Superheroes

by Margaret Ronald

  He kept a running list in a dedicated notebook that he continually updated and revised, adding names, striking others, rearranging the prospects in order of likelihood. But eventually, the speculation became less important to him as other aspects of his life began to intrude and command his attention. Girls, school, friends, and, of course, girls. He lost his notebook on a school trip to the Grand Canyon and never bothered replacing it. In the end, he never stopped wondering. He just stopped caring.

  Marshall popped the pretzel into his mouth, effectively snuffing the memories.

  It turned out to be a relaxing couple of hours. He knocked back a couple of drafts while watching a late college game on the tavern’s big screen, politely turned down an offer from a tipsy cougar out celebrating a friend’s engagement, and even signed the back of a Budweiser poster for Walrus: “To Jermaine, Keep the dream alive. Your pal, Downfall.” It was just after midnight, as he was finishing up what he’d planned on being his last beer, when he heard someone call his name. Assuming he’d misheard because whoever it was couldn’t possibly be addressing him, Marshall didn’t even bother acknowledging the speaker. But the second “Marsh!”, emphatic, almost indignant, made him turn.

  And the sight that greeted him when he did was a prospect so bizarre, so altogether wrong, that it took Marshall several seconds to convince himself that he hadn’t lost his mind and that, yes, it was Terry Langan standing there, fists on hips, grinning at him like he’d just cracked the sentinel system to the real Fort Knox beneath the Lincoln Memorial. Clean shaven, roughly twenty pounds lighter, and sporting a stylish tan leather jacket over a white cotton dress shirt and black slacks, he looked, thought an amazed Marshall, much better in death than he had ever looked in life.

  They caught each other up over several rounds, Marshall filling Terry in on the monotony of prison life and his eventual return to freedom, conveniently leaving out the details of his conditional release, suburban do-over, and the terms of his all-expenses-paid trip to the old neighborhood, while Terry enlightened Marshall on just how the hell he was still alive given that the last time Marshall had seen him, Terry and his associates were being buried under several tons of debris.

  “Force-shield generator,” his old friend explained, knocking back a shot of Tennessee whiskey and grimacing. “Part of the Professor’s bag of tricks. He activated it in the nick of time; saved the whole damn crew.” He sighed contentedly, sank back in his chair, resting his clasped hands on his chest, and sniffed. “It was crazy. One second we were as good as dead and the next … ” The very memory made him shake his head in dazed disbelief. “Nobody said a word. Nobody even moved. That shield was eggshell thin and so clear we could make out every piece of fucking rubble hanging over our heads. Took him a while but, eventually, the Professor was able to expand the field and get us out.”

  “Ha!” Marshall clapped a hand on his long-thought-lost friend’s shoulder. He would have gotten up and hugged him but for fear that in his inebriated state, the all-too-tricky maneuver would land him face-first on the suspiciously sticky floor. Instead, he smiled, knocked back his shot, and marveled at the twists and turns that typified his alternately dazzling and disheartening once-profession.

  He and Terry had met as hired muscle for an anthropoid dandy who went by Python, a colorful if not altogether noteworthy miscreant with an affinity for bowler hats and the works of W. H. Auden. As fellow first-timers, they had been given the relatively straightforward task of taking up position at the bank’s back emergency exit to ensure no one went in or out while the heist was in progress. They acquitted themselves nicely, looking their nonchalant best as they manned their post, casually chatting about the state of officiating in professional sports, a recent political scandal, and whether or not Vin Diesel should ever make another movie. And then, the alarm went off. Too late, both realized that, while doing a bang-up job of keeping an eye out for enterers and exiters, they’d done a comparatively poorer job of keeping track of time and were thus late for their own getaway. By the time they scrambled around the corner, the Crown Vic was long gone.

  To their credit, they didn’t panic, simply strolling by the crime scene as curious observers, then catching a bus back to the hideout. Or close to it anyway, because, by the time they got there, police were already on the scene and the entire block had been cordoned off. And so, instead of prison, they ended up celebrating their not-exactly-good-but-not-altogether-bad luck in a manner that would become tradition: over shots of J.D. at Vinny’s.

  Over time, they became fast friends, henching for the likes of MaNYEik, Dragoon, and the sullen Firewire before he found God and renounced his sinful ways to become a Baptist minister in Charlotte. Eventually, however, Marshall grew tired of playing second banana to megalomaniacs and Machiavells whose best laid schemes were, all too often, uncredited rehashes of old movie plots—hijacking a treasury plane, launching a solar-powered satellite weapon, threatening Silicon Valley with a massive double earthquake, perfecting a subspecies of flying piranha—so when the opportunity presented itself, he seized it, parlaying his deep-seated dissatisfaction and a modest poker win into a step up in the criminal underworld, adopting the Downfall persona and striking out on his own. To arguable success. He and Terry lost touch after that, occasionally reconnecting at Vinny’s or on a joint op like the U.N. takedown. But it was never quite the same after Marshall went solo.

  “You were damn lucky,” said Marshall.

  “We came out of that rubble expecting to go another round, probably get our asses handed to us, but by the time we saw daylight again, the heroes were long gone.”

  “Yeah, they were busy ferrying everyone clear of the potential blast zone,” Marshall recalled. He himself had been one of their charges, a helpless sack of flesh, alert to his circumstances yet helpless to react, his motor functions short-circuited by Nantech’s miniature invaders. His last ride as Downfall.

  “Right. So the Professor initiated the oscillator’s self-destruct and we cleared out. When that thing blew—”

  “Wait a minute,” Marshall interrupted. “Bedlam triggered the self-destruct?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Terry responded matter-of-factly, as if explosions vaporized everything within a two-mile radius of secret Moave labs all the time. “If you think about it, it was genius.” Clearly, Marshall was having a hard time thinking about it, so Terry elucidated: “The Professor was done. The heroes were going to get their hands on his oscillator anyway. Eventually, they’d have taken it apart, reverse-engineered their own version, and then some mental midget like QuickThink would’ve claimed he’d invented it like he did the Volcanizer or the Weather Accelerator. The Professor figured he’d rather start from scratch than let that little prick cop himself another Nobel Prize in Physics. So we all started over. As far as anyone knows, Professor Bedlam and his Agents of Chaos are dead.”

  “So you guys took yourselves out of the game?” The whole scenario struck Marshall as altogether bizarre. And most un-Terry-like.

  “Didn’t say we were out of the game.” Terry leaned in conspiratorially, looked around to make sure the businessman was still passed out in that booth at the back, and lowered his voice. “Professor Bedlam and the Agents of Chaos may be history, but Brainstorm and his Cerebellum Squad are alive and kicking.”

  “Cerebellum Squad?”

  Terry waved off the implied criticism. “Look, all I know is we’re off the radar and these new outfits are killer. Did you ever try on one of those Chaos suits?

  Marshall had to admit he hadn’t.

  “They weren’t particularly well insulated. And they never got the boots right. They were always too tight around the toes.”

  “So, Brainstorm and the Cerebellum Squad,” said Marshall, still far from convinced.

  “We hit a few banks. Run protection on a drug shipment or two. Nothing flashy, but enough to keep us in coin and the Professor in plutonium and weapons-grade rividium.”

  It all sounded unnecessarily complicated, b
ut Marshall saw no point in arguing the logic. Whatever strange turn his life had taken certainly seemed to agree with Terry, who looked better than he had in years.

  “So how long you been out?” asked Terry.

  “Not long.”

  An awkward lull in the conversation as Terry deliberated and then, almost reluctantly: “Hey, if you want, I can talk to the Professor, see if I can get you in with us.”

  “No, I’m not looking for work.”

  Terry was palpably relieved.

  “I’m looking for Adam Virtue.”

  “Adam?” Terry jerked his head back and squinted, his telltale way of letting you know he was genuinely perplexed and/or thought you were nuts. “Geez, it’s been a while. Why do you want to look him up for? The old-timer hasn’t had anything going on in years.” And then, suddenly intrigued: “Has he?”

  “I don’t know,” said Marshall. “But, like I said, I’m not looking for a job. I just want to say hi.”

  Terry seemed to find it a strange request, frowning down into his lap and taking a few seconds to think about it. Long enough for Walrus to deliver their next round. Whatever internal battle raged within him was immediately decided at the sight of those amber shots. “All right,” he announced, suddenly upbeat. “I’ll ask around, see if I can track him down for you.” He raised a glass. “To crimes past.”

  “And scores future.”

  He was aswim in darkness, a thick, torpid presence that pressed up against him, obstructing sight and sound. He shifted and felt it recede, its soft black essence drawing back slightly and then, suddenly, solidifying. Six inches to either side and directly above. He became aware of his own heartbeat, its quickening thrum pulsing in his ears, the tips of his fingers. He tried to cry out, let them know he was still alive, but his parched throat could manage little more than a strangled gasp.

  A shuddering thud as the first shovelful of earth struck his coffin, dirt and dust filtering through the shifting slats to sprinkle his exposed face and neck. Full panic snapped him out of his paralytic stupor. He struggled wildly. Sounds filtered down to him through the mounting barrier of soil and mud. Traffic. Voices. The flush of some distant toilet. He fought to get air to his oxygen-deprived lungs, the tangible darkness closing in on him once again. And, as he thrashed and kicked and struggled to give voice to his terror, he became aware of two things. One: the walls of his coffin had magically dissolved away and he was able to breathe freely once again. And, two: the burial earth on his face tasted a lot like chipotle barbecue.

  He opened his eyes. The first sight to greet his resurrection was that of Agent Bryerson looming over him, casually munching from a bag of Olde Southern Hand Cut Chips. “He’s alive after all!” he said, looking vaguely disappointed. From the bathroom at the end of the hall came the sound of a faucet running.

  “What time is it?” Marshall propped himself up on his elbows and searched the room for the bedside clock he could have sworn had been sitting on the dresser the night before. Nauseous, disoriented, and thoroughly dehydrated, he hadn’t felt quite this crap since that time he caught a Juno Jones disruptor shock full in the face. Of course on that occasion, sweet unconsciousness had been his savior. No such luck this time.

  “Ten-fifteen,” announced Agent McNeil as he stepped out of the bathroom and shot his cuffs.

  “You were supposed to contact us when you got in,” said Bryerson. “We left you a message.”

  “I didn’t get it.”

  “Bull shit.” Byrerson pronounced it as two separate words.

  McNeil raised his hand in a calming gesture. Bryerson responded by sucking his teeth, a mannerism Marshall had always assumed proprietary to Jamaicans and white rappers. The big man crushed the chip bag in his meaty fist and tossed it in the general direction of the trash basket. It sailed wide and disappeared behind the desk.

  “So what happened last night?” asked McNeil.

  “I went to Vinny’s Tavern, a gathering place for the local riffraff back in my time. Ended up meeting someone who might be able to get me a line on Virtue.”

  “Oh yeah? Who?” Bryerson wanted to know.

  Marshall hesitated. The code of the underworld dictated he be circumspect when discussing former associates, especially a former associate he’d once considered a friend, and, in particular, a former associate and friend who was now, for all intents and purposes, officially dead. He wished he’d had the opportunity to prep a suitable cover story, but he’d been caught flatfooted and quickly realized there was no way he was going to spin his way out of this one.

  “Withholding information could be considered a breech of your parole,” McNeil prompted.

  “Terry Langan,” Marshall fessed up, hoping that as a relatively small fish in a pretty big barracuda pond, the details of his career profile wouldn’t warrant too hard a look. “He works backup, hired muscle for some of the low-level players, but says he can tap some of his connections for me.”

  “And how likely is that, you figure?” asked McNeil.

  Marshall shrugged. He honestly had no idea. The feds exchanged looks. Bryerson rolled his eyes, lost interest, and directed his attention to the minibar, squatting down to root through its contents.

  “I gave him my number here at the hotel,” said Marshall. “He said he’d be in touch as soon as he had something.”

  McNeil sighed. “Well, we can’t just sit around, hoping he calls. Virtue is dangerous.”

  “Assuming he was responsible for what happened to The Imperial.” Annoyed, Marshall got up, grabbed the open can of cola sitting amid the ruins of last night’s dinner, and downed the cloying, lukewarm remnants, slaking his unearthly thirst.

  McNeil fished a briefcase out from behind a chair and set it down on the desk. “Process of elimination makes him the most likely candidate.”

  “Fuck process of elimination.” Marshall surprised himself with his own anger. He paused, softened. “Like I’ve been saying, Virtue’s been out of the game longer than I have. Besides, he never had a beef with The Imperial. If he’d go after anyone, it’d be Captain Spectacular. Juno Jones, maybe.”

  “Then all you got to do is prove he’s innocent and clear him.” Bryerson, hunkered down in front of the minibar, pocketed minibottles of Chivas and Tanqueray. He briefly considered the Bailey’s Irish Cream before slotting it back. “You’ll actually be doing him a favor.”

  McNeil unsnapped and opened the briefcase, angling it to face Marshall so he could see the lone, black leather belt sitting within. “This is for you.”

  “And I didn’t get you anything,” quipped Marshall. McNeil’s expression was inscrutable. Marshall stepped in and picked up the belt. Grooved striping and burnished silver buckle aside, it was wholly unremarkable.

  “The buckle houses a solid-state radiation module capable of detecting trace amounts and residue,” McNeil informed him. “It’s been specifically calibrated to sniff out ferenium-17, which has a half-life of about two weeks.”

  “If Virtue’s our guy, then we got him.” This from Bryerson, who, having cleaned out the minibar to his satisfaction, straightened, both knees popping in protest.

  “And if he isn’t and we don’t?” asked Marshall.

  Bryerson shrugged, cocked his head, and offered his shark grin. “Then we’ll thank you for your service to this great nation and hope that we never have to lay eyes on you again.”

  After impressing upon him the time-sensitive nature of the investigation, they left him to hit the streets and reconnect. Instead, Marshall went right back to bed. But he couldn’t sleep and ended up spending several hours watching CNN’s coverage of the mayhem in Atlanta. Early Wednesday morning, law enforcement officials backed by local heroes, including Georgia’s favorite son, Johnny Victory, had descended on The Indigo Club in the city’s Five Point district, igniting a firestorm that had transformed the downtown core into Battleground Zero. So far, damage estimates were in the hundreds of millions, with eighty-six confirmed dead and over two hundred mis
sing, including Johnny Victory. Newly elected mayor Anthony Williams, who had campaigned on a tough-on-crime platform and authorized the ill-advised raid on the nightclub “notorious for catering to the city’s criminal elements,” had already tendered his resignation in a hastily convened press conference. Although order had been more or less restored with the arrival of Captain Spectacular and his Confederacy of Justice, open skirmishes were still being reported in isolated pockets of the city.

  As he watched a live feed of Amnesty and The Silver Gryphon take down Flashback on the grounds of the Georgia Institute of Technology, Marshall couldn’t help but wonder how a similar scenario would have played out on his old stomping grounds. Probably not all that differently, he eventually concluded. Nobody liked to have their downtime crashed, least of all volatile psychos like Shatterdam and The Purple Lamprey. Throw in The Imperial’s reckless disregard for collateral damage and you’d have been lucky to have a building standing once the dust settled. Fortunately, the authorities in Fortune City had always had the good sense to steer clear. In his day, Vinny’s, and a few places like it, were considered off-limits in the life-or-death battles waged by the costumed narcissists and their hangers-on, undeclared sanctuaries where the rules no longer applied, and every so often, it hadn’t been uncommon to see the odd hero having a drink at the bar or holding a civilized conversation with someone whose headquarters he’d trashed only hours earlier.