileen replied. “It shut down twelve years ago, and the land was purchased by a development company, but they haven’t been able to get sufficient funding to demolish the old rides or construct the planned outlet mall there yet.”
“What’s the security there like?” I asked.
“Not much,” Aileen said. “They have a barbed wire fence around the perimeter and KEEP OUT signs. There used to be guard dogs, but then the company got sued when a kid got bitten trying to sneak onto their property. Then they got sued again a few months later when a different kid fell off the Ferris wheel and died.”
“Guess Grayville’s just as lawsuit happy as the rest of the country,” I said. “Sounds like this company can’t catch a break. I wonder if they know about the supervillain squatters. I bet they’re not paying rent.”
“Well, it’ll be in the news once we slaughter Mayhem and his henchmen,” Norma said cheerfully, “and then maybe they’ll be able to raise the funding they need to convert the old park into something new, or, maybe they’ll leave it as is and turn it into a haunted Halloween attraction.”
“I like the way you think,” I said with a laugh.
On the screen next to the satellite imagery of Wacky Wonderland, Aileen pulled up one of the park’s colored maps of all its attractions. There was a water slide, a Ferris wheel, an arcade, three rollercoasters, a few other defunct rides, a gift shop, a food court, and restrooms.
“So where exactly do the coordinates place us?” I asked.
“Inside this ride here,” Aileen said as she pointed to the map. I looked at the label.
“Munchkinville?” I asked.
“Yes,” Aileen said as she pulled up the image results for a Google search of “Munchkinville Wacky Wonderland Grayville.”
The screen filled up with images of a kiddie ride in little green carriages that went through brightly painted sets of farmland, huts with gardens, a waterfall, a May pole, and other scenes of idyllic village life. All of them were populated by miniature plastic people with rosy cheeks and baby doll eyes animated to wave at passersby, buck hay, water flowers, and so on and so forth.
Aileen clicked over to the total web results to display reviews that described Munchkinville as “slow,” “boring,” “faintly creepy honestly,” and as having “made my kid cry.”
“Damn,” Norma said, “he could have lived in Cloud Castle or Tyrannosaurus Rex Lava Attack Mountain and he chose fucking Munchkinville? He really is crazy.”
“We don’t know whether he and his henchmen, assuming that he has assembled some, are only occupying that ride,” I reminded her. “They could be occupying multiple rides.”
“If so, my guess would be that they only use the ones that go underground or inside structures,” Dynamo said. “Ones where they can lurk out of sight.”
“Aileen, could you download this map and edit it to show all the rides like that colored in red?” I asked. “Also, let’s highlight the tall ones that they could use as lookout towers where they could stick snipers.”
Elizabeth, Norma, and I pulled up chairs to the screens, and then Norma fetched writing utensils.
“I assume you all will want refreshments?” Aileen started modifying the map as I had requested, and she used her physical body to go pour us some bourbon from my liquor cart.
“Can you order a pizza too?” Norma asked Aileen. “Sausage, bell peppers, onions and olives, with extra cheese.”
“Run searches to compile the most recently posted images tagged with the ride names,” I told Aileen. “Check for remodels, structural damage, closures prior to the closure of the park itself. The park has no power, right?”
“No power,” Aileen confirmed. “Nothing is running, not even the plumbing.”
“So the supervillains are shitting in a hole and not washing their hands afterward?” Norma asked.
“Unless Mayhem and his guys have installed generators since,” Dynamo suggested.
“True, that could be the case,” I said. “Aileen, compile a list of supervillains active in Grayville. Eliminate any whose whereabouts or activities are accounted for and indicate that they are not currently involved with Mayhem and his scheme. Focus on those that do have known connections with him, such as those that served the Gray Ghost during the same period that he did. I want to know if there are any notable abilities that we should prepare ourselves for.”
“Compiling now,” she replied.
Soon the pizza arrived, and our happiness was complete as we pored over maps and diagrams and planned out routes in and out of Wacky Wonderland. I decided that Aileen would participate physically in this mission. We were already likely to be badly outnumbered as it was, and I didn’t intend for any of the supervillains to live to tell the tale about the deadly robot beauty. I wasn’t too concerned about any supervillains lame enough to be working for someone like Mayhem, though. The more impressive ones would probably get hired on by someone more on the level of the Maniac, unless of course they were leading their own gangs.
The bigger complication was going to be all of Mayhem’s mind-chipped slaves. I knew that a lot of them had been taken into custody, but I didn’t know how many people he had managed to implant, and if he was using them as bodyguards just like he had done with some of the singers at the opera. If so, I didn’t want to kill those people, and I knew Elizabeth especially would refuse. I wondered if there was a way to run some kind of signal jammer that would neutralize the control chips. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a lot of time to work on that project, because the longer I waited, the more people Mayhem would continue to possess and destroy.
The four of us worked into the early hours of the morning. Then, all of us but Aileen crawled upstairs to our beds and passed out for a nap.
In the early afternoon we met up in the kitchen for breakfast.
“So what should we do with poor Bernardo?” Elizabeth asked as she bit into a bagel with lox and cream cheese. “If we’re flying back out to Grayville now, I mean.”
“Fuck, I forgot he was still in the bathroom,” I said. “Norma, why don’t you call up Wanda?”
“Who’s Wanda?” Dynamo asked.
“She’s a nice retired lady who used to be a caretaker for the elderly,” I said. “Eastern European I think, I’m not sure. Doesn’t speak much English. She can babysit for us.”
“She won’t… er… think it’s weird that Bernardo is handcuffed to that chair?” Dynamo asked. “Or what if Mayhem tries to talk to her through him again?”
“Nah,” I said. “She cared for patients with dementia and worse. She’ll be immune to his bullshit.”
Half an hour later Wanda showed up, and Norma let her in safely through the front door. Since she’d be staying at the house alone while we were in Grayville, I provided her with a guest key card and tried to emphasize the importance of using it every single time she entered by drawing a hand across my throat.
“Don’t want anything bad to happen to you,” I said.
“Yes, yes,” Wanda said impatiently. She had gray hair done up in a tight bun, a perpetual scowl, and was wearing a floral housekeeper dress that showed her thick ankles. She was one of those women that you couldn’t imagine as a young girl or a nubile teenager, just as progressively more miniature versions of her current self. “Swipe card. Easy, easy. Where is patient? Show me.”
I led Wanda down to the Cellar bathroom where Bernardo was still sitting in his chair with the hood over his head. He growled faintly when he heard us enter and squirmed against his shackles. Wanda harrumphed under her breath,
clearly unimpressed. I’d never known Wanda to be impressed by anything. Aileen’s research on her suggested that she had a husband and a son, though. I wondered sometimes how a man had convinced her to marry him and whether or not he regretted it afterward.
She walked up to him, whisked the hood off his head, and stared at his rosy, twinkling-eyed, bearded face while he stared back at her.
“What I feed him?” Wanda asked. “You have some formula? IV tube?”
“That won’t be necessary, just normal food should do fine,” I said. I assumed Mayhem had still left his control-chipped victims with the ability to eat and drink, otherwise they would all die pretty quickly, and he would lose his slaves. “Anything from the kitchen. And, er, if you need to wash him or anything, or if he gets out of hand, well you know where the tranquilizer is.”
“Yes, Wanda remembers,” she assured me.
“So… any questions?” I asked.
“When I receive payment?” she demanded.
I gestured for her to step outside and closed the bathroom door so that Mayhem wouldn’t be able to hear us through Bernardo’s ears, since I didn’t want him to know that the team and I were coming for him.
“In full upon my return,” I said.
Wanda nodded her acceptance.
Then she opened the door back up and stepped into the bathroom to announce, “I am Wanda, I take care of you.”
“I will devour you alive, witch,” snarled Bernardo.
“Ah, man has tried this before… I am too tough, he spit me back out,” Wanda replied nonchalantly.
I chuckled under my breath and returned to the elevator.
After I rejoined Norma, Elizabeth, and Aileen and assured them that Bernardo had been left in capable hands, we went outside to drive to the airfield, our luggage bulging with all the equipment I thought we might need for our raid on Wacky Wonderland, and then we flew back to Grayville.
Mayhem didn’t stand a chance.
Chapter Twelve - Mayhem
“Are you running away from me?” I screamed out after the door shut. Through my tablet, which was supposed to display Bernardo’s field of vision since I was currently tuned in to his chip, I could see only the black of the fabric that Miles and his girlfriend had used to cover his head.
