Zephyr IV

by Warren Hately

  Naming the devil, however, doesn’t make him appear. The etchings remain as cryptic as they first appeared and after long minutes spent poring over each fine detail, I am only marginally further along in my understanding of what the Prime intended. Things aren’t helped by the more than conveniently liberal use of Latin in some of the sketches. Still none the wiser, I dig the Enercom phone from my waistband and do what every person under pressure has done before me.

  I phone a friend.

  Do not ask me how I retain Dr Prendergast’s number, but thank to fuck the crazy mad scientist answers on the second ring, breathless tone like that old skit about the dude with more cell phones than friends.

  “Yo, Dr Frankenstein, it’s Zephyr. I have a problem.”

  “It sounds like we all have a problem, Zephyr. What can I do for you?”

  “Thanks for being chipper,” I tell him. “How’s your Latin?”

  *

  ABOUT TEN MINUTES later I understand the nuts and bolts of the Prime’s plan.

  It’s not much of a plan as far as plans go, but hey, at the end of the day these are still supervillains we’re talking about, so no one should be surprised. No. But the important thing is I know where he’s gonna be and where I might have the best chance of getting my hands on this Moonstone thing.

  In space.

  Yep, as annoying as that’s going to be, the Prime’s big plan is that once he has our country’s civil powers cowed and the public more or less adhering to his plan for he and his fellow Titans to form a new elite aristocratic ruling class in North America, he himself will retire to the international space station and prepare the next phase of his plan to a) track down and recruit even more copies of himself, and b) bring the rest of the world under his control. It didn’t really occur to me that these guys can survive extended bouts with zero oxygen and gravity, unlike myself, so therefore looking off-world is as good an option as anything else.

  I’m not sure how much time my host Titan is giving me to figure out the ruse and get some plan of action underway, but even though he’s given me a chance to throw a spanner into the works, I know he’s not going to roll over and play, I dunno how he would put it, like yonder mastiff ‘pon which my foamy loins break, or some such.

  “You don’t have some sort of means to get to the international space station, do you doc?” I ask into the phone.

  “Well you know, ever since the disaster with my master work, I have mostly focused on the potential of certain . . . mental technologies. . . .”

  “Right,” I say, unhelpful. “Thanks for your help, doc.”

  I disconnect, sensitive to the noises outside, and exit the claustrophobic old control room and out into the huge work area, no sign of the cyborg Titan anywhere.

  Within moments I am back in the van with Draven, who sits up looking sleepy with the night now upon us. The orangey glow of nearby security lights spill down on our alleyway as my chauffeur eyes me expectantly. I’m not sure what to tell him.

  “We need to steal a space shuttle,” I say.

  Draven actually grins like I’m joking, but that quickly wears off as he sees the awkward self-acknowledgement that lets him know sadly this is legit.

  “I don’t think I’m going to be able to help you there,” he says weakly.

  “Yeah, I know, boss. Just drop me off somewhere downtown.”

  *

  CONTRARY TO MY earlier stated plan, I flip the phone open once I find my way through the eerily deserted streets of Van Buren and into an ensconced doorway from where I can watch the metal fire escape to my old digs. I have come to this point more by muscle memory and faded habit than because it’s any part of a useful plan, and there’s no reward for me doing so, the warehouse as deserted as the last time I was here, and a quiet, possibly despicable part of me is glad for it. It’s not the night for trying to reconcile with Loren, nor to save her from whatever prosaic hell she has fallen into. Instead, I dial the number for my daughter’s cell and listen as the signal disintegrates into a weird cacophony of blips and echoing bleeps.

  I can only pray to gods I don’t believe in that Tessa is safe. I told the Wallachians to get our fugitive heroes to safety and not return until they were recovered, knowing there’s something untoward about the eldritch technology at their means, but inadvertently perhaps my orders could be interpreted as an open-ended permission to play hooky from the costume-and-capes game.

  The streets are inordinately quiet, even here in the cesspool where I’d expect a variety of new fauna to thrive in the petri dish of our new rulers’ command. Power abhors a vacuum, as they say, and there’s not a cop or an Army patrol as far as the eye can see, yet the streets, still glistening from a twilight shower, look as peaceful as they’ve ever been. It’s only the sound of distant explosions like thunder beyond the silhouette of the inner city that bemuses my conviction that somehow everyone has had the good sense to stay home and snuggle with someone important tonight, if they’re lucky enough to have one.

  The non-signal means calling for back-up’s out.

  Pondering this, I eye the bleakness of space invisible through the benighted pollution of the city, wondering at the man-made colossus orbiting beyond and what illusion of mastery it gives the Prime, in other words, to what degree the symbolism of his achievement drives him in the doing of it. My fist clenches – in anger at him, imagined up there upon his throne, and also frustration at how alone I am – and a single taxi cruises past and the driver crouches to scan me and sees the look on my face and frets and hits the gas and drives off and leaves me alone with my thoughts.

  Zephyr 14.9 “The Ghosts Of Hindsight”

  THE HARD FLOOR of my old loft is no refuge, but a man, even one with the power of six bazillion light bulbs or whatever it is, he’s got to sleep some time. Besides, the floor of the roach-infested warehouse loft is more appealing than the bed I remember from happier times, back before someone lit a fire in the middle of where I used to fuck. I know I could make a bad pun about that, especially with my habit of sometimes igniting bed sheets while asleep, but it’s one of the bleakest moments in my life to wake in the shell of my fleetingly brief former life, a veritable cavalcade of the ghosts of hindsight tramping across the bare, trash-littered boards to remind me of how low I have sunk. Loren is gone along with a moment’s chance for happiness I suspect I squandered bitching and cussing and looking to a future that just hasn’t unfolded anyway close to how I imagined, though that’s the universal condition to be sure.

  Daylight brings back the crowds. As I sip a mildewed glass of water, I eye the street from the broken doorway, a couple of the pawn shops open for business, tentative movement from the corner boys and the girls who know it’s too early to sell their pussies, just killing time, the beat of the day out of rhythm thanks to the events of the night.

  And the night still lays on me heavily. Sense memories from the day before came like succubae in my sleep so that again and again I imagined strangling one of the Titans to death, much as I actually had. Anyone would think I had a conscience. I find the moment the door’s unlocked to these sorts of introspections, it’s all bets off, the veritable Pandora’s Box of memories conjuring every potentially crippling personal crisis possible as I angst again about who is my real father, why I even give a shit, and likewise my vengeance for my mothers’ killer or killers when so much of my childhood now feels like a memory watched on TV during a sleepover a long, long time ago.

  Now’s not the time for such thoughts though – if ever there is such a time – because experience tells me self-doubt makes you weak, and in my game that weakness will see others pounce. I try to shrug it off, not entirely without nagging doubts.

  It’s a dangerous move, but that great engine of the unconscious mind has been at work through the preamble of the night and a glimmer of hope rises like a Excalibur from the water or, shit, maybe that’s a tad too dramatic and I should just say I’ve had an idea, not a fantastic one, and one that will probably soon turn t
o shit on me like almost everything else I touch, Antichrist as I apparently am, but when life’s a crap shoot, what else are you gonna do but shoot crap? Beats talking it.

  So with that little life lesson in mind, I shrug back into my new jacket and leap from the top of the fire escape before any of the nearby dope fiends have even registered my presence, sirens and klaxons reverberating across the city I now do my damnedest to leave behind as fast as possible, hoping against hope that I don’t pick up a red-and-gold tail as I cross the water, angle past the ruins of old New York and then hit about Mach 3 going north, water parting beneath me like Moses was a superhero just like half the other long-bearded dudes in the Old Testament.

  It’s only a few minutes before Twilight’s island hoves into view.

  *

  IT MIGHT BE a little early in the morning for Twilight, but hell, it’s only the apocalypse, so I figure I’ve got a good excuse for gatecrashing, which I’m only too happy to explain to one of the big lug’s minders as I land like a flipped pancake on the mansion’s helipad, four Mafioso types scrambling from a nearby greenhouse where they were all enjoying a macchiato in between stripping down and oiling their guns.

  I raise a hand for peace as the group spread out, the oldest of the four sneering as he takes in the anarchist zee on my shirt and the domino mask, the Uzi wilting in his hand like an old Valentine’s.

  “Zephyr, right?” he asks.

  “That’s right. I’m here to see the man.”

  “The boss is asleep.”

  “Wake him up.”

  They exchange quick glances, moves economic, theatrical, and more than a little afraid – of Twilight, not me. I’m under no illusions. This is Twilight’s domain, his spiritual sanctuary. The guards eye me and step down reluctantly from battle stations, one lights a smoke, the old due who addressed me looks away, totally enthralled by his own Goodfellas impression, scratching the back of his head as he looks uncertainly towards the main house, shoots his colleagues a look and a shrug and motions lazily with the automatic weapon for me to walk with them back to the greenhouse.

  “No,” I say and surprise them by remaining on the spot as they start moving like a herd of goats. “I’m here to see Twilight. You might not’ve heard, but things have sort of gone to shit back on the mainland.”

  “You’re not on the mainland now, you’re on the boss’s territory. He doesn’t like to be disturbed.”

  “I’m really sorry guys. This is bullshit.”

  I know the way myself since I’ve been here more than a few times. I start for the main house, pleased to see the destruction wreaked by Twilight and me during one of our last bouts of fisticuffs now mostly repaired. He probably thinks of it as a convenient impetus for landscaping the yard like he always wanted. Actually that’s a lie. Twilight’s not a guy who spends a lot of time thinking about landscaping. Me, I remember it as the night I found out one of my best friends had been using hardbodies as human sock puppets to make out with me on the sly. Not the most comfortable of feelings and sure to be something they cut from the film adaptation of my life.

  The sentries follow, clucking like a flock of geese (OK, fuck, gaggle), but otherwise generally keeping their cool as I reach one of the back doors, taking in the artfully overturned garden setting, cigarette ends floating in nicotine-colored water filling the outdoor ashtray, a pane busted in the French doors I open, moving through into the warm dark fug of the hashish-smelling hallway, my escort losing their collective nerve as the gloom swallows me, my nose as well as the sound of a vintage tape deck having hiccups leading me to the billiards room I know from days of yore.

  The padded door is ajar, but I open it further to step into the room, stuttering music playing over a scene of utter debauchery, the Nineteenth Century languor of Twilight’s parlor not for the faint of heart. Two gorgeous naked nymphs make out slowly atop the green felt table clad in little more than stockings and a faint sheen of sweat, while a beautiful jet black maiden sleeps naked on a padded armoire and the man himself slumps in a matching armrest of Iron Throne proportions nursing the nozzle of a huge water pipe, a black eye and a three-day growth of beard as he lifts his gummy mug at my entrance and I notice the only thing clothing him is the silk kimono on the Japanese houri kneeling between his legs. The air is smoky with drugs and the smell of sex as billiard balls gently chink together in their nets in time to the subtle swaying of the ardent pair above, lacquered fingertips brushing my leathers as I move past just out of reach to approach Twilight like a supplicant at the court of Gomorrah.

  “Hey, it’s a superhero,” Twilight drawls, a drugged paralysis slowing his grin and thickening his speech.

  The Japanese waif shifts slightly on her knees, but doesn’t relent, moving posture giving me a glimpse of Twilight’s waxed shaft disappearing into the spider web silk of the prostitute’s black hair before my gaze flicks back to find Twilight leering.

  “Take your clothes off, Zephyr. Grab a seat.”

  “I’m here on business, not pleasure,” I say, words catching in my throat, this level of discomfort not well known to me. “Put away your rod and scepter, my liege, and step down from thine fucking high horse to speak with me.”

  “Mortals,” Twilight glowers, only half-angry it seems as he removes the girl with an audible slurp, slapping her on the tail as she giggles and half-jogs, half-stumbles across to the twosome on the table.

  Twilight peels the gown from her as she goes and slips into it in one easy movement as he stands, belting the waist despite the considerable protuberance from below. For a moment I fear for his balance, but he steadies himself against the walnut grain of the billiards table, lost in the tangle of thighs and breasts he contemplates like a Buddhist pondering the higher mysteries of the cosmos.

  “What do you want?”

  “I need your help,” I tell him. “Not just me. The city. Hell, the country.”

  “Yeah?” Twilight asks, the voice of pure disinterest. “What’s shakin’?”

  “You haven’t been watching the news? No one called you for help? The Wallachians?”

  “Who?” Twilight shakes his fuddled head and I grab him by the shoulder, forcibly diverting him away from the women on the table.

  “Listen, Twilight –”

  “No. Fuck off.”

  We look at each other. Clarity starts to resolve within his gaze as I look slowly to his half-curled fist and the shadow of what’s come before steps between us. Twilight sighs, dropping the hand, head shaking.

  “What is it?”

  There’s a flatscreen TV on the wall and a remote nearby. I switch it on thinking I’m going to have to work the channels to show him better than I could ever tell it, but rolling news coverage being what it is, the screen lights up with footage of a Titan hovering overhead, clouds and rooftops jumping in and out of frame as an off-screen male newsreader rapidly intones, “The scene you are viewing is outside our Lincoln office. The superman, like others of his kind, identified as Titan, has demanded we go off the air until further notice or face consequences.”

  Twilight watches, blinking with vague interest as the image switches to the sweaty-looking newscaster. There’s no autocue. This is pure old fashioned news improv.

  “Viewers, until such time as we are able to safely deliver our reliable and regular coverage, station managers have instructed me we are to comply with the invaders’ request. This is me, Brian Ross, signing off for FOX News.”

  And the screen goes black. A moment later, the Family Ties titles start to play. Twilight takes the remote and switches it off as Scott Baio’s annoying grin swims into view.

  “So what, the country’s overtaken with. . . ?”

  “Hundreds of these guys. Each one could go toe-to-toe with you and me.”

  “Clones?”

  “No. Copies. Parallels.”

  “I’m wasted, Zeph. Come back later, OK?”

  Twilight moves away, the sheer lack of anxiety in his superhuman shoulders almost spurring me
to start swinging. I watch in mild disbelief and follow as he picks up a tray of croissants and opens the door to the library room and leaves the moaning she-devils behind.

  “Twilight, I need your help.”

  “You’re gonna do fine.”

  “Are you fucking listening to yourself?” I ask. “This is the part where, you know, Twilight steps in and somehow you and me, for all our crazy history, you know, we do it together. Well, not it, but . . . we somehow cobble together a plan, and –”

  “You got a plan?”

  “The makings of one.”

  “See?” Twilight says. “There you go. Go get ‘em, tiger. Tell me how it goes.”

  “What?”

  “Send a friggin’ postcard.”

  “Twilight, you don’t mean –”

  “I don’t want anything to do with it.”

  He sniffs, takes a bite from one of the pastries, and casually flings the rest of the plate across the spotless room.

  “I’m done with this fucking world. It’s all yours.”

  “But it was just a few weeks back we were –”

  “Things change,” he says, turning to me so I can absorb his sincerity. “What’d I always so to you, Zeph?”

  I pause.

  “You’re the antihero.”

  Twilight grins, makes a gun with his fingers and winks.

  “You got it in one. Now get outta here. I need to sleep.”

  I don’t go. Not straight away. Tragically, my man-crush aside, I realize there’s absolutely nothing further to be said or had standing here and pleading with the guy. When someone decides they want to leave, that’s what they’re going to do. You can try to intuit the changes you think they might want or need to try and find a way back to normal, but ultimately you can lead a horse to water, but shoving their head repeatedly into a bucket is just going to get you bitten or stomped on or worse.