2014 Campbellian Anthology

by Various

  No-neck spun the strange gun around a clean arc, bringing it to bear on his fallen comrade and whatever was on him.

  “Grieves? Can you hear me?” was all he managed to say—before a gloved hand rocketed up, from the black mass on the alley floor, and caught the goon with the gun just under the chin. There was a gurgle but the gas mask held firm, although its wearer was lifted a clear foot into the air and held there by one hell of a strong arm.

  Rad backed himself along the rough brick of the wall, trying to keep his not insubstantial frame away from the new, violent arrival. The floored goon stayed floored, mask at a slight angle. Unconscious. The second recovered from his shock at being held up in the air with his legs swinging and lifted the fat-barrelled gun towards the face of his attacker. The trigger tightened and more of the blue smoke escaped the barrel, but it was knocked up and back by the free hand of the newcomer. There was a crack and the large gun arced towards Rad, bouncing off the wall. More sounds came from behind the soup can, a cry of surprise or pain, and then maybe something that was either an insult or a plea for help—Rad couldn’t quite tell which, the goon was being strangled, after all—and then the attacker let go.

  The goon dropped to his feet, then his knees buckled and he toppled sideways. He lay there, clutching his nonexistent neck with both hands, head bobbing and wobbling the respirator as he desperately sucked city air past the filter.

  Rad tasted something sour and touched his lip. In his quickstep he’d knocked or bitten his wound again, and the back of his hand came away dark and slick from his chin. And then he realised he’d been saved from something like death by a big man in a cape.

  The man stood in the alley, unconscious goon flat out on one side, choked but recovering goon rolling on the other. The man was wearing black, but Rad could see lines and shapes differentiating parts of the uniform. The black cape—Rad was fairly sure it was black, so absolute was the void it created—hung from the vast shoulders like the side of a circus tent, covering nearly his entire body, open only in a triangle at the neck which swept down to a scalloped edge that trailed in the puddles left by that evening’s heavy downpour.

  As the man moved his head to look first at his two defeated opponents, and then at Rad, the weak light reflected off an angled helmet, a sharp-fronted slatted visor covering the entire face and continuing back and up past the ears. The edges stood nearly a foot away from the top of the man’s head, and were fluted into sharp points, like the flight feathers of a bird’s wing. Two eyes glowed white in the dark, as though lit from within the weird helmet.

  The uniform was outrageous, far odder than the two masked villains that lay insensible at his feet. He relaxed a little, recognising his saviour, but still keeping his back to the wall. Rad knew he was safe—assumed he was safe, anyway—but he’d… heard things. Not all of them good.

  The Skyguard. A legend, a bedtime story for good little boys. A story that the Empire State would rather not be told. A hero, a helper, and according to the city, a vigilante, criminal, and terrorist. Someone who couldn’t be there, not tonight.

  “Ah…” Rad said at first and then closed his mouth a little too tightly. His lip stung and he winced. Rescued by the Skyguard. Well, OK. Rad was pretty sure he should have been somewhat surprised. And he was. He just didn’t know how to show it.

  The Skyguard stepped towards him.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “Ah…” Rad said again. His head hurt and his face was going to be brusied in the morning, and his ass was wet. But other than that…

  “No, no, I’m good.” Rad pocketed his bloody hanky. “Thanks, by the way.” He glanced down at the goons. No-neck seemed to have recovered and was sitting tensely, watching his attacker. If the Skyguard noticed he didn’t show it.

  “You know these guys?” Rad continued.

  “Do you?”

  Rad’s mouth opened and then shut again, and he thought before he answered. “No, but they seem to know me. Or at least, they thought they did.”

  The Skyguard’s visor shifted but he didn’t say anything.

  “I mean, they grabbed me from the street, but they didn’t seem to get my name. Seemed a surprise.”

  “That a fact?”

  “Ask them.”

  No-neck got to his feet, and began brushing down his trench coat. The Skyguard didn’t turn around.

  “They’ve been following you.” The Skyguard’s uniform creaked and there was another sound, like ceramics rubbing. “So have I. You need to be careful, Mr Bradley. They’ll come for you again.”

  “Well, I’m glad I’ve got you on my side, but you wanna fill me in on this one? Because I got nothing. I haven’t had a case in weeks and there ain’t no loose ends left hanging. Can’t think of who would have a grudge. I’m small fry.”

  The sound from behind the Skyguard’s visor might have been a chuckle, but it was late and he was sore and Rad wasn’t much in the mood for guessing games. He stepped away from the wall and pointed at where No-neck was standing.

  Had been standing. The goons were gone, both of them. The alley was empty, save for a private dick with a sore chin and a big guy in a cape.

  “Oh, come on!” Rad felt more comfortable now his attackers had gone, but there was no way they could have left the alley without being seen. The night was getting stranger.

  “They’re gone.”

  Rad raised his arms and slapped them against his sides in frustration. “No shit! Where did they go, how did you let them go? Didn’t you see them? I didn’t.”

  The Skyguard turned slowly and surveyed the alley.

  “They’ve left.”

  The observation wasn’t helpful.

  “Left? Left how? Gone where?”

  The Skyguard turned back to Rad. “They’ve left the city. They’ll be back. Be vigilant.”

  Rad had just enough energy to start another objection, but as he drew breath to speak the Skyguard shot directly upwards on a column of blue flame. In seconds he was out of sight, the glow of his rocket boots fading slowly into the low clouds.

  Rad adjusted his hat and sighed. He still needed that drink to wash the cold metal taste out of his mouth. He glanced around, just in case he’d missed the goons hiding in the shadows, crouching in their gas masks and trench coats behind a dumpster or stack of wet newspaper. But he was alone.

  He turned and walked out, running the Skyguard’s words around his head. Left the city? What did that mean? He shook his head, unable to process the statement.

  Because you couldn’t leave the city. The city was the Empire State, and it was… well, it was impossible to leave. No, not impossible. Inconceivable. The concept, alien in nature, rattled around Rad’s head. You couldn’t leave the city, because the city was the Empire State, and there wasn’t anywhere else.

  Rad gingerly fingered his lip and hobbled out into the street.

  FIVE

  RAD SAT the cup and saucer down first, and then pulled the chair out and dropped himself into it. His hat was still damp (although no more nor less so than the rest of him) so Rad shucked it off and dropped it onto the table between him and Kane Fortuna. Kane winked, then frowned as he looked at Rad’s swollen lip.

  “You’re late,” Kane said. He held his own dainty teacup between an elegant thumb and forefinger, midway between the table and his mouth. He waited for a response, got none, so took a sip.

  Rad pushed his cup around the tabletop for just a moment, then quickly checked his watch. “No, actually you’re early.” He moved the cup again, then rechecked his watch. “Yes, actually I am late. I think my watch is busted.” He gave the dial a flick and the second hand began to move again.

  “Like your lip.”

  Rad took a sip and immediately yanked the cup away from his mouth like it was a hot iron. Kane tried not to laugh.

  “Rough night? I thought you weren’t working at the moment?”

  Rad raised a single eyebrow at his friend, and sipped more carefully a second time. “I’m no
t. But the city is full of some interesting folk.”

  Kane laughed this time, causing Rad to smile too broadly, pulling the split in his lip. Kane’s laugh grew and he gestured around the dark room with his cup.

  “You say this city has some interesting folk as you sit in this place! Nice to see a few weeks out of work haven’t dulled those amazing detecting skills of yours.”

  Rad held his breath and with another sip allowed the clear strong liquor to bathe his injured mouth, enjoying the sensation as the initial sharp sting dulled to near numbness after just a few seconds. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to speak or eat in the morning, so for now keeping his jaw exercised so it didn’t seize up seemed like a good idea. And Kane liked to listen.

  “You look like you were hit by a brick wall,” Kane continued, sitting up in his chair a little to look Rad up and down. “You’re wet.”

  “Speaking of amazing powers of detection.”

  Kane waved his hand, all the while the smile never leaving his face. Rad felt the warmth of the alcohol spread over his body, and smiled in return. You just couldn’t help it in Kane’s presence. Young, good looking, wide eyes and slick black hair that fell over his forehead in a way that Rad imagined drove the girls wild. Rad liked to pretend he’d been like that once, when he was Kane’s age. It was too long ago to remember properly, but he knew it was a lie. A comfortable one.

  “So…?”

  Rad drained his teacup and set it rattling in its saucer, and quickly caught the attention of Jerry, the barkeep, to order a second.

  “So,” Rad began. He relaxed his shoulders. The drink was starting to have exactly the effect he’d been looking for

  “So I was walking down Fifth, no problem, heading back to the office. And there’s people around, y’know, the theatre crowd. And cops, of course. Plenty of cops.

  “And then I’m somewhere north of… well, somewhere, and I’ve got an arm around my neck and I’m scuffing my heels in an alley.”

  Kane’s smile vanished, replaced by an open oval of surprise. “You got mugged?”

  “I’m not sure.” Rad shook his head and looked around for his next drink, which hadn’t arrived. “I don’t think so, anyway. Two goons in masks—like gas masks, big things with respirators, and they had these fedoras pulled down low—these two goons and me in an alley in the dark, and I’m thinking this isn’t my night, but the first one asks me a question and then he doesn’t like my answer, so he lays it on.”

  Kane drained his cup. Jerry appeared and switched Rad’s empty cup for a full one. Kane flicked a finger discreetly to indicate another for himself, and waited until Jerry had moved away. He leaned in and lowered his voice.

  “What did they ask?”

  Rad’s eyebrow went up again. The drink was loosening him up. He picked up his new cup and had a sour mouthful.

  “They wanted to know about nineteen fifty.”

  “Nineteen fifty what?”

  Rad shrugged, jogging the rim of the cup against his teeth, absently making sure they really were all still there.

  “Exactly. Figured it might have been an address. Can’t think what else.”

  Kane mouthed the number silently to himself, then shook his head and shrugged. Rad began to fill him in on the rest, but before he reached the end Kane held a hand up.

  “Smoke?”

  Rad nodded. “Blue. Thin. Gas, maybe, not smoke. No clue. He never actually fired the gun.”

  “You were right about the city being full of interesting folk. G-men maybe?”

  “Suppose. You don’t get gear like that just anywhere. But why the fancy dress? There are easier ways to disguise yourself. Those masks sure as hell couldn’t have been comfortable.” Rad paused and wondered idly whether he needed a third drink. He didn’t have any plans for the following day, except to have a sore face and a sore head and to keep himself to himself. He got Jerry’s attention again.

  “There was something about them,” he said. His eyes weren’t quite focussed on Kane, who hadn’t touched his second drink yet. Rad wondered whether he actually liked the stuff, or whether he just came to Jerry’s speakeasy because it made Rad happy. No, he had to like it. You don’t break the Prohibition just to win friends and influence people. Or perhaps you did.

  “You mean apart from the masks and the hats and the smoke gun and the math questions?”

  Rad laughed. “No, I mean something. But I didn’t get much of a chance to grill them myself, not when the Skyguard arrived.”

  Kane froze. He was about to lift the teacup he hadn’t touched, and for a moment looked into it—like he was reading the tea leaves that should have been there, but weren’t. He downed the alcohol in one mouthful and exhaled hotly. The smile was gone and he pushed his hair off his forehead.

  “I think your friend in the gas mask hit you too hard.”

  Rad snorted and looked at his cup. “That so?”

  “You sit there an’ talk about an audience with the Skyguard like it was tea with Grandma.”

  Rad shrugged. Maybe Kane was right and the punch had been harder than he thought.

  Kane reached down beside his chair and pulled up a slim, brown leather satchel. It was unbuckled already, and from within he pulled a stack of loose papers. They were bent, and crinkled, and rough; pages torn from a notepad and covered with small writing in black ink.

  Rad recognised them. Kane had shown them to him many times over the last couple of months. His notes from the prison.

  And then it clicked. Kane’s week-long feature on the Skyguard for the Sentinel was due to end with the next morning’s edition, and already Kane’s star was rising on the back of the impressive piece of serial journalism. Rad felt tight in the chest and his head spun, just a little. He’d had too much to drink. That had to be it.

  Kane piled the notes out onto the table, but continued to flick through the bag until he pulled out a folded newspaper. The paper was crisp, virgin white, literally hot off the press. Kane saw Rad’s look and held the newspaper, headline up, towards him. He twisted his wrist as he held it and checked his watch. “Should be on sale in an hour.”

  Rad leaned forward, taking the newspaper with slow hands. The main headline was huge, stretching right across the upper half of the paper, dwarfing the masthead.

  EXECUTED! JUSTICE SERVED AS VIGILANTE PUT TO DEATH.

  Rad slumped back into his chair, paper in his lap. Below the headline was a mugshot, so badly reproduced he could barely make out the facial features. He didn’t need to. He knew who it was. The whole city knew who it was.

  The unmasked face of the Skyguard. Deceased.

  He glanced down the column, past Kane’s byline. The Skyguard had been executed at twenty-hundred hours, three or four hours at least before he’d rescued Rad from the masked goons. Not that that detail was particularly relevant. The Skyguard had been in prison for nineteen years anyway.

  “Huh.”

  Kane reached over and took the paper away. “I was there tonight, Rad. The Skyguard is dead.”

  Rad’s fingers groped for his teacup. He knocked it at first, the hard porcelain of cup and saucer clattering together unpleasantly. “Someone needs to tell him that. He flies well for a dead guy.”

  Kane grabbed his notes by the handful and began shoving them back into his bag. He kept his eyes off Rad and on the table.

  “So when are you going to get back on a case, Rad? The Empire State is a big city. There must be plenty that needs investigating.”

  Rad eyed his reporter friend over the rim of his cup. “What? You saying I ran into a brick wall to give me a lip just so I’d have a nice story to tell? Is this what they call investigative journalism? Because you don’t seem too interested for a reporter. Two guys in masks ask me for directions and the Skyguard—deceased—says he’s following me. You saying it’s all in my mind?” He tapped his temple.

  Kane sat still, trying to read Rad’s face. His lip was continuing to swell, and Rad kept a hand close to his jaw and cheek, as i
f trying to protect them from further blows. Sweat stood out on his big bald head and glistened in his goatee.

  “You’ve had enough, Rad. Come on, let me get you home. You’re gonna need to look after that pretty face of yours for a few days.”

  Kane stood and swung the strap of his satchel over a shoulder before moving around the table and gently taking Rad’s arm. Rad pushed him off and mumbled something, but Kane tried again, this time with a firmer grip. Rad slumped, defeated, and then pulled himself to his feet.

  “Must be someone else then.” Rad’s speech was slurring now, and Kane had to lean in to hear. He nodded and patted his friend’s broad back.

  “Come on, big fella. Home time.” He turned to the bar. “Thanks, Jerry.”

  The red-jacketed barman nodded in return.

  “It’s someone else, Kane. Someone else. Has to be,” said Rad. Kane gently guided him to the steps that led from the office basement commandeered by the bootleggers to street level. Rad managed the first few no problem, but the sudden physical exertion after a couple of hours sitting and drinking now took its toll. But the stairway was narrow, fortunately, and Kane let Rad knock against the side as Kane slipped his head under his friend’s arm and half-dragged him up the remaining steps. Just another night at Jerry’s speakeasy.

  Luckily it wasn’t far to Rad’s office. Kane hadn’t been able to believe Rad’s luck when the illegal bar opened on a quiet backstreet just down from his agency door. Discreetly hidden in a area of the city that wasn’t so much downtrodden as merely worn at the edges—dirty, just a little, but not enough to grab the attention of the police—the only real danger of detection was perhaps from a police surveillance blimp passing overhead, but that had been considered. The top of the stairs ended at a plain door which opened immediately into a sunken porch, separated from the street itself by railings and a concrete staircase set at ninety degrees. Jerry had installed an angled mirror in the overhang of the building above the concealed exit, so looking up, you could check both the street and the sky, safe in the knowledge that your departure would go undetected.