Footsoldiers: A Super Human Clash Special From Philomel Books

by Michael Carroll

  At that, Hesperus said, “If so, then that’s all the more reason to behave like mortals. Because we are not Gods. We are people with gifts. That’s all.”

  Apex said, “The girl is right.” He often called her “the girl” even though she hated it. He went on, “I am sure that Thunder would agree with me, so I will cast his vote for him. That makes three against one, with one abstaining. The Footsoldiers will remain in the shadows for now. Making a press announcement seems so . . . crass. It will make us look like we are seeking fame. That is not what we are about. If the public are to become aware of us, it is better that they do so through our deeds, not our words.”

  Now, that annoyed me. Apex knew that wasn’t what I wanted. I would have voted for taking us public, letting the world know who we were and what we could do.

  I could have thrown my voice then, allowed them to hear my point of view. But Apex’s words had really bugged me. I didn’t like him speaking on my behalf.

  So I shut him up. I was still a couple of miles away at this point, but I didn’t want him to say anything else in my name. I blocked the sound of his voice from reaching the others’ ears. It was a simple trick, one I used mostly at the movies so I could concentrate on the film without being distracted by people crunching popcorn, crinkling bags, coughing.

  At first it was kind of fun listening to the others speculating about what was happening to Apex. Octavian said, “I don’t get it. What’s wrong, Apex?”

  “His voice . . .” Hesperus began. “Apex, nod if you can hear me . . . OK, that’s something at least. The speaker in his helmet must be malfunctioning.”

  I heard the rustle of paper, and Thalamus said, “Just write it down.”

  Then there was the sound of Apex shoving the paper aside. I could hear his boots scraping on the floor, pictured him shuffling about.

  “What is this? Are we under some sort of attack?” Octavian asked. There was the spark of panic in his voice.

  I was close enough now for the sounds to form an echo-picture of the room. Apex was backing away from the others, gesturing wildly, trying to keep them away.

  Hesperus said, “Octavian, hold him. I’m going to get his helmet off.”

  The warehouse was directly ahead of me, the skylight open as usual. I arced toward it, dropped through.

  Just in time to see Apex whip his massive right arm in Hesperus’ direction. The back of his hand slammed into the side of her head with enough force to knock her across the room.

  I immediately created a cushion of semisolid sound in Hesperus’ path and slowed her down before she hit the wall, then I released Apex’s voice.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” I yelled at him. “She was only trying to help!”

  “I did not mean . . . That was an accident.”

  “That was no accident, Apex! You think I can’t tell the difference? I heard your muscles tense as she approached. That was a calculated move.”

  He whirled around, glared at me. “You did this! You silenced my voice!”

  I walked over to Hesperus, helped her to her feet. “Yeah. I did. And you deserved it. But you overreacted, you moron.”

  Apex was standing still now, the dark visor of his helmet fixed in my direction. I remember wishing that I could see his expression. You never really knew what he was thinking.

  Hesperus pulled away from me. “I’m all right.” She glared at Apex, then quickly turned away. “I don’t need this. We’re supposed to be a team.” She picked up her ax and sword, then looked back to me, Thalamus, and Octavian. “We have a job to do tonight. When it’s over, you have another decision to make. I will not work with Apex again. So it’s either him or me.”

  She turned away, leaped up to the skylight, and swung herself through.

  Octavian followed next, carrying Thalamus, who didn’t have the ability to exit that way himself. Physically, Thalamus was actually weaker than the average human. That’s the thing about whatever it is that makes superhumans—you never know what you’re going to get. Most of us looked perfectly normal physically, but there were a few who changed. For some, like Brawn or Metrion or The Hive, the change was so great that there was no way they could ever pass as a human again. Others, like Thalamus and Apex, seemed normal at first glance, until you looked closer and realized that they were just a little too thin or too bulky, or had an unusual stance. But even then you might not be able to tell.

  Apex moved to go next, but I stepped in front of him. “I don’t want the others to hear this, so I’m stopping my voice from carrying that far.”

  “What do you have to say?”

  “You hit her. I don’t care why. But if it happens again—”

  “I am aware of my actions, Thunder. It was an error of judgment.” Then he jabbed his finger at my chest. “But you caused this. You silenced my voice.”

  “You told the others that I agreed with you about keeping the team secret. You know I think that’s the wrong move. I’ve told you often enough. But that’s not the point here, Apex. You hit one of your own teammates.”

  “I intend to apologize to Hesperus when the time is right. But not now. Now we have a mission to complete, and you are slowing me down.”

  I stepped back and watched as he leaped for the skylight. Despite what most people thought, Apex couldn’t actually fly, but he didn’t really need to. He could leap huge distances—well over a hundred yards if he had to. And he was fit, easily the most agile superhuman I’d ever seen. It was like he was able to bend his joints at any angle. Even with all that armor he was incredibly flexible, and had a sense of balance that would make a cat cry with envy.

  Once, I saw him run up a vertical ladder without using his hands. Now that takes skill.

  I followed him out through the skylight. The others had assembled on the edge of the roof, waiting for us.

  “So what’s the mission?” I asked Thalamus.

  “Oh, so you weren’t listening in to that part, then?”

  I was a little taken aback at that. It wasn’t like Thalamus to make snide comments. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Let’s not pretend to be friends, Thunder.” He turned away slightly, almost as though he was dismissing me. Louder—more for my benefit than anyone else’s—he said, “My sources report that three known members of the Chaingang have been spotted in different parts of southern Wisconsin in the past two days. The other three can’t be far behind. Tonight a shipment of weapons-grade nuclear waste will pass along a route that intersects with what I’ve projected are the paths of the members of the Chaingang.”

  Hesperus shook her head. “We don’t do nuclear. We leave that to people like Impervia and Titan who are immune to radiation.”

  “She’s right,” Octavian added. “I’ve no problem with going up against the Chaingang in most circumstances, but not in a situation like this. The government transports nuclear waste in secret, and that’s the way it should be. The plebeians don’t need to know that sleeping dragons are carried through their towns in the dead of night. I say that if we have to act, then we wait until we know for certain that the Chaingang is after the shipment.”

  I looked at him. “Plebeians?”

  “The common people,” Thalamus said. “The lower classes. As the Roman rulers saw them.”

  I sighed. “Man, that Roman emperor act is getting old real fast.”

  “Enough discussion,” Apex said. “But Octavian is right. As is Hesperus. We go after the Chaingang one by one, before they can assemble.”

  The Chaingang mostly kept out of the press, so you might not have heard of them. Actually, I should put it the other way around: the press mostly avoided reporting on the Chaingang. Much later, a couple of years after we lost our powers, I saw one of them on television: he had inherited his parents’ media empire. It’s pretty clear now that his paren
ts knew about his bad side and used their influence to hush up his activities.

  There were six of them: three guys, two girls and one we were never sure about. His—or her—codename was Spite. I’m pretty sure he was a guy; Octavian was certain Spite was a girl. It was hard to tell because he had a very lean body, no real muscle structure, dressed from head to toe in solid black, and almost never spoke. He was rarely seen too. He had this power that allowed him to teleport, but only when no one could see him. Hence the black costume—it enabled him to hide in the shadows.

  The others were Muscle, Torture, and Incendiary—the guys—and the two girls, Vortex and Paranoia. They didn’t dress alike, or have any team motif. I believe they called themselves the Chaingang simply because they thought it was an intimidating name.

  I’m not going to tell you which member of the Chaingang is now running that media empire, nor am I going to say which media empire I’m talking about. I’ve no physical proof to back up my story and they’d sue me for everything I have.

  We were going after Torture first. Octavian carried Thalamus on his back, Hesperus and I flew, while Apex bounded along behind us, leaping from rooftop to rooftop.

  Now, the Footsoldiers weren’t like the High Command. We didn’t have unlimited funds for equipment or a team of private security guards backing us up like Dalton and his crew. None of us were billionaires, or mechanical geniuses like Paragon. We had no government support. We had to make do with what we could scrounge from others, or stuff we “acquired” in battle.

  We were the poor relatives of the bigger teams. I wasn’t happy about that, but, hey, it was better than not being in a team.

  So when we fought, we didn’t have dinky little communicator headsets. The only way we could communicate was through me. I could hear the others and pass on messages. Once when we were fighting with Impervia she started calling me Switchboard. I guess she thought that was funny.

  Thalamus told us that Torture had been spotted by “one of his sources” in a café in Watertown, which is about halfway between Madison and Milwaukee. Thalamus had a lot of these “sources” but he never revealed who they were or how they got in touch with him. Sometimes the information just seemed to come from nowhere.

  I’d fought Torture a couple of times, before the Chaingang had been formed. On the supervillain scale—where you’ve got Ragnarök and Slaughter at the top end and that dipstick who called himself Cake-Man at the other end—Torture would be closer to the Cake-Man end.

  Torture was strong, cruel, and he had a bad temper. That was about it. On his own, any one of us—apart from Thalamus—could have defeated him. That was also pretty much true for Incendiary, the pyrokinetic. Definitely second-string villains. But with the rest of the gang they could be extremely dangerous.

  I took the lead, because it had been over a day since Torture was spotted and I was the only one who could track him down. You see, what most people don’t realize is that the human body is not silent. Not even counting the voice, every human makes noise all the time. There’s breathing, the heartbeat, the digestive system, the creak of ligaments and muscles, drops of perspiration being pushed out through the pores. The scrape and rustle of body hair as it moves and grows. The twin thumps of eyelids blinking.

  The firing of neurons in the brain.

  All these things combine to give every person a unique sound signature, and when you’re a master of sound—like I was—that signature is as distinctive and recognizable as a face.

  Now that I knew what to listen for, I was able to pinpoint Torture’s location from over thirty miles away.

  “I’ve got him,” I told the others.

  From a few miles behind me, Apex said, “Stay focused on him, Thunder. We do not want to lose him.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I know how to do my job.”

  He ignored that. I screened out the pounding of his large feet on the sidewalk as he leaped, and heard him say, “How are the others holding up?”

  “They’re fine. Octavian is muttering a prayer to the war-god Mars under his breath. Hesperus is gearing up for battle—I can hear her tightening her grip on her ax.”

  “And Thalamus?”

  “His heart’s racing. He’s starting to sweat. I think he’s actually more scared of Octavian dropping him than he is of going up against Torture.”

  Hesperus asked, “Thunder? How much longer until we reach Torture?”

  “Ten minutes tops,” I said. “Any particular reason?”

  “No. Just . . .” She paused, but even without that I knew there was something wrong. Her voice was strained, the words a little forced. Her question had been filled with tiny delays—imperceptible to anyone without my abilities and experience. They told me her mind was on something else. Her question had been a mask for what she really wanted to ask.

  I directed my voice so that only she could hear me. “What’s wrong?”

  And she told me.

  I didn’t know what to make of it. It seemed impossible, too crazy to even consider. But the more I thought about it, the more sense it made.

  See, this is something that we never talked about with anyone else. As near as I can tell, Hesperus died without even giving the slightest hint. I swore that I too would take the secret to my grave, but not now. Everything has changed.

  When word first got out about this new generation of heroes I didn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it. It wasn’t that I was ashamed of my time as a superhero, but that was in the past. The world had moved on and managed to survive without us.

  Now we have these New Heroes and it looks very much like it’s starting all over again. I’ve heard some stuff about the situation in Topeka—and about the destruction of Las Vegas—that actually has me scared. Most people probably can’t see the bigger picture, but you have to remember that I’ve been there. I’ve seen things you can’t imagine. Because of the New Heroes this whole world is going to change, and probably not for the better.

  The future doesn’t belong to us. We shape it from the present, then pass it on to our children. They reshape it and pass it on to theirs, and so on.

  Most of the time the shape is only marginally different from one generation to the next. But sometimes the changes are huge. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my time with the Footsoldiers—and in particular from this mission that I’m telling you about—it’s that no matter what you do, you can’t ever change the shape back to the way you want it.

  Pandora’s toys will never all fit back in the box.

  By the time we reached Torture, Hesperus’ words were weighing so heavily on my mind that I wasn’t paying close enough attention to what was happening on the ground. I’m not blaming Hesperus for that, I’m blaming myself. And Apex. Mostly Apex.

  Or maybe I should be blaming Paranoia, because she’s the one who sensed my anxieties and magnified them.

  All the members of the Chaingang were waiting on the ground below. They had managed to mask themselves from my senses.

  They had a prototype sound-muffling device. You may have heard about these things. They cancel out all noise within a specific radius. As I’ve already explained, this was one of my own tricks and I’m still annoyed with myself for allowing it to fool me.

  What really, really bugged me—and still bugs me even now—was that a few months before that mission, I’d done some freelance work for one of Max Dalton’s research foundations. No one talks about it, but sometimes we did that sort of thing, used our powers to earn some money. I know Thalamus did it quite a few times. Like I said before, we weren’t all billionaires. A full-time superhero can’t keep a full-time job going.

  My abilities gave me an instinctive knowledge of everything to do with sound-generation. I thought I was helping Dalton’s researchers create a new type of soundproofing that came in the form of a paper-thin membrane. But ins
tead they were developing a device that could be used directly against me.

  Torture was outside the device’s sphere of influence, so he was the only one I could detect. If I’d been paying attention I would have spotted that there was a “hole” in the echo picture of the area.

  He was walking along a narrow street on the north side of the town, and for the life of me I still don’t know why I didn’t see the word “trap” written all over the situation.

  We approached in the usual pattern: Hesperus and Apex came at Torture from the side while I blasted him with disorientating sound waves. But I was a little off my game, because all I could really think about was what Hesperus had told me about Apex. That concern quickly became a worry, a fear, a kind of sick queasy dread that made me want to throw up.

  Paranoia was a bit like Thalamus in that she rarely got involved in any direct fighting. Her power was a sort of reverse empathy. She could greatly magnify your fears and anxieties. One time Gladius went after her and she left him a quivering wreck. For weeks he was unable to do anything but panic over whether his costume made his butt look big.

  Sounds stupid, I know, but when you’re in the grip of an irrational fear, you can’t tell that it’s irrational.

  I touched down directly in front of Torture, tried to hit him with a wall of sound powerful enough to knock him off his feet. Then suddenly I had the feeling that it wasn’t going to work. I was convinced he’d become immune to my powers and he was going to kill me.

  He charged. Torture was a big guy with powerful fists and a long reach, and all I could do was stand there.

  Then Apex struck, leaping out of the darkness and slamming right into Torture’s back. Took him down immediately.

  Octavian and Thalamus landed then, followed by Hesperus. “Tie him up,” Apex told her. “Thunder, contact the local authorities, tell them where they can find him.”

  I wasn’t able to do it. I just knew that it was pointless. The police would come and they’d find us and assume that we were bad guys. That was something I’d always been a little concerned about—we do operate outside the law, after all—but now it was getting to be a full-blown panic attack.