Zephyr II

by Warren Hately

  Nevertheless, this doesn’t do much to soothe my ire when I realize I can’t exactly make the call to the removalists from my Enercom phone, the one with the little stylized lightning bolt on gold now on the red-and-black case. It takes a while, but I get a VoiP program running in the wallspace and hook up the headphones and manage to get on to a removalist and a storage place and then I dress in uncomfortable civilians and go for a walk, stop in at the 24-hour and nuke two chili dogs and get some pork rinds and a Coke slushee and a copy of the Post, the Inquirer and Teenscene (I am on the cover again, and even I am wondering now what they want with a has-been thirty-five-year-old on the cover of a magazine for under-sixteens). I sit at a bus stop and consume the junk food while a homeless man makes deranged attempts to hoover under my feet and those of everyone else legitimately waiting for transport. He’s only got an imaginary vacuum, doesn’t even have any props, and the shoom-shoom noises start to really get on my nerves until the bus turns up and the driver salutes him, calls him either Vern or Venom, I’m not sure which, and everyone else but me clears out for at least the next fifteen minutes leaving me in peace.

  I have to say I am disappointed not to have heard from Sal Doro in a while and I take my revenge by stuffing the skimmed newspaper into the trash and upending the remains of my drink on it. The death of newspapers writ small. Idly wanting a cigarette, I’m on my way back to the apartment for one of the last times and plotting out my approach to my mothers’ house when the Zephyr phone rings and I dig it out and answer surreptitiously, since I am in civilian guise. It’s Paragon.

  “Hey Zephyr. Long time no hear, pal. What gives?”

  “Yeah, I’ve been busy and stuff,” I reply as I hike against the press of foot traffic coming from the afternoon Cineplex around the corner from where I live, used to live, the new Nic Cage film Cinderella Man coming out to the amusement of the critics. At least it looks better than his previous effort, him in that fucking awful superhero film Hancock.

  “I haven’t seen you at Nephilim or Orchard,” Paragon says and sounds like he’s about to recite the whole frigging list. I cut in on him.

  “Actually, Para, I’ve been pretty busy with the whole, you know, the new team I’m putting together.”

  “Well, I’ve only heard whispers,” he replies in a voice sounding like he’s channeling his elderly Jewish stepmother. “I don’t suppose you need an impossibly handsome, physically impervious type, do ya?”

  “Hey, we’ve got me for that, right?”

  Paragon is unperturbed. The sarcasm slides off him like eggs from a Teflon pan.

  “Actually, you know, Jocelyn and I have been working on some of our moves. We’d make a pretty awesome combo.”

  It seems like Paragon has taken up some of Red Monolith’s surfer dude drawl since the poor kid died – like it’s some type of living tribute or something. It only makes me remember my friend with a sadness that also reminds me Paragon is no Red Monolith. Stoner or not, the guy could shred. And Jocelyn is no Angelina Jolie.

  “I thought she would have to be kinda careful, now, Para? With the baby?”

  “Well, yeah.” Paragon halts, changes gears, veers off again. “At least tell me you’re not going to miss the wedding of the century, Zeph?”

  “Gee, I didn’t think I’d received an invite yet. . . ?”

  “Well yeah, it’s in the mail, Zephyr,” Paragon says ironically.

  “I’m sure I’ll see you at the premiere.”

  “So that’s Sunday night, right?” Paragon asks.

  I had forgotten to this point that the big unveiling coincided with my eviction from the family home. I sigh haltingly.

  “That’s right.”

  “I’ll be the guy with the glowing golden aura,” he says, never tiring of that one.

  His laughter clatters down the phone line like tin cans tied to a newlywed’s car.

  “So what were you after, pal?”

  “Oh yeah, I was just going to ask,” the golden one replies. “Have you seen Darkstorm lately? Even Stiletto says she doesn’t know where he’s gone.”

  The reference vaguely tickles my mind, but I have to shrug. Besides, my building arrives.

  “Can’t help you there,” I say. “You know, away from the clubs Darkstorm and I. . . .”

  “Oh, I understand totally,” Paragon says. “I mean even for me, he and I, well, we’re like night and day.” Again with the laughter. “Jocelyn was really insistent he was at the wedding, though. I was just calling around a few people, but no one’s heard. . . .”

  “That’s a real shit. Hey Paragon, I think I just saw one of Thoughtstorm’s flying sky-labs over near the Silver Tower. Got to go.”

  “Oh you were flying the whole time? You should’ve said. Sorry.”

  “Hey don’t mention it,” I say and throw the pork rinds pack in the bin and sweep through the entrance to the apartment building.

  “You want me to dust the bike off and ride over, see if you need a hand?”

  “I’ve got this one. Thanks all the same.”

  “Okay,” Paragon says with an air of something bordering on the wistful. “Well, we’ve got to do more to catch up, sometime soon. And I don’t mean at Transit. . . .”

  “Yeah, we’ll do that. Holy shit, is that the Skeleton Queen? Got to go.”

  I disconnect. The old lady in the lobby thinks I’m referring to her and she stabs her index finger at me and spits her falsies into her hand, muttering something vile in Ukranian or Finno-Ugric. Not hard to shrug off. I continue the ride upstairs buoyed by the solvent fats now bubbling through my system. Once in the wallspace, I change for what could be the last time and then just stand there, surveying the unwitting trophies I have collected during the interim of my career, the skewered stacks of receipts and post-it notes, the obsolete computer, the Zephyr animated series calendar and the crates of test merchandise that never made it to full release when those Pixar fuckers went bust. A fine layer of dust covers everything, like the reverse of the luster an old man gives to memories of youth. The decrepitude is all too apparent, even to me. When I jack from the secret window, it is for the last time, I am thinking, latching the revolving door closed in the silent space left behind.

  An envelope with $20 for the super includes the key and instructions to let in the workmen the following morning.

  And if it all falls apart, I’ll probably never really notice anyway.

  I throw my fist toward Queens and vengeance.

  *

  SOMETHING ABOUT BEING electrocuted limits even my colorful reach of vocabulary. I guess they don’t call it a bolt from the blue for nothing. Sure, while I am technically immune to all but the strongest electrical effects, and though I wouldn’t call it pain, having ten thousand volts channeled through you still feels like a motherfucker.

  Why am I crapping on like this? You’re all hot to hear about my mad dash to home, saving the domestically imperiled Windsong and confronting my latest nemesis, my own damned mother. Hell, I’m pretty keen to get there too, only some damned fool decides to quite literally give me a taste of my own medicine.

  The attack knocks my from mid-air.

  While I am flailing I am not concentrating on my flight vector and as a result I tumble through a set of power lines, the awning of a factory-direct bakery operation and destroy about a thousand dollars’ worth of empty wooden crates. Picking splinters from my ‘do, my glare travels upward to where this donkey-headed cocksucker stands on the third-floor roof of the building opposite and gives the most ridiculous wave that I can only assume he’s one of these schizoid bozos who dress up in costume just to get their asses kicked. It’s a repressed sexual thing and I say this regardless of being a guy who dresses in head-to-toe leather for most my waking hours.

  Most these guys are powerless twerps. Obviously, this one is a bit different from the rest. He’s wearing a charcoal-colored rubberized bodysuit with weird patterns on the chest and upper arms that make me think of a circuit board. Later, when
he reveals his name is Helix, I want to grab him by his admirable coif of hair and explain that this is not a helix depicted on his costume, but by then we’re onto the next chapter and besides, problems with his apparel are the least of my worries.

  He steps from the roof of the building and sorta floats to the ground in a whoosh of familiar air movements. I close my eyes and extend outward with my weird extra sense and confirm my suspicions – he’s flying the same way I do. Between that and the lightning bolt, I risk the assumption he’s somehow copied my powers.

  A famous man once said shooting someone in the chest is a pretty good test of finding out how much damage they can take. Likewise, suspecting this fucktard’s not just copied but possibly stolen my abilities, I decide prudence has the edge on valor and the moment his little black booties touch the ground, I light him up with a return serve plus a little tip. It is – well, refreshing isn’t really the word, but maybe you get what I mean – to see the black-clad figure arch his back and stretch his mouth open in a wordless howl. I cross the distance pretty much before the calamity is finished and punctuate his sentence with a couple of solid hooks to the ribs and a follow-through to the side of the head.

  Unsurprisingly, this makes Helix a little more manageable. He rebounds from the solid brick wall of the St Assumpta Home For Recuperating Gentlemen and staggers right into another haymaker. Unusually for me, I hold the blow in check as I watch the guy’s eyes roll around beneath his black face mask. Just before they lose their luster entirely, his eyes find mine and he drops to his knees.

  “Zephyr, man, what are you doing? Don’t you know I’m a huge fan?”

  *

  I CROSS MY arms and don’t say anything as my recently flash-fried acquaintance struggles back to his feet and continues with the introductions.

  “My name is Helix, dude. I thought you be totally boned to know I was emulating your powers,” he says.

  “Leave a comment on my website,” says me.

  I start to turn away and Helix lurches forward, grabbing me by the shoulder. I’ve had about as much manhandling as I can handle for the festive season already so I grab the offending paw and give a pretty good twist. Helix is still taking a few lungfuls of not-quite-Christmas air when I sweep my boot behind his knees and he goes down on his keister.

  “If you touch me again, pal, I am going to do to you what the Brits did to William Wallace.”

  The guy looks up with puppy dog eyes and gingerly makes to stand.

  “I don’t understand. I’m, like, your biggest fan.”

  “For one, that’s technically not true,” I reply. “There’s a lady in Wichita I paid good money to burn the photographs that prove it. Second, if you were a big fan, I’m sure we would’ve met before now, especially if you can do what you say you can.”

  “I’m a, what they call a, power emulator,” Helix says like the news was a bit of a bummer even to him. “I was stuck copying the powers of Mister Magnetic until I, like, learnt how to unlock them.”

  “You’re from . . . Kansas?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Commiserations. Look, it’s a pretty simple hint, but given your performance today I think it’s still worthwhile. If you want to make nice with people, you should probably avoid electrocuting them, ‘K?”

  I nod, start to turn away, and then that stoner-slacker voice starts again.

  “You can take it okay though, can’t you, Zephyr?”

  “It’s not about whether I can take it or not, pal,” I tell him. “Folks like us, we take enough knocks just doing the whole hero thing without our freaking fans using powers on us, right?”

  “I thought it’d be like the highest form of flattery.”

  “No, that’s imitation, which I guess you’ve got down pat. There’s nothing flattering about nearly being killed.”

  Helix nods. “Well, okay.” He nods his head, bummed again. “Great to finally meet you, anyway.”

  “Yeah, that was really fantastic, kid. Let’s try not to do this again, OK?”

  I walk off a bit because that’s what I do when I’m trying to gather my shit and get ready to fly again. I’ve barely cleared my right nostril before another blue flash lights the scene and I feel energy coursing through my system.

  Stupidly for Helix, the attack isn’t as strong as the first and I’m sufficiently depleted by my own response that the new blast is like a drink of cool water to a thirsty man. I almost entirely store the current away in my myelin-sheathed reserves. My utter disbelief, I am less able to contain.

  “What the fuck did you do that for?”

  Helix has the biggest shit-eating grin on his face. For a moment I think maybe he knows more than I do. Maybe this is part of a far more elaborate plan. He may just be the point man in a deliberately diffuse ambush. But no. He watches as a fat blue spark leaps from one of his hands to the other and I know his eyebrows are wiggling beneath the mask.

  “Aw, come on, man,” he replies. “I can see through that routine. Don’t you know all the best team-ups start with the heroes slugging it out?”

  As I grasp the sheer idiocy of his proposal, all the adrenaline seeps from my body and my arms drop by my sides and I simply eye him, standing there like a ten-dollar hooker hoping to get a date. My hands curl into fists.

  “We’re not teaming up,” I say. “Now get the hell out of here before I make you dead.”

  *

  THE KID WON’T take a hint. Still with that grin emblazoned across his face in what I am fast appreciating might be his trademark, he sizzles the air as he launches at me with fists incandescent with energy. Still thinking about how I’d like to be winging my way out of here, I pause, crouch, and fairly leisurely leap over him as he hurtles by, collecting the front of the bakery and managing to take a little wall in the process as well as the glass shopfront.

  Alarms are like the background music to this business. Idiot Boy hurls two globs of electrified plasma my way and I easily dodge the lazy attacks. In reply, I test him with little better than a love tap, a Taser tag to the chest that sees his eyes roll up into his head as he staggers backwards like a clockwork automaton misfiring. However – and as I suspected – given his powers at least currently work like mine, receiving the same juice back only seems to power his resolve. He claps his hands together and unleashes a big dose, shattering the windscreens of several parked vehicles as I dive out of the way and roll hard enough over the footpath that I crack slabs.

  “Hey, you fuckin’ menace,” I bawl from behind a parked Impala. “You’ve got a funny way of getting acquainted, but if we’re gonna do this thing, you gotta realize two electricity types zapping each other is a slow fuckin’ way to finish.”

  Walking like a drunk, Helix steps down from the shopfront and wipes a gloved hand across his chin.

  “What would you suggest? Something like this?”

  He scoops up a Honda sedan and throws it like the cheap import it is. Again, I make like a turtle, retracting behind the parked scenery and allowing the missile to carom off the brick wall behind and then rebound from another parked car. As he’s recovering from the throw, I rush Helix, pouring on the speed to improve my force of impact and managing to get us both airborne, smashing through the upper-level brick façade of the bakery and skittering across the tin roof dislodging air-conditioning units and insulation hatchways left, right and center.

  Helix gets in a couple of good shots to my jaw before I snag his forearm between my elbow and my other arm, a judo move I learnt from Hawkwind back in the early days of my training. And this allows me to lever pressure on the exposed limb until the Boy Wonder starts sweating like a pervert in a pet shop.

  “Give it up,” I grunt.

  “No, it’s OK,” Helix manages in reply. “Go ahead. Break it.”

  “Are you nuts?”

  Perhaps it’s my surprise that gets the better of me – otherwise I’m just a soft touch – because suddenly Helix elbows me in the face and wriggles free, grabs me by the foot (of all t
he fucking things) while I am still astounded, and then he tosses me off the edge of the building and into the locked parking lot down the side.

  I crunch through the soft top of a sporty convertible with rusting plates, kick my way free, and roll into the dirt just in time to see Helix leap from the roof doing scissor motions with his feet headed my way. It is some kind of chop-shop we have floundered into and I figure it’s better to make a mess of a few wrecks than the ordinary cars parked out on the street. Quick as I am able to, I sink my fingers into the grille of an abandoned Buick and make like Yogi Berra. The vehicle produces a surprisingly satisfying noise as it collects my foolish assailant and sends him flying God-knows-where.

  It’s over. I toss down the automobile cadaver and clap dust and engine grime from my hands. Before the idiot can come back, I do the crouch thing and get the hell away.

  Zephyr 4.16 New-Fangled Zombies

  MY MIND IS ticking over with thoughts of Tessa, her desperate tone replaying endlessly in my thoughts as I burn air over the Hudson. The sky around the bridge to Queens aka Lincoln is alive with cranes and choppers as the city makes good on its pledge to rebuild the Hell Gate Bridge, destroyed so recently. I make a note to self that I should really pay a courtesy visit to my mate Nigel, the troll who some errant sorcerer trapped there in the late 1800s, but the alarum surrounding Tessa really pushes such niceties from my mind much sooner than they should. Or maybe that’s exactly how things should be, a doting dad and all that.

  I am moving fast. I know this route, having travelled it hundreds of times in my adolescence and when I was first starting out. I had a hole-in-the-wall behind the community theatre on 8th when I was seventeen; used to meet Beth there for long hard bump-and-grind sessions as well as manning the amateur radio system a geek friend of mine cobbled together, believing my bullshit about ham radio enthusiasm. The theatre is gone now, bought up by some multi-denominational church and turned into aged care units, the façade still intact. The bulk of the building remains, reassuring from the air, and I use it to navigate without slowing to my parents’ place, descending like a miniature tornado into the backyard without the usual care and attention paid to the costume.