Zephyr III

by Warren Hately

  Pa? You called me “pa”. Never thought anyone would.

  “Probably didn’t expect your kid to have a Yankee accent, either.”

  True. No surprise though. I was knobbing a United Nations of prime, A-grade parahuman tottie, my boy. Wouldn’t shock me if you were made of chocolate and had a tail, Joe.

  “That’s very . . . honest of you,” I say and find I can’t really do anything but make a sort of goofy face, admitting anything Lennon says that sounds sexist or off-color’s really nothing compared to things I’ve said and done, pretty much all of which he’s witnessed if not enjoyed as a sort of de facto privilege. My thoughts trail back to Loren, sitting downstairs somewhere with misery etched into her no-longer supernaturally infused DNA.

  A nice girl, Joey-lad. She deserves better.

  “That’s what I’m thinking,” I say.

  And I take to the air.

  *

  MY FATHER HAS a craving for Mexican food, which I rarely eat, he complains inside my head, so we – or I should say I – swing out over the city and angle downtown like a cruise missile with the munchies, and true enough I am hungry as an ox or a cow or whatever the frigging saying is, so we amble over Mexicola, which used to be part of the old Bronx, ruined Manhattan maddeningly close as we, I mean I, land on the potholed asphalt of the barrio.

  After more refried beans than a man really has any sense to eat, I drink a jug of cerveza and engage in petty small-talk with the voice inside my head. The tattooed waitresses and the zombie punk gringos eyeball me, a real-life superhero to all intents and purposes writing himself off at the cheap eats, though of course the fizzy beer barely touches the sides, so to speak. It doesn’t stop me trying. Fortunately my constitution evaporates most the fluid and turns it into mystical power juice or however the hell it all works, otherwise I’d be using my super-speed for the bathroom.

  So, not even the slightest part tipsy, it’s close to sunset when I bust it from my private booth and get a signal on the Enercom phone. Using a fake name I get through two layers of the Atlantic City Post newsroom before Nate Simon answers.

  “I’m surprised you’re at work. Couldn’t you be claiming stress leave?”

  “What, and miss the story of the year? It’s not every day you nearly get your head handed to you by a real-life hero gone bad,” the other guy replies.

  “I guess I should’ve IDed myself first,” I tell him. “It’s Zephyr.”

  “Oh.”

  I can hear my alleged half-brother trying to think up a ret-con and peddling only air.

  “Forget it, Simon. I know what a smarmy fuck you are. You’re Nightwind, after all – the human PR stunt.”

  “Like you can talk, Zephyr.”

  “We need to speak.”

  “What are we doing? Playing mah jong?”

  “I mean really speak. Mano-a-guano. Tonight.”

  “Yeah. OK.”

  He sounds dubious, which I guess comes with being dangled out of a thirty-floor office window. I should know. He did similar to me.

  “There’s a building across from the Post. Five floors. There’s a Budweiser sign on the roof. I’ll see you at ten,” my erstwhile nemesis says.

  Then the little fucker hangs up on me.

  This could turn into a real bitch.

  *

  THE AIR BREAKS around me as I funnel the tension, throwing myself across the city in a heady mix of particle acceleration and telekinesis. The vibrating molecules bounce off the unconscious shield of under-control air particles and what force gets through is countered by my super-dense physiognomy, eyeballs that resist a nail gun (as I’ve found out), skin not thicker but more dense than a rhino’s hide.

  Beneath us, those parts of the city that played host to the most recent alien invasion are band-aided by civil work crews, police barricades, volunteer emergency service teams and local church groups crewing hot-coffee-and-sandwich stalls. So much of the architecture is under tarpaulins at some locations it’s like a view from space of one gigantic crime scene. Certainly there were bodies enough for every agency.

  I land at the end of the street I grew up on and I’m not really sure of the point of the visit given Lennon was trapped inside me the whole time, so I’m sure the place has an eerie sort of nostalgia for him too, but there’s something about the prospect of getting my mitts on Ono again that makes me want to drop by, looking for the haunts of ghosts past, wondering about the woman my nemesis befriended and murdered so she could impersonate her practically from the moment I was brought to New York, as it was known then, from the wacky island on which I was conceived.

  Lennon feels it with me. Like some doddery granddad, he peers out through my eyes at the half-completed build and is basically lost for words, which is a new one for me. I mentally indicate a few landmarks of significance as we trudge up the drive and I dismiss his concerns about being spotted in uniform. I find I can barely muster a damn, which is just as well as there’s no one about in the cool evening air except the occasional town car rolling past and idling into a well-heeled drive. I barely noticed this area get so up-market, like my downfall is some perverse indicator of a personal zeitgeist.

  How’re you going to finish all this off then, lad?

  “I don’t know,” I mutter under-breath. “You any good for a loan, old man?”

  I’m surprised and disappointed to realize Lennon doesn’t have any zillions stashed away for a rainy day, growing exponentially in the years of his absence.

  Anything I might’ve had was lost when fuck-face called in the Editors.

  There’s a bitterness to his Liverpudlian twang that I decide to leave alone, despite the classic opportunity to rub the old man’s nose in his self-abuse. Instead, we stare at the open plan replacement of the abode I once knew, more tarpaulins covering things and puddles replete from the recent rains. It’s depressing, and suddenly I wonder what the hell I’m doing here.

  “I’m getting hungry again,” I whisper, not to myself.

  There’s a few hours to go yet, so we crack across the Hudson and I still the debate about what we’re eating by insisting on pizza from Clive’s.

  Zephyr 9.7 “Physical Therapy”

  EVEN AT MACH, the sound of a burglar alarm has a particular zing I’m not likely to miss, especially if I’m in the market for taking my frustrations out on some lowlife while impressing my dad at the same time.

  I land in downtown Grant, lights spilling from a megaplex like the long-lost loves of the sirens issuing from a slew of police cruisers around it. A dozen cops are doing the whole cliché thing, rocking out with their Glocks out, waiting for the SWAT team to arrive and get a bead on the bad guys holed up inside.

  I tap a balding, seagull-complexioned older sergeant on the shoulder and ask for a précis.

  “Four little sons of bitches. Thought they’d hit the weekly cash take at the megaplex and it all went to shit. They’ve got two ushers in there, but they’re armed to the teeth.”

  “Shit. OK.”

  I think about something subtle, but that’s not really me. Instead, I shoot into the air and then down again through the second floor balcony and a vacant Barnes and Noble, crashing into about the middle of the candy bar just in time to see some Latino hoodlum gutsing himself on Coke slushies. I Tase him good and proper (I hear that’s a verb now) and he goes back into the popcorn machine to the orgiastic accompaniment of things smashing. It makes the goon I didn’t even notice working a crowbar on a cash machine make a noise like a donkey, so I light him up as well.

  There’s a very feminine scream from behind the smoked glass counter that draws my eye from the fact these creeps are armed with paintball guns. Next thing, I smash through into the office area of the cinema foyer and dodging as the next little hardass tries to pepper me with brightly-colored yellow globs of paint. I don’t check my momentum, introducing him to the row of shelves behind to the accompaniment of popping ribs.

  I turn, sans quips, and eye the two teenage girls bound an
kle-to-wrist kneeling on the floor of the office, the remaining armed desperado caught in the act of lowering his coveralls around his work boots.

  “Jeez, dude,” I say, eyeing his member. “That’s a weak effort.”

  I punch the guy in the face before he can even recover and something vital goes snap in his skull bones and he slumps, rebounding from a computer desk so hard that he might need physical therapy to recover. Then I kneel beside the two sobbing girls, thinking about my own daughter, for chrissakes, and snap the cable ties keeping them together.

  The girls are so distraught they cling on to me, weeping and thanking me over and over again, but apart from my nascent boner, I can’t help thinking about the inevitable media attention and right now Zephyr with twin fifteen-year-olds on him isn’t the angle I’m really going for. So I gently disengage, smoothing back one of the girl’s curly hair, caught for a moment by her likeness to Candace.

  The grief – inexplicable, incandescent as she was herself – hits me like a freight train and tears start spilling from my face like from a tap.

  It’s enough to give the girls pause. They check themselves mid-freakout and dab their eyes, moving away from me as I go from kneeling to all fours, hot tears staining the worn-thin grey carpet.

  “Shit. Shit. Sorry girls,” I manage to bark after a couple of cringe-inducing instants. “I’m just so, you know, freaking angry at these perverts. Such nice girls like you.”

  They look at me in horror.

  “He smells funny,” one says to the other.

  I can only nod. I guess they’re right. It’s been a while since wash day.

  *

  A POLICE LIAISON escorts the girls out into the glare of the TV cameras and I follow, irritable for too many reasons to count, pushing aside the metal bollards as the ex-hostages slip away onto a police escort bus leaving me like the sacrificial lamb for these so-called journalists. Leeza and a bunch of other plucked, waxed, fine-browed bimbettes thrust microphones in my face that I bat away like flies, frustration reaching a slow, even boil.

  “Get that goddamned thing out of my face.”

  “Zephyr, what’s the latest on Loren?”

  “Are her powers gone?”

  “Is it true Candace McArthur’s parents are holding you responsible for her death?”

  “Zephyr, what’s the rumor you’re considering a singing career . . . again?”

  “What do you say to accusations you used excessive force on your one-time adversary Negator, Zephyr?”

  “I still don’t know what the bleep you’re talkin’ about,” I reply.

  A cute brunette with milkmaid freckles sticks her thing in front of me.

  “Zephyr, they’re saying Nate Simon’s going to sue. Your response?”

  “My response is to say, what’s your name, cute-thing?”

  I grin and wink and the flustered reporter doesn’t know what else to say – which is to say mission accomplished. I push through the throng like a man trying to hail a taxi, though really I’m just looking for a little clearance for take-off.

  A rugged-looking blonde with a chin like the surface of the moon covered in brown make-up pushes aside a few of her peers and jogs up in steady heels, no mean feat, her begrudging cameraman behind.

  “Zephyr, there’s still no word about some of the costumed adventurers missing since before Christmas, including your one-time colleague Samurai Girl, and now we hear The Blur is missing too. What can you tell us?”

  I look around. I’m ringed by live-streaming media like a clown at the circus. I adopt my casual, too-cool-for-school smirk I use specifically for the TV.

  “You ask the New Sentinels about that?”

  “No one was available for comment,” she fires back.

  “Interesting. You think they’re off in some far corner of the galaxy fighting evil overlords? Or just ignoring you?”

  With a final snicker I jet into the air, even though the question sticks in my mind like a hobo with a hard-on.

  Zephyr 9.8 “Ancient History”

  AT THE APPOINTED hour I’m overlooking snarling traffic, bumper-to-bumper, horns and other sounds of affray rising with the stink of burnt ethanol as commuters in and out of this end of our sprawling metropolis try and make for the entertainment district or their miserable homes to lick wounds and sniff tails.

  The beer sign throws a red glow across the tableau reminding me of my apartment, which I realize I am too afraid to visit. Too much pain and overdue rent. But I don’t linger on these thoughts long, not wanting to exhume the angst of yet another recently failed relationship, the whole thing made all the more pertinent by the eavesdropper inside my skull. It’s like thirty years in silence has killed any ability to self-monitor, but I guess I wouldn’t blame the bloke if only he wasn’t lumped in with me.

  Just as I start thinking Nate Simon’s not gonna show, the sneaky little fucker ghosts up through the ground behind me and taps me on the shoulder. Unsurprisingly I jump, and he makes a pleased little noise from behind that gas-mask of his. It’s my immediate reaction to grab the prick by the shoulder, leather on leather, and we face off this way for all of two or three seconds before I release the hold with a start and back off half-a-dozen steps.

  “You took your time. Still suiting up?”

  Nightwind looks like some kind of bondage ninja in a black cape and hood, technophiliac goggles over a vinyl-ish bodysuit, the neck like old rubber car parts, concertina grooves silent despite the retro look.

  “I could say the same for you. Is this a new look?”

  He gestures at the Banksy-like decoration on my chest and I shrug.

  “We’re off-the-record, right?”

  I say it with a sneer because I think Nate Simon’s worked out what’s probably gonna happen next time I read something I don’t like with his byline beneath it.

  “Well, if we’re actually gonna talk this time,” Nightwind says.

  He gestures and the non-verbal remark turns into a clenched fist.

  “Aw, you’re not still pissy with me, are ya?” I grin and hunker down and squint at him, the spirit of condescension, finishing off with a cumshot wink.

  “I figured I probably got you worse than you got me,” he says.

  “How’d you feel after that boot in your ass?”

  Nightwind says nothing. Behind the mask he manages to remain inscrutable, but I grin all the same.

  “Are we going to keep trading cheap shots or are you gonna tell me what you want?”

  “You said you could give me Ono,” I tell him. “That’s what I want.”

  The temperature drops a stitch and Nightwind goes all emo on me, crossing his arms and stalking over to the ledge to lean out like the Gothic gargoyle he no doubt fancies himself, scowling at the cityscape below.

  “It’s not as easy as that.”

  “You said you had a connection to her,” I say to his back. “What is it?”

  Nightwind steps back.

  “She . . . They check up on me. Now and then.”

  “Who? The. . . ?

  “Her brood,” he replies. “The Progeny, as they call themselves.”

  “Fuck. I don’t see you writing about them too often. Conflict of interest?”

  “Get knotted, Zephyr. You’ve seen how vulnerable I am. Shit. I used to sleep in this suit when I first . . . got it.”

  “Yeah. Where did your powers come from? Pretty handy, for the only one of Lennon’s kids who came up with jack when Santa was handing out talents.”

  I snap my fingers and add, “Oh, by the way, you know you’re not the only one of his kids without powers. You forgot about Julian.”

  “Oh who, the public face of the Lennon dynasty?” I hear what I would call a very Nate Simon laugh behind the Darth Vader get-up. “Yeah. Shoot me if I’m not in any rush to compare myself to a culturally-dysmorphic Frenchman.”

  I keep staring, so Simon adds, “I got the suit from a dead villain. Never had the powers long enough to make a name for himself, I
’m thinking. The suit, I never really figured it out. It’s alien. Their makers are here. I am going to track them.”

  “That’s very transparent of you,” I smile and gesture with my own fist. “Now how about telling me how I can find Ono?”

  “You can’t.”

  “Oh come on. Every loony fucking bad guy has a secret lair. Where is she? Japan?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Kind of?”

  “Yeah. She’s in Japan. Sixteenth Century Japan.”

  Admittedly I don’t have much comeback for this. I close my trap, silence the better part of caution as the cogs in my head spin and whir.

  *

  “OK, I GIVE up. What do you mean?” I ask my half-brother.

  “One of the Progeny. Gertrude. Shift, she calls herself. She’s a temporal teleporter.”

  “Have you ever encountered the other kids, the Torus?”

  “Shit. Don’t even say that name,” Nightwind says with genuine dread.

  He scans around as if waiting for them to manifest, but it seems we’re lucky.

  “Those kids are messed up. I don’t even understand what their deal is except to say they’re like us. Or like you, anyway, except – you know – younger. The Asian one, you know, I think he has trouble staying in the hive mind or something because he told me once they survived some cataclysmic event when they were all still in their mothers’ wombs or something. Hard to accept, I know.”

  I harrumph. If the Torus survived the Doomsday Man collapsing reality in 1977, they’d be almost my age now. But I guess I can’t know everything and this is one of those intellectual battles that, like many, I’m not even willing to enter.

  “So how do I get to Ono?”

  Nightwind shrugs.

  “I dunno. You could try and take out Shift. I dunno. It’s not like she’s always there, bunkered down hiding out in ancient history. But when your hideout’s in the past – the pre-industrial past, I might add – it means you’re pretty well defensible.”

  I’m thinking this through as other associations occur and I am trying to push thoughts of my mother not being dead and Loren not being dead and me not being with Loren or Elisabeth or Cusp or anyone and I take myself off for a moment’s private time before rounding back on Nightwind before he can lose interest.