by Ben Bequer
Apogee suddenly woke and stepped out of the car, stretching her arms wide as she faced me. She caught me watching her, staring at her breasts as they strained the fabric of her clothing, and chuckled to herself, shaking her head. I suppose she expected me to try something with her since she was my thrall.
And I wanted to, I won’t lie.
I’ll admit, I’ve been lucky with the ladies my whole life. Contrary to what Sandy thinks, I got to thank good genetics more than any power. In school and thereafter, girls were something of an afterthought to me. I could be wherever, and I’ll spot some nice looking girl giving me the eye. It’s always been that way. I’m never lonely if I don’t want to be.
But I’m not a player by any means.
With Apogee it wasn’t so much that she was uninterested, and that was a challenge. I don’t think of girls that way at all. If a woman isn’t interested in me, I could care less, all I have to do is turn around and there’s ten more to work my charms on.
Besides, I knew her reasons for hating me, and to be honest, I could empathize. I had killed her friend, whether it was an accident or not was irrelevant.
It also wasn’t how attractive she was, though she was a stunner. She had a body that belonged in a museum, and a face that would make Helen of Troy join a convent in shame. And her legs, those legs seem to go on forever. The dude that had landed her was a lucky guy indeed.
But that wasn’t what was interesting about her. There was something else, something I was having trouble putting my finger on. Our conversations to that point had been short, and terse, mostly her complaining, or me roaring something in anger. But talking to her, as contentious and truculent as she was, only made me want to talk to her more. In a way, Zundergrub’s spell was a godsend, because we were stuck together and there was no way for her to run away. We were forced to talk, to be civil, and who knew what that would lead to.
Her eyes wandered to the driver’s seat and seeing the food, she reached in and grabbed a sandwich. I left the pump and leaned, picking up another one, and after whole day of silence, I finally spoke.
“This one’s yours,” I said holding up her tuna sub.
I kept up with the news and read everything about most supers out of nosy curiosity, but I couldn’t remember where it was I read that she liked tuna.
She took it and grinned when she recognized what it was.
“Thanks,” she said and thus ended the day I didn’t speak to Apogee.
* * *
“So what’s with the name?” she asked drinking down a 64 ounce sports drink after finishing two tuna sandwiches. The girl had an appetite like mine, despite a figure to rival any cover girl.
“Which name? Blackjack?”
She nodded, “What’s it have to do with anything?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I guess it’s cool.”
“The name should mean something,” she snapped. “It’s important; it’s how you’re perceived by people.”
“What about you, Apogee?”
“It’s the farthest distance between-“
“I know what it means, but it has nothing to do with what you do.”
“It’s a complex geometric term,” Apogee rationalized. “In case you didn’t remember, I have great speed, and in any case, it has more to do with what I do than Blackjack.”
I laughed, having too much fun putting her on the defensive.
“Blackjack’s cool, admit it.”
She shook her head, “There’s too many guys like you out there, with names that make no sense.”
“Mr. Haha did a poll,” I started, “on his online blog thing-“
“Yeah, I saw that.”
“-and the results were…You saw it?” I stopped, a bit amazed.
“I did my research on you,” she said, then blushed and added, “On all you guys.”
“Well the name was very favorable, and 74% of respondents said they thought it was sexy.”
“Half of those people are deranged fanboys,” she scoffed.
“You mean fanGIRLS,” I said.
“Whatever. Just because Haha’s blog portrayed you as some sort of modern-day Robin Hood, don’t think it means anything with law enforcement. Besides, that blog was the dumbest thing ever. It gave us so much information on you, like your personality types, how you fought. You don’t do that when you’re a villain. The less we know the better.”
“Didn’t help you much in New York,” I chuckled, but quickly checked myself when I saw her face harden.
“You were lucky, plain and simple,” Apogee said and I let that one go without retort. There was no point in reliving that fight again. I know what it’s like to lose a big time fight and have it rubbed in my face by that schmuck Atmosphero.
“So what other research did you guys have on us?”
She smiled, “We know everything.”
“I crawled out of nowhere, lady. There’s no way you know anything about me.”
“You’re kidding, right? We even sent agents to interview your step-mother and her brother.”
The mere mention of those people made my blood boil. Without realizing it, I clenched my fist on the steering wheel, twisting the metal. A wash of bad memories from my childhood flooded me, angering me more from the shame of having her know my background.
“It bothers you that we went there?” she wondered.
I nodded.
“What’d she do to you?” she asked.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said, hoping to end the whole line of conversation right there. I actually longed for our quiet day at that moment.
“Hey, you kidnapped me-“
“I didn’t kidnap you, ok? I even tried taking you back.”
“Zundergrub’s your friend, not mine.”
I glared at her, not wanting to relive that subject either.
“Hey, I’m saying.”
“And what do you think gives you the right to talk about my life? Don’t pretend you care.”
She looked ahead for a few moments before saying, “it explains a lot.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” Apogee said. “It explains a lot about what you’ve become.”
I laughed. “Why don’t you enlighten me? I’m dying to hear what they told you.”
“Well, in her statements, she mentions how you were always fighting other kids. Especially your brother. You were in trouble all the time at school, and-“
“That’s a whole load of bullshit.”
“You can’t deny-“
“It’s hilarious. You believe the crap she told you.”
“Why shouldn’t we?”
I shook my head, bewildered at how poor their research was.
“I got into a lot of fights with my brother, sure. But it was because my step-mother would be drunk as hell. And her brother Bennett, my step-uncle if you want to call him something, was also drunk as hell. They’d take all their problems out on him, and he’d come and beat my ass to take his problems out on me. Jason was four years older than me, Apogee. It wasn’t much of a fight. But that’s nothing, kid’s stuff compared to the shit they did to me once he ran away. I have the scars to show it.”
“That wasn’t what she told us,” Apogee said, much less confident in her intelligence.
“What’s she going to say? Huh? I’m all bitter that my husband, the doctor, died, and now my sweet life is gone and I’m stuck with his two brat kids ruining my life. You think she’s gonna tell you that she’s living with her drunk masochist brother who spends every dollar he earns bouncing some bullshit strip club on alcohol, and who’s idea of butching up a twelve-year old kid was to…”
I stopped, not wanting to relive memories that served only to frustrate and anger me. It’s almost like I had shut them down, set them aside so I could move forward to something more positive. There was only one thing that I had kept, the child hood memory of hiding out in my father’s work shed in the back of the house, tinkering with his collection of watches
and old radios. It was the only thing the man left me after he died, and my sole valued possession as a child. I’d open them up and tear them apart, over and over, as if trying to find something inside, something to give me a chance to avoid the monsters that lurked outside the shed, anything to keep me from their hands.
Maybe Apogee had a point; though, maybe these experiences had set the stage for me to become what I had become. But I had moved on, I had made an effort to get out of there, leave that world behind, and try a legitimate life. Tried and failed miserably.
“I didn’t know,” she managed, trying to pacify the situation.
I shrugged.
“What about your dad?”
“What about him? He died when I was a kid, and my mother died giving birth to me which is probably why my brother hated me.”
“He was a good man, though.”
“My old man? He was a small-town doctor. A saint,” I said. “He was a throwback to an older time, when doctors did house calls and they took payment in barter or whatever. So basically we were poor as shit. Well, we were poor then, and after he died it was more like squalor.”
“How old were you when he passed?”
“Twelve. He died a month after marrying Doreen. That’s my step mother’s name. Doreen Wellington. She didn’t even take my dad’s name. And Bennett,” I laughed. “Mr. Bennett, he made us call him or we’d catch a beating. Mr. Bennett. He’s still alive, huh?” She nodded. “Maybe I should pay him a visit and see what he thinks about me now.”
“He’s in a wheelchair,” Apogee said. “He lost his right foot from diabetes. I don’t think he’d put up much of a fight.”
I shrugged and drove on.
“Now you know,” I spat.
After a minute of silence, she went on; “You ever make up with your brother?”
“Sort of,” I said. “He ran off to the army when he was eighteen. After the army, he became a big shot with the whole dot-com bubble thing. The guy’s a billionaire. Can you believe that? He called me when I went to the Cal Tech, to wish me luck. But when I got tossed he wouldn’t take my calls. I was a big embarrassment, or whatever.”
She nodded.
“I don’t want your pity. I don’t want anybody’s pity. That’s where I came from but it’s not what I am. And don’t think that it explains anything. Everything I’ve done was me, Apogee. I take full credit and blame for it.”
“So why archery?”
“You’re going to laugh.”
“You’re a big fan of Kevin Costner,” she said, giggling.
I shook my head, “Of the old Disney movie.”
Her eyes widened.
“Since I was a kid,” I said. “Hell, I love all those movies. I’ve seen them all.”
“No way.”
“Oh yeah. Those old movies were awesome.”
She laughed and slapped her thigh.
“What, you don’t like them?”
“I love those them. But most of that stuff is for girls with all the princesses and everything.”
I shrugged, “Some of them, sure. But there was a bunch of them that weren’t, like Treasure Island, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and The Love Bug. I have them all on DVD...well, had them all ‘til Atmosphero threw my house on my head.”
“The Love Bug…isn’t that the one about the car that’s alive or something?”
“Herbie,” I said.”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“They made like five movies in all, but Love Bug was the first one. It’s a classic.”
She looked out the window for a moment, lost in thought before saying; “I remember my dad took me to see one of them in the theaters when I was a little girl.”
“My brother took me.”
We rode silent for a while, both reminiscing our shared experience, but talk of real life stuff, and the dangers we both faced wouldn’t have ended the chatty part of the drive as much as the sudden traffic jam that appeared out of nowhere and the distinct lights in the distance of police vehicles.
Because we had driven into a roadblock.
* * *
It was starting to rain, though only a slight drizzle and I didn’t even have to put the wipers on. A long line of cars crawled ahead of us, the red of their brake lights glaring off our windshield. Beyond them, so far we couldn’t even see them, were the glowing klaxons of police and emergency vehicles.
It was the end of the line, and we both knew it.
Apogee was tense, inadvertently digging her fingernails into the armrest of the car door. Her jaw was clenched, her gaze averted downwards to the floor of the passenger side. I couldn’t tell why she was so nervous, so bothered. If Epic and Superdynamic and the rest of the guys were waiting up the road, this was her chance to be free of me, to see me jailed for the murder of her friend. She should be happy, even excited and hopeful. Instead she looked ill.
Driving onward, I inched closer to the inevitable, not even knowing why. I tensed as well, not sure what I would do. I should ditch the car, ditch the girl, run into the wilderness at either side of the road, and make them catch me.
I looked out the window, up at the night sky, trying to catch a glimpse of a super flying by, or a shimmering cape or reflection off a costume. They would be scanning the road for people leaving their cars. Epic was a buffoon, but Superdynamic would be ready for anything, especially after the debacle in New York.
They didn’t know what they were facing with me, so he’d bring his entire team to bear, and call for friendly reinforcements. Once I got spotted, they would drop their entire arsenal on me, and I would wake up in a cell for supers, never to be heard of again.
“Please don’t do anything stupid,” she said, watching me closely.
“Huh?”
“I can see you getting all worked up.”
I gave her a bewildered look, still lost in the thought of a line of supers waiting for me but I couldn’t even respond. A state trooper stood outside our window as we drove by, waving the cars along. He wore an orange vest and motioned us past with a flashlight.
It was peculiar, because he was vulnerable, standing all alone a few hundred feet from the vehicles. I looked ahead and another trooper stood maybe half the distance to the eventual roadblock. They weren’t even looking inside the vehicles, trying to identify the occupants.
It made no sense, why use the troopers to weed out traffic? If they knew I was here, they had to know state troopers alone couldn’t stop me. Not a hundred of them. To have them out here, defenseless against a Class-A super was careless.
It should be one of the flyers Atmo, FTL or Gamma Demon, perusing the cars for me. Once they spotted me they could call in for Epic and Superdynamic to put me down.
I flipped the wipers on to clear the windshield and saw the line of cars ahead turning off the road into the depressed median, and continuing across the divider. More troopers waving flashlights routed us to the detour. Our row of cars now drove up onto the right lane of the other side, while oncoming traffic was diverted to their left lane of a two lane road. A long row of flares stood in the path we had left, and ahead was the true reason for the roadblock; a horrible accident involving a minivan and an 18-wheeled tanker truck.
The rain was coming down harder and I left the wipers going. I sat back, more relaxed. Apogee’s attention was on the mangled cars lying on the opposite side of the road against a fence. Surrounding the wreck were several emergency trucks, two fire engines, and at least twenty state trooper and local police cars, as well as a dozen or so other vehicles. Above us, a helicopter was on final approach to land a few hundred feet beyond the accident.
“Hold on a second,” Apogee said and lowered her window, motioning for one of the troopers managing traffic.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Mam, please move along,” the trooper said, perturbed.
“Look, I can help.”
He smirked. The trooper was probably a shade over fifty, with a thick gray hair and a bushy m
ustache, with slits for eyes. “Help by moving your car, miss. And hurry, they’re going to close down the interstate any minute now.”
Apogee was looking at the accident, almost ignoring the trooper.
“Is someone trapped inside the minivan?”
“Miss, you’re holding up traffic.”
“Officer Donovan,” she said, reading his name tag. “Please answer me.”
She was forceful, but respectful, and using his name got past his defenses.
“There’s a mother and three children under there,” he said, almost exasperated. “But we have a crane on the way and we’re going to get them out. Now mam, please, can you and your husband move on? You’re holding up traffic. Sir?” Officer Donovan added and pointed the flashlight at me
I flinched and accelerated, intent on leaving the scene as soon as possible. They weren’t here for us. We were safe.
“Pull over,” she told me once we rejoined the line of creeping cars.
I blinked at her.
“I said pull over,” Apogee commanded.
“Fuck that,” I snapped, and looked forward, but there was nowhere for me to go. The car in front wasn’t moving.
“Blackjack, please.”
My mind raced at all the possibilities. Maybe the Superb Seven were hiding behind that truck, waiting for me, hoping to draw me away from bystanders. Or perhaps they were in the chopper that was moments away from touching down.
“I have to help,” she said, and in her eyes I saw no deception.
I turned off and parked the car on the side of the road. It immediately drew the ire of Trooper Donovan, who I could see in the rear view mirror, running in our direction.
Apogee got out of the car and took a few steps towards the accident, but stopped. She paused for a few seconds then returned to the car, as the trooper reached us.
“I need you to come with me,” she said.
“Hey!” Donovan shouted as he came near. “I’m not kidding goddammit. This isn’t a time for sightseeing. Get back in your damned car and move on. I’m only going to warn you this once.”
“This is crazy, Apogee,” I said, ignoring the trooper. “I can’t be here.”
“One second,” she snapped at the cop, and then back at me. “I can’t go without you, ok? I can’t.”