by Tom King
“Yes, Mr. Gold.”
“Thank you, you’re a good girl.” Jules grabs Jose, who’s getting Broadsword and his brothers some water. “Jose, clear fourteen, best you can. I’ll get these.” Jules takes the two glasses to the table, cracks a quick joke about his food compared to their native Britain’s, and heads over to table fourteen to supervise the cleaning effort. When Soldier and Pen arrive, he’s too busy trying to scrape up some hardened schmutz with his fingernail to even notice their approach.
“Julie, good to see you.” Soldier takes Jules’s hand in his, just as he had done in ’41, the day he set Jules free. Because the power of that first grip will never leave his fingers, Jules notices how much strength Soldier’s lost since.
“How’s it going, Mr. Gold,” Pen says as he slips into the booth.
“How am I doing? Eh, business is good. Health is good. Wife’s health is very good, thank God. My grandson is now working here. Who can complain?”
They swap a few more pleasantries before Jules interrupts to remind them they came here for good food not to share old stories with an old man. Soldier orders a burger and fries, and Pen scolds him for going generic at the “best deli in Arcadia.” Soldier shrugs, and Pen asks for corn beef, rye, with slaw.
Jules tries to turn away, but he’s stopped by Soldier, who puts his hand on the older man’s hip. “I’m sorry about your boy,” Soldier says. “I ain’t talked to you since, and I’m sorry.”
Jules cocks his head to the right. “Eh, he has his life like that and he should expect to live forever? Feel sorry for the villains with a chance of reforming, that’s what I say. My son, The Terrorist, he wasn’t coming back.”
“Still,” Soldier says, “Julie, Freedom Fighter, I’m sorry.”
Jules smiles, turns to Pen. “You see, this is a good man you’ve got here. A real hero. Saved me, I can tell you that. Maybe it’s not too late for you, eh? Maybe you could learn some? Not that you haven’t been around real heroes before . . .” With a wave of his hand, Jules cuts himself off. In his younger years he was better able to control himself around the customers. The kid was here to eat; he should eat. “But what could that matter now? What matters now is the food, let me get you the food, eh?” Jules swipes some dust from the side of the table and walks away.
Back at the counter, Jules pins the order up on the creaking spinner rack for Burn to take and dole out to the rest of the kitchen staff, some of whom used to work for El Meurte’s crew before he died, shooting himself in the head, just as Jules’s boy’d done.
“Burn, this order has the priority, okay?”
Burn walks up and checks over the scribble on the tab. After a while of squinting at the rutted letters, he yanks the paper and stuffs it in his breast pocket. “Yeah, yeah. All right, I got it.” Burn scratches at the gloves on his hands that cover up the bandages from his little hospital adventure. “Y’know, Soldier, I get that. But that’s PenUltimate with him, right? I mean, what’s that little shit doing here?”
“Ah, let him be. If he’s with Soldier, he’s all right. And I’m serious, no funny stuff in the food, not at my place of business.”
“I hear you,” Burn says before yelling something in Spanish to the back of the kitchen.
“Least not while he’s with Soldier,” Jules adds as Burn walks away.
Jules leans on the counter, looks back at Pen. A coward through and through. But, really, who is Jules to judge anyone? His life was so perfect and moral?
In the war, when he was a prisoner, a Nazi guinea pig hung from a wire, Jules had made a pact with God. He had yelled out, begged God for power, for freedom to hurt these bastards; and Jules vowed that if God gave him that, Jules would forsake everything, even his greatest wish: his son’s happiness. And the pact was accepted. And he was freed. And the experimenting the Nazis had done on him had changed him, blessed him with the ability to bring plenty of hurt.
After the war, he left that life and started this deli, scratched his way up, the real American Dream. But the connections he’d made before—fighting with a costume taken almost thread for thread from The Soldier of Freedom—helped him find a customer base in all these new gamers, who considered him a sort of pulp hero. And they helped him too on the dozens of times he’d have to track down his boy after Ian’d committed some other sad monstrosity. Always another thing with that boy, another cause; never satisfied that boy, never content with anything.
When The Blue came, Jules didn’t have any quarrel with it. What’s an old man to do with all that power anyway? Fix his arthritis for the fiftieth time? He felt maybe pity for his grandson, for poor David, but the kid took it okay. He had only just started playing the game, trying maybe to undo what his father had done, to make up for all that misery caused by such a miserable man.
So grandfather and grandson faced The Blue together, arms around each other. The kid stood strong, and Jules had never been more proud of anyone. His dad gone less than a few days, faced with losing the thing that made him special—and he bears it like a hero, like his grandfather maybe. Along with Soldier’s grip, the imprint of David’s arm on his shoulder will never leave Jules. Never.
About halfway through his rounds, Jules watches the focus of the customers shift to the entrance—when someone’s been toiling as long in one place as Jules, it’s not so hard to notice such a thing—and Jules follows his patrons’ lifting heads and sees her: Mashallah, the gift of God. If he were maybe a few years younger (and a dab less married), he’d have loved to have courted a girl like that, the type who takes the attention of everyone near her, as if it all belonged to her—as if she had only lent it out for a while and was now asking for it back.
He knows her of course; Jules knows everyone. They’ve spent some lovely evenings kindly arguing over Palestine while he enjoyed a bottle of wine, or three. Whether she, the good Muslim, also had a sip, or three, well, Jules would never tell.
For a second time, Jules rushes to the entrance to cut off the new girl, Brittany maybe? Who can keep track?
“My Mashallah,” he says. “I haven’t seen you in too long, too long! How radiant you are! You must stop in more often, eh? But what do you need with this talk, just coming in here? What can I do for you, darling?”
Mashallah barely seems to notice him as she looks around the restaurant. “Hi . . . oh, hi, I . . . I am here for—oh, I see them. Thank you.” Mashallah smiles slightly at Jules and walks past him, up to Pen and Soldier.
Jules fights the urge to follow her and listen in. He knows a biselleh of the history between these two and he wouldn’t mind hearing what this is all about. But who is he to interfere? “Bethany,” he says to the new girl, “get another menu to their table, fast as possible.”
Crack.
Food and glass are everywhere. And pieces of plates. And silverware. Every time Jules can get an eye open, can use his own spit to wipe the plaster from his eye, he sees them everywhere: food, glass, plates, silverware—on every surface, every man.
Something’s come into his diner. Someone’s blown up his diner. Put a bomb just on the other side of Pen and Soldier. It’s not so hard to tell; Jules has set off a few bombs of his own, seen his son off more, and he knows well enough.
Pen reacts first. He places his hands flat against the bottom of his table and wrenches it free from the bolts Jules screwed in some thirty-odd years ago. A studded screech of metal squeals from the floor as Pen pivots his body outward, one hand above the other, and tips the table toward the main aisle, placing it between Mashallah and the next attack from above.
Crack.
Some piece of something crashes through the wall, crashes into Pen’s table, knocking him to one knee, shattering his little shield. Pen discards the wooden husk and sprints forward toward the center of where the blast hit, where Jules’s customers are dying beneath tables and plates and silverware. Behind Pen, Soldier grabs Mashallah and starts to drag her in Jules’s direction, away from the debris. Not shockingly, she doesn’t take t
his so well and starts pounding on him with small fists. Jules shouts out something, but does anyone listen?
Crack.
Another explosion blasts from the floor in front of Pen, but the boy merely jumps over this newest attack, flips in the air, and lands next to Chimera, who is screaming, his chest caught under a hunk of wall Jules painted with his own hands. Pen reaches under it, yanks it up, putting a few inches between the man and the mess.
With no hesitation at all, Burn jumps the counter and joins Pen at the center of all the commotion. While Pen holds the wall aloft, Burn moves Chimera out from under it, freeing him just as another crack goes off, another piece of the diner drives inward toward anyone it can find.
Burn is a good man. This restaurant’s been his home through some hard times, and Jules’d always tried to do right by him. Still, Jules wouldn’t have expected this, for Burn to react the way he does, thrusting himself into this. But then he remembers the hospital, Burn’s confession of how he’d run when Doc Speed stayed. God, is anyone not trying to come back?
Another crack, another piece of wall slashing through the air, coming right at Burn and Pen, and Pen flips, puts his feet through it, shatters it, but it’s not enough. A hunk of plaster whizzes past Pen, gnashes into Burn’s head, and the big man falls back into a sudden cloud of blood.
Jules cries out, and his own voice, so rusted now, wakes him from his temporary stupor. He looks around, sees his customers as frozen as he is, stuck watching these folks playing again, all his customers, watching, waiting to be saved. Another crack comes, reminds Jules he’s seen this waiting before, seen those in need before, all these poor people wanting a hero.
“What is this?” Jules shouts at his patrons. “Get out! Get out!” A dozen customers peer up at Jules. “Get out of here! Go, people, go! Go!”
This voice of authority seems to have some effect, and a few people finally start to move. “Go, people! Go!” Jules continues to shout, and a few more, thank God, start to go to the exits, crowding the aisles of what now seems like such a small deli.
Jules runs at the crowd, finding those that lag, who seem to look almost longingly at the destruction and death—those fools get a quick scolding from the old man who’d invited them in the first place, who had every right to tell them to get out of here, to leave for God’s sake.
Jules does what he can, clears out whom he can, and then Jules makes to leave himself, glancing back only once to see what poor souls have to get left behind.
And there’s Mashallah, wrestling free of the protesting Soldier, rushing back toward the center of the attack. And there’s Pen, bending over Burn and Chimera, scraping dust from their bodies, looking up every second to see what’s coming next. And there’s . . .
David. Where’s David? Where’s the boy? He isn’t here; he wasn’t one of the ones Jules cleared. Where’d that boy get to? Where the hell did that boy get to?
Crack.
More debris pouring in near Pen now, more hunks of tables, plates, silverware, swerving through the air, landing anywhere at all, more noise leading to more noise as Mashallah wades into the mayhem, ducks down, bends down over a boy, over Jules’s boy, his good grandson, lying there on the broken floor, lying not too far from Pen, plates and silverware and food covering him every which way; and part of the roof starts to fall right on top of the two of them, even as Soldier runs to them, screaming.
Pen is there—he jumps, puts his back between them and the diving metal and concrete, busting it from one piece to many, creating a burst of gray that buries him, that pushes Pen back to the ground on top of Mashallah and David, a burst of gray and food and plates and silverware that buries the three of them equally.
The great Soldier of Freedom arrives too late. Dropping to his knees, he begins scratching at the new hill, does nothing more than scratch his finger into it. That’s all he can do, and there’re tears in the man’s eyes.
Crack.
Another explosion. And another. Between Jules and the heroes, the diner quakes as plates and silverware and food crumple together.
Crack.
Another explosion, and Jules’s legs give, and he’s flat on the floor, his nose stuffed into his own floor, his back only feet from the exit.
Jules is old. He tells people he’s eighty-three, but really he’s eighty-five. During the war he fought good. If anyone got in his way, this was no problem at all. If they hurt him, he’d heal the wounds, and if they stayed around after that, he’d turn the pain back on those bastards. But the war was so long ago. He can’t do anything now, not since—he’s an old man for God’s sakes!
But in front of him, his grandson lies under a pile of rubble that needs to be moved, and he can’t be helpless now; he can’t; he won’t allow it. Years ago he bargained with God for power. And he only knew God had been listening the day Soldier freed him. And when Jules’s son went as he did, Jules knew that his price had been paid.
After the war, Jules decided not to use the powers that condemned his boy. He wasn’t the hero. Not anymore. He’s just the man who makes the food at the diner. He’s just the old man who promised some poor people that if they came here, to this place, to his diner, they would have some peace.
But that doesn’t matter anymore. Decisions. Promises. Peace. What are they? All of it worthless. What is important is David. Someone has to save David. Oh, God, please, I have to save him. But I don’t have enough to help him anymore. I need you. Please, I’ll do it again. I’ll deal. I don’t have much, I don’t have too many years left, but I’ll give you what I’ve got. I’ve given you my son. Now you must take me. Take my life. Only let me save the boy.
Oh, God. Please. Please. Please.
A quiet, high voice sniffs beside him, tiny peeps filtered through rough sobs. “Sir, sir. Do you need this? Will this help.”
It’s the girl, the new greeter. She’s quivering, the poor thing. He wants to reach out and brush at her face and tell her it’s going to be fine.
And in her hands rests the repulsor ray gun that Techno—The Greatest Engineer of the Twentieth Century!—made for Jules after losing a bet that that fatass could eat two pastramis on rye in one sitting. No one could do that. It’s ludicrous. Who did he think he was kidding? But Jules needed something for the robberies, something with some extra oomph considering his unique clientele, so who was Jules not to accept such a wager?
Jules lingered at the periphery of the game for so many years, supporting those men more worthy than he ever was. Not since the war did he ever think to walk the radius from the edge to the center. But here is the gun, a good gun that could dig through the pile; here is God in the child’s hand, responding to his request, offering him again the contract to do good, to earn his grandchild.
Jules reaches out and signs his name, takes the weapon from the girl, tries maybe to remember training from sixty years ago. But what time is there for such thoughts? His knee drags under his body, and he settles one hand on the floor pushing against the cold tiles. With his other hand, he pats the child on the head.
“Thank you, Tiffany,” he whispers.
Thank God, thank you, God. Weapon secured, Jules Gold stands up. Thank God. Jules steps forward, and though it’s been a while, The Freedom Fighter reenters the fray with the vitality of a man at least two years younger.
The diner still rumbling around him, Jules hustles as much as a grown man can be expected to, forcing his way up to Soldier, who’s still scratching at a pile of junk with his small hands.
There’s no need to say anything, not that anyone could hear over all this ruckus, but still Jules has nothing to say as it is. All he does is tap the butt of the gun up against Soldier’s shoulder, gives him the type of nudge Soldier would remember from all those times the two of them chased Nazis across Europe, the type that meant that Jules had something, had an idea that needed executing, and it was time for Soldier to get out of the way.
Of course, without even a glance, Soldier moves back. Jules doesn’t want t
o notice how much the man’s shaking in all the wrong places, but he does, but Jules puts that junk out of his mind because it won’t do any good now anyway. There’s only one thing that’ll do any good, and that’s the gun in Jules’s hand.
Cracks rage around him, and with Soldier out of the way, Jules cocks the gun good and hard, the way he used to, as if it were nothing new at all. Techno made the thing fancy, so that it could fire a wave of force, and Jules aims it at the pile, not directly, but not indirectly either, direct enough to do damage, but not direct enough to hurt these people. He remembers how to do this; it’s all things he’s done before, during the war. Or at least he hopes he remembers. No, forget that. Your name’s signed. Your life is gone. You remember good enough.
Jules pulls the trigger, and the gun crashes back, hitting him hard across the chest just as another crack goes off, blaring somewhere to his right, blasting food and plates and silverware into the air again; and the one shot wasn’t enough, didn’t dig out enough, and though the wind’s left him, left him weak, Jules cocks and fires again.
And there’s Pen; there’s a sliver of Pen poking through the pile, part of a back, and part of an eye looking through the gap the ray gun has dug, looking right back at Jules, and Jules raises his aim and fires again.
More of the rubble falls away from Pen, and though the boy is cut bad, he’s still moving, still pushing, wires under his skin humming and glowing as he screams and screams and pushes some more. Another crack goes off, and Pen screams, and he pushes up, arches his back, pushes away from the ground, brings what’s left of the pile cresting down off his back, away from him and down.
Pen rises like such a good boy, like Ultimate’s boy. And beneath Pen, protected from the fall by the boy’s hard body, lie Mashallah and David, both not moving, not moving at all.
Jules drops the gun, tries to go forward, but he too cannot move. The cracks, which’d been so insistent on enforcing their will on his diner, finally go silent, seem now to retreat back into the sky without a thought in the world for what they’ve done.