Minion

by John David Anderson

  Eventually Aziz comes back with a small brown bag and hands it to me—he saves the brown bags for special customers. When I start digging in my pockets for the cash, he puts up his hands and moves his head back and forth, shoulder to shoulder. I thank him and head to the door, glad to get out of here without Zach showing off anymore. “Tell your father I said hello. And give my regards to Mr. Romano,” Aziz says behind us, flipping his sign back to OPEN.

  “I will.” I’m guessing I will be back here in a couple of days. Maybe I can have some tea then.

  We turn up the block, headed toward my house. As we walk, Zach points out all the stores and restaurants that Tony has a collar on, making me wonder why the whole street isn’t just named after him. Big Tony Avenue. Or better still, Romano Way. You could probably parse out the whole city if you had a map; take a big Sharpie and outline the neighborhoods. This is Tony’s. To the west is Maloney territory. Even farther south you’ve got rival gangs fighting over trailer parks and burned-out apartment complexes. Then there’re all the neighborhoods north of the mall. The ones with private security systems and wrought-iron fences.

  “I mean, it’s New Liberty,” Zach continues. “Nowhere is really safe. But Tony makes sure everyone here stays in business, at least.” Then he starts going on and on about how nice the bathrooms are in Tony’s house—gold-plated faucets and sixty-inch flatscreens. I start to tune him out. I can’t stop thinking about our little run-in at the mall. She was right. I don’t get to talk to girls enough.

  I interrupt Zach in the middle of some spiel about how Tony Romano is probably the most feared man in New Liberty, ever since the Harbinger—pretty much the city’s last great supervillain—slipped up and got himself disintegrated. “It just goes to show, you don’t have to have superpowers to be respected, you know?”

  “Yeah, whatever,” I say. “Hey, you know how in the movies the chick always goes for the dangerous guy? Do you think that’s true? I mean, do you think girls like that kind of thing?” I had seen a lot more movies since I’d escaped St. Mary’s. Friday night is movie night. My father’s attempt at normalcy. Taco night. Movie night. Game night. A series of typical family nights to balance out our rob-a-bank and test-out-this-new-superconductor days.

  Zach snorts at me. “You’re not dangerous,” he says.

  “I didn’t say I was dangerous. I just asked if they really fall for the dangerous guy, or do they go for the good guy.”

  “You’re not the good guy either,” he points out. “You’re goon number three. You’re the guy that gets his neck broken when the hero shows up under cover of darkness to infiltrate the bad guy’s lair in the finale. You get to say something stupid like, ‘Hey, did you just hear something?’ and then, snap, you’re a mound of Play-Doh on the pavement.”

  “That’s not me,” I say.

  “Fine, then I’m that guy and you’re the guy that says, ‘Nope, I didn’t hear nothin’. Did you?’ and then has his neck snapped.”

  I wonder if he’s right. Wonder if she even gave me a second thought or just left me with a half-eaten breadstick. “You’re just jealous,” I say.

  “Jealous?”

  “Because I have a cooler power than you.”

  Zach stares, incredulous. “You think so? Tell me, Mister Mindflop, when was the last time you used that little trick?”

  I had to think back. Besides the accidental use today, it was probably a month ago, when I parked myself by the ATM machine at the Piggly Wiggly and convinced some guy in a sweater vest to withdraw a hundred dollars from his checking account so we could pay the power bill.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “Exactly what I’m talking about. Even if your power is cooler—and I’m not admitting that it is—you’re too scared to use it. If you weren’t, you would be walking home with that chick from the mall right now instead of arguing with me. Come to think of it, we could both—”

  Zach’s rant is cut short by the crackle of gunshots, a not entirely unusual sound in New Liberty, except these are coming from very close by. I can feel him bristling beside me, his instincts triggered. Two more gunshots follow, then some screaming and an alarm.

  I duck just as the windows of the jewelry store in front of us explode.

  A COMET SIGHTING

  The detonation tears through the city streets, one sound blanketing all others. Zach and I crouch there and watch the glass fly. We should run and scream like all the people around us, but we don’t even move. Paralyzed and mesmerized both. I get a strange prickling on my skin, then another sound, like a dial tone or a dog whistle, a constant buzz. My instinct tells me to turn around, double back, find another way home, but Zach grabs my hand and pulls me behind the dingy glass of a bus stop, mostly hidden from view. Smoke belches from the jewelry store windows, obscuring our line of sight. A mother of three runs past us in the opposite direction, two of her kids trailing behind her, the third crying in her arms. The little one drops a stuffed bear he is holding and wails even louder as they duck inside a nearby apartment building, slamming the door behind them. I wonder if I shouldn’t follow them. If they would even let me in.

  “Look,” Zach says, pointing as three men emerge from the jewelry store, large black duffel bags stuffed. Zach’s eyes are large. Clearly impressed. These aren’t hooligans or thugs. They don’t belong to any of the graffiti gangs we passed on the way here. They are professional criminals, the likes of which New Liberty hasn’t seen in a while. The men, dressed in matching black leather jumpsuits and armed with assault rifles, step through the hole in the window, walking with steady, determined strides. Silvery metal masks hide each of their faces, wrapped halfway around their skulls, with three rectangular slits where their mouths and eyes should be, like a toddler’s first jack-o’-lantern. They look almost like robots. They even move in sync.

  “Those aren’t your guys, are they?” I ask Zach, though I already know the answer. Tony’s men don’t wear masks. Nobody in New Liberty wears masks except for dental hygienists and hazmat crews. Zach shakes his head. I can see the bristles already peeking through the taut skin of his cheeks. “Could be Mickey Six Fingers’s goons,” he says, “but they wouldn’t dare mess with this neighborhood, and they mostly use bats and pipes. That’s expensive hardware.”

  The men in the silver masks fire into the air, making sure the bystanders give them a wide berth. Each shot makes me jump. I can’t help but feel like I should be doing something. Running, probably. Or maybe calling the cops, crazy as that sounds. I say as much to Zach, who already has his phone out and is recording video of the whole affair.

  “Trust me,” he says, “somebody is already on the way.”

  I stop and listen, and in a second I can hear the sirens. The three men in silver masks stand in a huddle outside the jewelry store, aiming their rifles in every direction. Zach turns and points to an approaching cop car, wailing and flashing, screaming to a sideways stop before being riddled by an assault-rifle onslaught. The officer leans out and squeezes off a couple of wayward rounds, then ducks back into the car just as his windshield shatters under a spray of bullets. The siren lets out one last pathetic whimper. Three metal faces whip around as a white van appears from around the corner, T-boning the first police car, knocking it out of the way, the cop still stuck inside.

  “Hope he’s not on our payroll,” Zach mutters.

  There are more sirens from down the block. An old man pokes his head out the door of the shop directly behind us, spits on the street to let us know how he feels, then slams the door shut again. In all the buildings you can see people peering through parted curtains. They haven’t seen anything like this for a long time either. Nobody’s quite sure what to do anymore. I look around, half expecting to see Tony himself walking up, brandishing his cane, demanding to know “What the hell is goin’ on heah?” But the lines have been drawn, and Tony wouldn’t get caught in the middle.

  Another police car careens down the street toward the scene of the crime. The side
door of the van opens, and a fourth steel-faced man pulls what appears to be a rocket launcher up onto his shoulder.

  “Ba-zoo-ka,” Zach marvels, his voice almost cartoonish. I plug my nose from the acrid smell of smoke and look through the slits between my fingers. It’s like watching a lion take down a baby gazelle. The laws of nature at work—that whole circle-of-life—but it still kind of makes your skin crawl seeing it. The squad car squeals. The man in the van fires, and the rocket sizzles through the air, planting a crater in the street for the cop to drop into, landing with another plaintive cry. A third police cruiser slams into it from behind, goes airborne for a moment, and then flips over on its side.

  I think I’ve seen enough.

  “Seriously, man. Time to go,” I say. I wonder what my father would say if he knew I was just sitting here, watching. Suddenly I desperately want to be back home.

  “No, wait,” Zach says, pulling me back down next to him with his free hand, still recording with the other. “Here comes the cavalry.”

  Zach points his phone at the SWAT truck charging from the other direction, plowing through abandoned cars on an intercept course with the white van, its reinforced bumper knocking sedans away like Ping-Pong balls. For a moment I think it’s going to make it, but Rocket Man reloads and fires just in time. The missile scores a direct hit, and the truck rolls twice before landing on its back like a flipped turtle. The officers try to scramble out of their vehicles, but a barrage of gunfire keeps them pinned down as the masked robbers pile into the back of the white van.

  “Who said crime doesn’t pay?” Zach whispers.

  I look around to see if anyone else is coming. More cops. Maybe some of Tony’s men. I don’t know. Somebody. I forget where I am for a moment. These men, with their metal masks and their machine guns and their van clearly fitted with bulletproof glass, they are out of place, and the effect is disorienting. I am suddenly nauseous. I peer through the haze as the van screeches backward, clearing a space, then pulls out into the street. Beside me, Zach stands and bristles as if he’s going to do something, though I know he’s not. His thorny hide is no match for a rocket launcher. The tires squeal, trying to find purchase on a street studded with broken glass. The fire in the jewelry store snorts, and another window shatters. Zach turns to say something to me, but I can only see his lips move as his phone suddenly drops from his hand.

  I can’t hear anything over the sonic boom.

  I topple backward, barely catching myself on the edge of the bench as the sound, curled into a tight fist of singular force, slugs me in the gut. Everything is muffled, like I’ve shoved Q-Tips in my ears clear to my brain.

  I think of my father. And the box he was working on today, the sonic disrupter. Maybe this is his doing. Maybe he’s come to save me. I look around. Then, suddenly, a streak of blue light comes shooting out of the sky, whatever’s at the tip of it landing on the hood of the armored van, which catapults straight up into the air on impact, doing two perfect somersaults before crashing down back on its wheels. It’s the kind of thing you are used to seeing in slow motion in the movies, so in real life it happens way too fast.

  “What is that?” Zach says, stupefied. He points to the guy dressed in blue—perfect blue, the kind you only see on color wheels and postcards of the sky in Wyoming—his black hair spiked out like some Japanese graphic novel cover boy, a blue mask covering his nose and ringing his eyes. Black boots rise up to his knees, and the form-fitting outfit he wears ripples with muscular implication. He’s at least six feet tall. Maybe closer to seven. There are no symbols or emblems on his chest. Whatever he is, whoever he’s with, he’s not advertising, but judging by the gymnastics he just made the van do and the fact that he fell out of the sky at two hundred miles per hour and landed on his feet, there’s little question he’s more than just NLPD or SWAT.

  He’s the real deal.

  Beside me, it looks like Zach’s about to soak his hundred-dollar jeans, hands clutching the bench with white-knuckled ferocity. We should really leave now. Both of us. But I can’t take my eyes off the guy. After all, I’ve never seen one before. Not in person.

  The blue-costumed figure approaches the disabled van in measured strides, ripping the back doors free as if peeling a tangerine. There is another explosion of gunfire as he disappears inside. Some shouting as the van rocks back and forth on what’s left of its wheels, looking as if it is having a seizure.

  Then silence. No more gunshots. No more explosions. Behind me, the man who spit on the sidewalk opens his door again and stands there with one eye closed. Zach whistles to himself.

  “What . . . in the world . . . was that?” he asks again.

  I still don’t have an answer, but whatever it is emerges finally, holding four full duffels of stolen jewels. When it steps off the back of the van, the whole thing lurches. The jewel thieves must be inside, but it’s clear they aren’t coming out. The masked stranger drops the bags at the feet of what must be the terrified store owner, who now stands outside in the pool of shattered glass. One by one the innocent bystanders emerge, peeking their heads out of windows and through cracks in doors, shimmying out from underneath cars like mice. A few officers manage to pull themselves through their smashed windows, clearly wondering whether or not to even bother aiming their guns at this new arrival, but before they can get the chance, the mysterious figure raises one hand toward the sky and, in a blink, launches himself toward the clouds. I clutch at my ears as the boom hits me all over again, then look up at the streak of blue light left in the man’s wake. Some of the bystanders begin to cheer, but most just stare at the sky like zombies, like me.

  Zach’s gone ghostly, face drained of all color. “Tony’s going to flip when he hears about this,” he says, bending over to retrieve his phone.

  I nod. It’s true. And not just Tony. Forget the people in the silver masks, whoever they were. Forget Tony and Mickey “Six Fingers” Maloney and the NLPD and all the other small-timers looking to make their marks on the city.

  New Liberty apparently has a new “hero.”

  Whether it likes it or not.

  “Come on,” Zach says, pulling me away from the smoke and the carnage and the wailing of more sirens, ambulances and fire trucks and who knows what else bearing down on us. I follow him a few steps and then stop, bending over and picking up the stuffed bear that had been left behind—its fur smelling of smoke, one black eye popping loose—and setting it on the step of the apartment building where it belongs.

  Hoping somebody will come to rescue it.

  Zach and I split, and I sprint home and pound through the door into the empty main floor of our house, beelining for the lair, taking the stairs two at a time, nearly tumbling down them, catching myself on the railing. Dad’s in the same spot I left him in hours ago, the bag of chips empty beside him, humming to himself. Bach, I think. I stop at the bottom step to breathe.

  “How was the mall?” he asks without even looking up, ignoring, apparently, the fact that I am doubled over like an asthmatic finishing a marathon.

  “You’ll never . . . believe . . . what just happened!”

  “Did you get my board?” he asks, nose still pressed down into his little black box.

  The board. I curse under my breath. I’ve completely forgotten about the package from Aziz. I must have dropped it or set it down back at the jewelry store and neglected to pick it up. I make a production out of slapping my forehead. “Yeah. Okay. I forgot the board, but listen, I have to tell you something—”

  “You forgot to get it? Or you forgot to bring it home? Or you forgot that I even asked you to buy it in the first place?”

  “The middle one, I think. Dad, seriously, I think we have a problem.”

  “Of course we have a problem. I need that board if I’m going to finish this,” he says.

  “No. A bigger problem. A big . . . blue . . . bulletproof problem.”

  Finally I’ve gotten his attention, at least enough to pull him out of his box. My f
ather sits back in his chair and pulls off his goggles; there are red raccoon rings around his eyes matching the red-and-white pineapples on his shirt. He has potato-chip crumbs in his beard. He regards me with a skeptical eye, as if he suspects I’m about to try and sell him something. I take a deep breath, trying to calm myself. Go slow, I think. Let it all sink in.

  “So Zach and I were walking home from the mall when suddenly there were these gunshots, right? And all these guys showed up, dressed up in black with silver masks and machine guns and I had never seen anything like them before, and they knock over a jewelry store, and then they were like blow! kablow! ka-ba-ba-blow!, blowing up everything in sight, and the cops came, but they got totally toasted, and the dudes with the masks, they pull out this rocket launcher and the SWAT team’s like, kaboosh!, and I was all ready to run, but then the sky suddenly rips apart, like keeyrack!, and this guy, I don’t know, he’s like eight feet tall and dressed in this blue bodysuit with this mask and everything, he comes falling out of the sky, and thoom!, just pummels the van, like crunch!, and then disappears inside, and it’s all like shaking and stuff, and when he comes out, he’s got the jewels, and he just sets them down on the ground and kazow! shoots right back into the sky, and if you go look outside you can still see the streak of blue where he flew away. . . .”

  I take another breath to keep from passing out.

  “Are you hurt?” my father says, slowly eyeing me up and down.

  “No. I’m not hurt,” I say, shaking my head. Did I look hurt? I glance over myself, looking for any trace of blood. There is a spot of tomato sauce on my shirt where Zach hit me with the pizza crust.

  Dad nods. “And these men . . . the ones in masks . . . what were they like?”

  “I don’t know, Dad. They were all the same. Just, you know, a bunch of men in black suits with guns. Like clones, almost. But this guy, the other guy. You should have seen it. He just dropped out of the sky—”