Blaze of Glory

by Sheryl Nantus

  Sure enough the enraptured faces looked towards me with a sense of satisfaction and glee that I would have loved to bottle and sell. Even the ones in the water seemed content as they slowly climbed onto the waiting boats, lessening the strain on the boat.

  It was easy for me to right the faux paddleboat and settle it back onto the water. “Everyone, please clear the upper decks. That’s why it’s tipping over.”

  Obediently they climbed down, men helping women, and the children carefully lifted and carried down to waiting mothers’ arms, clutching stuffed animals and small knapsacks.

  “May, what did you do?” I croaked.

  “I just made everyone calm down.” Her words held an air of surprise. “Didn’t think it’d work so good, though.”

  “It worked just fine.” I glanced up, spotting the quartet watching me from the neon yellow bridge. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  A little boy, no more than five, waved at me from the deck of a Coast Guard boat. I waved back before moving off, glancing behind me to make sure the boat was at least half-assed balanced now. The evacuation continued around us, the ferries persisting in their race down the river. God bless Pittsburghers, takes a lot to freak them out.

  I landed beside the team, breathless from the experience. Hunter gave me a tight hug while Limox scowled from the sidelines.

  “Nice landing,” he growled. I looked down at the melted handprints at his feet and couldn’t help smiling. “Not quite ready for prime-time, I guess.”

  My mind was still spinning from actually doing something heroic.

  “Next time turn your bloody hands off when I ask you to,” I replied sweetly, noting Peter’s wide grin. “Nice touch with the fish, Peter, and the mass hug, May. Really came in handy there.”

  “Well, I thought it’d help.” She patted Peter on the shoulder. “Well done!”

  “Thanks.” He kept smiling. “Nice to do something positive, you know? Sending dogs in to bite guys gets old.” The words trailed off as the dark shadow moved closer.

  “Yeah. That was the warm-up, folks. Now it’s the main event.” I pointed at the ship, now easily within flying distance. “Okay, here’s the first stage. I’m going to take you up with me…” a tug on Meltdown’s shoulders, “…and drop you off on that thing. I want you to try and melt through the outer skin, if you can keep on going until you hit something vital, if you can’t, I’ll jet you back to dry land. Peter, can you get us some avian assistance?”

  “The local birds are reporting a single warrior exiting the ship.” He stared over my shoulder, his gaze unfocused. “He’s not doing anything, just hovering there. Guess he’s waiting for us to make the first move.”

  “Good. Keep on the link, I may need you to have them do some diversionary stuff. May, Hunter—stay here. May, if you can toss some of that soothing mojo around it may help make the evacuation go smoother. I’m still not happy with so many civilians in the battle area.” I grabbed Limox under his arms, and we moved towards the ship, gaining altitude as quickly as I could. “Now, let’s…”

  A steel beam shot by us, missing us by about a hundred feet, and headed directly for the ship. Now that may seem like a lot of spare air at first glance, but trust me, that’s way too close for comfort when dealing with a twenty-foot long metal bar.

  “What the fuck?” Limox cursed as he thrashed around in my arms.

  “Stop it or I’ll drop you on your head,” I roared, jerking us to one side as I reacted to the attack. “It’s not aimed at us; it’s headed for the ship.”

  We watched as the beam flew towards the alien craft, the unerring arc carrying it directly over and then down at the center of the fat green ship.

  The steel needle jabbed at the side of the ship and then slid off with a metallic scream, skidding down and falling back towards the ground.

  “Some sort of force field,” Limox muttered. “Something that’s not going to let you through. Not going to be able to burn through that.”

  I saw it when I squinted, the faintest wobbling air around the avocado and the space disrupted ever so slightly. “Change of plans.” I dove towards the ground so quickly that I swear I heard my ears pop. “We’re going to have to take on the fellow first and then the ship. Peter, keep your avian friends seeking for some sort of weakness on that ship—there has to be something somewhere that’ll let us in. An open hatch, anything. I don’t care how big it is. The three of you head for where that slab came from.”

  “Roger.” Hunter’s calm voice sent a shiver down my spine. He sounded confident, self-assured. Just like Mike.

  “Where are we going?” Limox asked. I pointed towards the city, following the arc of the steel beam.

  “Maybe I’m crazy but I’m figuring that a super tossed that thing at the ship. And hopefully he’ll still be there.”

  Limox nodded, almost breaking my nose as we swooped down between deserted office buildings to the approximate location. “Sure can’t hurt to look.”

  Suddenly a girder came into view, barreling towards us at way too close an angle for me to get out of the way in time.

  “Hold on!” Limox thrust his hands out in front of him as I twisted to one side. The steel bar rocketed right at our heads.

  Meltdown’s fingers scored along the heavy metal, digging into the steel as it clipped my left ear and spun away without doing more damage to us. I dropped us to the vertical and then to the ground much faster than I had planned, resulting in a rather disorganized and slightly embarrassing heap of supers atop each other in the middle of the street.

  As I struggled to my feet I put one hand to my ear, coming away with only a trickle of blood from the wound. Limox lay on the ground gasping for air.

  “Good catch.” I turned towards the unfamiliar voice. Static started at the back of my mind as May dashed around a corner of the deserted street, huffing with every step.

  “Slammer?” Limox scrambled to his feet and brushed dirt from his turtleneck sweater. “Is that you?”

  “Good grief, you hanging with this crowd?” The deep rolling voice came from a man who stood at least six feet tall, his muscle T-shirt giving a great display of his well-toned arms. His bald head matched Limox’s, but his skin was darker, tanned and muscular from hard manual labor. Denim coveralls covered the rest of his middle-aged frame, his hands stuck in the deep pockets.

  The most striking thing about him was the way his arms glistened. Not with sweat but from a thousand small shining spots over his arms and face, even over his head. As I slowly approached him, I saw they were a silvery white and in no regular pattern.

  “Stephen Nyre.” He extended a large meaty hand that dwarfed mine. “Slammer. You must be Surf.”

  Limox chuckled, moving to stand beside me. “You’re lucky you never had to face Slammer. He’d have bumped you on your ass and then some.”

  “Not likely.” Stephen laughed, a deep roar that would have knocked me off my feet if I hadn’t braced myself. Putting his two meaty hands together, he popped his knuckles in a rapid-fire sequence that had me wincing. “Wouldn’t have been a fair fight.” His attention turned to Limox. “So what the fuck are you doing here?”

  “Same as you.” He jerked a thumb upwards. “Although your tosses aren’t doing much. Bouncing off a shield of some sort.”

  “Damn.” The large man sighed. “I was hoping…” He grinned as Peter, Hunter and May caught up with us. “So, you guys ready to fight?”

  “That’s what we came here for.” Peter smiled. “You ready to do more than just chuck steel?”

  Stephen’s face split into a wide smile. “Oh, I like you.”

  Suddenly all of our links went live, the chatter almost overwhelming. I recognized some voices, some supers I had worked with in the past. Hydro, JamJam…

  “Can you fly?” I snapped at the large man. He shook his head.

  “Not my gig.” He waggled his hand in the air. “And I get airsick, so don’t even think about it.”

  “Okay. Look, you
and Meltdown take May and try to get her close enough to see if she can fry the alien warrior’s mind, scramble his thoughts. Might as well give that a shot. Peter, send in the troops, anyone and anything you can think of.” I lifted off the ground slowly, hovering just a few feet above the street. “I’m going to charge up and see what a good blast gets me.”

  Slammer looked at the man beside him. “She’s a feisty one, isn’t she?”

  Limox grinned. “You always said you like a woman who takes charge.”

  The giant laughed, slapping the back of the smaller super. “So true. May, is it? May, let’s get you someplace so that you can smack this guy around.” He beamed at the senior with a wide smile that she returned in kind. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, of course.”

  Leaving them to their introductions, I rose above the nearest building, hoping to get a good view of the situation. In my ear I could hear the voices of different supers, some shouting curses, some crying, many of them falling silent after a last garbled gasp. No one tried to organize them, no one asked for help—total panic. My mouth opened to say something, anything on the link. What could I say? What could I offer?

  Then I spotted him.

  The same bastard from New York City. The same man who had murdered Mike.

  He hovered a few hundred feet above what could have once been a circular fountain placed at the intersection of the three rivers. He wore the same light blue shirt and black pants, the same bored look as he raised his hand to deflect an energy blast coming from someone on the ground, returning it to the sender with a resounding blast that was at least double what had been launched.

  “Stop it,” I screamed, knowing the links would pick it up. “We can’t just lob crap at this guy one at a time. We need a coordinated attack.” Taking a deep breath, I continued. “Stop throwing your lives away and think for a second. Let’s take this bastard on together. Together.” I stored up as much of a charge in my gloves as I could as I spoke. In the back of my mind all I could think about was NYC and that my best shot hadn’t even scratched the bastard’s chin. “This is Surf, I worked with Metal Mike. Sound off.”

  A burst of yelling snapped back in my ear, words and names and titles, many of them unknown to me. Either there had been a lot of names left out of my briefings, or many of them had reverted to their personal names in their newfound freedom. Shaking my head at the confusion, I stared at the alien as he easily deflected another plasma blast back to the top of a nearby building, ripping the top off like a piece of torn paper. The attacker disappeared in a bloody smear of asphalt and brick.

  “May! May!” I fired off my best blast at the man, hoping to draw his attention away from any other supers nearby. “Are you anywhere near ready?”

  “You should be hearing some background noise.” Her sharp, crisp voice startled me. This was who Hunter had been working for and with for the past few years, the professional. “And for the rest of you, if you’re not going to help, then shut the hell up and get out of our way.”

  I chuckled at hearing the swear word, or what would have passed for a swear word in her generation, as I began to recharge, moving between the buildings so as not to give this guy a clear shot at me. I spotted a few other supers dodging in and out of alleyways, all of them grounded. There hadn’t been too many who could fly unassisted, and I was pretty sure that most of them had fallen in NYC.

  The hairs on the back of my head began to tingle, signaling that May was about to do her mojo. “Peter, what’s happening with you?” I shouted.

  “Look below you.” The calm voice was an island in the middle of the insanity around us as yet another energy blast landed not too far from me, taking out a small shop.

  I looked down at what could only be described as a menagerie of animals, both domestic and wild, probably from the zoo. Lions, tigers and bears, indeed. Peter sat proudly atop an elephant that raised his trunk and roared into the sky as the animals spread out from each side. Around him an ever-widening circle of birds spiraled out. “May not be able to hurt him, but we’ll make him uncomfortable.”

  “Ah…love it. Now let’s see if I can bring this guy to ground for your bigger friends to take care of him.” I rose above the top floor of the building to take another shot.

  Except that I had somehow lost sight of the alien. Instead of the bastard, ahead of me all I saw was empty air.

  “Jo!” May’s scream sent me spinning around.

  To come face-to-face with the invader hovering only a few feet away from me, a strange smile on his face.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “I’ve seen you before.” The voice was almost seductive in its intensity and emotion. “You were at the other city.”

  The rising hum in my brain started to overwhelm me as I held my breath, unable to respond. The words were low and gravelly, with a hint of something that might have been pride.

  “Right. And now I’m here.” My heart was hammering so loudly I thought briefly about it exploding and taking us both out in a supernova blast.

  “You fight well.” He tilted his head to one side. “Your friends fight well.”

  A shadow appeared over us, descending on the strange man in a flurry of feathers and claws. The small birds pecked at his flailing arms, the larger crows and hawks digging deep into the now-bloodied shirt.

  “Away!” The roar was matched by a shock wave that sent the birds falling away in a furious retreat. He returned his attention to me, his face strangely untouched by the aerial assault.

  Out of the corner of my eye I spotted something large and fast flying at us. Lifting my gloves, I pointed them at the man.

  One eyebrow rose. “You can’t hurt me with those.”

  “No, but it’ll get me out of the way.” A short blast sent me flying in the opposite direction away from the alien as the large piece of concrete slammed into him. Broken cement and rebar fell away and back to the ground.

  “Thanks, whoever.” I ducked behind an office tower and pressed my back to the glass windows as I pulled another charge from the electromagnetic waves around me.

  “No problem, sweetie.” Slammer’s voice was tinged with a bit of laughter. “Don’t want that pretty little face banged up.”

  “Bet you say that to all the girls.” A burst of gunfire from around the corner made me flinch. Civilians. “Don’t guess we got lucky and you took the bastard out?”

  “Nah.” The grumpy response made me smile. “Although he does look righteously pissed.”

  “I’m heartbroken.” Ducking out from my hiding place, I headed back to where the alien had been. “Anyone got a visual on this joker?”

  “How about right here?” The reply came with a resounding punch to the side of my head, sending me spiraling towards the ground without any hope of controlling my descent.

  “Mike!” I screamed, the world whirling around me as I braced for impact, a small part of my mind calmly calculating the damage a human body would take smashing into the ground. The other small part noted that calling for my dead partner wasn’t such a good idea since he was unlikely to rise up from the ashes of New York City and save me. The last small part screamed at the other two to shut the fuck up and save myself. Seems I was doing a lot of that lately.

  “Will I do?” A strong set of arms grabbed and lowered me to the cool street surface. Stephen’s face hovered over mine. “He seems to like you.”

  “Yeah, well the feeling’s not mutual.” Sitting up quickly, I stared up at the alien who hovered over us, a blank stare on his face as he watched. “May, can you slam him yet?” I put my hand to the side of my head. It came back covered in blood. Great. At the least a minor concussion and at the most I was running on empty.

  “Right now. Hold on to something.” Hunter’s voice held a warning tone I hadn’t heard before, and I mentally steeled myself for the onslaught.

  The burning in the back of my mind began to blaze into a full-fledged fire, the ache like an itch I had no hope of scratching.

  Slammer pu
t his hands over his ears, the shiny streaks on his skin reflecting the light like a thousand diamonds. “That’s some nasty shit,” he mouthed, not wanting to say the words out loud. Either he already knew May’s dislike of profanity, or he didn’t want to send it out on an open channel.

  “Don’t I know it.” Shaking my head cut a bit of the static out, but it still felt like I had a fogbank the size of Newfoundland between my ears. Powering back up, I rose above the street about a foot, smiling at Slammer. “Got any other hidden talents I need to know about?”

  He grinned, lifting one hand towards me. “Did I mention my skin’s as hard as steel?”

  “No shit?” This time I didn’t care if May heard me.

  “No shit.” Slammer wriggled his fingers. “You any good at baseball, Canuck? I can jump but if you give me some speed, I’ll slap you a home run.”

  I looked at the strange man about twenty stories above us, who was just staring down at the ground. Abruptly he clapped both hands to his ears, arching back as he screamed into the sky.

  Pay dirt.

  “Crank it, May.” I grabbed Stephen’s hand hard, wrapping my fingers as far as I could around his huge palm, his meaty fingers wrapping around mine with room to spare. “Ready to fly?”

  Without waiting for his answer I zipped into the air, hauling him behind me. The second we reached the same altitude as the confused alien, I spun around twice then launched Stephen at the invader with as much velocity as I could manage.

  “Peter, Limox—get ready to give me backup.” Yanking out all the stops, I launched another mega-charge out of my gloves, sending it barely ahead of the super hurtling towards the motionless man. The blast slammed into the bemused alien the same split-second as Slammer’s fists did, right between the eyes.

  The two men fell from the sky like a rock. Slammer spun around and around, roaring with laughter. He landed on his feet, the impact craters sending small shock waves along the street, and then stood up with a wide grin.