by Russ Linton
Enough to make me want to stop the freefall. To try again. Not the jump, but everything else.
My failed marriage. My midlevel management job, lost to overseas restructuring. My daughter and her coke habit.
"That's where he grabbed me." I press against the chain-link and point to a spot along the beam. I could count the rivets and know.
My daughter squeezes my arm when I lean forward. She's too far back to actually see. "That's amazing, Daddy."
I've never brought her here before. Her mom and I never reconciled, but I like to think I helped turn my little girl's life around once I got mine back in order. She made it through rehab. College. She's got a good job. We both do. She'll be getting married next week, and for reasons I can't explain, I wanted to share this with her.
"He changed me and I never knew him," I say.
"Do you think you'll ever get to meet Hurricane? He's always showing up somewhere or another."
I scuff my shoe on the walkway and tear my eyes off the beam. That point where he redirected my life. He must've timed everything perfectly. Running fast enough to defy gravity and slowing down at the precise fraction of a second to pluck me from the air without breaking my neck.
"I hope so," I say. "I know people fear these Augments, I get why. But I want to thank him one day."
I pull her tight and turn to leave. Now that she's seen this place that we never speak about, the space between us feels strange. I want to ask about the wedding and talk about her plans. Bother her about grandkids and listen to her go on and on about dresses and flowers and invitations. Her eyes get wide when she talks about the upcoming day and she looks exactly like she used to at Christmas.
But everything goes black.
She screams and the cry is distant and after that a sharp report breaks above the sound of cars and buses streaming by. A backfire? A gunshot? I'm falling. The only thing I think this time is that this is how people die.
***
1988. Outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
One dollar and twenty five cent gas was going to put him right out of business. The van drank gallons of the stuff, but he'd chosen to live out in the country for some peace and quiet. Ingalls paid the store owner, Frank, and headed back out to the pump.
His time overseas had gifted him with a newfound appreciation of the things that kept getting paved over. Sure, the brush in 'Nam had hidden untold dangers, but it had also hidden him and his patrol. Nature itself was rarely the threat to worry about. People were what killed you.
He unhooked the nozzle and flipped the lever. The lettering on the side of his paneled van had faded over the years. "Ingalls Electric" had gone from a glossy yellow to the dull pastel shade of an Easter egg. Everything was legible, so it wasn't a concern, but the faded American flag next to the phone number bugged him the most. He'd need to get that touched up. Maybe next week. The gallons and dollars ticked by on the pump.
Even the suburbs had gotten too crowded for his tastes. That surprised him when he'd come home from 'Nam. When he first got out there, all he wanted to do was get back home. When he finally did, the tightly-packed houses with their little white fences might as well have been an alien planet. The broad streets offered no cover, same with the carpet-like grass, the very stuff he used to trim at his mom's house. In the jungle, that shit grew wild until they decided it was a nuisance and burned it the fuck away from low altitude.
People burned too.
"Shit."
He'd overfilled the tank. Gas belched out around the nozzle, splashing his hand. He released the handle and stooped. As he bent, a wave of pressure zipped across his scalp and a sharp crack sounded from the woods across the street. He fell flat, gas fumes burning his throat.
Fifty caliber. Seven or eight hundred yards. He scrambled under his van.
How many years again since the jungle? Since he put his foot on a defective landmine? However long, it all melted away.
Frank appeared at the glass door of the convenience store. All Ingalls could see were the man's tattered jeans and steel-toed boots.
"Get down!" Ingalls shouted.
Glass shattered and Ingalls caught a glimpse of Frank's plaid shirt, spattered with blood, as the man crumpled, the stretched coils of a phone receiver held taut near his body.
Metal ricocheted in the engine compartment of the van, followed by the gurgle of a hose and fluid dripping to the pavement. Then he heard the crack of the shot, catching up to the supersonic rounds.
Man down. Evac disabled. He envisioned a field of four-foot-high brush and a wiry-browed scarecrow, plain as day. He'd survived then and learned to keep on living.
No more rounds incoming. Ingalls knew he was being stalked. If he stayed pinned down, he was as good as dead. He needed to call for support.
He scooted out from under the van at the back, away from the direction of fire. He shimmied into a crouch and pressed close to the rear bumper. The building offered his only real cover. The phone was there and he knew Frank well enough to know he had a twelve-gauge squirreled away behind the counter.
Biggest problem was the distance. Ten yards of open pavement. If he was lucky, the shooter was on the move, trying to close in and finish him off. Unlucky, and a more patient sniper would be waiting to put a bullet in him.
You needed to wake the fuck up. You'll be okay now.
"I'll be okay." He huffed and rose on the balls of his feet, one hand on the bumper. He breathed again, sharp and hard. "I can do this."
He let his hand slip from the cool chrome. His eyes fixed on the shattered door. He could see himself, leaping through the dangling remnants of glass, grabbing the receiver cord and sliding toward the counter where a solid brick wall blocked off the outside. A round that caliber might penetrate the wall, but it would be a blind shot. No way anyone could make a shot like that.
He launched into a sprint, trying to channel that speed he'd been a part of so long ago, which had whipped him to safety across a broad jungle plain.
Ingalls never made it to the door.
***
1989. Mount Misen, across the bay from Hiroshima.
For obvious reasons the last one was the hardest to pin down. No matter. Balor knew this was a tortoise-and-hare kind of thing. In time, the hare always loses.
He shimmied into position on the ridge. No cross wind. Visibility was crystal clear. Today he'd make up for that bullshit in Central America.
Little Boy had burned himself out in the jungles there, added a smack addiction to his unhealthy fascination with fire. Bastard had wound up dead in a steaming pile of excrement in a whorehouse in Nicaragua. The ladies he'd hired were there too. Police didn't bother with the chalk outlines. That was his final mission for the U. S. of A.
Figuring out that Little Boy was even part of Augment Force Zero had taken Balor two years. Nobody knew that shit. Story was, he'd been such a psychopath that any mention of him had been scrubbed from official records.
Balor should've been satisfied, but it felt wrong to know he hadn't been there. Hadn't pulled the trigger, like with Fat Man. Plus, he didn't get a dime if they offed themselves.
He settled into the rifle and centered the tree in the sights. He focused his eye, and the distance melted away. Maybe eight hundred yards out. If the conditions held, the shot itself wouldn't be a problem. He'd dropped targets at twice that range, but if he missed, the extra distance didn't matter. His hare was too damn fast. This close, though, his quarry would drop dead before the sound of the shot told the speedster to move.
The Augment program was supposed to be a gentleman's game, and that's how they'd played it since Cuba. A dance or a sideshow to draw attention away from the obvious fact that these broken former people were still on active duty. But almost overnight, all of those rules had changed.
The tree in his sights was a veiny thing holding up an umbrella of leaves. A Japanese maple, right on top of a hill. The primordial forest offered the dense kind of concealment that was a sniper's dream and
the field of view around the hilltop was uncluttered. He'd think this was too easy if not for all the work it had taken to get this far.
Hurricane traveled a lot. One minute he'd be in the Eastern U.S., and the next he was in Eastern Europe. Trying to catch up to him was pointless.
Balor really did think the old codger was legit. A freelancer who sat around watching the news, waiting for places to swoop in and help. Maybe the only one of these guys that could actually pull off the superhero schtick. For the others, unless that breaking news was in their backyard, all they could do was help pick up the pieces. That was, if they were ignoring their Agency handlers.
Too many were, nowadays.
Even so, he'd been surprised when his own handler recommended his current Chinese employer. He'd been even more surprised by the job.
They wanted him to find them all—all six of the members of Augment Force Zero. At first he wasn't sure if his handler understood what the Chinese were asking. He never tried to verify though, the money was too good.
From what he could tell, the People's Republic was jealous. They didn't have any Augments, and even though the world powers swore no more had been created, it probably didn't help that the procedure had slowed the aging process for the ones in circulation. That must've been like salt in the wound.
Balor wasn't sure how he felt about that little anti-aging perk either. There was a chance his nest egg could stretch thin. One more shot, though, and he'd retire. Disappear before the sights were on him.
To find them all, he'd kept a record of Augment Force Zero's former team member's movements. He had even considered one of those insanity maps, where you plaster clippings on the wall and tie them all together with colored string. That was too much work. In the end, he'd made a simple list. Only one place kept showing up over and over for Hurricane: Japan.
Made sense he'd come back. Balor had killed a lot of people, one hundred and twelve to be exact, and people called him cold, heartless. In the space of a few hours, the mighty Hurricane had ended more lives than Balor could ever hope to snuff out. And that son of a bitch had done it for free. A genuine hero-type might even feel guilty.
Movement caught his eye and he focused again, drawing the world closer. Balor knew being able to telescope his vision wasn't something that made him too wildly different from everybody else. Augments are people, he reminded himself. People are animals. All it would take to draw his hare out was a piece of bait.
A man climbed the hill, working his way up a game trail toward the maple. He was old and bent but moved steadily enough. Balor watched him stop and stare out toward the harbor before continuing his climb. When he reached the top, he parted the drooping limbs and worked his way to the trunk of the tree, where he sat. Balor kept him firmly in the sights.
Not everyone had died in Hiroshima that night. About a dozen people had reported being carried away. All but seven were dead now, six as of twenty-four hours ago.
Nobody ever believed the survivors' stories when the government finally allowed people to talk about that day in Hiroshima. But Balor had studied those stories. Tracked down survivors and even posed as a reporter to interview them. Then he'd hiked every damn trail on Mount Misen. He'd found a lone tree and a hill with an unobstructed view of the city across the bay where the sun rose directly behind him.
Hurricane was good at keeping things unpredictable. He always came back to Japan, but never at the same time. He might've lived there long term, even, but his trail would always disappear like so much wind. However, this place and the man under the maple tree were a certainty.
The two hadn't met in several months, but with the body count rising, it was only a matter of time. They'd feel safe here, the secret place where they'd met all these years. Less than a second of conversation. Balor knew that was all he needed.
Hare, meet the tortoise.
The wind shifted. Slight, but enough to make Balor readjust for the shot. The variables had become second nature to him, and he always wondered if that too weren't a gift of the Augmentation process. As soon as he thought he had everything dialed in, the wind changed again.
He stared at the hillside. A dozen crosswinds picked up, all going different directions. They shook the trees and ferns in violent bursts, working outward in a spiral from the maple.
With each pass, the wind grew closer. It was a typical search pattern; a platoon could scour the surrounding forest that way in a few hours. Hurricane could do it in a few seconds. Balor had hoped the speedster would be too anxious to take such precautions. Now he could only hope his ghillie suit did the trick.
As soon as it started, the wind stopped. Balor scanned the hillside. The old man was looking about too, but he stayed seated under the tree. Balor watched his eyes for a sign that he'd found something so he could follow his gaze.
Then he heard a cough and a wheeze off his right shoulder.
Balor held his breath. Focused to slow his heart rate. All good things when taking a shot and even better when his target wasn't more than a few yards away.
He couldn't hope to wheel the heavy rifle fast enough to get a shot off. That would be suicide. This man could move faster than anyone could think. He needed his target downrange.
Another sputtering cough then the wet sound of phlegm, hacked up and spit. He felt it land near his elbow. All it would take was the Augment's eyes idly following the trail of spit and seeing the outline of his form, or more likely, the barrel of his fifty. Sure, every inch of his gun and his ghillie suit, had been camouflaged using the native plant life. The tricks he knew worked for hiding from enemies at range, and in sniper school he'd gotten within ten yards of his instructor over the span of a day spent inching his way across an open field.
This was closer.
Camo wouldn't save him. None of his so-called powers. He'd barely gotten anything out of the Augmentation. But Hurricane…
Best news was, his death would be quick and painless. Hurricane wasn't ruthless, but as a soldier he'd perfected his technique. Balor'd seen footage of the bodies, enemy soldiers lying on their backs with their heads twisted into the dirt. Entire squads in one go.
No, the thing behind him wasn't a man at all.
He heard a hiss and a sharp intake of breath which rattled out after a long pause. Footsteps, slow and measured, crunched closer toward the ridge. He'd be spotted soon. He couldn't die with his eyes in the dirt.
He lined up the old man beneath the tree and pulled the trigger.
A gasp and flash of movement erupted beside him. Two explosive bursts of sound flattened the brush in successive waves, the larger one fractions of a second behind the other. A small object tumbled toward the ground where Hurricane had stood.
Balor flicked the bolt upward.
Air shattered around the wake of the bullet, forming a trail like hot sun off desert sand. Back and to the left of the spiraling shot, a spearhead of dirt and ferns raced along the uneven, rugged terrain.
Balor slid the bolt back.
An empty casing twirled from the rifle. It struck the ground next to the tumbling object Hurricane had dropped. The asthma inhaler canister and the hollow brass collided with a metallic ring. Balor barely registered the oddity.
He chambered a second round.
The bullet trace neared the hill. The old man sat unaware, deaf yet to the reaping wind. At the base of the hill, Hurricane, a streak of dust and color, exploded upward, the distance from the hypersonic bullet closing faster now that the terrain offered a straight path of interception.
Balor reached for the trigger.
Under the maple there was a sudden blur of dust and men. He thought, in that fraction of a second, he saw Hurricane pause and scoop the man up, unable to collide with him at the fantastic rate of speed that had carried him up the hill ahead of the bullet. Then the tree canopy reeled in like a collapsed lung, sheltering the scene. Blood sprayed into the air. Branches sprung out and the twin outbursts of sound, Augment and bullet, finally echoed across the vall
ey.
The old man was gone. Something fleshy and rigid, like a fallen branch, tumbled to the ground.
Balor reached out with his sight. No, not a branch but a limb. A calf and foot pumping blood into the earth beneath the tree.
A shadow twitched behind the tree trunk. An anguished cry filled the valley and quieted. More shadows danced frantically and Balor knew the two, Augment and man, were pinned down behind the tree. He sighted for the distance and waited. The tortoise wins.
The ground erupted beside the trunk. Balor fired his shot but realized he was shooting too high. The cloud of dirt and debris tore low across the valley floor toward him. He chambered another round, but the wave of movement washed over him first. He fired, and the shot buried into the ground in front of him.
Hurricane was there, his hand pushing the rifle away. His taut face looked drained. Stems and twigs perforated his cheeks and chest. His front half was bathed in soil, head to toe, his forearms and hands torn into raw meat. Blood pulsed from his shattered leg. The man on the hill, so far away, rose from behind the tree and rushed toward them along a trail of blood and flattened brush.
For a split second, Balor saw dirt, then darkness.
FAT MAN AND LITTLE BOY
Eldon stood in the gravel driveway, feeling the vehicle coming toward his house. Four tires on the ground, no tracks, lightweight. Closer, and he could tell by the resonance of the V-8 that it was a sedan. Probably the government-issue kind.
A Ford De Luxe crested the hill. Black, coated in road dust like a layer of ash. Ash, falling like snowflakes.
He turned and raised an arm, motioning toward the house. Small. White. A two-bedroom farmhouse his grandparents had built. He'd grown up here, and to this day, every time he laid eyes on it, he was amazed it was still standing.
He climbed the porch, walking gingerly from heel to toe. An awkward thing, but the house needed to last a lot longer. On the wooden porch, above the floating foundation, the tingle of the car on gravel left the soles of his feet.