"You know what happened to me?" he said. "I won the NY lottery. No big plan, no childhood trauma, no call from destiny, just a lucky break that gave me freedom from work and lots of time to think. So there I was, thinking, and you know what? I figured that all my life I just needed a place to go, and a person to become."
He waved his hand at the twitching form of Soldier Blue.
" I used the funds to set up a corporation. I set up a weapons development firm under a different name and a holding corporation, and took out contracts with E.A.G.L.E. The eggheads that I employed dreamed up new weapons for Jankowitz, but at the same time…"
"The weapons were also going into the Enforcer's pockets."
The vigilante smiled. "Well, I like to call it a utility belt."
Cambridge looked down at the semi-conscious Levitt, slumped against the corridor wall. "So what do you think is causing all this crap?" he asked.
The vigilante rubbed his chin. "Think about it. Something goes down in Manhattan, who responds?"
"The Over-Heroes."
"Exactly. Let's say something hits the whole city and paralyzes it. At the same time, someone takes out the Vice-President of the whole United States. Every Over-Hero who can answer the call flies in to restore order. All gathering at the same time, in the same place."
Cambridge shook his head. "Something's trying to take out all the Over-Heroes at once? Jesus Christ. Whoever you are…I hope you're wrong."
He looked around. "So whadda we do now?"
"Well, I don't know about you, but I got an appointment with the asshole who's causing all this shit."
"I'm comin' with you."
The Enforcer looked into Cambridge's face and smiled. "I kinda figured that," he said. "Okay. I could use some back-up."
"Excuse me?" called Levitt, who'd regained consciousness. "I don't wanna break up your party and all, but I reckon Gonzalez is still on his way up here. And he's bringin' his friends."
They carried Levitt and Carlini into a nearby office, and then dragged Gauntlet and Soldier Blue – who were incredibly heavy – inside after them. The Enforcer sealed off the doors by spraying some more of his quick-sealing foam into the jambs and the hinges.
"So how do we get outta here?"
The Enforcer pointed to one remaining door leading to the elevator shafts. "Whatever this weird crap is, it's on one of the observation decks, because that's where LeBeau and the Vice-President are. The first deck is twenty floors above. You reckon you can climb?"
Cambridge nodded. "I got this far already."
They forced the doors of one elevator shaft open. The rungs of an inspection ladder were inside to the left, and they started to climb.
Hand over hand, one rung at a time, Cambridge climbed the ladder, the boots and cape of the Enforcer above him. Don't look up, and whatever happens, don't look down, he told himself. Don't worry about losing your grip, or cramp in your legs, or the bruises that ached where Soldier Blue had hit him. Just let the time pass one rung at a time.
His mind daydreamed while his body moved mechanically. He felt like an insect. A bug, climbing up the inside of a factory wall. Once, and only once, he asked the Enforcer to stop so he could rest and ease the pain in his fingers. He heard something below. Was it the echoes of the climb in the greasy darkness? Or was it – someone else?
Had the zombies got into the elevator shaft?
He shuddered and started climbing again, faster than before.
After long minutes, his hand bumped against the Cutter's boot. Looking up, he saw the vigilante shoving a long thin tool into the gap between the elevator doors, and they slid apart silently. The Enforcer stepped through the gap, and the Lieutenant scrambled over the lip of the platform into a space flickering with an eerie, pallid light. Cambridge stood up, and tried to understand what he was looking at.
SEVEN
He remembered the observation room from his trips before, the wide-open chamber and the pillars and the walls lined with windows…but the space facing him, between the floor and the ceiling, was filled with what looked like a giant cobweb made of mucus. The silver threads gleamed with something moist and unspeakable.
About thirty men and women stood silently in the main hall, facing the elevator, their eyes on Cambridge but blank, unseeing. Their clothes, faces and hands were covered with the same metallic residue that he had seen on the other zombies. With a shock of recognition, the cop realized that the tall man closest to the elevator was none other that the Vice-President of the United States.
At the heart of the web above the motionless horde hung something that had a man's shape and wore a man's clothes, but its head was buried within a globe of something that glistened and shook like a beached jellyfish. It was a solid ball of the slime Cambridge had seen staining the building, and inside it was the blurred impression of a human head, eyes, mouth. Even through the vile mess, Cambridge recognized it; the face of Lewis LeBeau.
Now looking like someone who'd been half-digested by a Portugese man-o-war, LeBeau held something in his hands, something elegantly carved and gleaming like gold. Several of the threads separated themselves from the wall, waving lazily in the air like the pseudopods of a massive, disgusting amoeba.
"Holy crap," muttered Cambridge. "What the hell's goin' on here?"
"And what's happened to LeBeau?" said the Enforcer, in a hoarse whisper.
"I have graduated," said a thick, congested voice. It sounded like someone gargling through mud, but the words were clear and distinct.
Cambridge now saw there was another body in the web. A figure hung motionless to the left, a figure with its head down, its dark jumpsuit ripped and bloody. Even though he couldn't see the face, the cop recognized Max Jankowitz. For a second, Cambridge wondered if this was all a nightmare. He'd seen some really stinking horror films where at the end it was revealed to be a dream or a prank by the main character's friends, or a story some kid told to his school buddies after reading too many comics.
No such luck.
Ah, crock it, Cambridge thought. He was with the Enforcer, who was a psycho, but who had stayed alive and out of jail for quite some time, so there was a slim chance that Cambridge could also come through this alive. And if he could – maybe others could, too.
"I have evolved," the voice sloshed, "I have become."
Cambridge and the Enforcer edged further into the room, their guns held high, turning from side to side as they tried to see into every corner of the observation deck. Cambridge aimed his revolver at what he thought was a pile of bodies near the side wall, but as he stared, he realized it was a large heap of empty clothing. Shoes, hats, jackets, dresses – all covered with the familiar metallic slime.
"You will not die here," continued the glutinous voice, "so do not be afraid. You too will change and evolve. Do not cling to your former lives; it is a sign of weakness, and weakness shall not be tolerated."
"You have any idea what he's talking about?" he asked the Enforcer.
"Not me, chief."
The Enforcer raised the futuristic pistol he held and advanced, standing directly in front of the hanging LeBeau-thing. It waved its pseudopods in long, slow arcs, threatening, but not touching.
"Whatever you've done," shouted the Enforcer, "I'm here to stop it."
"Too little, too late," gloated the voice. "You are cowards and fools, clinging to outdated concepts of national sovereignty and global justice. Vigilantes are, at best, superfluous. I hoped it would not come to this, Enforcer. If I had wanted you dead, you would have died without knowing what killed you. But…enough. You have forced my hand."
One of the pseudopods made a sudden curling gesture, and Jankowitz jerked his head up. His eyes closed, his face blank, the Director of E.A.G.L.E dropped out of the web and landed on his feet. He extended his hands and leaped at the Enforcer.
Cambridge backed away as Jankowitz and the vigilante traded blow for blow, punch for punch, at a speed that was almost too fast for his eyes to follow. As his
fatigued mind decided to act, the police revolver was suddenly plucked out of his hand by a stringy arm of mucus, and lifted into the web. The other pseudopods loomed out of the half-light, reaching down for him.
"My harvest has begun," the voice said. "Just as we initiated the age of the Over-Heroes, we shall now preside over them. The LeBeau clan shall own the Over-Heroes, body and soul, and I rejoice that I was the one born at the heralding of the new era! We have predicted the transition from energy to beautiful flesh, from base mud to purest gold, from gold to the brightest light–"
"Well, predict this, asshole," shouted a voice from behind Cambridge. He ducked as gunfire boomed all around the observation deck. The lump of gold in LeBeau's hand exploded.
The floor of the observation deck shook, and from instinct Cambridge went into a crouch, hands and knees on the floor, his eyes trying to scan every moving shadow.
LeBeau dropped out of the web, landing on his feet. Bathed in the half-light, the pseudopods whipped back into the main bulk surrounding his body, and his blurred face grimaced like melting putty. For a second, Cambridge locked eyes with LeBeau, and he was shocked at what he saw there. The arrogance had gone. There was only disbelief. Not even time for anger.
Max Jankowitz dropped suddenly to the ground, like a marionette with its strings cut. He lay, arms and legs sprawled in uncomfortable angles, and did not move. The Vice-President and all the others followed him to the ground, slowly collapsing.
Cambridge turned.
Levitt and Carlini were standing at the shattered entrance to the elevator shaft.
Le Beau convulsed, and fell to his knees, the slime upon him now shining with such a brilliant white light that Cambridge had to shield his eyes with his hand. Something was emerging. The slime stretched itself into pseudopods again, reaching up towards the ceiling. The globe sucked itself from his head and was borne up on strings of mucus.
LeBeau coughed and spat jelly out of his mouth. "No!" he roared. "No! No! You were dying, before I found you! Whatever you are now, it comes from me, my family! I made you!"
It was the last thing he said.
Cambridge ducked as the last of the slime ripped itself out of LeBeau's body in a grotesque, wet explosion, splattering flesh and fluids all across the room. Cambridge frantically wiped fragments of bone, blood and brains from his trenchcoat as he watched the slime rear up now, an organism once more whole, sliding upwards like a vast silver serpent. It shattered the upper windows and slithered out into the night. Its nightmare shape glowed in the darkness, insane and unreal, spiraling, twisting, and fading into the darkness.
Cambridge stood up cautiously, listening to the tinkle of glass and the dripping of LeBeau's vital fluids. The Enforcer leant against a wall, catching his breath.
"Yeah, well, ya know, Lootenant, it's nice to see you again too," came Carlini's voice.
"What the crock?" Cambridge cried in disbelief.
"We followed you up," said Levitt breathlessly.
"You did what? You climbed twenty floors with a broken wrist? And after getting an electric shock?" Cambridge shook his head. "You've gotta be kiddin' me."
"Maybe we kidded LeBeau as well," said Carlini. "Maybe he thought we was outta the game."
"You reckon that's why he didn't see you coming?"
"I couldn't care less." Carlini limped into the main space of the observation deck, looking around in disgust. "Say," he called, staring at the Enforcer. "Ain't you that vigilante guy?"
"Yeah, I'm that vigilante guy," the Enforcer replied, "and we'd better take a look at the Vice-President, I guess. There might be part of his sorry ass worth saving."
They checked the pulses of every one of LeBeau's hostages, or whatever they had been, and found that they were still alive, with steady pulses but still unconscious. A shout from Levitt brought them all back to where Max Jankowitz had fallen.
His body was glowing. A shimmering haze covered his legs, his torso, his inert face, and expanded upwards into a funnel of light. The four men stood back as the Director of E.A.G.L.E dissolved, transforming into a cloud of sparks that floated up to the skylight, then effortlessly passed through the glass without breaking it.
"Holy crap," Levitt muttered.
"Looks like Max Sonuvvabitch has left the building," Carlini muttered.
The Enforcer pointed out of the nearest window, and Cambridge turned to look.
All across the city, pillars of light had appeared, like the beams of search lamps turned towards the dark swirling clouds. In the shining columns closest to the Empire State, Cambridge thought he could make out human shapes, gleaming particles that still vaguely resembled arms, legs and heads.
"A harvest," Cambridge muttered. "That's what LeBeau called it. A harvest…"
"Didn't you think it was all too weird?" said the Enforcer. He turned his thin, undisguised face to all of them. Levitt and Carlini studied his features carefully. They were probably trying to match it to mug shots, Cambridge realized; they couldn't help it.
"Think about it," the vigilante continued. "The press said the Over-Heroes were the next step in human evolution, heralding the Atomic Age. Guys like Hornet-Man got their Over-Powers from getting stung by a radioactive hornet. It was all bullshit. I used to have friends who worked in hospitals as porters and nurses. What I learned from them is that radiation doesn't give you Over-Powers. All it gives you is cancer, leukemia and massive organ failure."
"So what's your take on it?" said Carlini.
"We've all been conned," said the Enforcer. "I had my agents get into the E.A.G.L.E files and do some snooping around. They found that in 1942, the LeBeaus – working as kind of Scientific Advisors to the White House – set up a top secret Over-Soldier program. They injected volunteer Marines with some kind of chemical that gave them these freaky Over-Powers."
"What chemical?" asked Levitt.
"One of my spies said the LeBeau clan had found some kind of alien creature out in the desert, back in the Old West. After decades of research, they synthesized a compound out of the alien DNA and injected the marines with it."
Cambridge shivered. "Jeez."
"Yeah. Seems like LeBeau's idea was to own the Over-Heroes. One day, he wanted to have them all under control."
"But when the alien got free just now, it owned him. LeBeau bit off more than he could chew."
"The old, old story, my friend."
"Why didn't you go to the New York Times with what you knew?" asked Levitt.
Cambridge grimaced. "Come on, Gene, even I know the answer to that one. LeBeau is the New York Times."
"Or was. Guess one of his relatives will have to take over. If they're still alive."
They lapsed into silence as they watched the streaks of light soar across Manhattan, disappearing into the sky like shooting stars.
"Where do you reckon they're going?" asked Cambridge.
The Enforcer shrugged. "If that alien's trying to get home, maybe it's taking the Over-Heroes with it, because they've got so much alien DNA in their system. They got more in common with that slime than with you and me."
"So how come you're still here?"
"Because like I told you, I'm not an Over-Hero." He took off his glove and pulled down his sleeve, and the cops saw the spring-loading mechanism that could push weapons into his hands when triggered. "I was just a regular joe who got a lucky break and took it." He turned to Carlini. "Just like you. Taking down the big bad wolf with a lucky shot. How does it feel?"
Carlini burst out laughing. "Well, free at last, free at last, thank God almighty we're free at last," he said through his laughter.
Cambridge pulled out his pack of Chesterfields and passed them around. The Enforcer declined. The cops stood in a circle around Carlini's Zippo, sucking in smoke and contemplating the damage around them.
The small group walked over to the seats flush with the observation windows, and wearily sat down. As soon as Cambridge had finished his Chesterfield, he sparked up another one.
"Gonzalez ain't coming back, is he?" Carlini finally asked. Cambridge breathed out smoke. "I don't see how. That creep broke his neck."
"Rizzo and the others? Did they make it?"
"God knows."
"We got more problems," said the Enforcer.
Everyone stared at him in alarm. The vigilante gestured out of the window. "The alien's outta here, but the lights ain't coming back on. Maybe it really screwed something up at the power stations. And the radio's still out."
Cambridge stared out of the observation window into the darkness that had fallen over Manhattan. In his mind's eye, he saw his home, where his wife and kids were waiting. Although the glass of the upper windows had shattered, he couldn't hear anything. An eerie calm seemed to have fallen over the city.
His reverie was broken by Carlini sniggering and finally breaking out into laughter. Harsh, braying laughter tinged with hysteria.
He scowled at the junior cop. "What's so funny, Carlini?"
"Sorry, Lootenant. The Enforcer tanked me up on some pain-killer from that belt of his. Man, I'm flying."
"He's right, Luke," slurred Levitt. "That jab kinda makes you feel light-headed. A bit."
The Enforcer nodded. "Side effect of the ampicillin. You'll be okay when you get to a regular hospital."
"Looks like we'll have to stand in line behind the rest of New York."
Carlini kept on laughing. "It's finished, man. The Over-Heroes have gone and they can't push us around any more."
"You'd better goddam hope that the Over-Villians went with 'em," said Levitt, cracking up.
"If they haven't," said the Enforcer, "it's gonna be up to me, or those like me."
"No. Those like us."
"Whaddya mean, Luke?" asked Levitt.
Cambridge glared out of the window again. "We make a new story. A story where we have to save ourselves."
"Once upon a time," said the Enforcer, "there were a lot of people stranded in a big city, with no power and no lights."
"You think they'd wait until the power came back on?" said Levitt.
"Hell, no!" Carlini was still giggling. "They'd look around for the other decent men and women who weren't goin' crazy and lootin' and robbin' and shit. Then they'd see what supplies of food, gas canisters and medicine they had. Then they'd start sharin' em out and makin' plans for their own neighborhoods."
Tales From Beyond Tomorrow: Volume One Page 19