Authors: Ernie Lindsey
I
heal easily and quickly
. That’s a benefit of being a manufactured superhuman. You get injected with enough blue goo that’s hyped up in a lab, it’s easy to feel like nothing can take your life away. I haven’t had a needle poked in me in, oh, thirty years, and I’ve often wondered if this shit will ever just wear off, like batteries dying out.
I’m nearly invincible but injuries still hurt like a son of a bitch, yet they’re usually fixed by my internal mechanisms before I step back into a fight. I wouldn’t say I’m quite as much of a badass as that Wolverine guy, though I’m pretty close. Here’s a quick example: I once fell off a ten-story building after the Dream Demon caught me with a wicked roundhouse kick that I wasn’t expecting. I landed, broke my back, and bounced like a basketball. By the time I hit the ground again I was healing and ready to rock.
But this knife in the side of my ribs? It must have pierced a lung, because I can’t breathe right. Kimmie pulls away, grinning, and leaves the blade hanging in my side. I’m dizzy. Woozy. I haven’t felt this before. Why am I…what’s happening…
I manage to utter, “Was that poisoned?” I watch her honk that stupid honk of a laugh as I fall back onto the sand. She leans over and twists the knife, hard, gouging it into my side, tearing flesh and shattering bone.
She says, “Don’t worry, I’ll still tell your stupid little story about the brozantium. This is just for an extra measure. Makes it look real.”
Kimmie may be a fallen hero, but, damn, she does have some muscles in those lithe arms. She’s been keeping up with her regimen, maybe for a day exactly like today.
My vision begins to tunnel, the blackness encroaching on the blue water, the blue sky, and the white sands. Waves rock the yacht, and I hear the clang of a metal hook on the mast.
I reach for her. I want to squeeze her throat until it squishes out between my fingers. The darkening circle closes, closes, to a pinpoint of light, and then I’m out.
W
hen I wake up
, it’s pitch black and cool and I’m lying on something hard and metallic. It’s cold against my skin. Am I…am I in a morgue drawer? I remember what happened, vaguely. The images in my mind are hazy, gauzy, and I can make out the fact that Kimmie was cackling right before the world went as black as it is now.
Something stretches across my cheeks, and I reach up to feel what’s there.
Damn, it’s my Patriotman mask. At least they let me keep that on, which is good. Hopefully my true-life identity remained hidden while I was out for…
Shit, what day is it?
And did I survive Kimmie’s betrayal, or did she do that on purpose—that whole murdering me thing? Because yeah, I’m not dead.
I shift positions. It’s cramped and uncomfortable in here.
A bright, red light emits from somewhere within the drawer, illuminating this enclosed, claustrophobia-inducing coffin. It flashes briefly, giving me time to see that I’m naked from the mask down, and there’s a toe tag hanging off my right foot. The red light flashes again, and my ribs ache when I move to discover the source. Whatever she got me with, that crap has a lingering effect.
It flashes a third time, and I have to close my eyes. I already have too many shimmering lights swirling around in my vision.
There it is. I put my hand on a small, plastic box. I trace my fingers around the corners, and it feels like it’s about the size of an engagement ring box. On the top is a rounded bulb that might be the LED light that’s been flashing. I confirm this by holding my thumb over it and watching the red illuminate under my thumbnail.
It’s…what is this thing?
My lungs shut down when I briefly consider the idea that it might be some kind of micro-bomb that Kimmie carried onto the plane. With Daddy Oilbuck’s private jet, she wouldn’t have to go through security, and this is how I turn into a pile of superhero oatmeal inside a morgue drawer, once and for all.
If that’s what this thing is, my only option is escape. As soon as I lift my foot to kick the door open, because certainly some rinky-dink latch can’t hold the mighty Patriotman, I hear the thick
kachunk
of the exterior handle. The door swings open, temporarily blinding me with white this time, and I’m rolled out feet first.
Standing above me is a large islander, tanned skin contrasting starkly against the white uniform of a morgue attendant. His hair is the dark color of Deathstrike’s uniform, with eyes bluer than Kimmie’s outfit back when she was the Blue Baroness. He smiles, showing a sparkling white row of teeth, and pats me on the chest. He smells like coffee and stale cigarettes. “Thank God it worked,” he says in stilted English. “They weren’t sure that it would.”
One wall is taken up with rows of drawers like the one I’d been calling home for some indeterminate amount of time. The metal wall is full of them, and it’s so clean I can almost see my reflection. A row of three fluorescent lights hang overhead, their brightness clawing into my retinas. I see a bay of windows to my left, and beyond that, there’s a cluttered desk with a small lamp, and what looks to be a five-inch television screen playing a rugby match.
So, a hospital? How’d I get here?
“What’s that?” I say, sitting up. “Thank God what worked?” I’m beyond being modest, but I ask the dude for a robe, or my clothes, or something, to cover up the fact that my junk is splayed out on this sliding drawer like a snake basking in the sun.
“Oh, right.” He spins around, looking for something, and slips a white sheet off a dead body at my twelve o’clock. “Here.”
I cringe and feel guilty, but the old woman on that morgue table is most definitely a goner, and she’s probably well past modesty, too. I’m probably imagining the scent of embalming fluid as I wrap the blanket around me. I hold up the black box with the red light that’s still flashing. “Is this some kind of…what is this thing?”
“They said it was a miniature seismograph that would send a signal when you started moving again. Didn’t know for sure if it would get past all that metal. Here you are, though, Mr. Patriot, alive and kicking. Hey, you want some coffee?”
“No.” I shake my head. I change my mind. “Yes. How long have I been in there?”
Sam, according to his nametag, checks his watch, then matches it against the clock on the wall. “Thirty two hours and change.”
“Feels longer.” He hands me a cup of coffee that smells like motor oil and tastes like
stale
motor oil. “Sam?”
“Yessir?” He looks overeager to please and thoroughly excited that I used his name. He’s a gentle giant. Might make a good replacement for the Beast Machine if anybody ever wanted to resurrect that identity again.
“What would’ve happened if the signal didn’t get out?”
“Then I wait another twenty four hours and pull you out myself.”
“Dead or alive?”
“They said you’d be alive.”
“They? You keep saying ‘they.’”
“A lady and a guy.”
“They have names?”
Sam shakes his head, begins rummaging through some boxes on a shelf nearby. “Now where’d I put your stuff?” he says, muttering to himself.
“Blonde lady and a guy about my size? Maybe he looked like me quite a bit.”
Sam shrugs. He’s uncomfortable, hiding something, or a little of both.
“Sam?”
“Here they are,” he says, pulling my shorts and a bloody t-shirt out of a box marked “S.P.” He also pulls out my Patriotman uniform and holds it up. “You want to put this back on? Or the normal clothes? Normal clothes might be good, only your shirt here, it’s not in such good shape.”
He’s smiling, holding my things out to me, trying to get me to gloss over who delivered me. I repeat myself. “Focus, Sam. Blonde lady and a guy that might’ve looked like me?”
“Well, um, the medics and police brought you in, dressed in your uniform, then they had her and the guy identify you. But—uh—yeah, she’s blonde. Real pretty, too. About this tall,” he says, holding his hand up indicative of Kimmie’s height.
“That’s her. No name?”
“No, she wouldn’t say.”
“The cops, they’re out looking for my murderer?”
“It’s all over the news. Nobody knows nothing, but that lady, she says she saw some guy attacking you.”
“What about the man with her? Where’d he go?” While Sam thinks about his answer, I take my shorts from him and find my ratty flip-flops in the bottom of the container. I rummage around in some of the other boxes nearby and find a blue t-shirt with a seagull on it that’s a bit too tight, but it’ll have to do. “Look,” I say, urging him on, “I know you looked under the mask, that’s why you’re futzing around like this.”
“You know that?” His eyes go wide in disbelief. “Are you psychic? Is that one of your superpowers?”
I have to laugh. I can’t help it. He seems embarrassed, so I reassure him that it’s fine. This situation is too far gone to care about one more person knowing my identity.
“Oh,” he says, seemingly disappointed. “That would be cool too, huh? My dad says you can absorb the powers of others. That’s how come you’re so awesome.”
This makes me think of my dad. Or step-dad, really. Phil. I need to go pay him a visit when I get back to the States. He’s a good guy, even if he has gotten a little curmudgeonly lately.
“I wish, bud. That’d make this job a lot easier. Okay,” I say, finally dressed, “I’ve got three questions for you and all I want is clear answers. Can you do that for me? Can you do that for Patriotman?”
He lifts an eyebrow at me, slightly confused. “Are those two of the three questions?”
I chuckle. Sheesh. I’d be in some seriously pissed off, rage-induced, total blowup mood if it weren’t for this big honking dude unintentionally providing comic relief. “No, Sam. Here’s the first one. I know you peeked under the mask because you got that sheepish look written all over your face. Did the guy that was in here with the pretty lady look anything like me, and if he did, did he leave behind any messages?”
Sam is suddenly really interested in the tops of his shoes, but he answers anyway, like a little kid admitting he stole a cookie from the jar. “Yes, sir. Exactly like you. Like a twin or something. He said to tell you when you woke up, if you ever needed him again, he’d be at the spot with the thing. Said you’d know what that meant.”
I do. It means Bart Alonzo went back home to Barcelona, to his magnificently overdone house that I’ve mostly paid for all these years, where
the thing
is this giant statue of a nude Marilyn Monroe, only the sculptor screwed it up royally, so now it more or less looks like The Thing from the Fantastic Four.
Either the police let him go, or Bart Alonzo disobeyed orders and skipped out.
“Good, good.” I look up and around the room, checking the corners, not discovering what I’m searching for. I see no surveillance cameras, and, I figure if there were any, Sam wouldn’t have pulled me out and allowed a dead man to walk around the room.
I reach up and pull off my mask. It’s sort of freeing, in a way, to stand here in front of an average citizen, intentionally revealing my identity. The weird thing is, I feel more naked than when I didn’t have a stitch of clothing on. Sam gasps, and I shrug like it’s no big deal. “Question two, buddy. What about the pretty lady…she say anything?”
He reaches into the pocket over his left pectoral muscle, which is literally about the size of a small ham. I’m not kidding. This guy would make a great Beast Machine. He pulls out a small note and hands it to me. “She said to give you this.”
I unfold the note and read it out loud because I’m sure he’s already snooped on it, too. “Dear Dumbass, your plan was stupid, mine was much better, and this way, at least it looked real. The cops and the media think you’re dead. Don’t ever call me again. See you on the other side. Never yours, Kimmie. P.S. I hope the knife hurt like hell.” I clear my throat and raise an eyebrow. “Can you believe we were in love once?”
Sam squints at me. “Is that the third question, sir?”
I take a deep breath, shake my head, and grin. “No, Sam. No, it’s not. Third question is, where’s the closest place to get a burger? I’m starving.”
I invite Sam to come along with me, because he knows too damn much, and I’ll need to debrief him. Plus, he’s huge, and right about now I could really use an ally.
“You mean that?” he asks, surprised. “I can come with you?”
“Surprise question, Sam… If I asked you to drop everything and become the new Beast Machine, my supreme ally, are you able to walk away and do it?”
The size of his smile is big enough to disrupt gravity. “Let me get my keys.”
T
wenty-five years ago
, I was a young, fledgling superhero who’d only just come to battle the ins and outs of navigating life as a high school teenager. My identity as Patriotman was a secret, of course, and has remained that way since, but back then, I’d barely figured out how to french kiss a girl before I started fighting supervillains on a worldwide stage. Mom and Phil were conscientious objectors, but how do you put chains on a typical teenager, let alone one with the strength, speed, and agility of a hundred Olympians combined?
More or less, the only thing I couldn’t do was fly. I didn’t mind that so much because I figured Clark had the market cornered on being the guy flying around in blue tights and a red cape. Besides, I’m a manufactured superhuman, not otherworldly.
My first car was a Dodge Dart. My first girlfriend was a young lady named Amanda who had a heart-melting smile and enjoyed making out with the entire football team after we went to our junior prom. My first F was in History. My first cassette tape, purchased with my own money earned from mowing lawns, was
Licensed to Ill
by the Beastie Boys.
My first major confrontation with a supervillain—which managed to get aired on national television—was against a guy who went by the name of Suckerpunch. He wasn’t necessarily one of the physical-type supervillains, but more of an intellectual, unparalleled genius. He had managed to stage a bevy of bank robberies so massive that it had the entire city of New York on a lockdown unlike any they’d ever seen. Every available cop, authority figure, or professional suit with a gun scoured the city searching for this guy and his band of cronies. Looking back on it, the execution was nearly flawless. Twelve banks in twelve minutes scattered far enough apart that the police couldn’t figure out which block of the city to tackle first.
That day, Suckerpunch had put The Joker to shame in terms of cunning corruption and sheer brilliance of implementation.
I caught up with him in the middle of Central Park.
He was tall, dressed in a black pinstriped suit, and wore a mask that resembled a Doberman Pinscher.
We fought. Hard.
I was young and inexperienced. I charged ahead like a bull and with the strength of one. He outwitted me at every turn. I landed a few punches here and there, but I was severely outmatched when it came to the intellectual aspect of fighting a good fight.
Or in his case, a sneaky, dirty, dastardly, underhanded one, but as they say, work smarter, not harder.
He won, and escaped, leaving me battered, bruised, and bloody, yet the good news was, I had distracted him long enough to allow the police to capture his crew and their truckloads of money. The only thing he got away with was the couple million in cash that he carried in a ratty briefcase. I probably shouldn’t mention that he beat me one-handed, because he held onto that damn thing the entire time, often using it as a weapon.
I got my ass handed to me. It is what it is. On the national news, no less, but in the twenty-five years since then, I haven’t lost a single battle, and I feel like I can personally thank Suckerpunch for teaching me what I needed to learn that day. The only problem is, the dastardly bastard disappeared and never committed another crime.
That we know of, at least.
George Silver, the handsome, debonair, eloquent senator from the great state of Virginia personally extended his hand in gratitude. He’d been in New York that day for a fundraising event and was so overcome with pride for a young superhero that was so gracious in defeat, he invited me onto
Tonight with Don Donner
and put my face in front of the world.
Kapow
, instant notoriety.
All of this comes flooding back to me as soon as I hear Deke say, “Did you ever wonder why they call George Silver ‘The Doberman’? Most people think it’s because he’s so vicious, you know? When he’s got an idea about something, he latches on with a full set of fangs and won’t let go until you give the right command. As far as I know, he’s the one that came up with the nickname for himself.”
I feel lightheaded. My legs go numb, as do my feet and hands. The ever-present smell of Deke’s overpowering aftershave becomes too much to bear, and I have to roll down my window. The breeze feels cool and refreshing on my face but it barely soothes my sense of…I guess it’s remorse. Shock? Regret? I manage to squeak out, “Go on,” as the bile climbs up the back of my throat.
“Get this,” Deke says. “I don’t ever go into things blindly—call it a byproduct of being in this field for too long—so when I was first invited into DPS, I dug up some dirt on everyone I could find, everybody involved. Lisa, the director of DPS, Crenshaw and Hawthorne, you name it, because you never know when you’re going to need a safety net. You’ve heard that ‘leap and the net will appear’ bullshit? No, sir. Give me soft landing already there waiting.”
We’ve been driving in circles long enough for the traffic to start piling on. I’m exhausted, so I pull into a parking lot and zip through one of those coffee kiosks for a quick pick-me-up. Deke stops talking about the shit he knows regarding Lisa Kelly long enough to order a dry cappuccino, and then we’re moving again once the steaming to-go cups get handed over. I find a spot to park under a maple tree at the corner of the lot. I back in because you can’t be too careful about a quick getaway.
Deke sips his cappuccino then wipes the foam off his upper lip.
“You were saying?”
“Right. Yeah. Pretty much the entire DPS crew is fairly clean. Lisa worked at a Hooters back when she was at NC State, but other than that, they’re all normal, right?”
“Except for...what? Because otherwise, you wouldn’t be telling me this shit if there wasn’t an exception.”
“That’s just it, see. It took me quite a while to unearth the fact that Silver was the brainchild behind DPS, so I didn’t start looking into his history until about six months after I was running all over the damn country cleaning up messes.”
“Why would it matter who set it up?”
“You can’t be that naïve, Leo. Really? It matters who pulls the strings, because it matters who’s got control of the money. Money talks—”
“And your bullshit is starting to smell. Get on with it.” I’ve already figured out what he’s going to tell me, but I want to hear it from his lips.
He rolls his eyes and takes another sip. “I traced George Silver’s history all the way back to the day he first started campaigning for office as some smalltime lawyer in Richmond, Virginia. I went through campaign contributions, public appearances, earmarks, everything I could find. From today, counting back twenty-five years, he’s as clean as surgeon’s hands. But, from August 23
rd
, 1986, back to July 4
th
, 1970, there are numerous reports of missing funds, interns filing reports that seem like they were totally swept under the table, all sorts of stuff that should have landed a normal Joe in prison. And I’m assuming you remember what happened on August 23
rd
, 1986?”
I hate being reminded of that day. “Patriotman got his ass handed to him by Suckerpunch, then George Silver invited him on Don Donner’s show and called him a national hero. Everybody knows that, so I’m assuming you’re going to tell me why I should care.”
He holds up his index finger and grins. “One report.”
“And?”
“Totally buried in a file box and shoved on some back shelf. Had to visit the precinct that took the eyewitness reports of Patriot’s battle with Suckerpunch.”
“Why would that matter?”
“On the day those guys fought, Silver was in the city for a fundraising event, right? Only problem is, he didn’t show up. The lady that organized it, she remembers he called ahead and told them he couldn’t make it. Bad egg salad or some shit. Anyway, he shows up that night on
Don Donner
, with Patriotman, looking as sparkly and fresh as ever. I watched it that night, so I didn’t know about him cancelling, but I specifically recall how wide-eyed he was to be standing beside the next big thing in superhero names, you know? I realize it was a huge leap, but something—intuition, I guess—made me go watch the video replay of that episode, and the portion of the battle that was televised. It didn’t seem like anyone ever caught on to the fact that he had knowledge of some of the battle elements
before
the cameras got to Central Park.”
I almost choke on my coffee. “No shit? How’d you know that?”
He points at his chest. “I was there. I was a beat cop back then, and I watched the entire battle from a distance. No way am I getting in the middle of that, not for thirty thousand a year and a small pension. Long story short, I’m reading through the files of the reports from that day, and there’s one eyewitness testimony from a little old lady, like, eight hundred years old, who saw a man running away from Central Park. She swore on her life that the guy ran by her and he was taking off a Doberman mask, like Suckerpunch used to wear, and he looked exactly, in her words, “like that handsome man in the newspaper today, that Silver fellow from Virginia.”
“And nobody followed up on that?”
“The officer’s notes questioned her credibility, and by that I think he meant her sanity, and that was it. And now you know.”
“George Silver was Suckerpunch.”
“You scared him straight, Leo.”
This time, I really do choke on my coffee. “Me?”
Deke winks. “I’m good at keeping secrets, especially when I need help.”
Ah, the blue sky peeks out from behind the clouds of misinformation and all this cloak and dagger nonsense. “So you’re bribing me to make this thing with Silver and Palmer go away?”
“Something like that, but you’re close. I’d even go as far as saying you’re a smart cookie.”
“And you’re a real bastard.”
He holds up his to-go cup. “Cheers!”
“My God, how long have you known? Does anyone else?”
“Couple weeks. Not a soul knows, not even Lisa, and she’s like a daughter to me. And, let me think…oh, I pieced it together when you came back from the Maldives and had no body to show for it. I can’t place why—maybe it’s that intuition thing again—but I had a feeling about you from the first day we met in the airport. You looked…familiar in a déjà vu way. Something like that.
“When you came back from the Maldives, and it was all over the news, like that same day, and it seemed to me like it was too quick, like it should’ve taken longer to hit the wire. Almost like—almost like you did the deed, then called it in to the media yourself and used that lady to tell the story, and I’m thinking, why would he do that? Why not give himself a chance to at least get out of the country before the locals are all over it? I put it together when you wouldn’t tell us where the body was. I’ve looked at every single one of your case files, Leo. You don’t operate that way. You’re proud of what you do. Same way a cat brings a dead bird home and lays it on the doorstep like an offering. I put it together then.
Vibes
. I get vibes.”
I’d put my .45 away, but now seems like just as good a time as any to shove it in his ribs again. He jumps when I do, and I wait on his face to ease out of its contorted fear before I ask, “And are those same vibes telling you that I could easily put a bullet in your gut and take away your trump card?”
He holds up a shaky hand. “Don’t pull the trigger, okay? Let me show you something.” He reaches for the lapel of his suit jacket, and at that moment, I know exactly what he’s going to show me.
The only thing that matters now is who’s on the other end of that wire.