Action Figures - Issue Four: Cruel Summer

by Michael C Bailey

  Oh, right, when I brought Edison here for after-training noms. I’m reminded of this when we step up to the counter. The photo I took of Concorde and the girl working that day has been posted prominently above the order window. Someone (presumably the owner) has written across the bottom in magic marker THE BEST CLAMS IN THE WORLD! — CONCORDE. I can’t find it in myself to get upset on Edison’s behalf that someone’s forged his autograph.

  “Huh,” Dad says, examining the photo. “How about that?”

  “Yeah,” I say, “how about that.”

  My annoyance vanishes once Dad and I grab a table and start chowing down on a mountain of fried clams. It’s a perfect summer day. The sun blazes in a cloudless blue sky, sparkling off the water as boats putter in and out of the harbor. Seagulls spin in wide circles overhead, waiting patiently for one of our fellow diners to step away from his food to grab extra napkins or more tartar sauce. A man in a Black Dog T-shirt obliges, getting up to throw away some garbage. A seagull drops like a Kamikaze pilot, pouncing on his lobster roll and flying away with it before the poor diner even makes it to the trash can.

  “Tourists,” Dad chuckles.

  “I resemble that remark,” I say. “So do you, all tanned and whatnot. I thought all you did was burn.”

  “Oh, if you’d seen me three days ago,” Dad says, which explains everything. Being of hardy German stock, Dad burns rather than tans, but for a day or two after the sunburn fades he gets to sport a rich golden brown that looks quite good on him. Me, I’m Irish-German, which means my choices are pleasingly pale or, if I forget to bathe in sunscreen, fire engine red. I can’t even rock a decent recovery tan.

  The conversation never elevates above light chit-chat. Dad doesn’t ask me about Sara or Malcolm, and I suspect that’s because he knows these are touchy subjects and doesn’t want me to start crying in public. He’ll ask eventually.

  And by eventually I mean right after we get back home — his home, I mean, not mine. Not anymore. Except for some photos on the walls, all traces of my life here have long since been erased. My former room is now a guest room with bland, nondescript decorations and generic furniture. I throw my clothes haphazardly into a plain bureau and head downstairs, which is when Dad asks the most painful of all possible questions.

  “Your mother told me you’d broken up with Malcolm. What happened? I thought you two were doing great.”

  I sit next to Dad on the couch. “We were.”

  “So what happened?”

  Daddy, I have something to tell you. It’s not going to be easy for you to hear, but I’ve been lying to you about something, something about me, and I can’t do it anymore. I hope you’ll understand why I kept this a secret from you and from Mom, and accept that this is part of my life now. You know that super-hero Lightstorm? That’s me. I’m Lightstorm.

  I’ve rehearsed that speech in my head a hundred times, maybe a thousand, and I’ve come close to delivering it on as many occasions. I’ve always wussed out at the last minute. I’ve always had an excuse for not coming clean.

  You know what? It doesn’t matter anymore. That part of my life is over. I’m a plain old ordinary everyday girl with no secrets to protect.

  ...and yet I still have to roll out a little white lie because I don’t have a plain old ordinary everyday answer. “It’s complicated.”

  “Was he treating you well?” Dad says with a predictable note of paternal over-protectiveness. He’s old-school like that. If I said no, I’d have to stop him from grabbing the nearest heavy blunt object and driving to Kingsport to work Malcolm over like he was a mob informant.

  “He treated me fine. He was great.”

  He asks again, “So what happened?”

  Marginally truthy lie number two, coming up. “I realized we weren’t going to last past high school and didn’t want to waste my time on a doomed relationship.”

  “Oh, honey, that’s not true,” Dad says. “Your mother and I lasted past high school.”

  Yeah, because you knocked Mom up with me, I almost blurt out.

  “Daddy, I know you’re trying to help, but I need to get out of my own head for a while,” I say. “I don’t want to talk about Malcolm or Sara or anything. I want to spend time with you and be happy.”

  “All right. No more serious talk,” he says, getting up from the couch and wandering over to a bookshelf loaded with DVDs and Blu-rays. He grabs two and holds them up. “Goldfinger or Casino Royale?”

  Ooh, Daniel Craig in that bathing suit...

  “Casino Royale, please.”

  I throw some popcorn in the microwave while Dad fires up the Blu-ray player, and we settle in for a night of movies and snacking and willful denial.

  It’s wonderful. Nothing could make me leave this couch.

  THIRTY

  ...Although, had we watched TV last night instead of movies, something might have tempted me to leave the couch at supersonic speed.

  I wake up late the next morning, as is my Sunday habit, and come downstairs to find Dad enthralled by the morning news. I ask him what’s so interesting.

  “Go get some coffee,” he says, “it’ll come up again in a few minutes.”

  Coffee in hand, I return to the living room and sit next to Dad as the one of the Boston news stations blasts its dynamic intro music, signaling the start of its eight-thirty broadcast — and today’s lead story is a jaw-dropper.

  “Several members of the New England super-hero community are out of action following a violent confrontation last night with Doctor Skyfall, one of forty-one superhumans who escaped weeks ago from Byrne Penitentiary,” the Ken doll of an anchor says with a little too much excitement for my liking.

  He tosses over to a reporter reporting live from somewhere in Nashua, New Hampshire, “a quiet community that quickly turned into a war zone” after an anonymous tipster reported sighting Doctor Skyfall, a super-villain I know only by reputation, and vaguely at that. He’s a ridiculously powerful would-be world conqueror who’s been sitting in Byrne for three, four years or so thanks to a protracted legal process. Matt told me during one of his super-hero geek-a-thons it took a full court super-hero press to take him down the first time, and it looks like Nashua hosted a repeat performance: it took the Protectorate, the Quantums, and every hero in New England — every hero except the Squad — to subdue Doctor Skyfall.

  “Mindforce of the Protectorate held a briefing last night after Doctor Skyfall was taken into custody,” the field reporter says. “He reported no casualties among the super-heroes who responded to the scene but declined to comment further. However, a source close to the operation, who spoke with us on the condition of anonymity, said there were numerous injuries, including among several of the region’s heavy hitters such as Concorde, Rockjaw Quantum, and TranzSister.”

  That tidbit causes my blood to run cold. I calmly excuse myself and slip back up to my room to check my phone. Edison, no doubt expecting me to change my mind about retiring as per his smug prediction, never removed me from the New England HeroNet, which means I’m still getting alerts and e-mails. The most recent notification sports the header NEHN ROSTER UPDATE. I open the e-mail.

  Oh, crap.

  The list of super-heroes considered still on full active duty is eight names long, eight names out of approximately forty super-heroes on the HeroNet. The first name on that list is Captain Trenchcoat. Meanwhile, Mindforce, Nina Nitro, the Entity, Megawatt and Kilowatt Quantum, and several others are listed as “injured reserve,” which means they’re not fit for duty unless things are truly desperate and there’s no other choice than to call them in. The rest of the names, about half the total roster, are on the so-called red list. They’re out of action for the foreseeable future.

  Point of interest: my name doesn’t appear anywhere on the roster.

  No, that’s good. It’s great. Just the way I want it.

  That’s what I would be saying if I didn’t feel so guilty about all the people who wound up in the hospital. These peop
le are my friends. If I’d been there, maybe I would have made a difference. Maybe so many people wouldn’t have been hurt.

  Or maybe I’m totally full of myself and should turn the ego down a notch or two. Like I’m so special I could swing the tide of battle against someone like Doctor Skyfall.

  (Says the girl who helped capture the King of Pain.)

  Shut up, brain. Whose side are you on?

  The doorbell rings as I come back downstairs. “I got it,” I say, and I open the door to find a well-dressed African-American woman standing there. She looks somehow familiar.

  “Hello,” she says, raising an eyebrow at me.

  “Hello,” I say, unintentionally mirroring her expression.

  “Oh, jeez, Tonia,” Dad says, scrambling to his feet. Tonia? “I’m so sorry, I completely forgot — oh, um, you remember my daughter Carrie.”

  Tonia’s eyes widen. “This is Carrie? Oh my God, look at you!”

  “Wait...Tonia Maples?” I say, my caffeine-deprived brain finally kicking into gear. She’s a good twenty, twenty-five pounds lighter than when I last saw her, and has a different (and much more flattering) hairstyle, but this is definitely —

  “Tonia Bishop now. Brian, you didn’t tell me Carrie was visiting,” she says.

  “It was a last-minute thing,” Dad says to Tonia. “We had plans to grab breakfast today,” he explains to me.

  “Brian, we can reschedule,” Tonia says, “I don’t want to intrude on —”

  “No no,” I say, “if you two had plans —”

  “Gah, what a mess,” Dad says.

  “You know, we could all go out to breakfast together,” I suggest. “Crazy idea, I know...”

  “You wouldn’t mind?”

  “I’m cool with it.”

  “I think it’d be lovely,” Tonia says.

  “All right. Well, come on in, have a seat while we go make ourselves presentable,” Dad says, gesturing at our eerily matching ensembles of rumpled T-shirts and plaid pajama pants.

  Sometimes we take the “like father, like daughter” thing a little too far.

  Tonia offers to take us to breakfast, so we don’t have to all cram into the cab of Dad’s pick-up truck. We drive to a restaurant on Main Street that Dad, Mom, and I used to go to for breakfast on weekends. The nostalgia stings a little.

  The hostess leads us to a booth near the back. Dad excuses himself to visit the little boy’s room, leaving us ladies to get acquainted (or, more accurately, reacquainted).

  Tonia shakes her head at me. “I cannot get over how much you’ve changed. Last time I saw you —”

  “I was an obnoxious brat who wore too much make-up and too little skirt,” I say.

  “I was going to say you were shorter.”

  “That too. I’m not the only one who’s changed a lot.”

  “After my divorce went through I thought it would be a good time to reboot my life, so I started eating better and working out, got a makeover...I even quit the architectural firm I’d been working for and started my own.”

  “Yeah? Good for you.”

  “It was scary, let me tell you. Starting over is not easy.”

  “I hear that.” Boy, do I hear that.

  “I was grateful to have your father to talk to. He helped me keep my head together throughout the divorce, and after I started my business he threw some work my way, recommended me to some friends...he was great,” Tonia says, a big, warm smile appearing.

  Aha. Suspicions confirmed. Great, then I can skip over my planned list of inane small-talk topics and get right to the main event.

  “So. Are you and my dad a thing or what?”

  Tonia stammers and laughs nervously, my question catching her totally off-guard. “You don’t fool around, do you?”

  “Nope,” I say, smiling to put her at ease. I don’t want her to feel like she’s being interrogated (even though that’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m shameless).

  “I don’t know what we are. We talk every day, we go out for drinks after work a few times a week, I feel like there’s something there, but...” Tonia shrugs. “It’s complicated.”

  I love it when adults say that about their relationships. When they say something is complicated, what they really mean is it’s actually very simple, but they’ve chosen to make up reasons why it isn’t.

  Dad returns, sits down, and we proceed to have a lovely breakfast, the three of us, eating and drinking coffee and chatting away, though the conversation is limited to dull, non-controversial topics (such as Dad and Tonia’s obvious affections for one another and my...well, everything). Tonia and I casually grill each other with offhand inquiries masquerading as getting-to-know-you chit-chat. She doesn’t say anything that sets off any alarms, and I realize at one point I’m not experiencing the same knee-jerk resentment I felt when I found out Mom and Ben were an item. I wonder if I’ve grown used to the idea of my parents moving on, or if I’m really so prejudiced toward my father that, even if he’d been the first to find someone new, I’d have been totally cool with it.

  Tonia drives us back home after breakfast and exchanges a kiss with my father that isn’t quite as chaste as either of them thinks it is.

  “So,” I say as we enter the house, “are you and Tonia a thing or what?”

  “What? Tonia? No,” Dad says unconvincingly. “We’re not a thing.”

  “Why not? She clearly likes you.”

  “We’re friends.”

  “I think she wants to be more than friends. You should ask her out.”

  “Aren’t you the happy little matchmaker?” Dad says with a laugh. The comment takes all the wind out of my sails. The last time I tried to pair up two people I was convinced should be together, one of them turned out to be a lesbian.

  Rrgh. Pity party imminent. Evasive maneuvers.

  “What would you like to do today?” I say.

  “It’s summertime on Cape Cod,” Dad says. “What would you like to do?”

  “Provincetown. Commercial Street. The Pilgrim Monument. The Wellfleet Drive-In after dinner.”

  Dad smiles. “Let’s get going.”

  Sunday was Provincetown. Yesterday Dad exercised executive privilege and took the day off. We took a day trip to Plymouth, where we played tourist by visiting Plymouth Rock (not as impressive as you’d expect; it’s a rock), the Mayflower II (very cool), and Plimoth Plantation (surprisingly fun for an educational attraction).

  Today I’m left to my own devices. Owner of the company or not, Dad can play hooky only so much, especially when the construction season is in full swing. He takes off after breakfast, leaving me to wonder what I’m going to do with myself for the day. I turn on the TV to keep me distracted while I poke around online, hoping to find something to keep me busy. I do not want to waste my morning hanging out at the mall or sitting in a movie theater. Maybe I’ll just go to the beach, like any other self-respecting tourist...

  “...known as Doctor Skyfall is expected here at Worcester District Court any minute now.”

  That catches my attention. A reporter stands outside the front of the courthouse. I know the place well considering I’ve been there only once, as part of a security detail escorting Archimedes to what was supposed to be his trial. An attempted jailbreak screwed that plan up. Man, if Archimedes warranted both the Protectorate and the Hero Squad, I can’t imagine what kind of security escort someone as hardcore as Doctor Skyfall has.

  The answer is none — at least none of the superhuman variety. The camera swings around as a caravan of police cruisers and motorcycles eases around a distant corner, schooling around three Byrne heavy prisoner transport vehicles. I know this tactic. Doctor Skyfall is in one of the transports. The other two are decoys. If anyone has any designs on breaking Skyfall out, they’d have to guess which transport he’s in and hope that their one clean shot hits the right vehicle because, after that, every cop in the convoy is going to open up and provide cover while the transports book it into the relative safety of the co
urthouse garage.

  In other words, this is plan B. Plan A isn’t viable because most of the heroes who would normally serve as a security escort are out of commission. That also means there’s no one to back up the cops if something goes sideways.

  If? I should have said when.

  The explosion knocks the reporter and his cameraman to the ground. The cameraman, idiot that he is, quickly recovers his equipment and stays out in the open to catch the mayhem as it unfolds. The middle transport belches fire from its engine compartment. Police leap out of their cruisers and duck behind them for cover, but they’re poor protection against their attacker — who I recognize, even though he’s off-screen. I’d know those energy blasts anywhere. I’ve seen them before. I’ve felt them. Time hasn’t dulled the memory of the pain one bit, and getting zapped was still not the worst thing that monster did to me.

  Manticore.

  The police open fire, popping up to squeeze off as many shots as possible before they’re driven down again by a return volley. It’s like Whack-a-Mole filtered through a Michael Bay movie. It’s only a matter of time before every man and woman on the ground is slaughtered. Whatever he wants, Manticore isn’t going to stop until he gets it, even if he has to massacre every person standing in his way. He’ll do it, too. He’ll murder those police officers without hesitation.

  Unless...

  I almost fall on my face twice scrambling upstairs. I pull my headset out of my backpack, jam it on my face, and by the time I hit the rear deck, the system has booted up and has already plotted out my course to the courthouse.

  Approximately one-hundred twenty miles to Worcester. Once I’m in the sky, I punch it, breaking the sound barrier and cranking it up to mach two in the time it takes me to blink. Not fast enough. Mach three. Mach four. I go hypersonic.

  I come in hot, dropping out of hypersonic flight at the last possible second in order to get a clean shot off. I slam on the proverbial brakes a hundred feet above Manticore, who hovers over the street, spraying energy from that mechanical scorpion tail of his, his bat-like wings spread wide.