Flashback (Out of the Box Book 23)

by Robert J. Crane

  “I think we need meat,” my mother said, and I nodded along until she got to the plastic-wrapped lunch meat fridge. She started scooping a couple containers of turkey and I sighed, apparently loudly enough she noticed, because she snapped around. “What?”

  “Oh, nothing, I was just...” I felt a little dumbstruck, caught out in the middle of telling a lie, so I just broke and went for the truth. “That prepackaged meat tastes like plastic.”

  My mother raised an eyebrow. “Look who's all hoity-toity.”

  “I have a refined palate, okay? I'm a foodie.”

  She frowned.

  “It's a thing,” I said weakly. “In my day. We kinda had this 'food revolution' and now everything tastes better.”

  “How does that work?”

  “I don't know,” I said. “More spices, less boiling of stuff, organic produce. I'm not really acquainted with the finer details, I just know stuff tastes better in my day.”

  That did not soften my mother's frown one bit. “Sounds like you people are getting soft.”

  “Yes, drill sergeant, we're getting soft,” I said, and meandered down the fridge case to a big ham that was only five dollars. “Can we get this? It'll be good right out of the oven, and the sandwiches we make from the leftovers will be epic-level compared to that plasticky crap you're about to spend perfectly good money on.”

  She rolled her eyes and tossed the assembly-line mass-produced lunch meat back into the display as I put the ham in the cart. My mother did the mental arithmetic between the bread, the ham, the ramen, and the two bags of super cheap generic knock-off cereal. “We need eggs and milk. Probably heavy on the eggs.”

  “That's fair,” I said. “Maybe some cottage cheese to offset the, uhm...ham and carb weighted nature of the diet?”

  My mom looked back down at the cart. “Not sure we can afford much, but...yeah, okay. A tub of cottage cheese. Lucky I stocked up on mustard, ketchup and mayo last week.” She looked up at me. “I went to Wendy's and stole a bunch of their packets.”

  “That's some budget shopping right there,” I said, as a guy with terrible, terrible teeth pushed his cart to a stop about ten feet in front of us, examining the dill pickle jars. He threw a cursory glance at us, but shifted his attention quickly, not letting it linger like he gave a damn about us at all. I looked at his mouth only as long as I had to; it was closed now, but his lips pooched out like he had an over and under bite, and from the brief look I'd gotten, it felt like he needed enough dentistry work to keep an entire dental school busy for years.

  “I've learned to be cheap and not picky,” my mother said, pushing past him as I followed. “Unlike someone.” She glanced at me. “I guess your life has turned out all right if you can afford the finer foods.”

  I shrugged at her fishing attempt. “Like I said, food revolution. But yeah...I've done all right in my life.” No need to mention that until a little less than a year ago, I'd had a net worth of a half billion. Sure, it was from thievery (from thieves), but dammit, it was my half-billion. I'd stolen it fair and square. Someday, when I had the time, I was going to get my money back, too, maybe live the high life at last, at least between kicking the ass off of whichever metahuman villain was asking for it that month.

  My mother seemed to take that answer in stride, nodding once like it satisfied her. Which hopefully it did, because who didn't want their kid to have done well?

  We came around the corner into the last aisle, picking up eggs as we went past them. Now we were in the long channel back to the main aisle that would lead us to the check-outs, and the glass fridge cases that kept the milk cold were to our left. My mother surveyed the aisle ahead carefully; there was no one here.

  “Let's get this finished,” I muttered, and we rolled forward, little me still playing with the ramen packets, muttering something about taking the prince to the ball. I listened, wondering where the hell my life had gone so off-the-rails, from this innocent little thing to being an action addict who was living for the thrill of hunting down wrongdoers. Clearly the little girl sitting in the cart beside me wasn't thinking about beating the shit out of her fellow humans who stepped out of line.

  Somewhere I'd gone way, way off course, and I didn't know quite what to make of her. Other than she was adorable.

  It was hard not to admire her innocence as she played, the happy little look on her face as she concentrated on the ramen packets in her hands so completely different from the full-scowl, weapons-grade RBF I saw when I looked in the mirror. I had a deadly look, the kind that sent men running in fear, the kind that had earned me the reputation of being death, itself.

  How had I been this little, happy, innocent, singing person only twenty years earlier? I mean, twenty years was a long time for me, especially at twenty-six, but still...that level of metamorphosis was incredible.

  “Heads up,” my mother said, jarring me out of my reverie. There was movement ahead as Mr. Jowls rolled his cart, now dotted with a few items, into our aisle, looking down as he shuffled along.

  “Saw him earlier,” I said, meta-low. “On the bread aisle. Didn't give us a look.”

  She nodded, then turned slowly to look behind us.

  I matched her move. The blond lady with the smoker's wrinkles rolled in behind us, also seemingly not paying a whit of attention to us. “Could be coincidence,” I said.

  “There aren't that many people in the store at this time of morning,” my mother said. We were conducting the entire conversation meta-low. “Two of three people we've passed are now in our aisle.”

  “It's the dairy aisle,” I said. “Everyone drinks milk in the nineties. It does a body good, and lactose-intolerance and soy milk aren't a thing yet, are they?”

  She shot me a funny look. “They make milk out of soy? How the hell does that work? Where are the udders on a soy bean?”

  “It's not actually milk,” I said. “It's like a milk substitute. They have almond milk, too, and you don't see any breasts on almonds. Though I suppose they do look slightly boob-like, at least if you're carrying the torpedo kind.”

  “I'm not so sure your so-called 'food revolution' was much of a revolution,” she said. “Maybe a Maoist revolution-”

  Ahead, more movement. The guy with the terrible teeth rolled into the dairy aisle, drawing the attention of mother and I.

  She swore under her breath. “Coincidence, still?”

  “Not looking as likely, is it?” I asked. I felt a little bead of sweat break out on my forehead.

  They were all looking at us now, the pretense of shopping cast aside, along with their carts. All three of them – the two in front and the one behind – were standing upright, unmistakable challenge in their postures.

  “No,” my mother said, “it's not looking likely at all.”

  And she was right.

  We were trapped.

  11.

  “Plan?” she asked, looking at me as she pulled the cart containing little me closer to her. She kept one hand free, ready to draw her pistol.

  “I like that you're letting me quarterback this,” I said. Our foes were just standing in place, the three of them, guarding the ends of the aisles, preventing our retreat. Two were in front of us, Mr. Jowls and Bad Teeth, and Smoker Lips was behind us, her raggedy blond hair hanging stringy around her face. “We don't know if they're meta or not.”

  “Nope,” she said. Little me burbled something about a ball as she twirled two ramen packets together. What a childhood I'd had.

  “You shoot down the two in front while I engage with the target at our six o'clock,” I said, still speaking meta-low. I doubted they could hear us at this distance.

  “Copy that,” my mother said. “On three?”

  “On one,” I said, and caught the nod out of the corner of my eye. “One!” I shouted and turned on Smoker Lips.

  She moved in a whirl, hair shooting at me in a furious tangle. She was a Medusa, her locks taking on a life of their own as they launched toward me. One of the tendr
ils seemed to form a fist, sneaking in under my guard and punching me in the stomach.

  It had some oomph behind it, the hair punch, and I doubled over. I managed to keep my fists up, though, blocking her second attempt, taking the hit on my right wrist. I batted it away when it lingered after delivering the blow, and I grunted as she came at me again, aiming for the ribs on my right side. She split her hair into several parts and was attacking me with each of them like a damned octopus.

  My only advantage, if you could call it that, was that she was a touch slower than I was.

  “Hey!” The shout drew my attention for a second. My mother had her pistol out and pointed down the aisle toward the guys, who were advancing on us, but she'd stopped to get my attention. I blinked, catching a hit to the ribs while distracted, and noticed she had something shiny in her hand, which she tossed to me-

  A knife.

  I snatched it out of the air and brought it around in a hard swing, chopping off one of Smoker Lips's strands like I was hacking my way through the jungle with a machete. “There's a donation for Locks of Love,” I said as Smoker Lips grimaced and backed off, retracting her octopus hair. “Come here and we'll make sure all the cancer patients in the world have a nice wig – if they can get that damned awful smoke stink shampooed out.”

  Gunshots rang out behind me as Smoker Lips picked up her assault. She came at me in a rush, screaming to distract me as she charged, hair leading the way. I hacked off the leading lock but she managed to score a glancing blow against my knife hand with her follow up, and I swatted it away, bringing the knife down as a follow up of my own, hacking the damned thing off. The knife was very sharp and cut through the stiff arms of hair like they were jelly. As soon as I cut through one, the hair would go limp and just fall where it lay, the severed part as dead as any normal person's cut hair. The uncut portion of the tendril would race back to Smoker Lips, apparently deterred or in fear of its life or something.

  “You know, you can pick up some product over in the health and beauty section to deal with this split end problem you're suddenly having,” I said, taking off two more tendrils as I swung the knife in a circular motion in front of me, trying to shield myself from her attack.

  She didn't say anything, and the sound of gunshots intensified behind me. My mother had apparently gone through the whole magazine and reloaded. Now she was being a little more judicious, because she'd run through all eight rounds in about five seconds. Now I was hearing several seconds between each shot, but I didn't have the time or inclination to check on how she was doing. The scared wailing of little me at the painful sound of all the shooting was like a dagger to the heart in any case.

  I took a step back as Smoker Lips paused her assault. Her hair was looking pretty chopped, retracted almost back to her head as she stood a few feet away from me, glaring. The strands wavered a few inches off her head, cautious now that they'd been hacked half to hell by my defensive efforts. “Come at me, girl,” I said, waving her on, “let's finish up this pixie cut. It's going to look terrible – but it'll be very 'you'.”

  She broke into a charge, hair shooting forward like a series of pistons. I couldn't count them, they were coming at me so quickly, and trying to chop them off seemed a futile effort given how many there were. I ducked as they shot over my shoulder, one of them skipping along my left trapezius. It cut me, breaking the skin just as cleanly as if she'd used a knife, and boy did that burn. I wondered if you needed a tetanus shot for a hair cut.

  I'm sorry. Terrible pun. But I couldn't help myself.

  I slid sideways a step and brought the knife down hard on the hair tendrils that she'd just shot past me. The blade caught half of them at full extension and sheared the damned things good. They drifted down in individual clumps as she brought the rest back in a hell of a hurry, the strands whipping back to her like individual snakes. “Hey, so that's why they thought Medusa had snake hair-”

  Something hit me hard in the side, and I realized that she'd reserved enough hair to pull a sneak attack when I dodged. It penetrated under my ribs on the right side, like a knife sneaking in just over my hip.

  I let out a gasp and brought my knife down, chopping off the tendril. Strands of bloody hair floated down, colored by the flow out of my fresh wound.

  It was hard to tell how deep she'd struck, but it wasn't a shallow hit. I dropped my arm defensively over the wound as Smoker Lips smiled in satisfaction, wrinkles emphasized as she puckered in glee.

  “Okay, then,” I said, locking eyes with her and dropping my shoulder.

  She must have caught my determination, because the smile evaporated as I charged at her. She threw her hair at me in another desperate, bladed attempt to take off my head as I came at her, but I dropped, sliding across the waxed tile floor and coming in under her defense.

  I buried my blade in her belly and launched back to my feet, bringing the knife up, up, up, from her guts to her breastbone, and I didn't stop when I heard the cracking as the metal made contact with bone. I kept it going, using my meta strength to tear through any resistance.

  Smoker Lips's eyes went wide as she lifted off the ground from the momentum of my upward thrust. She hung there, feet dangling about a foot off the floor as my attack came to its end, my stroke reaching its rest in the middle of her face.

  “Hey!” my mother shouted, and I turned. Mr. Jowls had advanced, and Funky Teeth was a step behind him, using him as a human shield. I saw some spots that looked like bullet impressions, holes in Jowls's clothing. He was still moving forward, though, undeterred by the shots. My mom was changing mags and had stepped out in front of the cart where little me wailed, hands over her ears, face red from screaming at the top of her lungs at all the scary shit going on around her. The improvised ramen packet dolls had fallen to the floor, forgotten.

  I glanced back at Smoker Lips. She was dead, twitching, and I kicked her off the knife blade and turned, sprinting at Mr. Jowls. My mother knocked the cart back a step with her hip, partially spinning it around with mini me still screaming in the seat, all the louder because of the sudden violence of being jarred sideways unexpectedly.

  “What the hell are you?” I asked as I came at Jowls with the blade bared. I slowed as I got closer, because if the bullets hadn't cut his flabby ass down, I had my doubts that my knife was going to do any better. “A Blob-type?”

  His eyes flitted, watching the knife, and he smiled around those pudgy cheeks. I hadn't been making a fat joke with the 'Blob' wisecrack. That had been the name of a comic book villain Reed had acquainted me with during one of our dreamwalk chats. He'd gone on and on and on and – you get the point. The Blob was an amorphous, uh, blob of a human being whose power was seemingly impenetrable skin. Shoot him, stab him, run him over with a train – nothing would happen, it'd all just bounce off.

  I had a bad feeling this guy had a similar thing going. It was hard to tell whether he was an Achilles who had just let himself go, or whether he was something entirely different. Based on my mother hanging back, I had a feeling I was going to be the one to do the hard experimenting to get to the truth.

  He came at me, a glint of joy in his eye at the prospect of doing – well, something surely unpleasant – to me. He giggled under his breath, and raised his hand, Funky Teeth a couple steps behind, still using him as shield.

  I came at him with a low thrust of my blade, and it cut through his shirt with ease. I buried it into his belly and he guffawed as it bounced right back out, turned aside as easily as if it had been me blocking Smoker Lips's hair thrusts.

  “Great,” I muttered, and tossed the knife over my shoulder to my mother. Mr. Jowls watched me do it, still chortling, and then reached for me.

  Damn, he was slow.

  I pushed his hand out of the way and grabbed him by the throat. His skin was incredibly malleable beneath my grip, sliding and sloshing. He definitely wasn't an Achilles with some extra body fat distributed around, this was its own thing, and I didn't much care for it. “Keep Funky
Teeth off my back a sec, will you?” I called to my mother as I pushed past Mr. Jowls's blubberous throat and left my wrist right there at his neck.

  “On it,” my mother said and took a couple steps to my right, trying to get a clear shot.

  I used my superior speed to leap around Mr. Jowls's shoulder. He tried to alter his direction to bump me, but he was too slow for that. I got in behind him and he tried to lower his shoulder and turn into me, but my left arm was still at his throat.

  Using a move I'd picked up from General Spider-Monkey Boy Bander Krall, of Revelen, I threw my right arm over Mr. Jowls's throat, meeting my left wrist, which was wedged against his windpipe, locking it in place with my right hand. I gripped myself as tightly as I could, then wrenched Mr. Jowls backward, dragging him off balance and making him gasp as I locked in the choke hold.

  “Yeah,” I said, dragging him so he couldn't use his slightly superior height to break free. He kicked his legs and bucked as he tried to gain footing and failed, because I was pulling him so quickly he couldn't. There were advantages to being super strong, and one of them was that I could haul a few hundred pounds of jowly douchebag like they were a mere inconvenience. “You're getting choked the eff out, ugly.” I tightened my grip, putting my chin against the top of his head as I increased my backward pace.

  I couldn't let him get his footing or he'd lift me up and drop back, crushing me beneath his bulk. It probably wouldn't kill me, but it might stun me enough to get me to let go, and I definitely didn't want that. I snugged my grip tighter and tighter, working my wrist across his throat like I was sawing it. I wasn't; I was just pushing in through the layer of blubber he seemed to be trying to summon to his neck's defense. His chin pinched against my forearm, but I ignored the pain as he applied pressure, answering with pressure of my own.