GODS OF JUSTICE
Edited by
Kevin Hosey and K. Stoddard Hayes
Illustrations by Mark Offutt and Joel Gomez
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Published by:
Cliffhanger Books, Dallas, Texas USA
Smashwords Edition (June 2011)
Cover design by Kevin Hosey
Book copyright ©2011 by Cliffhanger Books. All rights reserved.
Stories copyright ©2011 by individual authors.
No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without written permission.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living, dead, human or super human is entirely coincidental.
"Gods of Justice" is also available in print through most major online retailers.
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To everyone who dreams of righting wrongs and fighting for justice. More power to you.
—Kevin Hosey
For all the real heroes who devote their lives to helping the helpless, protecting the innocent, and resisting bullies and tyrants.
—K. Stoddard Hayes
******
HEROIC TALES
THE MASS GRAVE OF JOHN JOHNSONS
Micah Urban
Kelly Wisdom
Dayton Ward
Lisa Gail Green
Kevin Hosey
Jordan Taylor
Derek Tyler Attico
K. Stoddard Hayes
Carla Lee Suson
Ricardo Sanchez
******
THE MASS GRAVE OF JOHN JOHNSONS
Micah Urban
IT WAS A long night, just the dead and me.
The body bags were the cheaper, blue, non-vinyl kind with handles. There were forty-four in all. Someone had written numbers on each of them with a permanent marker, probably the order in which they had been brought out of the mass grave discovered on Kampe’s farm—in the remains of the lake that had disappeared into the local system of caves one night last week.
Now they filled my cooler, occupied all the gurneys I could find in the little clinic called Green Garden. They even lined the hall between my office and the morgue. In an effort to keep the temperature down on my side of the building, I turned off the heat and propped the outside door open to let in the frigid January air.
It was past midnight. I wasn’t a young man any more. I was tired and hungry. Late nights like this reminded me that I was now closer to fifty than forty.
After eating a cheese Danish, I went back to the morgue and opened the bag marked with a sloppy 27, the most easily accessible corpse. The only definite conclusion I could come to after a precursory examination was that the body had once belonged to a male. The next three corpses had little else to contribute to the matter. All were males of a similar height and build; all lacked distinctive identification marks.
Discouraged, I retreated to my office, warmed by a space heater.
After making myself a fresh pot of strong coffee, I sat down at my computer. I typed up some notes and read my email. I debated canceling all of my appointments for the remainder of the week, but thought better of it. There was no way I was going to be handling this particular case all on my own.
* * *
I called the State Police forensics lab in Rockford for help. The trooper in charge of the lab told me right off that my case was too big for them, and recommended I contact the FBI. The Chicago field office told me to contact the Minneapolis field office who referred me back to Chicago. Cutting out the middle man, I called D.C. There, after fifteen minutes on hold, I talked to a man with a deep voice. He did not introduce himself, but he was very curious as to who I was and why I was calling. I answered all his questions and asked if there was any assistance the FBI could offer.
“Mister Murray,” Deep Voice said. “I want you to know that we’ve been expecting your call.”
I sat up straight in my chair. “You have?”
“We have standing orders to be on the lookout for your call.”
“Really?”
“Do you have something to write with, Mister Murray?”
“Yeah.” I reached for the nearest scrap of paper and managed to just barely keep up with the phone number he rattled off. “Is this a special branch of the Bureau or something?”
Deep Voice chuckled. “Yeah. Or something.”
* * *
The number the FBI gave me turned out to be the direct line to the Federal Office of Super-Heroes.
What had I stumbled onto?
I had a very helpful customer representative take all my information and in less than five minutes, I was approved for support. They would be sending a special forensics team from Omaha to Green Garden just as soon as possible. My main contact went by the name of WhoDied.
WhoDied was famous in my trade. Some might say infamous. He was said to be able to identify human remains no matter how badly decayed or how little remained of the corpse, and he would do it on site. Some said he was psychic; others said he was a hoax.
Hoax or not, he arrived with superhuman speed.
One moment I had put my head down on my desk, and the next, I glanced up to find a trio of strangers standing in my doorway. They all wore costumes and masks.
I rose and ran a hand along the front of my shirt to try and iron out the wrinkles.
WhoDied stood there, the office door opened wide, letting out the heat. He wore a cowl that showed only his mouth and chin; the eyes were hidden behind dark lenses. Under a hooded cape, he wore tights of a macabre decoration—black above the chest and white below. “R.I.P.” was emblazoned across his stomach above a large question mark. Thick black gloves went up nearly to his elbows. The entire getup hung limp on him, denoting a frame of skeletal substance. He kept his back rigid, his shoulders squared and his head up.
Before I could get a good look at the other two masked strangers, the hero closed the gap between us, coming to a stop on the far side of my desk. “Doctor Abram Murray?”
I nodded.
“WhoDied.”
I stumbled over what to call him. Should I call him Who? Was that too informal? Should I call him Mr. Died? Too formal? I ended up nodding my acknowledgement and held out my hand. I kept it simple. “How are you?”
WhoDied stepped back. “No touching. That could contaminate me.”
I withdrew my hand; I brushed my palm off on my jeans, and having nothing else to do with my fingers, I stuck them into my front pocket.
“You left your door open,” said a feminine voice.
I looked past WhoDied to one of the other two, a girl I wagered was barely old enough to drive. She was half a foot shorter than WhoDied. Her cowl, like WhoDied’s, exposed the lips and chin, but it also opened above the brow, exposing black hair pulled tight into two shoulder-length braids. Her eyes were hidden behind violet lenses. Above her full-length black tights she wore a Mandarin dress depicting a map of the world. Gray gloved hands held the straps of a large, neon blue bag.
WhoDied introduced her as Locality.
His other aide, whom he called Four-D, was a boy—maybe fourteen—who wore simple black tights with motorcycle boots and a belt with an hourglass buckle. He didn’t wear a mask, but had a black bandana pulled high across the bridge of his nose. Acne stretched across his forehead and up past his hairline, well into his crew cut.
I explained about the many bodies I was trying to preserve, my lack of space for storing them, and my improvisation. Locality nodded her head, but WhoDied made no acknowledgement. He just stood there, motionless. Perhaps he was staring off into space. Perhaps he was taking in every detail of me and my office—garishly lit by fluorescent bulbs which made my 1960’s toothpaste green walls appear all the more minty.
WhoDied looked at me and asked, “What have you learned so far?”
I reached for the yellow legal pad on which I had jotted all my notes. “There are forty-four bodies.” I explained about the Kampe’s vanished lake where the bodies were found and the badly decomposed state of the few corpses I had looked at.
“And where are the bodies now?” he asked, as if he hadn’t seen them stacked all over on his way in.
My mouth opened—I was ready to tell him that most of them were right outside in the hall, but it was such an obvious answer that I felt stupid saying it. I said nothing and shut my mouth. Behind WhoDied, Locality offered me a shrug, from which I gathered the momentum needed to ask, “Which do you want to see first?”
“Do you have a favorite?” he asked.
I glanced back to Locality, who smirked.
Realizing the hero wasn’t being serious, I stood up and led the FOSH forensics team down the aisle of body bags to the morgue, where I introduced them to Body Number 27.
WhoDied moved fast. Before I could even think of stopping him, he had climbed up on top of the gurney and straddled the body; then he spread apart the lips of the bag and proceeded with an up-close inspection of the corpse.
I didn’t know what to say or do. Rooted where I stood, I merely stared in grotesque fascination, wondering exactly what his powers were.
“Just wait,” whispered Locality from behind me. “It gets better.”
WhoDied opened a pocket on the cuff of his right glove. It was a deep pocket, for he pulled out a surgical scalpel. He held it up to the white light and turned the blade first this way then that. Then he leaned down and reached inside the exposed, decomposed body cavity with the blade. His hands disappeared from sight and went to work. A moment later, he sat up, scalpel in one fist, human tissue in the other. He held the scrap of meat up to the light, examining its color.
“The liver,” WhoDied said, “is surprisingly rich in memories.”
I took a step closer, expecting he would hold the snippet out for me to examine as well. Instead, he plopped it into his mouth.
I blinked. I turned to Locality. “Did he just....”
She nodded.
I looked back to the hero. He seemed to be savoring the morsel as if it were gourmet cuisine. I was transfixed by the repulsiveness of the deed. “Why?”
“That’s just the way he works.” Her voice was flat, unwavering in the light of the spectacle. “The way he’s always worked.”
WhoDied actually licked his chops, as if enjoying the aftertaste. Then he swallowed.
I felt my jaw drop—it was the only reaction I could muster. He looked directly at me. My mouth closed so hard my teeth clacked.
Dismounting the corpse, WhoDied squared his shoulders and raised his chin. He looked directly at me without shame and announced, “His name was John. John Johnson.”
I tried several times to say something intelligible, but could only manage a shocked, “Really?”
WhoDied nodded.
In a hushed tone, I asked Locality, “How accurate is he?”
She dipped her chin. “One hundred percent.”
Turning back to WhoDied, I smiled. “So. John Johnson.”
WhoDied rested a hand on the gurney and—for just a moment—looked very old and tired. Then he regained his composure. “And he was a superhero.”
My ears perked up. “A superhero? Do you know which one.”
A frown creased his lips as he nodded. “We were friends once. Long ago. The world knew him as Rex Solaris.”
* * *
The first time I had seen Rex Solaris on TV, I was a boy. He had been helping the survivors of an earthquake in Nicaragua. I sat in front of the television for hours that day, hypnotized by this modern day Olympian saving life after life. He even rescued a whole schoolroom of children my age. It was to one of these school children that he gave his famous belt buckle—a golden sun engraved with an ‘R.’
I remember wishing I had been trapped in that schoolhouse, that Rex Solaris would’ve saved me and given me that buckle. A lot of children did.
Rex Solaris was the Mick Jagger of Superheroes. He made doing good look sexy.
Unlike his government counterparts, who wore cheesy costumes with stiff names, Rex Solaris was a style all unto himself. Before him, a superhero never would’ve worn black, let alone a black, rhinestone studded jumpsuit. A FOSH agent never would have had unkempt brown hair, sideburns to his chin and a thick bushy mustache.
But in 1972, Rex Solaris did. And he didn’t just look good, he was endowed with super strength, super speed, super senses, and he could fly.
What woman could resist him?
My mother, Polly Murray, came into the room for a bit and watched the news with me. She was cool and calm. Between puffs of her cigarette she told me that Rex Solaris was my father. When my jaw dropped, she said she wasn’t joking.
I went outside to play after that. I tested my abilities to see if I had superpowers of my own, but I didn’t. I had to work very hard just to be average. It crossed my mind that my mother was crazy. By the time I was in high school, I had lost interest in what she was saying, so she stopped telling me.
* * *
“Rex Solaris.” I looked down at the body anew.
I wondered if WhoDied would be able to tell me if the hero really was my father by sampling my flesh, but this was a passing whim left over from childhood. I didn’t really care anymore and there was a lot of work left to do.
“Take me to the next body,” WhoDied ordered, as if he couldn’t see the pool of body bags that spilled out the door of the morgue and extended all the way down the hall.
I chalked it up to professional theatrics and led him over to the next gurney, presenting Body Number 16 as if I had just conjured it out of thin air.
WhoDied extracted a mint from a tin he kept tucked in his left glove. Only after he had munched the pill to pulp did he unzip the body bag and continue with his ghoulish performance.
“Liver’s missing,” he commented. Then, after a moment, he produced another sample of meat. He held it up to the light and after a moment discarded it. Then he reached back inside. “Stay away from the pancreas.”
I raised an eyebrow in Locality’s direction.
“Gives him indigestion,” she explained.
“Ah.”
Looking back at the FOSH hero, I was just in time to witness him tasting a bit of Body 16. His head dipped and his tongue ran the meat all over his cheeks and teeth.
Without warning, WhoDied spat the sample out onto the floor.
“Anything wrong?” I asked, eyeing the spot on the tile where his spit mixed with decayed human flesh.
“Horribly.” He turned to me, his lips stretched into a disgusted scowl.
WhoDied reached for his left glove and once more brought out the tin of curiously strong mints. Popping the lid, he emptied the canister into his palm, opened his mouth wide and poured in the whole handful. He munched for a minute and then swished the mixture back and forth, thoroughly cleansing his palate.
I took a cautious step back, waiting for him to spit out what was left of the mints. Instead he swallowed them in several small gulps. When he was done, he took a deep breath, inhaling the frigid air through his teeth.
Then WhoDied reached back into the corpse’s body cavity with his scalpel and retrieved a fresh sample from even farther in. He tasted this directly, forgoing the visual inspection he had performed with the other specimens. He sucked on the flesh as if it were a gobstopper.
I cast a sideways glance at the sidekicks.
“I don’t know,” Locality said as she watched her mentor. “I’ve never seen him act like this before.”
The silent boy, Four-D, shrugged.
We watched as WhoDied moved on to the next body. Here he extracted a bit of the tongue. He placed this between his teeth only long enough to be sure of something and then he spat it out; he turned for a fourth set of remains.
I quickly stepped between him and Body Bag 12. I grabbed him by the shoulders and forced him to stand still. “What in God’s name are you doing?”
WhoDied stared at me and I stared back.
“What I am doing,” he said, “is stumbling unto the most fascinating murder mystery I have ever come across.”
* * *
After he finished his fourth test, WhoDied returned to Body 27. He stood at the head of the gurney and placed a hand lightly atop the corpse’s chest. Turning to the three of us, he announced, “This is John Johnson.” He then sidestepped to Body 16 and patted the head. “This is John Johnson.” At the third corpse, he jovially slapped his palm against the decayed shoulder. “This is John Johnson.” He gestured behind himself at his most recent attempt to help me, Body 34. “And that is John Johnson.”
WhoDied, in my silence, walked up and looked at me in earnest. “I wager that every one of these victims is John Johnson.”
“So,” I said in my most scholarly voice, “somebody out there is killing people named John Johnson?”
“No.” The barest trace of excitement could be heard in his raspy words. “Someone has killed John Johnson forty-four times.”
“The same John Johnson?”
“Yes.”
“Rex Solaris?”
“Yes!” He was positively giddy.
I looked around at the eight gurneys that were crammed into the morgue. My gaze wandered over to the refrigerator units where seven more bodies were stored and I thought of the bodies lining both sides of the hall outside the door. Finally, I stared deep into WhoDied’s empty black lenses.
“That’s impossible.”
WhoDied held up a slender finger. “Don’t confuse impossible with improbable.”
I was pretty sure I meant impossible, but I didn’t argue. Instead, I went to Body 27. I spent the next few minutes studying the decayed features for any recognizable markings. There was a distinct, knotted mess of hair around the chin and a faint line along the left shoulder that might’ve been a scar. I moved on to Body 16 and spent all of thirty seconds locating the same features.
Casting an uncertain glance back at WhoDied and his sidekicks, I squeezed between the gurney and the counter, making my way to a corpse WhoDied had yet to touch. The blue bag was marked with a large number five. I unzipped the bag and took a look at the body, which also had a tangled beard and shoulder scar.
I rested a hand on the gurney and turned my attention back to WhoDied. “All these bodies are the same man?”
He nodded.
Despite the cold, a bead of sweat trickled down into my right eye. “Are you sure?”
WhoDied pointed in turn to 27, 16, 12 and 34. “About the ones I’ve sampled? Yes. But I should sample the rest of the victims to make sure.”
* * *
I watched the trio work.
WhoDied would examine each body first. After sampling the meat of the dead, he would say a few words before stepping aside to let Locality through. She no longer wore her gray gloves, and her performance consisted of nothing more than running her hands along the contours of the corpse. She would then rattle off a string of numbers as she cleaned her skin with the hand sanitizer she kept in her bright blue satchel.
Four-D carried a yellow legal pad and would jot down everything said. Before moving on to the next body, Four-D would pull his bandana down and lower his head until his nose was practically touching the body. He would then inhale deeply, scribble his own notes and pull the bandana back up into place.
WhoDied explained the process. Locality had the ability to determine where a person died by touching the flesh of the corpse. The numbers she rattled off were longitude and latitude, but she could also provide the specific details of the scene right up to which direction the body had been facing when taking the last breath. Four-D, by smelling the body, somehow knew the exact time of death—not how long the body had been decaying, but the exact moment life actually left the body, down to the second.
I could’ve gone back to my office. I could’ve caught another catnap.
But I was fascinated by the show.
* * *
“Everything is becoming much clearer,” WhoDied said.
We were all sitting in my office. I was in my chair, WhoDied sat across from me, and Locality and Four-D stood close enough to my space heater to keep me in the cold.
“Clearer?” I leaned on my desk. “How so?”
WhoDied glanced over the notes Four-D had made and then handed the yellow legal pad to me. “Look through the list. You should come to the same conclusion.”
The page was broken into four columns: identity of the victim—which was John Johnson from top to bottom—a set of coordinates, additional information about the location, date and time of death.
The coordinates meant nothing to me. I perused Locality’s additional information and recognized the places listed. Corbinsville, Griffith, Bradley. They were all towns within ten miles of the mass grave of John Johnson.
I turned my focus on the last column. The exact date was never repeated. Even the times of death were scattered throughout the day, and though the large majority of deaths had occurred during the night, more than a dozen had occurred in middle of the day. The only discernable pattern was that all of the listed dates were in the future.
Looking up only with my eyes, I peered over the notepad at WhoDied. “Are you saying that these murders haven’t happened yet?”
WhoDied pointed to Four-D. “No. He is.”
I looked to the boy. Back straight and head high—much like his mentor—he possessed a steely resolve in his gaze as if he was daring me to challenge him.
“He’s never been wrong,” Locality offered.
I shifted my gaze to WhoDied sitting on the edge of his chair. “Are you saying that our murderer is a time traveler?”
“Yes.” WhoDied almost smiled. “Isn’t it marvelous?”
“So....” I stared at the dates a moment longer and then dropped the legal pad on my desk. Leaning back in my chair, I crossed my arms over the gentle bulge of my belly. “Let’s say we are dealing with a time traveler. How do you kill the same person over and over again, you know? I mean, once you’ve killed John Johnson in 2012, then there’s no John Johnsons left to kill in 2013 or 2014 and so on down the line.”
Another smile tried to emerge from the corners of WhoDied’s lips. He pointed to the sky. “Unless you start killing John Johnson at the end of his life then work your way backwards.” When I didn’t reply, he leaned forward and said in a hushed tone, “Blew your mind, didn’t I?”
He had.
“Who...?” I sat up straight. “Who could do this?”
WhoDied sat back in his chair. I wasn’t expecting an answer, but he gave me one anyway. “I don’t know. My brother, WhoDidIt, passed away last year. He would have been the one to ask.”
Locality and Four-D nodded their heads in agreement.
I pushed my chair back from my desk, stood up and stretched. “So who do we call now?”
WhoDied looked at his folded hands resting on his lap. “No one.”
Resting my hands on the edge of my desk, I looked down at him. He did not look up at me. “Isn’t there someone who can help figure out who is killing John Johnson?”
“There are a few people I could ask,” WhoDied admitted, “and I’m sure they would be able to piece it together eventually, but we don’t have time for that. And the grim reality is that it doesn’t really matter. The killer is a time-traveler and for all we know at this time he may only be a ten-year old boy.”
“May not even be born,” Locality conjectured.
“Too true,” WhoDied agreed. “If only we had more time.”
“More time?”
WhoDied sprang to his feet and planted his finger on my desk in the middle of the notes. I followed his direction and stared at the date for Body 15: January 23, 2012—two days away, in the parking lot of a roadside diner near Griffith where I had eaten a few times.
I looked up at WhoDied. “So what do we do?”
“I’m thinking it will probably be best if we let John Johnson know what is happening.”
“You know where he lives?”
WhoDied was silent as he reclaimed his chair. “No. Not exactly.”
He told me what he did know.
Rex Solaris and WhoDied had worked together in FOSH, back in the early ‘60s. Then Rex Solaris had been lured away from the bureaucracy of FOSH to the newly created corporate entity called “The Union of Superheroes.” As the first famous member of the Union, Rex Solaris was lavished with wealth and perks to make any celebrity jealous.
Rex Solaris was a notorious lady’s man. His numerous encounters with his pretty, young groupies were well documented in the tabloids. But what only the government knew was that a number of these trysts resulted in children. The government kept tabs on all children born to known Persons of Extraordinary Power.
In the early 90’s—at the end of the Cold War—the security surrounding this top secret information was breached and the files were leaked. The parents of the children were notified so that they could take the appropriate action and secure their children from threats.
The file on Rex Solaris’s offspring was hefty.
A rumor persisted on the internet that when his contract with the Union expired, he settled in the Midwest, near a high concentration of his offspring, watching over his children from afar.
WhoDied looked at a map of the local area I had given him. “Based on the locations that the John Johnsons were killed, I’d say we’re in the right area. But even if we could find him, there’s no guarantee that he’d let us in to speak to him.”
“But surely he’d talk to you?” I said.
WhoDied shook his head. “There’s no guarantee. What would really be helpful is if we could find one of his children. That would be a certain ticket in to talk to him.”
Before I could stop myself, I was saying, “Well, I might be able to help with that.”
“Oh? Who do you know?”
“Me.”
I told them about my mother’s claims regarding my pedigree.
“And you believed her?” Locality asked.
“No. Well, yes. Sort of.” I turned to WhoDied. “I wanted to, when I was little. But as I grew older, I assumed she was delusional.”
WhoDied stared at the jade lion statuette on my desk. Just when I was beginning to wonder if he had fallen asleep, he said, “This could work.” He sat up straight. “Provided we can find Johnson in time.”
It was my turn to sit in a contemplative funk. I went over the name of anyone I knew who might be able to locate John Johnson. There was only one name which persistently popped up—someone who knew the area better than the other lifelong residents.
WhoDied must have been reading my body language, because he asked, “You know someone?”
“Maybe.” But I was pretty sure that I did.
* * *
Sheriff Walter Swit knew everyone within twenty miles. He didn’t know anyone by the name of John Johnson; however, there was a Jon Jensen living out by the abandoned quarry who fit the description of our forty-four corpses. The man was a hermit who had moved to the area in the mid-nineties. The sheriff even offered to drive me out there—perhaps he felt guilty about burdening me with the bodies. Regardless, I had a ride so I settled for directions.
The FOSH transport was an ambulance that was matte black from top to bottom. The windows were as darkly tinted as the lenses covering WhoDied’s eyes. All the lights were covered with smoke tinted plastic. Inside, behind the driver and passenger seats were two captain seats and a bank of state-of-the-art equipment.
Locality drove. I was given the passenger seat.
By nine o’clock in the morning, we were parked on the side of a wooded road across from a dirt drive that led deeper into the forest. A simple metal swing gate cordoned off the private path from passing traffic—not that there was much of that. A large “No Trespassing” sign was chained to the metal crossbars.
As I peered through the bare branches for any sign of civilization, WhoDied announced from his seat in the back, “We’ll wait here.”
I turned and looked back at him. “You want me to go alone?”
“We might not be welcome.”
“I might not be welcome.”
“You’re his son, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know.” I didn’t. Not really. I had my mother’s accusations. “What if I’m not? What if he vaporizes me with his heat vision?”
Locality laughed.
“He doesn’t have heat vision,” WhoDied said.
* * *
Half a mile into the trees I found a clearing that was home to a log cabin, a two story piece of art that easily could have taken half a million dollars even in a bad real-estate market.
The steps did not creak or groan as I slowly made my way up to the deck. There was a well-worn rocking chair and table. Drapes were drawn shut in all the windows.
I knocked on the door and waited.
After several minutes without a response, I peered in the window through a sliver of an opening in the curtains. It was dark inside. I couldn’t even distinguish the furniture from the walls.
When I went back to the door, it was open. Standing there was a man who resembled a lumberjack only slightly more than he resembled the bodies at my morgue.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hello.” There was calmness to his demeanor more fitting of a monk than a rock star celebrity.
“My name is Abram,” I said. “Abram Murray.”
He stretched his neck, cracking his joints. He smiled politely at me. “I know who you are, Abram. How did you find me?”
* * *
John invited me into his home.
Beyond the initial recognition at the door, he made no further mention of whether or not there was any special tie between us. I opened my mouth to ask him if he was my father, but I lost my nerve. What if the answer was no? What if it was yes? I said nothing.
He took me to his kitchen. There, over a meal of reindeer stew, I explained the situation. John listened while he finished his bowl. When he was done, he stood up, went to the stove and dished up a second helping. Turning around, he asked, “What does this all have to do with me?”
I stirred the remains of my stew. “The bodies are you. All of them.”
He raised an inquisitive eyebrow, then came back and sat down. He tapped his fingers rapidly on the table. He picked his spoon up and held it over the bowl. “How sure are you that these bodies are me?”
“WhoDied said they were.”
John set the spoon down. “Marcus is here?”
“Marcus?”
John smiled. “That’s WhoDied’s real name.”
“Ah.” I nodded. “He’s here. Why? Do you have reason to doubt him?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I trust him with my life.”
“Well, that’s good.” I placed my hands on the table, folded. “Because according to him, you’re going to die on Monday.”
* * *
John stared down into his own eyes.
“When did this one die?” he asked.
I double-checked the note pad for Body 12. Before I could tell him, WhoDied announced from behind me, “August 9, 2031.”
John focused on the faint scar which traced the curvature of the left shoulder. “I was fighting Doctor Red back in ’82. He had a knife made out of...I don’t know what. Something alien maybe?”
“I understand the lab tests were inconclusive,” WhoDied answered.
John didn’t look back. “It’s the only time I’ve ever been cut by a blade. It never did heal right.”
He stretched, cracked his neck, and looked back at us. The Zen-like calmness he had first displayed had given way to an aura of disturbed seriousness. “Show me the one who dies Monday.”
We went out into the hall. I led the heroes towards the open exit, where Body 15 resided two spots from the end. His only comment upon seeing the corpse was: “I just bought this shirt. I haven’t even worn it yet.”
WhoDied stepped up besides John and rested a hand on his old friend’s shoulder. “You don’t have to die in it.”
* * *
After John Johnson left, I turned to WhoDied. “What now?”
WhoDied was looking out the door at the daylight flooding in. “We’re going to go back to the hotel. I have some calls to make. Would you be able to stay here a little bit longer? I have a colleague who should be arriving shortly.”
Looking at my watch, I tried calculating how long I’d been up—thirty-two hours. I yawned. “What time is he supposed to be here?”
“He was supposed to be here this morning.”
* * *
I stayed.
A deep, dreamless sleep was shattered with one fell swoop of something heavy and blunt across my left shoulder. I jumped out of my chair before I was fully awake.
Standing on the far side of the desk was a caricature of a man. What hair he had was unkempt and a sickly yellowish white. His skin was a leathery tan, yet so tight against his form that his dark veins bulged, disappearing from sight only where his circulatory system was hidden by liver spots.
He was dressed in a tuxedo and tapped his cane impatiently against the floor.
“You Abraham Murray?” he asked. His voice was high-pitched.
“Abram Murray,” I corrected. “Are you Mod?”
“No one calls me Mod anymore.” He hefted his cane into the air and let it fall across my desk. “What’s with all the bodies? Marcus didn’t say anything to me about having to take a look at so many bodies.”
“No. There’s only one body that we need you to take a look at.”
Mod stabbed the floor with his cane. “Then show me that. I don’t have all night.”
I led him to Body 15. From where we stood, I could look out the open door and see the brake lights of an idling car.
“You left the door open,” Mod announced as I squatted down and unzipped the body bag which held Monday’s corpse.
I ignored the remark. “This is the body we wanted you to examine.”
For a moment of silence, Mod stared down at the body. Then he sniffled. After wiping his nose with a handkerchief, he turned to me. “You tell Marcus that his powers were drained—taken completely away. Then he was stabbed in the heart with a steak knife.”
And then the mysterious Mod was out the door, into his car, and gone into the night. I wasted no time in calling the number WhoDied had provided me and told him the diagnosis.
The news was exactly what he wanted to hear.
* * *
Lady J’s was a twenty-four hour diner nestled between a gas station and a closed-down truck stop. Garnished with red neon lights and windows that wrapped around the front two-thirds of the building, it had a beacon of a sign that rose over a hundred feet into the air and bore a rendering of Rosie the Riveter as a carhop.
I sat with WhoDied, Locality and Four-D in the FOSH van, idling at one of the pumps at the gas station. I had the passenger’s seat and a pair of government binoculars.
WhoDied was in the driver’s side captain chair watching a streaming feed of what was happening inside Lady J’s on a bank of flat screen monitors. In the passenger side captain chair was Locality, who had her eye on another set of screens which displayed various views of the surrounding parking lot. Beside me, in the driver’s seat, Four-D ate a donut, taking occasional sips from his hot chocolate.
I put the binoculars down and looked at my watch. Less than fifteen minutes to go. The killer could be arriving at any second. I raised the lenses to my eyes again and looked inside.
Aside from John, there were five other patrons. Two college-age boys in a far corner booth, an older couple several tables away, and a lone man at a counter seat who looked like a trucker. Behind the counter there was a cook and a waitress, who from time to time actually went out to wait.
They were all FOSH agents.
John kept to himself, reading the morning paper and eating his steak and eggs.
My mind wandered. I found myself wanting to believe the stories my mother told me when I was little.
“I’ve got movement,” Locality announced, her voice excited, but professional.
I was already moving the binoculars back to the entrance when WhoDied responded, “Where?”
“East side.”
A blurry figure crossed my vision. Before I could focus, however, the new arrival was approaching the diner door—his back turned to me.
“Where did he come from?” I asked.
There was a silence I mistook for being ignored. I looked back to see her shrug.
“One moment he wasn’t there, the next he was walking across the parking lot.”
“Do you want to watch?” WhoDied asked, keeping his eyes on the monitors in front of his face. “Abram?”
I handed the binoculars to Four-D and crawled into the back of the FOSH van; the sidekick followed me. We jockeyed for comfortable positions between WhoDied and Locality, but gave up and turned our attention to the action about to start inside.
* * *
The killer wasn’t at all what I imagined.
He was tall and lanky; he had close-cropped hair that was either blonde or white—it was hard to tell from the video feed. One of the camera angles had a good shot of his face. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. Before the black eye and swollen lip he was now sporting, he could’ve had a distinguished career as a model. He was dressed in thin, white body armor that was visibly damaged; a silver circle emblazoned on his chest was spider-webbed with cracks.
He weaved and staggered and bumped into stationary objects on his way to John’s table.
“He’s either drunk or seriously hurt,” Locality commented.
Could this really be the man who murdered Rex Solaris so many times?
WhoDied reached over and turned up the volume.
* * *
The killer landed roughly in the chair opposite John, who put his fork down and swallowed his last bite of steak. “You new around here?”
The killer shook his head. “Not really, no.” Then he nodded. “But in a way, yes.”
John stretched his back and cracked his neck. “You seem a bit confused. What happened? You look like you’ve been knocked upside the head pretty good there.”
“My name is Sorbere, Mr. Johnson. Though you don’t remember it, we’ve met before.”
“Oh?”
Sorbere tipped is head down without lowering his eyes. “The reason you don’t remember it, is because for you, it hasn’t happened yet.”
He rested his arms on the table, his white-gloved fingers landing well within John’s personal space. “You see, I’ve traveled here from the year 2060 to find you.”
“That has to be an interesting power—to travel through time.”
“That’s not my power, Mr. Johnson. That’s modern technology.”
“What a wonderful world you must come from.”
“On the contrary, Mr. Johnson, it’s a very dark world where true superheroes are an endangered species. Oh, we have plenty of pretenders. Plenty of villains—far worse than any you’ve ever encountered. But there’s never been anyone who can compare to you.”
“Flattering.” John forced a smile. “And you’re here, why? Because you need me?”
“Yes. I need you.”
“And you came back almost fifty years just to find me?”
A lopsided grin broke out on the killer’s face and then faded away. “Sadly, in my time you’ve already passed.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. But I’m afraid you’ve come all this way for nothing. I’m retired now.”
“I know. That’s what you said when I first met you, in my time.”
“You said I had passed in your time.”
Sobere shrugged. “The world thought you had been dead for years, but rumors persisted that you were holed up in the backwoods, somewhere, living the life of a hermit while the world went to hell.” A thin smile spread across his face. “So I looked for you. And I found you. But you wouldn’t help me. So to teach you a lesson, I absorbed your powers—that’s what I do, Mr. Johnson, I absorb the powers of others.”
“So you’ve come all this way to absorb my powers?”
Sorbere did not say anything, but a cold look in his eye seemed to confirm everything.
Despite the immediate danger to him, John did not draw back. “So if you’ve absorbed my powers once already, why do you need to absorb them again? Unless it wears off. It does, doesn’t it?”
“The first time it lasted a year.” Sorbere took off first one of his white gloves and then the other. “But each time I take your powers, it seems to wear off faster.”
“Each time?”
The killer slowly moved his bared hands in John Johnson’s direction. “The last time, it only lasted two days.”
John didn’t flinch. “What do you need my powers for?”
“It’s not your powers that I crave. Not anymore.”
Sorbere laid his bare hands on John’s wrists. “You have no idea what it feels like knowing that you—and only you—can take the power and the life of the greatest superhero the world has ever known.”
He closed his eyes and concentrated; after a minute, though, he opened them wide. He looked to John Johnson and then around at the rest of the people in the diner, all of whom had stopped what they were doing and were looking in his direction.
“What’s going on?” Sorbere asked. The man from the future leveled accusing eyes at John. “My powers are gone.” He stood up, knocking his chair over backwards and turned to the undercover FOSH agents. “Which one of you shut my powers off?” he screamed.
No one answered.
The villain made a move for the door, but by the time he could turn around, John blocked the way.
Sorbere dodged left and went for the waitress, who was standing nearby. She was in her fifties and petite. Sorbere did not notice the weapon in her hand as he wrapped his forearm about her neck. He was also oblivious to the other FOSH agents, who were now all visibly armed and pointing their own weapons in his direction.
“Nobody move,” the killer began. But before he could finish his threat, his hostage had slipped out of his grip, sidestepped out of his reach and shot him square in the chin with her stun gun.
Muscles throughout Sorbere’s body convulsed. He landed hard on the ground, his extremities twitching now and again.
Even before his vitals were taken, he was being restrained.
It was 5:46 AM and John was still alive.
* * *
As government agents finished cleaning up the restaurant—taking down their equipment and turning the restaurant back over to its normal staff and clientele—WhoDied, Four-D and Locality saw me safely back to the clinic. They parked next to the side entrance, which had been open now for three long days.
I turned around in my seat and looked back to WhoDied. “What do I do with the bodies?”
“You don’t have to worry about those,” WhoDied told me. “FOSH wanted the corpses moved somewhere more secure so they picked them up while we were at the diner.”
“Well.” I nodded. “Okay, then.”
“You look bummed,” Locality said. “Were you expecting them to fade into nothingness?”
I smiled at the thought. “Maybe.”
WhoDied leaned forward and put his hands together, fingertip-to-fingertip. “The world doesn’t work that way, Mister Murray. We didn’t prevent anything, we just . . . changed course slightly.”
I looked around the van—at all the equipment, at the superheroes. I glanced out the window and through the open door to the dark hallway, now empty; then I turned back to WhoDied. “Is there anything else you need from me before I head out?”
“No.” He stuck out his hand. “Thank you for your help.”
I studied his offered palm. He was clearly no longer concerned about contamination, so I reached over and shook his hand. “Thank you.”
Four-D gave me a curt nod.
“Take care,” I told him. Turning to Locality, I said, “You too.”
She smiled. “Always.”
I stepped out of the FOSH van into the cold and watched them drive off into the sunrise. Then I turned and went inside, shutting the door behind me.
* * *
I was not alone.
John was waiting for me in my office. He was sitting behind my desk, studying the same jade lion which WhoDied had earlier found fascinating. As I came in, John looked up at me. “Do you know what this is?”
“It’s a lion,” I replied, shedding my red parka; I tossed it over the back of one of the other chairs.
“It’s not just any lion.” He smiled. “This is Ishi, the favorite lion of the Emperor of Japan.”
“Oh?” I came to a stop before my desk and looked down at the mighty Rex Solaris. “How do you know that?”
John set the lion down in its original resting place. “He told me so when he gave it to me.”
I examined the statuette anew. My mother had given it to me when I went off to college.
“Go ahead, Abram.” John got to his feet. “Ask me.”
I turned to him. “Ask you what?”
“Ask me the question you’ve wanted to ask me since we first met.”
It took me several tries, but finally I managed to find the words. “Are you my father?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
Feeling a little light headed, I stumbled back and fell into the chair reserved for my guests. I nearly missed and ended up on the floor, but somehow I kept my perch. Stars exploded in my vision, then faded away.
“I’m very proud of you,” he told me. “You saved my life.”
I shook my head. I had done little more than make a phone call.
“You did,” he affirmed. He rested his hands on my desk. “But we’re not done yet.”
He picked up a familiar legal pad. “Sorbere is still coming for me. As far as he’s concerned, he’s already killed me forty-three times.”
“So he has to be stopped again and again?”
John dropped the legal pad; he nodded. “FOSH is assembling a team to prevent the future murders. Naturally, I’ll help in any way I can.”
“So will you be heading off to Washington?”
“No. The team will be based locally.” He looked around at my office and then back to me. “They asked if I had any recommendations for the team. I hope I didn’t overstep my bounds, but I recommended you. You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”
I looked up at John Johnson, Rex Solaris—my father, who wanted my help. I smiled. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
#####
Kelly Wisdom
I FOLLOWED MIA into the Bureau chapel, filing in behind the rest of our neighbors to take our seats on the hard wooden pews. Once everyone was settled, the officiant standing at the front of the room raised his arms, a fur-lined robe draping his ample body.
“Hey, Veronica,” Mia whispered. “He doesn’t seem to be missing as many meals as the rest of us, huh?”
“Shh,” I said. “You want to have to pay more atonement?”
“Let us rise and recite the Oath,” the officiant said. When he spoke, his breath fogged out in tiny white puffs.
The benches creaked as we stood. I forced myself to mouth the words, lest I be chastised by the under-officiants prowling the aisles.
“I promise to obey the Bureau, created for my welfare and protection, in all things. Let this be my oath, or my life be forfeit.”
The last line stuck in my throat.
Once we’d all fallen silent again, the officiant looked out over the crowd as if we were a bunch of unruly school kids. “The Bureau would like to address the rumors that a Child of Keres has been spotted here in the University Quarter,” he said.
Sinking lower in my seat, I pressed my back against the pew and swallowed uneasily around the growing lump in my throat.
The officiant continued. “These evil creatures arose as abominations of nature after the environmental disasters of the Ancient Age. They spread like vermin over the earth as the continents came together to form the Landmass. Their so-called civilization was nothing but a hotbed of violence and degradation. A human with wings is an aberration, should not even be called human, so it is no wonder that they promoted unnatural ideas of social equality, unnatural liaisons between themselves and humans, as well as unnatural behaviors among their own kind. It is said they even lay with animals, being part beast themselves.”
I clenched my teeth and tried to breathe calmly.
“When the Bureau was formed a century ago, its first priority was to eradicate the Keres race. Brave men of the Bureau fought these bloodthirsty creatures and eliminated them from the face of the earth. The battle took many years, but we won. The last Child of Keres was put down nearly twenty years ago. None have been seen since. There are no Children of Keres in this Quarter, in this city, or on this planet. Anyone stating otherwise will be subject to higher levels of atonement.”
There was anxious shuffling and coughing from the pews, but no one said a word.
“The Bureau will now accept your atonement,” the officiant said.
People began to slide from the pews and walk toward the front of the chapel, where a line of under-officiants stood holding baskets, each adorned with a different color ribbon. Black for curfew-breaking, yellow for sedition, green for not attending chapel, red for deviance. I watched the under-officiants check names off their lists as my neighbors dropped pennies in the baskets. Pennies they had sweated for in mines and factories, or, if they were students like Mia, pennies they had begged, borrowed, or sold their possessions or bodies to get.
Mia walked to the front and tossed a penny in each basket, not bothering to see her name checked off the lists.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” she said when she returned.
We pulled our coats tightly around us and walked out into the night.
“So that sermon seemed to kind of upset you,” Mia said.
“Did it?” I kept my face still.
“Yeah. How come?” She grinned impishly. “Have you seen one of the wretched beasts?”
“Cut it out,” I said. “You want more atonement? You can’t afford the ones you owe now.”
“I’ll just have to rob a Guard or something. Or that officiant tonight. I could cut up that furry cloak and make three coats from it.”
In front of Mia’s building, we stopped so she could dig her keys out of her bag.
“You know,” I said, “I should probably just head home.”
“Don’t be silly,” Mia said. “You’ve got time before curfew.”
“Not much time.”
“I thought you wanted to hang out more,” she said. “To ‘take this thing to the next level,’ isn’t that what you said?”
“I did, yes, but....”
“Don’t you want to be with me?” she asked.
“You know I do.”
“No, I don’t know. You come around one day, then you disappear for weeks. Now, suddenly, you’re back again. You’ve never even stayed over.” Her voice kept getting louder.
“Can we take this conversation inside, please?”
“Thought you’d never ask.” She jingled her keys in my face.
Once inside, Mia sat on the battered couch and waved me over. She pulled the batteries from her transistor radio and licked them. “These should have enough juice to get us through the evening report.”
“Please. I can’t listen to that shit.”
Mia regarded me with inquisitive green eyes.
“It’s depressing,” I explained.
“No shit,” she replied. “But don’t you want to know what’s happening out there?”
“What’s the point? I mean, what can anybody do about it? Nothing. So, what does hearing about it do for me? Nothing except get me all frustrated and pissed off.” Which is not good for me.
“You think there’s nothing anyone can do?” Mia shifted suddenly, bringing her feet up under her body in a crouch, as if she might spring at me like an animal. “What about all of us students out there demonstrating? You think that’s ‘nothing’?”
“Wait. Are you still going to the demonstrations?” I demanded.
“Of course. Why don’t you go?”
“I’m not a student.”
“You don’t have to be a student to demonstrate.”
“I wish you wouldn’t go to those things. It’s too dangerous.”
“Why aren’t you a student, Vee?” she asked, ignoring my warning.
Ah. The question I could not answer.
“I already have a job,” I said.
“As a dishwasher in a pub. And do you find that work fulfilling?”
“Don’t mock me.” My back began to quiver with anger. “I’m not like you. I’m not meant for school like you clearly are. I can’t understand even the titles of those science books you read.”
“It’s not just science, it’s twentieth-century quantum physics,” she said.
“See,” I said. “I don’t even know what half those words mean.”
“It just infuriates me that most of the Lecturers treat quantum physics like it’s alchemy. I’m something of a joke in the department. ‘Oh, there goes Mia with her silly books from the Ancient Age.’ They think Einstein was a fictional character.”
“Who?”
“Albert Einstein. He was a menial worker in some kind of office in a place called Switzerland, which apparently was part of what’s now the Fornian Desert. Can you believe that used to be a temperate zone? Anyway, Einstein was....”
Mia recounted Einstein’s entire life story to me. But it did not seem amazing in the least. And then she explained his ideas, which sounded like impossibilities. I sat listening, content to hear the lilting tones of her voice even if I couldn’t grasp the import of her words, until the fire had died down leaving us both breathing small clouds of mist. Mia reluctantly wound up her tale and left the warmth of the blanket to stoke the fire.
“I got lucky down by the tracks today,” Mia said.
“Oh yeah?” I eyed her waifish body as she tossed a few more pieces of coal into the stove.
“Yep. Found a few lumps as big as my fist. Had to fight off some dude taller than you for them.” She grinned, an impish glow suffusing her features. “Worth it, though. That’ll keep us toasty till you have to go. Unless you decide to stay, that is. Then we’ll have to find other ways to stay warm.”
Ignoring her suggestion, I looked down at my rough hands, nearly twice the size of Mia’s. “I should get your coal for you. You shouldn’t have to fight.”
“Pshht.” Mia slapped my arm dismissively.
Surprising myself, I reached up and caught her hand mid-slap and squeezed the cold, tiny fingers. “I mean it,” I said, pulling Mia’s fingertips to my lips.
“Vee,” Mia whispered.
I paused, staring at her fingers still held to my mouth. Lifting my gaze, I found her green eyes piercing me. She tugged at my hand, and I melted into her. Our mouths came together eagerly.
“I’ve wanted this for so long,” she murmured, holding me tightly at my ribs, the tips of her fingers dangerously close to my back.
I tried not to flinch.
She must have noticed the subtle stiffening of my body. She pulled ever so slightly back.
“You okay?” Mia murmured.
I nodded. “Mm-hmm.”
Mia didn’t hesitate to lean back in and trace a series of light kisses across my neck, her hands continuing to stroke my torso, which was covered by two shirts and a bulky sweater.
Surely she won’t feel anything, I thought.
The warmth that had flooded my body at the first touch of Mia’s lips turned to pure ice as her hands reached my waist and inched under the hem of my sweater, grazing bare skin.
I bolted off the couch, furiously tugging my clothes back down.
“I’m sorry, Mia,” I blurted. “I can’t.
Mia’s wide eyes followed me as I paced the small square of rug between the couch and the fire. “Can’t what?” she demanded.
“You know.”
“I don’t know, Vee. Tell me.”
“I can’t...sleep with you. I’m not ready.”
Mia stood up and pushed past me into the kitchenette. She pulled coffee powder down from a shelf, filled a kettle with water, and placed it on the hot plate.