by S. A. Beck
Afterward she got lunch at Musso & Frank Grill, Hollywood’s oldest surviving restaurant. The day was really turning out great. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been able to spend so much time alone. The only people who talked to her were a couple of guys who tried to hit on her like that guy in the bus.
She couldn’t figure out why they bothered. They were cool about it and took the hint that she wanted to be alone, but she’d never had so much attention before. Usually guys walked right past her.
Maybe it was her confidence. That had been growing. Could it be that they sensed that and it made her more attractive?
After lunch, she strolled down a side road, wondering what was just off the famous boulevard. She walked for a long time without really paying much attention to where she was going, simply daydreaming about movie stars and enjoying the peaceful solitude.
Suddenly she became aware that she no longer knew where she was.
Damn, how had she managed that? That cheap old phone of hers didn’t even have GPS, and she didn’t have a WiFi signal to check any map. The street she was on was certainly no tourist attraction. Instead of famous movie theatres and wax museums, it had liquor stores and pawnshops. Everyone there looked a bit run-down, like the buildings. One guy going the other way stared at her chest as he passed.
She needed to get to a better neighborhood.
A cry from an alley to her right made her turn. At the far end of the alley, past heaps of trash and some stains Jaxon didn’t want to identify, she saw a fight going on. Three teenagers were cheering and laughing as they beat on someone staggering between them.
Jaxon hesitated. Should she help? But the fight wasn’t like the one between her neighbors and the prostitute. That had been clear-cut. But at that moment, she didn’t know which side was right.
Except that it was three against one. She’d been bullied like that before. But what if the guy was a thief who had robbed them?
She stood, uncertain, at the opening to the alley. None of them noticed her. The guy in the middle was getting smacked around pretty badly by the teenagers, although every once in a while, he got a hit in and one of them would stumble backward.
Then the people shifted, and she got a good look at who the teenagers were fighting.
He was an older man with an unkempt beard turning gray. He wore a dirty overcoat and shoes that were so worn-out that his bare toes stuck through the front. The guy was homeless.
Jaxon took a couple of steps into the alley and opened her mouth to shout at them to stop.
Just then, a figure in a hooded sweatshirt ran around the far end of the alley. She hadn’t noticed before that it took a left turn around the building she stood next to. At first, she thought it had been a dead end.
The figure leaped into the fray, knocking down one of the teenagers with a martial arts kick. Then he swung around and landed a punch right on the nose of the second teen, knocking him back so that he cracked his head on the brick wall of the alley and slumped down, unconscious. The third teen took a swing at the newcomer and cracked him in the jaw. The hood fell away, and Jaxon gasped. It was Brett, a guy from her class!
Brett shook off the blow, managed to block another punch, and gave the teen a straight kick to the groin that doubled him up and left him groaning on the pavement.
Brett turned and started talking to someone tucked in a doorway and almost hidden from her view. In all the excitement, Jaxon hadn’t noticed that person. Brett extended his open hand. It didn’t look as though he was about to attack. It looked as though he was demanding something.
“Brett!” Jaxon called out.
At the sound of his name, Brett turned, his eyes widening and his jaw dropping as he recognized her.
The figure in the doorway popped out behind him and ran down the alley.
“Damn!” Brett shouted, running after the figure.
Jaxon headed down the alley too. The homeless man was leaning against the alley wall, wiping his bleeding nose. One of the teens who had attacked him was just getting up. Jaxon knocked him back down again as she passed.
Brett grabbed the figure who was running away and spun around. The figure staggered for a second. Jaxon saw it was a girl about her age holding a cell phone.
“She was filming the whole thing!” Brett shouted.
The girl swore at them and whined, “We were only having some fun!”
Brett managed to grab the phone from her hand. “Don’t move,” he ordered and took a look at her phone. Then it was his turn to swear. He held up the phone so Jaxon could see.
The video app was on, and it was live streaming to a website called beatingthebums.com. Suddenly Jaxon felt ill.
“What the hell is this?” she demanded.
“Trouble,” Brett said. He smashed the phone against the wall several times until it was dead. “She got my face, and probably yours too, and thanks to you, she got my name.”
The sound of running feet made them turn. The girl was disappearing around the corner.
“Let her go,” Brett said. “I don’t hit girls, not even ones like her.”
“What’s going on?” Jaxon asked.
The homeless man staggered up to them. His nose was still bleeding, and one eye was beginning to swell shut.
“Thank you so much, sir,” the man said, sending a cloud of alcohol fumes over Brett and Jaxon. “Those little bastards have been attacking a lot of guys lately.”
“And they put it up on the Internet?” Jaxon asked, appalled.
“Yup. Think it’s funny,” the homeless man said. “Well, their viewers got an eyeful today, didn’t they? Har har!”
“Too much of an eyeful,” Brett grumbled.
“But what are you doing here?” Jaxon asked.
Brett shrugged. “Just hanging out.”
“In a back alley in a bad part of town?”
“Well, what are you doing here?”
“I got lost.”
A thud and a groan made them turn. The homeless man had given one of his attackers a kick and was walking out into the street.
“Thanks again, man. You’re a real hero!” he called back to Brett before rounding the corner and disappearing from view.
Something clicked in Jaxon’s mind. She spun to face Brett. “Wait, you’re that guy in the papers!”
Brett grinned and stretched out his arms. “The same! You never suspected you were dating a superhero, did you?”
“Um, we’re not dating.”
“Of course we are. But before I take you out on our next date, let’s get out of this alley. I don’t feel like fighting these guys again once they wake up. Besides, this place smells like the school bathroom.”
They headed out onto the street as the teenagers slowly picked themselves up. Brett led her back to a nicer part of town.
“So why are you doing this?” Jaxon asked.
Brett shrugged. “I’m bored, and there’s too much injustice in the world. Helpless people are always getting stepped on, and I felt it was time to do something about it. But mostly I’m bored.”
“You became an imitation Superman because you’re bored.”
Brett turned to her and tried to put an arm around her waist. Jaxon stepped back, and he ended up hooking empty air.
“Glad you think I’m Superman, baby. Are you Lois Lane?”
“Comic books are stupid.”
Brett inclined his head in the direction from which they had come.
“Nothing stupid about knocking down trash like that. You know how I knew about these guys? Courtney sent a video from beatingthebums.com to a bunch of us. She thinks it’s hilarious.”
“Why am I not surprised.”
They continued walking. Brett tried to put an arm around her, and she ducked away again. For a minute, they walked in silence, Jaxon’s mind racing. There she was walking next to the guy who had inspired her own night walks, and it turned out to be a spoiled kid from school.
How could someone on the golf team be
a superhero?
They’d gone on a date a while back. Basically, he had pestered her until she said yes. It hadn’t been so bad. Brett was superficial and kind of dumb, but at least he treated her like a human being. That was more than she could say about the other kids at school.
And suddenly, Brett had become interesting.
“So tell me more about this vigilante thing,” she said.
“It doesn’t freak you out, does it?” Brett said, looking concerned.
Jaxon shook her head slowly. “No, but I’m surprised you’d do it.”
Brett bit his lip. “Yeah, I figured you’d say something like that. It would probably surprise everyone I know. I’ve always been a bit of a screwup. My older sister is smarter than I am, got a full ride to Princeton. And my dad is a big overachiever. Mom is popular in society, running all sorts of charities and stuff, and what do I have? A decent golf game and a winning smile.”
“You don’t have a winning smile.”
“Well, I’m pretty good at golf, though,” Brett said and laughed.
Brett always laughed at everything. It was one of his more annoying traits. That time, though, his laughter sounded fake.
“I got the idea to do vigilante stuff from this cheesy old TV show my dad made me watch that he loved as a kid. It’s called The Greatest American Hero. It’s about some loser who dresses up as a superhero and fights crime. It’s all very eighties. I mean, the guy’s got a perm! I can’t believe men really did that back then. Anyway, it got me to thinking. The guy is a total nobody in his regular life, but his superhero persona becomes famous and saves a lot of people. And I figured, why not do this for real?”
“You became a vigilante because of an old TV show?”
“No, I became a vigilante because I wanted to be somebody.”
“I thought you said you did it because you were bored.”
Brett stopped and looked her in the eye. “Yeah, bored with myself. Bored with living in a house so big that I can walk from one end to another without bumping into any of my family. Bored with the fact that I don’t want to bump into them. Bored with school. Bored with people like Courtney. Bored with people calling me a spoiled rich brat when they’re the happy ones. Bored with pretty much everything.”
Jaxon was taken aback. She’d never heard him speak seriously about anything before. Brett grinned again. That time, it didn’t look so forced.
“So I got the idea to come out and fight crime. I’ve been taking Wing Chung Kung Fu since I was a kid. As you can see, I’m even better at that than golf. It gives me a thrill to walk through these crappy neighborhoods. There’s always someone to protect. It makes me feel useful. Did you read those articles about me in the paper?”
“Yeah.”
“Those are only two of my latest jobs. I’ve done plenty more. Newspapers are always slow to pick up on stuff.”
They’d gotten back on Hollywood Boulevard and slowly walked past the tourist spots Jaxon had admired that morning. Brett waved a hand at all the glittering signs and ornate buildings.
“This is the only LA most people want to see, and I’m not just talking about the tourists but privileged people like us too. Most people live in crappy parts of town and are always afraid. They deserve better. So maybe I’m doing a bit of good.”
Jaxon shook her head. It was so hard to believe.
“What?” Brett asked, noticing her gesture.
“Nothing.”
“What?”
Jaxon laughed. “I guess I’m just weirded out that I can’t look down on you anymore.”
“You looked down on me?” Brett seemed hurt.
“You got to admit that you don’t make a very good impression.”
“I don’t? Well, now that you’ve met the real me…”
Brett hooked his arm around Jaxon’s waist.
“Brett, since you’re a vigilante, could you help me?”
Brett’s face turned serious. “What, are you in trouble?”
“Yeah, there’s this creepy guy at school…”
“Who?” Brett demanded.
“…he’s always bothering me, trying to get close and always asking me out…”
“Who is the bastard? I’ll take care of him!”
“…he’s not a bad guy. He just won’t take no for an answer. He’s always trying to grab me.”
“What a creep. I’ll pulverize him for you.”
“He’s a bit boring too. Oh, he’s got a more interesting side to him, but then he’ll come off all fake and start talking about golf.”
Brett’s hand fell from her waist. He had a glum face like a kid who had just been denied an ice cream cone.
“Sounds like you can take care of yourself,” he grumbled.
Jaxon laughed bitterly. “Oh, if only I could!”
Chapter 11
JUNE 28, 2016, TUCSON, ARIZONA
6:45 PM
Otto was beginning to wonder if everyone in the Atlantis Allegiance was going to spend the rest of their lives hiding out in the desert. They’d spent the first three days in the remote hideout near Yuma, in a desolate stretch of sand and rock far from any settlement or even a gas station.
Most of that time, he didn’t have anything to do. Edward had been buried in his online research, trying to find more evidence of Atlanteans or the Atlantis gene in old UFO reports. Grunt and Vivian played soldier with the Tohono O’odham in the hills nearby, making sure no one came close to their settlement, and Drs. Yuhle and Yamazaki mostly conferred between themselves, occasionally braving the funky smell in Edward’s trailer to look at documents the hacker had found.
From what they said, they weren’t finding much of interest. Still, Otto envied them. At least they had something to do. Edward wouldn’t let him get on the Internet for fear he’d get tracked, and after reading a couple of dog-eared old paperbacks one of the Native Americans had in his pickup truck, Otto was excruciatingly bored.
A little excitement came on the fourth day when they moved the entire camp to another location, that time in the Sonora Desert in South Central Arizona. They hid in a little side canyon of the Santa Rita Mountains, surrounded by towering saguaros, those strange cacti that looked like green, prickly people holding their arms in the air. By day there were buzzards and rattlesnakes, by night owls and scorpions. On the first night, one of the Tohono O’odham had loaned him a handheld black light.
“What’s this for?” Otto had asked.
“Switch it on, and let’s go for a walk,” the man had replied. He led Otto to a cluster of rocks. “Shine the light over there.”
Otto did as he was told, panning the beam across the jagged rocks. The lamp lit on a weird, glowing neon-blue oval. Otto peered closer and saw that it was a scorpion.
“Wow,” Otto said. “Neat trick.”
“Keep looking,” the man told him.
Otto searched the rocks and found three more scorpions clustering on them.
“Keep that with you,” the Tohono O’odham advised. “Scorpions like to come out at night when it’s cooler. The smaller, clear ones are the most venomous. They’re called bark scorpions and are the only ones that come in groups. My neighbor got stung once, said it hurt more than when he broke his leg as a kid. He was seeing double until they got him to the hospital and pumped him full of antivenom. If you’re going to wander around at night, shine that ahead of you. Also, check your trailer and sleeping bag before you turn in.”
Otto figured that was a good idea. The first night was a bit tense, checking for the little poisonous critters everywhere. By the next day, however, he’d fallen into the same dull routine, and he began to lose hope that they’d ever do anything interesting again, so when Vivian told him they were meeting someone in Tucson for dinner, someone who might have some clues to what was going on, Otto leaped at the chance to go. People! Shops! A meal at a restaurant! It sounded way better than another cookout and a couple of hours looking at the stars until he was tired enough to go to sleep.
Be
sides Vivian, most of the core team were also going—Drs. Yamazaki and Yuhle, and Grunt. Otto was surprised to see they were taking Dr. Yamazaki along. The others must have decided she could be trusted enough for the meeting. Another decision they had taken without him. Sometimes he wondered why he was even there.
Edward said he had things to do and stayed in his trailer, set up at the base of a forty-foot cactus. From a distance, the cactus rising up behind the hacker’s trailer looked like a giant green radio antenna.
Otto sat in the back of the car with the two scientists. Dr. Yamazaki looked happy to be going into town.
“I had a postdoc at the university here,” she said.
“A postdoc?” Otto asked.
“That’s a research position you get right after graduating.”
“That’s cool.”
Dr. Yuhle laughed. “Cool if you like short-term, underpaid grunt work. But at least it gets you started.”
As the car neared the city’s nightglow to the west, Dr. Yamazaki described the land they were going through.
The thin range of small, jagged mountains that their two-lane road snaked through to the east of town was called the Rincons. It didn’t take long to get through them, and the land opened up into a vast bowl of a valley.
They hit it at exactly the right time of day. The sun had just winked out behind the low range of the Tucson Mountains that made up the valley’s western edge. To the north stood an imposing wall of mountains Dr. Yamazaki told him were called the Catalinas. The sunset had turned the mountains a deep gold that within a few minutes turned into a brilliant crimson. The tops of many of the peaks were darkened by trees. Pointing off to the left toward the south, she showed him the distant Santa Rita Mountains, which looked as though they might be the biggest of them all.
Before them stretched the lights of Tucson, taking up almost the entire valley. Dr. Yamazaki wrinkled her nose.
“When I worked here in the nineties, the city was only a little more than half this size. Every year, developers ripped up more desert to add new housing that looked like it had come out of a cookie cutter. I used to love hiking around Tucson. You could get to a good trailhead in twenty minutes from any part of the city, even from downtown. But now? I wonder how many canyons like the one we’re camping in have been wiped out.”