Don't Be a Hero: A Superhero Novel (45 page)

“Goddamn it,” he said. He ducked back inside the car and got on the radio. “Sergeant. Are you still there?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve sent half my team to escort a couple hundred civvies to the Greene Street shelter. The freaks are still pressing us, sir. We’ve got three dead and another five seriously wounded. We’re falling back.”

Shit
. “Hawthorne, that is a negative. You have to hold. The primary threat is a Caucasian male teenager flying above…” He tried to work out where the boy was closest. “…Mayoral Street. Probable psychic. He’s targeting civilians.” He watched as another wave of strings came floating in. Behind them, the captured civilians floated slowly upwards, forming a loose sphere around the boy. Damn it. How the hell were they supposed to mount an attack on the kid with civilians in the way? “Hawthorne, do you have a visual?”

There was a pause. “Sir, it’s too hot on the surface. Beech just got frozen solid by some sort of ice beam, sir. We’re moving underground.”

“No, dammit! You can’t mount a defence from there. We need every man trying to put this kid down.”

The pause was even longer this time. Then the radio cut out. The son of a bitch had switched off his radio.
He switched off his fucking radio!
Wallace slammed the handset down hard enough to break the cradle. He was going to tear that insolent boy a new arsehole when this was over.

He gripped the steering wheel in both hands, trying to force himself to be calm. He needed a plan. He needed weapons. And he needed men.

Static hissed from the radio again. Had Hawthorne come to his senses? Wallace snatched up the handpiece again and depressed the button, but the static remained. What the hell?

A voice boomed through the speakers. “People of Neo-Auckland. I’m sure you know who this is by now. And I’m sure that deep down you always knew this would happen.”

Wallace ground his teeth together hard enough to make his jaw ache. Morgan Shepherd. This was supposed to be a secure frequency. The fucker must be broadcasting across every band.

Quanta’s voice continued. “One day you will understand why I’m doing this, if you survive tonight. Do you see the boy above your city, taking your loved ones away? He could have been the greatest hero the world had ever seen. But you didn’t want that, so I gave him a new purpose. There will be no negotiations. No ransom. If you don’t break us here, we will move onto another city, and another, and when this country is nothing but a burning ember we will start on the next.”

Quanta paused, and the screams of the city filled the gap. Damn this bastard. Damn the government for not giving Wallace the men he needed. Damn everything!

“I just have one question for you all,” Quanta said. Wallace could hear the smile in his voice. “Is there anyone out there who can stop us?”

The radio hissed once more, then went dead. Wallace switched it off before he was tempted to put a round through it.

He turned his attention back to the crowds scattering around him. More and more people were starting to rise into the air, fibres slipping into their ears or their noses. Others phased straight through the walls of apartment buildings, still in their pyjamas, and drifted slowly up towards the boy. On the street, some civilians were grabbing hold of ankles and trying to pull the hostages back down. He could taste the sweat and fear in the air.

Half a block down the street, a fibre dropped down and slipped into the nostril of a young Polynesian girl getting dragged along by her father. She stopped, the terror in her eyes fading, and jerked her hand free of her father’s grip. The man stopped, buffeted by the crowd, and yelled something at his daughter, gesturing frantically. She didn’t even glance at him as she turned away.

“Son of a bitch,” Wallace said. He squeezed out of the car and fought through the press of bodies. The air was stifling. Elbows jabbed at him as he shouldered his way onwards. For a brief, mad moment he considered firing his 9mm into the air just to clear himself some space, but that might turn this into a stampede.

He caught sight of the girl again a moment later, three feet above the ground. Her father was battling against the current as well, but he was too slow, too timid, and he wasn’t gaining ground. Wallace grunted and shoved past him, following the glimpses of black hair he got through the elbows and dresses and suitcases.

“C’mere,” he said as he got close enough to lay his hands on her shoulders. He could feel something pulling her upwards, but she made no move to fight him. Wallace elbowed aside a man and tugged on the girl, pulling her down.

The string looked like fishing line, but when he touched it, he could feel it quiver with soft fleshiness. It disappeared into the girl’s left nostril. He gave it a tug, but it was anchored on something. He didn’t want to think about what that something was. He’d seen these strings disappear straight through solid walls, so he might only get one chance at this. Holding the limp girl with his left arm, he pulled his multi-tool from his belt and used his teeth to open up the wire cutter.

This better not fucking kill her
, he told God. No response from Him. Typical. Wallace put the string between the blades and cut.

The fibre split with an electric buzz. The girl continued to dangle limply from his arms for a moment. He took her in both hands and shook. “Wake up.”

She gasped and blinked. Her muscles went tight, regaining their tone. She stared at him with horror in her wide eyes. Then she began to kick.

“What are you doing?” a man’s voice yelled. The girl’s father finally came stumbling through the crowd.

Wallace shoved the flailing girl into the man’s arms. “Police. Get her out of here, and don’t stop.”

A scream ripped through the night, louder than humanly possible. Wallace’s gaze snapped up to the figure of the boy hovering above the city. The multi-tool was slippery in his palm. The boy was facing towards him. Staring at him. Bugger. The boy had felt the fibre being cut.
That was reckless.

“Move!” he shouted at the crowd. A new wave of strings flew towards him. With his ears still ringing, he plunged through the crowd, moving perpendicular to the flow. A dozen strings snagged civilians around him, but he couldn’t stop to help. He pressed onwards, making for the shelter of an elevated monorail station.

The crowd thinned, allowing him to break into a run. The kid’s screams still echoed around the street, drowning out those of the civilians. He ran until he was breathless and his bad hip stabbed at him with every step. He was going towards the danger area, where Quanta’s metas were wreaking havoc, but as long as it was away from the boy, he didn’t care.

Finally, he pressed his hand against a brick wall in the shadow of a shoe-store’s awning. His moustache was drenched with sweat, and his breath came in short, sharp pants. How was he supposed to fight something like that? He didn’t have the men he used to, and the ones he did have were probably all cowering or running for their lives now. He could still hear a few scattered gunshots popping in the distance, but he couldn’t tell if they were friendly. How was he supposed to do his job?

The vigilante woman’s words came to his mind. He tried to force them away, but they clung to his brain and dug their claws in. No. This was still his city. He wouldn’t play that madman’s games. He wouldn’t.

The screams hammered against his skull. His city. His fucking city. And it’d be his to enjoy all on his own once everyone was dead.

“Son of a bitch.” He clenched his fists and started running again. This time, he ran south.

The main police headquarters wasn’t far, but his joints had nearly locked up by the time he got there. During the war he’d done a forced march all the way from the Sangro River to the Gustav Line, and now he couldn’t run two bloody miles.

Silhouettes moved in the windows of the police station. He stepped off the street through the main doors into a hive of panic. In the tiled entrance hall, uniformed officers desperately tried to fend off the attention of desperate civilians. Most of the officers were unarmed. He’d have to take the best men from here and get them some rifles from Met Div before there wasn’t a city left to defend. But first, there was something he needed to do.

No one challenged him as he shouldered his way through the officers and panicking civilians. Like Met Div headquarters, the basement was used for archives and evidence storage, but he knew this building had a sub-basement as well. The elevator didn’t go down that far, so he had to take the stairs, his hip aching with every step. He was panting again by the time he reached the bottom.

The thick black door at the bottom was locked. He pulled his keyring out of his pocket. Even though it’d been years since he’d used this particular key, he found it with ease. Grudgingly, he slid it into the lock and worked the rusted hinges.

The musk of a different age assaulted his nostrils. He flipped the light switch, but the bulb had probably given out years ago. He switched on his torch and crossed the room. As he swept the light around, he was greeted by the smiling faces of a hundred heroes. Their pictures adorned the walls, everyone from the big shots like Battle Jack to two-bit heroes like Weeping Willow. Away from the sunlight, their pictures were unfaded. His heart grew heavier as he looked on them, so he flicked the beam away. This was a stupid idea. This was what Quanta wanted. But as sick as it made him, he had no choice.

He stopped in front of a radio transmitter that covered the entire wall. Countless dials and switches glinted in the torchlight, dust coating the upper surfaces. There were no instructions and half the labels had peeled away or faded, but he still remembered. He was still good for that, at least.

The pendant that the vigilante left him was heavy in his pocket. He took it out and held it up to his torchlight. It looked like such an innocent thing. “Goddamn it.”

He placed the pendant into a recess in the machine and flicked a couple of switches. The machine reluctantly whirred to life. A panel lit up, and a needle jumped to attention. Static hissed through the speakers.

Damn it. How had it come to this? It was pointless anyway. Even if the transmitter worked, there was no reason to think any of the receivers still did. He’d be doing more good out on the street with a rifle in his hands and a supercriminal in his sights. He wouldn’t save the city, but maybe he could get a couple more people to safety. Maybe he could put a few of those bastards down.

He glanced once more at the pictures around the room and sighed. “Goddamn it.” He’d lost control of his city. There was no bloody choice. The chair creaked when he sat down. Sighing, he pulled the mouthpiece up to his face, covered his forehead with his palm, and depressed the button. The static went silent, and the faces on the walls waited.

“Calling all heroes, calling all heroes….”

29: Once More into the Night

There’s always something. No matter how much you want to rest, there’s always a death ray or a bank robbery or a tsunami or a doomsday machine. There’s always more people to save. So you run and you plan and you dive through the fire and sometimes you fight when you have to but mostly it’s running, always running. Always trying to outrun the next crisis, always trying to be faster because you weren’t fast enough the last time and if that little girl had just hung on a second longer you would’ve been there, but she couldn’t, and you weren’t, and now she’s dead, so you run, trying to beat destiny. And you’re tired, always tired, but you run anyway. Because you chose this life, and there’s nothing else you’d rather do than see the smiles of the ones you save.

—Memoirs of a Speedster

Neo-Auckland burned, and Niobe watched. She sat on the roof of the Starlight Hotel with her feet dangling over the edge, taking long drags from her cigarette. It kept trembling in her fingers; she’d nearly dropped it over the edge once already. A portable radio sat next to her, barking one horrible fragment of information after another. She’d nearly tossed it over the side when Quanta had his little speech. The fighting was still a few blocks from her, but it would come. Every few minutes, the night lit up with another blast from Quanta’s airship, and a new wave of screams rolled across the city.

With her goggles and the aid of the radio, she tracked the progress of the battle, looking for something—anything—that would allow her to get to Sam. Met Div and the police were in tiny units scattered across the city, being ambushed and picked off by Quanta’s metas. The radio said the AAU was sending in military support, but they’d be lucky if there was anyone left to rescue by the time they arrived.

Over there to the south, she saw Avin leading an aerial attack on a pair of rooftop snipers; and there, a fire-based meta sent a column of flame into a building, flushing out the Met Div officers who were then struck down by some bestial creature as soon as they reached the street. And all the while, Sam hovered above the city, snagging civilians and pulling them around him. He already had close to two hundred people forming a near-impenetrable meatshield. And she’d stood by and watched, because there wasn’t a bloody thing she could do.