Wonder Heroes 4.0

by Ahlquist, Steve

Wonder Heroes 4.15

  Susan appeared by way of teleporter on the roof of a parking garage on a colder than average late October day in Cambridge Massachusetts. The off-duty Wonder Hero was only slightly underdressed, but by the time she had descended the six flights of stairs to the streets below she was reasonably warmed up. Though the Wonder Gauntlet allowed Susan to ignore extreme temperatures and feel comfortable in almost any environment, Susan had found a way to limit that particular convenience. One day she was flying for fun through the New Mexican deserts near Wonder Base and had stopped on top of a random mesa. Dismissing her Wonder Armor Susan expected to feel the warmth of the desert sun but instead had felt nothing.

  Under the clear blue sky and the larger than life sun Susan could appreciate the aesthetic beauty of the desert from her unique vantage point on top of the mesa, and she had reveled in the thrill of the flight that brought her here, but the warmth of the sun was gone, as if she were not really a part of the world, but an observer. She held out her hand and felt the slight breeze, which flowed through her fingers in an almost abstract way. She stared into the sun, and the Wonder Gauntlet allowed her to do this without any discomfort. The sky simply darkened and the suns rays were filtered so that she might view the nuclear workings within without ill effect.

  The experience frightened Susan. Since becoming a Wonder Hero she sometimes felt like her old self was something lost in the distant past. Susan wanted to feel a part of the world. She wanted to feel hot and cold. She wanted to look at the sun and blink away spots, run her fingers through sand and not instantly analyze its composition…

  Is this what happened to Harlan Flicker? Susan wondered, as she found a way to turn off the various protections the Wonder Gauntlet provided her, Did he lose touch with what it meant to be human? Even now, on the familiar streets of Cambridge, after having altered her Gauntlet's sensory feed, Susan felt disconnected and alien. She craved normalcy and connection.

  The Wonder Hero walked quickly past a store selling televisions, hoping not to be recognized, because every TV in the window was broadcasting her image, taken after a minor incident in Seattle earlier that week involving an extra-dimensional incursion of beings that resembled flaming eyeballs with telekinetic powers. It had been quiet since then, alien activity was at an all time low. Perhaps, Susan hoped, the presence of the Wonder Heroes alone was a suitable deterrent against alien mischief.

  There was still the open investigation into Jaimie Karasik and her gang, consisting of the human Kyle Jensen and the robots, Crush and Kill. Karasik, after murdering her parents and several others in Dumfries, Virginia had then perpetrated a string of deadly robberies at government and corporate research laboratories all over the world. It appeared that she and her gang had gotten their hands on some sort of teleportation technology that allowed them to appear and disappear at will, and so far the Wonder Computer had been unable to track them.

  It was General Rumpole who determined something of a pattern in Jaimie Karasik’s crime spree. The General had been trying to navigate through the labyrinthine United Nations bureaucracy to find out all he could about Project Kryptonite. The leaders of Earth had come to depend on the Wonder Heroes for the defense of the planet, but since the betrayal of Harlan Flicker these same leaders were working on developing technology that could defend the planet against the defenders. From what little the General could work out, the Project had been approved and branded top secret, but Jaimie Karasik had penetrated the security almost immediately and then set out to raid the various labs and facilities.

  Susan put these thoughts aside as she joined her MIT friends Dave, Steve and Lindsey in line at the Brattle Theater. Steve and Lindsey were holding hands.

  Susan smiled. “You two are an item again?”

  Dave laughed.

  “I Facebooked you about it,” said Lindsey.

  “I haven’t really looked at Facebook, or my email,” said Susan guiltily, “Sorry I’m so busy.”

  “So what’s it like, being famous?” asked Dave, “Saving the world?”

  Susan put a finger to her lips, telling Dave to keep it down. “Not too loud, I don’t want to be recognized.”

  Dave made a sarcastic face and smiled, “Big star, ducking the paparazzi.”

  As if on cue, two women, about Susan’s age, interrupted. “Excuse, can we get a picture with you?”

  One of the women stood close to Susan, the other snapped a cell phone picture and then they switched places. The people in line around Susan began to realize who she was. Murmurs rippled through the line, and the crowd began to bulge around her. Soon Susan was signing many autographs and posing for countless pictures. Her friends found themselves pushed aside, and Susan was forced to join them inside the theater, after the movie had already started.

  Dave had saved her a seat and whispered, “It’s Truffaut’s The Bride Wore Black.”

  “Is it good?”

  “Yeah, it’s Truffaut,” said Dave as if that settled it.

  Susan laughed. Truffaut’s name meant nothing to her, but the movie was fun, if old fashioned. She enjoyed the clothing and the photography. The next film in the double feature was Mississippi Mermaid, also by Truffaut, but Susan fell asleep during the middle of it and the film made less sense to her than to the rest of the audience.

  “So what did you think?” Dave asked Susan over coffee after the movie.

  Lindsey intercepted Dave’s question, and gave her own view. “Two people, very much wrong for each other, fall in love despite all odds.” She squeezed Steve’s hand and smiled. “It happens.”

  Steve made a face. “What do you mean, wrong for each other?”

  “You know, like you and me.”

  “Are we talking about the first movie or the second one?” asked Susan, trying to change the subject.

  “The one you slept through,” snapped Steve.

  Lindsey could not be dragged off topic. “I just meant that I’m from money, and you’re on scholarship…”

  “Awesome,” said Steve, feigning surprise, “Hey everybody, we almost went an entire evening without Lindsey mentioning that her dad’s rich.”

  Dave pointedly turned to Susan. “You know, Quentin Tarantino said he never saw The Bride Wore Black before he made Kill Bill.”

  “Really?” Susan replied, joining Dave in the new conversation, “Well the movies are different in tone and execution, but a bride going after the five people who killed her husband on her wedding day seems a specific plot point…”

  “You know the money thing’s not a big deal to me,” said Lindsey, not falling for Dave and Susan’s attempt to get the conversation onto a less volatile topic, “it’s a big deal to you.”

  Steve got up from his chair in exasperation. “You drive me crazy,” he said, wrapping his scarf around his neck before turning abruptly and leaving the coffee shop.

  Susan and Dave looked at Lindsey, who sat very quietly, thinking.

  Then Lindsey stood up, surprising everyone. “I’d better go after him,” she said.

  “Really?” Susan asked.

  Lindsey paused, examined her feelings, and said, with a sort of minor epiphany, “Yeah.” Then she left after Steve.

  After a moment of silence, Dave said, “Next Sunday’s Halloween. They’re showing Die, Monster Die! and The Dunwich Horror. Sort of a Lovecraft twofer.”

  “Well, I had such a great time with Steve and Lindsey…” said Susan, semi-sarcastically.

  Dave shrugged.

  “If I’m not busy saving the world,” said Susan, “I’ll try to be there.”

  Dave smiled and said, “Cool.”

  That night Shadows moved on a hill overlooking the Potomac River. The moon was three quarters full, and cast darkness from the trees and tombstones, but these Shadows were alive, and quickly flowed from one object to the next, dripping like liquid across the graveyard. The Shadows avoided moonlight as if it burned, because, somehow, it did. Everywhere the Shadows fl
owed death followed. Brown grass and decayed flowers crumpled in their wake.

  The Shadows approached the multicolored glowing tombstones of the Wonder Heroes, shrinking against the burning light, gathering strength in the shade of a bush. No human was present to hear the near silent voices of the Shadows, gurgling like drowning puppies, speaking a language that defies translation.

  The Shadows burbled in the darkness, then formed a tiny, jelly like volcano that spit a glob of mucousy black goo towards the glowing tombstones. The glob of goo landed in the grass, expanded into a large bubble and popped, covering the tombstones in a thin coat of slimy, sticky grime that completely blocked the glowing light.

  The Shadows now oozed forward, and gathered over the grave of Paul Kettles, the deceased Wonder Hero Imperial. The young grass over his grave withered and died, the flowers left there earlier in the day by Matthew O’Dette shriveled and gave up their petals. The liquid-like Shadows seeped in to the ground and in graveyards throughout Washington, DC such a scene was replayed a thousand times as a thousand Shadows seeped into a thousand graves.

  Matthew O’Dette arrived at the Wonder Heroes gravesite with General Rumpole the next morning. They had not notified the rest of the team about the event. A caretaker had noticed the opaque goo covering the front of the gravestones, and the dead grass and flowers. Scientists were taking samples of dead vegetation and the dried goo, trying to determine if this was simple vandalism or the presage of an alien attack. Matt walked through the area in street clothes, scanning the area with his gauntlet, and running what he could learn through the Wonder Base Computer.

  “I was just here, with Cassie yesterday,” said Matt, “She wanted to visit her mother. We put flowers on the graves.”

  The General nodded.

  “Whatever it was General, it was definitely alien. No toxins killed the grass, it was a life force drain.” Matthew looked up from his Gauntlet. “We know a few aliens that can do that, but it’s weird to come to a graveyard to drain life energy.”

  “This isn’t the only gravesite hit. We have reports from graveyards throughout the DC area.” The General put his hand on Matt’s shoulder, “We’re disinterring the bodies.”

  Matt his voice level as he asked, “Why? There wasn’t enough left of anybody to bury, except Paul…”

  “That’s just it,” countered the General, “the effect is centered on Paul’s grave. If this is some sort of alien attack…”

  “Dig somebody else up,” Matt said, “we’ll get answers there. We should just let Paul rest…”

  “We’re doing that,” said the General gently, “We’ll get some answers, but those other people weren’t Wonder Heroes, Matt. We need to know what’s going on.”

  Matt waved the General off. “I can’t do this. I won’t be part of this, digging up Paul. I won’t.”

  General Rumpole put his arm around Matt and led him away from the site and down a gently sloping path. “I understand completely, Matthew. I really do. Whatever’s happening here isn’t happening fast. I think we have time to figure this out.”

  They stopped under a tree, and could hear the engine of a small backhoe as it approached.

  “Go home,” said the General finally, “Hug Cassie for me. I’ll call you if we need you.”

  Matthew nodded, relieved. A small voice told him to stay, to be brave and see this through, but the idea of digging up Paul, his husband, who he loved so much and missed every day, was too much to bear.

  “Thanks.” Matt stepped back, pressed the recall button on his Gauntlet, and vanished.

  The General watched as the backhoe came into view and headed for the grave of Paul Kettles, the former Wonder Hero Imperial. Paul was one of the few people in the world General Rumpole called friend. The old man looked to the sky, closed his eyes, and sighed, summoning the resolve to prevent tears. Then he dug into his coat pocket and pulled out a cell phone, flipped it open and pressed the small, hexagonal, multicolored button there.

  Ten minutes later Susan Daystrom was standing with the General in the graveyard, watching the workers and the scientists as they dug into the earth and retrieved the casket containing Paul Kettle’s body from where Paul’s family had intended it to be permanently entombed only six weeks ago.

  “Thanks for coming out here Susan,” said the General, “You know that Matt and Paul were married and I saw no need to subject him to this.”

  “I understand General. I do.” Susan knelt and touched the dead grass with her fingers. She watched as the backhoe lifted the casket from the ground by means of a chain. She checked her Wonder Gauntlet for readings, but could make no sense of them. “I’m getting all sorts of weird readings here…”

  The General had his back to the proceedings, and was breathing heavy. Susan stood, and then realized that the General was trying not to cry. She stepped forward and took his rough and calloused hand in hers.

  “General? It’s all right.”

  “No, it isn’t,” said the General, “Paul, Terry, Jeff, Matt, Danielle, even Harlan, they were like family to me. When I think of their bravery, their sacrifice…” General Rumpole stood straighter, calling on his training to help control his emotions. He looked at Susan and smiled. A single tear rolled down his cheek. “I’m a military man, and in the military they teach you everything: how to sleep, how to eat, how to kill and how to survive, but it was the kids buried here…” The General broke off.

  Susan nodded. “Stay here,” she said, “I’ll do the analysis so we can get this over with.”

  The General nodded and Susan joined the scientists as they opened the casket. She did not know what to expect a month old dead body to look like, but it turned out to be not that bad. The careful embalming made Paul look as if he were sleeping rather than dead, only upon close examination was there any indication of lifelessness.

  One of the scientists was using a tool that resembled a dental scraper to remove samples of what looked like dried black paint from inside the coffin. “It might be the same as the black goo we found above,” said the scientist helpfully.

  Susan nodded, and tried to make sense of the readings from her Wonder Gauntlet. What she read gave her a chill. “I’m getting intermittent life readings…” she said, “somewhere between human and alien.”

  What happened next happened so fast that Susan could only put it together after she regained consciousness.

  Susan was taking her readings, trying to figure out what they meant, and was beginning to feel as though the readings, and even her understanding of them, were being interfered with. She looked at Paul, eyes closed, at peace in death, then at her Gauntlet, where the readings seemed to indicate everything and nothing at the same time, and then back at Paul, whose eyes were now open.

  With a gasp Susan jumped back, as did the scientist at her side, but Susan was held fast by Paul’s hand, clutching her arm. In panic Susan summoned her armor, but instead of protection there came a terrible sound, like the popping of a balloon, and Susan was knocked backwards, unconscious.

  Susan became aware of movement, darkness, and distant screams. She heard something like the sound of gunfire, and the discharge of Wonder Hero energy blasts. She fought her way through the fog of unconsciousness and tried to open her eyes. Her mouth was dry and she felt weak. Her right arm itched terribly and as she sat up she scratched it absently.

  As Susan looked around she saw the scientists and workers scattered about the ground, unconscious or dead. Susan rose unsteadily to her feet, and found the General, face down in a nearby bush, scratched, banged up, but breathing. Susan felt her arm, and then with a panic noticed her Gauntlet was gone. Her arm was pale where the gauntlet had covered it, and she was bleeding from long lines of small puncture holes where the gauntlet had been connected to her. Her arm itched terribly.

  Then memories filled her head, memories that were not hers and memories she could not remember having built. Alien images and ideas flashed through her mind, reached a dea
fening crescendo, and suddenly faded, leaving Susan on the ground in a fetal position, hands over her ears, tears streaming from her eyes. She had no idea what she had just experienced. She was overcome with fear, pain and confusion.

  She heard sirens in the distance, and from far away she saw smoke rising. Susan felt helpless and alone, then with real horror she connected all the dots and realized what had happened. She knew without a doubt that Paul had awoken and taken the Wonder Gauntlet from her. Susan went through the General’s coat and found his cell phone. She opened it and pushed the hexagonal button. Seconds passed. Then a tone came over the phone, followed by a voice.

  “We’re sorry, your call cannot be completed as dialed…”

  Susan closed the phone and dropped it in the grass next to the General, who was beginning to regain consciousness.

  “General, are you okay?”

  “What the blazes was that?” The General sat up with Susan’s help, then he noticed her arm, pale and bloody, the Gauntlet missing.

  Susan nodded. “It’s gone. Paul took it back.”

  “Paul?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Susan, “but I have these memories… something has taken over Paul’s body, and whatever it is has taken my gauntlet…”

  The General got to his feet. “We’ve got to contact the rest of the team.” He patted his coat as Susan bent over and picked up the cell phone she had dropped in the grass.

  “I already tried. I couldn’t get through.”

  The General pushed the button but threw the phone down when the tone signaled. “Dammit!”

  Some of the scientists and workers were starting to regain consciousness. One came over to the General with a radio. “General! I’m getting reports from every agency in DC. Bodies are crawling out of the ground everywhere. It’s a freaking zombie invasion!”

  General Rumpole had dispatched United Nation teams to all the graveyards scattered throughout the DC area where the mysterious goo had appeared. The EFTs, or Extraterrestrial Forensics Teams gathered readings, ran samples through portable labs and continually uploaded information to the Wonder Base Computer, which sifted rapidly through the data.