by Ben Bequer
“Remember the tunnel? Didn’t we make a deal?”
“Fuck that! I know what you’re doing.”
Apogee shook her head and was silent for a few minutes, looking out the window on the passenger’s side.
“Something happened to me,” she started, almost to herself. “I don’t know what it is, but I can’t attack you. I can’t hurt you. Hell, I want to help you and it makes no sense to me.”
All I wanted to do, there and then, was find Zundergrub and break his fucking neck for saddling me with her. Apogee was probably the most well-known super in the world, universally loved. She was as big as they came, as big as Superdynamic, Epic or other major guys like Lord Mighty and Primal. Apogee was also known for her foundations’ efforts to highlight embattled regions affected by rural poverty, to protect natural resources and wildlife conservation.
Basically, everyone knew who she was, and that she was missing, and she couldn’t be more than a few feet from me. Not the ideal situation for escaping the amount of heat I had on me.
“Why are you doing this?” she said.
“Driving west, or do you mean the jobs we’re doing?
“Both.”
I shrugged, “I did the jobs for money and we’re headed west because I don’t know what else to do.”
She stared at me with a bewildered expression, “All those people you killed, and you did it for money?”
“It was the one guy, Apogee. And like I told you-“
“What about Germany? Their government is up in arms about a bunch of their soldiers getting killed.”
“They were trying to kill me.”
“Sure,” she said sarcastically. “What about the oil rig workers?”
“No, it was some commando dudes with machine guns and this plasma cannon that ripped my guts out. They started shooting up the place.”
“Okay, I can understand that-“
“They killed our pilot, and he wasn’t even armed.”
“Fine, but that still doesn’t explain the 287 oil rig workers that they found torn to pieces.”
I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. In our whole time on the rig, I only caught a glimpse of one or two, running away. I’d figure they would have the sense to either hide out, or evacuate the rig.
“I know you have no reason to believe me,” I said. “But I only saw a couple of guys running around and they were alive.”
“You’re trying to say you don’t know anything about it?”
“That’s exactly-“
“Because that’s real hard to believe,” she said, jumping all over my efforts to explain.
“-what I’m…I don’t care if you don’t believe me…” I paused then realized what must have happened. “We were separated from Zundergrub,” I said and she slowly raised her head as if understanding. “Yeah, he showed up late and he had blood all over him. That cold-blooded motherfucker.”
Apogee nodded, as it was all becoming clearer.
“He’s all anti-government, and anti-environmental polluters,” I went on. “The only guy that listens to him at all is Mr. Haha, but I’ve overheard him…and he said something, when we were at the bottom of the rig about getting revenge ‘on the despoilers’ or something like that.”
“He butchered them all,” Apogee said. “And he’s your partner.”
“There’s something you need to understand,” I shot back instantly. “I’m nothing to that guy.”
“Typical,” she said.
“I didn’t do it, Apogee.”
“No, I’m saying it’s typical that villain groups always end in drama.”
“Says the person that put two of her former teammates in jail,” I said, laughing and I instantly regretted it. Apogee’s jaw line clenched tight, and her eyes bored into me with sudden rage, but sometimes I’m too stupid to leave well enough alone. “I wonder what Steeltoe and Matchstick would say on the subject of intergroup drama.”
“That was totally different!” she snapped.
“Oh, really?”
“Just shut the fuck up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Maybe,” I said, regretting I had brought it up in the first place. I’ve always had the bad habit of knowing the exact thing to say to make people both hate me and at the same time do everything in their power to try to kill me.
She was quiet for almost a minute, stewing while she stared at the road ahead. It didn’t take much longer for her to come back to the subject, but I was wondering why she cared what I thought.
Apogee sighed and shifted, then cast a sideward glance at me before climbing over to the backseat. As she brought her right leg over, she caught me on the side of the head with a solid shot.
“Shit, sorry,” she said and by how she was cringing, I could tell it was an accident.
“It’s ok,” I said fixing my hair.
I drove on, glancing back at her in the rear view mirror occasionally as she fell asleep.
* * *
It was late afternoon and Apogee was fast asleep in the backseat. We were headed north. My plan was to lodge up at some small bed and breakfast until things cooled down. If my theory was correct, the boys were well on their way to one of Jupiter’s moons for whatever Dr. Retcon needed there.
Voyager 1 made the trip from Earth to Jupiter in two years, so I figured that even with the benefit of Dr. Retcon’s technologically advanced Rocket Flyer; their trip would take some time.
But it wasn’t that weighing heavy on my mind as I got off I-84 and turned around, headed in the opposite direction. It was the sleeping heroine in the backseat that made me turn around. Attractive as she was, I was tired of having her around, tired of her damned whining and complaining. I wasn’t just scared that she would shake off Zundergrub’s spell. I was worried what would happen if a super came along and decided to ‘save’ her. People would get hurt, and I was tired of that happening on my account.
I went the long way around, instead of directly through Philadelphia and Baltimore. I drove down the 81 to Harrisburg, then down US-15 to the 270 and into Washington, DC.
It was silly, I know, because what I wanted to do I could do from everywhere, but there’s always been a method to my madness, even when it made no sense to me.
Reaching Bethesda, outside the District, I made my way south on the 495 to US-123, which snaked along the Potomac towards one of the bridges into the city. Traffic was murder, but Apogee slept peacefully as I came up 14th Street NW to E Street and turned right to find a spot to park.
I pulled the car on the curb beside a payphone bank, a block from the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building, and right across the street from my target building on E Street. Security was rampant, but my car was a black Suburban SUV with tinted windows and I was dressed in a black windbreaker. A big guy, in dark clothes with dark shades in a dark car.
I fit right in.
I walked up to a pay phone and dropped in some change. I dialed the number committed to memory. They answered after one ring.
“Mr. Braxton’s office,” the secretary said.
“I need to speak to Mr. Braxton.”
“He’s not available,” she said. “Can I take a message?”
“I’m sorry, miss, but he’s going to want to talk to me right now. I’m Blackjack.”
The pause told me the secretary either took me seriously and was starting a trace, or thought I was a kook and was starting a trace.
“I’ll get him for you,” Braxton’s secretary said and put me on hold.
While I waited, I ticked off the seconds in my head, having a rough idea of their response time in the middle of the District. Tracing a call didn’t work like in the movies. They knew the number, where you were almost instantly. Even on a cell phone, which cops could use as a GPS to track your location. The delay was merely how long it would take them to get their agents to the location.
I figured I had two minutes to make the call, and get well enough away from the location to be clear of the in
coming agents or supers.
“Braxton here,” he said in a heavy smoker’s voice that I recognized from the press conference on television. “So, big bad Blackjack. Please tell me you’re calling to turn yourself in.”
I looked across the street, where a few agents were leaving the FBI building. It was totally unrelated, but hearing Braxton mention surrender gave me pause.
“Maybe.”
“Make my life a whole lot easier,” he admitted. “I don’t like this whole business.”
“What am I looking at? If I do surrender.”
Braxton took a long sigh. “What do you think? You’re looking at over two dozen crimes and violations of Wattley; local, federal and state. And there’s the whole thing with the Germans and the oil rig,” he said then broke into a hacking smoker’s cough.
“I guess I’m fucked,” I admitted.
“You said it kid,” Braxton said. “But it’s only going to get worse for you if you keep running. I mean, you know I’ve got everything after your ass now.”
I nodded, though I knew he couldn’t see me.
“I don’t know who to trust anymore,” I said, not knowing why I was commiserating with the guy who was trying to put me in jail.
“That’s what happens when you choose the wrong side, Blackjack. All this business of late, it doesn’t make any sense to me, or to any of the guys here. You were strictly small time for a couple of years, then all of the sudden you’re throwing heroes off buildings and knocking the crap out of people on live television. What happened to you?”
“I guess the prison shrinks will psychoanalyze it all out of me if it comes to that.”
“It will. It always does. Bad guys don’t die of old age,” he said, and I couldn’t help but think of Shivvers, bleeding to death on my arrow.
“I was also calling about something else,” I said looking at the backseat of my car, but Apogee wasn’t there. She was standing behind me, watching me curiously. She looked different now in civilian clothing, much better than before. She may have looked stunning in all that pushup spandex, but in normal clothes, her real beauty came through, natural and without compare.
“It’s Apogee. I’ve got her.”
“What, kidnapping now? Give me a break. You want me to-
“I didn’t kidnap her, Braxton,” I stopped him. “Zundergrub did something to her, so she’s stuck to me.”
“What, like with glue?” Braxton mocked.
“No, damn it. He used some sort of mental power and she can’t leave my side.”
“Ah,” he paused and I felt the seconds ticking by. “Is she alright?”
“Some bumps and bruises, but she’s fine. Here, talk to her.” I handed Apogee the phone.
“Hello William,” she said.
“I’m fine.”
“Yes, I’ve tried. Several times. I can’t.
“He’s behaving.”
“Yes, I tried breaking his face a few times too. I can’t either.”
She smiled mischievously at whatever Braxton said.
“I will.”
“Tell my mother I’m alright, please.”
Apogee nodded at what he was saying then suddenly stopped, and stared at me severely. She had figured out what I was doing.
“What are you trying to do?”
Braxton kept talking on the phone, but she dropped the cradle and left it hanging.
“Answer me!” she demanded.
I picked up the phone and hung it up.
“What is wrong with you?”
I clenched my fist, preparing for what I had to do, unpleasant as it was. There were a few police officers nearby, and what I could only surmise were FBI jocks who I had seen leaving the FBI building, heading towards a parking garage.
“Don’t,” she pleaded, but my left hand rose and clenched around her pretty throat. “Stop, please.”
“I’m sorry Apogee,” I managed, reaching my free arm back and opening my stance. “You can’t come with me. I’m a dead man, you see? If I turn myself in, Retcon’ll kill me.”
“Retcon?” she interrupted, but I lifted her off the ground, shutting her up.
“If I run,” I continued, “then your people will kill try to me, and you might get hurt.”
“No,” she managed.
“You have to trust me. Even though I’ve done nothing in my life to make you want to trust me.”
“I’ll die,” she began sobbing.
“No you won’t,” I said getting my courage up. One shot and she was out, and I could go. A few pedestrians were looking at us curiously, and even a cop across the street was starting to notice. Now was the time to do it.
“Zundergrub’s spell,” she managed through her tears. “It will kill me.”
“What?” I said, though it made perfect sense.
He must have programmed her with a psychosomatic trigger to give her heart failure, or a stroke. He knew I was a loner, and I’d eventually want to ditch Apogee. The doctor was tricky, keeping his tracks covered. He left me stuck to the one person in the world that wanted me dead, and left a psychic bomb to kill the assassin. I had to hand it to the doctor, finding a neat and tidy way to get rid of us both.
“No,” I managed. She coughed, unable to breathe. I put her down, but retained my grip on her.
She wept, “He was in my head, Blackjack. I heard him. If I fail, I’ll die. I don’t know how, but it’ll kill me.”
I released her, defeated, and got back in the car. Apogee tried to compose herself as she came around to her side but when she sat down, I noticed her sobbing softly, her face turned away from me. I let her cry and drove off into the busy D.C. traffic.
Across the street was the Frank F. Murrow building, the headquarters of the NAS, National Administration of Supers.
William Braxton’s office.
Chapter 15
Braxton had made it clear; something happens to her, and it’s on you. And Zundergrub had made it that much harder, with his potential mind bomb, so now I couldn’t get rid of the woman, I couldn’t really run to be free of the people that were trying to put me away. “People,” that’s a joke. The whole world was after me, and I had Apogee wrapped around my finger, like a beacon of light at midnight, drawing everyone towards me.
We drove out of the District and through Maryland, and it was almost ten o’clock at night by the time we were into Virginia. There I intended to turn West at the nearest major interstate and head through Kentucky into Indiana or Illinois. After that, I had no idea.
She was upset, and saddened by what happened in D.C. and at being my captive. I could feel her steaming; waiting for the next thing I would say so she could explode. Apogee was a ticking time bomb in the passenger seat, so I did what she couldn’t have possibly expected of me; I didn’t speak. It was easy for me, I’m always alone anyway.
Apogee dozed off here and there, but for the most part, she didn’t talk. Once she woke from a nap and saw my face, she grimaced, shaking her head. I laughed, and that was as much as we communicated.
For the whole damned day.
Her anger and diffidence made no sense to me. I was trying to help her. Maybe she’d have had a bad headache, but leaving her in D.C. would have saved everyone a lot of trouble. As it was, I was responsible for her. I was on the hook with Braxton and whoever cared. If anything happened to her, you could ‘tack it on to the sentence,’ as Apogee herself had said. The pressure was driving me insane. It was more than I could handle.
But this was different. If Zundergrub had worked some sort of psychosomatic trigger on her, set to go off if we were separated, then we were stuck together. Proximity was the key, but I also had to protect her from enemies and friends alike. If Braxton and the Seven came knocking, the first thing they’d do is put me down, and take her to safety, regardless of her pleas. Then the doctor’s mind bomb would kill her. What was it that Zundergrub had said?
“Save him.”
Zundergrub was obtuse as always. That could be interpreted in
many different ways. Was she supposed to help by reforming me? Was that what she was trying to do? Since we’d made peace, I noticed her different. Friendly, as if resigned to her fate, but something else. She was concerned for me. I noticed it in her when we were near police officers, or a Super flew overhead.
It was midnight and her growling stomach announced to both of us that we’d have to stop and eat. We were dressed in civilian clothing, so I could potentially stop anywhere, but I had to minimize the risk of anyone recognizing her. So I pulled over into the next gas station I saw, one of those huge roadside spots that had a minimart.
It was a popular place, even so close to midnight so we were running a risk. But I was comforted by the fact that the place had no visible cameras and it was late enough that most folks would be minding their own business, or too bleary eyed to notice. That was the idea anyway.
She stayed in the car as I went inside and got us food and gas. My emergency money was dwindling, and I had to find a way to get a hold of Sandy through a secure phone so he could wire me some money.
I didn’t speak to anyone at the minimart either, which was strange, since everyone was being chatty. But when I walked up to the cashier and gave him my purchases, he clammed up and was suddenly worried. I am a tall guy, and I do tend to glower, but I didn’t recall giving the cashier reason to be frightened at me.
Maybe I was settling into my role as a bad guy.
“Please put the change on pump one,” I said as I paid with a broad smile, trying to put him at ease, but it only served to unnerve him more.
He nodded nervously, “Pump number one, got it.”
Before I left, I noticed that they also sold prepaid cell phones. I pulled out more of my emergency cash and bought a few.
Returning to the car, I found her still asleep. Her head was tilted back and her mouth wide open, which was a funny position to be in, but I muffled my laughter so she wouldn’t wake. I placed the sandwiches and drinks gently on driver’s seat and gassed up the car, looking out to the parked trailer trucks nearby. The truck park looked peaceful, each rig settled in its spot, plugged in so vehicle and driver could recharge their batteries together.