“I care nothing for your accolades. I do not want your adoration. I am here to make this world a better place. To cleanse it, if necessary, in fire. I have started with this murderer,” he said, gesturing to the puddle of flesh behind him. “And I shall continue with—”
“He wasn’t a murderer,” said Sam, much to his own surprise.
Savior craned his neck and looked back over his shoulder. He was the same height as Sam, but Sam suddenly felt even smaller and more insignificant than usual.
“I’m sorry?”
Sam’s throat was dry from the heat and the terror that was now flooding through his body. He swallowed a couple of times before he was able to reply. “He didn’t kill anyone. The Beef Chief. It was… It was a mistake.”
“A ‘mistake’?”
Sam nodded. “Yeah. I mean, not a mistake exactly, but… It wasn’t him. He wasn’t a killer.”
“Oh.”
Savior’s eyes went to the puddle for a moment, then flicked back to Sam. It was hard to make them out in the shadows of his mask, but the whites seemed yellow and bloodshot, while the pupils were ringed with red.
“But a criminal, yes?” Savior gestured around them at the wrecked cars, toppled truck, and ruined storefronts. “He was responsible for this?”
“Uh, well, I mean… Kind of,” said Sam. “But, I mean, I suppose it wasn’t just him.”
Savior turned. Slowly. Ominously. “Then who else was responsible?” he asked.
The question sounded innocent enough, and Sam almost fell for it. He caught himself just before the, “Us,” could leave his lips, and turned it into an, “Uh…” instead. He shrugged. “I, uh, I guess it was just him.”
The dragon-like helmet dipped in a nod. “As I thought,” he intoned, before turning back to the crowd. “The Justice Platoon were not your protectors,” he continued. “They were your exploiters. And yet, they were also your court jesters, performing the same tricks in the same brightly-colored costumes for your entertainment, while ignoring the death and destruction they left in their wake.”
He took a step toward the crowd, and the heat made the front row recoil. “This ends now,” he announced. “There will be more death, yes. More destruction. But those deaths shall be the right ones. The innocents have suffered long enough. It is the guilty who shall now pay the price. This world—all of you—are under my protection. Embrace that. Go about your lives, and you shall be unharmed.”
His voice deepened into a growl. “Defy me. Challenge me. And you shall be destroyed, just like your Justice Platoon.”
“Screw you!” bellowed a voice from the crowd. A bottle was launched from somewhere. It spun, end over end, as it sailed through the air toward Savior. He watched it approach, then continued to watch as the heat warped the glass and the whole thing splatted to the ground in front of him.
There was silence for a while then. Sam looked to the others, but they were both fixated on Savior and didn’t notice. Randy still had his fists raised but seemed to be in no rush to run in swinging.
Savior sighed, and the temperature raised a full degree. “Very well,” he said, his yellow eyes turning on the audience. “I see a demonstration is in order.”
He cricked his neck, flexed all his blackened fingers, then shrugged.
“Let us begin.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Savior cast his gaze across his audience. Despite the obvious danger, and the best efforts of the cops at either end of the street, the crowd had filled out during Savior’s speech, and there were now a hundred people gathered there to watch, plus a couple of news crews who’d be widening the reach to millions more.
His head panned from left to right and back again, searching for one specific face in the crowd. After a few seconds of this, he stopped.
“Garry Forshaw,” he said.
The crowd parted, just a little, as it turned in on itself to look at a man in a checked shirt and denim jeans. His dark hair was graying a little, and he rocked an impressive mustache that was almost all the way white.
“Uh, yeah?” he said.
“Repeated public intoxication. Multiple counts of public urination,” Savior said. “Your police force may not be aware of your criminal actions, but I am. I know what you’ve done. I know what you’ve all done.”
Garry shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know what you’re—”
The flames seemed to consume him from the inside out, leaping from his mouth as he screamed, before burning out through his chest. The crowd scattered, stampeding in panic as he thrashed around in agony.
And then, he was gone. In his place was nothing but a pile of black ash, a half-melted shoe, and a smell that no one present would ever forget.
“Penny Willow,” Savior continued. “Disturbing the peace.”
A blond-haired woman ignited and the crowd changed direction like a shoal of fish in a shark attack.
“Christina Schneider. Trespassing.”
“No, please, n—”
Another woman became a pillar of fire. She zig-zagged frantically for a few seconds, her burning flesh igniting the clothing of those around her.
Sam gaped in horror at the chaos, his whole body rigid with fear. It was Anna’s voice that finally snapped him out of it.
“Sam! Sam! Do something!”
“Wha—?” Sam blinked. “I don’t… I can’t…”
Randy roared as he raced at Savior, but a cushion of blisteringly hot air kept him at bay.
“OK, you asked for this,” Randy growled. He whipped his arms around in what was presumably meant to be a significant way, then pressed his fingers to his temples. “Come to me, my butterfly brethren!”
He thrust a hand dramatically in Savior’s direction, and waited.
And waited.
Another member of the rapidly dispersing crowd erupted in flames.
Randy watched the skies. “Any minute now,” he growled.
“Sam! Stop him!” Anna begged, as two of the burning figures became ash piles.
The shape in Sam’s head shifted, as if waking from a deep slumber. Sam clenched his fists and concentrated on it, concentrated harder than he’d ever done before as, all around him, people burned.
Mary-Ellen Unan, tax evasion.
Dave DeCamp, petty larceny.
Claire Oxborough. Josh Kolakowski. Hayden Ward.
All burning. All dead.
“Battle Mode!” Sam cried, and his suit’s armor activated.
Lowering his head to protect the exposed part of his face, he charged at Savior. The intensity of the heat drained the last of the suit’s power almost immediately, and Sam howled in pain as the armor retracted and the costume’s punishment-absorbing functionality shut down.
The heat tore at every part of him at once, turning his legs to jelly and his head to mush. The agony of it swelled inside him like a balloon getting ready to burst. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t think. He felt the suit ignite, the now dormant material unable to resist the heat.
The shape in his head danced in the fire and the chaos, and Sam felt power surge through him as he—
Something heavy and fast-moving slammed into him, launching him backward out of the heat cloud. Sam hit the ground hard, rolled for several feet in a deeply undignified way, then slid to a stop against the wreckage of a car.
His eyes stung. His lungs ached. Most of the rest of him hurt, too, in fact, but at least he was no longer on fire. That was something. He blinked through the tears to find a scarred face staring down at him, brow furrowed in concern.
“Sam. Are you OK?” asked Kapitän Nazi. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
Sam groaned and tried to shove the Kapitän away, but his arms were too heavy to manage more than a shrug.
“Stay here. All of you, stay here,” Nazi said, shooting Anna and Randy warning looks. “If you can get anyone to safety, do it. But leave this guy to me.”
“Uh, OK,” said Anna. “But be careful.”<
br />
Either she teleported to Sam’s side, or he passed out for a moment, because suddenly she was there beside him, an arm around his shoulder, helping him to sit up. Randy stood a few feet away, eyes turned to the sky.
“Come on,” he muttered. “Where are they?”
Kapitän Nazi pointed to the wreckage of the car Sam was propped against. “Mind if I take this?”
“Take what? The car?” said Anna. “Uh, no. Help yourself.”
“Thanks.”
Nazi ran to the front of the car, hooked his arms underneath it, and raised it a few feet off the ground. There were no war cries or witty quips, just a grunt of effort as he flipped the vehicle. It somersaulted through the air toward Savior, flipping end over end.
“Come on,” Nazi muttered, watching its flight. “Come on.”
Without turning, Savior reached a hand out behind him. A thin beam of concentrated fire sliced through the flying vehicle, cleaving it neatly in two down the middle. A cloud of heat parted the two halves, and they crashed to the ground on either side of him with a couple of disappointing clanks.
Only then, once the car halves had stopped moving, did Savior turn. He regarded the Kapitän quizzically for a moment, before asking, “And you are?”
“You want to deal with criminals?” Nazi asked. He jabbed a thumb into his own chest. “Deal with me. Not these people.”
Savior held his gaze. Something about the shape of his eyes suggested he smiled beneath his mask.
“Les Fulbrook,” he announced. “Littering.”
A man in the scattering crowd screamed as he became a column of flame. He made it just a few feet before his legs gave way and he hit the ground as charcoal and ash.
Roaring, Kapitän Nazi raced at the murderer, gritting his teeth and throwing up a hand to shield himself from the heat.
A bolt of fire erupted from Savior’s hand, but Nazi lurched to the left, narrowly dodging it.
Nazi pushed on, ignoring the heat and the pain. His t-shirt blackened, then disintegrated, the ashes fluttering away on the heat-breeze.
Another blast hurtled toward him. He zig-zagged, avoiding it and the one that immediately followed. His legs were still powering him on, but it was like moving through molasses now, every step requiring more and more effort.
“Well, well. You are a persistent one, aren’t you?” Savior said.
He raised a hand to a news crew—a journalist and a cameraman—who’d stood their ground, capturing events for the world to see.
“Let’s see where your priorities lie,” Savior said.
He fired.
Kapitän Nazi jumped.
Sam had been slowly recovering and was watching when Kapitän Nazi threw himself in front of the reporters. He was watching when the former supervillain stood his ground, shielding them.
Watching as the blast struck him in the stomach, and as the agony contorted his face.
Nazi landed heavily on the asphalt and slid several feet to a stop. He was moving, but not in a way that suggested he was going to continue the fight any time soon.
Savior gave a little contented nod, then spent a few moments watching the last few of the crowd’s stragglers flee. Only the news crew he had just been targeting remained. He turned to the camera and stared straight down the lens.
“Demonstration complete,” he announced. “Innocent citizens of planet Earth, rest easy. Your Savior is here. Crime—and those who commit it—will soon be a thing of the past.”
There was a faint whooshing noise as he rose into the air on a shimmering column of heat. He looked down at Sam, Anna, and Randy, and there was that suggestion of a smile in his eyes again. “Nice outfits, guys,” he said, and then he continued climbing until he was lost in a bank of gray cloud.
“Nazi’s down,” said Anna. “Sam, you OK?”
Sam nodded. “Go. Randy, help me up.”
Randy, who had been watching the sky, turned to him. “Why can’t you help yourself up?”
“Because the evil fire guy almost killed me,” Sam wheezed.
“Oh. Yeah. Makes sense,” said Randy, holding out a hand. Sam took it, and between them they managed to wrestle him up onto his feet.
Limping, Sam made his way over to where Anna was kneeling beside Kapitän Nazi. His face was twisted up in pain, both hands jammed over a nauseatingly horrible wound in his stomach. “How is he?”
“Not great,” said Anna. “I mean, I’m no doctor, but…” She indicated the blackened, bloodied hole in his stomach. “That can’t be good, can it?”
Nazi lifted a hand away from the wound for a moment and beckoned for Sam to come closer. Sam resisted at first, but a glare from Anna and a general feeling of weakness in his legs quickly brought him down to Nazi’s level.
“I lied,” the Kapitän wheezed. As he spoke, something burbled inside him. “I remember all of it. All of those things I did. And I am sorry, Sam. I am so… so very sorry.”
Sirens wailed in the distance. Sam gave a shake of his head. “It’s… Let’s not worry about it for now, OK? We’ll get you fixed up. You’re going to be OK.”
“I doubt that, Sam,” said Randy. “He’s got a big hole in his guts.”
“Randy, please.”
“And his legs are on fire.”
Anna jumped into action. “Oh, shit!”
A frantic few seconds passed as she slapped out the pockets of flame that had ignited near the bottom of Kapitän Nazi’s jeans.
Sam looked down as something was pressed into his hands. It was a slim leather notebook.
“My burden,” Nazi whispered, the effort of it etching itself across his face. His accent was becoming less American and more like his native German. “Please… take it for me. Put it… vhere it… belongs.”
“Where it belongs? Where does it belong?” asked Sam.
“I leave you the book, but its content I take vith me,” said Nazi, summoning his strength enough to strain his way through the whole sentence in one go. “Its burden follows me now.”
“Jesus. Can we get an ambulance over here?” Anna yelled. “Randy, come help me find a damn paramedic.”
They ran off, just as a series of wet coughs wracked Nazi’s body. Unsure of what to do, Sam placed his hands on the Kapitän’s shoulders, holding him down.
He should’ve been enjoying this. After everything the bastard did to him, after everything he put him through, Sam should be savoring every moment of his pain.
And yet…
“You saved those people,” Sam told him. “You… you saved me.”
Kapitän Nazi said nothing. His eyes swum vaguely as he gazed past Sam at the sky above. Sam looked around, but there was no sign of the ambulance yet. He drew in a deep breath, building up to saying something he never thought he’d say.
“I get it. It wasn’t you,” he said. “Back then, you weren’t in your right mind. This… this is you.”
Nazi’s eyes focused a little. Pain whispered from his lips as he tilted his head to look at Sam.
“You saved those people, and you saved me, and… I guess…” Sam steeled himself. “I forgive you.”
Kapitän Nazi’s eyes widened in surprise. He gasped, but Sam couldn’t tell if it was through surprise or pain. A tear cut through the ash marks on his face, rolling sideways across his temple, then plopping onto the black soot that covered the ground.
“Thank you,” the Kapitän mumbled. “I think… Kapitän Nazi finally dies today.”
Sam shook his head. “He died a long time ago.”
Nazi managed to contort his mouth into something like a smile, and then his chest stopped heaving and his eyes became pebbles of glass.
“Nazi?” said Sam. He waited for a response, then gave him a shake. “Kapitän?”
Sam’s throat felt dry. He forced the word out.
“John?”
But John was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Four
It was three hours later—after the government agents had taken John’s body awa
y, and the black sedans had driven Sam and the others back to the underground base—when Sam found himself in Kapitän Nazi’s room.
He’d peeled himself out of the remains of the suit and gotten changed into his training shorts and t-shirt. He hadn’t seen Chuck yet, and thinking about doing so made his hands shake, so he tried not to. Now wasn’t the time. There were more important matters to attend to.
First, the chalkboard. Sam found a chunk of chalk balancing on a ridge at the bottom of the board, and blew some of the loose dust off its tip.
He marked two lines beside each other, one for the cameraman, one for the journalist. The chalk squeaked lightly on the board’s surface, two tiny screams of despair.
With those two marked off, he marked a line for himself, added another for Anna, then drew a diagonal through them all representing Randy. Sam didn’t know for sure if John had saved all three of them from some grisly fate, but he was confident enough to mark them up.
He studied the board for a while, wondering who all the people marked on it were, and if they even knew that their lives had been saved, let alone by whom. He wondered how they’d feel if they knew. He wondered how he felt about it himself.
Returning the chalk to its slot, Sam walked to the bookcases and their countless notebooks. The notebook containing Nazi’s list of names was in Sam’s hand. He held it by the bottom edge, waving it up and down a little as he looked for somewhere to sit it. Kapitän Nazi had asked him to put it ‘where it belongs,’ but Sam had no idea where he was referring to. There was no space left in any of the bookcases, but Sam discovered that if he lay the smaller book flat on its back, he could slide it in on top of the other volumes.
He didn’t know if this was what Nazi had meant, or if it qualified as where the list of names belonged, but it was close enough, he reckoned.
It was twenty-three minutes later when Sam threw the punch. It connected cleanly with Chuck’s jaw and did quite a staggering amount of damage.
Unfortunately, almost all of that damage was to Sam’s hand.
“Ow. Fuck!” Sam hissed, shoving his bruised fingers under the opposite armpit and trapping them there.
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