Blackjack Wayward (The Blackjack Series) (29 page)

“Cheers,” I said and drained the beer.

“Cheers,” he chuckled, laughing at my attempt to seem nonchalant in his presence. “What are you doing here, is my first question. What am I going to do with you is the next.”

I smiled. “At least you’re organized.”

“Man has to be, if he plans on going all the way. Story has it you broke out of Utopia last month and killed a bunch–”

“Month?” I had no idea of the passing of time.

“The thirteenth of last month. Makes it, what ... twenty five days?”

I had been with Claire only a few days at the Rabbit Flat outpost, so unless she had done something with her magic to affect the passage of time, it meant I had wandered the outback for about three weeks. Major Aussie wouldn’t let me ponder that fact, pressing me.

“So what’s with all that business, mate? You like hurting innocent folk?”

“Zundergrub,” I managed to say, but it was more like a cough.

“What’s that about?”

I shook my head.

“How many people were hurt?”

He chuckled. “Guess you weren’t counting, huh? News said forty-five.”

“Dead?”

Nate nodded.

“God....”

“That’s the only bloke that’s gonna help you now.”

I bowed my head, feeling the tears welling at the sides of my eyes, the streams biting into the dusty junk that encrusted my face.

“Well, at least you’re repentant.”

“It was Zundergrub.”

He smiled and shook his head.

“Weren’t he your friend? I wasn’t there for that Japan business, but from what I recall, fella was on your side.”

“And then he wasn’t. He betrayed us.”

Nate shrugged, “Happens, mate.”

“He broke into Utopia to kill me. He’s the one who did all that.”

“You really expect me to believe that?”

I looked into his hard, weathered face.

“No, I expect not.” I looked bashfully at the empty beer glass. “Thanks for this, I guess,” I said and handed him the mug.

“You’re quite welcome,” he took it and held it for a moment.

“Why Australia?” he asked.

A smile crossed my face. “Wasn’t my idea.”

“Who’s was it?”

“Back at Utopia, when all the craziness was going on, and I was running for my life from Zundergrub and his–” I paused, noticing I was just rambling, being too familiar with the situation. He had no idea what I was talking about. “You know about Utopia?”

“’Course I do. It’s a prison for the real crazies. They don’t put you there ‘cause you say too many prayers at Sunday mass, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, but it’s a mind-prison. They throw you into a world, designed by psykers, and you think you’re going through an adventure.”

He didn’t even change his facial expression as I broke the secret of Utopia.

“It’s quite realistic, you know? How else are you going to keep a high class super from trying to escape? You make him think he’s already escaped. Keep his mind busy for a few decades until he drops dead of old age.”

“All right,” he said, crossing his arms. “And what’s all that to me?”

“I was in there, dreaming some cockamamie story, when they pulled me out, and there was Dr. Zundergrub and a bunch of hired goons.”

“This is what you’re telling me? That the Zundergrub fellow came to break you out or something?”

“No, he came to kill me.”

Major Aussie laughed. “So how come you’re not dead?”

“One of his goons, he was an old friend. Ever heard of Razorman? Black Razor?”

He nodded. “Nice friend.”

“Turns out he was,” I said. “He stopped them and helped me get away. Razor sacrificed himself to save me.”

He looked at me, unconcerned.

“Then as I’m trying to find a way out, I see all these people dead. So many dead.”

“And this Zundergrub fellow killed them?”

“Him or his people, yeah,” I said. “Then I ran into a guy who was hurting someone who was still alive. Another inmate like me. A woman. I rescued her and helped her get away.”

“Where’s this lady friend of yours?”

I shook my head, “Gone. She was a witch. Went by the name of Lady Vexille, but I hadn’t heard of her before.”

“I have. Nasty little monster, she is. You have some odd friends, mate.”

“Yeah, well she made some portal and we got away.”

He smoothed his mustache, giving my story a thought.

“Saying you’re making friends with a nasty bonzer like Vexille doesn’t do much to help me believe you’re some sort of victim here.”

I laughed. “I guess we’re judged by the company we keep.”

He nodded, his eyes hard and emotionless.

“Lesson I learned the hard way in Hashima,” I said, “The Japan business,” I added, seeing he didn’t understand.

Nate raised one eyebrow, shaking his head, like he had seen it and heard it all before. “You have anything to do with what’s going on now in America?”

My befuddled look gave him my answer.

“Talk of Civil War back in the States, mate. Some General fellow’s starting a war. Guess he was someone important, because it’s in all the papers. He’s threatening your President, he is.”

I shrugged.

Aussie looked at me, scratching his chin, “So Vexille got you here, huh?”

I nodded.

“And where is she now?”

I shook my head. “She left.”

He scratched the stubble on his head, smiling. “Well, that’s the answer to question number one,” Nate said. “But what to do with you.”

“I can barely move,” I said, laughing. “So it’s your call.”

“Just like that?”

“If you want a drawn-out brawl, you know, to knock a bad guy around ... well ... it’s going to be kind of one sided but I guess you’ll have some fun.”

He leaned back. “Oh, I dunno. What if I told you I lost my powers a few years back?”

“Serious?”

“Yep. What about that?”

I laughed again. “Means it takes you longer to beat me down.”

Nate joined my laughter, getting up and serving us both another frothy beer.

“Thanks,” I said when he handed me the mug.

“You don’t seem like such a bastard,” he said taking a long swig.

“How’s that?”

He chuckled, “Figured you’d take a swing at me when I told you I had no powers.”

“Then who’d get me the beers?”

Major smiled. “Very true. I lied, by the way. Haven’t lost ‘em.”

I leaned forward, trying to force my body up, and suddenly he was apprehensive, his eyes wide open, body tense and ready to strike.

“Sorry,” I said, with a bashful smile. “Need a bathroom.”

Nate watched me for a second, making sure I wasn’t going to lunge at him or something, before shrugging in the direction of a wooden door across the room.

I used the couch arm to get up, feeling every muscle and tendon complain. My right leg quivered with the first step and for a moment I thought it might crumple beneath me. I caught myself on the armrest, and the Major jumped forward to snag my arm by grabbing me under the armpit.

“Easy there, mate.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled as we struggled toward the bathroom. Nate managed to muscle me into the small room, which had an old-style faucet and a cast iron bathtub.

“Now that I think of it, I could use a bath,” I told him.

Major Aussie laughed. “Now you’re on your own, there.”

A long, cold bath freed me of all the grime and dirt, but nothing could free me from the weariness of a month lost in the desert. My skin is super-resilient, or else I would have been a dingo fest and Wally and his mates wouldn’t have found anything but a pile of bones. But the sun had taken a heavy toll, burning me to a crisp, leaving wounds on my shoulders, arms, and face that were like second degree burns.

I sat back on the couch, wearing borrowed pants and a long-sleeved white cotton shirt, feeling myself fall asleep despite a loud commotion coming from outside. My boots had somehow survived the ordeal and were the only thing I kept from the shredded pile of dusty clothes I stripped out of. I also noticed the metal bracelet still inside one of the pockets of the pants, and I slipped it on my wrist. It went right over the bumpy scar tissue where Haha had resided until about three weeks ago. The wound itself had healed almost immediately, but the scar was something I would carry with me forever. Much like the jagged tissue on the back of my right hand, an ever-present reminder of my worst moment of desperation.

Major Aussie served me a plate of scrambled eggs and biscuits, and I dug in, like one of those ravenous dingoes trying to get a bite out of me. Just as I had cleaned the plate, I felt a commotion outside. He came out of the kitchen to the big window that overlooked the Australian prairie.

“Friends of yours?” Aussie asked, peering out of a window.

I forced myself to stand, an ill feeling in my stomach spreading across my chest as I scanned the outside through the angled blinds and saw a gathering throng of supers. I saw a few villains I recognized and knew immediately that Zundergrub’s horde had found me. “I don’t think they’re friendly.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Major Aussie said.

“Why the hell not? I don’t know those people.”

“And they happen upon you in the middle of nowhere? Yeah, right.”

He paused for a moment, looking at the stairs, then back at me.

“Would rather be in my suit,” he explained.

“Want some advice?” I asked. “I mean, I know you don’t want my advice. Why the hell would you want it, right? I just felt like I needed to ask, you know?”

Major Aussie smiled.

“Go on.”

“Get your people out of here,” I said.

He shook his head, looking out the window again, “And let you get away with your friends? I don’t think so.”

“They’re not my friends. They’re here to kill me.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

I walked to the front door and stepped outside, Aussie following close behind. There were over a hundred villains crowding the horizon, more than enough to take the two of us down.

I took a long look, studying the gathered villains, trying to identify whomever I could. It’s what I do; it’s what gives me an advantage. They might outnumber me, but I was going to give them a fight they would long remember, and once I identified their leaders, I’d have a target to strike first. Maybe if they were demoralized and leaderless, I would have a chance.

Standing in the middle of them all and in full leadership pose was a statuesque blonde woman, wearing winter garb of blue, the blue/white gem encrusted on her forehead the same color as her eyes. Her matching robes would have been more at home in a colder climate, and I didn’t need to see her wielding her eponymous staff to know she was the villain White Staff, a witch who hailed from the Nordic regions and considered herself a throwback to Viking times.

Standing beside her was companion and lover, Modi. Named after the berserker son of Thor, this fellow was so large and bulky that he made Aussie and me look small by comparison. He wore a horned helmet, compressing his long blond hair and beard around it as if it were exploding from the bottom edge of the armor piece. The massive man fought with a pair of metal claws forged directly into his arm, which replaced his hands and were larger than most swords. Other than that, and a pair of boots to protect his feet, he was completely naked, his rippling pale form exposed to the Australian sun.

On the other side of White Staff was Slicer, a formidable cage fighter from the streets of Chicago, who wore a purple and yellow leather suit and a pair of daggers that were large enough to be officially classified as swords. For a guy his size, the things were tiny. He smiled, revealing two rows of gold-capped teeth. His hair was dyed shocking yellow and eyes covered by lenses, but the most ominous feature on his face was the twin scars that formed an X across his face, mementos from a long-ago lost fight.

Behind them I saw a trio of armored fighters, their power suits so garishly red, they looked straight from a console game. In fact, their names were Scout, Trooper and Heavy, and each had increasingly heavier armor and weaponry. They were mercs for hire and, to the best of my knowledge, former inmates at Utopia. Apparently Zundergrub hadn’t killed everyone.

Another fellow who caught my attention was the villain Dreadlord. He was a walking corpse, the armor and stitches that wrapped his body the only things keeping him together. Dreadlord was a tough one, though, able to syphon the life force of others to power his abilities. I felt a chill, looking at him and thinking of the things I’d done with Claire.

Next to him, and standing as a stark contrast to Dreadlord’s dark demeanor, were two figures. One was Bright Boy, a bare-chested guy with long, blond hair, who would have looked more at ease on a beach, surfing, if not for the fact that his hands were strange, pliable contortions of flesh, muscle, and bone twisting and reforming into claws, weapons, or whatever he needed.

The other was the pixie Charisma, in her full-sized form, dancing and swaying as she played her flute, surrounded by all nature of woodland creatures and a host of butterflies that moved to the rhythm of her song. It was curious that everywhere she stepped, her bare feet would leave behind small tufts of grass amid the arid, sandy ground of the Outback.

Around them were four or five dozen others, some flyers, a few in hover vehicles or space boots, surrounding me in a semi-circle: a Mexican standoff from Hell. There were so many that they blotted out the horizon. I was sure there were more behind and around the house, making sure that we wouldn’t make a run for it. I shot a glance upward and saw a few more flyers above us, silhouetted against the bright sun.

Among the main throng were others that I could recognize, such as the massive voodoo warrior fellow called Gris-Gris, who wore simple brown robes. I saw the famous adventurer/explorer Slipshod, though it was clear he wasn’t interested in a fight. Sky Angel wanted a brawl, though, and she jostled with the twin villains Senka and Bioshock to get into the front row and shoot me with her twin blasters. There were a few giants as well, though they lingered back to give others room to surround me. One that I could recognize was the Japanese Oni Demon Jigoku, towering over the crowd with bovine horns jutting out of his forehead and deadly cat-like claws and fangs that were the size of a normal man. The demon wore a tiger-skin loincloth and wielded a huge Japanese peace bell on a long chain. Another of the big ones was Odyssey, a twenty-foot-tall mechanized robot with massive, weaponry-laden arms and a fusion reactor rhythmically pulsing within a golden sphere where his head should have been. The last of the larger villains was Fenris, a mammoth-sized black wolf, with crimson eyes and blood-caked fangs. Atop him rode a young feral boy with long black hair, grabbing the beast’s fur to make up for a lack of a saddle. The boy looked gaunt, almost spectral, and indifferent.

There were also a few heroes in the bunch, probably mind-jobbed just as Zundergrub had done to Apogee. The most dangerous of these was Athene, a powerful Greek warrior-goddess, who wore striking silver armor, shield and a sarissa just like a hoplite of the City-state era. She was as strong as anyone here, maybe even stronger than Aussie and I, and damned near indestructible. But I could see confusion in her azure eyes, and from her body posture. Unlike the other heavy hitters, she wasn’t itching for a fight.

Another hero, just as dangerous as anyone here, was Rikishi, a young Japanese kid, with a coif of black hair held down by a back-turned baseball cap and wearing a wild t-shirt that had spray paint pattern on it. He held a microphone that, when he spoke a specific word into it, would turn him into Rikishi, a hundred foot-tall warrior, straight out of an anime. If that thing got going, the whole party would be arbitrary – he could beat everyone on the continent. Thankfully, Rikishi kept far to the right, almost as if hiding in the crowd.

The most noticeable player on the field, standing front and center before me, was Nevsky, a Russian national hero in the same mold as Robin Hood, except this guy was a real bastard. Muscle-bound like me, he was even more impressive than Modi. Nevsky had permanently dyed or tattooed his skin red, to honor his country, and with his high-topped, jet-black hair, he had a demonic look. He stared at me, but I didn’t bother giving anyone eye contact. No one was special here; I was going to have to beat them all. Nevsky wanted my attention; he wanted to take down the guy who had dropped Epic. He strode forward, waving the others back, and stopped halfway to the house.

“You are Blackjack,” he said with a strong Russian accent.

I was too tired for this, tired and hungry. A cold shower and some eggs were a start, but I needed sleep, rest, months of it. I’d gotten a half hour, maybe, but there was nothing I could do to avoid it. I wasn’t going to talk my way out of this, or negotiate, and I couldn’t expect anyone to come to my aid. Even Major Aussie, who seemed to like me, was rattled and ready to make a run for it.

“I’m not letting you get away,” Major said, completely misunderstanding what was happening here.

I laughed.

“I don’t care what happens, mate. I’m not letting you get away.”

“You think Zundergrub sent these guys to save me from you?” I said.

He blinked, looking at the swarm of villains, then back at me.

“Does that look like a bunch of rescuers?”

The Captain was slowly starting to realize our predicament.

“Come down here, Blackjack and we have a little talk,” Nevsky shouted, starting to lose his patience with me.

“Fuck me dead,” he said, rubbing his head. “So what do we do?”

“Your friends,” I said.

“They’ve all gone,” he said. “Except Walt and Nelly. They’re still upstairs packing.”

“Ok. Anything gets past me, you make it dead.”

He took two steps to the door and paused, looking back at me bashfully, as if he wanted to come back and shake my hand.

“Go on,” I said turning away from him and stepping off the porch and toward Nevsky and his horde of villains.

Once we were standing in front of each other, it turned out that we were about the same height, our eyes roughly at the same level. The big difference was the extra four inches of high top radiating outward from the base of Nevsky’s crown. It must’ve taken him 10 cans of hairspray to keep his “do” that way. It reminded me somewhat of the guidos from that New York City fight against the Superb Seven. Thinking back to that day, I couldn’t help but think of Apogee. She wouldn’t be very proud of what I was going to do today, because this was going to get really messy. This was going to be ugly.

Some of this bunch was tough – they could handle themselves – but among them were others who were marginal powers. Some of them were afraid, and they had good reason to be worried. In the middle of the fight that was coming, I wouldn’t have time to regulate myself. I wouldn’t have time to pick and choose my targets and to measure my strength against each enemy. No, I was going to have to go all-out. If I planned to live, I was going to have to lay into them with no mercy. And the more I thought about it, the angrier and angrier it made me to think that I’d gotten myself into this mess all over again.

I stepped into Nevsky’s personal space, making him raise his head back and to the left as if to recoil from my presence. His eyes were wide behind the shades, surprised and taken aback at the same time, but unwilling to admit to the fear that was scratching at the back of his neck, bristling the hairs at its nape. He was more afraid of letting everyone else see his apprehension, to know what I already knew. Nevsky was outmatched. We hadn’t traded a single blow and he was already beaten.

His intention was to beat me, to steal my hard-earned reputation as “the guy who beat Epic,” and wrap that around his waist like a World Championship. He wanted to be the man and had stepped forward to take his shot, but staring hard into my eyes, he knew that to do that he’d have to beat me, and I wasn’t a man angling for pride, or my virtue.

I didn’t care anymore.

Not about what happened today, or in the future. I had no care for reputation, or what others would say, or how this day would be perceived and misunderstood. I didn’t even care about the bevy of villains surrounding us, waiting for their turn, for Nevski and me to finish so they could rush me and tear me to pieces. Nor did I give a damn that I had been Earth’s savior, that at one strange moment in history, I had stood between the planet’s survival and damnation and I had saved everyone, even this sorry bunch. For that I had been punished as harshly as humanity could envision in their eagerness to channel their wrath, to give a complicated situation a clean and easy-to-understand conclusion for public consumption.

No, all I cared about right now was this poor bastard standing in front of me; I channeled all my anger, all my frustration, and aimed it at Nevski. My face felt like a corded mesh of flesh and muscle, much like a tiger’s death mask, moments before it plunges the long canine into the carotid and feels the flush of warm crimson as the death throes begin.

In fact…

Without giving him a chance to recompose himself, or to say some wicked shit, I lunged forward, grabbing his head and forcing it closer to me, ignoring his surprised grunt. My jaw flew open and I clenched down on him, biting at his cheek with every ounce of energy channeled through my body, from my calves and thighs to my arms and back. My reward was a splash of metallic blood spraying into my face and mouth and the loud, crooning howl of pain as Nevsky pressed against me to escape our embrace.

I released him, his pained cry stilling on his lips as he collapsed, and looked around at the throng, reveling in the fear and disgust. He clasped his blood-streaked face, cowering from me with a mixture of rage and shock as he realized I had ripped off a part of his face with my teeth.

I spit it back at him, a two-inch-diameter bit of his skin and flesh, letting the blood dribble down my face, and flashed a wicked grin at the others, taking the wind from their proverbial sails in one gesture.

“No surrender,” I sneered through blood-clenched teeth.

And it was on.

I didn’t give him a chance to recover; though when you think about it, what man could effectively fight with a chunk of his face torn off?

I rushed him, grabbing his long hair with both hands, and powered my knee into the side of his head with everything I had, crushing his skull like a ripe watermelon. Before his lifeless body collapsed to the floor, I grabbed the back of his belt and hefted his bloody frame over me, then looked among the horrified host to see where to hurl my superhuman missile.

The obvious choice was White Staff, as she was probably the most experienced of the bunch, and if allowed, would lead them to victory. But I knew if she went down, her boy, Modi, would enrage and nothing could stop him if he went berserk.

Fine, fuck it.

Nevsky flew from my hands like shot out of a Howitzer, and she didn’t have time to look surprised, or even flinch, before my 350-pound cannonball bowled her and everyone behind her over in a loud “thwap!” of breaks and fractures.

I heard a loud roar and expected the bad guys to swarm me right there and then, but the scream came from me as I rushed Modi, red face twisted in rage. His attention turned to me as knelt beside his beloved’s crushed form. He was twice as tall as me, and each one of his legs was easily the width of my waist, like a pair of massive tree trunks. I hurled myself, linebacker-style, into one of the knee joints. My left shoulder exploded in pain from the impact, and his knee bent backward. With a loud howl, the big man went down.