Worm

by John McCrae

  We’d arrived in the middle of a road, one I’d crossed several times when going to the loft or leaving it. It was still dark out – either the sun either hadn’t started to rise yet, or the storm was enough to obscure it. The ‘river’ that I was kneeling in was the ebb of water from the first tidal wave, receding downhill toward the beach and the ocean. It brought waves of trash, litter, broken windows, wooden boards and dead plants with it.

  I looked around, saw the other heroes and villains composing themselves, climbing to their feet in the knee deep rush of water. A few fliers were conveying our ranged combatants up to the rooftops.

  At the end of the road, downhill, was the Boardwalk, or what was left of it. From what I could see through the downpour, the wooden pathways and docks had been shattered by the initial wave, to the point that many were standing nearly straight up, or were buckled into fractured arches. Water frothed and sprayed as it rushed back against the ragged barrier that had been Brockton Bay’s high end shopping district.

  He was there, too. I could see his silhouette through the rain and the spraying water that was the tidal wave’s aftermath, much as I had on the television set. Thirty feet tall, the majority of him was was muscled but not bulky. His hunched shoulders, neck and upper torso were the exception, bearing cords of muscles that stood out like steel cables. It gave him a top-heavy appearance, almost like an inverted teardrop with limbs and a tail.

  His proportions were wrong – his calves and forearms seemed too long for his height, his clawed fingers and digitigrade feet doubly so. He moved with a languid sort of grace as he advanced through the spraying water. His arms moved like pendulums, claws sweeping against the water’s surface, while his upper body swayed left and right, as if to give counterbalance to his great height. His tail, forty or fifty feet long and whiplike, lashed behind and around him in time with his steps, perhaps borne of the same need for balance that gave him his teetering gait.

  Gallons of water poured around him in the wake of his movements, roughly the same amount of mass as the body part that had just occupied the space. This ‘afterimage’ streamed down him and splashed violently against the water he waded through.

  As he got closer to the heroes and villains that were organizing into lines, shouting something I somehow couldn’t hear over the buzz of fear and adrenaline, I could almost make out his face. It was something you never really saw in the videos or pictures. He had no nose or mouth, no ears. His face was a flat, rigid expanse of the same scaly skin that covered the rest of him, like the scales of a crocodile’s back. The hard, featureless plain of Leviathan’s ‘face’ was broken up only by four cracks or tears – one on the right side of his face, three on the left. In each of those dark gaps, the green orbs of his eyes glowed with a light that pierced through the rain. His head moved faster than the rest of him, twitching from one angle to the next like someone’s eyeball might flicker left, right, up and down, taking us all in, uncannily out of time with the rest of his body.

  “Get ready!” Legend howled the words.

  It was hard to say whether Leviathan heard the command or if Legend had spotted some tell, but Leviathan dropped to all fours at the same time Legend gave the command. With Legend’s cry still ringing in the air, Leviathan moved.

  He was fast.

  Fast enough that his clawed hands and feet didn’t touch the road beneath the water – after the initial push, his forward momentum was enough to let him run on the water’s surface.

  Fast enough that before I could finish drawing in a breath, to scream or shout something or gasp in horror, he was already in the middle of us, blood and water spraying where he collided with the lines of assembled capes, and the armbands were beginning to announce the hopelessly injured and deceased. Carapacitator down, CD-5. Krieg down, CD-5. WCM deceased, CD-5. Iron Falcon down, CD-5. Saurian down, CD-5…

  8.03

  As tough or invincible as a given cape might be, most were still hemmed in by the restrictions and boundaries of physics. Getting hit by something that weighed nearly nine tons sent men, women, boys and girls in costume flying, if it didn’t kill them outright.

  Leviathan’s echo added surprising quantities of water to the battlefield. Every step and movement he made, he filled the space he’d just left with water. How much water did it take to displace something as big as he was? However much it was, he created something like three times that amount when he took a single step forward, when you accounted for the space his body moved through. A hard amount to eyeball, because it had the same momentum his movements had, and some of it crossed great distances as he lunged and clawed his way through the front line of capes.

  Sham down, CD-5. Acoustic deceased, CD-5. Harsh Mistress down, CD-5. Resolute deceased, CD-5. Woebegone down, CD-5…

  I had to help, somehow.

  I pressed both buttons on the armband and spoke into it, “Direct me to the wounded I can help. I do not have mobility powers. I am not very strong. I do have basic first aid training.”

  There was a pause, then a female voice, synthesized, just sharp enough to be heard over the noise of lasers, guns and rain, “Acknowledged.”

  The response both relieved and terrified me. I’d halfway expected that to fail.

  My armband beeped and flashed, and I saw a red dot on the map, along with an arrow at the edge of the square screen. As I moved my arm, the arrow adjusted to keep pointing the same way. It was directing me to near where Leviathan was.

  Lashing out with tail and claws, he was advancing steadily through the ranks of defenders. The occasional strike from a strong hero or one of the ranged combatants slowed him, made him stumble, if it hit in the right spot or pushed him off balance.

  I hesitated to get closer. I hated myself for doing it. I was here for a reason, to do something.

  Legend fired a salvo of lasers at Leviathan, and the beams turned at right angles to strike Leviathan in precise areas, knocking his feet from under him, slamming him down into the road, catching him under the chin. Leviathan raised a hand, and a geyser of water rose to block more incoming lasers. Legend’s lasers simply turned at angles to circle around Leviathan, strike the Endbringer from behind. They left Leviathan so hot that his flesh glowed a yellow-orange around the areas they struck him.

  I took the opportunity, found some measure of courage and hurried forward to my target.

  There was a leg, half floating, weighed down on one end by a metal boot on the foot. Someone in a leather costume lay on their back, barely conscious, bleeding from a gash that had opened them from the left hip to their right shoulder, a cloud of blood spilling out in the filthy water that came halfway up to our knees, an inky black color in the gloom.

  Icouldn’t help them, as much as it pained me to ignore them, move on. I had to trust that the armband would direct me to someone I could help.

  I found the person my armband was directing me to, some teenage boy with a metallic bird design to his costume, the helmet that covered the upper half of his face looked like a bird’s head, maybe an eagle. I knelt by him.

  There was a crash as Leviathan whipped his tail toward Legend, a blade of water soaring through the air to strike the hero out of the air. The onslaught of lasers interrupted, Leviathan shifted from a crouch on one side of the road to being the midst of the defending heroes in one fluid motion, resuming the carnage in the span of a heartbeat.

  Fierceling deceased, CD-5. Adamant down, CD-5

  He was way too close to me for comfort – a single leap on his part would close the distance to me – but freaking out over it wouldn’t help anyone. I could only hope that the front line would hold for long enough for me to help this person.

  “What can I do?” I asked the bird-costume.

  “Leg,” he said, voice strained, “Help me stand.”

  His left leg, I realized, was smashed into pulp from the knee down. I crouched, helped him get his arm over my shoulders, and used my legs to heave both of us into a standing position. The bird-costume was
below average in weight for a teenage guy, but it wasn’t exactly easy. He was wearing armor.

  I might not have been able to get both of us up to a standing position like that if it weren’t for my weeks of running.

  He leaned on me heavily with each step forward, and we retreated from the front lines. Someone with the ability to fly landed not far from me to pick up the man with the gaping wound across his torso, flew off with him. Two seconds later, a teleporter blinked into existence near us, touching two fallen capes, and disappeared with them and a bathtub’s worth of water.

  I wanted to apologize for not having a better power to help this person, but the breath would have been wasted. It was hard work to help him along, to slog through the water.

  The fight was ongoing, with a dozen heroes in Leviathan’s vicinity, more than twenty others shooting at him from range whenever there was a clear shot. Yet more were on the fringes, to keep him from slipping past the combatants and to take the place of the fallen. It wasn’t enough – the damage we were doing was negligible and his long strides were advancing him further and faster than the rest of us could back away through the water. Trash and debris threatened to trip us up with every step we took. He forced a fighting retreat, moving quickly and often enough to avoid being caught by any concentrated fire.

  Our progress was agonizing. Move too slowly, and we fell behind, move too fast as we waded through the trash-ridden water, and we risked falling, lost precious time. Had to find the middle ground, and we weren’t moving fast enough even if we did find that sweet spot. Hell, it would have been kinda difficult even without my burden.

  Chubster down, CD-5. Good Neighbor deceased, CD-5. Hallow deceased, CD-5.

  It was Alexandria who speared forward to confront Leviathan. He saw her coming, ceased his onslaught to rear back and then lunge ahead to meet her. When they were only fifteen feet apart, he stopped, let his water echo rush forward to meet her.

  Anyone else might have been staggered in the face of several tons of water moving forward at the speed of a locomotive. Alexandria intertwined her fingers, swung her arms forward as though she were holding a baseball bat, and cracked her hands against the image a second before she disappeared headlong into it. There was a sound like a bomb going off, water spraying everywhere, followed by an earthshaking crash as Alexandria used the crook of her arm to catch Leviathan around the neck and heaved him backwards and onto the ground.

  Most of the capes took the chance to retreat and expand the gap between themselves and the Endbringer, firing lasers or sonic blasts or whatever else at him as they retreated.

  It was so strange to think I was just like the rest of these people. Even after all this, the last few long weeks to get used to being in costume, it felt like I was the bystander. Maybe it was that my power was ineffectual here, in the water and the rain, maybe everyone felt that way.

  A flier with fringes of ribbons down the sides of her arms, legs and body landed next to me, “Give him to me.”

  We transferred the bird-boy to her grip, and they were gone in an instant. My armband flashed and pointed me toward the next target.

  A series of explosions and a massive collision marked Dragon firing a full salvo of missiles and entering close quarters combat with Leviathan. Alexandria was gone – no, wait, she was rising from the water, where Leviathan had been holding her down. Standing, staggering, falling again. Had he been drowning her?

  Dragon began breathing out a stream of what might have been plasma in Leviathan’s face. From his increased struggles and frenetic clawing at her, I gathered he didn’t like it. Still, it was doing surprisingly little damage to him.

  Leviathan found a point to get a solid grip on Dragon’s armor, and tore off a plate. His next swipe took off another, and it careened a good twenty feet before landing with a heavy splash, close enough to me that I was caught in the spray.

  I hurried to the next target on my armband. It was a woman witih a white costume, white hair and what was probably skull paint on her face. It was hard to tell, and not just because of the rain smudging the make-up. Nearly half her face was torn off. Glanced by one of Leviathan’s claws, maybe, or caught by the lash of water from his tail.

  “Hey,” I shook her gently by the shoulders, “You awake? You alert?”

  Maybe a stupid question. I didn’t even know if she could talk with her face like that.

  A small wave sloshed against us, she sputtered and turned her head, didn’t respond. That was a ‘no’ to at least one of my questions. I suspected her condition was a combination of shock and blood loss as much as anything else.

  Too heavy for me to lift, and I didn’t have first aid supplies. Fuck, I could have kicked myself for that. Anything I did have – epipens, smelling salts – were probably spoiled by the water and the septic conditions. Not that they would have helped.

  I looked up, looked around. Spotted what I needed. Someone was manifesting green fireballs in his hands, lobbing them at Leviathan, where they exploded violently.

  I rose, hurried to him, keeping low so I didn’t walk face first into anyone’s laser blasts or gunfire. “Your fire, is it radioactive? Is it anything special, extra dangerous?”

  He gave me a look, lobbed another fireball, “It’s fire, it combusts if I concentrate it.”

  “Okay. Great. I need your help.”

  He nodded.

  I showed him the woman. “Blood loss is a problem. She needs the wound cauterized.”

  His eyes widened, “I can’t do that! Her face-”

  “-Is half scraped off. She’s not going to care about a burn. There’s nothing close to a clean bandage anywhere here, and she’s going to die if we don’t stop the blood loss.”

  Looking a little sick, he nodded, wreathed his hand in flame and then pressed it against the woman’s face. She pulled away, made a gurgling noise. I gripped her head and shoulder to keep her in position.

  “Come,” I said, after he pulled his hand away, “Help me move her.”

  Greenfire – I wasn’t sure on his name, and it didn’t seem the time to ask – hooked one arm under her armpit, I used both hands under the other one, and we hauled her off to one side, into an alley, propped her up sitting.

  “I’ll stay here,” Greenfire said, “Keep an eye on her. You go.”

  I nodded, pressed both buttons on the armband and spoke, “Next!”

  As we emerged from the alley, there was a massive explosion, five times what had followed when Dragon launched her missiles at Leviathan. Leviathan reeled – He had a shallow burn along one side of his neck, more on his face, one of the four glowing orbs of eyes were dim, but it wasn’t as much damage as I might have suspected. He lashed his tail violently, as if in anger, or maybe he intended to use the echo of his tail’s lashing to strike down others, I couldn’t be sure.

  It was a contingent of lesser heroes that joined the fray, now. It was as though the tougher fighters were staggering their attacks, to ensure that just the right amount of force was being exerted to keep Leviathan on his heels, taking the maximum amount of damage while being prevented from taking out too many capes at once. These three were clearly members of the same team, flying in formations, moving in sync. Two of them had super strength, and were gripping at the damaged areas of Leviathan’s flesh, tearing, pulling away as he lashed out in response, while the third had a massive battleaxe with what looked like a chainsaw setup on each blade, opening more wounds. The damage was superficial, only taking off slices of Leviathan’s hide, but surely stripping away his hard exterior would help in the long run?

  The armband directed me to someone that was already getting assistance. An obese cape in armor, getting CPR from a man with a princess-bride style mask over the upper half of his head, a goatee, a chainmail lined mantle and a shotgun three times the normal size. He didn’t know what he was doing – the fat man’s chin was almost touching his collarbone.

  When I moved to take over, Shotgun Westley left without a word, wiping his mouth and
unslinging his gun as he ran back to the fray. I was irritated.

  Hew down, CD-5.

  It was my first time giving CPR for real. So much harder than it was in the class, on so many levels. I don’t know if it was the fat man’s powers, his weight, his armor, or some combination of the three, but it took incredible effort to actually fill his lungs. Just doing it made me want to gag. He’d vomited a little at some point, and though I’d wiped it away as best as I could when I was done checking his mouth for blockages, the taste lingered. The taste of salt water only accented that flavor, sort of the same way table salt did with a cooked meal.

  Strapping Lad down, CD-5. Intrepid down, CD-5.

  I was aware of Narwhal stepping into the fray, in my peripheral vision. She raised her hands, manifesting a dozen forcefields like oversize crystal shards around her, then flicked them forward. Like guillotine blades, the forcefields raced toward Leviathan, faster than the eye could follow, sunk into his flesh. Those that glanced off stopped mid-air to turn around, edges against his body, getting in the way of his legs moving.

  There was a horrendous crash, I looked up, pausing to catch my breath, saw the remains of a car falling apart around Leviathan. Another crash, a piece of rubble turning to dust from the speed of the impact. I couldn’t see through the bodies, but I had an idea of who it was. Ballistic.

  A dumpster hit Leviathan in the upper body with the speed of a bullet, and he folded backward, his shoulders hitting the ground while his legs and feet were still held against the ground by a mess of razor blade forcefields. Narwhal sent another forcefield flying into his neck, and it cut as deep as any attack had yet. Blood spilled down from the opened wound, thick, more like ichor than anything I was used to seeing.

  I heaved another breath of air into the lungs of the fat man, he sputtered, coughed up a mouthful of dark water. I knew I was supposed to follow up on the CPR, but there was no way I could move or roll this guy.

  Unable to do anything but wait and see if he recovered, I raised my head to watch the continuing battle, feeling just a touch dizzy.