Hero (38 page)

The Wilson Memorial.

A woman clasped her hand over her mouth when they announced that a twelve-story building near the memorial had just crumbled to the ground. A grocery deliveryman had dropped his bags, and milk pooled around his shoes. A scared child clung to his mother's leg, and I saw the fear in his eyes. The mother looked at Goran, then at me.

Another whistle pierced the air; then what sounded like a thousand missiles screamed over the sky above us.

"It's the end of the world," the mother said, dry-lipped, and pulled her child into her -closer.

We all stared up to see the missiles of mass destruction fly overhead. But what appeared over the tree line wasn't missiles at all.

It was the League.

I could tell, even from this far away, that Uberman led the charge. They flew in a perfect pattern, hundreds of heroes, all the League's allies over the years, and its many probationaries. Whatever it was in the city, the crisis had to be big. I'd never seen this many heroes in one place in my life; I didn't know that many even existed. I touched the skin on my finger, the empty space where the League probationary ring used to be.

It was a dazzling sight. Legions of colorful costumes skimmed across the horizon, flying like fighter jets in tight formation.

I looked around me, and all of a sudden I knew what I needed to do, where I should be. I turned to Goran.

"I have to go," I said to him.

But he was already gone.

I raced into the house without closing the door behind me and bounded to the top of the stairs before the screen door had even slammed.

I burst into my father's room, threw open the closet door, and reached inside, grabbing a handful of plastic dry-cleaner bags. I found what I needed and threw it on the bed, then rifled through my father's change dish on his dresser for his car keys.

Shoving the keys in my pocket, I ripped open the plastic and stared down at my father's uniform.

I stomped on the gas pedal of Dad's Camaro to make it go as fast as it could. Dad was always careful to observe the speed limit. You should have seen the papers the time he got a traffic ticket for rolling through a right-hand turn on a red light.

There was a line of traffic stopped ahead, a row of police cars blocking the road in front of them. I pulled over onto the shoulder and sped forward to the front of the line. A cop rushed over and waved his hands for me to stop.

"You can't go into the city," he said as he walked over to my window. "The governor has declared a state of emergency. We can't let anyone in or—"

He stopped short when he saw what I was wearing.

Although it was a little broad in the shoulders, my father's old costume fit nearly perfectly.

"Where are you going?" A stupefied grin appeared on the officer's face.

I put the car in first.

"I'm going to save the world."

Then I floored it.

It took me forever to get to the center of the city. Although incoming vehicles were blocked, there was a steady line of traffic to get off the island. I rarely encountered another inbound car, but I did have to be careful to stay out of the way of ambulances and fire trucks, and there was the occasional impatient departing motorist who decided to use the lane of the oncoming traffic. I saw this maneuver result in three accidents; one took out a police car. It was an appropriate amount of chaos for the end of the world.

I circled around the outer loop of the downtown area; every road into the center was blocked off by police. I decided to go the rest of the way on foot, but by the time I was halfway to the Wilson Memorial, I couldn't remember how many turns I'd made. A nagging doubt entered in my head—that I wouldn't be able to find my way back to Dad's car.

I encountered masses of oncoming foot traffic as panicked people fled the scene. Other people seemed glued to the spectacle, and I pushed into the crowd as close as I could get to the Wilson Memorial building. People stared up at the building, sirens blared, and  policemen and firemen rushed inside.

Emergency service workers tried to tend to the wounded and get them into ambulances.

"It's going to fall! Just like last time!" a man in a pinstriped suit shouted, sheltering himself under his briefcase as he fled from the scene.

I heard other fragments from the crowd, and I couldn't tell which were silly and which were true. A bearded man with a homemade poster that read JOHN 3:l6 in Magic Marker shouted at our section of the crowd.

"Repent! Repent!"

A stray chunk of debris came tumbling down from the sky directly toward the crowd. I shouted for everyone to move and did my best to shove as many people as I could off to the side. The chunk of debris landed and exploded into dust, and tiny sharp bits sprayed the crowd. People screamed as they were showered with shards.

I tried to decide which person was the bloodiest, who needed my hands the most.

"It's the remains of that Planet Eater. It's an alien reactor, and it's been activated," a fireman covered in a chalky layer of dust told me. "Someone stirred it up again." I saw a trickle of blood drip down his forehead from under his hat. Hands burning, I reached up to shift the hat and help him. The bleeding stopped.

"Who stirred it up?" I asked.

The fireman charged back up into the building before I could get an answer out of him. I looked around and saw too many victims for me to help. Maybe instead I should try to get everyone out of here as fast as possible before another explosion.

But if what the fireman said was true, nowhere on the planet would be safe from the next explosion.

I looked up at the Wilson Memorial, looming high above. It blocked the morning sun, and its shadow felt cool on my face. I could hear the cops shouting over the din of the sirens and engines. They did their best to control the crowd, to move people out, keep them away from the building. Round after round of firefighters charged inside. You could tell that most of them were remembering the event of the first disaster on this site, because they wore doom on their faces.

At the very top of the Memorial building, towering high above us, Justice stepped out. More accurately, he hovered out onto the ledge. Instantly the crowd recognized him by the unmistakable color and pattern of his cape, and cheers erupted.

Thank God, I thought to myself. Justice made it here first; of course the entire League was inside under his command, repairing the damage in superhuman time.

Justice surveyed the crowds beneath him, then looked up into the sky. I couldn't pinpoint where he was looking. It was difficult to see his expression from so far away, but I could read something in his posture, something resigned, almost sad. It reminded me of the night I'd interrupted him while he stared out into space.

And suddenly the Wilson Memorial was a beehive, and we the people on the streets were the foolish, curious children who'd knocked on it to see if there really were bees inside. Hundreds of heroes came flying out of the building and flew overhead.

The crowd looked up in awe, and the applause diminished.

Fantastic colors and capes swarmed high above us and gathered in a single, unified swirl of heroes. Uberman was in front, his proud chest puffed and leading the way. There was something different about the way that he flew, though. He had the same righteously powerful posture, not too graceful, not too rough, but there was something missing in his face. Then it dawned on me: what was missing was his kindness.

The swirl of heroes changed direction and swooped down on the crowd. The people froze, caught in a single, spectacular, breathtaking moment, the moment their heroes became kamikazes and their city became Pearl Harbor. There wasn't even time to scream.

Gamma rays, supercold charges, and bio-blasts rained down from the sky and blew holes in the ground around us. I saw a NO PARKING MON/WED/FRI sign vaporized. A goateed man on his Vespa was instantly frozen in a block of ice. A group of tourists dropped to their knees and grabbed their bleeding ears at the howl of a sonic scream.

"Move!" I yelled at the top of my lungs. "Move!"

People scattered and ran helter-skelter, and I saw a few trampled in the stampede to escape. Another wave of heroes was swooping in for the next round of attacks. Victims littered the streets everywhere. I needed to get the crowds to safety.

Warrior Woman pulverized the entire top floor of an office building and toppled over a giant underwear billboard. The billboard caught on the side of the building, but threatened to fall and flatten a circle of ambulances and emergency medical technicians. I raced to the group and yanked an EMT's hand away from a resuscitator.

"Tell everyone to hold hands now!"

She looked at my hand, then at me like I was a nut job.

"NOW!" I yelled, and looked up at the billboard. She saw the threat and screamed for everyone to take cover by her ambulance. We grabbed each other's hands and joined in a chain right as the billboard dislodged and careened down toward us. I shouted for everyone to hold on tight, and I heated up and sent my power through the chain just as it crashed onto us. Under normal circumstances we would have been crushed to death, but it took only a split second for me to concentrate and make us whole. Still holding hands, we stood up and shot clear through the remains of the billboard. I'd never pulled off anything like that kind of healing before, and I was a little surprised at how simple it had been. I even felt energized by the action. All I had to do was keep my cool and focus. Maybe it really was as simple as my dad said it was. Maybe all you really need to do is believe in yourself.

I didn't stick around for congratulations, and the EMTs went right back to work on their patients. I had to be extra fast because people were understandably dumbfounded, which made their reaction time slower. They couldn't imagine why their greatest heroes had turned on them. It didn't make any sense to me either, but I had to focus on the task at hand. Rescue. I could think about the rest later.

Across the street the Galaxy Twins, blank-faced, had cornered an entire waitstaff in the vestibule of their restaurant. The Twins hovered in front of the potential victims and reached out to join hands and ignite.

God, how I missed my team. If Golden Boy had been there, he would have been on top of the Twins in a second flat, Scarlett would have flown the group to safety, and Larry would have given the Twins a mean case of shingles. Actually, no one would have been in any serious danger in the first place, because Ruth would have spotted the whole thing minutes before it happened.

But I was alone, and it was up to me to stop the carnage. I tried to break through the chaos to get to the Twins, but there was no way I could make it there before they blasted the restaurant workers to smithereens. The Twins rose up into the air to improve the trajectory of their blasts.

Suddenly a dark cape materialized out of the shadows of the building behind them. I was just halfway across the street when I saw Dark Hero palm each of their heads like they were two coconuts and smash them together. The Twins spiraled through the air like crumpled paper airplanes and careened down into a Dumpster.

Dark Hero disappeared into shadows, and I turned and saw Warrior Woman high in the air. She had drawn her sword and was diving down toward a tour guide and a group of school children huddled pitifully with their teacher under a thin, glass bus stop.

"You get the kids, I'll take that pushy broad."

Next to me a big, bald bruiser was rolling up his sleeves. It was Ruth's old partner, the Wrecking Ball. I guess there's not much thrill left in robbing banks if the world has been destroyed. We raced toward the bus stop at full speed as Warrior Woman neared her target. Her aegis, full-body armor, and battle helmet reflected the glare of the sun, and she looked more missile than woman. I yelled at the school group to move, to get away from the glass. The Wrecking Ball grabbed a stop sign and yanked it out of the pavement like he was pulling a dandelion out of his garden.

I pulled the children away from the bus stop at the same moment the Wrecking Ball leaped up onto it. He turned his shoulders, wound up, swung with all his might, and hit Warrior Woman with the stop sign like she was a softball, knocking her out of the park. The sound of the sign connecting with Warrior Woman's armor produced an eerie metallic clang that traveled up my spine.

The Wrecking Ball hopped down off the bus stop.

"That'll teach her," he said, and wiped the rust off his hands. "Who's next?"

I looked around at the tour group. We were standing in the middle of the street. Devastation all around us. A tremor in the ground knocked a few kids off their feet. We were exposed, and I had to get them to safety.

I wasn't sure where to take them. Hundreds of heroes were attacking in the streets. Hiding them in a building might be our best bet, but I couldn't tell which ones were safe. Blue Lightning blew up a bagel shop. Ethereal Empress evaporated a shoe store. There was so much more, it was difficult to take in all the destruction at once.

I shielded my eyes to block the sun and looked up once more at the top of the Wilson Memorial building. Justice still hovered in front of the building. Why hadn't he put a stop to the threat inside yet? What could be so insurmountable that even he couldn't stop it? I thought about charging in as soon as I'd helped these kids to safe ground, but what chance did I have of stopping those alien remains from blowing if Justice himself couldn't do anything?

The tour guide was in a panic. She grabbed the epaulets of my father's costume and tugged at the medals.

"You have to help us, you have to help us!" I saw the panic in her eyes and recognized her as the same haughty tour guide who'd led me and my mother through the Wilson Memorial days ago.

My mind turned to thoughts of my mother. What had she done? What was happening in that crystallized alien core? Was this all part of her doing? I hoped she wasn't responsible. I couldn't imagine her falling this far. Instinctively, my hands went to my chest, and I fingered the ring on the necklace she'd given me.

Justice turned and looked down. He raised his arm and pointed his finger at me. The boom of his voice echoed in my ears as he looked right at me and shouted "Boy!" with anger and disgust on his face. The sound of that accusation chilled me. Every hero stopped when they heard it, and the swarm turned their attention to me. They swooped in our direction from all sides. The kids screamed.