Already there, Nimbus directed the work, searching out buried pockets of survivors, her photonic form able to go anywhere light could penetrate. Atlas and I followed her in using our own enhanced senses, pushing aside fallen walls and twisted framework, opening crawlspaces and digging into the ruin under her direction.
We dug for hours in the haze. Dust settled into everything, caked everything, turned into mud. The workers around me hacked and spat black gobs, wrapping their faces in damp bandage-gauze to keep from choking on it as we dug. Each body we found was a tragedy deferred till later, each living victim we recovered a win very briefly celebrated. No one worked harder than Atlas, clearing rubble through aftershocks that buried us more than once.
The rest of the team came in a couple hours behind us, and Chakra used her psychic powers to locate pockets even Nimbus couldn't find. Blackstone teleported down to them whenever we found room. Artemis, down in the dark, misted through the rubble and brought the smallest children back with her to the edge of daylight. Ajax joined in the digging, and Rush and Quin turned out to be licensed EMTs. We combed the wreckage till nightfall, doing days worth of search and rescue work in hours.
Dead or alive, we took them to the emergency camp set up in nearby Barnsdall Park where surviving staff did what they could for the injured with scavenged supplies. We laid the dead in rows, wrapping them with cut garbage bags. Atlas' face was stone, and the part of my mind not occupied with the tasks of the moment filled with the prayer from that Monday in Chicago.
God, look after your newest angels. Be with the ones who mourn them now.
It became my litany for grief.
Chapter Thirty Four
If the advent of superhumans has hugely increased the power of non-government groups to make war, it has also significantly impacted humanity's ability to respond to disaster. In the California Earthquake, nearly 300 emergency-capable superhumans reached the stricken cities of Southern California in the first day. In contrast it took the US Marines three days to begin significant operations, centered around the emergency base that became Fort Whittier. It took five days for the USS Nimitz and its carrier fleet to reach LA Harbor. Superhumans have become the first-responders in cases of natural disaster.
Dr. Benjamin Svengal, World Health Organization Report
* * *
The storm finally broke that evening, washing away the dust as we worked through the night and into the next day. More CAI superhumans with emergency-appropriate powers arrived in the morning, and I found myself directing a put-up team of CAIs from all over the country. Riptide had come to the hospital New Year's morning to see his nephew (who'd come through without a scratch), and he became the assigned waterman for our zone as soon as the disaster coordinators learned about him. Once he wasn't needed for fires anymore, he purified and stored thousands of gallons of runoff in hours.
"My peeps can look after themselves, you know?" he said when I asked him about it. "My sister got trapped at Mom's in San Diego. I'm going to stick around in case Carlos needs me, and I might as well pitch in if I'm here."
He seemed almost embarrassed. With his shiny tattooed head, mustache, soul patch, and the blue t-shirt with a spray-painted Pisces symbol that he wore under a long canvas coat, he looked like what he was: a supervillain gangbanger. But he worked as hard as anybody and we needed him.
I half-expected to see Dad assigned to our scratch-built Search and Rescue teams, but because of his experience FEMA assigned him to work with Mr. Ludlow—recently out of rehab—and other members of The Crew. They got to work clearing roads and replacing fallen bridges and overpasses with temporary patches as soon as they landed.
Taking Dad's advice, I categorized the capes on my team as cutters, lifters, and seekers, amazed at what powers were useful. One woman, Entropy, sped up the decay of inorganic compounds; we used her to weaken fallen wall sections so volunteer diggers could easily break them up. Vector, a gravity controller, lowered the local gravity so they could lift huge chunks away as easily as I could.
At sunset on day two we stood down and they directed our teams to a nearby Motel 6 they'd commandeered as a rest-center for out-of-town heroes like us. We were filthy and had no running water, but Riptide joined us, pulling water from the air to fill all the containers we could find so at least we got to rinse and wipe down. A neighboring supermarket opened its aisles for us.
Atlas and I flew to the airport and brought back our field gear pallets, which included a satellite uplink. We turned on the news to learn that the governor of California had asked for all possible help within minutes of the quake, President Touches Clouds had declared a national state of emergency, FEMA was on the move, and hundreds of superhumans from around the US were converging on California if not already here.
I'd been focused on our part of the crisis, but now all I could do was stare helplessly at the pictures of devastation. LA and San Diego looked like they'd been carpet-bombed—in some places no building taller than five stories stayed standing. Commentators estimated the official death-toll as thirty thousand and rising. And the shattered state faced a humanitarian crisis.
There are four parts to emergency management: mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. In the case of an earthquake, mitigation includes things like structural requirements for building and road safety—lack of mitigation engineering is the biggest reason why earthquakes in third-world countries kill far more people. The California State Government had planned for a major one for years now, but all their mitigation planning had been assuming an 8.2 strength quake, 4 gigatons tops. A 9.0 was far stronger than anybody had considered using as a reasonable risk factor, so lots of buildings that should have ridden it out, didn't. Bridges hadn't been built or strengthened to take it. Only the day and time had kept the immediate death-toll from skyrocketing into six digits.
Preparedness failed for the same reason; the stockpiles of emergency supplies and the number of trained and equipped emergency specialists weren't nearly up to handling a catastrophe this big. Southern California had become a rolling humanitarian disaster waiting to get bigger.
Nobody had much to say so we headed for our rooms. Without a word, Atlas took my hand and led me into his. I started to protest when I realized what he'd done.
"Hush up," he said, stripping the dust-laden cover off the bed and pushing me down to sit on the edge while he pulled off my boots. "This is hardly the place and certainly not the time for anything, but you're not going to want to be alone tonight. Trust me."
Tired as I was, I simply nodded and removed my gloves, belt, mask, and wig, and ran my fingers through my relatively clean hair. He reached up and detached my cape, then pushed me down to stretch out and spooned in behind me.
I wondered if I was his teddy bear tonight, but I was out before he stopped moving.
* * *
Sometime in the night I dreamed of rows of trash-bag covered children and jerked awake, nearly paralyzed by a horrible realization. There was only one way the quake could have come without warning. Holding tight to the arm around me I forced myself to stop shaking, willing myself to breathe normally.
If the Anarchist had known it was coming he would have warned someone or stopped the person responsible. I had to believe that. If the quake really was caused by an unbelievably powerful terrakinetic then it would have been easy for him to spot it from the future, to prevent it from ever happening. So his twin must have intervened. Made it happen when it hadn't happened before. I wanted to be sick.
I even understood why DA had done it—the Anarchist had said his nemesis was losing the political fight, that he didn’t have enough popular support for the kind of regulations and control he needed to build.
But not anymore, not after this.
After this people would be scared, angry, vengeful. How could any amount of good deeds make up for thousands dead? And politicians calling for registration, monitoring, restrictions, would seem so reasonable. That it made sense if someone was willing to kil
l thousands simply made it more horrible. All those little bodies.
I realized I was silently crying when Atlas' arm tightened.
"Are you alright?" he whispered. When I shook my head he turned me about so the spooning became a mutual embrace. He held me together, kept me from flying into a million pieces, and I squeezed my eyes shut, burrowing in as his human warmth drew me out of myself. When I finally relaxed he adjusted us so I was comfortable, his breath stirring my hair.
"Go to sleep," he whispered, and I nodded. I had work in front of me, but when we got home I would place another ad. The Anarchist was right; it had to stop. There had to be something more I could do.
In Atlas' arms, my new resolution was enough to take me back to sleep.
Chapter Thirty Five
In any large-scale disaster, the majority of fatalities often happen after the initial killing event. Tsunamis, typhoons, and earthquakes, especially, can completely disrupt the systems which sustain populations. Homes only keep enough food to last a few days, local stores can be stripped as quickly, and if power—therefore refrigeration—is lost, the local food supply shrinks immediately. In these situations the first priority, once immediate rescue efforts are largely complete, is to restore these systems as rapidly as possible.
Emergency Response, Systems and Procedures, 2004.
* * *
With the death-toll reaching 38,000 by day three, naturally the trauma of the quake created more breakthroughs. Most got to work wherever they could pitch in, but not all of the new breakthroughs wanted to help.
One of them tried to kill me.
Dispatch had switched Atlas and me to flying pallets of food, water, and fuel to the new camps and distribution centers springing up everywhere, and the jet of superheated plasma caught me on our eighth supply run from Whittier Base. I screamed as my supposedly fire-resistant uniform went up in flames. Touched by the stream of disassociated ions, the fuel pallet I carried over my head exploded, throwing me down. I cratered the residential street, pieces of burning pallet raining down around me.
Stunned, I lifted my head and saw the shooter.
His rage-contorted face glowed and waves of plasma rolled off him, making him look like a devil sprung from the Pit, and I got only as far as my knees before his next shot tumbled me down the street. His third shot blew me into someone's home where the street turned and I ran out of pavement. I heard Atlas shouting, felt the fire on every inch of my skin.
What did I do to him?
His anger felt personal, and I dazedly thought that if only I could talk to him, he would stop. Instead I ran. Not far—just through the house and into the back yard, where I found the feature I prayed for: a family pool, the great California accessory. Thank you God, it had been covered for the winter but not drained. I went through the cover like it was tissue.
Surfacing, I finally paid attention to the yelling in my earbug, miraculously intact under my scorched mask. "Astra! Dammit, are you alright!"
I inhaled with lungs that felt fragile.
"I'm here! I mean—" Deeper breath. "I'm okay, I think."
The burning dimmed, became ignorable, and I lifted myself out of the pool and flew over the house. In the street, I found Atlas had dropped his own pallet somewhere to directly engage my attacker. He grappled the burning man, standing inside his glowing and pulsating corona. His hands around his neck, he choked him at arm's length.
As I landed beside them, stumbling, the shooter slumped and his plasma sheath disappeared. Atlas dropped him on the charred grass. Just like that, it was over.
* * *
The infirmary at Restormel proved every bit as good as the Dome's, with its own resident doctor of superhuman medicine. I wondered just how much the Hollywood Knights really used her skills. Dr. Carlson helped me peel out of my burned costume—parts were melted to my skin—and checked me over inch by inch, even sticking a camera down my throat between cups of ick. It'll help restore you, she said.
I was too shell-shocked for my iatrophobia to even twinge.
She ran a gloved finger over the dark red patch just to the right of my belly button.
"How does that feel?"
I twitched, inhaling.
"Like a bad sunburn. It hurt worse a few minutes ago."
"Your nerves are returning to their normal sensitivity. You can feel intense heat, but burning attacks need to work very hard to actually raise your body's temperature—even at the skin. If your attacker had had more time, well, it could have been bad."
She snapped the gloves off.
"As it is, your skin, throat, and lungs got baked a bit but you're recuperative powers are already taking care of it. By tomorrow you should be fine." She handed me a blue cotton jumpsuit (I'd come to realize the jumpsuit was standard hero-wear for capes who trashed their outfits). I gingerly pulled it on and rolled up the legs and sleeves while she dictated into a recorder. "Send your man in," she said when I finished dressing.
I stepped out into the hall to find Atlas waiting. He looked me over, the stiffness going out of him.
"Are you alright?"
I nodded, a lump rising in my raw throat.
"She said it's your turn."
I jerked my head at the door, not looking at him.
The plasma-user had turned up the heat when Atlas grabbed him, and it showed. Atlas didn't wear gloves, but the sleeves of his leather jumpsuit were burned away and his hands glistened bright red. So did his face. He'd actually taken more hot plasma than I had, but he refused to be treated first. I held the door so he wouldn't have to touch it, and he went through it with a last look at me. Once the door closed I put my back to the wall and slid down it. Sitting on my heels, I rested my forehead on my knees and concentrated on not losing it.
I'd almost died. If I'd been alone I might have.
Rook had dropped what he'd been doing and scrambled with a wagon and a police unit as soon as we called the incident in (he flew them in himself). Waiting for them, keeping a careful watch on plasma-guy, we'd talked to a couple of neighbors. And to his hysterical domestic partner.
Plasma-guy wasn't a villain. He was Bryce Walters, a divorced chemical engineer. He'd been given full custody of his son, Bryce Junior, but the boy had been at his mom's for the Christmas season, in Anaheim. He'd allowed him to stay over for New Years. Bryce's mom lived in a high-rise.
I wiped my eyes. Cell-service restored, a state emergency worker had called this morning to tell Bryce his son was dead. His partner, Toni, said he'd listened to the message, repeated it to her, then stopped talking. Stopped doing anything until, hours later, he looked out the bay windows and saw us flying overhead. Then he exploded, literally as well as verbally. I'd seen the melted hole in their front windows, the scorched footprints across their lawn to the street.
The guy was a vegetarian, a pacifist, a member of Greenpeace. And the sight of superhumans, swanning across the sky, while his son was dead in an earthquake one of them had caused, triggered his rage-fueled breakthrough. He'd shot me down, tried to kill me, because I’d been closest.
Bryce woke up before Rook arrived with restraints, but Atlas simply put his foot down—literally. He'd calmly informed Mr. Walters that, if he tried to get up, or ignited again, he would put his boot through his neck. The threat hadn't been needed; Bryce was a beaten man. He hadn't said a word, hadn't even looked at Toni when Rook arrived and they sedated him, locked him in restraints, and took him away. Rook said they'd take him to the Block, California's superhuman lockup, for processing and detainment until trial. I wished he could just go home.
I want to go home.
By the time Dr. Carlson finished with Atlas I was back upright and steady, even smiling for their benefit. She called me back in, handed him a big tube of something, and waved us on our way; a waiting room full of normal patients waited for her and she'd put them on hold to check us out so we could go back to work.
Fortunately for us, our away-gear always included spare costumes; Rush brought the
m to us at Restormel. The tube contained a gel for us to slather on after showering, which we did before changing (it smelled like peach, and I smiled inside at the thought of a fruity-smelling Atlas). I felt naked without my mask and intensely grateful to be back in costume. I also felt horribly exposed up in the air, but we got back on the job. The whole episode took little more than an hour. And it changed everything.
Chapter Thirty Six
With great power comes great responsibility.
Stan Lee, Marvel Comics
With great power comes great perks.
Seven, the Hollywood Knights
Wearing the Cape Page 23