We Can Save Us All

by Adam Nemett

  David assumed his parents would say, “Not yet, not till your birthday,” or worse, they’d scold him for snooping. But by the time Dad’s brown-slippered feet arrived on the carpet next to the pool table and asked, “Now where can David be?” David was already long gone. A new creature lurked on the floor. Waiting for the brown slippers to walk away, David took off the cape and promised to steal more time with this secret treasure as soon as the grown-ups weren’t watching.

  Until this deception, he’d known himself only as a good boy, the best boy, smart and brave, honest, caring, well behaved, a plate-cleaner, a colorer of complex squiggle-worlds on the backs of Chili’s placemats, a hero in training. But now, hiding from his father’s brown slippers, David faced the startling possibility that he was becoming a petty thief. A bad guy.

  He’d never really known any bad guys. The only ones he could think of were on TV, thieves and scoundrels like Dr. Cranum. But the more he thought of it, Cranum wanted only to share his magnificent powers with the rest of the world. He seemed well intentioned enough.

  In the days leading up to his birthday, David stole his cape for longer and longer periods, wrapping the cape around his face like a bandit mask, whispering villainous threats to the dark.

  “You’ll never stop me!” he’d cackle quietly. “I am David’s evil twin: David Instead.”

  His secret minutes of capeness grew insufficient, and oh, how he longed for April, for his birthday party, when he could wear his cape unleashed from guilt and the limits of time. The big day was around the corner. RSVPs were being collected. There was to be a cookie cake.

  He’d wait until April 4.

  When it mercifully arrived, David spent the morning of his fifth birthday capeless. Hunkered by the front window, he kept vigil, listening for the first car to arrive, hoping it might be his best friend, Claire. But he soon grew bored and went trolling around.

  The house looked impressive. His mom had laced the dining room with crepe paper and Mylar balloons boasting the emblems of caped crusaders. She placed hero-themed tablecloths, paper cups, and plates on a long party table where goodie bags lined up like good soldiers. And in a feat of majestic overkill, they’d transformed the exercise room into the Hall of Justice—old computers along the room’s perimeter, and hanging behind the party table was a map of Earth with Christmas lights poking out from behind it, marking the world’s major metropolises with yellow blinks.

  Waiting for the party to start, David snuck into Mom and Dad’s room to squeeze in one more training session. More flips off his parents’ headboard—jump, bounce, flip, land.

  “David! You’re gonna give me myocardial infarction!” his mom screamed from the living room. “You remember what that is?”

  “A hard attack!” he yelled back.

  “Heart!” she said. He tried to fly quieter.

  His guests arrived, dressed in capes and masks. Claire showed up in Supergirl garb, complete with a cool red-and-blue headscarf to cover her smooth skull. Soon, the dining room filled with activities. And after mask decorating and Pin the W on Wonder Woman, David finally got to open his Superman cape. His mom latched the Velcro around his neck, and as David merged into David Instead, she unveiled the final surprise.

  The children screamed when Spider-Man appeared at the front door.

  Claire ran crying to her protective parents. Most of the boys went mute. The neighbors’ granddaughter wet herself. David felt conflicted. On one hand, he was pumped. Spider-Man had somehow gotten wind of his party and here he was, miming his red palms against Mom’s freshly Windex’d French doors. David worried that evil lurked close by. After all, Spider-Man usually appeared in proximity to villains. Or, wait, maybe David Instead was himself that evildoer and here was a hero to deal with him accordingly.

  Alas, he, too, had wet himself.

  The center of the room cleared, parents lifting and rushing and patting their children to the far corners, trying to calm them down and help them face the fear. Scrambling to detach David’s cape and refashion it into a kilt around his waist, Eileen positioned the Superman insignia in front to hide his urine stains. David might have been embarrassed—his honor besmirched and pants bepee-peed—but in point of fact, David failed to notice. Because there he was.

  Spider-Man’s Harlequin body tiptoe-danced onto the carpet, flicking his wrists into space, approaching with the grace of a cat burglar. Staring at his feet, David tried to imitate this animal-ninja walk, the subtle touch of Spider-Man’s brown-tipped toes upon the carpet, peeking out from his leggings. Silently, Spider-Man motioned to David’s kilt-cape, to the S insignia. His body language gave off an air of hurt: Why Superman? he seemed to ask. What’s so great about him?

  No, no, Spidey, David thought. I have eyes for you, too.

  Then Spider-Man poked David in the tummy, shook his hand: he was only joshing.

  But before Eileen could stop him, Spider-Man knelt down and unfastened the cape from David’s waist, replacing it around his neck. When the Velcro was fixed Spider-Man saw the puddle on David’s pants. He looked at David, then at Eileen. David couldn’t think of what to say, so he made a desperate attempt to relate to the famous superhero.

  “Hey, Spider-Man,” he said. “My dad has those slippers, too.”

  Spider-Man hugged David. Which seemed to David, even then, unprofessional.

  Still, he knew this was what adults meant when they talked about the best day of your life.

  Newly emboldened, David grabbed Spider-Man’s hand and dragged him to his parents’ bedroom to show off his super-abilities. An audition of sorts. Maybe, if he proved himself worthy—if he could fly—and Spider-Man welcomed him into the ranks of the world’s superheroes, that might mean David could save Claire from the evil attacking her.

  As an audience gathered behind Spider-Man, David climbed to the headboard. Like an Olympic diver, he nudged his toes to the edge of this platform and held out his arms. He glanced at Claire, who looked up at him with red post-cry eyes. David took a breath. Watch this, he thought.

  High in the air David flew, his fingers nearly scraping the blades of the ceiling fan.

  His feet bounced onto the mattress, ricocheting him back into the sky.

  At the zenith of his flight, he tucked up his legs the way he’d done a billion times before, and he went into his patented Fuffman Flip, the climax of this momentary aerial show, curling over himself, a perfect sphere in space, and just before David landed on his neck and the world went black, he thought, I am flying I am flying I am flying.

  — Ø —

  Guests trickled from the party, offering support and abandoning their goodie bags. Even Claire left, back to the hospital. This would be the last time David would see her and he didn’t even get to say anything. He just lay on his parents’ mattress, right where he’d landed, quiet, still, breathing steadily. Mom sat behind David and, placing light fingers on his skull, she checked his cranial rhythms. David could wiggle his fingers, so at first Eileen and Spider-Man thought this was another of his weird games. But then David peed himself again.

  They feared him paralyzed.

  David’s parents think he doesn’t remember any of this. But he remembers.

  He remembers they put the TV on, or maybe not.

  He remembers Krypton exploding.

  He remembers Earth breaking.

  Blue flames.

  Rocks tumbling, the ground splitting as if sliced by a great cosmic knife. The dam breaks and water swallows the bridge.

  All fall down.

  So much dust and sand and dryness, but then no light, no power, no water to quench the trapped and fallen, the dark-haired women entombed in their cars.

  It had all gone wrong, and the only thing left for Superman to do was fly faster and faster and faster around Earth’s oceans until time stopped and rewound and everything was good again.

  Pretend it never happened.

  When David came to, his dad was standing in the corner, wearing a white button-dow
n. His mom patted David’s forehead with something cold and wet, singing a soft rendition of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” calling him her good boy, her perfect little boy. His pants were still wet. He felt suddenly restless. As if kicking his way out of a sleeping bag, David hopped up and over to his dad. Eileen cried while Gil knelt down and squeezed David’s shoulders, not yet sure his son was okay.

  “Dad,” asked David. “When will this world be gone?”

  “The world isn’t going anywhere, buddy. It’s right here! See?” He stomped his foot on the carpet for emphasis, trying to make life tangible again.

  “What if it blows up?” David asked. “Like Krypton.”

  “It won’t,” Dad said. “But even if it does, there’s nothing to worry about. You know why?”

  David shook his head no.

  “Because even if the world explodes, you’ll be okay. You remember how Superman’s parents took care of him when Krypton blew up? Well, as long as we’re good and we follow the rules and remember what Mom says and never ever ever flip off the goddamn headboard again…” He winked at David and unbuttoned the top of his collared shirt, exposing the red-and-blue Spider-Man spandex beneath. David’s eyes widened. His dad pinched his costume, then tugged David’s own Superman cape, held the soft fabric to David’s face, and whispered, “Superheroes never die.”

  In time, David would resent his dad for making that promise, for telling the sweet lie fathers tell, for forcing him to see the great gulf between the damned and the saved.

  But for the time being, David asked if his father was really Spider-Man and his father asked if David was really Superman, and they both said yes.

  9

  MAY

  i.

  Three thousand had now died in the Texas oil fires, with a million evacuated. Worlds away, the Maldives and Tuvalu islands were sinking fast, creating 350,000 new refugees. Closer to home, the water supply around the Chesapeake Bay watershed had either been polluted or, some thought, poisoned by the Chinese, and much of northern Virginia’s intelligence community was relocated.

  David’s parents and sister left Maryland and moved in with Aunt Abby in Bethlehem. The news talked of diaspora, the latest exchange of people exiled by their environment.

  The USV, too, had splintered and shuffled. It had grown too big for one roof. The Egg’s basement remained its headquarters, its Hall of Justice. Taped over the tool bench was a map with tiny red dots marking all the satellite USV enclaves. David knew of chapters at a dozen colleges along the East Coast, plus the huge one at the University of Wisconsin. Other large collectives in San Francisco, Denver, Austin, and Chicago. Similar groups had cropped up in Canada, the UK, Japan, and even Australia, they’d heard. Factions and subfactions ready to face the future their own way.

  There were the SuperJews, the Wakandans, the XX-Women, but these were social affinity groups more than silo’d operational divisions. Matters of race, class, gender, sexual orientation—the weather had worn down these historically ghettoizing barriers—but religion and spiritual ideologies still stood strong. There were the Sons of Ultraviolet, a more militant, anarchist crew destroying corporate property and picking fights with neo-Nazis; the Bearded Ladies, hippies preaching sustainable living; and the Black Holes, whose main mission was to break into pharmacies and steal Zeronal, antiparasitics, and water purifiers like iodine, stockpiling for the End. Now that their movement was connected to B&E charges, vandalism, and theft of Schedule II narcotics, David figured it was only a matter of time before the authorities descended.

  The Egg pulled together. Lee and Mathias seemed to have squashed their beef from that night in the van. But the honeymoon period of the USV was done. Sinister elements threatened to emerge. Now more than ever, it was incumbent upon leadership to recommit to utopian ideals and stay true to the mission.

  David and Nyla updated The Superhero’s Journey with an official rule-book, a code of conduct for new converts, lest they poison The Egg. In addition to the smaller rules and regulations that helped them run a tight ship, a few big ones were added to David’s original Code of the USV.

  Following on #5, a tenet clearly referencing Batman—You are not entitled. You’re flawed—mortally—and must sacrifice and work like mad. If destiny fails, use your smoke pellets—It Girl and her confidantes drew up a commandment inspired by Wonder Woman, applicable to all: You are not yet free. You’re chained—eternally—and must pull yourself from bondage and XplO. No man has a right to enforce his will on another.

  Nyla wrote a piece of doctrine inspired by Black Panther, also universally relevant: You will keep your mask on, but you must not hide yourself. Our mystery is our power, but the world needs you to reveal your will. We cannot wait.

  And as a reminder, the final addition to the bylaws—rounding it out to an even ten—was from Ultraviolet: You will zero in and emerge from the dark neck of time luminous without end.

  They played up the idea of Ultraviolet being able to envision what lay ahead and retitled these commandments “The Ten Assured Futures of the USV.” But David felt the most prescient law was the one about freedom, chains, and men enforcing their will on others. With the incredible influx of great new arrivals, there were a bad handful looking to prey on the lowered inhibitions presented by drug use and communal living. So, among other things, that new measure was clearly intended to curb and correct any such nonconsensual activity.

  Meanwhile, in those post-orgy days, Mathias only expanded and deepened his sexual curb appeal to the newly minted lady-heroes at The Egg. The rest of the League of Nine had enjoyed their naked time in the MaxMobile together but organically fell back into the habits of mostly monogamous coupling (Nyla+Owen, Britt+Fu, and even Haley+David, kind of). Mathias, on the other hand, became the superstud, organizing regular field trips in the MaxMobile consisting of himself and up to six ladies (Zoe was a regular attendee). David was conflicted about this. He knew it was base and sophomoric, but Mathias was, well, a sophomore, and he could pull it off, so who could blame him? Above all, David felt Mathias was playing his part, and so long as things were consensual and of age and otherwise legal, it kind of helped the overall USV narrative David was cultivating.

  There were transgressions, however, and this also fit well into their legend. For months, the USV had been practicing civil disobedience and nonviolent strategies of working through aggression; it’d been fighting invisible enemies—weather systems and cosmic funnels—and now it occasionally had to combat something solid. A cancer to be excised out. A shitty person.

  It couldn’t send lawless USVers to the cops, of course. And it was clear to David: fists felt wrong. Too brutal and premeditated. It’s so weird to punch a face. And Haley wouldn’t have it.

  So, yes, the fire was initially David’s idea. But others threw the gas on it.

  — Ø —

  Haley held the colored markers, waited for them to quiet down.

  She figured they’d now covered the checklist for any good spiritual movement: they had a charismatic leader; a gateway drug; an initiatory vision; a promise of a new era on Earth and salvation beyond; a strict set of rules by which to become spiritually worthy; a comprehensive set of practical skills and cottage industries to generate revenue and to practice in the mundane hours; and a mealtime means of social gathering and fellowship.

  What Haley insisted they lacked was liturgy: the regularly scheduled ritual worship that could elevate daily life in The Egg to a place both structured and sacred. And that’s what the fire provided.

  “Chainsaw, LumberJill, and the Inhuman Torch will be designated Fire Keepers,” said Haley to the League of Nine, gathered in the basement of The Egg for their nightly planning session. The core USV heroes sat around a new circular table while Haley worked the whiteboard, scrawling a fire with red and orange dry-erase markers.

  “Everyone who comes will be encouraged to bring combustible offerings,” she said.

  And so their heroes built a blaze in the center of the Woosamons
a cul-de-sac, which soon became a permanent fire pit ringed by large rocks.

  “The first inner ring around the fire will be the dancers,” said Haley, “wearing capes and masks and constantly moving clockwise to symbolize time.”

  “What about counterclockwise?” offered Owen. “Like time going backward?”

  “Perfect. Love it,” said Haley, changing the direction of the circular arrow around the fire.

  And so the dancers and Hula-Hoopers and spinners gathered and spun slowly around the fire.

  “The next ring is the drummers”—she drew another circle—“and the outer ring will be the chorus,” Haley said. “Golden Echo’s Human DJ musicians, split into his four-part harmony, soprano down to bass, arrayed in the four cardinal directions—north, south, east, and west.”

  And so the masses gathered in the outer orbit according to the timbre of their voices.

  Mathias looked up. “Call it something insane. Like the Super Fucking Fire Circle.”

  “Wait, it’s not a circle, it’s a zero,” said Haley, drawing a thick diagonal across the concentric rings. “This is the zip line, stretching from the top of The Egg to the far corner of the Pink House. Forget walking across hot coals. Our heroes will fly through fire.”

  “Badass,” said Britt, pounding her fists on the table. “When do we get to do this?”

  “Fridays,” said Haley, tossing her markers on the table. “It’s the best day to fire someone.”

  And so the Super Fucking Fire Zero was set.

  Every Friday, the fire grew, the drums beat their unmistakably tribal rhythms, and the League of Nine took their place on top of The Egg, playing their executive parts while ushering new initiates into the zip-line harness. Echo was maestro, calling musical instructions into his ham setup, with the chorus below and their wireless earbuds tuned to four radio frequencies: four vocal parts.