Super Human

by Michael Carroll

  “But...”

  Lance put his hands on her shoulders. “Come on, Abby—get with it, OK? Slaughter’s not dead—you think this is the first time she’s been stabbed? She was shot in the head last night, remember? The woman has healing powers! Abby, Roz needs your help.”

  Abby took a deep breath, and her trembling subsided. “OK, OK. My sword . . .”

  “Leave it!” Lance said. “It’ll be no use to you against Pyrokine and the longer it’s inside Slaughter the longer it’ll take for her to heal. Now go!” He pushed her in the direction of Roz and Pyrokine.

  A hundred yards away she found Roz crouched into a ball as Pyrokine bombarded her with fireballs. Most of them seemed to dissipate before they reached Roz, but it was clear that the girl was weakening: Her clothing was scorched, her hands and face covered in red blisters.

  Abby launched herself at Pyrokine, slammed him into the ground.

  He twisted away from her, jabbed his elbow into her face. Abby flinched, cracked her own elbow into the pit of his stomach.

  Pyrokine shuddered, turned onto his side, and coughed uncontrollably.

  Roz climbed unsteadily to her feet. She limped over to Abby: Much of the skin on Roz’s left hand had been burned away.

  Pyrokine was getting up. Abby began to move toward him, but Roz grabbed her arm, held her back. “No . . . I owe him.”

  The boy rose into the air as though an invisible cable was tied around his waist. Roz lashed out with her foot, a spinning kick that slammed into Pyrokine’s face and sent him tumbling on the spot.

  He hung limply, facedown, and Abby reached out and lifted up his head. “He’s out.”

  Roz released her control, and Pyrokine dropped. The glowing, crackling shield of energy around his body faded as he passed out.

  Roz stared down at Pyrokine’s face, as though seeing it for the first time. “I think I know him . . .”

  She snapped out of it when Abby grabbed her arm. They looked at each other for a moment, then turned toward the Fifth King, still sitting on the ground and unconcernedly weathering Thunder’s sonic assault.

  “Last one’s gonna be tough,” Abby said. “You ready for this?”

  “No. But let’s do it anyway.”

  They charged.

  CHAPTER 31

  Something slammed into Lance’s back, pushing him face-first onto the ground. Strong hands grabbed his arms, pulled them together behind his back, and before he could react he felt the familiar ratchet of a tightening cable tie around his wrists.

  As he was hauled once more to his feet, a coarse voice nearby said, “Your friends’ courage is impressive, but futile.”

  He whirled around. Remington was holding his arm, and to the right an old woman was standing between three other guards.

  The woman was wearing a long white hooded robe bearing the symbol of a blue eye surrounded by a golden sun. The same symbol was on the upper arms of the men’s uniforms.

  The woman was watching the battle, but the men had their weapons aimed at Lance’s head. Behind them was a helicopter that Lance hadn’t even heard approaching, its rotors slowing to a stop.

  Lance couldn’t take his eyes off the woman—he’d never seen anyone so old. Or so ugly. The woman looked furious: Her eyes and lips had narrowed and she reminded Lance of when he was six years old and his grandmother had caught him digging up her prized flower beds because he was looking for treasure. “I’m guessing that you’re the Fifth King’s welcoming committee. Bit late, aren’t you?”

  Speaking slowly, the woman said, “It was not meant to happen like this. Slaughter should not have taken matters into her own hands.” Her teeth gritted, she added, “For four thousand years we have prepared for this day. Four thousand years. There was a ceremony prepared. . . .” The woman sighed. “She will die for this.”

  So she’s the one behind it all, Lance thought. If I can . . . He felt Remington’s grip tighten on his arm, and knew he could do nothing: The man was looking for an excuse to kill him.

  Instead, Lance said, “Your Fifth King isn’t doing much. But you should have been here earlier to see him and Brawn going at it. That was great.”

  The woman said, “You are a fascinating young man, Mr. McKendrick. You possess no superhuman abilities and yet you are even more courageous than your friends.” She turned to him. “You won’t win, of course. Nothing can defeat the Fifth King.”

  He shrugged as well as he could. “Well, I don’t know about that. Something defeated him once, didn’t it?” He paused. “No, wait a second. . . . If you’ve taken him from the past before he was killed, then . . . He never got killed, so, yes, you’re right. Nothing has defeated him. Not yet, anyway.” Doing his best to keep his voice cheerful, he asked, “So, who are you, then?”

  She returned her attention to the battle: Abby and Roz were kicking and punching at the Fifth King, but still he sat there and didn’t react. “I am but a pawn on the chessboard of the Fifth King’s glorious reign.”

  “Nice to finally put a face to the voice, Mrs. Pawn. And by ‘nice’ I mean ‘extremely scary.’” Lance cautiously raised his hands a little. The small knife was still tucked into the back of his jeans—either Remington hadn’t noticed it, or he didn’t care.

  “Your forced optimism does not fool me, boy.”

  “Why are you doing this? I mean, the plague . . . Billions of people infected. Why? And for that matter, how?”

  The woman raised a liver-spotted, wrinkled hand and showed her palm to Lance. It was covered in small red blisters and open sores. “I too am what you would call a superhuman, Mr. McKendrick. I was a little younger than you are now when I contracted typhus—but it did not kill me. My ability allows me to neutralize or change any bacterial or viral infection, and I soon learned that I can modify even a simple strain of acute viral nasopharyngitis—the virus that causes the common cold—into whatever form I wish.”

  Lance said, “You’re a snot-monster? Ew! As powers go, that’s not one I’d choose. So instead of using your ability to do good—like cure the sick—you created a virus that’s going to wipe out most of the human race. But how did you get it to infect everyone at the same time?” He knew that he had to keep the old woman talking. He pushed his thumbs against the knife’s hilt, forced it up an inch, two inches. . . . Then he shifted his arms down a little, tried to press the thick plastic cable tie against the blade.

  “It was a simple matter of constructing the virus so that it became active only after a certain amount of time had elapsed,” the old woman said. “In the last two months our people have acted as carriers, taking the virus to every major city in the world.”

  “And all this just because you wanted to bring back the Fifth King?”

  “When we learned of the Pyrokine’s ability to manipulate matter and energy, we realized that given sufficient energy it would be possible for him to create a . . .” She looked toward Remington.

  “A tachyon well,” Remington said. “Tachyons are subatomic particles that travel faster than light—with the right guidance they can breach time.”

  Lance nodded. “Clever. But I don’t understand your obsession with the Fifth King. Why him and not, say, Attila the Hun or Alexander the Great?” Finally, he felt the cable tie snag against the small knife’s blade. He began to slowly work his hands up and down.

  The old woman looked insulted that he would even ask. “The Fifth King is a god.”

  “No he’s not. He’s a superhuman. Powerful, I admit, but still only a superhuman. I mean, he—” Lance paused. “Hold on. . . . Give me a second here. Something one of us said.” Then he remembered, and grinned. “Got it.”

  She turned to him once more. “Yes?”

  “Oh, you people are in so much trouble! Your Fifth King is going to kill you. Doesn’t matter how much you worship him, that psycho is going to absolutely murder you. And that’s if you’re lucky.”

  The woman dismissed him with a wave of her hand.

  “I’m serious, granny
. Look at what you’ve done to him: You took him away from his own time, when he was the most powerful—and most feared—man in the world. How long do you think it’s going to take for him to adjust to this century? He’ll hate it here. You ripped him away from everything he knows.”

  Remington took a swing at Lance, who ducked out of the way. “He’ll understand that we saved his life!”

  Lance paled—when he dodged Remington’s punch his right hand scraped against the knife’s blade. The pain flared along his arm and he had to bite the inside of his cheek to stifle the scream. “Uh . . . No . . . you didn’t. How was it he died? Consumed in a pillar of fire, right?” Lance forced a laugh. “You idiots! That wasn’t a pillar of fire. He wouldn’t have died that day. All those people who saw his supposed death . . . What they really saw was an energy flare. The same one that happens when your little pal Pyrokine destroys something.”

  The woman stared. “No . . .”

  “Yes,” Lance said. He was sweating heavily now, and his hands were slick with his own blood. But still he kept working the cable tie against the blade. “They didn’t witness the Fifth King’s death—they witnessed him being pulled through time.”

  She screamed, “No!”

  “Look at what you’ve done. You’ve spewed out a virus that’s going to kill billions of people, and all because you wanted everyone out of the way so you could pull the Fifth King out of danger that he was never in.”

  The old woman staggered, swayed a little. One of the soldiers lowered his weapon to grab her arm.

  “You know it’s true,” Lance said. “And as soon as he figures it out, you’re dead.”

  At that moment, a guttural cry erupted from the battlefield. The Fifth King jumped to his feet, swatted Roz and Abby aside with a single blow. He roared something in a language that Lance couldn’t understand, but he knew what it meant: “Enough!”

  All of the men were watching the battle now—Lance clenched his fists and tried to force his arms apart. Beads of sweat ran into his eyes and he had to shake his head to clear his vision.

  Struggling against Thunder’s sonic attack, the Fifth King planted one foot in front of the other. His body trembled and his skin rippled as though he was fighting through a hurricane—but he was making progress.

  Thunder began to back away.

  Abby threw herself at the Fifth King, slammed shoulder-first into the small of his back. Roz telekinetically lifted a foot-thick lump of masonry and launched it at him—it struck the side of his face, set him staggering.

  Come on, Abby! Lance said to himself. Don’t let up—flatten him! He took a deep breath, held it as he once again tensed his muscles and pulled. The cable tie snapped suddenly and Lance almost cried out with relief, but he forced himself to keep his arms behind his back.

  Abby leaped onto the Fifth King’s back, locked her arms around his throat. He reached over his head and grabbed her by the shoulders, threw her straight at Thunder.

  But they didn’t collide—Abby slowed, floated gently to the ground.

  The king whirled about almost faster than they could see. He lunged at Roz, his fists swinging. Then he lurched to the side, hit by another sonic blast from Thunder.

  The old woman barked an order to the men: “Target the boy!”

  The guards swiveled their weapons in Thunder’s direction.

  Lance shouted, “Thunder! Get down!” and at the same time pulled the knife from his belt and threw it at Remington—its point struck the man’s armored chest dead-center and bounced away.

  The man looked down at the knife and grinned. “That was a good throw. Absolutely futile, though.”

  “That depends on whether I was trying to kill you or distract you.”

  Remington swiveled back to the battlefield; Thunder had darted to the side and was now keeping the Fifth King between them.

  Lance threw himself against the guard who was closest to the old woman—she shrieked as he then locked his arm around her throat.

  “Drop your weapons or I’ll break her neck!” Lance screamed.

  Remington glanced at him. “You wouldn’t. Murder is not your style.”

  “Oh, I would. I told you before: I’m not one of the good guys. They’ve just been a convenient cover. And this wouldn’t be murder—it would be an execution.”

  To one of his men, Remington said, “The chopper.” The man darted away.

  “What do you think?” Lance asked. “Which way do you want to play this, Remington? If Thunder dies, so does the old woman. . . . And I think you need her alive to ensure that the Fifth King doesn’t get out of control.” He risked a glance at the King, then smiled. “You thought you had it all planned out, didn’t you?”

  “We had. And we do.” Remington nodded past Lance. “See?”

  Lance didn’t turn around. “See what?” He heard footsteps approaching, and the sound of something being dragged. An unconscious man was thrown to the ground. Lance thought he recognized him from somewhere.

  “This is Maxwell Dalton,” Remington said. “Your friend’s big brother. He’s infected—and he’s got it bad. So . . .” Remington lowered his weapon so that the barrel was resting on Max’s forehead. “Let her go.”

  Lance relaxed his grip and stepped away from the woman.

  “Are you all right, ma’am?” Remington asked.

  She nodded. “This is not the first time my life has been threatened.” To Lance, she said, “You would not have done it. You claim to not be ‘one of the good guys’—but I have been around a long time, Mr. McKendrick. I know about people. Mr. Remington? Kill the boy.”

  Lance backed away. “Wait! Wait! You shoot me and you’ll lose the chance to really save the Fifth King’s life!”

  “What do you mean, boy?” the woman asked.

  “He’s bluffing—again!” Remington snarled.

  “No! Speak. What do you mean?”

  Lance pointed to the battle. “Look. He’s weakening. Three teenagers are defeating your mighty immortal warrior. But if he’s half as good as you people seem to believe, he should be able to overpower them with ease. So why is the fight still going on? It’s because you geniuses haven’t figured out what you’ve done to him. You pulled him through time and dumped him here. What was it like, four and a half thousand years ago? A lot different, I’m guessing. The people were different, the cultures were different . . . and so was the environment. Your homemade plague is still around. You think he’s got any resistance to it?”

  The old woman froze. “The boy is right. The Fifth King is infected. Remington—your hand!”

  Remington reluctantly stretched out his right hand toward the woman. Her lined face frowned in concentration for a moment, then she pressed her hand into his. “A counter-virus—it will instantly nullify the effects of the first. Run to the Fifth King, touch his skin!”

  Remington swallowed. “He . . . He won’t know that I’m on his side.”

  Lance stepped up to Remington. “You have to do it! If you don’t, he’ll die!”

  The soldier was trembling. He looked toward the battle—Brawn had recovered and was locked in a strangling embrace with the Fifth King.

  “Look, she was right about me. I don’t want anyone to die,” Lance said. “Especially not me. I know we’re not going to win this. I just want you to cure him and make him promise not to hurt the others.”

  “Go, Mr. Remington!” the old woman snapped.

  He swallowed again, and nodded, but still didn’t move.

  Lance said, “Approach him from the front, OK? Let him see you coming, openhanded so that he knows you’re not a threat. You can do this.” He grabbed Remington’s hand and shook it. “Good luck.”

  The man’s eyes were wide with fear as he passed his gun to one of the other soldiers, then turned and walked slowly toward the battle.

  To the old woman, Lance said, “You’re sure this will work?”

  “It will work. The moment Mr. Remington’s bare skin touches the Fifth King’s, the co
unter-virus will be passed to him. It will race through his system and override the first virus. He will recover his strength in seconds.”

  Lance nodded. “Good.” He carefully lowered himself into a sitting position. “I don’t know about you people, but this has been a tough couple of days. I could do with a rest.”

  He watched the woman and the soldiers, and—sure that their attention was on Remington—he reached out and placed his right hand on Max Dalton’s neck.

  Max groaned. His eyes flickered open. Lance whispered, “Read my mind.”

  A voice inside his head asked, “Who are you?”

  Never mind me, Lance replied, these people are trying to kill your sister.

  The three soldiers instantly screamed, dropped their weapons, clutched at their heads, and dropped to the ground twitching and convulsing. Seconds later the old woman toppled over on top of them.

  “That guy too!” Lance said, pointing toward Remington. He toppled over on the battlefield and lay still.

  Lance helped Max to his feet. “Over there—the guy fighting Brawn. Stop him!”

  Max briskly shook his head. “No, I can’t. I’ve never been able to control Brawn. It just doesn’t work on some people.”

  “Not Brawn,” Lance said. “The other guy!”

  Max suddenly flinched, as though hit by something invisible. “Whoa. . . . Who is he? I’ve never met anyone with a mind like that. . . . It’s . . . My God, so much power! It’s not going to be easy to get in.” He looked around at the battlefield, then turned back to Lance. “What is going on here?”

  “Too long to explain,” Lance said. “Just try to knock him out. Or at least slow him down.”

  We need help, Lance said to himself. If Dalton can’t stop the Fifth King then who can? All the other superheroes are out of action because of the plague. Right—that’s what we need to do! To Max, he said, “Listen, that mad old woman created a plague. That’s what made you and your guys sick back in Midway. Everyone in the whole world is infected. But you’ve got the counter-virus in your system now. The old woman gave it to Remington, I got it when I shook his hand, and now I’ve passed it to you—you need to get to other people, spread the counter-virus. Get to Quantum and Titan and all the others. All you have to do is touch their bare skin and they’ll recover. Then you can all gang up on the Fifth King.”