The Good Fight

by Scott Bachmann

  Fiona rose from the couch. “Where are you going?” Becky asked.

  “To fight the good fight.”

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  Firedrake: A Frosty Reception

  by T. Mike McCurley

  About the author: T. Mike McCurley started writing superhero fiction in 2004, and his short stories soon formed the backbone of what became known as the world of The Emergence, describing events and players in a world of metahumanity that began in 1963 and has continued to grow since. From there came the stories of the metahuman cop known as Firedrake, whose adventures have now filled three books, with a fourth in the works.

  Follow him on Twitter: @TMikeMcCurley

  Facebook: Author T. Mike McCurley

  www.tmikemccurley.com

  www.penandcapesociety.com/t-mike-mccurley/

  * * *

  Flagstaff, Arizona

  August 9

  0755 hours

  “Oddest damn thing I ever saw,” the detective said into the phone. “I’ve seen dead folks in all kinds of situations, but I ain’t never seen one froze to death in the middle of an Arizona summer.

  It was hot enough in his office to remind him exactly what that summer meant. The tiny air conditioner unit in the window rattled and wheezed as it pushed sightly cooler air that barely kept the room livable. Outside, he knew, he could add a good twenty degrees to the temperature.

  “You stated the victim was a metahuman?” asked the voice on the other end of the line.

  “Yes, ma’am, he was. Not, y’know, big time stuff like y’all are probably used to, but Shake was fast. Faster than anyone from around here. They called him that ’cause he could shake a pursuit in no time flat.”

  “I see.”

  “We all knew him. He was a dope runner for the Broken Angels. That’s an up and coming gang we’re dealing with. Mostly meth and a little weed, but lately they’ve been bringing in Hype and Kamikaze from California. He had half a dozen bindles of Kamikaze in his pocket when he died.”

  “And he froze to death?”

  “Yeah. Doc says he was fighting it but didn’t make it. He’s got frostbite burns all over, too. Even if Shake hadn’t been the vic, we’d have been calling you, ’cause I have no doubt whoever did this isn’t . . .”

  She broke in as he paused, knowing from past experience that he was searching for a word other than ’normal’, and not wishing to listen to him fumble through his vocabulary.

  “This information will be passed on to Director Hart, detective. Someone will make contact with you shortly.”

  “Okay, well, I wanted to—”

  She once again cut him off. “Not meaning to sound rude, sir, but I am not an investigator. It will save you time and the effort of repeating yourself if you wait for the call.”

  “Oh. Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”

  “Thank you, sir. Again, contact will be made soon.”

  The line disconnected with a dull click, and Detective Max Lahey was left staring at a silent handset. With a shrug, he dropped it back onto the cradle. While he could appreciate the businesslike manner in which the lady at Metahuman Response had conducted the call, he himself was in favor of a more congenial discussion.

  * * *

  Washington, D.C.

  August 9

  1421 hours

  Drake looked across the desk through half-closed eyes. Colleen Hart, the Director of Metahuman Response, had been railing at him for almost half an hour about his failings, and he was tired of hearing her words. Factoring in his jet lag, he was actually amazed he had managed to stay awake this long. Her voice had become a drone in the background, a sound that existed only to lull him further and further into a relaxed state. He felt a tugging sensation on his eyelids as they fluttered and the room seemed to be illuminated by a strobe light. Slowly it slipped into gray and then to black.

  “Drake!” Hart roared. He jerked awake, eyes blinking a rapid beat. Behind him, his wings rustled and his tail thumped against the floor as he sat up higher in the chair.

  “What?” he asked, matching her volume with his own deep tone.

  “Stay awake while I’m talking to you!”

  “You ain’t talking, you’re bitching. You coulda done that in an email, and I wouldn’t have had to come in.”

  “And you wouldn’t have read it.”

  “Well, no, but I’d still be home and asleep. So there’s that.”

  Hart took in a long slow breath, a calming gesture she used often while dealing with the big reptilian booster. When that was ineffective, she moved to Plan B and sparked a fresh cigarette. Twin columns of thin grey smoke issued from her nose and she shook her head. For his part, Drake tried to hide his amusement as he realized he was—for the moment, at least—winning in their continual battle of wills. He failed miserably, as his lip peeled back across his fangs and a sudden chuckle erupted from within his chest, accompanied by a gout of sulfur-scented breath.

  It was not everyone who could hold their own in a meeting with the seven-foot dragon that was Agent Francis Drake. Of those that could, Colleen Hart, the Director of the Department of Metahuman Affairs, was one of even fewer who could do so without being intimidated. Her position required her to be in contact with some of the most destructive geneboosters on the planet, and she rarely ever so much as mussed the silk of her tailored suits.

  “Agent Drake,” she said, her tone low and words delivered in a slow, methodical manner, as if speaking to an angry child. “While you captured your assigned target, the collateral damage to the surrounding infrastructure is going to be difficult to explain to our Senate oversight committee.”

  “The chick throws energy bolts and blows shit up! Did you think she was gonna come without making a mess?”

  Hart tapped ash from her cigarette and drew in a another lungful of smoke. As opposed to the rest of her fastidiously maintained office, the ashtray was full almost to the point of overflow with retired, crushed butts, their white surfaces marred only slightly with a trace of her pale lip gloss.

  “I will not debate the issue further. Instead, much as it amazes me, I have received a personal request for your assistance.”

  Drake leaned forward in his chair, his interest suddenly piqued. Gone was the banter of a moment ago. His eyes narrowed as he tried to read the documents in the open folder on the desktop. From his angle, though he could read nothing. He could make out aphoto of a body and what appeared to be the interior of a house, but that was all.

  “Apparently you know a Max Lahey, who is a police officer in Arizona?”

  Drake rolled his eyes and laughed. “Yeah, I know him. Worked with him years back. Long before I worked for you. Back when it was me and Monster on our own.”

  The mention of Drake’s younger brother pushed Hart into motion. She knew if she did not distract him further at this point, he would find a reason to complain about the conditions in which his mentally challenged sibling was kept. She slid the dossier across the desk, careful to jerk back her hand before she actually touched him.

  “He called with a case, and the followup call established that he knew you. Consequently, it is now your assignment. The short story is that they found a body, frozen to death, in a tenement without so much as air conditioning. Local gang member, as the detective explained, but also a metahuman . . .as was whoever froze him. The long story, you can read in that file while you’re on the plane to Flagstaff.”

  “So will the plane at least land this time?” he asked. Hart’s usual method of transport was to have Drake shipped via military aircraft and allowing him to jump out, using his wings to glide down. It allowed for a certain level of stealth and occasionally a dramatic entrance, but in the instance of meeting with law enforcement it would be far more convenient to simply meet them at the airport.

  She paused, and Drake silently cursed as he realized she was considering his recent behavior and taking that into account. One day, he knew, he would really need to learn to keep his mouth sh
ut.

  * * *

  Flagstaff, Arizona

  August 10

  1033 hours

  Max Lahey was waiting when the plane touched down, and although he did flinch once when Drake poked his scaly head out of the door, he regained his composure without delay and greeted the booster with a hearty handshake.

  “How’ve you been?” Drake asked as he folded himself into the Chevrolet SUV that Max was driving. His wings were cramped, and he knew without doubt that he would have pain from sitting with his tail cinched up behind his back. The safety belt not stretching far enough around his massive torso was a foregone conclusion.

  “Other than this case? Pretty good. Mia got her first adult tooth last month, Sean is nine going on forty, and Alyssa for some strange reason has stayed married to me.”

  “You’d think she woulda learned better by now,” Drake quipped as Max drove them out of the airport property and onto the city streets. He drove with the effortless grace and speed of a seasoned street officer, using one lane after another to cut through traffic with little effort.

  “No kidding. Eh, one day she’ll figure it out.”

  Max turned into an alley and slalomed around the Dumpsters behind local businesses, drifting through one alley and into another, and coming out next to a ramshackle building. The paint, once white, was now a dull, dirty gray and peeling. The porch roof had been supported by four carved posts, though one of them had succumbed to age and weather. It had broken about a third of the way down, leaving part of the roof sagging. Most of the flyspecked windows had at least one crack in them, and some had been shattered. Max parked and killed the engine, jerking a thumb toward the structure.

  “This is where we found him,” he explained. “Thought you might wanna look here first.”

  Drake nodded sagely and exited the vehicle, stretching his wings out wide and thrashing his tail about to break loose the kinks.

  Yellow tape crisscrossed the entryway to the building, and two large padlocks secured the door. Max produced keys and opened them both, locking them together and placing them on the ground.

  “Got locked inside a building once ’cause I left the lock hanging,” he explained. “My partner thought it was funny as hell. The Chief? Not so much.”

  He pulled on the handle and the door opened with a shriek of rusted hinges. A blast of hot air rushed out to meet them, the ambient air heated even further having been sealed for days as a crime scene. Inside, it was easily a hundred and twenty degrees. Sweat began to run from from Max’s face, and he felt it inside his suit as well. Drake seemed unaffected, strolling casually through the room and examining everything he could see. Light filtered in through a pair of skylights and a few windows, illuminating some sections in stark clarity, while leaving deep shadows elsewhere.

  “The techs cleaned up most of it,” Max said as he and Drake stepped into the main room, what might have once been a living room. He fished out a small flashlight from one of his pockets and shined it into a dim corner. There was still an outline on the floor where the body had been sprawled. “There was evidence of a gunfight: shell casings, spent slugs, some buckshot pellets. They found a couple of bloodstains, but none were related to our stiff.”

  “So these Broken Angels . . .you know who they got a beef with?” Drake asked, using a light of his own to scan the areas the sun didn’t cover.

  “The Six-Three Cutters had a hold on the drug trade here until the Angels started taking it over. Never heard of them running with a meta before, but I guess there’s a first time for everything.”

  “We’re all over these days,” Drake said with a smile that had been known to terrify grown men. “You think these Cutters could be the ones?”

  “Well, no one has turned up any evidence to say conclu—”

  “You, Max. Just you. Do you think they did it? Don’t think about the lawyers and the boxes of evidence and shit. You’re the guy on the street. Tell me what you believe.”

  Max stood in silence for a moment before nodding his head. “Yeah. I think probably so. It’s the only thing that makes sense. None of the other gangs get this far up north. The Cutters have always held them back. I mean, until the Angels showed up.”

  Drake made a chuckling sound. “That’s good enough for me. I trust your judgment.”

  “Yeah, but you can’t get a warrant based on my judgment.”

  “Who says I need a warrant?” Drake asked. “I’m just gonna go talk to them.”

  “Don’t screw up my case, man. I’ve got men in this working their asses off, and I damned sure don’t want it to be in vain.”

  “Not an issue,” Drake assured him, hands raised in a gesture of surrender. “I’m just working the meta angle here. Y’all got a booster freezing people alive, and I sure as hell wanna find out who it is.”

  Max was satisfied with the declaration, and he continued to show Drake around the scene despite the fact that the heat was taking a toll on his body. It wasn’t until they were back in the SUV, with the air conditioning turned to its highest setting and with a bottle of cool water from a chest in the back of the vehicle, that he realized how much it taken out of him.

  “Jesus, Drake,” he said, sipping slowly on the water. “I gotta start watching what I’m doing.”

  “Sorry about that,” Drake said. “I’m totally at home in the heat and I didn’t think about you having problems.”

  “I usually don’t, but that place, man . . .”

  “Take your time,” Drake urged, slipping a cell phone from his pocket. He tapped information on the tiny keys with the tip of a talon. He typed in a quick description of what he had seen inside the warehouse, knowing that if he simply relied on memory he would likely forget something very important. He had the official report, with all its accompanying photos, but everything was different when viewed in person. Documenting it from his own point of view kept his memory clear.

  After some time had passed, Max proclaimed himself ready to proceed and they drove away from the beaten house. He drove Drake through the outskirts of the city, through to the warehouse district where the Six-Three Cutters made their home. Graffiti splashed the walls of every building in sight, some of it decent street art but primarily signs and phrases coded for other gangs. It was nothing new to the detective nor to his passenger.

  What caught Drake’s attention was the lack of people. With any operations he had ever conducted in a gang-ruled area, there were street soldiers in place both as security for the working gangers and as visible muscle to deter an incursion by the gang’s opponents. Here there was nothing.

  “They all go to church or something?” he asked. Max chuckled.

  “Prime dope-selling hours deeper in town,” he explained. “They’re making bank and dodging our gang units. There are signs up, though.”

  He pointed to the graffiti as they passed a bar that was closed until later in the evening.

  “Crown pattern. It’s on this side of the building so we keep going this direction. It indicates where the King can be found at the moment.”

  Drake nodded as if he understood what the man was saying. Trusting the detective with the street savvy years of patrol had given him, Drake simply sat back to enjoy the ride. His relaxation was short-lived, however, as they drifted up near a rusted warehouse with an open door.

  “We’re here,” Max said. He checked around them, seeing no other vehicles in the area.

  “Sweet. Let’s go see who’s home,” Drake said, opening his door before the car was even in park. He stepped out, his size seventeen feet landing on the gravel with a crunch. Max dug under his seat, fishing out out a spare magazine for his pistol and dropping it in his pocket. Cops did not generally come to this section without backup, and usually that meant the entire gang unit. Operating with Drake, however, carried its own set of risks and rewards. One got close to the truth in a big hurry, but one could also find that the odds were definitely stacked in the enemy’s favor.

  “What do you think?”
Drake asked as they neared the doorway. “Looks like an invite to me.”

  “Seems so,” Max agreed. He followed Drake as the enormous booster simply walked through the gap. Within seconds, they were staring at one of the Six-Three Cutters, across the barrel of a large-frame revolver.

  “This is Cutter turf!” the youth said in a voice just a little too aggressive and cocksure.

  Drake laughed aloud. “You honestly think I’m gonna piss myself over that little popgun?” He reached beneath his left arm, gripped the butt of the weapon that hung in the holster there, and dragged it out: a massive, slab-sided handgun with a bore that looked large enough to crawl into.

  “This is full of high explosive rounds,” he said in a casual tone, as if he was describing the weather, or a rock. “I use this to shoot boosters. Now you can bounce a slug from that .38 off my scaly ass, but you better know I’m gonna shoot back. With this. At your funeral, there won’t be enough of you left to fill a kid-sized coffin, and your mom’s gonna have to wonder why they couldn’t go open casket. So you call it, slick. Do we talk or do we call a janitor in here to squeegee you off the walls?”

  The revolver drooped toward the floor and then dropped from the fingers of the Cutter to clatter as it landed at his feet. He took a step back, raising his hands up in submission.

  “So what you want?” he asked. Even with the weapon on the floor, he maintained a semblance of invulnerability and superiority, seeming to act as though he was merely tolerating the presence of the two badges in his sanctum.

  “We wanna talk to the King,” Max said. “Business.”

  The thug looked at the cop for some time, finally nodding his head and motioning for them to follow behind. He kept looking over his shoulder at Drake, unable to suppress the shudders that ran down his spine. Happy to continue the impression, Drake favored him with a smile that had been known to make lifelong convicts quiver. Somewhere in the brains of man is a tiny spark that remembers the mythical dragon, and Francis Drake had grown accustomed to fanning that spark into a terrified flame.