Zephyr II

by Warren Hately

  “Are you okay?” I say, senseless, eyes wide with concern. “We need to get out of here. Try to help these people.”

  As I speak I crane my neck. I can’t see anyone in a costume or astride some robotic death machine. Instead, policemen come running into the scene from the south, garbed in chalk dust, their faces set in grim and not entirely surprised expressions.

  “Dad, I . . . my arm . . . there’s blood.”

  “You’ll be OK,” I say and crouch to establish eye contact, more relieved than words can express when Tessa’s baby browns lock on mine and focus and clarity works its way to the fore.

  “Honey, we’ve got to get out of here. I have to get out of here.”

  “To do what, dad?”

  It would be easy to treat the question as an aside. I look away, focusing on the image of a man staggering seemingly unhurt from the gaping maw where previously a building stood, peering hard at him like the answers might be writ upon his shirt. Instead, the picture resolves to the point where I can see he is walking blind, stumbling, razor gashes to his face and dark holes where his eyes used to be. He staggers into the arms of a helmeted policeman, one of the horse cops we passed before, and when he opens his mouth to moan, blood dribbles down the front of his dress shirt.

  “What can Zephyr do here, dad, that you or I can’t?”

  I wrest my gaze back to Tessa. With clarity comes a weird composure. She doesn’t look at me expectantly. Instead, I see a grandmotherly urge, the desire to impress some vital lesson upon me, a message well beyond her years and entirely like something one of my parents would produce in a moment like this. I can smell the dead and wounded, but I’m as captivated by Tessa’s face as if I were in the presence of the Dalai Lama or one of the Ancients of Mu or perhaps even Huey Lewis.

  “I am just finding out who I am when I wear the mask, dad,” she says, “but I am worried you’ve forgotten who you are without it.”

  It’s a bit much, I know, but the truth of her words is like the shrapnel wound I failed to receive. Abashed, any urgency to rush off and play dress-ups dissipates. The very real urgency of the situation coalesces around me and draws me in. A policeman with his hat off yells and clicks his fingers at me, asks, “You alright?” just to confirm I look like I might be able to help him. I nod and move over and together we lever a piece of retaining wall off a girl not much younger than my own, who by fate, genetics or the great mysterious computational abilities of the universe is able to withstand the Bloomingdales blast where this innocent flower-printed dress of a thing has succumbed.

  Pieces of the girl peel away, severed by flying glass, as the cop and I try and move her into the recovery position. I am aware of the policeman sobbing, his hands sinking to the wrists in the dead girl’s wounds. I pull him free and open my mouth like I might say something useful, insightful even, anywhere near as wise as the childish wisdom just uttered to me – and before I can realize there’s nothing I can really say, the cop sinks into me, clutches my torn coat, dislodging pieces of glass from my scarf, not noticing I should be dead too as he cries with grief and horror.

  Helplessly caught, I look across for my daughter and find she has moved on. I locate her later, arm tourniquet’d, helping a woman with two missing girls gather her wits sufficiently to file the report. By then the worst of the business is over and we can walk like it is another day among the ruins and not the one upon which such violence has freshly occurred. The news reports have identified Hebrew separatists as the bombers. It’s not a scene that belongs to my four-color universe, and standing there, my clothes daubed with grey dust and bloodstains turned to an oil-slick black ichor by the dirt, it seems Tessa was right. We were already dressed wearing what was needed for this day, or at the very least we had the colors right.

  Zephyr 4.11 “Accept Into The Night”

  LESS THAN THREE hours after returning from the department store bombing I am under the shower for the second time, scouring scalding water into my face and hair, trying to wash away the pain and embarrassment after another failed encounter with my determinedly soon-to-be ex-wife.

  Life has certain parallels, you’d have to agree. We are born feeble and many of us end that way, brains no good to us as we descend into madness. Likewise, early courtship begins as such a fumbling tryst and advances to its fulminating giddy apex only to decline once relationships go awry. And so it is with me and Beth. She had nothing but daggers for me when she came in the company limo, Tessa in a change of clothes I managed to scrounge from what little they didn’t pack and take with them. An interesting ensemble, especially when you consider it seems like only two weeks ago my little girl was cutting out the eyes from Hannah Montana pictures.

  I compounded my foolishness by asking Beth if she would consider taking me back.

  You know sometimes when you ask a question and the viciousness of the reply is a genuine surprise? A betrayal, as vast and absolute as abuse by a parent or the murder of a child. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I certainly didn’t anticipate the metaphorical bucket of ice water, Tessa slinking into the back of the long saloon. I guess the emotional baggage of the day piled on top of me and I lost the hard-won perspective I’d only recently started to see as normal. Nonetheless, to see something bordering hate in eyes I have stared into happily enough on so many occasions . . . the shock remains with me still.

  Such a galvanizing experience, however debilitating at first, can’t help but have a practical effect. After some soul-searching, I have stripped, showered and dressed in my leper’s leathers, clinging to the half-life even my own daughter can see for the substanceless mimesis it is.

  It is 4pm in the ruins of old New York. I belt into the sky, my mind conceiving a gentle parabola my physics hastens to refine as I accept into the night. Rocketing passage over the Atlantic brings rainclouds and darkness and I am stone-jawed to both as my transit conjures thunder and raindrops the size of fists.

  I’m not exactly sure what I’m thinking. Google gave Julian’s location in Normandy, a medieval fortress abutting a market town. A quiet life for the scion of an ignoble house – one the world would be better not to know. And it is as if I speed thither to claim my share of the family shame. I cannot guess how my older half-brother will react.

  It is my intention to use England only as an aid to navigation. Yet somewhere over the Cornish coast, the clouds hiding swarms of gargantuan sea birds, a perilous transistor fuzz descends over the forepart of my mind so treacle-smooth I can really only describe it once it departs. And when it does this, I find I am not in Normandy as per my intention, but some rich man’s living room, the French doors open, the fire guttering in the grille fanned by the evening chill.

  The Übermensch known to the wider world as Sting hovers in a lotus position before me.

  “Good evening, Zephyr. Tea?”

  *

  EITHER IT’S THE brittle architecture of my mind or the English accent just really shits me, because I curl my fists at the offer of refreshment and consider a response akin to shitting on the rug then and there. If it weren’t for the suggestion of cosmic power roiling in waves off the hovering blonde yogi before me, I might just make good on the inhospitable response my tattered nerves tempt. Or perhaps Sting is making good on his famed redactive control and it’s just a more subtle expression of the hold he’s obviously exerting over me.

  “I figure you could make me dance like a monkey if you wanted,” I say with a grimace, fearing my lips won’t move as I make like a ventriloquist. “I take it it was you who brought me here. Why start with manners now?”

  “Easy on, lad.”

  The ageless-looking Englishman unfolds his legs and seemingly steps down from the hovering pose, though even as he crosses the living room rug barefoot I have the sense still Sting’s not quite touching the ground. My eyes betray me and the superhuman formerly known as Gordon Sumner gives a curious little shrug, accompanied by a wry winking grimace, and beneath that smirk I can still feel the steel cold grip
around the base of my mind.

  “What do you want?”

  “We just wanted a chat,” Sting says.

  “We?”

  “Patience.”

  “Patience?” Obviously I rile at that. “Hey, fuck you. You pulled me out of the clouds. How did you do that? Teleportation?”

  “We’ve got the whole British Isles wired,” says a voice from the back of the room. “You might not recall doing it, but you flew here. Quite willingly.”

  I look past the billiards table to the back of the big vault-like chamber and there’s George Harrison, the infamous St George, stepping through a curtained doorway and into the room. He still has the big moustache, but there’s a little greying fuzz on his chin since the last time I recollect seeing him on television. While Sting wears only a pair of light track pants, the former Beatle wears a three-piece suit, all white, with a plum red shirt and a white tie, loosened, like a living historical document beneath his unkempt locks. His smile is at one and the same time kindly and sardonic. I have a strong impression of great sadness, looking at him, but I feel punch drunk and probably not the best judge of character right now, especially when these are some of the most famous masks in the world.

  Sting came to prominence probably just a few years before the whole Doomsday Man saga. He started as a simple British super, part of a trio who used to joke they were the New Police, their jovial and sometimes politically-barbed approach to the 1980s, like the title they used, suggesting they were something new that the world, or at least Thatcher’s England, had never seen before. As most things do, it proved an elusive ruse. It wasn’t long before the trio went their separate ways, most of them to ignominy, and it would’ve been the same for Sting except he came back supposedly enlightened from a trip to the Far East. Like John Lennon before him, the exposure to yoga and tantric Buddhism greatly boosted his previously unremarkable energy-manipulating powers. The psychic shocks that gave him his original nickname Sting were transformed into a powerful suite of psionic abilities allowing him to become a major international player and even have a role in the détente between the USSR and the West. (That line, “Don’t the Russians love their children too?” had politicians cringing, but it worked.) After that, he was everyone’s darling, more likely to appear levitating on a chat show boasting of his sexual prowess than actually busting villains. While the similarities to his and my father’s journey have my scalp itching, the fact I’m here with him and St George and they seem to be suggesting they occupy some active national security role is as bewildering as it is intimidating.

  “Can’t say I recall the trip here,” says me. “Co-inky-dink? I think not.”

  “You can relax, Zephyr,” Sting says. “We mean you no harm.”

  “Quite the opposite, in fact,” Harrison says as he walks further into the room. “We hope we can help.”

  *

  I ROLL MY shoulders and take a few steps just to show I’m in control of my faculties – and to prove it to myself. My stroll takes me to the glowering fireplace and I stay there, resting an arm on the expensive mantelpiece.

  “If you want to help, you’ve got a funny way of showing it,” I say.

  “Security is a big issue with us,” St George says. “That’s why we could not have you retain any memories of your flight here.”

  “So what, I was on autopilot the whole time?”

  “Er, actually I flew you in,” Sting says.

  At least he has the decency to sound sheepish, though this doesn’t mean I am gonna forgive him.

  “Great.”

  “Look, Zephyr,” George says. “I knew your father. If you’re looking for him, I’d like to help.”

  I am not about to ask where they’re getting this information because I don’t think I’ll like the answer.

  “Do you know where he is?” I ask.

  “Well, not exactly.”

  “Then what fucking help are you?”

  I stare at the pair hard enough to make most lesser-grade villains khaki their pants. Instead, an air of gentle bemusement radiates from both. Sting moves around until he’s standing alongside Harrison.

  “Astonishing, isn’t it?” St George says.

  “Quite,” Sting replies.

  “It’s like they took John and, I don’t know, sort of made him an American overnight,” the former Beatle says. “He doesn’t exactly look like him, with or without the mask, but there’s something about that bloody swagger. . . .”

  “I didn’t know John as well as George here, Zephyr, but we can agree on one thing,” Sting says.

  “What’s that?”

  “He’s a bloody menace,” George cut in. “And a danger to the whole world.”

  “We want to help you, Zephyr,” Sting says.

  “We want to help you to help us. We want to take down the Preacherman for good.”

  “You want to . . . to. . . ?”

  “That’s right,” George says. “We want to kill John Lennon.”

  Zephyr 4.12 “Thwarted Godheads”

  I SPEND A few minutes contemplating the latest announcement. Sting goes to the sideboard and mixes four very large snifters of brandy. I don’t think to comment on the curious number until later.

  “Kill him?” I repeat again, eventually – my roundabout way back into the conversation.

  “As reprehensible as it may be to you or I to take human life,” Sting says, giving me my first serious doubts he’s actually rooted around too far inside my brain, “in this instance – and thinking of the greater good – it’s hard to envision a better solution.”

  “What the world does not know is that we have already repelled two more of the Doomsday Man’s attacks on civilization,” George says. “In each instance, we’ve only narrowly escaped with our lives.”

  “It’s actually thanks to him, indirectly at least, that our little group came together,” Sting says, neatly picking up the narrative while George fossicks around inside one of his sizeable nostrils with some sense of urgency and then inspects the results.

  “We came together in a fairly impromptu fashion to defend the UK against the first attack,” Sting says. “Of course, we were ready when the second came.”

  “After that, we told Her Majesty she might as well relax and let us take care of any future incursions,” George says, flicking something away into the far corner of the carpeted room. “You could say we’re single-handedly responsible for the fairly serious decline in superhuman crime in the United Kingdom since.”

  “What have the Jacks got to say about this?”

  “Those ingrates?” Sting laughs.

  “Well really, we’re not sure they’ve noticed,” George says with more of that wry, sardonic, sad-faced act of his. “Between their book deals and celebrity diet endorsements, I’m not sure the Union Jacks have noticed that any superhuman crime bar a few bank robberies have pretty much stopped in the last few years.”

  “The country needs us,” Sting says, “but it’s not enough.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “No,” he says and looks at Harrison, as if the elder in the room might be better able to explain it.

  “We’re thinking of the bigger picture, Zephyr,” St George says. “It’s not just your father. It’s space. Deep space. Alternate realities. Extra-dimensional consciousness. Thwarted godheads. You name it.”

  “We’ve already fended off three serious, global-sized disasters this year,” Sting says, some of the money dropping from his voice as the passion takes over. “Only one of them was even focused on the UK.”

  “North America?” I ask.

  “Na, Greenland and Russian tundra. Never mind,” he continues. “I think the point stands. Your dad’s a threat. A global threat. But it’s not him alone. We need to expand. A global operation. A safety net for the entire planet.”

  “You’re talking hundreds of masks,” I reply, thinking of my own nascent team and the inevitable bickering. “I don’t think . . . well, unless you’re planning to mind con
trol all of them, then I don’t see how you’re going to do it.”

  “Our plan doesn’t involve hundreds, Zephyr,” St George says. “Just a few. A few like you.”

  “Um, what does that mean?”

  “You’re the son of the Preacherman, if you’ll excuse the pun,” George says with a wistful smile. “An incredible power runs through your veins.”

  “And you probably don’t even realize it, son,” adds Sting.

  “Go on. . . ?”

  “Your father and I knelt before the Maharashi, Zephyr,” George says. “We learnt the same techniques. The same openings.”

  “I’ve been there too, mate,” Sting says. “We could teach you. To open up. To your true potential. We don’t need an army. Just a few good men.”

  I am about to say something insightful when a coarse voice, invisible in the ether, chimes in with, “Oi, isn’t you bein’ a bit sexist wiv jus’ wantin’ a few good men?”

  I’m not prepared for the two supers to break into laughter. I’m only marginally more prepared for the figure in canary yellow sportswear who materializes into view standing in the middle of the conversation and carrying one of the earlier-mentioned snifters of brandy. He hoists it and tilts the swirling goblet at me.

  “Aiiiiight?”

  “Zephyr, this is the third member of our elite cadre,” George says.

  “DJ Ali.”

  *

  I TAKE A few nervous steps back in the room and almost put my butt into the fire. The newcomer has a faggotty little beard and moustache and yellow-tinted goggles over his eyes, an elasticated cap of some sort drawn down over his hair. Around his neck rest a pair of the biggest headphones I’ve ever seen, yet the bungee cord loops over his shoulder and down to the belt of his parachute-fabric pants seemingly without connecting to anything. The jacket’s of the same material, bright yellow as I said, and emblazoned with a gigantic letter G. A relatively modest amount of bling also dangles around his neck.