Collateral Damage

by Steve Beaulieu

  A quarter-instant later, time crashed down like a curling wave over a daring surfer.

  His actual velocity caught up in real time now, and Spitball’s body carried through and threw him hard against the inside of the open cab door. It screeched and buckled backward on its hinges. Buckled, but did not break. The hero, therefore, got bounced back and flung six feet in the other direction. (Along with momentum, which is somehow related to Newton’s second law, he’d also learned Newton’s third law in his elementary physics class: the one about equal and opposite reactions.) Luke felt like Wile E. Coyote suffering through another failed Acme slingshot attempt. He stopped rolling just as his nerves were realizing the bodily pain of being catapulted at high speed onto asphalt.

  And there he lay, face squashed against the rough asphalt.

  A breath he’d been holding for who knew how long rushed out in an exhausted sigh.

  A few seconds of rest. He’d earned that much.

  Those nerves relit and continued firing. Muscles spasmed here and there.

  Luke flopped another half-roll away from the scene, despite his body’s protests.

  Above him now was a blue sky mottled with fluffy white clouds, all cast behind a foreground of foreshortened building tops. With tunnel vision like this, one might think it a lovey early spring.

  What had seemed to him a long moment’s rest, however, had only taken a second or two in the real world. And as he rejoined the normal perception of time, he heard Longbow cry out in pain: “Aaagghh! My fingers!”

  Lying on the ground, clouded by a stinging haze that made him wonder if he’d even be able to stand again, Spitball smiled.

  He lay there a couple seconds more.

  Stay down, a voice in his head told him. You did your part. Take a break.

  The monster, however, was far from defeated.

  “Ah, hell,” he sighed. “No rest for the wicked. Or the superpowered and socially responsible.”

  Spitball forced himself to sit up. Muscles and bones popped and ached and he was sure he felt bruises pooling under his costume, but he wasn’t dead. Yet. And if he wanted to stay not-dead, and make sure everyone else did, too, he had to get his ass back up off the ground.

  Silk Spider crawled out the passenger side of the taxi, no longer threatened by a jagged glass obstacle course, thanks to him.

  Creepshow flowed quickly around the now back-bent car door and smashed a heavy pseudopod down, caving in the windshield.

  Too late, though. Cheryl was clear, and she sprinted several yards away before turning back to continue the fight.

  It’s like a 50’s movie monster, Spitball thought. Always goes for the girl.

  But the pretty girls were out of reach. Just the pretty boy left.

  Longbow was the only hero (if you could call him that) left standing toe-to-toe with the thing. Toe-inside-toe was actually more accurate, as his feet were consumed by its feet.

  Creepshow turned to face him without actually turning around. Its rear became its front, reforming so that its rudimentary face reopened at the back of its head. The upper pseudopods it called arms bend backward, but didn’t bother to reach for the man already standing in its own overspill.

  Longbow stared up helplessly, gripping his injured fingers in his opposite hand.

  The monster drew itself into a fifteen-foot tower of glistening black sludge... And engulfed the archer.

  It swallowed him with the formless mass of its own body and Longbow simply disappeared.

  “Holy poop,” Spitball muttered. “Dongbow! Now what do we do?”

  More screaming. This time it was Mannequin.

  She ran out in front of the thing and planted her feet defiantly.

  Creepshow oozed off of the hood of the cab and closer to her.

  They stared at each other for almost two seconds, which seemed a long time to the speedster. “Can she do it?” Spitball asked himself aloud. “Does Creepshow have enough of a mind…? She has to. That guy’s drowning in there! Do it, Anne!” he shouted, perhaps too fast for her to understand. “Do it!”

  The colossus looked down on her raised its fists, and gurgled a terrible roar.

  Spitball jumped to his feet, ignoring the pain. In another second he’d have sprinted through and scooped Mannequin out of the threat zone.

  But she disappeared before he could do so. Her thin, black-clad body was already little more than a wisp of flesh and armored spandex, and before his very eyes, she faded completely out of existence.

  The creature stood dumbfounded. It appeared self-conflicted, arms moving in spurts and jerks, body flowing, stopping, reversing. It was effectively paralyzed this way for a couple more seconds.

  Then its chest split in half, parted right down the middle as if by Moses himself.

  Spitball released the safety on his own action mode and jerked into motion, racing right up in front of the beast.

  Longbow emerged, the yellow-haired fruit inside a rotten banana skin. He stood there unconscious for just a moment, then folded streetward.

  Spitball zipped in and caught the archer as he fell out of the monster. Then he looked up at the tower of black sludge before him. “That is you, isn’t it, Anne?”

  Creepshow’s black, wet face flexed into forehead, cheekbones, and a smile that more closely resembled the ex-supermodel. Apparently, the beast had had enough of a mind for Mannequin to displace with her body piracy. The creature’s consciousness, like any of Anne Luna’s psychic victims, would be shunted away into a tiny prison in Astral Space (wherever the heck that was). Her own body disappeared there, too, into its own private bungalow on Limbo Beach, whenever she possessed someone—or something—else.

  The sludge-sculpted face winked at him.

  He knelt down, allowing the archer’s weight to settle as gently as possible. Black tar clung to the Longbow’s SWAT team uniform, particularly in the corners of its buckles. And there were tiny gobs here and there on his face: the wells of his eyes, a little around his nostrils, stuck in the stubble on his face.

  Spitball pressed an ear to the man’s chest. He could hear his heart beating, kind of fast in his opinion. He focused past that and stared at the man’s chest. There was no rise or fall, no in-and-out of air movement.

  “He’s not breathing!” Spitball shouted. Then mumbled, “Time to be a hero.”

  He leaned down, closer to the archer’s face... And paused.

  Leaned further, as if into a life-giving kiss... Paused again.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this. You so owe me, douche bag.”

  He pinched Longbow’s nose, took in a deep breath, and blew it into the man’s lungs. Mouth to mouth. Two breaths, he thought, and quickly delivered them.

  Spider had followed Stormfront’s example by continuing the Weather Station’s regimen of superhero training. The gang had all spent a Saturday learning CPR at the local community center, along with a classroom full of babysitters and lifeguards. (Luke Gillis—alias Spitball—had told everyone in class that he was a campus fireman in-training. And he’d repeated it to the tall red-head, who’d seemed especially interested in knowing.)

  Yup, he was a card-carrying life saver now.

  But Longbow still wasn’t breathing on his own. “Rescue breaths,” he reminded himself. “Check the pulse.”

  He shoved two fingers into the man’s throat. Blood was indeed flowing in beats under his fingertips. That was good, at least.

  “Hey,” he shouted, “someone tell the ambulance teams that it’s safe now. Scene’s safe, get your asses in here! I barely know what the hell I’m doing!”

  Two more breaths, mouth to mouth.

  This time Longbow coughed in his face and Luke swore some black gunk got catapulted into his mouth.

  The archer curled over on his side, sucked air and coughed, sucked air and coughed.

  Spitball patted him hard on the back. “There, there, Goldie Locks. The paramedics will take it from here.”

  Longbow shook his head, still
coughing. “Can’t. Go with them. Secret identity.”

  “Oh, come on. A secret ID is for real superheroes. You might as well…”

  The burning glare he received stopped him in mid-sentence.

  Then confusion and horror replaced Longbow’s expression. He was staring up at the monster behind his rescuer.

  “Don’t worry,” Spitball said. “Mannequin’s pulling the strings now.”

  He turned to look, too, and then wasn’t quite so sure himself.

  The pudding statue of Anne Luna was in flux, eyes, mouth, and cheekbones struggling to retain their shape.

  The creature let out a gurgling cry of pain and literally split in half.

  Literally. Spilt in half.

  4

  The terrible black shape cracked right down the middle, rubbery strands of goo indecisively connecting the two emerging shapes. A fresh bouquet of rotten garbage and burning oil permeated the air.

  Soon there was a pair of identical slime monsters half as thick as the original, and each now only (only?) eight feet tall. One of them stood staring down at its own blunt hands. The other turned and stalked away down the street.

  “What the hell?” Spider shouted. She looked back and forth between the new creatures. “What do we do now? Anne?”

  The closer beast stopped feeling sorry for itself and looked down at Spitball with a slightly more human, even feminine face. One eye winked (or was its brow just drooping?) and started after its twin with long, Sasquatch strides.

  “What’s happening?” Spider asked. She threw a few webs at the first Creepshow as it passed within twenty feet of her. “What’s the plan?”

  The beast casually allowed the web lines to flake off with whatever droplet they were connected to and continued its retreat.

  The second twin charged after the first and crashed right into it from behind. The tackle brought both to the ground in one disgusting hump of sludge. The violent rising and falling of liquid-dark wave crests suggested a wrestling match, but discerning two different creatures from the mess was impossible.

  Spitball just stared.

  Finally, he blinked free of his horrified trance and looked around for the brains of their operation.

  Miracle Worker was sitting up now. Thank God.

  Paramedic crews appeared from a hidden side street, pushing wheeled stretchers onto the scene.

  “Over here!” Spitball shouted, waving his arms.

  “Just oxygen,” Longbow groaned, struggling to his feet. As if ignoring his own words, though, his body quickly flopped back-first onto a gurney. A ponytailed medic pressed a transparent mask to his face and cranked the valve on his small green tank. Longbow cupped his own hand over hers and sucked in deep, life-giving breaths.

  Another pair of medics were trying to convince Miracle Worker not to stand up.

  Spitball was there in a flash. “Are you okay?”

  W gently refused their help. He looped a strap over his shoulder and handed the satchel to Spitball. Inside were a number of shiny metal canisters that looked an awful lot like chrome grenades.

  “Uh... Are you sure about this?”

  W nodded, coughed, and pointed at the real-life mud wrestling tournament going on. “Go. Be quick.”

  “Quick, sir, is my middle name!

  “And say, fellas,” Spitball said to the paramedics. “How about a face-full of that O2 for the man in dreadlocks? Just in case? Can’t hurt, right?”

  W begrudgingly accepted the oxygen as Spitball zipped away.

  Spider was standing by the grotesque fight scene, frustrated and powerless to help. “What can we do? How do we even know if Anne wins?”

  “W gave me the Holy Hand Grenade. A bag of them, actually.”

  Spitball performed a hyper-speed side-shuffle around the monsters in spasm. Shiny metallic bombs thunked into the slimy mass. It was like decorating an alien Christmas tree. In a matter of seconds, the black blob sparkled with ornaments. Some even got ebbed and flowed deeper inside the dark mass.

  He paused to admire the collection of grenade pin rings on his fingers, then grabbed Spider just as she was voicing the same concern that’d just crossed his mind: If they all blow, won’t that spatter the black tar all over everything? Including us?

  He likely knocked the air from her lungs when he scooped her up over his shoulder, though she apparently didn’t need air to cuss at him for doing so.

  The pair were about a block away when the explosives went off in a series of choked pops.

  Spitball came to an abrupt stop, planted Spider (still on her first string of curses), and whirled around to see the carnage.

  Christmas tree was a good analogy, he told himself.

  The horrible sculpture was frozen in place and dusted with sparkling white frost, as were the street, the front fender of a red sedan, and anything else within a ten-foot radius.

  Silk Spider’s obscenities trailed off. “Anne…?”

  The speedster’s reflexes kicked in at the first hint of materialization from the ether. Spitball was halfway there, sliding in just in time to catch Mannequin’s body as she re-entered reality and began falling into the street. He caught her frail form, slipped a little on the frosted asphalt, then caught some traction and brought her back around to the others.

  Anne was conscious but obviously exhausted. She stood up, but only by looping an arm around Luke’s shoulders.

  “That thing’s body,” she said wearily, “was hard to hold on to. Mind, too. Slipped right through my fingers.”

  “You did fine,” Spider assured her.

  “Damn right, you did,” Spitball agreed. “But the show’s over now. Let’s go home before something else shows up! Giant lasagna monster comes to mind... Maybe we should grab lunch?”

  Longbow hopped off the gurney and handed the oxygen mask back to the wide-eyed paramedic. “Let’s go.”

  Spitball held up his free hand. “Sorry, members only. You got the jacket? Didn’t think so.”

  “You’ve got a Members Only jacket?” Longbow asked, mocking him.

  “Figure of speech!”

  “Besides, you’ll need help.” The blond pretty boy braced Miracle Worker, who did look like he could use some help getting back.

  “Nice try,” Spitball objected, “but Spider can carry him and Anne, and I might just jump on top so she can show off. We don’t need any—”

  Spider took Mannequin away from him and scooped her up into her arms. “Okay, follow us. We have a way out without press coverage.”

  Spitball stared on in disbelief as the others moved at a quick trot toward an alley.

  “Once again, my vote counts for poop,” he told the paramedics, who stood by in awe. “You guys might as well come along, too.”

  “Really?” The youngest medic’s chubby, hopeful cheeks spread wide, ear to ear.

  “No, dude, I was just kidding. Sorry, you can’t come.”

  • • •

  Miracle Worker had reviewed several blueprints and city works charts on the way over, and he’d already had most of the common grids committed to memory anyway. Therefore, the team’s escape from the scene of daring heroics was relatively easy. They ducked into a theatre basement, slipped down behind a municipal power relay, and then through a trapdoor into an old subway access tunnel. And once they had a safe distance between them, the press, and the authorities of a government that resented them, Spitball could stand it no more.

  The New Phenomenal Four (fifth pending), you see, had a tagalong.

  “Okay, okay. Everybody bring it to a stop, please.”

  They were five shadows in a dark corridor, all black uniforms and flesh tones with one among them sporting more fashionable yellow trim.

  “What’s the problem?” Silk Spider asked.

  Spitball whirled his finger around. “Count us,” he said.

  After an uncomfortable moment of silence, W finally agreed with him. “I’m sorry, but he’s right. We do appreciate your help, but the truth is, we don’
t know you. I’m afraid this is where we must part ways.”

  “For now,” Mannequin added. “We couldn’t have done it without you, uh…”

  She was fishing for his name.

  Oh, come on, Spitball thought. This is embarrassing.

  The silhouette with the recurve bow on his back stepped closer to the thinnest among them and took her hand. “Longbow,” he said.

  “She knew that,” Spitball muttered.

  “They call me Longbow,” he repeated, heavy with insinuation, and kissed her hand.

  “Give me a break…” Spitball groaned. “Can we keep this PG? There’s women and children about.”

  Then he saw the glistening strands of web lines flick onto his thighs, knees, and shins. Spider could take them away from him at will. It was a subtle—or not so subtle—warning to shut his mouth.

  “Thank you for stepping in,” the shadow with the shaggy beard and dreadlocks said, shaking Longbow’s hand. “Things might have otherwise gone very differently.”

  “I was a goner for a minute there, myself,” the archer admitted.

  “Well, you know, it’s not a game for casual... players...” Spitball said, tapering off under Spider’s glare.

  “If it wasn’t for Ms. Luna having the courage to put herself in harm’s way, I’d have suffocated today.”

  Spitball stifled an objection—a deeply offended objection. Who was it that gave you mouth to mouth, the disgusting kiss of life? he wanted to shout. It wasn’t the pretty girl. It was me!

  “If there were more light down here,” Mannequin told him, “you’d see me blushing.”

  Longbow still loosely held her hand by a few fingers. “I don’t know what kind of heart it takes to give up your perfect form to take on the body of a hideous, inhuman monster… I can’t imagine how frightening that must be, but I thank you. Truly I was inside you today.”

  “Okay, that’s it!” In a flash, Longbow was holding Spitball’s hand instead, which the speedster then tossed it aside as if he’d accidentally picked up a turd. “I’m too young for the sexual innuendo here! Save it for the date you usually hire on Saturday nights, pal.”