I take hold of the kid. “We really need to have a little talk about right and wrong. Like, suppose a runaway train is heading toward five people tied to the track, but you can flip a switch that’ll send the train down a different track where only one person is tied up. Do you flip the switch, killing one person, or do you do nothing and let five people die?”
He can’t answer. He doesn’t get it. Or maybe he’s frozen with fear. I think about taking him back to S.H.I.E.L.D., but I don’t want him in the same building with Mr. Snuffles.
If I put him down to untie Mom and Dad, he’ll book, so I carry him toward the house. “You got an aunt or a babysitter? Someone still alive in the neighborhood I can call?”
Nothing.
On the street in front of the house, squealing brakes shatter the suburban illusion of peace. Kid under my arm, I’m doused by flashing white-and-blue lights. A tired man with an honest face runs toward us, panting. The three police officers behind him are armed and in better shape.
Once he’s caught his breath, he asks, “Who’re you?”
“Deadpool. I’m a mercenary, secretly working for S.H.I.E.L.D., and… Oh, damn. Uh…could you promise not to repeat that? And hey, who’re you?”
He flips open his wallet, revealing an ID. “Social Services, responding to a call from the woman who lives at this address.”
The boy shivers and clings to me. “Don’t let them take me, mister! Please!”
“What’re you, kidding?”
I toss him into the man’s arms. The guy’s so out of shape, he almost drops him. Once he lets go of the wallet, he manages to keep the kid from hitting the ground.
“Good luck with him, pal. That is one nutty kid. Well, gotta go. There are a few bags of puppies I’ve got to get back to.”
As I race back into the comforting darkness of the woods and my own unknown destiny, a question haunts me. Should I tell them about the bound-and-gagged parents, or not? After all, what kind of people could raise a kid like that?
CHAPTER 20
IN THIS line of work, you’re always learning something new. Turns out that over time, carrying around three sacks of puppies stinks—in more ways than one. They need a place to run around, eat, and do their business. Someplace large and secure, set up to deal with a plethora of playful puppies and the monsters beginning with G that they might become.
Pretty specific, I know. Like shopping for a mansion that already has a Danger Room.
Then it hits me.
No, I’m not going to make some stupid joke about a truck hitting me. I actually have an idea, one that has my finger jabbing the speed dial.
“Yo-yo-yo! Preston, where’d you say that abandoned Weapon X lab was found?”
“I didn’t. Why?”
“It’s up in Canada, though, right?”
“No…but again, why?”
Fast-forward a bit, and she gives. Soon I’m on a lonely stretch of beach at the eastern end of the north fork of Long Island, doggie bags at my feet, enjoying a view of the Orient Point Lighthouse. Past that, it’s a hop, skip, and a jump to Plum Island, which is probably why Weapon X picked this spot. See, Plum Island is home to the Animal Disease Center. According to conspiracy theorists, it’s also the birthplace of Lyme disease and a host of other tasty biological weapons.
Pretty cagey of the Canadians to hide a secret genetics lab so close to one owned by the U.S. Gives them someone else to blame if something goes wrong, eh? You’d never even notice the sandy dome I’m standing in front of unless you knew where to find it. I’d give you the Google Earth coordinates, but then I’d have to kill you, and I may need you to buy the sequel. The salty ocean breeze regularly sweeps so much sand over it, the entrance looks like one of a hundred dunes on an inhospitable beach.
I type in the access code Preston gave me, and the door hisses. I don’t know why certain doors feel a need to hiss like that. Maybe the air pressure inside is different, or maybe it’s just tired of being a door. Whether it likes it or not, the door opens to a cold, gray metallic inside that could barely sleep two. I’ve been around long enough to know this excuse for a phone booth can’t be the whole lab. Sure enough, once I get myself and the doggies in, the door hisses shut, and the floor starts a-moving down.
It’s an elevator—one that travels so smoothly, there’s no way to tell how fast or how deep it’s going. No Muzak, either. Smooth as silk on ice, it stops. We arrive dead center in a massive space with an open floor plan. Why open? Because study after study shows that evil-worker productivity increases up to 20 percent when everyone can keep an eye on each other.
The place is so tightly designed, you can’t tell where the floor and walls end, and the endless array of uber-tech equipment begins. One object flows right into another: desk-like thing into giant laser-gun thing, laser-gun thing into pod-like storage device—all arranged in a weird forced perspective. Objects appear closer than they are, so it looks like something freaky is about to poke you in the eye no matter which way you turn. And the ceiling’s covered with these glowing bulbous things that could be lamps or alien eyes.
Did I mention the constant power hum?
Ah, Weapon X, you old Canadian dog, you. Brings back memories, and at least these don’t involve middle school. Not that my origin story resembles those of my fellow guys and gals in colorful suits—like one day I’m bitten by a radioactive spider, or find a magical hammer lying around in a cave—but there was one special moment when everything changed.
Already said that my terminal cancer diagnosis made volunteering for an experimental program seem like a good idea. Survival’s always worth a shot, right? Felt that way right up until they started splicing those mutant regenerating genes atop my own. Forget all the sparks, crackles, and dark-energy fields, or the arched-back body with open-mouth scream. The real agony is much more intimate—like being forced into tight jeans four sizes too small, only the jeans are made of razors so sharp they barely exist. The sick, cutting feeling starts in on your skin, then works its way through the muscles and ligaments, finally wringing your internal organs so badly you can tell one from the other by how much it hurts.
From there, it moves into the bone—turtle-slow, because bone’s tough. When it hits the marrow, that pulpy stuff you heard was in there but never really thought about? Surprise! That hurts most of all. And just when you think every one of your billion nerve endings are firing as hard and as fast as they can, well, then it gets worse.
I put down the sacks. “Welcome home, kids!”
“Kids? Smells like a bunch of mongrels crapping themselves to me.”
The voice is as familiar and welcome as worn slippers. Heart in my throat (which could be a poorly healed wound from my last fight), my eyes eagerly zero in on the source. Leaning against what could be either a table lamp or a death ray is a sight for sore eyes: a blind, thin, scowling old woman. Her shock of white hair flows back in short, sharp tufts, like clipped raptor feathers. Rectangular black glasses wrap around her skull like an oversized visor from a Halloween costume. All across her face, wrinkles wrinkle about in a decidedly wrinkly fashion.
“Blind Al! You look exactly the same as the last time I saw you.”
“So do you, Wade. So does everything.”
“You old kidder. You came! You’re here!”
She crosses her arms. “What nonsense are you spewing? Ten minutes ago I’m sipping lemonade on my porch. You show up, grab me, and ’port me here! Now I’m supposed to pretend I came by myself, of my own free will? You want that kind of cooperation, hire a hooker.”
I admit it, gentle reader. I left out the part where I tracked Al down and brought her here. In my defense, I felt it made for a better narrative introduction. Like I said back in Chapter 5, I don’t have many close friends, but Al’s the closest. Doesn’t really matter how or why she got here, does it?
She shakes her finger in my direction—sort of. “Better not be thinking of trying to keep me here. I’ll kill myself, I swear it. If I can,
I’ll take you with me. If not, I’ll haunt you.”
Don’t let the cheery façade fool you. Al, short for Althea, used to be with British Intelligence. While she was stationed in Zaire, I was hired to kill her. Never could color inside in the lines, so I killed everyone else instead. Once I got all Deadpooled, I ran into her again. Long story short, I really needed someone to keep the place tidy and point out what was and wasn’t real, so I decided to keep her around—and, yeah, I pretty much refused to let her go.
Kidnapping, or a complicated-but-loving relationship? You decide.
Kidnapping.
Kidnapping.
I step closer to give her a hug.
She rears up and grabs a mean-looking lever behind her. “One step closer, and I’ll blow us all to kingdom come!”
“Al, Al! What’s a guy got to do to get a little Stockholm Syndrome going? Besides, I think that’s a light switch.”
“You only get Stockholm Syndrome when the hostages mistake a lack of abuse from their captors for kindness. No lack of abuse, no Stockholm Syndrome.” She spits. “As for the light switch…damn.”
I gently pry her hand from the lever. “Oh, who was the real prisoner, you or me?”
“Me.”
Her.
Yeah, her.
Same old gal. I try the lever just to be sure. Yep. Light switch. “I did give you a roof over your head, food, and all the Matlock you could watch.”
Her sneer deepens. “When I finally escaped and made it to a friend’s house, you were there waiting. You nearly tortured him to death in front of his dogs!”
“Nearly. The key word is nearly. So that means you’re good with dogs, right?”
Speaking of which, they’ve been pretty quiet. Funny that they’re not trying to get out. Maybe I should have untied the tops when I set them down.
“No. The only dog I ever fed was that seeing-eye mutt, Deuce, and I hate him more than I hate you.”
I undo the bags. “How is old Deuce?”
Al’s not like me, not so far from the realm of normal human feeling that she’s locked herself off from love. That’s why I kept her around, to ground me.
“How the hell should I know? I left him chained up in your yard years ago.”
Wonder if I still own that yard… Anyway, I know that once she gets a lick from these little big-eyed animals, her heart will melt. “Well, you won’t want to chain up these darlings.”
Like an emo Santa, I pour puppy after puppy out of the sacks. She can’t see them, but I know she hears them as they tumble over one another. One by one, with life-affirming yips, they right themselves. They’re all over the place in no time, getting into all sorts of mischief in the nooks and crannies of dangerous equipment the purpose of which I can’t begin to guess.
At first Al is expressionless. Then they start swarming all over her feet, jumping on her legs, pressing their noses into her varicose veins. And that woman with the harsh, unfeeling mask? Well, she tosses her hands in the air and starts screaming in utter dread.
“Help! Oh, sweet Lord, help me!”
In seconds, she’s down on the floor, buried in a living mound of fur. I almost want to get down there and play with them myself, but I can’t open myself up like that again. Mr. Snuffles might get jealous. I’ll have to content myself with watching.
“You bastard!” she cries, but it’s clear she doesn’t mean it. “You sick bastard!”
“That’s what I like about you, Al. Sometimes you sound just like the voices in my head.”
I want it to last forever, but nothing ever does—not the good, or the bad. Before I can take a picture so it will last longer, the hissy elevator returns.
Six S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are crowded on the platform, looking all shiny in their stylish black field outfits as they heft that containment tank. You know, the one that contains all the monster-goo from the creatures I’ve zapped so far. The one that’s perfectly safe. Like in Ghostbusters.
Preston steps up from behind, holding the collie and…Mr. Snuffles! The collie seems indifferent, but Snuffs recognizes me and barks. My heart skips a beat, but I try to play it cool.
“You’re not bringing that tank in here, are you, Em?”
As the expertly trained, physically and mentally fit men and women in black set down the tank and start running wires, Emily rubs Mr. Snuffles’ head. “Makes as much sense as having all the puppies here. This is where they came from. Once Tech assured me the place was secure and under our control, I realized you really did have a good idea, Wade. We’ll keep the tank out here. There’s a kennel area just past those double doors, if you haven’t found it. It’s comfortable; there’s plenty of potable water and dog chow.”
From under the puppy pile, Al screams, “Give me a gun with one bullet! I’m begging you!”
Preston looks down. “Is someone under there?”
“Where are my manners? Preston, Al. Al, Preston.”
“She okay?”
“Agk!”
“She’s fine. There were twice as many dogs on her a second ago.”
It’s true. At least ten of the pint-size devils are leaping on the consoles, nosing the levers, and chasing all the blinking lights on the touchscreens.
Preston looks around nervously at all the pointy, energy-gunlike objects. “Uh…maybe first priority should be getting them all into that kennel.”
“Right. Want to get on that, Al?”
“Mfff!”
“Okay, okay, crybaby.” I gather up a wriggling armful and follow Preston across the lab. It just sort of tickles, and they’re a little cute. No biggie. I’m okay with it. Not worried, not…falling in love.
As for the kennel, I picture it as clean and humane, but basically a bunch of cages. Hope they’re roomy. I’ve got that thing about tight prison spaces, so I’m bracing myself a little—telling myself it’s for their own good, they’re just dogs, etc. But when the doors do their hissy fit, I’m so stunned I drop my jaw. And the pups.
Wow.
It’s like the scene in Willy Wonka when those brats first see the chocolate factory. It’s a freaking indoor field, full of rolling hills, balls, and chew toys. And that grass? It’s not AstroTurf—it’s real! Cages? There are rows of little doggie houses on either side, each with windows and little flowerbeds and fluffy mats inside.
It puts a smile on my face so wide I have to slap it off before anyone can see it.
After I carry in my second puppy load, Al can almost stand. Yeah, this time I’m giggling a little from all the scratchy tongues. And sure, there’s a friendly tingling running up and down my spine. But I’ve got this.
On the third trip, when the pups see where I’ve brought them, they get so excited I feel it in their shivering little bodies. I can’t stand it. I go to pieces. I fall on the ground with them, hug them while they lick me, and laugh like a little kid.
Puppies! Puppies, puppies, puppies! Wheeeeeee!
I hear Al ask, “He’s hugging them, isn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
She tsks. “There are some things—just a few—mind you, that I’m glad I can’t see.”
BOOK 3
I WILL DROWN YOU IN MY BLOOD!
CHAPTER 21
HERE we are in Book 3. No big scene transition or anything. I’m still on the lush hills of the underground kennel, rolling around, luxuriating in my living canine quilt. What does that Book thing mean, anyway? Isn’t the whole thing a book? Cheap effort at structure, if you ask me. Better yet, don’t ask me—I’m having too much fun. I know Preston’s staring, and Al would if she could, but I can’t stop myself. This is better than Cancun—and no voices or flashbacks! “Wheee!”
“Wade? Didn’t you say something about keeping some professional distance?”
“I’m cold and distant as a star! I swear!”
Eventually—too soon, if you ask me—Em and Blind Al pull me up. The puppies tumble in a waterfall of delightfulness, then scamper off to explore their new digs.
P
reston eyes me, brow as ruffled as the loose skin on a shar pei. “Glad to see your soft side. At least, I think I’m glad. You do have a job here, Deadpool. Some of those puppies may change, and then you’ll have to…”
I cough out some dog hair. “I know, I know. Can we not talk about that right now? I’m fine, promise. It was only…you know, an instinctual physical reaction. Means nothing to me.”
Em’s “yeah, right” look stays plastered on her face until one of her techie minions marches in to report that the containment tank’s been installed.
“Okay. I’ve got to head back to the office to complete downloading the offsite databanks into our secure mainframes, and sync the file structures to buttress our control of this facility,” she says.
“Heh. Buttress. Is that code for some hanky-panky with the mister?”
“No. It means I’ve got to head back to the office to complete downloading the offsite data banks into our secure mainframes, and sync the file structures to buttress our control of this facility, but I’ll let Shane know you were thinking of us. Once you get past the encryption, the operating system here is one of the most straightforward I’ve ever seen, so I shouldn’t be long. Meanwhile, I’ll have some staff onsite here within a few hours.”
Though loathe to leave the dog version of Shangri-La, I follow her back into the main laboratory to make sure she’s clear on a key point. “Nice staff, though, right? No cut-up-the-doggie types?”
She pats my shoulder and gives it a squeeze. “PETA supporters to a man. You can keep things together here for an hour, right?”
“Sir, yes, sir, ma’am!”
By the time I finish saluting, she’s on the elevator platform with the other agents. Don’t know if they practice that formation, but it sure looks like it. They’re all at attention and staring at the same distant point, as if posing for a movie poster. The bright backlighting makes them look like they’re a gift to humankind from some pagan sun god. I assume they didn’t bring that lighting along with them.
I snap a pic and make an “okay” sign. “You got it, chief. I’ll get back on that list pronto while Al keeps an eye on things here.”
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