Peter Clines: Ex-Heroes

“I’ve got another ninety-one minutes at peak, three hours of idling.” She dipped her head at Barry, a fetal ball in the blankets. “Let him sleep. It’s not like he gets to that often.”

The lift gate locked into position and St. George leapt to the roof of the cab. Lady Bee gave him a wink and settled back on her pillow.

There was a gas station at Vermont, drained dry three months back by an earlier expedition. They were turning onto Vermont when Lynne, the teenager, stumbled to the front of the swaying truck. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“You guys are the only heroes left, right? I mean, you and the ones back at the Mount.”

“As far as we know, yeah,” said St. George. “We know some are dead and a few are exes.”

“Were there any supervillains? You know, like in the movies?”

“Not that we know of.”

“So who stacked up the cars like that?”

“We think it was the SS. The South Seventeens. They were one of the gangs from the Koreatown area, like the XV3s. There are other survivors in LA, but they’re not all quite as civic-minded as us.”

“No,” she said shaking her head. “I mean how’d they do it? How’d they cram them all under the bridge?”

The third punk met my eyes and froze in midswing. I held his gaze, drained him until he dropped the baseball bat, then let my goggles snap shut. The little fuck fell over, twitched once, and whined like a hurt dog.

When my eyes first started to change, a few days after I got the blood transfusion from that creepy old woman in Greece, I thought it was kind of useless as superpowers went. Then I realized people couldn’t fight me without looking at me. And that changed my view on things.

After stumbling into this night job about seven months ago, I had a solid routine down. Work at the agency by day. Grab dinner or hit the gym to work out, socialize a bit, and convince everyone I have a life outside of work. Leave early because I say I’m working on a script, like half the people in town. Home to sleep until eleven. Patrol as Gorgon for four or five hours. Two hour nap, and then back to work. Catch up on any lost sleep over the weekend, and be seen enough to keep people from wondering why Nikolai started wearing dark glasses for his sensitive eyes around the same time an optic-themed superhero appeared.

Of course, half a dozen comic-book types have appeared all across the country these past few months, even some in Europe, and they’re all a lot more interesting than me. Somebody flipped a switch and wham superpowers are showing up everywhere. The Mighty Dragon was the first, but I think the morning after my first night out the big story was a man made of electricity in Boston. The Awesome Ape is in Chicago. Here in LA, in addition to the Dragon, there’s some kind of monster terrorizing drug dealers in Venice Beach, and a dominatrix-ninja type cleaning up the Rampart district. Over in Beverly Hills there’s an immortal guy who heals instantly from everything. Just the other night I heard about some kid down in Koreatown who’s wearing a rainbow-striped karate uniform and bouncing around like a superball.

Wearing spandex or bright colors wasn’t my thing, though. There’s so much more practical stuff you can get when the agency you work for represents celebrities. The body armor? It’s a gift for Colin—-he’s playing a SWAT cop and wants to get used to the weight. I know it’s bending the rules, thanks so much. Reinforced leather duster? Hey, you-know-who has a weird fetish, what can I say. Storage locker under an assumed name? Ms. Lohan has some things she’d like to keep out of sight, but doesn’t want to get rid of. Your discretion is appreciated, thanks. Custom motorcycle helmet? Military-style utility harness? Kevlar gauntlets? People hand you stuff so they can tell their friends someone famous touched it.

It was the end of my Christmas bonus and the start of my night job.

These three Seventeens were out for at least an hour. Stupid fucks, barely into high school and already throwing their lives away. I flipped them over and took their wallets. Then I dragged them to a sign post and ziptied them to it with their arms behind their backs. I took their driver’s licenses and their cash (crime fighting isn’t cheap).

“See this?” I growled. I held up the IDs. “I know who you are now. I know your names. I know where you live. In an hour I’ll know your families, your dogs, your girlfriends. What I’ve done to you, I can do to all of them. And worse.” The licenses vanished into a pouch on my belt.

Yeah, I stole the whole gag from Fight Club . Sue me. If I was that creative I really would be writing a script and I wouldn’t have to finance all this with drug money.

The goggles were the hardest thing. I knew what I needed, but had no idea how to make them. Through a friend of a friend I found a retired prop-builder out in Van Nuys. Guy used to design and make stuff for all sorts of sci-fi films before everything went digital. I told him they were for a movie being shot somewhere in Hungary. He complained for half an hour about film jobs leaving Hollywood and then asked when I needed them by. He built the goggles from old camera irises and dark-mirrored sunglasses, and made three sets of them, so I’d have spares. I got the blueprints and design notes, too, in case they needed to do on-set repairs. On the movie.

I walked back to my motorcycle and pulled a road flare from the saddlebags. It hit the ground a few feet from the punks, casting a flickering red light over everything. People ignore gunfights, screams, and drug deals, but for some reason everyone calls the cops if there’s a flare burning in the street.

I gunned the engine, spun the bike around, and gave them one last flash, the goggles snapping open and shut just like a camera. Somebody told me the moment I make eye contact is a lot like getting hit in the back of the head with a baseball bat, just without the actual pain. Then comes the fear when you realize I’ve got you locked. When someone’s in my sight, they can’t blink or look away.

“Get out. You don’t want me to catch you again.” And I roared off in what I hope was a terrifying display of ice-cold bad-assery. It’s worked so far. Half a year at the night job and I hear crime’s down six percent in my territory.

Of course, that doesn’t mean a lot. There’s always two or three gangs fighting over this part of the city. Sometimes it’s just tagging. Sometimes it’s drive-bys. The City Council would brag in the papers that gangs and drug dealers and homeless people had been driven out of this neighborhood or that one. No one would ever discuss the fact they’d all just moved somewhere else.

So my goal wasn’t to drive them out. It was to eliminate them. To make every current and potential member of the South Seventeens—a gang that proudly referred to themselves as “the SS”—run in terror at the sight of a green gang scarf or bandanna.

The bike shot down the street, slipping through intersections and around corners. I tried to cover as much ground as possible each night. The trick was to be seen as many places as possible, but never be moving so fast people thought I wouldn’t stop for something. There’s a reason police cars seem to move at “hanging out” speed a lot.

I’ve also learned moving targets are harder to hit. There’s a chip in my helmet where someone tried to blow my head off with a rifle. Knocked me off the bike, and that was when I learned my power can drain someone from a block and a half away.

I was on Pico when the sedan pulled in behind me. I got a good look at it in the mirrors. An old Caddy with a lot of power, a lot of seating room, and one dumb fuck sitting in the passenger window with a shotgun.