by James Maxey
Maybe he was a decent guy deep down. Yes, he was dumb, and crude, and clueless, but he seemed comfortable in his own skin in a way she'd never been.
Maybe. . . .
Maybe she didn't hate all mankind.
She walked over to him. She nudged his cheek with her ice-cold toe.
"Wake up," she said.
Pit kept his eyes closed and rolled over.
She put her toe in his ear and wiggled it. "Wake up."
He opened his eyes and rolled onto his back. He stared up her long legs to where they disappeared under the wrap of the banner. He looked disoriented for about half a minute, then he grinned as his eyes fixed on her face. "Ain't this a fine way to start the day," he said.
"A better way to start the day would be with coffee," she said. "And some clothes. And some transportation. And some clue as to where the hell we are."
"West Virginia," he said. "Maybe Ohio. Or Kentucky."
"I guess it doesn't matter," she said.
"Naw," he said. "Banks are the same no matter where we rob 'em."
"We're done robbing banks," she said.
He propped himself up on his right elbow. He stared at the stump of his left hand, looking puzzled. "We must have had one wild night."
"You don't remember?" she asked.
He sat up, scratching the back of his head. Then he carefully touched his nose, and finding it improved, shoved his finger into it and began to dig out big black globs of dried blood. "Yeah, I remember now," he said. "Supercops. It just takes my brain a while to get going some mornings."
"Mine too," she said. "Let's break into the rest of the cabins and see if there's a mess hall."
"What are we going to rob?" he asked.
"The mess hall?" she answered, not understanding his question.
"I mean, what are we robbing if we're not robbing banks?"
"Nothing," she said. "I've decided you're right. We'll go to Pangea. We'll retire and spend the rest of our lives drinking banana daiquiris."
"You think we've got enough?"
"By my count you've got about eighty million dollars swimming around in that mysterious gut of yours, and that's just the cash. We'll be all right."
Pit nodded. "What changed your mind?"
"It's a different game, if superheroes are back," she said. "I don't want to play any more."
He furrowed his brow. "You scared? 'Cause by my scorecard, we licked them pretty good."
"I'm not scared," she said, turning her face back to the window so he wouldn't be able to see her eyes. "But the war is over. We've got all the money we'll need to buy a little peace and quiet. I just don't have anything left worth fighting for."
This was answered with silence. She turned back toward Pit, and found he had his hand crammed deep into his mouth. He produced the regeneration ray a few seconds later.
He aimed it at his left hand and pulled the trigger. In under a minute, he was wiggling fresh fingers.
He rose and dropped his pants. He squatted, looking awkward as he tried to aim the gun at the affected area. She sighed.
"Give me that."
He handed her the gun.
"Sit there," she said, pointing to the hearth of the fireplace, which was raised off the floor about a foot.
He did so.
She crouched before him and pushed his knees apart. She grimaced.
"Bad?" he asked.
"What did he use on you? A chainsaw?"
"I think it was his toenails. Sort of mutified."
She set her jaw and breathed through her nose. He'd brought her back from the dead. She at least owed him the fortitude not to turn away from his mangled manhood. She took aim and pulled the trigger. The gun began to scan. It ran through all of its normal commands, but introduced a new one: "Removing foreign matter." Suddenly small dark pins, rings, and balls began to ooze from his flesh and drop onto the stone hearth, making soft clicking sounds as they bounced.
"What the hell?" she asked.
"Damned if I know," he said.
Half a minute later, the job was finished. Pit had a fresh new pair of hairless testicles and his penis seemed intent to prove its repaired blood flow by sporting a rather impressive erection. Of course, Sunday might have been easily impressed. She didn't have much to judge these things by. She felt an almost overwhelming urge to reach out and measure this part of his anatomy by comparing it to her hand size, but she was absolutely certain this would be misinterpreted.
She said nothing.
Pit wisely acted as if he didn't notice anything out of the ordinary about the situation. Instead, he picked up some of the small metal bits that had fallen from him. He stared at them, and suddenly she could see a spark in his eyes.
"You remember something?"
"Maybe," he said.
"What?"
"I . . . I don't know where it was. Down south somewhere, maybe. I remember there was a two-lane road, and right beside one another, a bar, a tattoo parlor, a Holiness church, and a graveyard, all lined up in front of a couple of acres of old mobile homes."
"What's that got to do with those?" She nodded toward the fragments.
"A woman ran the tattoo parlor. Wendy? Cindy? Candy? We met at the bar. She was just getting started in the tattoo business. I told her she could practice on me. She used to draw all kinds of designs on me. A week later, they'd just fade away, like my body thought they were just another injury. She also did piercing. I think my body absorbed some of them."
Sunday furrowed her brow. "You let someone shove metal into your genitals?"
"She was real nice to me," said Pit, with a shrug.
"But you don't remember her name?"
"I don't remember my name."
"So what happened to her?"
Pit said nothing. His eyes went vacant, like he was searching through all the little film loops in his brain, trying to find one that answered her question. He shook his head and grabbed his pants. He looked at the bloodied crotch.
"Guess I should wash these," he said.
"Or burn 'em," she said.
"It was cancer," he said. "Cancer's what happened to her."
"Oh," she said.
"She'd been sick before I met her. Breast cancer. She'd tattooed over the two long scars on her chest. Lightning bolts. Said she had power over death."
He shook his head. "She was the skinniest woman you ever seen. Then the cancer came back. Chemo made all her hair fall out, even her pubes, even her eyebrows. Her skin was so smooth and soft. She didn't feel much like going out, so we'd just lie around in bed, holding each other, the hours rolling by. I'd try to cheer her up. Tell her she was beautiful as her hair fell out and her face turned slowly into a skull. 'My cancer beauty,' I called her."
He pulled on his pants. "And then she got really sick." He tucked his still erect penis up against his belly. "And then she died."
"I'm sorry," said Sunday.
"Aw, it's nothing," he said, shrugging. "Everyone dies. Everyone."
"You don't."
"Yeah," he said. "I do. A little every day. You ain't looking at a living man. You're looking at a corpse too stupid to call it quits."
"You keep saying you're stupid," she said, brushing her hair back from her face, "but the more I listen to you, the more I suspect you're secretly kind of smart."
"That's just my dumbness rubbing off on you," he said.
"If so, I wish more of you were rubbing off on me."
Pit looked down at his jeans, at his still noticeable erection. "Are you . . . are you saying . . ."
"No!" she said, feeling her cheeks flush. "God no. I'm saying that you've got this . . . this quiet wisdom about you. A calmness. You seem . . . centered. I'd like to learn how you get there."
"Brain damage, mostly," he said.
* * *
The next cabin over turned out to be a chapel. In a room behind the altar there was a small kitchen and, praise the Lord, a coffee maker and an unopened vacuum pack of Starbucks coffee. Because t
he Lord was kind, water ran when they opened the tap. They plugged the pot in. Because the Lord was cruel, there was no electricity. Pit flipped a few switches.
Nothing.
"I bet there's a breaker box," she said. "Check outside."
"Can't you heat the water with your powers?"
She froze. It was a very simple question.
For a brain-damaged freak, he picked up instantly that something was wrong.
"Has something happened to your powers?"
"What?" she said. "No. Why would you think that?"
"Well, you ain't glowed even a little bit since we climbed out of the lake. Usually by this time of day, you've lit up a time or two."
"Usually by this time of day, I've had coffee," she said.
"You need coffee to use your powers?" he said. "That seems like some kind of weakness."
"Some kind, yeah," she said. "Look, it's nothing big. I used a lot of power last night. It's left me feeling a little . . . unsteady. I need to . . . if the heroes show back up, I need to save my strength."
Pit leaned back against the sink, staring at her.
"What?" she asked.
"The first time I met you, you had trouble turning your powers on."
"That was ten years ago," she said. "I was just a little girl."
"You were afraid of losing control."
"What are you now? My dad?"
"You still touch yourself?"
"Pit!" she said. "What's gotten into you? And how can you possibly know about that?"
"Monday told me before I ever met you that was how you found out about your powers. Maybe I got a dirty mind, but it's a memory that stuck with me."
"What I do or don't do with my body is none of your business." She went the tap and filled the carafe with water, then dumped in a random amount of coffee. She'd do this without electricity. Where the hell did Pit get off asking something like that?
She cradled the pitcher between her palms. She took a deep, slow breath. All she had to do was let out a little heat. Very little. Too much and she'd blow up the pot. She imagined shards of glass flying everywhere. She visualized a sliver sinking into her eye, driving into her brain.
The water stayed cold.
"You can't do it," said Pit.
"I just don't want coffee all that badly," she said, putting the carafe down on the counter. "It wouldn't taste right without it dripping through a filter."
"Sure it would," he said, eyeing the grounds in the water. "That there's cowboy coffee!"
She stared at her hands. All she needed to do to get past this was just make a little ball of light in her palm. Just something the size of a marble.
Nothing.
Pit said, "Looks like we're gonna have to go into town for some java."
She shook her head.
"We should stay here," she said.
"Someone will find us here."
She nodded. "I know. So. I should stay here. You should go."
"That don't make sense," he said.
"I can't turn my powers on," she whispered.
"You mean I was right?" He scratched his head. "Man, I oughta write this down."
"What you oughta do is go," she said. "Right now, I'm a liability. Leave me my half of the money and go on. If I get my powers back, I'll meet you in Pangea."
Pit shook his head. "Naw, we're a team. We go together."
"A team is only as strong as its weakest link," she said.
"You're thinking of a chain," he said. "And yesterday you melted a mountain while I coasted down a burning road in a crippled truck. Who was the weak link then? You've stood by me. I'll stand by you."
She crossed her arms. "You don't understand." She felt on the verge of tears. "I died. I died! And, using my powers last night . . . it hurt! When I was powering down it felt . . . it felt like I was being hollowed out. The pain was . . . it made me . . . I don't want to die, Pit. I'm not like you. I can't just shrug this shit off."
"Then don't shrug it off," he said. "Wrap both arms around the idea and pull it close."
"Embrace dying?"
"Death is like a mean dog. You show fear and it's gonna chase you. But you run at it growling, and it backs off."
"I saw you try that trick in Toronto eight years ago," she said. "You got bit!"
"But I bit him back. Look, you gotta stare the Grim Reaper straight in the eye, grab him by his hood and plant a big one on his bony chin. If it's your time, he'll kiss you back. If not, you're gonna make him more scared of you than you are of him."
She rubbed her arms, thinking about what he said. She was as cold as she'd ever been, and her bones still hurt. If she'd ever felt more afraid, she couldn't remember when. But she took some degree of comfort that Pit was going to stick around.
"You look cold," he said.
"It's freezing!" she said, shivering. "Wasn't it hot yesterday? Where's global warming when you really need it?"
Pit took off his biker jacket and held it out to her. "I'd have given it to you sooner if I'd known you couldn't make yourself hot no more," he said, sounding sincerely apologetic.
She looked at the jacket like he was handing her a bomb.
"Something wrong?" he asked. "It smell bad?"
She took the jacket. "It smells fine." The leather was still damp, but it was warm from his body heat. She said, "You keep being kind to me. Kindness messes with every assumption I hold about humanity."
"It ain't no sure thing that I'm human," he said.
She slipped her arms into the sleeves. Then, for the first time in her adult life, she couldn't help herself. She hugged him. He held his hands out awkwardly to the side.
"Whatever you are," she whispered, "the world needs more like you."
He carefully wrapped his arms around her. He patted her back, as if she needed comfort.
But what if she didn't need comfort?
She tilted her face toward his. He stared into her eyes, looking confused. She held his gaze. His eyes were brown, the irises looking almost like they'd been carved and polished from some rare wood.
"You, uh," he said. "You . . . got nice eyes. You could, uh, you could be a model?"
"You really should just give up on sweet talk," she said, standing on her tiptoes.
He took the hint and kissed her.
He hugged her even tighter. She ran her fingers up his neck and mussed with his curls.
Embrace death, he'd said. Run straight towards it.
She moved her hand toward his crotch. Since the Grim Reaper wasn't around, she chose to grab hold of her second worse fear. She found his fly and toyed with it. He moved from her mouth to nibble on her ears. The sensation was electric.
"I don't touch myself," she whispered in his ear as he nibbled on her neck. "I haven't come since I was fifteen. The second I found out Rex Monday could watch anything I did, I swore off sex. I'm still a virgin."
Pit put his hands under her butt and lifted her onto the counter. He tore away the cloth banner under her leather jacket and pressed his mouth between her breasts. Then his tongue found her nipple. She gasped, then tilted her head back and groaned as heat flooded her body.
His rough fingers slipped between her thighs. She instinctively closed her legs, trapping his hand. There was no need to rush this. Kissing and a little fondling were enough for now, weren't they? Pit didn't push. He waited patiently, his hand hot against her smooth skin. Caution and timidity were such human traits. Sunday knew that thinking too much had once kept her from reaching the sky. If she was going to fly again, she had to let go of all doubt and hesitation. Drawing a breath, she spread her knees apart.
She gasped as his fingers slipped slowly along her flesh. Her fears vanished beneath a wave of pleasure.
The paint began to peel from the kitchen walls. Soon, the air smelled of burning coffee as the last of the water boiled away.
Clean water is hard to find. The loose stuff drifts around in little spheres, most no bigger than ball bearings. I found an orb the size o
f a baseball last week and felt like I'd found gold. Except, gold's easy to find. Bars, coins, rings, chains and sometimes little chewed up nuggets.
Useless.
If I could melt it all down I'd have enough to build a throne. I'd be Midas, king of this world.
Rex mundi.
Dying of thirst.
Why didn't I drink more water?
Chapter Nine
* * *
Homes of the Heroes
AP WANTED TO BE DISCRETE. He couldn't just ask Simpson to cut and paste him into Detroit. Ap had no ties at all to the city, no reason to go there. If it was true that Servant had once been the meta-human drug lord known as Ogre, how high did the secret go? Did Simpson know? Did Katrina Knowbokov, who bankrolled the whole operation? Whose toes was he stepping on by pursuing the truth?
The irony was, he had a damn teleportation belt, and the one thing the geniuses here hadn't figured out how to do was to make it teleport him anywhere. Not that he was ungrateful. The restore application had worked beautifully, resetting his body to the exact condition it had been a week ago, when he'd done his last back up scan. From now on he was doing those scans daily.
In the end he'd had Simpson send him to Chicago. He'd mentioned a few touristy things he planned to do with his time off. Simpson seemed to buy the cover story. Unlike comic book heroes who always seemed to work pro bono, members of the Covenant were paid a generous salary, so he'd made reservations at the Peninsula Chicago, the fanciest hotel he'd ever stayed at, not that he intended to actually stay there. Instead, he checked in, removed the space machine transponder unit from his belt, and plugged it into the bathroom outlet to charge. He put his cell phone into the same outlet. Without these, he was no longer transmitting real time data revealing his location. He now had his privacy, but he was also working without a safety net. He didn't even have an internet connection. He was so used to the streams of data in his retinal display that he felt off balance, half-blind and stupid, as he went down to the lobby to meet the courier bringing him his rental car.