Crawling From the Wreckage

by Michael C Bailey

  “And that’s my fault? I’m doing my best here, Dennis! I’m trying to do right by you!”

  “By making decisions for me?”

  “By stopping you from doing something incredibly stupid — again! First it was Manticore, now it’s Typhon and his goons — Jesus Christ, Dennis, do you want to die?”

  “Maybe I deserve to be dead!”

  Dennis echoes my horrified gasp. Before I can stammer out a coherent word, he terminates the call.

  “Oh, God,” I pant, my head spinning. I’m shaking. I can’t breathe. I want to throw up.

  Mom and Sara burst into my room. “Carrie?” Sara says. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “That wasn’t nothing. We heard you all the way downstairs,” Mom says.

  “I’m fine.” Sara breathes an exasperated sigh. “What?”

  “Carrie, how long are you going to keep telling us you’re fine?” she says. “You’re not fine and you know it. I know it. Christina knows it. Everyone knows you’re not okay and you need to stop lying to us — and to yourself.”

  “Oh, really? I need to stop lying? Funny, you don’t seem to have a problem with me lying to Mom about you and Meg screwing around in the house.”

  “Carrie!”

  Mom turns bright red. “You’re what?” she says, glowering at Sara. “Dammit, Sara, you promised me you and Meg would keep that out of my house! How could you do that to me?”

  I snort. “Easily, since you’re so busy whoring around,” I mutter, which turns Mom’s deathgaze on me.

  “Excuse me?” It comes out in a strangled hiss. “What did you say?”

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Sara says.

  “Why don’t you tell me, Dr. Danvers? All you’ve done since I got back is analyze every little thing I say and do, you must have me all figured out by now. Hell, you’ve practically been me for the last eight months! You know what?” I grab my headset off my desk and barrel past Sara and Mom. “You want to be her daughter? Job’s yours. Have fun.”

  Mom and Sara chase me down the stairs, calling my name. I stick my headset on and, once I’m outside, throw myself into the air, out of range of their shouts — out of sight and out of mind.

  And yet, no matter how high I climb, no matter how fast I go, no matter how hard I push myself, it’s not enough to extinguish the raging blaze in my chest threatening to reduce my heart to a dead cinder.

  Somewhere over western Massachusetts, a call to my phone relays to my headset. I almost ignore it without checking the number, assuming it’s Mom or Sara calling to chew me out, but it’s Dennis’s number. Now what?

  “Dennis, this really is not a good time,” I say, but the man who replies definitely is not Dennis.

  “Uh, hello?” the caller says. He’s older and speaks with a slight accent I can’t quite place.

  “Who is this?”

  “This is Dennis’s father. I’m sorry to bother you, but do you know where Dennis is?”

  “Where —? Uh, no, but I was talking to him a little while ago.”

  “Did he say anything? He ran out of the house a few minutes ago and he seemed very upset. He took his car but he left his phone behind. This was the last number he called. Did he say anything to you? He’s been in such a state since his friends — after what happened to his friends. I’m worried about him. Do you know where he is?”

  I change course and head north, to New Hampshire.

  “I think I do,” I say.

  ***

  Called it. I find Dennis in the Skyblazer suit, sitting atop the Notre Dame Bridge and gazing out onto the city. He doesn’t acknowledge me as I touch down.

  “Your father called me,” I say. “He’s worried about you.”

  “I’m fine,” he says.

  The universe has a cruel sense of humor.

  I sit next to him. Sunset is a good hour away, but the summertime blue sky is already fading at the edges, easing into a deep purple. There isn’t a cloud in sight in any direction. It’s going to be a beautiful night.

  “You’re not fine,” I say. “You’re hurting. You’re hurting more deeply than you’ve ever hurt in your life. You’re distraught, you’re angry, you’re frustrated...”

  Through clenched teeth, Dennis says, “You don’t know what I’m feeling.”

  “No, Dennis, I do. I know exactly what you’re going through.”

  “You don’t know what I’m going through!” he screams. “You don’t know anything about what I’m going through! My friends are dead! Your friends are all still alive! So how do you know what I’m feeling? Who did you ever lose? Huh?!”

  “You have no idea who I’ve lost. You have no idea,” I say, fighting to keep my temper in check, but it’s a losing battle. “I’ve lost so many people I cared about. And you know what? I actually saw them die. I didn’t come in at the end after it was all done, I was right there!” I wail as a dam that’s been on the verge of bursting for days, for weeks finally lets go. “I can’t close my eyes without seeing them die all over again! I can’t get it out of my head and it’s eating me alive! I can’t sleep and I barely eat and I’m always so angry! Everything in the world pisses me off! I hate food because it tastes wrong and I hate my bed and my clothes because they feel wrong and I barely recognize my friends or my family and no one needs me anymore! It’s like — it’s like...”

  I throw my hands up. I don’t know what it’s like. I don’t have the words.

  Dennis, however, does. “Like you don’t belong in your own life.”

  That one little sentence shocks me into silence; I try to respond, but I can’t.

  “That’s how Kyle felt after he got back from the Middle East,” Dennis says. “When he left, I was a little kid and Dad was still married to our mom. He comes back and I’m grown, Dad and Mom are both married to other people, most of his friends from high school have gone away and the ones who stuck around have completely changed — and it pissed him off so much that we had the audacity to keep living our lives. On top of that he was always complaining about how food tasted off, his clothes felt weird, his bed was uncomfortable...nothing felt normal anymore.”

  “All he wanted was to go back to the life he left behind,” I say, “but it wasn’t there anymore.”

  “No,” Dennis sighs, “and Kyle never gave himself a fair chance to get used to the world all over again. I think that’s why he wound up joining Gladrock.”

  “It felt familiar,” I say, thinking about my secret jaunts back to Kyros Prime just so I could sleep in a comfy bed.

  “Yeah.” Dennis smiles humorlessly. “I guess I know what you’re going through too.”

  “Great. Matching his-and-hers neuroses.”

  “What do we do about it?”

  “We stop lying to ourselves. We stop pretending that we’re okay, because we’re not. We’re both messes and we need to admit that. We need to get help.”

  “You want help?” someone says. The voice is tinny and squelchy, as if it’s coming through a bullhorn.

  I jump up, my hands flaring, as the source of the question descends into view, the thruster jets on the back of his armor roaring. He settles in front of us in an unsteady hover, the setting sun gleaming off the faux-steel plating of his bulky battlesuit.

  “Let me make you an offer,” Steampunk Leviathan says.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  We follow Steampunk Leviathan to the roof of a nearby mill undergoing renovations. Thanks to Matt’s briefing, I recognize three of the people waiting for us. The woman dressed in black fatigues and cradling an assault rifle is Jane Grimm, the man in the brown bomber jacket is Critical, and the woman in the red-and-green unitard is La Rabia. I don’t remember the African-American man with the skull facepaint or the guy in brown and tan military fatigues, but there’s no question who they all are.

  Hello, Vendetta.

  “Lightstorm. This is an unexpected surprise,” the sepia-toned soldier guy says as we touch down. He extends a hand
in friendship. “Faultline. It’s an honor to meet you.”

  I turn off my aura and shake his hand, but I don’t return the smile. “No offense, but aren’t you supposed to be dead?” I say.

  “I believe you’re thinking of my father, the original Faultline,” he says, and a piece of a puzzle I wasn’t aware I was assembling falls into place, though I can’t quite see the picture forming. I let Faultline make his introductions. He identifies the African-American man as Wyte Zombi, and my mental puzzle fills in another hole.

  “What can we help you with?” I say casually. I throw a quick glance over my shoulder to let Jane Grimm know I see her circling around behind me.

  “You have it backwards; we want to help you.” He turns to Skyblazer. “We heard about what happened to your teammates. You have our deepest condolences.”

  “Thanks,” Skyblazer says, his tone neutral.

  “We all understand what you’re going through,” Faultline says, which makes me want to punch him in the mouth on principle. “You see, we’ve all lost a friend or a colleague or a loved one to super-villains who never truly paid for their crimes. That’s what brought us together; we’re on a mission to right some long-unpunished wrongs.”

  “A mission? Why don’t you call it what it is?” I say. “It’s a vendetta.”

  “I wouldn’t call it that.”

  “That’s what we’re calling you.” Faultline raises an eyebrow. “The Protectorate. They’re calling you Vendetta.”

  Faultline’s smile wavers. “I see. Well, the Protectorate’s emotionally charged label notwithstanding, we believe our cause is righteous.” He turns back to Skyblazer. “We’re dedicated to hunting down those who’ve escaped justice and making them pay. That’s what we’re offering you, Skyblazer: a chance to find your friends’ killers and exact justice.”

  “You mean revenge,” I say.

  Faultline bristles, and for a fleeting moment, his smile turns into an angry grimace. He shakes it off and sticks the fakey grin back on.

  “We want you to join our cause, Skyblazer,” Faultine says, pressing on. “Join us and I promise you, we’ll help you find justice for your teammates. You help us attain our ultimate goal and we’ll help you attain yours.”

  “Your ultimate goal?” I say.

  “We have a very specific endgame here, Lightstorm. We’re hunting the worst monster to ever terrorize our community, a man who’s escaped his comeuppance for far too long. We’re after the King of Pain.”

  And with that, the puzzle completes itself. The original Faultline was the King of Pain’s first victim. Airstrike, one of Wyte Zombi’s teammates on the Justice Krewe, was another. Vendetta has been working their way west to east, toward the King of Pain’s last known location in Kingsport, and all the people they’ve killed along the way were side-quests on the path to taking out the boss monster.

  “Out of curiosity, what happens if and when you find the King of Pain?” I ask. “You call it quits and all go back home? Or do you find a new windmill to tilt at?”

  “Is that what you think we’re doing?” Faultline says.

  “I think you’ll never be satisfied. You take down the King of Pain, you’ll find another big bad to hunt down, and another after that. It’ll never end.”

  “Isn’t that what this life is anyway? Fighting against an endless tide of evil?” Grimm chimes in. “We catch criminals, throw them in prison, they get out and go right back to their old ways — over and over, without an end in sight. All we’re doing is breaking the vicious cycle.”

  “By killing people.”

  “People who deserve to die. People like the monsters who slaughtered the Wardens,” Faultline says. “What do you want, Skyblazer? Do you want to see your friends’ killers sitting in prison? Or do you want to see them buried?”

  That Skyblazer doesn’t immediately tell them off sends a chill down my spine.

  “Is that what your friends would want?” I ask him. “To bloody your hands in their name? That’s not who you are. You’re better than that.”

  “I — I don’t —” Skyblazer stammers.

  “Lightstorm.” Faultline lays a hand on my shoulder. “May I speak to you privately?”

  “You want to move the hand first?” I say.

  He lets go of me, then leads me across the roof, just far enough away from his cohorts to create an illusion of privacy.

  “May I speak frankly?” Faultline asks oh-so-politely.

  “Oh, please do. I intend to.”

  “It’s obvious you have an issue with our methods.”

  “Murdering people in cold blood? Yeah, I have a huge issue with that.”

  “Is that what you call it? I call it balancing scales that have been long out of balance.” He rests his hand on my shoulder again. “Surely you agree —”

  “Move the hand.”

  He does. “Surely you agree our justice system is imperfect?” He waits for a response. He gets an icy glare instead. “All we’re doing is righting wrongs that were never properly redressed in the first place.”

  “To your satisfaction,” I counter. “I read the files on your victims. Some of them did in fact pay for their crimes, but you decided they hadn’t paid enough.”

  “And some of them never paid at all,” Faultline says, letting his anger show, just a little. It’s all part of the performance. “People like the King of Pain. I know he was in your backyard and that he slipped away, again, and I couldn’t take it anymore. Knowing that bastard was still out there somewhere, stalking his next victim —”

  “He’s dead,” I announce unceremoniously.

  Faultline blinks at me. “What?”

  “He’s been dead for more than a year. I know because I was there when it happened. You’ve been hunting a ghost this whole time.”

  Faultline searches my face for the slightest hint I might be lying to throw him off. When it finally sinks in that I’m telling the truth, his whole body sags, like he’s deflating.

  “So now what?” I say. “Moby Dick is dead, Ahab. What do you do now?”

  His response doesn’t surprise me in the least. “The King of Pain isn’t the only monster running around free. The Wardens’ killers are still on the loose.” Faultline straightens up and gives me a smile lacking the used car salesman vibe of before. This one has a wolfish edge to it. “What about your old playmate Manticore?” he says, and out of the corner of my eye, I see Skyblazer’s head snap around. “How many times has he escaped capture? How much death has he left in his wake? How many opportunities to take him out have you missed because you fought him alone?”

  Too many, but I’m not about to admit that to him.

  “I’ve heard how powerful you are. If we joined forces, we could stop Manticore permanently.” He grabs my arm. “We could stop anyone.”

  “Hand. Move it.”

  His grip tightens. “Don’t be stupid. Think about how much good we could do!”

  “I am doing good. I stop bad guys the right way — and the next bad guys I plan to stop are you and your happy little band of murderers.”

  Faultline’s face hardens, and he shakes his head as if in remorse. “I am sorry,” he says.

  A massive electrical charge courses through my body, powerful enough to knock me out for a week — if I’d actually shifted all the way back to my physical form, that is. Thank you, healthy sense of paranoia.

  My point-blank concussion blast blows Faultline off his feet and sends him flying, almost off the roof, and that’s the spark that ignites the powder keg. Jane Grimm lays the butt of her rifle into the side of Skyblazer’s head, dropping him to his knees, and then shoulders her weapon. Panels on Steampunk Leviathan’s armor pop open to expose clutches of miniature missiles. Critical’s hands glow an angry red.

  “You want to do this?” I say. “Fine.”

  I power up full throttle and rise into the air. They squint, shield their eyes, turn away, unable to look directly at me. You psychopaths think you can take me? Well, you
’re about to learn the hard way just how badly out of your league you are because you’re not facing a teenage girl, or a super-hero, or a Vanguardian.

  I am a pissed-off cosmic goddess, and you sons of bitches are going to burn.

  “Let’s go.”

  Steampunk Leviathan is the first to take his shot. A half-dozen missiles scream toward me, trailing dark smoke. They detonate against my force field, bathing me in fire and shrapnel. Jane Grimm joins the assault, firing half-blind in my general direction. The bullets that connect melt on contact. Droplets of molten lead rain down on the rooftop.

  My first retaliatory blast knocks Grimm flat on her ass. The second caves in Steampunk Leviathan’s torso. He staggers. He’s tough, but he’s still a man in a suit. I know how to handle those. A second blast bowls him over. He crashes to the roof and flails on his back like an overturned turtle.

  Something hits me from behind. The impact sends me spinning. I twist in mid-air and manage to land on my feet. A rooftop HVAC unit, its gray paintjob marred by a Carrie-shaped scorch mark, sits in a heap on the roof. The guy who threw it, a tall man rippling with bodybuilder muscles, beckons to me, daring me to come at him, bro.

  I shake off the disorientation and take aim, realizing too late he’s a distraction (dammit, girl, learn from your mistakes already!). I never see Wyte Zombi coming. He passes through me like a ghost, and for a moment, my brain goes haywire, and I lose control of my body. It takes every last ounce of focus I have to stay powered up.

  “Stay down,” Wyte Zombi says.

  “Screw you,” I spit.

  I lash out, throwing a wave of energy. It passes through Wyte Zombi harmlessly but wipes out the muscle guy. He spins head over heels and nearly takes out the figure crawling over the edge of the roof, a small man wearing a blood-red hood and wielding a dagger with a curved blade. The Redcap, I presume.

  He’s not the only new player in the game. A woman in red-white-and-blue regalia and carrying an old-fashioned saber appears on my left. To my right, a woman covered in a full-length black cloak stalks into position, backed by a rail-thin man in a skintight yellow bodysuit. Behind me, a vaguely humanoid black blob advances on Skyblazer. Libby Tee, Red Linda, MTX, and Viscous, respectively.