Action Figures - Issue Five: Team-Ups

by Michael C Bailey

  “Yeah, right.”

  “I haven’t,” I insist.

  What a lie.

  When we first met, I sneaked peeks at Natalie a lot — especially at her butt, which is indeed awesome. I stopped because I started to feel like a total creeper, and sitting here with the crown prince of creepers is bringing all that guilt back with a vengeance.

  “Next thing you’ll tell me is you’re not tapping any of those young honeys on your team,” Deuce says, and now I feel like I have to apologize to Carrie, Sara, and Missy on principle.

  “I’m not.” Deuce arches a skeptical eyebrow. “I’m not. We’re friends. That’s it.”

  “That’s sad, dude. What’s the point of being friends with hotties like them if there’re no benefits? I mean, that blond, Lightwhatever? I’d be her friend. Know what I’m saying?”

  “Deuce. She’s sixteen.”

  He shrugs. Good God, man...

  Nina returns and slides into the seat next to me. I catch a flicker of disappointment pass over Deuce’s face.

  “My turn,” he says. “If our waitress comes back while I’m gone, order me the Cattleman’s Special, well done, extra fries.”

  “Will do,” Nina says from behind her menu. She waits until Deuce disappears from view before emerging. “Do I want to know what you two talked about?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “Deuce wanted to know which of my friends I was ‘tapping.’ He made a skeevy comment about Carrie,” I say. I hesitate before adding, “He told me how much he appreciated your butt.”

  “Of course he did,” Nina says.

  “On a related note...” Deep breath. Steady on. “When we first met, I used to check you out. I don’t anymore but I used to, and it was a scummy, creepy, disrespectful thing to do and I’m really sorry.”

  Nina lays her menu down and gives me her full attention. Well, world, it’s been nice knowing you.

  “Are you going to beat the crap out of me?”

  “Oh, Matt, buddy,” Nina says, patting me on the face, “I’ve already beaten the crap out of you. Many, many times, in fact.”

  “Not because I deserved it.”

  “I’m not mad at you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re young and goofy on your own raging hormones. You can be forgiven for letting your libido get the best of you.” She gives me a gentle smile. “And because you’re sorry. Yes, it was a disrespectful thing to do, but you recognized that, owned it, and apologized for it. That was very mature of you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Do it again and I will destroy you.”

  “Oh, no, sure. Totally reasonable response.”

  Deuce returns as our waitress comes to take our orders. Nina orders the same thing as Deuce: the Cattleman’s Special — cooked rare because she, unlike Deuce, respects beef. The dish features a steak as big as Nina’s head, a mountain of fries, and a bowl of mixed vegetables. She attacks her food like a starving velociraptor. If I tried to steal a French fry off her plate, I’d pull back a stump.

  “Where’s a tiny little thing like you going to put all that meat?” Deuce says. He has an uncanny knack for making everything that comes out of his mouth sound patronizing.

  “I have pouches in my cheeks,” Nina says humorlessly. “Like a hamster.”

  “Better be careful or you’ll pork out. Don’t get me wrong, I like those big Latina booties just fine, but —”

  Nina shifts her grip on her steak knife. Red alert! Evasive maneuvers!

  “There’s no chance of her gaining excess body fat because of her power set,” I say. “Pyrokinetics tend to have higher metabolisms than normal humans and burn calories on average fifteen percent more efficiently. Plus, she’s physically active and has relatively high muscle mass, and since muscle burns fat more efficiently...”

  “Listen to Doctor Science here. Man, it’s like listening to Concorde blab,” Deuce says, but he’s not impressed. He strikes me as the type who resents intelligent people because they remind him how dumb he is.

  An image jumps into my head. I imagine Deuce as a teenager, and he looks a lot like Angus Parr.

  Once the plates have been cleaned off, the table cleared, and the coffee served, Nina says, “All right, Deuce, let’s hear it. What are we dealing with?”

  “Dig this. Two weeks ago I was at Walmart and I saw this dude, looked wicked familiar,” Deuce begins. “I couldn’t place him, but I was like, this guy’s suspicious — it was, like, an instinct thing, you know? I was operating on this whole different level.”

  Nina makes a hurry up gesture.

  “Right. Anyway, on a hunch I followed the guy back to this abandoned building at the edge of town — used to be one of those third-rate auto mechanic places, I think. I staked the place out for a couple days. I saw him and this other guy go in and out, and the other guy looked familiar too...”

  “Get. To. The. Point,” Nina says, the last of her patience draining away.

  “Yeah, sorry. I started poking through all the online police alerts — most wanted lists, stuff like that — and boom. Saw them on the Byrne website’s fugitives list. Deadeye and Spasm.”

  Deadeye, alias Robert Teller, is only barely a superhuman. He has an ability known as perfect aim, and yeah, that sounds vague, weird, and unimpressive, but it’s actually pretty cool. If he doesn’t have a projectile weapon at hand, he’s not much of a concern, but if he does? He’s able to accurately establish the precise distance between himself and a target; calculate a myriad of variables such as wind resistance, how gravity will affect the trajectory of a projectile over that distance, and the movement of his quarry; and calibrate his body to perfectly place a bullet, an arrow, a thrown knife, any kind of projectile, in his chosen target. His brain makes the calculations instantly, his body responds flawlessly. Unless you happen to duck or dodge at the very last second, he’ll tag you.

  Spasm, alias Markus Curry, could be a problem. He’s a speedster, which is one of the rarer superhuman power sets. He’s only capable of short bursts of super-speed, but that’s enough to make him a potential headache, whether he chooses fight or flight. Either he pummels us with a dozen punches before we have a chance to throw one, or he’s a mile away before we can finish saying “Surrender!”

  “This garage or whatever it is,” Nina says. “How secluded is it? How much do we have to worry about collateral damage?”

  “It’s not exactly in the middle of nowhere, but it’s set back from the road a good ways, and there’s nothing nearby — no houses or anything like that.”

  Nina flips her placemat over and slides it toward Deuce. “Draw it.”

  Deuce scrawls a crude map of the site, indicating the building itself, access points to the property, and notable features such as a cluster of old junker cars that might serve as a blind or, if things go south, a makeshift bunker. It looks like a five year old drew it, but it’s good enough for our needs.

  “Anything you can tell us about the interior?” Nina asks, but Deuce has nothing. He didn’t risk sneaking onto the property in the interest of avoiding detection, which actually sounds reasonable. Maybe he’s not a total idiot after all.

  “I say we charge in and hit ‘em hard and fast,” Deuce says. I retract my previous statement.

  “No. We are not going to charge in and hit ‘em,” Nina says.

  “Why not? Two of them against the three of us? No contest, man, no contest. Am I right?” Deuce says, looking to me for support.

  “I’m with Nina. Running in blind is asking for this thing to blow up in our faces,” I say. Deuce gives me a sour look, like I’ve violated the Bros before Hoes Code — which, in his mind, I probably have. “I’m not against going in guns blazing, but we should at least know where in the building these guys are before we barrel in.”

  Now it’s Nina’s turn to frown at me, I assume because I kinda-sorta agreed with one small part of Deuce’s so-called plan.

&nbs
p; “What?” I say to her. “A little shock and awe isn’t a terrible idea, as long as we’re smart about it.”

  Deuce smirks at Nina. Dude, no, not helping.

  “Let’s get one thing straight, Deuce,” she says. “I am running this operation. I call the shots, you play by my rules. If that’s a problem, tell me now, because I’ll be happy to go home and let you handle this all by your lonesome.”

  “Not a problem, babe,” he says.

  5.

  We pull our cars onto the unmarked side road leading to the garage. Nina jumps into the back seat of my car to change into her full uniform, a mostly leather ensemble that includes boots with scuffed steel toe caps, heavy knee pads, leather gauntlets that cover her from her hands up to the elbows, and a pair of welder’s goggles — actually a headset similar to the one Carrie wears, complete with an integrated communications suite. She completes the outfit with a red bandana she wears over her nose and mouth. She’s drawn on the bandana, in white spray paint, a crooked grin. That alone says everything you really need to know about Nina Nitro.

  My super-hero outfit is practical but less iconic: black military pants, a heavy Kevlar shirt laced with protective plates designed to resist small arms fire, my magic gloves, a modified BMX goggles-and-facemask set equipped with a comm system, and my signature trench coat. Like I said, it’s not an iconic uniform, but next to Deuce, I’m the epitome of super-hero fashion: he wears leather pants emblazoned with stylized flames like you’d see on a Fifties-era hot rod, a tank top, and wrap-around shades with a neon orange plastic frame. Someone call the WWE circa 1995 and tell them we found one of their wrestlers.

  “The Machine is ready for action,” he proclaims.

  And on top of everything else, he refers to himself in the third person.

  As promised, the business formerly known as Duarte’s Garage is fairly secluded, maybe an eighth of a mile off the main road. A rusting chain-link fence topped with spiraling barbed wire surrounds the property. The front gate is held closed by a padlocked chain, but it’s all for show; the padlock hangs uselessly from the chain, unfastened.

  The garage sits beyond the gate, separated from us by an open asphalt plain — a parking lot, judging by the faded yellow lines. A half a dozen old cars, all rust and Bondo and primer, mark the halfway point between the gate and the garage. They’re right where Deuce said they’d be, which is encouraging. The garage itself is a large, flat-roofed building made of cinderblocks rather than brick. The front face sports a pair of traditional roll-up garage doors, both made of solid steel, and a large plate glass window that is, amazingly, intact. A layer of yellowed newspaper prevents us from seeing what’s inside.

  “That used to be the business office,” I say, thinking aloud, “but it might make a comfortable little improvised apartment for two.”

  “Certainly more comfortable than a garage that stinks of gas and oil,” Nina says. “Deuce, does that office have a back exit?”

  “Uh, maybe?” Deuce says.

  Nina slides her goggles up onto her head and glowers at him. “What do you mean, maybe?”

  “I don’t remember. I mean, I don’t remember seeing a door back there.”

  “Trencher, think you can circle around to the back without being seen?” Nina says.

  “Easy-peasy,” I say.

  The property’s surrounded by sparse woodland. The trees are widely spaced, which gives me enough cover but allows me to keep the fence in sight as I work my way around to the back. I pull a small pair of binoculars out of my coat and scan the garage. There are a couple more junk cars sitting near the fence, along with several rusting fifty-five-gallon steel drums, all of them leaking sludgy waste motor oil. Past that, I spot a dumpster snugged up against the back of the garage. It’s literally overflowing with garbage, which tells me our fugitives have been hiding out here for a good long time — maybe since they escaped from Byrne. Next to that is a dented steel door. It’s impossible to tell if it’s locked or barricaded from the inside, but if I were hiding out in a dump like this, I’d want that door unlocked and unblocked in case I had to bail at a moment’s notice.

  I activate my comm. “Nina, you there?”

  “I copy. What’ve you got for me?”

  “A dozen EPA violations and one possible means of escape: a door in the back corner of the building. It’d be on your left. I’m going to finish circling around to see if there are any holes in the fence.”

  “Good call.”

  The fence looks solid all the way around — no holes, no gaps near the ground, no breaks in the barbed wire. It’s not an insurmountable obstacle, but it wouldn’t be fun for anyone trying to go over the top.

  “That means the only easy way out is through this gate,” Nina says distractedly. Her attention is, for some reason, on the no man’s land between the gate and the garage. She grunts thoughtfully as she scans the front of the garage. “We’re going in,” she says. “Comm systems on.”

  “I don’t have a comm system,” Deuce says.

  “Trencher, set him up.”

  I reach into my coat and pull out one of the Protectorate’s loaner comm units, an earpiece with a small mic. Deuce slips it on. “Does this mean I’m part of the Protectorate now?” he says.

  “One thing at a time,” Nina says by way of a non-answer. “Deuce, head for those cars. Move fast and stay low.”

  Nina slips the chain off the gate. Deuce slips through. He hunches down and does a comical duck-walk toward the cars then flashes us an utterly unnecessary thumbs-up once he’s there. Nina and I go next, pausing long enough for Nina to replace the chain. I slap a new, functional padlock on it, trapping Deadeye and Spasm in with us.

  “What now? Three count and then rush the place?” Deuce says.

  “No,” Nina says. “For the last time, we are not going to go charging in like idiots.”

  Deuce sputters. “Jeez, when did you get all cautious?”

  “There’s a difference between reckless and stupid. I’ll cop to the former...”

  “That means the first one, right?”

  “Focus, dammit. I want you to take the back door —”

  “The back? Aw, come on,” Deuce whines.

  Nina slaps a hand over his mouth. “Keep it down, you moron!” she hisses. “I swear, if you botch this op...”

  Deuce utters a muffled apology.

  “You’re taking the back. Period. Got it?”

  “Okay, okay, I’m going,” Deuce says. He takes a quick peek around our blind then speed-waddles away. Nina lets out a long sigh, shakes her head, and holds her hands up as if wrapping them around an imaginary throat.

  “I’m in position,” Deuce reports. “Here I go!”

  “What? NO!” Nina says, but it’s too late. Over the comms, we hear the bang of the rear door caving in and Deuce letting out a guttural war cry that quickly turns into a yelp of surprise. An explosion of other voices follows, and then a cacophony of thuds and crashes.

  Nina curses and springs to her feet as the office door is thrown open from within. A man, as tall and thin and wiry as an Olympic sprinter, staggers out. That would be Spasm. He and Nina briefly lock eyes, and then he tenses up, bracing for action.

  Everything happens simultaneously. Spasm bolts for the gate in a burst of super-speed. He’s not quite a blur, but if I had to guess, he’s easily clocking in at sixty miles per hour — twice as fast as the official world’s record for a non-superhuman running speed. As he skids to a halt to fumble with the chain on the gate, Nina throws fire, but she’s not aiming for Spasm. Instead, she’s spraying the asphalt — asphalt soaked in oil and gasoline that’s been leaking out of abandoned cars for years. A ring of fire rises up with a WHOOMP, trapping Spasm.

  I catch out of the corner of my eye a flash of motion. A second man, Deadeye, steps out of the garage, a gun in his hand. He brings the weapon up.

  “DOWN!” I shout.

  Nina doesn’t question me, doesn’t look around, doesn’t hesitate. She just d
rops, flattening on the ground. Deadeye’s shot pings off a fence post. Instincts, training, and trust in your partners. These are marvelous things.

  Deadeye turns his attention toward me. I fall out of sight, dropping behind the wall of cars, and reach into my coat to grab a favorite toy of mine: a flash-bang grenade. It’s a small cylinder that, when it detonates, emits a blinding burst of light and a miniature thunderclap. They’re most effective when they’re set off in a confined space, but I think it’ll do the job here.

  I lob the grenade over the car toward Deadeye. He responds predictably. He sees something sailing toward him and, instinctively, shoots it out of the air — and in doing so sets it off. The bang doesn’t amount to much, but the flash dazzles him. He staggers back, falling against the plate glass window, eyelids clamped shut.

  “Get him!” Nina says.

  I cover the distance in a few quick strides and hit Deadeye in the chest with a flying knee strike. He sails back. The window craters, a spider web of cracks spreading across its face, but it doesn’t shatter. The hit doesn’t take Deadeye out, but he does drop the gun. That’s one less thing to worry about.

  He throws a wild roundhouse punch. I block it with my forearm, but he lands hard, harder than I expect. I stagger into a stiff kick to the ribs. Deadeye throws another right, but I spin into the blow, grabbing him by the arm and redirecting his momentum. He stumbles away, skidding on the grit-covered asphalt. His arms pinwheel as he fights to keep his balance. I launch myself at him and drive a fist into the side of his head. He reels.

  Deadeye isn’t a great stand-up fighter. I could take him, but we’ve had enough ego-driven stupidity for one day, so I pull a stun baton out of my coat and drive the tip into Deadeye’s chest. The baton buzzes, sending 150,000 volts of electricity into my playmate. He goes rigid, a scream escaping through clenched teeth, then he collapses in a heap, making it easy for me to slap a pair of heavy-duty police handcuffs on him.

  “Got a spare set?” Nina asks as she walks up to me, her gait stiff, like every little movement hurts like a mother. I look past her toward the gate. Spasm is laid out on the ground, unmoving, surrounded by dying licks of flame and a ground-level haze of thick smoke. Racked with pain or not, Nina’s one up on him. She pulls her bandana down. Blood is smeared across her face.