Prepare to Die! (42 page)

“It’s over!” she laughed. “Eleventh Hour reigns supreme! Your lives are mine! Reaver was the last of his kind! The last to stand in my way! I applaud his efforts to save you, to preserve his own life, but in the end it was useless! Useless!”

The crowd was huddled together. Was hugging. Was trembling. I was healing. I could still be their hero. If Octagon would… only… keep… flapping her goddamn jaw, I could still go home to Adele.

Octagon yelled, “There are no heroes! There is no future!”

I could go home to Adele.

I could… go… home to Adele.

Would the cat ever grow to accept me? Would Wiggles ever be my friend?

I could go home to Adele.

Give me an opening, Octagon.

You’re the smartest person the world has ever known.

Just this once, be dumb enough to give me a chance.

Octagon yelled, “Steve Clarke! Reaver! It is time for you… to die!” She pulled a marble of some sort from within her black costume. Simply reached inside and drew it forth. I had a moment to see it (a black marble, an inch in diameter, devoid of any gleam or glare) and I was racing (I was moving so fast, the fastest I’ve ever moved, and it still wasn’t going to be enough) and then Octagon was dropping the marble at my feet. At our feet.

I was rearing back for a punch.

The world went black.

An utter void.

I could feel the quarry floor beneath my feet.

But couldn’t see it.

Couldn’t see my fist as it moved through empty air.

Couldn’t see anything.

But I heard Octagon.

She said, “Steve. It’s time for you to know my plans.”

***

When I was quite young my parents were very busy and they trusted me to fend for myself, meaning that I was allowed out of the house for as long as I wished. I often spent time with my friends, of course, and I was often getting into trouble, of course, but I was learning things, too. Like, how close to stand to a model rocket for the maximum mix of safety and hilarity. Or… which windows fostered the most educational view (meaning that of either of the Gorner twins, and also the corner window of 756 Beddell Street during the Grand October when Miss Isaacson was in town as a substitute teacher) and I also learned that a cigarette habit isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and that mouthing off to older kids isn’t always the wisest course of action. That was my youth. My youth was also filled with, whenever I needed solitude, going into the woods and pretending to be a survivalist.

I would stay overnight.

Deep in the woods. Wondering about the sounds. The woods have far different sounds at night.

And the woods, away from the city, away from the town, away from any houses, away from the highways, away from it all, deep within the woods… in these places the forest gave my youthful self a true glimpse of how dark a world can be.

A survivalist boy has plenty of time to learn the methods of moving down a deer trail when not even able to see so much as a hand held up in front of his face, and to wonder if the cost of getting himself beaten up again might not be worth it for another handjob, and to keep a sense of the self even though the woods are very large and very lurking and he is very small and very unable to see himself or anything at all including those things that are always, in everyone’s mind, prowling through the woods.

The woods were very dark.

I had thought it was complete darkness.

Until Octagon dropped that marble.

Until she was whispering in my ear, saying, “Let’s do this. Let’s save the world.”

***

I said, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

A voice, somewhere in the darkness, answered, “I think you’re smart enough to know my plans.
That’s
what I’m talking about.” It wasn’t Octagon’s voice. It was Apple’s. Technically there was no difference between the two. One was the other. Still…

… it was interesting.

“I can’t see for shit,” I told Apple.

“Wait a bit.”

“Wait… and then I’ll get used to it?”

“No. I’ve nullified light. You can’t get used to it.”

“Then what am I waiting for?” I was keeping her talking. Keeping the sound of her voice in front of me. If I could just draw her in… just get a hold on her, I could end the fight. Immediately.

“I had to make it look good, so I tossed you around pretty bad. Sorry about that. Anyway, you’re wounded now. You’re healing.”

“And?”

“I’ll give you some goggles in a bit. They change the, umm… I don’t mean to sound pompous, but you wouldn’t understand what they do.”

“That sounded pompous.”

“I know… but I didn’t mean that way. I guess… in simple terms, the goggles nullify the nullification.”

“Why not just turn the lights back on?” She was somewhere in front of me, but I kept moving forward, and the voice kept being the same distance away. Either she was moving backwards, or else I couldn’t trust my senses, or both. It was not at all nice to be in a situation where I was taking blind steps, and trying to find a woman who was always ten steps ahead.

“Because then everyone could see us, and we need some privacy, and I can’t give you the goggles yet because the glare of your healing would be way too strong, right now. So… heal a bit, and then you get the goggles.”

“You’re waiting for me to heal?”

“I know this is going to be hard to believe, Steve, but… I’m not your enemy.”

“Girls with vibrators usually aren’t. Usually, they’re amazing, but, you… you. I’d have to say you’re my enemy.” I could feel the crunch of the rocks beneath my feet. I had to believe that I was moving. I had to believe that I was moving forward. That I was closing in on Octagon.

“We don’t have all that much time,” Octagon said. It was important to remember she was Octagon. No matter what voice I was hearing… I was faced off against Octagon.

“Why don’t we have much time?”

Apple said, “Because right now Laura is wondering where I’m at. And right now Adele is worried sick that some asshole villain is killing the man she loves.”

I said, “Right now the man she loves is worried about that, too.” There was a crunch of rocks off to my left. Her voice was ahead of mine. I wasn’t sure which one to ignore. One of them was probably a trick. The other one was victory, and…

“Put these on,” Octagon said. Something was pressed into my hand. It startled me. I hadn’t known she was so close. I took a swing, a big punch, connected with nothing. Almost fell down.

“Look,” Octagon said. “Just… put on the goggles, okay?” She sounded five feet away, or maybe fifty, or maybe behind me. I was disoriented. I had nothing to lose. I put on the goggles.

And I could see. I was very nearly centered in the quarry. The green glow of my healing wounds was intense… far more intense than ever before. My wounds were already halfway closed, healing, fading. If I’d put on the goggles when I was healing at full bore… I’d have looked like the sun.

Laser Beast’s body was to my left. Past him, a ways, was a large boulder that was acting as a tombstone and an anti-memorial to Firehook. Up on the edges of the quarry were the townspeople of Greenway, staring down into the pit, obviously confused, squinting every which way, rubbing their eyes.

A bit to my right was a beautiful woman wearing nothing but a pair of panties as she slid out of a black body suit. There she was. My deadliest enemy. My nemesis.

Octagon.

Her panties had a rainbow and a leprechaun.

“Never tell Laura you saw me this way, okay?” she said. “It’s just… it seemed like we should talk as Apple and Steve… not Octagon and Reaver. Hold on, I’ve got a shirt in here, somewhere.” She was rifling through the interior of the discarded Octagon costume, searching within it. The costume had retained the shape of a man, one who had fallen onto his side. I lifted my goggles for a bit.

Blackness. Nothing but blackness.

When I put the goggles back in place, Apple was putting on a shirt. Her nipples had been as black as coal. I would never tell Laura of this. I would never tell Adele. It would have been like talking about a dream. Nobody ever wants to hear about dreams, no matter how strange they might be.

“Testing the goggles?” Apple said. “You can’t see without them.” She gestured to everyone who had circled the top of the quarry and added, “They’re blind to us, down here. To them, the entire quarry is nothing but a void. A blob of black. Darker than oil.”

She waited for me to say something. I pointed to the Octagon suit and asked, “How’s that damn thing work?”

“I built it from pocket universes. I mean, seriously… that much should be clear. That’s how I can reach in, anywhere. Infinite storage. Well, not infinite… but for all reasonable purposes, yes… infinite.”

“You built a costume using universes as a fabric?”

“That I did. And a dress, too. But I can’t wear it anywhere. Also a pair of panties, because it seemed like an interesting challenge. And, you know, fetish-y.”

“Your panties have infinite storage?”

“That… doesn’t sound right. Let’s talk about something else. There’s something I need to know. I need to know… Steve… do you trust me?”

I was supposed to answer.

I stayed quiet.

I mean… seriously, I wasn’t just talking to Apple, or Octagon, I was talking to Checkmate. The smartest person in the world.

She could figure it out.

She did. She nodded, sadly, and said, “Here’s the thing. I need you to trust me, so we’re going to do something now. I’m going to do something dumb.” She was exasperated with herself, I could tell. She was doing the walk of a person who can’t believe she’s doing what she’s doing.

She was walking closer to me.

She was walking within range.

And she kept walking.

And I nearly went for her.

But something held me back. Something kept me from doing anything. Something kept me from attacking the person I considered the world’s deadliest threat. I stayed motionless as she approached, motionless as she grasped my hand, motionless as she took a deep breath, and motionless as she wrapped my fingers around her neck.

Apple said, “If you have to, then do it. If you don’t have to, then listen to what I have to say.” My fingers were trembling around her neck. The words came out of her hard, struggling up past the clench of my hand. I had lifted her up, taken her feet from the ground. Her legs were kicking, a little, but her arms were at her sides. Her face had gone ashen. Her eyes, tinted red by her goggles, said that she wasn’t sure she knew what I was going to do. My fingers were tensing. Her neck was soft. There wasn’t the tingle of a force field. It was just a young woman’s throat. I had Octagon by the neck and her expression was one of confusion and fright. It was everything I’d fantasized about. It was the wet dream of a battle. My fingers can squish through steel. Flesh isn’t any obstacle… not at all. My fingers can crack stone. My fingers can be heroes, each and every one of them.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t do it. I knew that I could. There wasn’t anything of any morality holding me back. Nothing past the look on Laura Layton’s face when she had raced across the grocery store parking lot to find the woman who she loved, alive, in my arms. That wasn’t so long ago. I have a good memory and it wasn’t so very long ago. So it wasn’t morality that kept me from snapping Apple’s neck. It was love. Not my love. But… love still counts.

Besides that, I wanted to hear what she had to say.

I put her down on the quarry floor and took my hand from my neck.

“Next time you do that, you’re dead,” I told her.

“I feel half dead, now,” she said, rubbing her throat, coughing out the words. “Seriously, do you know what your fingers feel like?” I didn’t answer. I wasn’t the one who needed to do some talking. She nodded, accepting the role. Hell… she’d probably planned for it.

“The world needs heroes,” she told me. It wasn’t big news.

“That’s why I did what I just did. To give you a chance to be a hero. Now what I have to do is convince you that you made the right choice. That
not
snapping my neck was the heroic thing to do.” She was looking me in the eyes. Not at all flinching, even though I am Reaver. Lots of people can still look me in the eyes. But they flinch when they realize they’re not only talking to Steve Clarke, but to Reaver. People just have those flutters of anxious realization. Paladin’s the only one who never flinched. And Adele. And now Apple. And, I guess, Checkmate and Octagon.

“There’s something that I know you understand,” she said. “Heroes can’t always be heroic. Heroes don’t always get to play the good guy. Heroes sometimes have to do some very bad, very un-heroic things.”

“Are you going to claim you’re a hero?” My words came out harsh. Of course. She was Octagon. Paladin had been my friend. I know about heroes.

“You wouldn’t snap my neck… but you’re willing to bite my head off,” Apple said. She bent over, picked up a fossil, traced the outlines of an ancient branch with one finger. Part of the leaf was visible. She held it up to me. She tossed it aside.

“That’s the past,” she said. “What we need is a future. Moving to the future means making progress. Progress needs a plan… not just random chance. This moment is what I’ve been working for.”

“You’ve done some shit things,” I said. “All part of your plan, right?” To be honest, I was itching to get back to the combat. I was itching to prove I was a hero.

“Don’t get high and mighty with me, Reaver,” Apple snapped. She moved closer. Pressed her finger into my chest. Surprisingly, it hurt.

“You want to talk about Lake Tanganyika?” she said. “You killed everyone on those boats. Just killed them. You have any idea who they were? You have any idea what they’d done?”

“They were criminals who…”

“They were people. They were people who were a mix of outright scum, and partial scum, and people just caught up in the events. You didn’t ask for any report cards, did you? No you didn’t. You went in killing. Two of them were my operatives, gone undercover, trying to break down Bapoto’s raids from within.”

“I…”

“Shut up. One of my operatives dove into the water. You booted the other one in after him. Broke his spine with a kick. He had a daughter. He had a wife. Two wives, actually. They lived together. They’re alone, now.”