I called out to my real bodyguard but an answer wasn’t forthcoming. I was in this thing alone. Mimix chuckled as he tugged his knife free from the Sheetrock.
“Come on, dude,” I said, “let’s talk this out like grown-ups.”
Mimix heard what I had to say then flung his knife in my direction. The blade sliced through my earlobe on its way to impaling a perfectly innocent recliner. Apparently the book on civilized conversation was closed.
I cheesed it. What else was I meant to do – stand and fight? State I was in a ten year old with a karate yellow belt could make me his bitch. I ran for the kitchen but Mimix sent an arm after me – an arm that stretched and snaked as though it were made of Silly Putty. It grabbed me by the wrist and whipped me around like a spinning top, sending me crashing into the kitchen island.
Mimix closed in with menace, his body transforming, molding into something new. His features swam about his face, his look set to shuffle mode.
“Are you ready to meet your maker?” he asked.
A familiar visage appeared out of Mimix’s face soup. It was loveable Howard Cunningham from TV’s Happy Days.
“Tom Bosley?”
“What? No, I’m your dad!” complained Mr Cunningham, all pudgy and bloodthirsty. “Why do you think I said your maker that way?”
“But my dad wasn’t Tom Bosley.”
“Who the hell is Tom Bosley?”
That’s when I figured out what was going on. Mimix had seen the Lifetime movie they made about me back in the Nineties and confused a washed-up TV actor with my real life dad.
The star of Father Dowling Mysteries closed in on me, teeth bared.
“Time for a spanking, boy,” he said.
That was the last straw. Bust into my home, attack me with knives, stiff me out of a pizza if you must, but leave my goddamned dad out of it. My blood flushed with bubbles and my brain went Krakatoa. Mimix might have fancied himself a man to be reckoned with, but I reckoned he was about to get my foot in his ass.
I looked about the kitchen for a weapon but the best I could find was a crummy mop. Goddamn thissh*tty house. Back at Might Heights I’d have had a small arsenal at my disposal; diamond-edged meat cleavers, copper-bottomed frying pans and a steak tenderizer that could have stoved in the head of a rhino. Now I had a Swiffer. I struck Tom Bosley over the head with it but it shattered to bits. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the brand.
Tom Bosley’s fingertips transformed into needle-sharp points. I squeezed my eyes shut and readied myself for death by acupuncture. With a triumphant roar, Bosley flung himself on top of me like a dead weight—
—dead being the operative word as the sharp end of the snapped Swiffer snagged his chest and sank into his heart like a vampire stake. I guess it’s true what they say, 80 percent of accidents happen in the home.
He bucked and thrashed and made a sound like a baby being fed through a mangle. A squirt of blood shot through the hollow of the mop handle and hit me square in the kisser. It was a bad time for everyone.
I rolled Mimix off me and he flopped onto the linoleum before morphing into his true form; a stinking man-shaped blob of Jello. Mimix was fighting for his life but I couldn’t have him bleed out on me just yet.
“How did you find me?” I demanded. “Are there others on the way?”
Even though he was mortally wounded he still managed a chuckle.
“Death will come for you,” he said. “Death will come.”
I interjected. “Do you mean Death like the grim reaper, or D’eath, like Professor D’eath?”
“With the apostrophe, you idiot!” he said, obviously frustrated. I was sorry to mess with his final words like that but the clarification was important.[84]
Mimix coughed his last and went slack before turning into a pile of something that looked like it belonged on an autopsy slab at Area 51.
I was spooked big time. If D’eath had my number I had to get out of there, and pronto. I scooped up an armful of belongings–
Dad’s Zippo
Those Mister Magoo glasses
A cheap two-piece suit
My tibonium handcuffs
Professor D’eath’s shrink-ray
–crammed them in a holdall and booked it as fast as my legs would carry me. I didn’t stop to look back, or at least I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t tripped over my bodyguard during my sprint across the front lawn.
He was splashed face down in the dirt, gagged, bound and butt naked. I bent down and pulled a couple of socks out of his mouth.
“Look what that bastard did to me,” he spat.
He was referring to the length of mailbox that Mimix had uprooted from the lawn and crammed into his tail pipe. It stood ramrod straight, reaching for the sky like a ship’s mast.
“You gotta help me!” he begged.
The guy looked as though he was in a lot of pain, so I reached over and put a hand on his shoulder, all pally like.
“You got shafted good, brah.”
I gave the mailbox a tap, making its shaft quiver in the bodyguard’s backside like a tuning fork. He cried mercy, his face raspberry bed, angry veins making knots on his temples. I poured an imaginary bucket of Gatorade over myself and made tracks.
I made for the highway and flagged down a truck headed east to the City. Fortunately the driver didn’t recognize me in civvies and glasses so I’ve been okay to sit in the passenger seat and get all this down without being hassled. Better yet, the guy hasn’t once asked me to blow his crank. What a credit to his profession.
April 28th
My ride dropped me off at a truck stop outside of Hoboken. We arrived at daybreak just as the sun was beginning to crest the horizon. I said goodbye to the driver, stepped down from the cabin and took a breath of air. I felt like a pardoned lifer released back into civilized society.
I looked across the morning gold of the Hudson River. There it was, New York, New York; the city so nice they named it twice.[85] Above the rooftops and between the skyscrapers I saw a lattice of human vapor trails criss-crossing the dawn sky. The air buzzed and crackled with masked avengers like the inside of a jar of fireflies.
“Home.” I said it out loud – didn’t even give the order – it just came out of my mouth. “Home.”
It was a two-hour walk to Manhattan. I passed a few faces on the way but no one saw me for who I was. A suit and tie, some extra meat on my bones, my hair combed a different way – that’s all it took to stay camouflaged.[86]
By the time I got to the City I was beat. I was so fired up after busting The Bunker I hadn’t slept a wink and the adrenaline had drained right out of me. Then came the rain, sharp and cold, soaking me to the bone. I needed to get indoors, but where? Might Heights had been annihilated and C.H.A.M.P was a no-go unless I wanted to find myself shipped off to some other one-horse town.
Besides, I’d do well to avoid old hangouts. Call me tin foil hat crazy, but it’s like I can feel D’eath hunting me, darting his beady eye about like some cosmic curtain-twitcher. If I wanted to avoid another hitman being sent my way I’d need to keep off the grid. Lucky for me there was nothing connecting me to the place I’d left behind. No trail of breadcrumbs. The only things I’d scattered in my wake were a dead flunky and a suicide note. That ought to keep D’eath guessing a while.
Thankfully I had a place to hide – a safe house hidden underneath the city, accessible only through a decommissioned subway entrance. I’d had it built off-the-books a few years back so I could be sure no one but me knew about it. I became convinced I needed a fallback site after an unexpected breach of Might Heights.[87]
The safe house wasn’t what you’d call luxurious – just a glorified lock-up really, no bigger than a shipping container. I wasn’t looking for anything fancy though. All I needed was someplace to lay low and get myself centered. Just the basics – nothing spare, nothing wasted. Well, almost nothing.
There they were, my old costumes, one for each day of the week. They hung from a row of
chrome hooks, pristine and vacuum-sealed. I took one from its rail, opened it up and ran a finger over the stitching, tracing a line around the world-famous ‘CM’ emblazoned on the chest.[88] I’d spent more of my life in that outfit than I cared to remember. It had become a defining symbol of my personality – now it looked like a dusty old prop. An old Halloween costume. That’s because it stood for a man who didn’t exist anymore. A man who sold his soul to toy tie-ins and energy drinks and brand of cologne that, if he’s honest, smelled like a mixture of mothballs and gasoline.
I took the Captain Might costume, hung it back on the rail with its brothers and hit the sack.[89]
April 29th
Tonight my Captain Might costumes came to life. I watched, paralysed with fear, as they climbed down from their hangers as though filled with the bodies of invisible men. The costumes stood upright in a line then marched in eerie synchrony to form a circle around my cot. They had no faces to read but I knew instinctively that they were up to no good. The six costumes labelled Saturday through Thursday grabbed me, pinned me down and held me fast. I tried to stop them but there was nothing I could do. No way out. Then the costume labelled Friday stepped into view. The bulge in his briefs – easily as big as the one on my C.H.A.M.P effigy – told me he meant business. His scrum of goons rolled me onto my belly and depantsed me. The last thing I saw was Friday reaching down to unbutton his fly...
Then I woke up. Thank God, I thought. Thank God I’d woken before I got that Friday feeling. My chest felt like someone had stepped on it carrying a brick hod. I had to get out of that dingy bolthole. I checked my watch – it was just after midnight. I decided I’d be safe to head up top and grab some air.
I emerged from the safe house’s secret door and followed the disused subway tunnel to the surface. It felt good to be outside again. To have the lights switched on and the noise turned up. I was kicking a soda can around when a pillar of light sprang to life and illuminated the sky right over my head. It was a C.H.A.M.P signal, a nearby one, and it shone like a sign from the heavens. I made up my mind right then. Just as the Three Wise Men had followed that star to Bethlehem, I was going to chase that beacon. Away from the darkness and into the light.
I raced to the scene as fast as I could. At one point I took a tumble and lost my glasses, and before I could re-attach them a hobo spotted me and realized who I was. He did that thing they do in movies where he rubbed his eyes and tossed his bottle of hooch, except then he lit up a crack pipe, which kind of spoiled the Eighties charm of it.[90]
The beacon, it turned out, was being beamed from the American Museum of Natural History; the same place Mimix had been nabbed a couple of months back. Whatever was going on inside it looked as though someone was there to finish the job he started, and with the prison escapees keeping C.H.A.M.P busy there was no telling when an Officer might show.
Hell with it. I sprinted up the building’s steps, bounded over a mangled door and followed a trail of carnage to the museum’s mineral room. That’s where I laid eyes on the intruder. It was a Mandroid – one of Professor D’eath’s robot bruisers – a pair of bullet belts looping by its sides and into its Gatling gun arms.
I was in way over my head.
I watched from the shadows as the Mandroid scooted between display cases, turning them out for booty one by one. After each rummage it dashed its plunder across the museum floor before repeating the process on another case. It wouldn’t be long before it scratched off what I felt sure was the one item on its shopping list: the world-famous Star of India.
Professor D’eath had his plutonium and his tibonium but
it looked as though he was still missing a piece of the puzzle. That would explain why he still hadn’t pulled the trigger on his space laser anyway. Who knew, maybe planet Earth wasn’t behind the 8-Ball after all – so long as someone stuck a spanner in this gem heist anyway.
An elderly night guard doddered into view, flashlight jittering in his arthritic hand. This was not the “someone” I had in mind. The guy was so old he probably had a tapestry at home instead of a TV. He painted the room with the beam of his flashlight, freezing stiff as it landed on the Mandroid. I had to get that old fossil out of harm’s way before he got himself ventilated, except I was too late. The Mandroid spotted him, spun in his direction and let rip with its Gatling gun.
Thankfully I was able to launch myself across the room and knock Old Papa Time flat before he got himself plugged. He crashed into the marble floor, clutching a fractured shoulder and mouthing off like a sailor. Despite some choice words, I could tell what he really meant to say was ‘Thank you, handsome protector, a thousand times thank you!’
I had the Mandroid’s attention but now what? I wasn’t going to survive a firefight, I knew that much – I’d need to tackle the thing on my own terms if I was going to stand a sniff of a chance. My brain raced to find some edge I might have. Some chink in the robot’s armor. I remembered that machinery and water weren’t great mixers, but how could I use that nugget to my advantage?
Of course! Reaching into my jacket pocket I pulled out Dad’s Zippo and flicked open the lid. While the Mandroid was busy strafing back and forth searching for its target I toppled an information rack, rolled up a museum map and set it alight. Springing to my feet, I held the burning paper to a ceiling sensor then quickly hunkered down to let the sprinklers do their work.
The plan turned out to be as much use as a peep-hole burka. The water rained down but the robot wasn’t slowed one bit. If anything the change of weather just riled the thing up, at least judging by the way it tore the room apart in a blizzard of hot lead. Scratch that plan then.
I needed to come up with a new strategy, and fast. What though? In movies they’d always bamboozle robots with some clever ‘Does not compute!’ logic bomb that made them self-destruct. I didn’t know where to start with one of those though. I’ve always been more of a doer than a thinker, so it was probably smarter I bum-rush the thing and hope for the best. Except didn’t that mean I was choosing to bum-rush the thing, and wouldn’t that make me a thinker after all? The only thing I knew for sure was that all that thinking was tying my brain into a pretzel, which made me think I must be a doer. The whole thing was a major mind-melter. If anything it made me want to self-destruct!
Then I came up with a plan so smart it gave me a brain boner.
Bolting from my hiding place, I led the Mandroid on a merry chase all the way to the opposite end of the museum. Waxwork cavemen and dinosaur bones exploded all around me as the Mandroid dusted the place with slugs. It was a risky maneuver for sure. Once upon a time I’d have knocked those bullets out of the air with a bat of my eyelashes, but any that connected during that dash would have torn through me like a hole punch.
I made the final stretch and rounded a corner, the Mandroid hot on my heels. It must have thought it had me trapped when we finally hit wall, but I had it just where I wanted it; the gift shop. Snatching what I needed from a souvenir stand, I took aim and launched...
SWISH!
...a fridge magnet sailed through the air, landing dead on target and gluing itself to the Mandroid’s metal skull. Nothing messes up a gizmo like a good old magnet – I learned that the hard way when I loaned my fellow superhero, Magno, a VHS tape and got back a cassette full of static.
The Mandroid opened up its cannon but its targeting was out of whack, causing it to fire harmlessly on a display of jigsaw velociraptors. Think outside the box? I am the freaking box.
SWISH!
...I sent another magnet the Mandroid’s way, this time causing it to lose control of its motor functions. As it pin-wheeled through a rack of Native American dream catchers I piled on another volley...
SWISH! SWISH! SWISH! CLUNK! CLUNK! CLUNK!
Sparks sprayed from the Mandroid’s ear sockets then it lost its balance completely, toppling bass ackwards into a basket of pterodactyl plush toys and twitching around like a strung out tweaker.
The time had come to put the
Mandroid out of its misery. I grabbed hold of the biggest geode I could find and lifted the rock over the robot’s head. I was just about to bring it down when I heard the darnedest noise.
Laughter.
Professor D’eath’s laughter, bubbling up from the Mandroid’s mechanical voice box. This wasn’t some pre-recorded message either, D’eath had been there the whole time, lurking behind those robot eyes – spying on me from the safety of his general’s tent while his toy soldier performed his dirty work.
“Greetings, Captain Might,” came D’eath’s voice.
Apparently the Prof had no trouble seeing through my disguise, but then he was cracked from the genius mold.
“I have to confess, your tenacity surprises me,” he added, genuinely impressed. There was aggravation in there too though. It warmed my cockles, let me tell you.
I brought the geode down hard. The first blow was for the Mandroid – an act of mercy that put an end to its thrashing and powered it down with the sound of an old-fashioned picture tube. The second blow was for D’eath, turning his replica face into a fountain of cogs and engine oil. The third, fourth and fifth blows, well... those were just a good time at the movies.
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