We Could Be Heroes 2

by Harmon Cooper

  “I need a weapon,” Sam said.

  “Just stay back!” Zoe called over her shoulder, swiping again at another vampire who had gotten too close.

  The train picked up speed, the click-clack of the railcar on the tracks startling the vampires for a moment.

  Sam didn’t know how long they held them at bay, Dinah and Zoe doing their damndest to keep the vampires back. But eventually, Helena and Ozella began to wake up.

  The only problem with freeing the other two from their cages was the fact that Zoe was still trying to stop the vampiric children from getting any closer.

  It was the worst standoff ever.

  Dinah was still protecting the perimeter, and it was up to Zoe to keep the bloodsuckers from coming up the middle. Growling, she did her best to keep the vampires at bay, which gave Sam an idea.

  He started with Helena, dragging her cage toward Zoe, the tiger girl still pacing back and forth swiping at the vampires, hissing at them, doing everything she could to make herself look intimidating.

  “I can’t keep this up much longer,” Zoe said, her voice haggard.

  “I’ll help you,” Helena said, “just get me out of this cage, and Ozella, tell Dinah to heal me.”

  Zoe crouched before Helena’s cage for a moment, fiddling with the lock. Of course, the brash vampire approached, and Sam met him with a swift kick.

  He realized then that it was the size difference that was keeping them away; the vampires still had instincts enough to recognize the size difference between them and Vigilante Justice.

  Just kids, the oldest one no more than six years old, a terrible thing to unleash onto a city, especially when they became more cognizant of the power they possessed.

  Zoe broke the lock on Helena’s cage and helped her out, Dinah coming to her side immediately and healing the lean combat dancer.

  “They must not bite us,” Zoe told Helena, slightly out of breath. “Remember that!”

  “Dinah, heal Zoe next,” Helena said. “And once you’re better, get Ozella out of her cage. Sam and I will hold them off.”

  “Yeah,” Sam said, trying to psych himself up, “yeah, we’ll hold them off.”

  He took a battle-ready stance, ready to launch into a flurry of kicks if the vampire kids came any closer. One eventually came, but Helena gave the kid a roundhouse kick that sent him flying into the side of the train cabin.

  “You’ve got to teach me how to do that,” Sam told her.

  “That would take a lot of work,” Helena said, cracking a smile.

  And even though they were in a train barreling South, a train filled with vampiric children, Sam couldn’t help but chuckle at this last statement.

  Ozella approached from the back, her hair a mess but her mask still on her face. “So we’re supposed to just keep them on that side of the train until we get to wherever we are going?”

  “Dinah, heal her,” Zoe said, nodding the now transparent wound-sucking ghost woman over to Ozella.

  “That’s right,” Sam told Ozella as Dinah latched on. “We’re going to see how this shakes out.”

  The four most-certainly-fucked members of Vigilante Justice didn’t have to wait long to see how things shook out.

  There was a rumble at the front of the train, the sound of footsteps above them, a sudden explosion, the vampire kids screeching at the noise.

  The ceiling above them gave way as two combatants crash-landed into the train, Sam instantly recognizing Mister Fist and Mia.

  Sam saw Plume’s terrible inferno rocket over the train, realizing then that the thing was still moving, his center of gravity temporarily thrown off.

  “What the hell are you four doing here?” Mister Fist asked, turning to smoke again and reappearing, punching Mia into a wall. The vampire kids scrambled away.

  “What you should have been doing all along,” Zoe spit, looking up at the hole in the ceiling that Mister Fist and Mia had caused. “We’ve got to go!”

  “Go?” Helena looked left and right, not sure how they should handle the fact that Mister Fist and Mia were still fighting in a cabinet full of kiddie vampires.

  “Stack the cages,” the tiger girl shouted. “We’re getting the fuck out of here!”

  No, it shouldn’t have worked. Hell no, it shouldn’t have worked.

  But the four just so happened to catch a point where Mister Fist was taking his real form, tackling Mia, the vampire kids jumping onto his back as he swung his arms to toss them away.

  It was the distraction Zoe needed to stack two of the cages on top of one another, Sam holding it while she jumped up, pulling herself to the rooftop. Helena helped Ozella up next, then climbed to the top herself, Zoe pulling the heiress to the top of the railcar.

  Sam was last to go, and as soon as he made it to the highest cage, the same brash young vampire from earlier slammed into it. Sam would have fallen if Zoe hadn’t reached out and grabbed him just in time, her claws scraping up his arms.

  “Dinah, heal,” Ozella said as soon as he was on the roof of the railcar. The ghost woman appeared immediately behind Sam and went to work. The stinging sensation on Sam’s arms went away almost immediately. Even weirder was the fact that his uniform had protected him, yet somehow, he could still feel her claws.

  “Come back down here!” Mister Fist shouted. The four of them exchanged glances.

  “What the hell are we supposed to do down there?” Zoe asked.

  But that was about the only chance they had for banter.

  The next thing to catch their attention, aside from the fact that they were standing on top of a moving train (something that Sam still couldn’t quite believe as the wind whipped past him), was a battle taking place on top of the railcars behind them.

  “It’s Team Saint; they’ve teamed up with Mister Fist,” Ozella said. At the same moment, Sam recognized the blue wolfman whom Dinah had drained. The wolfman was engaging the guy who had attacked Sam earlier, the man with large blades for arms.

  Looking to the front of the train, he could see Plume flying around, another fight taking place on one of the rooftops, this one waged mostly by William Bottorf’s clones, the replicas falling off the train every now and then and smashing into the track below, getting caught up in the wheels. There was also the stone woman on a different railcar, engaging Donovan.

  “It’s not working,” Helena said suddenly.

  “What’s not working?” Sam asked her.

  “My mental messaging. I can’t contact Lance.”

  “Mine either,” Zoe said.

  “Same,” said Ozella.

  “We’ve passed the border, haven’t we?” Sam asked, looking around. Surrounding the tracks was a crapton of foliage, way more than there should have been in Centralia, unless they were going through a state park.

  “We have to do something,” he said.

  “We could jump; Dinah could heal us?” Ozella asked.

  Sam and Zoe looked over the edge. “Maybe…” Zoe started to say.

  Mister Fist and Mia burst out of the top of the rail car, Mia’s wing cracking against the back of Sam’s head and sending him over the side of the train.

  “Sam!” Zoe shouted, jumping for him, her arms wrapping around his body.

  They smashed into the branches of a tree, Zoe’s claws stopping them from hitting the ground too hard. The train was gone in a matter of moments, Zoe still tightly clutching Sam.

  “Damn,” he said as he rolled to the side and pushed himself up. Something was off; Sam could hardly get stable on his feet.

  “We are so screwed,” Zoe said as she got her feet, noticing that there was blood dripping down the side of Sam’s face. The train sounded off in the distance.

  “I’m fine,” he said as she came to him, just about to put both hands on his cheeks. “Really,” Sam said as he stumbled in the direction of the train track. “We’ve got to catch them.”

  He could still see the train; as he walked toward it his knees buckled, and he tumbled down a small drop i
nto a bush.

  Zoe rushed to him. “I think you hurt your head.”

  “My head?”

  Zoe no longer looked the same as she had before. Something was different about her, her tiger features gone, or were they? Sam pushed himself away from her and kept stumbling toward the train track, one foot in front of the other, trying his best to get to Helena and Ozella. He felt as if he were wading through a thick fog, stars swirling all around him.

  “Sam, stop,” Zoe said, forcibly grabbing his arm this time.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “Sam, listen to me. You hit your head. You need to rest for a moment; let’s figure out how we’re going to do this.”

  “If we rest, we lose them…”

  “No, I don’t think that will happen. Not with Helena. She will figure a way out of this,” Zoe said, clearly not stoked to be talking so nicely about the heiress. “She’s incredibly smart. She’ll figure a way out.”

  Sam took another step forward, even though Zoe was holding on to him. He fell to his knees, bringing Zoe down.

  “You idiot,” she told him, “stop moving around so much.”

  “Got to get to them…” Sam said, trying to pull his arm away again. “Have to help…”

  “Sam, Sam Meeko, you will stop this right now. You and I are going to go…” Zoe looked around. “I’ll find us shelter. It doesn’t matter where we go; I’ll be able to find something. There have to be people living around here. We’re clearly in the Southern Alliance, and Centralian exemplars don’t have jurisdiction down here, so if Southern Alliance forces find out that they’re assaulting the train, there could be trouble.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “What I’m trying to say is I don’t think the ‘good guys’ are going to stop that train, even if there’s a hole in the top.”

  “What about Helena, Ozella?” Sam asked, now seeing two Zoes.

  Seriously.

  There were two Zoes now, their forms wavering together, tails bobbing in the air.

  More?

  Sam now saw a lot of Zoes.

  And while this may have been a fantasy of many a non-exemplar in Centralia, and possibly a couple of exemplars too, Sam found it slightly frightening. He cringed away from all the Zoes he was seeing, ignoring the fact that all their mouths were moving now as she spoke.

  “Helena and Ozella will make it, Sam, they will get to the capital city, Argoze. Remember, they have, well not better, but arguably more helpful powers then you and I have together.”

  “What do you mean?” Sam asked, slurring his words as Zoe led him away from the tracks, still heading south, but now more to a southeast direction.

  “I’m saying that I am all combat, and you have, well, a utility power.”

  “Utility power?” he asked, the world spinning around him.

  “There’s nothing wrong with being a Class E, that’s the intelligence-based ones, right?”

  “Right, I think,” Sam told the multiple Zoes leading him deeper into the forest.

  He was tripping balls by this point, Zoe’s voice racing in and out of his ears as she spoke.

  “All I’m trying to say is that Ozella can at least heal people and quietly attack others. I can’t quite say that having a nude woman running around giving BJs is helpful, but Dinah throws a pretty mean punch too. So stop talking, and keep walking. Stay with me, Sam.”

  “Where… are we going?”

  “I told you, we’re going to find someplace to sleep. I don’t want to sleep in the forest. I may be half-tiger, but there could be bears or something.”

  “Bears?” Sam asked, seeing turquoise, red, yellow and dark blue spots.

  “Anyway, back to what I was saying before…” Zoe jerked his arm, her voice again going in one ear and out the other. “Helena is useful because she can hypnotize someone and she could just say, ‘let us go,’ or ‘bring us to blah blah blah city.’ And she has a new power of hers, plus she’s rich. So she could always promise to pay someone off.”

  “What about… us?”

  “Like I said, an ass-kicking power and a utility power. Keep up, Sam.”

  “I can be helpful.”

  “No one said you weren’t helpful, and just because your power isn’t like ours, doesn’t mean it isn’t useful. In fact, once we get to a clearing and let you sit down for a moment’s rest, we could probably use your enhanced sight to figure out where we should go next. But first, rest. We need to rest.”

  “Fine, rest, take me to rest,” Sam said as he passed out.

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Oh Nooeeez

  (The inevitable inevitably happens.)

  Zoe didn’t know how long she carried Sam. For once, she was glad to have enhanced strength due to her newfound exemplar status. Had Zoe been a normal person—ha!—she wouldn’t have been able to carry Sam as far as she did.

  But as the half-morphed tiger girl, it wasn’t too bad.

  Sure, she was a bit exhausted by the time she saw lights in the distance, but she could have gone further if she needed to.

  Initially, she thought that the best strategy forward would be to go to one of the homes and see if they would let her rest there for the night. But as she grew closer, the fear of the unknown swelled in her chest, Zoe suddenly afraid of confrontation, even with her power.

  She was second-guessing herself now; the thought that she was in a foreign country coming to the forefront of her mind. While her family hailed from the South, she had never visited and she didn’t know the customs, or how a person would react to a half-breed tiger girl knocking on their door.

  Of course, she could morph to her non-exemplar form, and this was definitely a strategy that would work for the time being, but eventually, she would have to morph back.

  That was the thing that Zoe was coming to understand about her life; from now on, anyone that got to know her would eventually have to know this side of her. And unless there was someone in Centralia (aside from Dr. Hamza’s twisted ass) that could make her be able to turn all-tiger and back again, this was it.

  Oddly enough, it was these vain yet appropriate thoughts that kept Zoe going, taking her mind off what was really happening at the moment and just how dire their situation had become.

  So she continued forward, cold air swirling all around her, Sam thrown over her shoulder, her thoughts on what she would do when she reached her ultimate destination.

  Most of the cold spells in Centralia came up from the South, and she figured the one passing her now would eventually reach her country. It was noticeably colder than it had been just moments ago, so she was glad to have Sam’s body providing additional warmth.

  She wasn’t great with distances, but most of the real lights started about a mile away, and she wasn’t ready to straight up roll into a city wearing an exemplar uniform with a passed-out dude thrown over her shoulder.

  But how would she decide which house to scope out? How would she decide where they could rest for the night?

  The forest was behind her, Zoe now walking along a path cut in the soil. It wasn’t quite a gravel road, but there was some gravel to it, the surface reminding her of some of the public parks back in Centralia.

  Her sense of sight was helping, yet another advantage to her exemplar nature.

  Maybe it’s not so bad after all, she thought for what must have been the thousandth time.

  Zoe spotted a small bungalow with a barn behind it. It looked quaint, and she seriously considered marching right up to the front door and demanding a warm bed, but the barn could also work.

  No, it’s too cold out, she thought, remembering that she needed to take care of Sam.

  Zoe could always threaten the homeowners, hell, she could do much worse than that, but that wasn’t quite the style she was going for, and it wasn’t how Vigilante Justice was supposed to operate.

  So she figured she would tell the truth.

  It wasn’t that Zoe was opposed to the truth, but she just was reluctant to
use it in this situation.

  Nevertheless, it could work, especially with…

  Zoe set Sam down in a wheelbarrow parked next to the quaint bungalow.

  She smoothed her hands over her exemplar uniform, and took off the mask that went over her eyes, pulling the hood down as well. “Power-up, on,” Zoe said, triggering her transformation, feeling her skin change, her strength leave her body.

  She now felt the strain from carrying Sam for so long, her shoulder aching, her calf muscles sore. But she ignored the pain as she took the steps to the front door, clearing her throat and smoothing her hair out as best she could.

  Zoe knocked twice, and eventually, an old woman answered.

  “Can I help you?” the woman asked, not opening the door all the way.

  “I’m just going to be honest with you,” Zoe told the woman through the slit in the door, “I am a member of a Centralian exemplar team, and we were battling some criminals and got stranded out here.”

  “You’re an exemplar?”

  “I am.”

  “What’s your power?” the woman asked, raising a suspicious eyebrow at her.

  “I morph into a half-tiger. My friend back there, he’s in your wheelbarrow, he has a super powerful sniffer. His nose. There’s a fancy way to say that, but I don’t remember it at the moment.”

  “Who are you fighting?”

  “That’s…” Zoe smiled at the woman. “Classified information.”

  “How do I know you’re really an exemplar?”

  “Is that how you would normally talk to an exemplar?” Zoe asked.

  “No, but… Well, show me your power, or something. I have to at least verify you are who you say you are. I mean, do you have identification?”

  “Does it look like I have room for a pocketbook on this uniform?” Zoe asked, turning to show the woman just how tight her uniform was.

  “I get it, I get it, you have a nice body. My niece would have a body like yours if she stopped eating treats from your country. You are Centralian, right?” the old woman asked, opening the door a little further. She was short, her hair under a nightcap, her cheeks rosy red.