Tales From Beyond Tomorrow: Volume One

by Catton John Paul

  Crackle, sizzle. "I can hear you, Lootenant, but only just."

  "Which floor are you on?"

  "Fifty-second. We can see smoke in the stairwell, it's kind of drifting from somewhere up top. We haven't met any more tourists walking down."

  "Keep going and call in if you see more smoke…or anything else."

  "Anything else? Like what?"

  "Just keep your eyes and ears open."

  He switched buttons. "O'Hallorhan, do you copy?"

  No answer, just the crackling of static.

  Cambridge closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, It had been a long time since he'd been to chapel, but maybe he could make up for lost time. Lord, he thought to himself – if there is someone up there, above the Over-Heroes, please don't let this get any worse. Don't let anyone else die tonight.

  Protect my wife and kids out there.

  From outside the window, there came a series of distant explosions, like fireworks.

  He took a deep breath, and calmed himself. "Everything's gonna be fine," he said. "We're gonna reach those people on the observation decks, and bring 'em down safe."

  He turned to stare at the two other cops, and they returned his gaze.

  Cambridge led them back to the corridor, holding his gun out with both hands in front of him. Levitt shone the flashlight from behind and as they stared at the landing in the unsteady circle of light, Cambridge saw – with a surge of panic – that his prayers had not been answered.

  "The bodies have gone," he said hoarsely.

  "Whaddaya mean, the bodies have gone?"

  "See for yourself, Carlini, goddamit!"

  The bare concrete space by the railings and stairwell lay empty – apart from something glittering, a thin film like the track left by a snail.

  "Aw, Jesus."

  "Whadda we do now?"

  Cambridge stared at the walls grimly, his jaw set. "Just what I said. We go up."

  FIVE

  They walked quickly to the steps and began to climb. Cambridge led the way, feeling the muscles in his legs complaining, fighting for attention with the beating of his heart. He hadn't felt so tense since the gun battle with the giant lizard that crawled out of the Hudson two years ago. Then, he'd just been back-up, and was ordered to clear the area by the Future Five when they took charge. Who was going to back him up now? What the hell was Jankowitz doing?

  The staircases were profoundly dark. Flashlight beams crossed in the confined space, illuminating the steps so they could see where to put their feet. A thought struck Cambridge out of nowhere, an image that chilled him to the bone; this didn't feel like the Empire State. It felt more like wandering blindly through a mausoleum, a huge, vertical mausoleum, a modern tomb of steel and concrete built for the black vastness of death.

  At the sixty-third floor they stopped. Cambridge pulled a crushed, well-worn pack of Chesterfields from his pocket, fished out three smokes and handed them around.

  "Reckon we've deserved them," he growled.

  Levitt lit up and took a long drag. The lighter illuminated his face and threw all the wrinkles and lines into sharp relief. For a moment, Cambridge felt in control, almost felt like his old self in the neighborhoods he knew.

  But only for a moment.

  "Hey, do you hear something?" Carlini said.

  "What?"

  "Someone's behind us," he said, leaning over the balcony. "Someone's following us up."

  "Knock it off, Carlini," yelled Levitt. "You're freaking me out."

  "No, wait, he's right." Cambridge joined Carlini at the railing and they shone their flashlights downstairs.

  The face of Reni Gonzalez stared up at them.

  "Get back," Cambridge shouted.

  "It's Gonzalez," cried Levitt, "He's not dead!"

  "That's not Gonzalez."

  Cambridge held his Colt.38 with both hands and fired down into the staircase. The shot hit Gonzalez in the chest and he staggered, nearly falling, his face showing no pain or emotion. Cambridge saw there were others behind him. The same young man from the crashed elevator. A woman, her face streaked with dried blood and moist, luminous slime. Others, with faces and eyes filled with emptiness.

  "Run!" yelled Cambridge.

  The three of them climbed the next staircase, shoes pounding on the stairs. Carlini turned to fire behind him but Cambridge screamed at him to save his bullets, and they ran on, climbing up, up.

  "They got Gonzalez, godammit," Levitt muttered.

  "That ain't Gonzalez," said Cambridge.

  "Well, that's his body," said Carlini. "If his body's walking around, what's making his arms and legs move?"

  "Jesus Christ, how do I know?"

  Cambridge felt unspeakably tired. The shooting and the running and the climbing – to what end? Was there any way out of this mess? He wished he were smarter, he wished the result of the Over-Hero testing back at Police Academy hadn't been borderline…

  But that was nuts.

  Still thinking like a kid with his comics, he told himself. Still looking for the comic deus ex machina to fix the problem before the reader's letters and the editor's soapbox on the final page.

  "How many floors left?" gasped Levitt.

  "Twenty or thirty."

  "Christ. And then what?"

  "Just climb."

  The walkie-talkie crackled.

  "Rizzo, this is Cambridge, do you copy?"

  "Lootenant, where are you? We heard gunshots."

  "We're doing the best we can. What's your status?"

  "We're on the 70th floor but there's smoke in the south stairwell."

  "Do not go anywhere near it! Get back down!"

  As he cut the walkie-talkie off a cry from Levitt made him stop. "Luke, watch out!"

  Looking up, Cambridge saw something move in the flashlight beam.

  Smoke.

  Cambridge led them back down to the sixty-eighth landing and down a corridor. 'Watch every turn," he panted. "Listen for footsteps. Maybe one of the fire-escape doors is jammed open; there could be God knows what coming up or going down."

  "What then?" said Carlini.

  Cambridge thought about it. He didn't have a clue.

  They made it through to the south stairwell. The door to it had a push-bar across the middle. Cambridge glanced at the other two cops who stood back, leveling their weapons.

  "Cover me," he whispered.

  He kicked the push-bar and the door swung outward. Instead of a staircase, instead of someone on the landing, the doorway was filled with thick, curling wreaths of smoke. As they stood, frozen in shock, the vapors writhed outwards, oily tendrils gleaming in the beams of the flashlights.

  "Run!" yelled Cambridge.

  They took off down the corridor, feet pounding on the carpet, flashlight beams shaking wildly and casting shadows in every direction. As he ran, Cambridge realized the smoke had a liquid, metallic sheen to it, like quicksilver. Like the ooze that covered the dead bodies below.

  "Jesus Christ, the fire crews were in there," Levitt said, his voice ragged and breathless.

  "West staircase," Cambridge grunted.

  "What about going through the building to south? Meet up with Rizzo's squad?"

  "Check out west first."

  "Wait," Carlini was motioning them to stop. "Do you hear that?"

  They stopped running, then heard it. Above them, something gave way with a rending, metallic screech. The ceiling of the corridor in front of them parted, and a violent outpouring of plaster, dust, wood, and shining green metal plunged down to the floor.

  "Holy crap!" Carlini screamed.

  It was Gauntlet.

  The armored figure, lying prone and covered with dents and gouges in the metal, lifted its head and left arm towards them. An amplified voice, mixed with the clicks and buzzing of a malfunctioning speaker, filled the corridor.

  "STAY…BACK."

  "What happened?" Cambridge yelled.

  "WE ENGAGED THE ENEMY. TOOK HEAVY…DAMAGE."

&nbs
p; "Enemy?' yelled Carlini. "Where is it?"

  "TOP FLOOR. OBSERVATION…DECK. LEBEAU IS UP THERE. LEWIS LEBEAU."

  "The richest man in Manhattan?" Levitt cried. "Is he part of this crap?"

  "LEBEAU HAS THE VICE-PRESIDENT IN HIS POWER. SOME KIND OF…MENTAL CONTROL."

  The metal hands went slowly up to the head. With a hissing of compressed air, the front mask lifted away from the rest of the helmet. Cambridge stepped closer. A handsome, bruised, male face looked up at him.

  "Oh wow, man," said Carlini. "I know you."

  "Steve Brooks," muttered Levitt.

  Cambridge nodded. The playboy test pilot for Stone Industries. It figured.

  "It doesn't hurt," the injured man said hoarsely. "Not anymore. Thought I'd really had it this time. The suit took most of the damage."

  Levitt started to kneel down but the metal-encased arm jerked up. "No. Don't touch anything. My battle-computer has been infected by something alien, and I don't think my defense programs can contain it. It's…"

  "What?" Cambridge prompted.

  "It's communicating with my suit," Brooks said breathlessly. "It's inputting new data, it's telling me things." His eyes lost focus, and Cambridge noticed for the first time the tiny wires connected to something on the back of his head. "There is…a consciousness. This building is only a small part of it. It's a single organism, just woken up, and it's spread out across the city…and LeBeau…he's trying to force it to…"

  The man's face spasmed, his eyes rolled back in his suit.

  "Goddammit!" yelled Carlini. "We gotta get him out!"

  He rushed up to the fallen Over-Hero and knelt by his torso, trying to pull the metal breastplate open. As soon as he touched it Carlini and Gauntlet both screamed together. The cop's body shook, his head thrown back and his back arched.

  Cambridge and Levitt both realized they couldn't touch him with their bare hands or they'd be electrocuted too. Cambridge looked around for something non-conductive to push Carlini off –

  And something shot across the room, hitting Gauntlet in his side. The crackling and sparking of the armor instantly cut out, and Carlini slumped to the floor.

  Cambridge peered into the darkness of the office to see where the missile had come from.

  A tall figure moved in the shadows, and Cambridge warily held up his flashlight. The circle of radiance illuminated a tall man wearing black, a dark suit beneath a fluttering opera cape. The figure wore a wide-brimmed fedora hat – and beneath it, a black mask, studded with a number of tiny crescent moons that glittered in the fabric like silver.

  Cambridge recognized him at once.

  He was the Enforcer.

  The surprise slowed down the cops for a second then Levitt was at Carlini's side, touching his neck, tearing open his shirt front, pressing an ear to his chest. "He's breathing," Levitt said.

  The Enforcer walked soundlessly across the carpet as Cambridge watched him. "What did you do?" the cop asked.

  "I fired an EMP bullet and destroyed all the circuits in the suit." The Enforcer had a ridiculously deep, resonant voice that must have been put through a filter in the mask to make it sound so inhuman. "Saved both their lives."

  Each of the Over-Heroes was bound by a certain rule, which had been made official policy by E.A.G.L.E back in the Fifties. The rule was the use of lethal force. No Over-Hero could kill, unless in self-defense, and as a last desperate resort.

  For the last five years, since his emergence into public awareness, the Enforcer had been hunted through the streets of Manhattan by Over-Heroes and police alike because he had no such rule. He killed. He killed muggers, bag-snatchers, pushers, pimps, drug runners, racketeers, mobsters, bank robbers, burglars – anyone who caused harm to anyone else. He killed them cleanly, efficiently, silently. He was the vigilante who'd become an anti-hero to some of the press, and a thorn in the Over-Heroes' side. Cambridge had attended briefing sessions where Captain Sullivan had worked himself purple in the face, ranting on how they had to get the Enforcer off the streets. In the locker rooms, Cambridge had also heard the quiet admiration expressed by some of his fellow cops, who thought the Enforcer was the best thing about the streets.

  Now Cambridge stood in front of him, looking at the Enforcer's featureless mask.

  "I thought you'd be busy gunning down looters on a night like this," Cambridge said.

  The Enforcer walked past him and knelt next to the nervous-looking Levitt. "Being taken care of, chief."

  The vigilante pulled something from the utility belt around his waist, rolled up Carlini's sleeve, and applied something Cambridge couldn't see to the semi-conscious cop's forearm. "He'll be okay. Needs to rest." He stood up and turned his mask to Cambridge. "So how we gonna play this, chief?"

  Cambridge glared, trying to think of what to say.

  The Enforcer walked past Gauntlet's unconscious form, down to a wide-open recreational space at the end of the corridor. There was a window that could be opened a few inches, with a locking bar limiting its movement. Cambridge and Levitt followed him and stood in front of the window. With a loud creak, the Enforcer eased the window open.

  Across Manhattan, the skyscrapers stood like blocks of obsidian. To the north, a hotel burned furiously, its top floors wreathed in smoke and flame. Three ladder crews were spraying jets of water that glinted in the weak moonlight. Gunshots, sirens and shouts drifted through the night.

  "You hear that?" said the Enforcer. "The cages are open, and the animals are on the prowl."

  He pointed due east, past the dark Hudson river. The horizon was lit up bright as dawn by a raging inferno. "That's Baytown Complex – one of the world's largest petrochemical refineries. They process half a million barrels of oil every day."

  The smell of burning gasoline hung heavy in the air. "I don't think they'll make their quota today," Cambridge said.

  "I have an earpiece in my hood tuned to Police frequencies," said the Enforcer. "There's too much static blocking it now, but before I got here, I heard a broadcast saying that Giant-Killer's over there helping the fire crews."

  "I'm glad someone is," said Levitt.

  The Enforcer closed the window and turned his masked face to Cambridge. "It's the old Roman festival, Saturnalia; the world turned upside down. You think you've got the stamina for this, chief?"

  Cambridge grunted. "Yeah, sure," he said. "I eat a lot of granola."

  For the second time, the ceiling in the corridor collapsed with a resounding crash.

  SIX

  They all swung round and saw this time, through the shower of plaster dust, the Amazonian figure of Soldier Blue, as she landed on her feet and smoothly regained her balance.

  Her costume was covered in transparent slime.

  "I have new orders," she said, in a voice suited for unquestioned commands. "You are no longer necessary."

  She closed in and her right arm came up with superhuman speed, batting the Enforcer's gun out of his hand. Then she delivered a stunning head butt, knocking the vigilante off his feet. The gun bounced across the floor, and stopped a foot short of a nearby table. A backhand smash knocked Cambridge to the floor.

  His ears rang and his eyes blurred. When he finally regained his senses, he saw Soldier Blue standing over the Enforcer.

  She didn't notice Levitt stepping up behind her; didn't notice until the cop brought the pistol down on her wrist, trying to knock the torch out of her hand. It didn't work.

  Levitt raised the gun again and struck at the Over-Hero's head, but she effortlessly stopped the blow and wrenched the gun away. Levitt screamed in pain. She calmly closed her fist around the gun, crushing the metal as if it were paper – then grabbed Levitt by the throat and lifted him off the floor.

  Cambridge struggled to his feet. Soldier Blue pointed the torch at him, and a purple-red blast of energy buzzed past. A chunk of plaster on the wall next to him exploded.

  Another shot sped past Cambridge, barely missing him.

  Levitt, above the floor an
d choking, kicked her hard in the midriff. Nothing happened.

  Cambridge raised his pistol; that got her attention. She turned, still holding Levitt by the throat, and threw the cop at him. The older man flew across the open space and Cambridge took the blow, cushioning the impact, both of them falling hard into the back wall. He lay sprawled on the floor, his ribs aching, trying to get his breath back, and he saw the Enforcer regain his gun and fire.

  Soldier Blue stopped in her tracks.

  Her arms fell to her sides. Her face beneath the mask suddenly blank, she sank to her knees.

  Cambridge sat up and looked at Levitt.

  "She broke my wrist, Luke," the other cop said, wincing in pain. His face had gone white.

  The Enforcer produced a small metal canister and sprayed something white around the cop's forearm. It hardened on contact with the air, and as Cambridge watched, he pressed a tiny plastic ampoule against Levitt's bare skin. The injured man's face visibly relaxed.

  Cambridge pointed at Soldier Blue. "What the hell did you to her?"

  "I fired something called a Notional Reality chip into her neck. It's over-riding the sensory impressions and feeding her brain new information."

  "What information?"

  "An army. An army of demons, aliens and robots. Creatures programmed to match her fighting style punch for punch. Her brain is so occupied with the battles inside her mind, her body shut down."

  Cambridge stood, and so did the Enforcer. "Who the crock are you?" said the cop. "Carrying around first aid, but designing weapons that can take down Over-Heroes?"

  "Because the good guys are not always the good guys. About once a year some of them get possessed by an alien or a demon or a crazy scientist, or they get replaced by a robot double or an alien shape-shifter. You can bet on it."

  "But you're a goddamn Over-Hero yourself."

  "No, I ain't. I'm just a regular guy who got lucky."

  The Enforcer took off his hat and peeled off his mask.

  Cambridge had seen thousands of faces like it in streets, bars, and diners. A broad, flat, tanned face with heavy brows and a strong jaw. Mole on the right cheek. Not handsome. Not remarkable. Not a face you would look at twice.