Superheroes In Denim

by Lee French

  “Where are the others, Mitchell?”

  “Go to Hell,” he ground out between gritted teeth.

  “Well, we have Dazai, too. She’ll probably tell us whatever we want to know when we’re through with her.”

  Bobby’s eyes snapped open to glare at the suit. The light stabbed his head with spikes of agony, but he ignored that to focus on delivering his message. “Keep your hands off her,” he growled.

  “Put three patriotic men in a room with a female terror suspect, and you never know what might happen.” The suit’s mouth curled into a cruel smirk of satisfaction. “You’ve been injected with a muscle relaxant. We have reason to believe it will prevent you from using your freak ability, so you get to lie here and listen.” The suit stood up and opened the door of what must be a bedroom in a house. He had no idea how they found a house, set it up, and got here fast enough for him to wake up and still feel this awful.

  With the door open, he could hear someone whimpering and sniffling. It had to be Ai or the other girl. Either way, he wanted to kill these four men for causing it.

  “The thing about Miss Dazai is that once she’s tied down, she isn’t going anywhere.” The suit nodded to someone outside the room, then he crossed his arms leaned against the door frame.

  “Get away from me,” Ai said, a warble of fear in her voice. She whimpered and Bobby heard cloth ripping. “Stop,” she begged, “please don’t.” She sucked in a breath, and it sounded like she’d begun to cry.

  “Don’t you dare touch her!” Bobby shouted with all he had, straining to free himself. He could feel the dragons still under his skin, but none could break free.

  “Just answer the questions, and this all stops.”

  This couldn’t be happening. No one really did this kind of thing, not in the States. Bobby stared at the suit, torn between disbelief and rage. “Let her go. She don’t know nothing. It’s all me, I’m the only one what knows. You let her go, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

  “No!” Ai cried. “Bobby, don’t tell them anything.”

  How could he lie here and listen to that? He liked Ai, she was nice and friendly and a decent person. She didn’t deserve anything like this. No one did. Had he really thought about doing it to someone else not so long ago? Listening to her crying and begging for them to stop, those men disgusted him. That he wanted to return the favor disgusted him more.

  He shut his eyes and breathed deeply, trying to push away Ai’s voice. It would give him nightmares later. No, he wouldn’t torture any of these men, not even for a minute. “I’m going to kill you. All of you.”

  The suit snorted. “I seriously doubt that, Mitchell.”

  Something still held his dragons in check, frustrating him and forcing tears of sympathy out of his eyes. He stopped trying to ignore the noises and let them in to fuel his anger. If he couldn’t take it in her stead, he would listen. For being unable to stop it, he’d have memories of her screams and tears as penance.

  “You sick fucks,” a new female voice snarled.

  Bobby’s eyes snapped open and he strained to see the person he guessed must be the Reno girl, Anita. He watched the suit in the doorway turn in surprise and pull out a gun and saw little else.

  Something crashed in the other room and the suit fired his gun. He kept firing and ran to the side. Whatever Anita could do, he doubted she could dodge bullets, leaving Bobby with little hope for rescue. Heavy things scraped across the floor, wood cracked, men grunted and groaned, and gunshots rang out. A nightstand sailed past the door, giving Bobby an idea of what happened out there.

  With one last crash, the gunfire stopped, leaving Bobby’s ears ringing. “Come on,” Anita said, barely loud enough for him to hear, “we’ve got to get out of here before they wake up.”

  “We can’t leave Bobby.”

  Anita growled in the back of her throat. “Fine, I’ll get him. Stay here.” A Hispanic woman with the eyes appeared in the doorway. She hurried in and bent to unbuckling the straps holding him down.

  “Anita?” He sagged to make freeing him easier. “What’d they do to her?”

  Anita clenched her jaw. “Why didn’t you save her?”

  “They drugged me.” With one hand now free, so he reached for the strap on his other wrist. Clumsy and stupid, his fingers fumbled with the buckle. Not willing to go to Ai unprepared, he persisted. “What’d they do to her?”

  She stopped and glared at him, her nostrils flaring. “They didn’t have time to rape her yet, but were going in that direction. She’s mostly cut up some. You let it happen.”

  As if he didn’t have enough guilt banging around inside his head already. She had to go and add an extra pile to the heap. He already knew he let this happen. It had been his idea to attack the car there, and his choice to attack it the way he did. Bobby growled at her. “You wanna blame me, fine. Get her out and I’ll make my own way from here.”

  “Fine.” She tossed open the strap on his right foot and shot to her feet, then stormed out.

  “What about Bobby?” Ai whimpered and hiccuped.

  “He’ll catch up when he’s ready to be a man,” Anita sneered. “You need medical attention, let’s go.”

  What did she expect him to do? Was it not clear he would have smashed skulls if he could have? Every inch of his body ached, especially his head, and he couldn’t even manage to free his hand. Sagging back to take a short breather, he called out, “Take care of yourself, Ai. You’re strong, remember that.”

  He heard a faraway door open and shut. If he called the one loose dragon back, would the drugs make it reattach? Probably, so he couldn’t chance it. He returned to freeing himself and managed to slide his hand free when he heard someone groan in the other room. Sitting up, he attacked the strap on his ankle. His hands still refused to do what he wanted, and he had to slow down to accomplish anything.

  A suit staggered into the doorway. This one had been the driver at Lily’s house. “Left you behind, huh?” Small cuts on his face oozed blood, and he held his side with one hand, a gun pointed at the floor with the other. “Still going to be loyal to those bitches?”

  “Least I ain’t a rapist.” He kept working on the cuff around his ankle.

  “It’s a fine line, you know. But really, none of you are actually human. We can do whatever we want to all of you.”

  “I’m still an American citizen. So is she.” Stupid, stupid fingers took far too long.

  “Technicality. Cats and dogs aren’t citizens, even though they live here. You just are because you look human enough to pass for one”

  “I ain’t a cat nor a dog.”

  “Close enough.”

  The buckle came loose and he looked up into the barrel of that gun. In his current condition, a BB gun could probably kill him. He froze and gulped.

  “Think you’re faster than a bullet, Mitchell?”

  His dragons still wouldn’t come out to play. “If’n you don’t think I’m human, why d’you keep using my last name? That’s my daddy’s name.”

  The suit chuckled. “Cute. Hands up or you get shot.”

  With another gulp, Bobby slowly raised his hands. For now, he’d have to do what this guy said. Why did he have to mouth off at Anita? Oh, right, because she blamed him for what these assholes did to Ai. His eyes danced from the gun to the man and back again as he thought about taking the chance. Another voice groaned out there. Two guys with guns sounded like way more than he could handle right now. Besides, the hospitality here sucked.

  Adrenaline pumped through him, easing the pain all over his body. Ducking to one side, he swung an arm out to push the gun aside. It went off. He lunged. They scuffled over the gun, both in equally bad shape. Bobby heard another gunshot. Something stabbed him in the side and he felt himself go pale. No matter how much he wanted to keep going, to keep fighting, his body wouldn’t let him. It had been beaten, battered, and now broken, and it couldn’t take any more.

  Staggering back, Bobby grunted as
the suit shot him again. He collapsed and felt unconsciousness creeping up over him, so he reached out to the one lone dragon that managed to stay apart. It perched outside the window, claws around the upper edge and dangling down to watch. Somehow, he found himself in there with it, and he watched the suit nudge his body with a shoe, watching himself not react. This beat everything else he’d ever done or seen for weird, no contest.

  The suit holstered his gun under his jacket and knelt beside Bobby’s body. He tucked two fingers under his chin to check for a pulse, then ripped Bobby’s shirt off. His muffled voice called out for the others and he covered the two the injuries he just inflicted, applying pressure to both. So, they wanted him alive. Had to appreciate the guy not putting a bullet in his brain and leaving it at that.

  Hannah needed to know what happened here. His current assets: one tiny robot dragon with no ability to speak. It could, instead, make cute little dragon noises. Now that he paid attention, this tiny robot dragon had enough rage to kill someone fifty times over. Its claws had dug into the metal it held onto so hard they punched holes in it. In fairness, he had a powerful urge to gut these four men, too.

  Getting a message to Hannah felt remote and impossible under these conditions. Freeing himself had to be his next best option. Thinking of it that way confused him, so he settled on thinking of it as freeing his body. The dragon preferred to do that, and let its rage simmer down to a manageable level to help.

  From this vantage point, he watched another suit hurry in with a medical kit. Together, they worked on keeping his body from bleeding to death. Neither of them tried to pull the bullets out or sew anything up. Instead, they focused on using powders and applying gauze and bandages.

  The problem of freeing his body occupied his mind while they worked. Actually, freeing it now would be stupid. He’d be unconscious, unable to accomplish anything and at their mercy. Waiting until it got real treatment and woke up struck him as a better plan, since he couldn’t go swarm until that happened. In the meantime, he would keep track of it, listen in, and try to find a way to contact Hannah. This plan sucked. It was still a plan, and better than no plan.

  For this plan to work, he needed to be able to hear what they said. Thankfully, the dragon understood it needed to stay apart from the swarm for now, so he could count on its help. Never mind the weirdness of that. This was not the time to be dealing with the absurdity his life had become. This was the time to be dealing with the crap in front of him. He directed the dragon to fly all around the house and find a way inside.

  As soon as they saw the tiny dragon, they’d recognize it. If even one of them noticed the weird shape of his finger, they knew he had a dragon loose. There would be no element of surprise here, and no hiding in plain sight. This dragon had to stay out of sight, and had to do it where he could listen in and follow them. The possibility existed that they wouldn’t think he could have his mind in the one missing dragon, which gave him a slight advantage.

  The dragon found a vent in the eaves of the two-story house and crawled inside, then flew through it and found the dryer vent with no dryer connected to it. The laundry room had no washer, either. That meant no one lived in this house. How did they get here? Where was ‘here’? The questions gnawed at his brain. Mind. Whatever. They gnawed. He flitted through the house from ledge to shelf, keeping track of the best hiding spots.

  All the action had taken place upstairs, so he stopped on the moulding at the top of the doorway closest to the bottom of the stairs. Unless a suit shone a light up here, they should remain unnoticed. With so little furniture and decoration, the voices carried, so he heard the suits talking. In fact, it had such a small amount of anything, he wondered where Anita had found anything to throw around.

  “Why did you even shoot him a second time? You could have just pistol whipped him.” Bobby decided to call this voice Suit One, it being the first one he heard well enough to make out the words. He spoke in a clean baritone with no obvious accent.

  “You saw the pictures from San Jose.” As already noted from his brief conversation earlier, Suit Two also had no accent. Did they train these guys that way? “They didn’t do his handiwork justice.”

  “He was doped up and couldn’t do that right now. Christ, that’s why we aren’t dead now.”

  “Just call it in and get us another ride.”

  “You think the girls took the car?”

  Suit Two snorted. “Of course they did. They’d be stupid not to. These things may not be human, but they aren’t stupid. If we’ve learned anything by now, it’s that underestimating them will get us all killed. We’re just lucky Martinez only beat the crap out of us.”

  Another voice groaned and debris shifted.

  Digital tones announced an outgoing phone call. Suit One spoke. “Dazai and Martinez got away. Mitchell is in custody, but seriously injured. He’s been shot twice. … Yes, sir, but Dazai and Martinez took our vehicle. … No, sir. … He’s stable for the moment, but we need to move. This location has been compromised. We could all use some medical attention, we didn’t let them go quietly or anything. … Yes, sir. … Understood.”

  “Did anybody get the number of that Mack truck?” Suit Three, also accent-free, joined the conversation as a pained tenor. “Jesus, I think she broke my goddamned arm.”

  “Barnes is still out,” Suit Two said. “Check on him.”

  “Someone will be here in half an hour,” Suit One said. “Privek is pissed.”

  Was that FBI Special Agent Steve Privek? The one that originally arrested Bobby a million years ago, on the other side of the world? Privek apparently had been slumming it by picking Bobby up, or maybe got a promotion from doing it with whatever freaky organization they all worked for. It couldn’t really be the FBI. The country his daddy fought and died for wouldn’t let the FBI do things like this. He hoped not, anyway.

  “No shit,” Suit Two growled. “We’ll be lucky if it isn’t a cleaning crew.”

  “Barnes is dead,” Suit One announced. “We should blame him.”

  “Seconded.” Suit Three grunted with pain.

  Suit Two said, “Agreed. He was in charge of keeping Martinez subdued. His judgment on the subject allowed her to get free, and that’s how she overpowered us and got away.”

  “Shooting Mitchell twice is all on you, though,” Suit One snapped.

  “Whatever. He was still a threat. At least we have him.”

  “Assuming he lives,” Suit One snapped.

  “He’ll live.” Along with Suit Two’s voice, Bobby heard the sound of latex snapping, probably him pulling off gloves. “He’ll never be a quarterback, but he’ll live.”

  They moved on to tending Suit Three, who Bobby learned had a name of ‘Walker’ when Suit Two told him to stop whining. Whatever injuries he had, they seriously hurt. Bobby figured these guys had one thing in common with his daddy: they didn’t bitch and moan about minor injuries. If they made noise, it damned well hurt. Walker made a lot of noise.

  It took them fifteen minutes to get Bobby’s and Barnes’s bodies down the stairs and within easy reach of the garage. Walker had to go slow and cradled his arm. After that, Suit Two walked around the house, dousing it with clear liquid from a large canister they must have brought along with them.

  At the same time, Suit One went through Barnes’s coat in the kitchen, where Bobby could see it. He pulled out four different badges from four different agencies, checking each one and setting them in a stack. When he ‘d checked all the pockets, he slid them in an already half-full bag, along with a set of keys, a pack of gum, and a few other small items. Bobby’s own trenchcoat could be in the bag, though he doubted it.

  With that done, Suit Two pulled Bobby’s cheap cellphone out of a pocket and futzed with it. It had only one number in memory and the call log, and he punched a button to dial it. If only he could warn Hannah somehow, or at least hear the other end.

  “Yeah, I got clear, sorry to make you worry.” Suit Two did a reasonably good impr
ession of Bobby’s voice. He listened in disgust, praying for Hannah to see through the ruse before she revealed anything. “I’m pretty messed up, but I’ll heal. Are the girls okay? … Good, good.” He stood there for several seconds without saying anything. “Hello?” He growled in the back of his throat and snapped the phone shut. “She hung up on me.”

  Bobby would have breathed a sigh of relief if he could have. The dragon kept its head and didn’t let him make any noise.

  Suit Two showed the phone to Suit One. “Trace the number down. It looks like he’s called it plenty of times. We should be able to get a fix on it.”

  Suit One pulled out his own smartphone and tapped on it several times while checking the number on the flip phone. “Assuming they don’t smash it. Someone just pointed out they aren’t stupid not too long ago.”

  A thumping noise cut off the conversation and made both suits look up. “Our ride is here,” Suit Two said, snapping the phone shut and tossing it into the bag. The two of them headed to the front door. Bobby followed along, doing his best to stay out of sight.

  Completely out of place in this nice, normal neighborhood, a sizable cargo helicopter landed in the middle of the street. Since they clearly intended to load his body into it, Bobby turned his attention to the task of getting into it unseen and finding a hiding place for the flight. Men in military camouflage hopped out and left the door open, and everyone kept their heads down, making his job easy. The dragon fought the wind from the rotors to come around the other side and swoop in over the top.

  From his perch under the pilot’s seat, the dragon could see part of the instrument panel. Bobby had no idea what any of the knobs, dials, and gauges meant. He did, however, figure out that one near the middle was a clock. Their flight lasted fifteen minutes and thirty-five seconds. It landed at some kind of military facility, one with hangars and an airfield, and some really enormous mountains in the distance.

  This was not Elko. No one would be stupid enough to put an airport along a road that wound through the mountains, and these particular mountains didn’t look like anything he saw flying over and near Elko. Until he got a better view or saw a sign, he had no guess for his location, other than ‘not Elko’. That meant he might have been unconscious longer than he thought.