How To Succeed in Evil (35 page)

Excelsior turns his head to hide his expression. The last thing he wants is Edwin gloating over his shame.

“There is no shame in defeat,” says Edwin, “There is only shame in avoidable defeat — in, to be perfectly honest, stupidity.”

Excelsior whips his head back and forth. “Your ass is mine Windsor. I’ll come for you. Nothing on earth is going to stop me from getting you.”

“You’re really not much of hero are you?”

Excelsior struggles some more. Sweat breaks out on his face. He yells at the top of his lungs. When he catches his breath he says, “I used to be.”

Edwin has another sip of tea. He tries to imagine what Excelsior would be like if he were really a hero. It is not easy. “You were never a hero. You just thought you were.”

“Great,”says Excelsior, “Now you are going to lecture me?”

“No.” says Edwin. “I came to offer you a choice.” He triggers a walkie-talkie and says “Go.” There is a slithering noise as a hose leading into the middle of the room swells and belches wet concrete onto the floor.

“What are you doing?”

“I am building a monument to your last battle.”

“You what?”

“Right up there,” Edwin says, pointing to the surface, “will be your memorial. A large bronze statue, with the legend, ‘Upward, ever upward.’“

“Why are you doing this?” asks Excelsior, eyeing the concrete as it oozes closer and closer.

“So no one will ever forget your sacrifice. I don’t see why you are so upset. This is your chance to die as a hero.”

“Is this because I destroyed your office?”

“No.”

“This isn’t fair. This ISN”T FAIR!” Excelsior pounds his head against the floor.

“Fair?” Edwin laughs. The concrete oozes across the floor. It has almost reached Excelsior’s face. “Fair has nothing to do with it. There is only what I can do, and what I will do.”

“Okay Windsor, what do you want?”

“You don’t have anything I want. You don’t seem to have anything at all.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

“I told you, I am here to offer you a choice. I can free you,” Edwin says, holding up the vial of reactant —

“Free me. Go ahead, that’s my choice!”

“Calm down. You haven’t heard the other option.”

“Are you insane?”

“I don’t think so. I think I am perfectly rational. I can free you, or I will generously agree to bury you in concrete.”

“What’s generous about that?”

“Well, I am doing all of this at my own expense.”

“That’s no choice, let me out of this thing,” Excelsior says as the concrete reaches the tip of his chin.

“I think burial is the way you want to go with this one. That is, if you’re serious about being a hero.” Edwin activates the video projector. Motes of dust dance in the beam and an image forms on the far wall.

On the wall Excelsior sees a picture of a candlelight vigil held in front of a memorial wall decorated with hundred of flowers.

“They’re holding a vigil for me? Because I’m gone?” Excelsior asks hopefully.

“No. It is not for you. Look closer.” Edwin advances to a picture of a young girl. “This is Stephanie Mills, 25. She worked in an office below mine. She and seventeen of her co-workers fell to their death when you knocked part of the top off Windsor Tower.”

Next, Edwin shows him a picture of a man with a plain, honest face. Now the projector shows that this picture is tacked to the memorial wall. Next to it the words, ‘Daddy, we miss you’ are written in crayon. “Thomas Sarah, bank clerk, father of three daughters. He is one of the people who was killed when Stephanie and her co-workers landed.”

“I didn’t kill them, I was fighting Lifto.” Even as Excelsior says it, it rings false in his ears. He has the feeling again. The feeling that everything is going wrong. The feeling of a plane falling apart in his fingers.

“You chose to fight Lifto in the city,” says Edwin. “You could have apprehended him at another place. Another time. You could have let the police do it.”

“None of the police are strong enough.”

“Not by themselves, but they could have maintained a cordon. Perhaps I could have talked him into surrendering.”

“But I had to save them. Save the people from villains like the Lifto and the Cromoglodon.”

“But you didn’t,” says Edwin, clicking relentlessly through pictures of the departed and the ones they left behind. A young girl, no more than three, but seeming ancient as she stands next to an open grave. 

And next,  an arm protruding from rubble. Cars, still on fire in the first light of dawn. The eerily peaceful face of a dead woman on a mortuary table. “Don’t you see, you killed all of them.”

“Hey, everybody makes mistakes,” Excelsior scrambles to think of that phrase that Gus always used, “Sometimes you gotta break a few eggs. Right? That’s no reason to do this.”

“I am trying to help you. I’m giving you a chance to be a hero. For the first time in your life.”

“What do you mean. I am THE hero!”

“Ah, the hero. Heroic in every way. Always doing what is best and right and true. Is that what you are?”

“Turn the concrete off and we can talk about it,” Excelsior says. The grey slush surrounds his body. It is heavy and cold. Excelsior starts to shiver.

“But I can’t turn the concrete off. No one can. There has to be a continuous pour or else it won’t set up correctly. There are concrete trucks lined up for a mile for you. So let us speak quickly. Do you always do what’s right?”

“Yeah, sure. I mean I make mistakes but pretty much, yeah.”

“But you don’t choose Excelsior. You don’t make mistakes. Other people tell you what to do and you make their mistakes. You only do what you are told. Don’t you?”

“Yeah that’s right, I was just doing what I was told,” Excelsior says, eager to pass the blame. Eager to say anything that will get him out of this horrible situation.

”You are not describing a hero, Excelsior. You are describing a puppet.”

“I’m nobody’s puppet. And I’m sick of hearing that. This is sick. This is wrong. That’s why you’re the villain. And I’m the hero. Can’t you see that?”

“No, I can’t.” Edwin activates the next slide. It is a picture of a beautiful village in Africa. Children play. Bright fabrics dry in the sun. The people of the village stand tall and proud. ”Uganda,” Edwin says. He advances to the next slide. It is the same village, now utterly destroyed. The huts are burnt. The body of a child lies bloating in the sun.

“Hey, I didn’t have anything to do with that. I’ve never even been to Uganda. I’ve never even heard of it.”

“That is my point. You’ve never been there. Hundreds of thousands of people die in a terrible genocide. And the mighty Excelsior does nothing.”

“But I didn’t know! They didn’t tell me!”

“But they could have. You know a man who was serious about doing good — a hero — would have found out. He would have asked. Might have wondered what more good he could have done. But you did not. What of the typhoon that just ravaged Hong Kong? You saved Miami, why not Hong Kong?”

“Hey I can’t be everywhere. I can’t save everybody.”

“Ah, you were busy. Bigger crisis on the other line. And what was that crisis? What was so important that it kept you from saving several hundred lives and averting billions of dollars of property damage?” Edwin reveals the next image. It is Excelsior crushing Telstar 9. “Ah, yes, here you are destroying a perfectly good communications satellite, while accosting the one client I have who I am certain has never committed a crime.”

“What? Why didn’t they tell me?” In his confusion, Excelsior stops thinking about himself for the first time in a long time.

“They didn’t tell you because they didn’t care. You have given your power over to men with no conscience.”

“This is wrong. It’s all wrong. I never wanted…”

“I know. That’s why I’m giving you a chance to make it right.”

The wreckage of Singapore Airlines Flight 209 fills the wall. On the side of the fuselage he can clearly see the indentation of his hand within the scarred and twisted metal.

“To make it right,” Edwin says again.

Excelsior huffs through his nostrils like a wounded animal. Slow ripples move through the concrete. His tears feel hot on his face. He’s tired, so tired. Tired of losing. Tired of doing the wrong thing. Tired of feeling like this. His neck muscles are sore from holding his head above the rising concrete.

“You want to be a hero. But you have become the villain.”

“No,” says Excelsior.

“Sooner or later, the world will figure it out. And then you will go from being loved to being reviled.”

“No, it’s not true,” Excelsior says, trying to convince himself. “You killed Gus.”

“Yes, and now you are all alone. Who do you have to live for?”

“But you’re a bad man, a murderer,” Excelsior says, clinging to the last rung of the ladder.

“So are you. You’ve killed thousands. I killed one man. One man had to die to give you a chance to save the world from yourself.”

“This is wrong.” Excelsior protests. He knows it’s wrong. But the feeling is still with him. Windsor is a bad man, but is it possible that Excelsior is somehow worse?

“If I let you go, more innocent people are going to die. Do you want more innocent people to die?”

“No. It’s not my fault.” Excelsior tries to say this with conviction, but fails. It rings false even in his ears.

“You are right. It is not your fault. You are who you are. No one man should have so much power.”

“But I can do good. I’ve done good!” Has he really? Excelsior can only think of one of two times when it was good. Really good. The pure win he craved so much. The other times…

“You’ve tried. But every time you have saved someone, you’ve made the rest of us weaker. You’ve made heroism of ordinary people seem insignificant.”

“But I didn’t mean to,” but he has seen it over the years. Once people had been surprised and grateful when he had shown up. Then they came to expect it. To feel that they were owed. That’s why there was a team of people to cover it up when he failed.

“But you did. And if you leave this room, you will continue to do more harm. Someone else will mislead you, or misuse you. More innocents will die. Don’t you see? You are the only person who is strong enough to defeat you. You are the only person who can save the world from yourself.”

Is it true? Could it be true?

“Are you hero enough to fall on your own sword? Do you have the courage it will take to die with honor.” Edwin doesn’t like the word ‘honor’. Honor is the revered lie that allows a shrewd man to trick a simple man into dying for his cause. Honor is the myth that allows men to kill those they’ve never met, for a wrong they have never experienced. What passes for ‘honor’ in the modern world leaves a bad taste in Edwin’s mouth. Edwin watches Excelsior closely to discover how well the modern myth of honor is holding up.

For a time, both men are silent. Excelsior blinks several times in a slow rhythm of realization. Edwin feels sweat on his palms. Is this it? Has he done it?

Excelsior blows the concrete away from the corner of his mouth and says, “You’re right Windsor. Leave me here. Better I should die a hero.” He allows his head to settle down into the concrete.

Edwin rises and buttons his suit jacket. Excelsior’s lets the muscles in his neck go slack. Now his face is completely buried in the concrete. Only the side of his head and his ear are visible. Edwin bends down to the ear and whispers. “This is not revenge. This is not a perfect remedy. This is not a perfect world.” Edwin watches as the concrete rises above the level of Excelsior’s ear. He watches Excelsior shiver as the cold, grey ooze floods into his ear canal.

Edwin thinks that this is all fitting and proper. Extinction for the whole breed. He turns and leaves Excelsior to his tomb.

When Edwin emerges from the tunnel, he shields his eyes against the harsh work lights. He walks down the long line of concrete trucks. He passes truck after truck, unable to describe what he feels. His stride lengthens. There is much work to be done. Tonight Edwin will rest. Tomorrow, he will begin in earnest.

Chapter Sixty 

The Man in Room Three

The duty nurse’s station. Terminal ward. This is where the people with money come to die. And nothing attracts friends and family to a hospital like a sick relative with money. Most of the time this disgusts Nurse Kim. All that fighting and scrabbling. But that’s the odd thing about the man in room number three. He’s got the finest treatment that money can buy. But no family has ever come to visit him. He’s listed as John Doe. How does John Doe get such good insurance coverage?

Nurse Kim doesn’t know why visitors would come here. It’s not like it matters. There’s a saying that floats around hospital wards that goes like this: don’t screw up so bad that you kill a dead person. And that describes everybody in this ward, dead, but kept alive through the miracle of medical science.

It’s not like the gentleman in room three was breathing for himself or pumping his blood on his own. Even his assisted vitals were crappy. So when Kim finishes her round she doesn’t give him another thought.

Then the alarm goes off. The gentleman in room number three is crashing. She calls a code and goes to save him. She hurries, but she doesn’t run. There’s no point. The monitor has told her that the man’s heart has stopped, so they’ll have to d-fib him anyway. Most of the patients here are vegetables, so there’s no harm in a little extra brain death. It’s not like he had really been alive anyway. Unplug the machines and he’s gone. In fact, the most likely explanation for all of this is that one of the machines failed.

But when Kim reaches the doorway, she stops dead in her tracks. The dead man in room number three is sitting up in his bed. He’s pulling the last of his ventilation tube free. He looks at Kim and spits a little blood and phlegm on the floor.

“Where is he?” the man asks.

“Who?” says Kim, because she can’t think of anything else to say to a man risen from the dead.

“Excelsior.”

“You mean the hero? He’s dead. They had a funeral and everything. The president was there.”

“Bullshit. Was there a body?”