by Adam Nemett
David hadn’t spoken to anyone in who knows how long. Words felt weird. Owen asked if he’d been taking the Zeronal and David confirmed. They made small talk about the erratic weather and medium talk about Bob Badalamenti. Owen said he’d been released on $8,000 bail and had settled out of court with the Roth family and was now gone from Princeton. David imagined Bob exiled like General Zod in the beginning of Superman II, trapped in some weird diamond-shaped mirror-prison, spinning endlessly through the cosmos.
“It’s called the Phantom Zone,” said Owen. “Invented by Superman’s dad, Jor-El.”
Wait, had David been imagining out loud?
“Just think about it, David.”
“Think about what?”
“Think about getting out of there. It’s good here. At The Egg. Think about it. We’ll be at Stony Brook again tonight if you want to—”
David agreed to think about it but had to hang up, because he’d just discovered a document open on his laptop that contained a term paper, a ten-pager, for Hague’s Problem of Evil class, somehow already drafted. He had vague memories of frenzied writing, but that felt like months ago. Nice. What a positive side effect!
His paper was apparently about the Iranian prophet Zoroaster, a.k.a. Zarathustra, and it wasn’t too shabby. In Zoroaster’s version of Earth’s origin story, the god of Time—named Zurvan—was pining for a son. Instead, he was impregnated with twins: the Destroyer, conceived from doubt, and the Wise Lord, created from the merits of sacrifice. In Zurvan’s androgynous womb, these twins wrestled to see who’d be born first and create the world in his own image.
David’s paper was about how this battle birthed monotheism, a new view of man’s active role in the fight between good and evil. Suddenly, we were accountable for our own actions. And wasn’t accountability the essence of being a hero, or at least an adult? And can one be accountable after the moment has passed? Do you just try harder next time, or is sacrifice the only redemption?
Spell check. Page numbers. Attach. Send.
He headed toward Nassau Street. Just after taking another Zeronal.
Shortly after the pill kicked in, David found himself taking a long detour. To Hamilton Hall. To the dorm room of Haley Roth. What would he say? He had no idea but knew he needed to knock on her door. He felt like he was about to ask someone to prom, except he was confident.
When her roommate answered, David boldly asked if he could talk to Haley.
“What about?”
“Sexual assault,” he said. The roommate bristled, made herself larger in the doorway.
“You mean rape?” The word sounded foreign. David grasped with awful horror that rape was something happening to people he knew, people his age, not just people on TV. Rape did not only occur in the dark ages, when Mongols conquered new territories, or on the evening news. Right now, men everywhere were enforcing their will on others.
Haley’s roommate closed the door on David. He heard her socks thudding through the room, her muffled explanation to Haley. David’s finger traced the grain of their wooden door.
“Who is it,” said a familiar voice behind the door, not asking so much as warning.
“Sorry to bother you,” he said. “It’s David.” No response. “Fuffman.”
“I know you think I was a whore in high school,” she said. “But believe it or not—”
“Can you give me like three minutes of your time?” David asked.
“I don’t have any time. None of us have any time anymore. You have three words.”
He took a breath and offered her all he knew how to offer:
“I believe you.”
David said it like a question, rising at the end. It wasn’t an apology or a confession. It wasn’t very much. But in three words, it was the least stupid thing he could think to say.
“Super,” she said, quieter this time. “Bye, David.”
Feeling semi-accomplished, David jogged to a bar on Nassau Street called the Ivy Inn where he’d heard they didn’t card. Alone, he got drunk on Scotch—shot after shot—which he’d never done before, but it seemed the sort of thing a guy in the process of exorcising demons might do. The Ivy Inn was at the northeast corner of his world, and he was sure he could make it to the far southwest boundary in record time, a personal best, sure, let’s do it. He hadn’t worked out in ages, but let’s just fucking do it, right? He started in a jog and soon broke into a sprint, arms chugging faster and faster, legs whirring like the Flash, and whenever he needed to change directions he did so in ninety-degree angles, also like the Flash, faster and faster past the Wawa, past Forbes, back to the Institute for Advanced Study.
When he arrived at this familiar, unfamiliar place, David strolled to the lip of the pond and stared down at his reflection. Out of many pages of fall semester reading, one thing David retained was the story of Narcissus. Everyone knows he died because of vanity, but it turns out the river nearly died as well. It missed Narcissus too much. Not for his beauty, but because the river had fallen in love with its own twinkling reflection found in the gloss of Narcissus’s eyes. David began to cry. It came on suddenly, powerfully, like a sneeze. David crouched and hung his head and wept so the tears ran inward, onto the bridge of his nose, freezing there to build over time like stalactites. He wept for Owen and for Haley, and he wept like the river when it realized its mirror was gone.
And now the sprinting caught up with him. He struggled to his knees and vomited, Exorcist-style. He slumped, stared at his orange mess. Running across campus was fine, he decided, but what David really wanted was to fly above it. Over the Gothic spires of campus, toward the future, where time might someday stop and cycle back on itself. Pretend it never happened.
But he had none of those powers. So he lay stomach-down on the crispy grass, once more scaling the treacherous crag of Floor Mountain, hand over hand, ice and monsters.
ii.
Helicopters were in the sky the day before Christmas. ERA, maybe, but it sure took them long enough. And they didn’t do much, didn’t relieve anything on the ground that David could see. They only sat up there, searchlights on, like ominous dragonflies. David imagined them shooting Santa Claus from the air: reindeer plummeting, sleigh trailing fire. A once-in-a-lifetime comet.
The next time David self-powered his iPhone to call his parents, the hand-crank thing fried his phone instead. Now, everything was gone. All his numbers, all his notes, all his delightful apps.
And Haley.
“Welcome to the Buddhist doctrine of nonattachment,” Lee said.
“Nobody likes you,” David said.
But Lee was right. The blizzard taught them sacrifice. Can’t get one thing without losing another. No electricity without gas. David knew this when the generator finally ran out of fuel.
After ten days, with the power still out, the thaw began. Next came the plows, with their massive light bars and thunderousness. They pulled into Woosamonsa, forging a path down the center, even though this meant slamming snow to the sides and blocking all the driveways even worse.
But then, something awful. As the plows cleared the court, they uncovered Fred.
Fred Shuster who was once the best.
From the window, Mathias saw the plow rolling his body around the court, frozen into an awful frostbitten log. At first, Mathias fell apart. But soon he was back in charge.
Bundling up, they got the front door open. Snow poured into the foyer, but they dealt with this and carved a kind of staircase and scaled the snowdrift onto the pristine surface, still a good four feet high. Owen tied tennis rackets to his boots—makeshift snowshoes. The others piled into the Intex raft and Owen pulled them from the front door to the court, where they could now see pavement. Six hours later an ambulance arrived to load up the body. EMTs figured Fred got stuck during the whiteout, dropped a glove, and never regained his bearings. Or maybe a heart attack. Said there’d been similar tragedies everywhere. Mathias believed Fred had been heading to The Egg for help.
Da
vid shivered at the sight of the poor kind man, frantically groping for a landmark amid the White Curtain. Screaming until his voice went numb. Praying. He thought of Lee’s idea—always tie a rope so you can winch your way back—but some people just don’t own that much rope.
Their Jøtul stove kicked out a good amount of heat. As long as you packed it full of wood at night, there’d still be some good embers in the morning that could be reignited pretty easily. The wood made them warm twice—splitting it and burning it—and they took turns chopping. But the log rack on the covered porch ran low, and then it was gone, their central stove eating up the last of it like that final gallon in the gas tank that always goes too damn fast.
When Mathias took his axe out to the porch and began hacking away at the wooden posts, David thought he’d lost it. But it’s just that burning the porch was better than burning books. It was hard to pinpoint the moment they’d crossed over, but they were now in true survival mode.
David’s dad said the toll had reached 450. His mom heard 500. David told them about Fred. Princeton sent out a list of its deceased. Barry Hague, his Problem of Evil professor, was on it.
“Unbelievable,” David’s mom said. “And do you remember the Hachenbergs?”
“Like Tracy Hachenberg?”
“Roof caved in on them,” said his father. “Her sister died. Unbelievable.”
“But you sure you’re fine?” That was suddenly all that mattered to David.
“Fine,” his mom said. “Plenty of food. Warm enough. Beth is teaching herself mandolin.”
“Mandarin?” David asked. “You’re breaking up.”
“No, the mandolin. Although Mandarin would make more sense these days.”
David didn’t care about China. Jersey was a closer war zone.
“I just can’t stop picturing Fred,” he said.
“Nothing you could have done, buddy,” said his father. “I’m sorry you had to see it.”
“I’m not. I just wish I saw him earlier. I would’ve…”
“Would’ve what?” they asked, after a suitable amount of time.
With cell service more reliable again, the others also phoned home. Families reconnecting. Once, Owen came upstairs with a confused and frazzled face. He stared at Mathias.
“Your father is on my phone,” he said.
Mathias stopped patching a leaking roof panel. He glanced down from the ladder.
“Tell him I went out for cigarettes,” Mathias said loudly.
“Your father says that he can hear you and that he knows you didn’t go out for cigarettes because there’s five feet of snow and you’re smart enough to have stocked up before the storm and… hold on… and that he just wanted to make sure you’re alive and that your mom is worried and he’ll tell her you’re fine. And he says to stay warm. Okay. Okay, yes, sir, okay bye now.”
Owen hung up. Mathias went back to hammering and said, “He spoils me with affection.”
— Ø —
Haley thought of paper dolls, those booklets she used to love with half-naked male and female figures and pages of outfits, hats, accessories, ready to be cut out and hooked with little white flaps onto blank-slate bodies. One minute, they’re policemen. Next, rodeo clowns. It’s amazing what costuming could do. When she was little she got obsessed with beauty pageants, briefly, and ended up drawing fake contestants with evening gowns and sashes and gave each a unique name and age and state and talent. She didn’t like drawing hands and feet, so Haley rendered them as footless, handless women. They were ridiculous looking.
David’s assignment was the first time she’d done any real work—the friendship bracelets and knots didn’t count—since Halloween. She was rusty, she knew that, but it felt good to be roughing something out on paper again. She told herself it was work for hire, something she didn’t have to strap her soul on to. Just a commission. But she wasn’t going to take any money from David.
Fearless Infrared, she thought, here are my sketches for an as yet Unnamed Supersquadron of Vigilantes (USV?). I had fun drawing them. I’m a big dork, too.
She tried to stick to his instructions but took some creative liberties.
She was pleased with how Infrared—David’s character and costume—came out. She made his goggles more steampunk than futuristic. His Mohawk idea was nice, but Haley flipped it sideways, ear to ear, so that it looked more like a halo or infrared aura. He’d mentioned his grandpa’s blazer, but she expanded the look into a sharp three-piece suit.
For Peacemaker, the ROTC-defender character, she went with standard-issue army camo gear and just added football shoulder pads underneath.
Golden Echo, she made him techie like David said, with yellow-gold body armor and lots of computer-y circuits attached. He got a motorcycle and helmet, like Akira. Haley worried his jacket was too robotic looking but reminded herself this was just a sketch, a beginning.
For the Dr. Ugs chemist character—I get it, she thought, hardy har har—David was exceedingly clear that the figure have very thin legs. Instead of the typical white lab coat she painted it black. Gave him black Converse, except they were tall like big-ass Goth boots that laced all the way to his knees because why not have some fun.
And finally, Ultraviolet. It took Haley a while to mix the skin color and find the right purple. It was way too lavender froufrou at first. But his jacket turned out awesome. She designed it so his hands could stick out of holes in the sleeves, which were abnormally long, hanging like the extra lengths of an unstrapped hospital straitjacket. She gave him purple parachute pants and silver John Lennon glasses. On his forehead, a “third eye” tattoo.
David had spouted something about ones and zeroes, so each of the superhero characters got a Ø insignia on the center of his chest, but she’d rework the logo at some point.
When she was finally happy enough with the work, she took phone photos, zipped them tight, and sent them into space, through the cellular sphere or whatever it was called.
Her accompanying message was simple:
You thinking of incorporating any ladies, or is this just a pure sausagefest?
— Ø —
Mathias shrugged listlessly. He was listening, but he was also still torn up about Fred.
“ERA is clearly insufficient,” said David. “If you’re right and things continue to get worse, we’ll need more people to learn practical skills to deal with basic needs, but also how to stay civil and not deteriorate into some bleak, violent nightmare. Combining the heartiness of savages with the intellectualness of civilized man, right?”
“But why the silly outfits?”
“I’m trying to package what you’ve been doing here. Superheroes are ubiquitous these days, but they’re always fighting alien monsters instead of dealing with real shit like hurricane evacuation. This way, we become elevated versions of ourselves. It’s collective branding mixed with radical individualism—best of both worlds. And costumes allow for anonymous protest.”
“It’s true,” said Owen. “The origin stories are the most interesting. Once superheroes are already powerful and battling aliens and stuff, it’s just watching fight choreography. But seeing how they go from being ordinary to being superheroes…?”
“I hate my name,” said Lee. “Dr. Ugs? People will think it’s about those stupid girl boots.”
“Okay, how about this.” Mathias rubbed his eyes, warming to the idea but also hangry. “If we’re the superheroes, who’s the supervillain? Who or what are we fighting against?”
David still wasn’t sure about that. He suggested the weather: man vs. nature!
“Too faceless, there’s real lives to be saved”—Mathias motioned toward the cul-de-sac—“but keep going.”
Watch this, David thought.
The next morning, David lay on his bed, arms flopped over his head like a sleepy Superman preparing for liftoff. He didn’t stir while the guys paged through his folder marked “USV.”
The power was still out, but what had transpired over th
e past twenty or so dark hours was a mad, focused feat of electric effort. In the endless back and forth between popping Zeronal and hand-cranking and typing until the batteries ran down, David had fleshed out five core superheroes and solidified each persona—each backstory, costume, accessories, strength, and weakness—in a way that supported their individual theses in progress. He drew a floor plan of The Egg, outlining a room-by-room training experience to guide new recruits from origin story to completed persona. He developed a ninety-day schedule of public “spectacles,” as well as an elaborate chart detailing the USV’s short-term recruiting targets—food/water specialists, doctors—all the all-stars a pre-apocalyptic commune might need to survive the end of time. He even added an appendix of financials. He bound his treatise with speaker wire. He would show them Haley’s drawings just as soon as she finished them, as soon as she sent them through. She was due to send them yesterday. It’d be soon. Any minute now.
As for whom they were fighting, the USV’s bad guys were not evil corporations, nor hordes of paramilitary personnel, nor cackling madmen bent on world destruction, not even the fucking president. The villains were themselves at their worst. The shadow side.
Just as each mythological deity and demigod in the Greek pantheon was capable of both good and evil, the USV did not need one single devil, because it had no single god. Each evil was part of the good. Each USV hero had his own private fiend to battle.
Man vs. his own nature.
Along with this proposal, David had drafted an initial set of “tenets” for this collective:
The Code of the USV
1. Our clock is ticking. Discover your powers and weaknesses, your persona and shadow.
2. You are not mild-mannered. Be like Superman: a bulletproof alien, a fucking god.
3. You are not a nerd. Be like Spider-Man: a hunter of radioactive arachnids, falling headlong into their webs.
4. You are not entitled. Be like Batman: flawed—mortally—and willing to work like mad. If destiny fails, use your smoke pellets.
5. We must evolve or perish. Doomsday prep the spirit, shore up this house.