by David Jobe
As he fell, and darkness started to close in around the corners of his vision, he saw the Hercules can roll into view. Underneath the metallic looking logo he could see the words, "For the Hero in All of Us."
Some hero, Brian thought as the darkness took him.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Golem watched it unfold just as he had planned it. The one Henchwomen whom he had started calling Medium One. He felt stupid thinking of any one of them in the plural version, though they insisted on it. She looked like the middle version of the three variations that he had seen those few nights before all of this. She appeared to be the one that had the wits required for the precision work needed for this part of the attack. She waited with a high powered sniper rifle on the overpass, hunkered down by a faded old truck that hid her position from traffic driving on that road...
He had chosen this spot because the road construction crew had narrowed the road to one lane, and they had piled a large mound of dirt for their construction off to one side. Also, this happened to be the last stretch of road before the pull off that led to the courthouse. Golem had taken control of the dirt, quietly forming half a face in the large pile, allowing him to watch and hear until it was his turn. Medium One was true to her word and an excellent shot with the sniper rifle. Two people were dead before the bus had reached close enough that Golem could make his move. Golem began to form himself and was already in the road when the third went down, though he wasn’t sure the third person wasn’t a government agent, and was in fact some teenager. Golem didn’t care. Everyone but Miss Fire had to die on that bus.
And in the end, if she died too, he wouldn't have considered the venture a loss. He needed to make sure she was silent about what she knew about him as little as it might be.
Golem formed twice as big as his previous attempts, having used as much of the sand as his will would allow him to piece together. The hulking behemoth crashed forward, through the orange cones until he stood in the path of the oncoming bus. The bus was going a good sixty miles an hour when the first bullet had punched through the window, and now it was close to fifty as the driver started to realize that they were under attack. Golem braced his stance, dropping his shoulder to face the oncoming vehicle. He was working hard to work on making his creations more solidified, and now he planned to put that to the test. Digging in, he growled as the bus loomed on, racing toward him like a runaway train.
The bus slammed into him, the hood crumpling like paper under the pressure, shattering the front window in a shower of glass. Also thrown forward and out of the vehicle was the driver, who bounced off what was left of Golem before slamming hard into the pavement and making sounds that indicated that bones were shattered.
The bus driver did not move after that.
Golem was shredded by the impact, the front half of him pulverized into a spray of dirt and metal, while the second half remained long enough only to ensure the bus was stopped. Then like a puppet removed of its string, the remaining parts fell into a huge sand pile.
Yards away, in a second pile, a regular sized Golem began to form.
From behind the pillars of the overpass, the two zombie versions of the Henchwomen stepped out, having gotten their cue from the Medium One. Each was loaded down with a semi-automatic assault rifle loaded for bear. They were instructed to control their fire as Golem did not want them to risk hitting Miss Fire. If they did, at least he could say that he had instructed them to be careful of her.
As if on cue, the three remaining red and black suited spooks poured from the bus and began to take up defensive positions against where they suspected the shooter was. It was only by chance that the arrangement had also made it so that the two machine gun zombies were also in that direction. His previous location was the exact opposite direction of the pile Golem had used to return. Though Golem could by no means move without noise with his hulking mass, he did try to plant each step so as to make as little sound as possible. He moved up to the back of the bus and ripped the door off. As he did, the body of an agent fell out, its skull exposed to the sky. Golem made no bones about stepping upon the fallen man’s torso to raise himself into the bus. “Not like you were getting an open casket funeral anyway, right?” he told the now pulverized corpse. Golem hunched down the aisle, finding Miss Fire about halfway down the bus. “It’s me,” Golem said.
“Golem?” Miss Fire asked.
“Yeah. I am here to rescue you,” he said, eyeing the seat they had her strapped to. The only problem was that his own body was not built to do finesse breaking. He wasn’t sure what he could break that would help free her.
“When this is over, you are getting one hell of a sloppy kiss,” she whispered to him.
That was what Golem had wanted to hear. “Deal,” he said with a gravelly chuckle. “How do I get you out of this stupid thing?”
She laughed. “Pull the helmet off, and I can do the rest.”
Golem nodded, and as delicate as he could, his mind imagining him ripping off her head on accident. He pulled the hood up enough so that Miss Fire could slip her head from out from under it.
“Thanks,” she whispered as gunfire erupted outside the bus. “You bring someone?”
Golem laughed. “I hired a henchwomen,” he stopped, pondering his next sentence. “They, she, it expects to get paid when this is done, so we are going to have to kill them.”
Miss Fire laughed, gazing down at her hands. “My, my, you have grown ruthless in my absence. I like it,” she said as if she had agreed to steak for dinner. In both her hands, fire began to glow a bright red. As the fires in her hand grew red, the metal around her wrists began to bubble, and melt away in slow red drops. Finally, with a venomous hiss, Miss Fire ripped her arms up, her hands coming free, and her wrists showing slight burns on them. “Let’s go finish this.”
Golem nodded, stepping back to allow Miss Fire to go before him. Since the firefight was in front of the bus, he figured this would be safest in case a stray bullet whizzed through the front, it would hit his large body, and not her beautiful fragile body. Now that he was around her, he started to feel that he better served his conscience protecting her. He wasn't sure why, but he believed that she had not revealed anything about him. He would make a point to probe later, but for now, they had to escape this firestorm he had brought down on them. It would only be a matter of time before back up arrived.
Miss Fire moved with grace, slipping out of the bus with graceful ease.
Just as Golem was about to leave the bus, he found that the teenager he had seen before now blocked his way. “Didn’t we shoot you?” Golem asked the teenager.
Just above the teenager's left eye was a sizable bruise that had grown more pronounced by the second. “I am bulletproof," the teen said in what Golem took as arrogance.
“That is the stupidest super name I have ever heard,” Golem said, taking a swing at Bulletproof.
“It’s not my...” but Bulletproof stopped talking as he ducked down to avoid the heavy swing from Golem. “Never mind. What are you supposed to be, A Turd-Burglar?” He said, crouching down and rocking up with an uppercut to Golem’s rough chin.
Golem staggered back, his head pushed up, and his body moving to compensate. “Son of a bitch,” Golem growled, planting his feet. Behind Bulletproof, Golem could see Miss Fire charging a ball of fire to throw at Bulletproof, but Golem shook his head, intent to take care of this so called Bulletproof himself.
Miss Fire nodded and moved off to assist with killing the spooks in red and black.
Golem turned back to face Bulletproof. “Let’s do this,” he growled, stepping forward and slamming a powerful fist into Bulletproof’s stomach.
Bulletproof flew out of the bus, landing hard, his head bouncing off the pavement.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Eclipse had seen the whole horrible thing start to unfold. He tried to fly as fast as he could to swoop down from his lofty vantage point to help. He was trying to stay high enough to keep an ey
e on the bus without giving away the fact that he was there. His hope was that the whole trip would have went off without any problems, but then he saw the muzzle flash from the overpass. It took him by the second one to realize what he saw. Someone had fired on the bus. It took him just a couple of seconds to descend so that he floated just before the sniper and between her and her targets.
The woman before him seemed plain enough, like a woman that he might see in the mall shopping for the latest clothes at one of the popular fashion outlets. She had her hair up in a ponytail as if she were just out for a run. The huge sniper rifle she held spoke otherwise. It had nothing on the gun that Kitten carted around, but it remained plenty lethal enough. She looked up from her scoping, having seen him fly into the scope’s view. “Well, if it isn't the flying fat guy. What's the media calling you now? Cheesecake?” She mused, sweeping the rifle up to point at his face.
"It's Ecl- Cherub,” he thought of Kitten's words and decided to stick with the angelic moniker, at least for the time being. He had to admit that looking down the long barrel of that rifle made him begin to doubt the strength of his shield. He expected that it would hold against such high-velocity rounds, even a point blank range, but yet again it wasn't something he had himself tested. He believed that his father would have tested it against such things before selling the plans to the government, but this was the prototype he was flying around with.
“I personally don’t care. All you kids with your half ass nicknames. Nothing as clever as Henchwomen.”
"What, like Lone Rangers? There is only one of you, lady."
"Shows how much you know, “she said as she pulled the trigger, only to growl as the bullet rebounded off the shielding that Cherub employed. “I wondered if a high power round would work,” she admitted.
“Nothing will,” Cherub replied, trying to sound confident.
She snorted in content and rose from her crouched position. “Alright. So, tell me, Cherry Cheese Cake. Now what?”
Cherub raised a brow at her, arms crossed. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I obviously can’t harm you. What are you going to do? Come down here and Buddha belly me into submission? Or do you plan to eat me” She smirked at him and gave him a playful wink.
Cherub blushed. “I am going to turn you over to the authorities,” he replied.
“Who?” She mocked. “Them?” She pointed down to the red-suited spooks who were hunkered down as the zombie twins took turns lighting the area up with gun fire. “They are a little occupied, Sugar”
“The police are on their way,” Cherub replied.
“And how are you going to keep me here until they do? Gnaw on my turkey legs?” she asked, and made her point by walking away.
Cherub frowned. What was he supposed to do now? Usually he acted as a figure head or a decoy until the police or Kitten could get in place. Even if Kitten was in place now, what could she do? Had he expected her to kill this woman? He floated to block her way.
The woman stopped, regarding him with open disdain. “So, you are a floating roadblock?” She mocked him. “Get out of my way, you fat assclown,” she stepped back to the railing and pointed her gun outward. “If you don’t go away, I start shooting whomever I can,” she told him.
“I will block the barrel,” Cherub said, floating in her way to prove his point.
“Not fast enough,” she sneered, swiveling her gun with practiced skill and firing a round before Cherub could react.
Down in the mayhem below, someone screamed once and then fell silent.
“Curse you woman!” Cherub growled, and flung himself at her. In the instant before he reached her, he dropped his shield, and the look on her face told him it was by far his worst mistake.
“Gotcha, Candy Crush,” she said, and pulled the trigger.
The round tore through his stomach, and out his back, taking pieces of him with it. Cherub could only look down as he fell from the height, landing hard upon the top of a car, smashing it with his weight. As he lay there, he stared up at the woman who had killed him. He should have thought this through a great deal more. He had intended to be the distraction while Kitten was the enforcer of their will, scaring them with high-velocity rounds. He had suspected that she fought stalled traffic trying to get to the scene. Just as he was delayed by his altitude, she remained delayed back in a traffic jam, hustling through traffic to catch up with the bus.
He lay there; hand over his wound, trying to hold his intestines in as much as he could. Gut shot. He knew well enough that these wounds would be fatal and worse yet, they didn’t have to be, but he could not see himself being able to make it to a hospital before he bled out. Besides, he knew the impact from the fall had broken something. He felt no pain, and that, he knew that did not bode well. Not a good sign at all.
Above the woman leaned over the rail, that imposing barrel sweeping down to point at him.
He tried to move his arm to reactivate the shield, but found it was pinned under his body. He was a dead man, and he knew it. He closed his eyes and waited for the inevitable.
The gunshot sounded distant, but just as lethal.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Kitten screamed as she watched Cherub fall. Though she had already hinted at it with him, she found that she felt the Cherub name was far better a name for him to have. She remembered all too well in High School when people would yell out "He blocked out the sun!" as Mac had walked by them. Even to this day the thought of the abuse he suffered in that school brought tears to her eyes.
She slammed the Jeep over an embankment and landed the nimble vehicle onto the patch of land where the dirt monster had risen from the second time. Before the Jeep's engine turned stopped running, she was out of the vehicle and pulling the steel case with her. She believed deep down that Mac was dead. How could he not be? She had seen the spray of blood and seen him fall. How the woman had gotten past his shield, she did not know, but she was determined to make the woman pay for it. She knew she should have talked him out of this foolish quest to be some sort of superhero, but she loved him, and she wanted to help him achieve his dream. Now he was dead on some damn highway, and the fucking gun case took forever to open.
The entire time, she kept her eyes on the woman who had shot Mac. She was still up there, sighting through her own scope at the red-suited spooks. After what seemed like forever, the gun case flew open, and Kitten started slamming pieces of the gun together like she was doing this for years. Once the gun was assembled, specialized battery slammed into place, she rested it across the hood of the Jeep, angling it with the gun case enough to draw a bead on the woman with the sniper rifle.
For a moment, she stood there, looking through the scope at the woman who had killed her best friend and the man she had grown to love. Just as before she was faced with the difficult question on if she could take another human life. Through the scope she saw that the woman was leaned over the overpass, angled down to where Mac had fallen. Did that mean he might still be alive? Was the woman about to make sure Mac was dead? Kitten gritted her teeth, took a deep breath and pulled the trigger.
The gun barked louder than she thought it was capable of, and bucked her up enough that she lost sight of the woman through the scope, and looked at her with her own eyes across the distances. She found that there was poetic irony in the fact that even from this distance; she could see the blood spray as the round blew a hole through the woman on the overpass. The bullet was aimed at her head, but Kitten had overcompensated, and the bullet had slammed into her chest. The sniper woman was crumpled by the weight, and then tossed like a ragdoll across the entire expanse of the overpass, until she landed out of sight of Kitten. Kitten knew from what she saw that she had just killed a woman. Something inside her told her that she should feel remorse, but there was none to be found in her. She only felt remorse for having not fired sooner. Deep down she hoped that later she would be able to claim defense of another for her actions, but right now, she only wanted to close
the gap between her and where Mac had fallen. The woman's actions had given her hope, so she dodged through cars that now clogged the highway behind the bus and kept an eye on the spot where she would need to get to as soon as possible. Now she rose, moving across the ground to find him, and at least get him away from the madness. Somehow. She owed him that much.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Brian lost consciousness for a second or two, but regained it as he felt the ground shutter at the approach of Golem. He needed to think and fast, if he planned to bring this thing down once and for all. He had no idea what he was up against, and while he was sure that his enhanced strength and fortitude would help him, it had started to be painful as hell, and he suspected that the fight with this dirt demon would drag out for far too long.
The Dirt Demon slammed his massive foot down, intending to squash the prone Brian, but Brian rolled away and was on his feet.
“Seriously, what are you?” Brian asked, scooting back as the demon roared after him.
“Nightmare given form!” The Dirt Demon bellowed, taking another swing.
Brian laughed from the gut, “That was horrible,” he mocked and ducked away from the lumbering creature. This reminded him of comic where Spiderman would just dance around the stronger character, mocking them over and over again with clever quips that would make the villain act in anger and make it easier for them to take be stopped. The only problem was that Brian was not as clever as the writers of Spiderman. He doubted he could string two things together to make a suitable sharp response. "That sounded like a line from a Disney movie. You know, one of the ones with terrible cartoon graphics aimed at kids who get hung up on rainbows and shit." The one thing he had on the monster was speed. Whatever this thing was, it wasn’t the most limber. He rolled away to come up behind the creature and found that the added exercise of talking wore him down faster than he expected. With a powerful downward kick, he slammed his foot into the monsters knee. The creature buckled, fell and part of the knee shattered away.
