Supers Box Set

by Kristofer Bartol

  "But we might."

  "Abrams wants a trial."

  "That's not gonna happen."

  "Yeah, well, that's not for me to find out."

  "This is bullshit."

  "Hey, don't get mad at me, I just work here," the radio chuckles. "Just think of it as another soggy lump on top of the dung heap we call August: rampage at An Khê; mudslide in Japan; tsunami in Indonesia—and that originated from an earthquake."

  "News is all bad news nowadays."

  "They should call it that: 'Thanks for tuning-in, this is the CBS Evening Bad News with Walter Cronkite.'"

  "Right?" the Candyman laughs, curt and hearty. "And Chet Huntley can run a counterpoint for the day's Good News, and it'll be film reel of dogs and stories about helping granny cross the road." He looks to Radiation Brother who only nods a smirk in reply.

  "Screw granny—Cronkite would gobble up all the airtime. The world produces shit stories faster than we can tell 'em. Just in the past two weeks, we've had, like, ten major plane crashes; and the commies turned down another peace proposal, and launched another offensive-"

  "Heard about that, actually; that's what we-"

  "And former V.P. Richard Nixon won the Republican Convention."

  "Oh? Big Dick won?"

  "Ha! 'Big Dick,' sure—imagine an irritable quaker with impeccable wood!"

  "At least he has Pat to go home to. She's not too bad a looker."

  "I guess so—I haven't laid pipe in almost a year," the radio confides. "And, man, all the smokin' hot super-ladies are gettin' killed. First Harmony and now Miss Bliss-”

  “What?” Radiation Brother interjects, snatching the receiver, “What about Harmony?”

  “Yeah, man, two weeks ago."

  "Two weeks ago what!" he screams; his muscles bulging, vibrating; black glowing green.

  "Took three to the chest at a peace rally. They haven't found the assassin yet. Last I heard-”

  Radiation Brother slams the receiver down upon the radio with enough force to cleave through the steel case, shattering the radio in a firework of copper frays, molybdenum plugs, and silicon glass.

  Without the radio static, the river runs eerily quiet, and the platoon gathered around the demolished device shifts their collective gaze from the shards to their comrade—their hearts in their throats and their ears burning hot—as Radiation Brother devolves into a rage of heartbreak; a fuming fury consumed by darkness.

  His body clenched—eyes shut, fists locked, shoulders tucked, and head down—shaking entirely; of such immense ire that suppression yields futile; that he vibrates on a molecular level, and the air around him glows a dark and sickly green.

  The men of the platoon look warily to one another, stepping backward with the caution of a deerhunter.

  Candyman steps, however, forward.

  "Ajax," he pleads, "listen, brother—I don't have any words that can make the pain go away."

  Radiation Brother emanates a stark heat, pulsating with the spectral glow of his skin.

  "I don't think any such words exist…"

  His entirety clenches further; his eyes shut tight to keep clear the visions of old memories, now fading.

  "But you need to calm down…"

  The emanate heat pulses faster; glows brighter; burns hotter—tangibly hotter—and bursts away from him in waves, rapid like a racing heartbeat and shimmering ultraviolet.

  "You're going nuclear, man. Cool down!"

  His gritting teeth part by tensioned jaw, releasing a mournful bellow from his very gut, and his green heat silhouette dances like the aurora borealis, streaming needles of supernovaic energy into his compatriots, searing their flesh a dull orange; scalding them on a molecular level—and they’re screaming.

  "Ajax!"

  Candyman roars as he dives through the heat, tackling Radiation Brother, sending him headlong down the embankment and into the river—an eruption of steam; violent, hissing, and frothing.

  Ajax bursts from the murkwater gasping for air. His eyes, still incensed, find Candyman with askance.

  He wades to shore and sloughs the water off. Candyman convenes to speak reason, and condolence, but Ajax wants none of it.

  "I'm going stateside."

  "If you go AWOL, they'll put a bounty on you."

  "I don't care."

  "But I need you on this mission, Ajax."

  "Can't, man—"

  "They wanted both of us."

  "I said no—"

  "For what? For vengeance? That won't bring her back."

  "Watch it, Leo."

  "Help me take-in Pharos first, then you can go off on your little dalliance-"

  "Oh, I need your permission?"

  "I'm your commanding officer, so yes."

  "You asked me to join you out here; I'm a volunteer."

  "You signed a contract; you're enlisted."

  "I'm out here for your benefit."

  "I know, so stay! Just a week or two to find Pharos-"

  "Too much time has already gone by."

  "I can't let you leave; not yet, at least."

  "Leo—"

  "I'm serious. You know, the platoon needs you."

  "Don't guilt me into staying; they've still got their own mission."

  "You do, too."

  "That's yours now. I have a new one." And with a raised palm, he takes a step aside.

  Candyman strafes into his path.

  "Move, Leo."

  "You're being stubborn."

  "I can walk through you, if I need to."

  "I'll send upline for your honorable discharge if you stick-out this one mission with me-"

  "Move aside."

  "Now hold on a second."

  "I said move."

  "Listen to reason."

  "Listen to me."

  Silent eyes between them, like wolves determining an alpha; neither budging nor blinking.

  "I'm going stateside," Ajax asserts.

  "No," Candyman says, "you're not."

  The ebony giant growls, "Step aside."

  Through gritted teeth, the captain replies, "Make me."

  Tension between their unrelenting eyes reaches its apogee, and shoulders tuck inward; fists quiver—

  "I'll go," Michael exclaims, stepping out from the platoon encirclement.

  The two supers sever their standoff and turn to Pvt. Page—all three defused by his curveball.

  "I'll go, dad—I'll go after Pharos with you." He glances to Ajax, "Let Radiation Brother do what he needs to do. There's nothing for him here."

  Candyman frowns and looks to his hulking friend—first, his chest, and then his eyes.

  He sighs. "Alright," and to Michael, "Are you sure about this? Pharos isn't your ordinary soldier."

  Michael shrugs. "We’ll have two extra-ordinary soldiers against one—seems pretty cut-and-dry.”

  Candyman looks back to Ajax Madison. “Well then.”

  Ajax purses his lips and nods.

  Candyman extends his hand. “Good luck.”

  Ajax completes the gesture with his own, gripping Candyman’s hand tight; the masculine effort of a full-strength handshake, as if imparting all the hearty warmth of a hug into the curl of five fingers.

  They sever their metacarpal bond and stare, if only briefly, into one another’s eyes, remembering their first bouts together; calculating the extent of aging as it's shaped each other's face over the years.

  Radiation Brother takes a step back, looking to each of the infantrymen around him. “Thank you all,” he says, somber and wistful. “I’ll see y’all soon.”

  And with sympathetic permission from the platoon, he leaves, stalking off into the jungle, alone and confident; fixated on the horizon.

  Candyman and Pvt. Page turn, too, to the platoon and bid their adieus.

  1st Lt. Philip Greene erects himself for a paltry salute, which is dutifully returned by the captain—both grinning like foxes. However, upon receipt of the Candyman’s respect, Greene is overcome with final
ity. He sighs, under his breath, and resolves his stance to stiffen sober; proud and honored.

  The infantrymen around him, too, raise their crooked arms—their anvil-flat hands outstretched to the tips of their brows; their faces as solemn as stone; their eyes wet with repressed emotion.

  Candyman completes the salute, bringing his arm back beside him. An upswell of colorful opinion fills his chest, wishing to pour forth in monologue, but he bites his tongue—and he lifts his chin instead, proclaiming, “You have proven yourselves fine soldiers, and even finer men.”

  His eyes scan the platoon, lingering on the likes of Price, Sullivan, Dyer, Hudson, Bender, Zagorac, Miller, and Greene.

  “I wish you all the best of luck,” he says. “Go forth and kick ass.”

  The platoon replies in unison—a rousing Yessir—and they board the three moored patrol boats. Then, with the revving of churning engines, the platoon departs downriver.

  Candyman looks to his son, and through wordless glance they agree to depart.

  Into the jungle, they stalk, carving swaths through palms and fronds; treading cautious and ever-vigilant, with perked ears and searching eyes. Page totes his bulky M60 LMG, trailing his father who scouts the path ahead, scrutinizing the shadows in the green, with his full-bodied Stoner 63 always pointed forward. They become survivalists, navigating territory that belongs more to the wilderness than to the enemy.

  There is, however, the occasional encounter; the stealth-kill or the firefight. Once, whilst crossing the Ho Chi Minh supply line, they’d settled atop the crest of a hill, squinting through binoculars to confirm a vietcong camp. In agreement, Candyman unslung a commandeered rifle—a secondhand bolt-action Soviet piece—and aimed west, cherry-picking targets while Pvt. Page stormed out the underbrush, steadfast, with M60 in the crook of his elbow; brass bandoliers snaking around his shoulders and torso, feeding into the LMG; converted into chaos and decimating the flanked camp, inch by square-inch.

  Among the wreckage, they recovered a map of vietcong encampments along the Cambodia-Vietnam border, including one of note: half a day’s travel, due west from where Pharos was last seen. Further still, then, they hike; their faces and bodies caked in mud, like night-stalkers; like the jungle itself, manifest in two men who scour south. The birds grow quiet as they near; as the canopy above appears evermore broken—first, in the treetops, then halfway high—and soon the calamity of battle finds their ears.

  The trees now snapped—their thick trunks fallen, and a crackling blaze across what remains of the canopy. Rifles forward, they breach the treeline—scorched short—into a blackened meadow; a forest courtyard before an ancient stone temple, carved by the Khmer for some vedic god—the limestone blocks, too, seared and soiled. The burnt remains of trees, prone and lumbered, blanket the meadow; these black logs, a mess, among the smoldering remains of saplings and shrubs that protrude from scorched earth—their shriveled trunks like black thorns—and a company of slain gooks lie departed and strewn across the ratty matted fields of black splintered timber ashes.

  Near, where thicker splinters stand erect—and yet still far from battle—Pvt. Page observes three bone-chilled gooks hiding in a gully, peering over yonder at the rampage beyond the ridge. They notice, in a moment, the two Americans who ogle them, and yet they care not to engage—only to survive.

  Father and son run through, toward the commotion across the temple, stopping briefly beside an upturned corpse—looking to the sky with wide-eyed demise—to observe the spectacle that occupies the gully gooks: the errant gunfire and the boiling-red spotlight that carves the air, where ocular bolts, too, erupt like an Independence Day celebration.

  Fingers on triggers, they crest the torchedlands, where long grasses lie matted and yellowed—evaporated of their vital dews—though the rest has burned away in crateresque divots of dirt; a meadow made vast by way of intense aggression and combustive bombardment. All that remains of the vietcong encampment are the husks of two trucks and some evidence of tents, now only broken sticks, torn flaming canvas, and melted metal bins.

  The supered twosome storm the hillock and rout the ancient monolith, running—heads low—to see the last of the desperate gooks crouched behind burnt logs and temple stone, emerging from cover to fire his weapon, only to take an ocular bolt to the chest, rupturing his ribcage in a devastating display of aerial organs.

  Pharos turns his thermite gaze to the newcomers, yards apart and intending to harm, but he hesitates upon recognition of the Candyman—the first person he’s seen since An Khê, and nonetheless one he knows. His eyes simmer to hot coals, cooled in familiarity, before he surmises—shouting to cover the distance—with despondency in his voice, “You’re here to kill me.”

  “No,” the familiar replies, “Just here to take you in.”

  “You’re the Candyman, right?”

  He lowers his rifle. “That’s right.”

  Pharos shifts his weight. “I’ve heard the stories about you.”

  A pause, “And?”

  “You’ve left a lot of bodies in your wake.”

  “Don't fret—you’re not gonna be one of them.”

  Pharos raises a hand between them, “You’ve gotta give me more than that, man, otherwise I’ll have to act first.”

  “Look,” Candyman shouts, laying his Stoner 63 on the charred grass, and taking a step back. He motions for Pvt. Page to do the same, and so his son begrudgingly does. “My hands are empty, Pharos. I’m powerless against you.”

  Pharos hesitates, studying the field; replaying his words in his head. He retracts his hand and inhales; his arms collapse by his side as his shoulders fall, and his head lists to the side.

  He inhales again, sharply, and whimpers.

  “I’m sorry,” he bawls. His hands expose his palms. He hangs his head to hide those few childlike tears that escape him; those droplets of tangible regret, streaking mournful down his starved face.

  Candyman falters. “I know you lost somebody close to you. I know it cut you deeper than any bullet ever could, but I can’t condone what you’ve done since-”

  “Please,” he gripes, “I don’t need to be parented, I just need to be left alone. I’m doing God’s work.”

  “God’s work?”

  “Cleansing the earth, man. Isn’t that what we came out here for?”

  “It’s war, not genocide.”

  “What’s the difference?” he bellows. “The generals wanted a war cos they aren’t employable in peacetime; cos they can’t get their rocks off in peacetime. So they pick a dirty corner of the globe, demonize the people, and send a bunch of tin soldiers to subjugate ‘em, and you know half of the population is gonna resist. That’s a dug-in army of some couple hundred-thousand people with nothing to lose. And the tin soldiers our generals send over—the schoolboys and their fathers—well, they have everything to lose, and more often than not they’re risking more than just their vitality.”

  “I understand, but that’s just the system we live in.”

  “Fuck that!” he shouts, “I say fuck that, and fuck every MP who keeps a tin soldier from going home; fuck every gook that stands in his way; fuck every bureaucrat who promises good intentions while shipping boys off to die in some rathole country, clinging to shelled earth while his guts pour out his abdomen, crying for his mother. If the generals want war, then I’ll give them war; if the generals want slaughter, I will give them slaughter. I will end this war faster on my own than they ever would, even with their fifteen ground divisions, air superiority, and the finest fucking damn navy in all the godforsaken seas!”

  “Woah,” Candyman pumps his hands, “Pharos, look, I agree with you on much of this, but the government cannot honor such speed in war. Haste implies advantage, and advantage can quickly become massacre, which violates the rules.”

  "You seriously believe war has 'rules'?"

  "Well, as I stake my profession on it, yeah, there are certain international pacts that we-"

  "Oh, international pac
ts my ass; 'rules of war' is an oxymoron. They're but tenets arbitrarily decided by old kings to ensure their country's own safety in the event the winds of war change direction."

  "I see your point," Candyman concedes, "and it's a broken system, but I can't change any of it. I just follow orders."

  "And that's a good thing? Look at all that happens when people blindly follow orders. You know, that's how the Holocaust happened."

  "You're right. I shouldn't be a sheep in the herd." He pauses, at a loss for words.

  Pvt. Page whispers to his father, "Ask him where he's from."

  Uh, "Where are you from?" the captain blurts.

  "What's that?"

  More confident, "Where are you from, son?"

  Pharos pauses. "Toledo, in Ohio—basically the middle of nowhere."

  "Heh, that ain't the middle of nowhere, kid, you're thinking of Iowa! But I know whatcha mean; I come from Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, which is just about as close to bumfuck as you can get without being born cross-eyed."

  Pharos cracks a smile.

  "Did ya go to school there?"

  "Born and raised, yeah."

  "How old are you?"

  He looks around, "Um, twentysomething or other."

  "Ah, so you were among that Baby Boom, huh?" he says, stepping forward.

  "Yeah, I suppose."

  "Classrooms must've been packed full," stepping forward again.

  "They were, yeah," Pharos says, widening his stance.

  "Didcha have a lot of friends growing up?"

  "Some, at school and in the neighborhood—I lived in a cul-de-sac, so we had, like, our own little group of kids. Mostly all good times."

  "Cozy suburban home?"

  "Yeah, like… back patio, sunken living room; my own bedroom. It was nice."

  "Dad hosting barbecues while Mom made lemonade, and the dog running around the backyard."

  "Yeah," he smiles, stepping forward, "um, it was like living in a postcard until I got older."

  "Then you got your powers?"

  "That's a long story."

  "Did you finish high school?"

  "I had to leave early."

  "By choice?"

  "I wouldn't say I had a choice."

  Candyman reaches out and sets his hand on Pharos's shoulder. "That's rough."

  Pharos looks down. "Yeah."