Becoming Zodiak

by Craig Jones

  Gemini approached and clamped a hand down on her shoulder. He knew she wouldn’t have felt the impact so he took a firm grip and gave her a vigorous shake.

  “The order to move has not come in yet,” he said, knowing she could hear him on the earphones inside the helmet.

  “It did,” she snapped. “Crabbe asked us if we were ready and we all responded.”

  “And we’ve heard nothing since.” Gemini tapped the side of his helmet. “Libra, is everything okay? Do we have clearance to proceed?”

  A buzz of static across the airwaves made the whole team grimace. Libra’s voice held none of its usual confidence. “We have a situation here, but you are clear to go.”

  No one moved. Everyone looked around at each other. Aries turned to Leo, perched on the hood of her red and white sports car, her body armor the same color as Aries’ but much snugger. Leo could only shrug. The momentary fugue was broken when the voice of Scorpio spoke calmly through the team’s headsets.

  “Clearance has been given,” came the firm Russian accent. “Forget all else. We go. Zodiak! Go!”

  “Roger that,” Aries shouted. She twisted the dial built into the left hand glove of her outfit and was on her way, heading straight for the bank’s locked front door. “Taurus! Hit that van just as I reach the steps. Give them a distraction.”

  As she ran all she could hear was her own breath inside the helmet. For even an elite level athlete, the twenty metres she had to cover carrying that excessive weight would have been fifteen metres too far, but she had been trained for this. This was what she had been born to do, what she had worked so hard to be the very best at. It was only as she neared the first step that she realized her breath had been the absolute only thing she heard. Usually, as she lifted each of the twenty kilogram boots, threw her legs forward and pumped her arms, she would have a running commentary from Taurus as he timed his movements to hers. It was what made them such a good team. But this time?

  “Nothing!” she yelled, slowing her run. “Taurus! Can you hear me? ’Cause I can’t hear you. You on your way?”

  Aries was startled when Lord Crabbe replied.

  “It would appear that Taurus is not with you. Aries, continue to the door. Team! One of you hit that van!”

  “I have it!” Scorpio declared. From the furthest end of the street the high-pitched roar of his motorcycle grew as he blasted the bike towards the van.

  Bike was possibly the worst and most inaccurate description possible for the vehicle. Yes, it had two wheels, but that was where the similarity ended. The frame of the bike was shaped like a bullet, overlapping layers of a silvery blue metal that wrapped around both the engine and the rider. Only a tiny slit, an inch deep and six inches long, positioned right at the front gave Scorpio a direct street view, not that he needed it.

  Inside the shell of the bike, Scorpio was crouched low over the gas tank, fists gripping the handlebars tightly. He could peer out of the miniscule viewfinder if he wished but the inside of the whole shell was one big screen, showing him what was out there while protecting him at the same time. The white van was approaching rapidly on his right and he slammed on both front and back brakes as hard as he could while jamming the handlebars to the left.

  “Aries, now!” he called and hit a red button with his right thumb.

  As Scorpio controlled the skid, the shell of the motorcycle peeled off in one fluid motion, exposing him as it reformed into a solid metal tail that whip-cracked through the air before smashing into the back of the van, crushing the double doors. At the exact same instant, Aries crouched in front of the locked bank door and placed her left hand over the handle. A puff of smoke billowed out around her glove and the door shattered inwards.

  “Door down,” she told her team as she dropped and rolled backwards down the steps, the actions of her body mimicking those of the van as it tipped end-on-end down the street, the cacophony of crashes filling the air with even more noise.

  Before Scorpio had even slid to a stop the rest of Zodiak were inside the bank.

  Voices, but no more shotgun blasts, boomed through Scorpio’s motorcycle helmet.

  “Get down! Get down! Get down!”

  “Drop it!”

  “Get them!”

  And then loud cheering that Scorpio didn’t need his earphones to pick up on. A small smile crept across his face, a sign of the satisfaction he felt in another mission completed successfully. He flicked down the bike’s kickstand and dismounted, pulling his helmet off his shaved head and baring a narrow scar that ran from his left ear down to the bottom of his jaw.

  “Zodiak! Update!” Crabbe’s voice was irritated.

  “Looks good from out here,” Scorpio said.

  “This is Sagittarius. All clear. No casualties.”

  “Thank heaven. Good work, team. Any injuries?”

  “One civilian, one—” Leo began before Scorpio interrupted her.

  He had turned to place his helmet on his motorcycle seat and he’d spotted something in a store doorway across the street. “We may have a situation here.”

  He advanced, unclipping a handgun from his blue leather motorcycle suit. Each stealthy step made his line of sight clearer, made him realize just what it was that he was seeing.

  A green boot protruded from the doorway. As he approached he felt his heart lurch in his chest. The boots were just like the ones Aries wore. Quickly the green boot became a green, armored leg.

  “Scorpio, is everything okay?” This time it was Pisces from inside the bank.

  “No. No, it’s not. I’ve found Taurus.”

  8

  Lord Crabbe hurriedly pushed his wheelchair towards Scorpio. The street, despite the huge crowd and the activity of the police and Zodiak, seemed eerily quiet now that Libra had flown the hovership away to a less intrusive holding position. Over a thousand people had quickly gathered at either end of the street once Zodiak had removed the danger, but they stared and shouted with perfect order. Photos were being snapped of the team, of their vehicles and of the ambulances and custody vans that had arrived on the scene soon after the siege at the bank had ended.

  “How is he?” Crabbe asked, running his hand through his untidy mop of ginger hair.

  Scorpio dropped to one knee and whispered to the older man, “Not good, Sir. You know this is his hometown, yes?”

  “Of course, of course. I feared this may have been the case.”

  “You feared correctly, Sir,” Scorpio continued. His logo, placed over his heart and rising up and down, seemed to move with the same anxiety he felt within: ♏

  “He says he froze when he thought that crime had returned to his town.”

  Crabbe sighed. “We need to get him—”

  Crabbe was interrupted by loud cheering from the crowd that had reassembled at the police cordon. He glanced across at the bank to see Pisces and Capricorn emerge with one of the robbers, his hands cuffed behind his back. They marched him towards a police van and the crowd all-out roared when they handed him over to two local officers who quickly locked him away in their vehicle.

  “As I was saying—”

  Lord Crabbe was this time cut off by yells and whistles, voices calling out.

  “Libra! Libra, we love you!”

  “Virgo!”

  “I’ve never seen her before.”

  “I didn’t realize she was so old!”

  “Virgo!”

  Crabbe spun his chair on its back wheels and saw Libra walking slowly towards them, one of his arms placed around Virgo’s waist. He looked anxious she’d fall to the ground a second time. She looked frail; the white dress looked three sizes too big for her as it clung to her thin body. Her face was grey and lined with worry. Crabbe saw Scorpio’s expression change to one of deep concern. He placed his hand on his team mate’s forearm.

  “Don’t fret, my friend. She will be fine.”

  “But Sir…”

  “I know,” Crabbe finished and pushed himself towards the new arrivals. “Lib
ra, you were given a direct order!”

  “And I overruled him, Andrew. I shall not rest while one of my children is hurt.” Virgo’s voice held a power that her visage seemed incapable of carrying. Libra could only shrug as Crabbe glared at him.

  “Then I will take you to him. Libra, we go slowly.”

  “Yes, Sir. Of course, Sir.”

  The crowd went wild again as Sagittarius and Leo emerged with another bank robber. His black ski mask had been removed and his left eye was bruised and had swelled shut.

  “That’s the last of them. This one needs medical assistance. See to it immediately,” Leo told the police officer, who nodded and led the man away to an ambulance.

  Leo and Sagittarius jogged over to Scorpio.

  “How’s Martin doing?” Leo asked.

  Scorpio could only shake his head, unable to meet Leo’s eyes.

  “Oh, come on!” Sagittarius implored. “This is Taurus. He’s the toughest guy we all know. This is—”

  “More serious than anything we’ve had to deal with before,” Scorpio said gravely. “You didn’t see him, Sag. I wish I had not been the one to find him.”

  “Once Virgo has spoken to him, he’ll be okay,” Leo said, forcing assurance into her tone. “You’ll see.”

  Gemini and Aries stepped out of the bank, followed by the hostages. They were quiet, subdued, until they saw the crowd and then began to wave and smile with relief. The man who had been struck with butt of the driver’s gun had a bandage around his head and Gemini was beginning to help him over to the ambulance when, suddenly, he froze.

  “Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” he shouted. He eased himself off the injured man and ran towards the police cordon. The rest of Zodiak halted, poised and ready to leap to his aid. They all relaxed when they saw him slow and raise an index finger at the same cameraman and his assistant that he’d chased away earlier. They were being jostled by the crowd, who had gotten even more excited as one of Zodiak approached, but the cameraman kept his focus on what was going on fifty metres away with Taurus.

  “Were the instructions I gave you not clear enough?” Gemini snapped.

  “Hey, buddy,” the assistant replied, “we’re with WWW. You can’t stop us from doing our job.”

  Aries strode up to Gemini’s side, turned the dial on her left hand slightly and placed the glove over the front of the camera.

  “No,” she said casually. “But I can do this.”

  The smallest of pops was followed by a stream of smoke from the camera, and when Aries removed her hand the lens was shattered, its plastic surround melting.

  “Oops.” She smiled, and she and Gemini turned and walked away.

  “You can’t do that!” the cameraman shouted.

  “They just did,” a policeman said. “Now get out of here.”

  Gemini placed his right hand on Aries’ shoulder as they walked. “Calm, Ariel,” he whispered. “That you should not have done.”

  “I know, I know, but it’s Taurus. He’s…”

  “The best there is,” Gemini finished. “Always has been, always will be.”

  “Are you still so sure of that?” Aries hissed as they approached Lord Crabbe. Over his head they could see Libra steady Virgo as she crouched next to their fallen comrade.

  Taurus’s green body armor was unzipped to his waist and the t-shirt he wore underneath was saturated with sweat. Instead of having a logo on his suit due to the number of times it had been torn off when he smashed aside some immovable object, Taurus wore his on a chain around his neck: ♉

  His brown hair was plastered to his round head and his usually ruddy face was pale and drawn. He looked like someone had sucked all of the energy out of him. He stared ahead, seemingly unaware of what was going on around him. When Virgo took one of his beefy hands in both of hers, he jumped like a firework had been set off underneath him.

  “Easy, my child,” she whispered, and the street around them became impossibly still. “You have faced adversity before. You know together we can get you through this.”

  His eyes refused to meet hers.

  “Look at me, Martin. Look at me and I will show you—”

  “Not here, not here, not here…” he murmured, and then snatched his hand away from Virgo’s grip before turning to face her, eyes blazing with anger and hurt.

  “Not here!” he shouted. “This is where I grew up. Liverpool is where my family is from. If I can’t stop it from happening here, then what use am I?”

  Virgo reached out and placed her hands on either side of his face.

  “But we stopped them. No one was hurt, no one—”

  He tried to wrench himself away. “I’m sorry, I can’t do this anymore. I—”

  Virgo’s whole body glowed for the merest of seconds, but the luminosity remained encased in her fingertips and Taurus’s eyes grew blank.

  As he watched Virgo and Taurus, Scorpio pulled on Lord Crabbe’s jacket sleeve to draw his attention.

  “This will work, yes?” he asked. “He will be okay? He is the toughest of us all.”

  “I’m not sure,” Crabbe said, his eyes sad. “If his nerve has gone then she’ll not push him. These last few weeks have been the toughest we have known.”

  “No,” Scorpio corrected. “At the start it was worse. When we first formed, no one knew what we were capable of. Now they do.”

  “And yet the crimes escalate. For five years we have kept the streets safe, but now it seems that policy, that we, are failing.”

  Taurus sucked in a huge gasp and Virgo removed her hands from his face. She leaned forward and kissed him gently on the forehead.

  “I understand, my son.”

  She signalled for Libra to help her to her feet and he guided her to Crabbe and Scorpio. Tears tracked their way down the deep crevices of her face as her skin aged seemingly another ten years in front of them.

  “Taurus has chosen to leave the team,” she said in hardly a croak.

  “What?” Scorpio blurted. “No! No, I’ll talk him around, I’ll---”

  “You shall not. I have read his heart and it speaks only truth to me.”

  Lord Crabbe cleared his throat and ran his fingers through his hair. He took a deep breath and felt the eyes of the rest of Zodiak upon him. They were looking to him to say the right thing, to do the right thing, but he knew not what that was. He exhaled and his shoulders slumped.

  “Then what do we do?” he asked finally.

  Virgo’s gaze still rested on Taurus. “Without twelve we are nothing. My powers are already fading,” she said. “I fear this may be the end of Zodiak.”

  9

  Jimmy checked that his gun was fully loaded and then adjusted his goggles. They had started to fog up when he’d been running; now that he’d found the sanctuary of the hollowed-out dead tree his breathing had slowed and the mist had dissipated. Each exhale hissed out through his plastic facemask, and although he feared even the slightest noise may give away his position to the enemy, he knew better than to remove it.

  The green bandanna tied around his head was dripping with sweat. Jimmy’s chest rose and fell harshly under his mud-streaked camouflage overalls, but he knew that was as much the rush of excitement as it was the physical exertion.

  A twig snapped and the sound was followed by an exasperated “Shhh.”

  Jimmy froze, focussing again on the outside world. He could hear footsteps approaching on either side of his hiding place. He popped his head out of the tree and glanced left and right.

  He saw nothing, and dropped back into shadow again.

  Jimmy had watched as the rest of his team was shot down. It wasn’t that they’d been outnumbered or that the enemy had been tactically superior; it was more that his team had been too gung-ho in their approach and had made easy targets. Yes, they’d taken out a few of their opponents, but after the initial melee there had been ten of them and only Jimmy. Through skill and subterfuge, he had survived, had even managed to pick off a few of his pursuers, bu
t now the final five were closing in on him. It was time to stand and fight.

  Or is it? He thought.

  The footsteps got closer and a voice called from the left.

  “You two, move up. We’ve got you covered.”

  Jimmy stole a peek out to the right and saw two shapes creep out of the undergrowth, guns cocked in front of them. Each step was taken slow. Jimmy hid again, steeling his nerve, and then peeked to the left. Three more people were advancing from that side, each wearing a blue headband. Jimmy took a calming breath and pictured the scene from above, as if he was watching from a spy plane. The enemy had split up but were progressing at the same pace, sweeping their way through the forest in a line to make sure their final prey didn’t sneak back through behind them.

  He knew exactly what to do next.

  And with a final squint to his left, he saw exactly how he could do it.

  Jimmy pushed his gun out in front of him, the muzzle aimed to the left as if he was handing it over to someone, and he blindly opened fire.

  As yells of pain filled the forest Jimmy hid once more. He saw shots fly through the air just inches in front of his face and he even felt some smash into the dead tree that provided him with cover.

  “What the—?” someone screamed. Reacting on instinct, the two enemies to Jimmy’s right returned fire until someone shouted out.

  “Stop shooting, stop shooting! Friendly fire!”

  A loud whistle suddenly blasted through the trees, silencing all other noise in the forest. The shouting and shooting stopped in an instant.

  “Game over,” yelled a deep male voice. “Green Team wins!”

  Jimmy stepped out from his hiding place and pulled his facemask and goggles off. Underneath his floppy blonde hair his smile was so wide that it actually hurt.

  To his left and right, his hunters talked towards him, removing their facemasks too. The tallest of them had a single splash of green paint in the middle of his chest, but the rest of them were plastered in blue. The one with the green on his camouflage gear ripped his blue bandana from his head, which freed his black, sweaty hair and, together with his facemask, threw it to the mud. His paintball gun was still held in one hand, and he kept it pointed at Jimmy’s chest.