The taser never made contact with Second Wind’s shoulder. An ethereal green appendage grabbed it before it came within a few inches of his skin, glowing and vibrating with power. Second Wind grinned at Malcolm, and after a couple of seconds, gave a small shrug.
“Multi took some blood sample from dozens of other champions, sprytes, and demons,” said Second Wind. “Apparently, that’s all I need now. It’s like my power mimicry is on steroids. Just ask Tapestry.”
Tapestry’s eyes widened suddenly, as though she’d remembered something important, something that cut through the fugue of her confusion and pain over the identity of the man she’d fallen in love with.
“Malcolm!” she shouted. “Get back! Don’t let him touch you!”
“Too late.” Second Wind grinned as he took hold of Malcolm’s hand. Malcolm felt an odd tingling sensation, similar to his power mimicry, but in reverse. It was immediately followed by a sudden cessation of awareness, as though he’d just closed one eye, except it was his superpower that was gone.
“I absorb abilities for keeps now,” said Second Wind. “And not just one at a time. Tapestry’s will prove to be the most useful. Yours… I’m just taking it to spite you.”
His smile was a cruel thing. Malcolm let out a roar of pure anger and took a swing at him. Second Wind slammed him against Tapestry’s wall with the wind, and Malcolm crashed hard enough to leave an impression.
“I’ve already become more powerful than I can explain in the time we have,” said Second Wind. “More powerful than Savior was. More powerful than anyone will ever be able to match. And I’m going to do what you never could. Set the world onto a new path.”
“A new path…” said Malcolm. He shook his head, though part of him held a desperate hope that there was enough of himself left in Second Wind to give him a moral compass.
“A new path,” repeated Second Wind. “Of course, first I’ll have to knock it off its old one.”
He nodded one last time to Malcolm and Tapestry, and then flew from the house in a sudden burst of movement. The stillness left behind by his departure made Malcolm aware of the pounding pain in the back of his skull.
“…Tapestry,” he said. “I am so sorry.”
She wouldn’t look at him. She slowly shook her head. Melanie had been awoken from the commotion, and was making her way downstairs slowly, only half awake and confused.
“What’s going on?” mumbled Melanie.
As though in response, the ground began to shake underneath their feet, and light flashed through the windows. Malcolm walked outside onto the lawn and stared up at the sky. Mushroom clouds were rising from three separate explosions on the horizon. Another blast created a fourth. The lights of the neighborhood flicked off, though the ambient glow of Armageddon was easy enough for them to see by.
He turned around to see if Tapestry and Melanie had followed him. The door was shut. He tried the handle, and found it soundly locked.
“Tapestry!” he called, knocking on it. “Hey! Don’t shut me out! We need to figure out what we’re going to do!”
A couple of seconds went by. When Malcolm stopped banging on the wood, he heard her reply.
“…I don’t even know who you are,” she said.
CHAPTER 32
The next few hours passed by in a blur. The looting had begun by the time Malcolm reached his apartment. He found the pistol that Tapestry had given him, the only thing that seemed to matter much as bands of angry men and angrier monsters ran through the streets, causing havoc as the world went completely off rails.
Electricity was out all across Vanderbrook, but Malcolm got a small update midway through the morning when a police vehicle slowly made its way down the street, booming an announcement over its loudspeaker. The officer inside claimed that martial law was in effect, which would have seemed more credible if a demon hadn’t approached with a small gang in tow to flip the cruiser over and light it on fire. Malcolm actually recognized the demon, one by the name of Bicep who was a regular at Terri’s Tavern.
He made the trek back to Tapestry’s house that afternoon. Her car was gone, along with most of the food in her fridge, lots of clothing, and toothbrushes. She and Melanie wouldn’t be coming back anytime soon, and Malcolm couldn’t blame them.
She doesn’t owe me anything for my lies. And with Vanderbrook the way it is, she’s doing what’s smart for her family.
His apartment had been looted by the time he got back to it, though what anyone would want with his PS4 and flat screen with dubious prospects of electricity ever returning was an open question.
He took what little clothing had been left to him, along with a few things he’d bought for Rose, and made the move to his hideout. Without electricity, it felt dank and dreary, but it was well hidden and felt appropriate, given the chaos descending on the town.
Over the next several days Malcolm learned that it wasn’t just Vanderbrook that was in turmoil. While out scavenging for what he could in the midst of the destruction, he joined a small, ragged looking crowd gathered around a man with a battery powered radio. A deathly silence fell over the group as they listened.
London, New York, Paris, Chicago… The list of major cities that had been virtually wiped off the map by Second Wind went on and on, extending into Asia, South America, even Australia and Africa. Multi had contributed in his own way, blowing up major highways within the United States, crippling power plants and points of infrastructure. It was as though his suicide bombings in Vanderbrook had just been a warmup for what came next.
The radio message ended by warning people to stay inside, and to avoid any marauding groups of men or monsters they might see. It made no mention of a governmental response, military, police, or even armed militia fighting to maintain order.
The crowd of people seemed to understand it on the same level that he did. As soon as the message looped back to its beginning, a husky man made a grab for the radio, trying to steal it for himself. Punches were thrown. A gun went off. Malcolm slipped away as soon as he could, holding his gun in one hand and his taser in the other.
He felt naked without his powers, and spent half an hour waiting for a group of men pillaging buildings near his hideout to move on before sneaking into the warehouse and down through the hatch. The sense of hopelessness that overtook Malcolm that night was almost enough to make him give up.
But he didn’t. He was still alive, and that meant that he had to keep going, even without the superpowers that he’d come to take for granted.
He would find Rose, and make things right with Tapestry. Those were both foregone conclusions. The last promise he made to himself, the one that he knew was long overdue, made him tremble both anger and fear.
He would track down Second Wind, and kill him.
Former Champion
Edmund Hughes
This digital book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this title with another person, please purchase an additional copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. All other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Edmund Hughes
Kindle Edition
CONTENTS
Former Champion
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPT
ER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER 1
The trap’s execution was flawless. Malcolm smiled as he examined it, brushing a tree branch aside and dropping to one knee in the early morning dew to get a better look at his catch. It was a fat weasel, with enough meat on it for at least a meal, along with a pelt that might have some value to the right trader.
The unlucky creature had gone for the morsel of food he’d left at the wide end of the hollow log. Pulling it loose had triggered the rock above it to fall, which caused the panicked weasel to flee into the log. Malcolm had rigged a small, self-tightening noose to the narrow escape hole on the other end, and the weasel had wiggled into it, eventually strangling itself.
He pulled the animal loose, carefully resetting all the elements of the trap. It reminded him of a board game he’d played when he was younger involving a marble ball and a convoluted series of tracks and widgets it would roll through. It was a memory from another time, another world, really.
Six months had gone by since Second Wind, Malcolm’s duplicate turned demon, had begun to reign destruction and terror down on the world. Six months since Malcolm had lost his powers, his friends, and everything else that really mattered to him.
For the first few weeks, Malcolm had expected the situation to bounce back, or at least reach an equilibrium. It hadn’t happened, and he had come to expect that it wouldn’t happen, at least not on its own.
Chaos had regularly erupted in the streets in the time after Second Wind’s one man apocalypse, with sprytes, demons, and regular old hooligans running wild and taking what they wanted. Basic utilities like electricity and water were turned off or destroyed. The only news available came from tiny, battery powered radios, and it was always just a daily tally of Second Wind’s murderous exploits. Every major city in the world had been razed. Millions of people were dead, and most of those left lacked the modern necessities they’d come to expect in life.
Somehow, Malcolm had held on to his faith that eventually the pendulum would begin to swing the other way. It hadn’t happened, and his deflating hope made him feel like a stock trader watching shares of a dying company slowly depreciate until there was pointlessly little value left.
Malcolm realized that his hope had been foolish. It was surprising really, how quickly civilization had collapsed in on itself. It seemed as though it should have taken longer. Electricity, the internet, and running water were all conveniences that had been around for longer than he’d been alive. It seemed counterintuitive that they could be permanently cut off overnight, even after the fact. What was left of the oil and gasoline had been hoarded by the constantly warring gangs, at least in Vanderbrook and the surrounding area.
Malcolm finished resetting the trap. He tucked the weasel into the length of twine that now served as his belt, and headed further into the woods. The brook was up ahead, and it had reached unseasonably high levels, making it deep enough for him to occasionally catch a fish or two.
Malcolm had a couple of basic traps set up alongside the brook, but nothing comparable to the sophistication of his log trap. They were mostly basic twine nets designed to trap fish within little inlets he’d dug along the bank until he could arrive and collect them. They only rarely ever worked, but were easy enough to set up, and only took him a glance to check.
Today was his lucky day. A long, silver scaled fish was in one of the traps. It looked tired from struggling against the net, and only gave a small thrash as Malcolm took it in his hands and pulled it loose. He gave it a small thwack against the rocks and carefully threaded it onto his belt.
After making sure the traps were in place to possibly catch him more fish, he turned around and started back toward Vanderbrook. He considered, as he often did, whether it would be smarter to abandon his base in town and move into the outlying forests.
Towns and cities were not safe places anymore. Malcolm had learned that lesson within the first couple of days after Second Wind’s ascension to demonhood. Gangs ruled the streets, some of them armed with guns, some of them backed by monsters, and most of them with nothing to lose. The gangs fought each other for territory and resources, and anyone caught in the warpath was given as much consideration as a squirrel on the highway.
Malcolm’s gun was probably the most valuable thing he owned. The three bullets he had left were a close second. He also had a taser, useless to him now that he’d exhausted its battery, and a medium sized hunting knife. He wasn’t stupid. He avoided the gangs like everyone did, and because of that, he was still alive.
A branch cracked just beyond the trees to his left. Malcolm froze, slowly dropping to the ground and sliding up against a large tree. He waited and listened, and then watched as a figure came into view. It was a demon, a tall one with unusually lanky limbs and deep green skin. The demon sniffed the air for a couple of seconds, stared at where Malcolm was in his hiding spot, and then headed off in another direction.
The dip I took in the brook last night might have just saved my life. Score one for hygiene.
It felt odd to remember that there’d been a time when Malcolm would have had the option to face off against one of the monsters. Now, he treated them like he treated the gangs, avoiding even the demons and sprytes he’d known from Terri’s Tavern. Avoiding all of them… except for Rose.
He still looked for her, though it had been weeks since he’d had any real hope. Thinking about her, the pain he’d caused her, the intimacy they’d once shared… It hurt Malcolm in a way that few things could. It made him feel hollow and pointless, like he was past the part of his life where any real enjoyment could be derived.
Thinking about Rose was a reminder to Malcolm that he was the kind of person who could do horrible things. He’d killed Brenden, her deranged fiancé, though it had been in a life or death struggle. He’d kept Brenden’s story to himself, the story of how Rose had accidentally killed her own daughter. He’d done it because he thought it was for the greater good, sparing Rose from a memory that could do nothing but hurt her.
Those had been Malcolm’s choices. In a strange way, they seemed a reflection of the widespread chaos his copy, Second Wind, had wrought upon the world. He’d taken to calling himself Zeus, though many people were too scared to speak his name openly.
Zeus. He thinks he’s a god. And since nobody is strong enough to challenge him, why wouldn’t he?
Malcolm waited in his hiding spot until he was sure that the demon had disappeared into the distance. Then, he slowly rose to his feet and continued on, back to what remained of his former hometown. The town he hadn’t managed to protect.
CHAPTER 2
The sky was choked with grey clouds overhead, and the air smelled of dust and smoke. Most of Vanderbrook’s outermost neighborhoods had been completely abandoned. The pressure of the looters had forced suburban families to run from their homes during the early days of the collapse.
Malcolm took his time moving through the neighborhoods and toward the center of town. He was careful, and he passed by the few people he saw on the way with as much caution as he could manage. Their clothes were dirty and ripped, and though Malcolm knew his own were just as bad, he couldn’t help but attribute desperation to their appearances. And desperate people were unpredictable.
A small, outdoor trading bazaar had sprung up on Vanderbrook’s old main street. It was ringed off by a wall of parked cars, useless for anything else without gasoline to feed their empty tanks. Here, there were a couple of armed guards, men paid by the traders in the area to “protect” them from the dangerous gangs in the area
s.
Malcolm stepped into the circle of cars and made his way over to Greg’s trading stand. Greg was one of the few local traders willing to trade in bullets, one of the common currencies after the collapse, along with rice, canned food, and other long-lasting food staples.
Bullets were the only resource Malcolm cared about accumulating. It made him feel cold and heartless to value them so highly, but being heavily armed was now a necessary part of his survival. Especially given the amount of traveling outside of Vanderbrook he did, searching for Rose. His gun was the only hope he had at keeping himself alive.
“Malcolm,” said Greg. “Good to see you. Plenty of food out in the woods today, I take it?”
Malcolm nodded.
“Take your pick,” said Malcolm. “You can have one or the other. The fish is the meatier of the two, but weasel’s pretty tasty. Tastes like chicken.”
Greg forced a laugh.
“I’ll take the fish,” he said. He reached down under his rough, wooden trading counter and pulled out a single bullet to set on top of it.
Malcolm frowned at him. “Come on. One bullet?”
“Margo’s gang had a shootout with Bicep and his guys the other day,” said Greg. “The value of bullets has gone way up. Take it or leave it.”
Wind Runner: The Complete Collection Page 69
