The sky was dark that night. No stars or moon. Why that detail sticks with me, I’ll never know. I heard Mrs. Blackford from across the street say she was going back inside to call the police. Shortly after, my father pulled away in his old Saturn Vue. That was the last time I saw him.
Mom and I went back inside, and we were both crying. She said something about having to be at work in a few hours, and how she didn’t want me going to school that day or being alone, but with dad gone she couldn’t afford to stay home. It was just the two of us crying and talking like that for maybe all of five minutes when the doorbell rings and it’s Mrs. Hochberg.
“Charlene, I…” was all my mom could get out before Zach’s mom stepped inside and wrapped my mom in a big, gentle hug. Mom started crying one of those hitching sort of cries that makes your body shake, and Mrs. Hochberg held her all the tighter.
Between tears, my mom started explaining about having to go to work and not wanting me to be alone and before I knew it, I was getting dressed to go spend the day at her house, and she would be keeping Zach home from school, too, because, “You two are best friends, and this is what best friends are for.”
It might have been the best-worst day of my life. Does that even make sense?
“I’m making you boys pancakes for breakfast, my special meatball and Provolone pizza for lunch, and your favorite dessert, apple pie,” Mrs. Hochberg told me on the way to her house. “I’m not sure what’s for dinner yet, but you and Zach will be so busy watching your favorite super hero movies that you probably won’t care.”
I felt embarrassed, not from her generosity, but because I couldn’t stop crying after she said it. Why should someone be so nice to me? When Zach’s dad left a few years before this, I don’t think I said two words to her. And as far as I knew, my mom hadn’t, either.
Maybe Zach can’t read minds, but it seemed like his mother could on that day. She put her arm around me as we turned up their little sidewalk leading to the porch. “I’ve been at this place before, Cody. So has Zach and the girls. We know what you need. We love you and want to help you through this.”
The day seemed nearly perfect, all things considered. Zach and I watched old Superman, Batman, X-Men, and Spider-Man movies between meals, and promised each other to watch more over the weekend. After dinner (which ended up being fantastic, homemade tacos), when Mrs. Hochberg was slicing the pie, Katie came running into the kitchen and bumped into Alisa, who in turn stumbled into her mother. The knife accidentally give Zach’s mom a nasty slash on her left index finger, and a lot of blood got on a couple pieces of pie. I have to hand it to Mrs. Hochberg. Despite all the tears and pleading for forgiveness from her daughters, she didn’t show any anger at all, and after cleaning the blood off her hand and deciding stitches wouldn’t be necessary, she calmed everyone down. It was pretty amazing, and I think Mrs. Hochberg may have saved me that day. I’m not really sure how, but she was there for me, even when things went wrong for her. Even now she still tells me the scar on her finger was worth it to give me a “best-worst day.” That’s right. Zach’s mom is the one who said it first.
Still, no matter how many pieces of delicious pizza and apple pie you get to eat, the day your father walks out of your life is tough, but Mrs. Hochberg and Zach (and even his sisters) helped me get through it. They showed me such love, and except for Zach, still do. That’s why the cost of my plan to stop Zach is going to be so freaking hard.
This is Coby Cook, signing out.
Day 7
I have a plan. Maybe it’s not the best plan, but it’s all I’ve got. Will it be easy? No. But anything worthwhile often calls for hard work and sacrifice. My mom will be involved, too. There’s no other way. I ran it through my head, like 50 times today. It’s all for the best. I’m going to hide out under the tree in the park across from the Hochberg house tonight and wait for Zach to go off on another robbery spree. Maybe tomorrow it will all be over.
This is Coby Cook, signing out.
Day 8
Things went well last night. Mrs. Hochberg and the girls seemed very surprised to find out that Zach is the ski-masked criminal, and when I informed them he’d been injured and was hiding out in the Valley National Park, they couldn’t pile into their old SUV fast enough.
The park entry had a chain across the road, and we had to leave the car there. The girls brought flashlights and soon we were walking on a trail, heading towards the river.
“And how did you find out Zach is hiding here?” Mrs. Hochberg asked, her voice dry and nervous.
I’d planned my story out and fed her a line about Zach flying up to my bedroom window, telling me he didn’t want to go home in case the police were able to figure out who he was, because in his struggle tonight his ski mask got ripped off his face.
“You’ve always been such a good friend to Zach, Coby. To all of us, actually.”
“Well…” and that’s all I said. I mean, I had a job ahead of me, and that’s the sort of thing I didn’t want to hear at a time like that.
“Hey,” I said, “we still have a ways to go, and I’ve got some water bottles in my bookbag.” I gave a bottle to Lydia, and to Katie, and to Alisa. And one last bottle to Mrs. Hochberg. It was that easy.
Later that night after my mom got home from work (actually, it was about 2 a.m. because mom had to clean a big floor of some office building), I gave her a nice cold glass of water.
This is Coby Cook, signing out.
Day 9
First thing I did the next morning, after drinking a couple cups of coffee (I didn’t get much sleep, I was so busy!), I biked up to Zach’s house. After about two straight minutes of knocking he finally opened the door. He looked terrible.
“Not sleeping well these days? Guilty conscience, perhaps?”
He turned around and shouted up the stairs. “Mom, why didn’t you get the door?”
Here we go, I thought, and stepped into the house, shutting the door behind me.
“She’s not here, Zach.”
A blank stare zeroed in on my face, and then his eyes started opening wider. Now he seemed to be waking up.
“What did you do?” he looked a little frantic at this point, and I have to admit I enjoyed it. “Lydia,” he shouted. “I swear…Katie?”
Afraid he’d react too quickly and I wouldn’t be able to put the rest of my plan into action, I couldn’t wait any longer. “Zach, if you ever want to see your family again, you won’t lay a finger on me.”
“What?” he shouted, and I think the house actually moved. Just a little.
He started reaching for me and I shoved a small box at him. He looked at me with such disdain at that moment, without even opening it. When he did, there wasn’t any anger. Just tears. Lots of them.
“What did you do? How could you?
Inside the little box was a finger. With a scar on it. I’m not sure if he understood the irony behind it, but no matter.
“I want you to surrender yourself to the police, and tell them just what you’ve been up to. Your reign of terror has come to an end. That is, if you ever want to see your family again. If you touch me, I won’t feed them. Seriously. Think about it. I’m the only one who knows where they are. Their fate is in your hands. And don’t think you’re going to get some leverage on me by zipping out of here and taking my mom. She’s with your family. Face it, Zach. I hold all the cards. Now go to the police.”
He looked like he wanted to knock me into the next state, but he wasn’t that dumb. So instead he spat on me and it knocked me on my butt. It hurt more than you can imagine.
“I’m not going to the police, you idiot! I’ll find them, and then you’ll wish you’d never been born.” He ran to the front door, smashing into it and knocking pieces into the street, then flew in the direction of my house.
The thing is, I couldn’t be sure how he’d react to all of this. And I should have known he wouldn’t turn himself in. After all, he’s a supervillain. I picked up the box Zach dropped. Someho
w the finger hadn’t fallen out. Concentrating on the scar for a moment, I considered just how kind Mrs. Hochberg had always been to me.
Everything I’d need, my laptop, some water bottles, and beef jerky, were in my bookbag. I got back on my bike and pedaled a couple more blocks north and then two streets west, where I’d left Mrs. Hochberg’s SUV. I wasn’t a very experienced driver, but I just needed to get as far as the bus station.
That’s where I am now, on a bus, headed towards Alabama. This is where I’d be even if Zach turned himself in. Because if he did, and the police got involved, things could get messy on my end. Maybe I didn’t think this through as well as I should have. But heroes like me make sacrifices all the time, don’t they?
This is Coby Cook, signing out.
• • •
The man powered down the battered old laptop. Energy of any kind was hard to come by, and he needed enough power for one more entry. Besides, it was difficult to see it now through all his tears. How many times had he read it from the beginning? How many times had he tried to figure out who to blame? At this point, he guessed it didn’t really matter.
Yet despite all the years he’d spent lying to himself, he knew the truth. How many cities destroyed because of him? How many wars started because of him? How many millions dead because of him? No one wanted to shoulder a burden of that magnitude. But he was the catalyst that unleashed the storm known as Zach Hochberg.
He crawled out of the rubble underneath the old Hockey arena and started walking. The raggedy clothes he wore were dirty and hung poorly from his skeletal frame, but no one was there to see him, so what did it matter? When was the last time he’d eaten? Two or three days ago, probably. At least he’d found some water in the city and was able to keep his three canteens filled. He used some of the water to shave, then he trimmed his hair as best he could. In a side pocket of his bookbag he kept an old folding mirror, and on rare occasions he’d pull it out and remind himself of what his life had become.
Sometimes it was hard to remember why he currently lived under a collapsed hockey arena, but figured his poor memory had something to do with a lack of certain vitamins and nutrients in his diet. Then he’d power up his laptop if he found a working energy source or had any batteries with juice in them (sometimes he’d find an old working generator and fully charge his four batteries), and it all came flooding back when he started reading his entry at Day 1.
He turned around for a last look at home-sweet-home. He’d hidden in many places like this over the years, and didn’t feel sentimental in the least. Maybe he was hesitating, just a little, about what was coming next. He sighed and trudged on.
Had he ever been to a hockey game before? Hard to remember. Sports, movies, the financial industry, and even churches, as far as he knew, hadn’t existed for about two decades. All he tried to do was the right thing. But stopping Zach at any cost turned out to be far more expensive then he could have imagined. After the finger incident, it occurred to him there was no way out of it. So he left town and went into hiding. And that’s when things went bad, fast. Zach, no longer caring about wearing a ski mask, escalated his crimes, but this time not to steal petty cash. The media reported about the super-powered being who was terrorizing cities, ripping apart buildings, fighting back against anyone and anything that got in his way. No one could figure out what he wanted. But Coby new.
It had to be about twelve years now since he last saw Zach face-to-face. And the first time since the finger. He was on a bicycle, traveling south at the time through Georgia. All he had were the clothes he was wearing and his laptop in a bookbag. He hadn’t seen anyone else for at least two days, and no cars on the road, but by then, he probably hadn’t seen any working cars in a couple years.
Out of nowhere the ground next to him seemed to explode and he was tumbling across the median, bits of gravel biting into his palms. Zach. Standing triumphant on the highway, the concrete at his feet transformed into a giant spiderweb of cracks.
“It’s the Bringer of Blight himself. That’s what they call you, you know. It’s your supervillain name. I suppose this is where you tear me to shreds?”
Zach gave him a vacant look, almost as if he didn’t realize it was Coby.
The man brushed his hands off on his shirt, got to his feet, and walked over to his former best friend. “Just do it. I’m tired of running.”
“You never had my mother and sisters hidden somewhere, did you?”
Coby looked defiantly into the monster’s eyes. Because of Zach’s desperation and rage to find his family, his path of destruction became unstoppable, crossing borders, and even continents. For humankind, life on earth became a daily struggle to survive.
“Answer me,” Zach said. He didn’t shout it or look threatening or flick Coby with his fingers. He almost sounded disinterested, which frightened Coby more than anything else.
“Okay.” Coby had to look away for a moment and gather his thoughts…what he assumed would be his last thoughts. But he was the hero, the good guy, so he needed to look Zach in the eye once more. “It was the only way to have any power over you, to make you stop before you killed someone or committed a crime so big that the freaking Army would be coming after you.” Zach continued gazing back at him with no change in his expression. “There was no way I’d be able to hide them all and feed them, because you’d just follow me and get them back. Then I wouldn’t have any leverage. So I killed them. The night before I gave you the finger, literally. Your mother and sisters and my mother too. It didn’t bother me as much as you might think, because someone had to be the good guy and find a way to stop you, and like a true hero, I was willing to do whatever it took, at any cost, to put a stop to you.”
Tears were welling in Zach’s eyes and Coby realized that his nemesis might actually have some real human feelings left in his bones.
“I never stole much, just enough to help my family,” Zach said, his voice hitching a little, and Coby thought he might break down right in front of him. “Mom was getting behind on the bills, and I found an easy way to help out. I never would have let it go too far if you’d have just left us alone.”
Zach’s face was red and wet, and Coby started feeling embarrassed for this horrible man who’d changed life on earth forever.
“But you did go too far. You put a man in a coma.”
“You’re no better than me, Coby Cook. You’re a murderer. You’re probably sicker than me.”
But Coby knew this wasn’t true. Zach’s the real monster, he told himself. Coby was Batman to Zach’s Joker.
“Staying alive is the best way for you to pay for your share of the sins we committed,” Zach said, then jumped into the sky and flew out of sight before Coby could blink.
Funny how that chance meeting so many years ago came to mind now. He hadn’t seen or even heard anything about Zach since that day. Then again, it wasn’t like he could turn on cable news or look it up on the internet.
With a few more steps he entered the shadow of the largest remaining building in Chicago. How it was still standing, he couldn’t figure, but he was thankful it was there. More than likely there wouldn’t be any power for the elevator, but walking up the stairs would be cathartic.
The ascent turned out to be more difficult than he thought it would be. Several times he sat to rest, and it didn’t take long before he’d finished off the water in his canteen. Sixteen more flights to the roof. And then one last journal entry to write.
• • •
Day 7316
Perhaps the loneliness is the worst part.
I haven’t seen another human being for close to three years now. Early on, when I first went on the run and it was kind of exciting, people were everywhere. I blended in as best I could, moving from city to city, trying to avoid Zach. I never felt lonely during the first couple years. But when Zach stepped it up and tore apart cities, states, and even countries in the search for his family, people went into hiding. Farmers didn’t work their fields, crops star
ted dying out, and hence Zach’s supervillain name, the Bringer of Blight.
The guy could fly anywhere he wanted, and so fast. But the attacks were completely random. One moment he’d be in Delaware, moving at lightning speed, pulling apart buildings with his bare hands, and the next hour he’d be sighted in some other country, across the Atlantic, doing the same. I’m not so sure that Zach thought I had the resources to move his mother and sisters out of the country, though. My best guess is that he was so enraged with me he’d just fly for a while, land, and start destroying whatever was in front of him.
Is Zach Hochberg still alive? Does it really matter anymore? But if he’s dead, I can’t begin to guess how he died, because military forces around the world hit him with their most powerful non-nuclear weapons and didn’t so much as scratch him.
Nearly finished now. My battery is getting low and I’m tired. Tired of writing, tired of running, tired of always being hungry. And most of all tired of remembering when I reread this stupid journal. But I have a confession to make. I’ve always been jealous that Zach can fly. Sure, I was afraid the one time he grabbed me and flew me across town, but that was on his terms. A bad guy isn’t supposed to be granted powers like that. It should have been me…it should have been me. So as I sit and write these words on the roof of the tallest building I could find, I’m going to let you in on one last secret. Now it’s my turn to fly. On my terms.
This is Coby Cook, signing out.
A Word From Ed Gosney
I fell in love with superheroes when I watched Batman and Robin battling the forces of evil in the mid- to late-Sixties. It was fun, exciting, and campy, but for a young boy, it was everything I needed. Then Saturday morning brought Super Friends to my TV, along with after school reruns of Spider-Man and other Marvel cartoons that didn’t have very good animation, but had great opening theme songs. Ultimately, the glamour of television superheroes led me to little mom and pop stores that had racks of comic books you could buy with pocket change.
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