Sam’s hand rises toward the hero of fire and flame, Fogo. Nothing happens. Her power is gone. Fogo drops River’s charred body to the roof and turns his sights to Sam. She dives behind the brick structure as Fogo unleashes a stream of flame that makes napalm look like a dive-bar matchbook.
I dive for my gun, snatch it off the ground, and roll to a crouching position. Four squeezes of the trigger leave four holes in Fogo’s chest, all of them oozing liquid blue fire. He opens his mouth to laugh and fire roasts in the back of his throat like something out of a dime-store demon hunter novel. Fogo’s chest swells as he sucks in enough air to fuel a typhoon. I look for something to hide behind and come up empty. Nothing solid around me. The only message my brain gets out is to curl into a ball, protect the important shit.
Heat licks across my face, but not hot enough to burn or even blister. Did he miss? I look up to see Fogo floating 50 feet above the roof. Ann is standing under him with her arm raised in the air. With a grimace, she swoops her arm down toward the roof. Fogo screams until his body crashes into the roof. It breaks through the floor below. Pieces of roof crumble and fall as the hole widens.
I scrabble backward until I’m safely away from the fall zone. The door to the staircase acts as my prop as I push myself to my feet. The gun in my hand chatters with my shaking. That was close, too close.
River.
I skirt the edge of the hole in the roof and make my way to him.
Sam is there. She holds his blackened corpse in her arms. Her body rocks, but there are no tears. I wonder if she has any left. The movement causes bits of ash from burned clothing to float up and drift lazily around the air on the roof.
“You bitch, you took everything from me.” The words come out in heavily-accented Russian.
Ann stands toe-to-toe with Petr. He’s bellowing and his hands are balled. He has no idea how close he is to death.
“Calm down.” Ann has her hands out in front of her. Through all this, she doesn’t want to hurt him, I don’t think.
“Fuck you, calm down. You took everything from me.”
“And you tried to take everything from everyone. Maybe you could have gone back in the Engine, but you destroyed it. You had it blown up, because you were hungry for power and now you ain’t nothing. Now, you will come with us and stand trial for your actions.”
Petr’s face and hands turn the red of freshly-spilled blood. His eyes glisten in the light of the sun, but he stays silent. His jaw loosens and turns to the remorseful pose of a man on trial for killing his wife, but the words stay locked inside. The sound that finally pollutes the air is that of gun shots.
Ann’s shirt bounces as two holes appear in her back. The holes in the clothing are the end of the damage, though. The Patriot was impervious to things like that. Now, Ann is impervious. We both turn to find Miles standing on the roof holding a gun. His eyes swell as he realizes he has only angered the beast. He might have meant to disappear, but I’ll never know. In the blink of an eye, Ann has crossed the roof, taken Miles by the neck, and broken said neck into two separate pieces.
If she managed to take Miles’ powers before she killed him, it has affected her less than the others, because she doesn’t make a sound. Maybe how much power she takes has more or less of an effect on her.
“Where’s Petr?” Ann says, drawing me out of my thoughts.
We both run to the edge of the roof where we left him and look over. A crowd has gathered around a body on the ground. Blood seeps out in a wide arc. I guess he couldn’t handle it. Losing his powers, coming to trial. He took the coward’s end. I hope it hurt.
Chapter 34
THE CHOP-CHOP of approaching helicopters echoes in the distance. Three little black dots are heading this way from the East. Ann and I walk over to Sam. She’s released her grip on River and is on her knees beside him. As we approach, she sets River’s head down on the roof with the gentle manner of a mother setting her newborn in his crib.
“We have to go,” I say. “We need to get you out of here before the men in black helicopters show up and get to asking questions.”
Sam doesn’t move.
“He’s right.” Ann crouches to set a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “Come on, let me take you home.”
“Can you do that?” I ask.
Ann’s eyes catch mine as she gives a gentle nod.
“I want to come too, come back and get me, okay?”
Sam grimaces.
“I promised your parents I would bring you home,” I say. “I plan to be there when we make good on that.”
The tears I thought had dried up start to flow again. Sam latches on to Ann’s neck and the pair of them vanish into the afternoon air.
I watch the choppers coming. They are still little more than specs, but they’ll be here soon. If this is anything like when there’s a police incident, I’d be willing to bet the paperwork is going to take me the rest of my life. At least the bad guys are gone, I hope. That means I might actually have a rest of my life to waste away on paperwork. For whatever reason, I think that if I had a cigarette, I would smoke it right now. The habit was never for me, but right this second, I feel like I could burn one down to the filter.
The gun is still in my grip. I tuck the weapon into my waistband. When I hold my gun hand back out in front of me it shakes. Apparently my body has finally decided this is a good time to give out. My jaw wrenches itself open in a yawn that brings a tear to my eye.
Ann appears next to me and takes me by the arm.
“Did you get lost?” I was beginning to think she forgot about me.
“No. I took her to across the street from her parent’s house. It took that long to get her to let go of me.”
The world around me changes in an instant, and I’m back in Houston. My throat churns and bubbles, but I swallow back every urge to puke. The bile burns my throat.
Ann shakes my shoulder. “Jim, look.”
In the front yard of the house across the street, the three Higgins are locked in an embrace. Sam’s mom is crying, and I even catch a single tear rolling down the face of her stoic father. My chest tingles. I never would have expected things to work out this well for the Higgins family.
We cross the empty street and join the rejoicing family. Sam turns to us, arms wrapped around her mother and father on either side.
“Thank you,” her father says. He squeezes Sam’s shoulder.
Her mother pulls a tissue from her dress and dabs the corners of her eyes. She mouths the ‘thank you’ but no words come out.
Ann steps forward and gives Sam a small hug between her parents. “Listen, I need you to get inside and keep Sam tucked away until Jim or Vince come to talk to you. You can do that, yeah?”
John Higgins gives a stiff nod while his wife scratches at her neck.
“Everything is going to be okay, we just need to smooth everything over,” I say.
John reaches out a hand for a shake. I take it and he simultaneously pulls me in for a bear-hug while fracturing half the delicate bones in my hand. After a hearty couple of pats on the back, he lets me go. “You’ll never know how much we appreciate what you’ve done for our family, both of you.”
Ann makes a half-curtsy motion and wraps an arm around me. “Sorry to run, but we’ve got to explain this mess away.”
The Higgins family waves their goodbyes, and once again, I’m back on a roof in New York. No use standing on ceremony now, so I puke all over the ground. I hack and spit the last of my guts down the hole with Fogo’s dead body. When I straighten up, I wrap my hands around my stomach on instinct. My equilibrium doesn’t give a fuck right now, so I step away from the hole in the roof and rest against the air conditioner that Ann lifted earlier.
The helicopters are landing in the field next to the hyper-speed jet we borrowed. Men clad in tactical black rush out like ants.
“They’ll be up here soon,” Ann says.
“Lucy, we’ve sure got some ‘splaining to do.”
The corne
rs of Ann’s lips fall. She blinks a few times before she says, “I’m sorry, Jim, you are going to have some explaining to do.”
I don’t know what the fuck that means. I almost feel like I should reach for the gun at my waist, but Ann continues.
“I can’t stay here. Not like this. I’m too powerful. I’ve taken in the essence of four heroes, plus my own weird blend of powers. You saw what the power did to the other heroes. I can’t risk that happening to me.”
What’s the old quote? Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Yeah, that’s it, I think, but I don’t want to believe it. Not to Ann, I’ve been by her side for days. Sure, she’s got a bit of a violent streak, but given our company over these past few days, I can’t blame her. “That won’t happen to you.”
I don’t know that I completely believe it, and it must show, because Ann doesn’t look convinced. “You and I both know that’s not necessarily true, Quig. I get it. There are no more heroes left. I am by all means the most powerful person on the planet. I can’t be trusted here, among Humanity.”
The realization hits me like a right hook to the jaw. No more heroes? “You’re the only one left?”
Ann ticks off attacks on her fingers as she speaks. “Two died in Seattle, three died in Houston, four died on the attack at SHI Headquarters, and eight died today, plus Flaura is powerless. Sam is human now. That’s nineteen of the twenty-one acknowledged heroes either dead or powerless.”
Holy fucking shit. “Who’s left?”
“Me, Medica, and Lady Atlas.” Ann’s eyes are on the ground as she speaks. The names come fast, she’s been thinking about this. She knew we would come to this moment. “They won’t be trouble, Medica can only heal and Lady Atlas is strong, but could easily be brought down by human weaponry. SHI can figure out what they want to do with them. I’m the only one of any concern.”
Through the hole, I see a soldier bust into the room on the floor below. He turns his gun toward me, says something into his headset and turns back out. “Where will you go?” I ask without taking my eyes off the empty room below.
When Ann doesn’t say anything, I turn to her. She’s looking at the moon, hanging low in the afternoon sky. “Heroes have spent too long as gods on Earth. Maybe it’s time for a hero to rule as a god in the heavens.” She still won’t look at me.
I watch the moon with her. “I know you’ve got some pretty boss new powers, but can you survive up there?”
Ann shrugs; the gesture is minute. “Either way, the solution is the same. Humanity is safe from the heroes.” She gives me a hug, kisses me on either cheek. “Good bye, Jim, it’s been a pleasure working with you.”
The door to the roof crashes open and a SHI SWAT team scrambles out in every direction, surveying the area. I turn back to tell Ann goodbye, but she’s gone. Hopefully, wherever she goes, she’ll be okay. Godly power or not, she’s good people.
Vince powers through the open door and out to the roof. He comes straight up to me. “Quig, what the fuck happened here?” His cool demeanor is gone. I swear I can almost see his heart beating through his shirt.
I sigh, try to think about how I’m going to explain this whole fucking mess.
“…and where is Ann?” I think I may have drifted, because I didn’t hear anything that came before that, but Vince is looking at me like he expects an answer.
“I need a nap, a shower, some food, and some goddamned caffeine. Give me these things and I will give you every detail in triplicate.”
Vince stares.
“Leave your men here to clean up the mess, there’s a lot of it. And you have a burned-out hero in the lobby if you didn’t already find her.”
Vince’s head drops to the side.
I reach into Vince’s jacket pocket and take out his gum. I pop two pieces of spearmint out and say, “Listen, Vince, I’ve got one hell of a story to tell you. When I’m done, you’re going to be jumping over the moon.” I look up and wink at Her in the sky.
I don’t know if you’re up there Ann, but I hope you saw that.
The End
About the Author
I'm a writer. I know these ‘about’ things are usually written in 3rd person, but I have this thing about hating people that talk about themselves in 3rd person. So I'm going to talk about me. I am a married father of three. My wife and kids are awesome and I love them. I've got a couple day jobs. When I'm not working at those, I work on my writing.
I've completed a handful of novels ranging in quality from 'awful' to 'not too bad'. One day I aspire to be a full time writer or at least only have one job plus writing. That would be a dream come true. Until dreams come true, I'm going to keep jotting my thoughts down around this here internets and see if something catches on.
If you like what you see you can find more at my website AlexanderNader.com or follow me on Twitter @AlexNaderWrites.
Other works from Alexander
Beasts of Burdin books:
Beasts of Burdin
Burdin of Choice
Burdin's End
Possessed: A Tale of Whiskey & Wheelguns
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