Just Cause Universe 3: Day of the Destroyer (26 page)

Shane bristled. “You’re not being very sensitive.”

Javier looked at him. “Fuck you and your sensitivity. So this asshole, did he deserve it?”

Gretchen shuddered at the memory, but somehow Javier’s rough speech and dispassionate attitude lent her a new reserve of strength. “Yeah he did.” She felt ready to take him on in an argument.

“Good.” Javier slipped off the gauntlet and pulled a small toolkit from his belt.

“Good?” repeated Gretchen. “You approve?”

Javier popped a plate off his gauntlet with a screwdriver and started to fuss with some of the intricate machinery and electronics underneath. “I got no problem with one less asshole in the world.”

“What is that you’re working on?” asked Gretchen.

“Technical,” said Javier.

“I see,” said Gretchen in her best frosty tone, but it didn’t encourage the hero to expound further so she changed she subject. “What’s it like, being in Just Cause?”

Javier set the glove down and leaned back as he considered the question. “Boring as shit,” he said at last. “The parties are good, and you get laid a lot, but besides that there just isn’t much to do.”

“What do you mean? You’re superheroes. Don’t you go out and fight crime?”

Javier snorted. “It’s been years since we had any parahuman criminals. Except you, of course, and you aren’t exactly worth calling out the entire team for.”

“I’m not a criminal!” Gretchen felt her cheeks grow hot.

“You killed a guy. That’s murder. Still a crime the last time I checked.”

The power yammered at Gretchen, begging to be let loose upon the man in the burnished armor. She forced it back down. “I was being raped,” she growled through clenched teeth. Javier had her mad enough to spit nails, as her father liked to say.

Javier shrugged. “You already said he was an asshole. Good that he’s dead. Doesn’t change the fact that you broke the law. That’s why you’re here.”

“Why are you here?” Shane asked Javier. “You said it’s boring. You’ve got sharp technical skills. You could probably make a mint in the private sector.”

Javier grinned. “In the private sector, I’d be just another engineer. Sure, I’d be rich, but foxy young girls don’t get all juicy over engineers. Here, I’m like a movie star. I’m famous. We all are.”

“That’s it?” Gretchen was incredulous. “You’ve got powers and all you do is use them for sex? That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. What a waste.”

Javier shrugged. “I busted up a drug deal this morning. Got to stay sharp in case anything ever gets out of hand.”

“Well, I guess that’s something,” said Gretchen.

“Then I went back to my place and had a threesome. It’s the price of stardom.” His face clouded. “Bitches ripped me off while I was sleeping.”

Gretchen shook her head. Javier lived in a different reality from her. She doubted she’d ever qualify to be a superhero, but she told herself that if she ever did, she’d act like one.

Chapter Fifteen

July 13, 1977, 11:00 PM

Harlem was like a war zone.

After a few minutes, Faith and Irlene realized they couldn’t stop every looter or douse every fire. At first, Irlene would shrink looters down to the size of G.I. Joe dolls, which was enough to keep all but the most motivated thieves from continuing. She assured Faith it wore off after several hours.

Faith had appropriated a hefty socket wrench and used it to open fire hydrants near burning buildings or cars. With Irlene’s help in shrinking heavy items and then returning them to normal size, Faith could direct the outflows towards the blazes.

Eventually, though, there were too many people in the streets and too many fires burning for the two heroes to do much more than just save those in immediate danger. Whether it was Irlene flying a shrunken family to safety through a fourth-floor window or Faith scouting out a tenement block to search for more trapped victims, they were running themselves ragged.

Finally, Irlene couldn’t do it anymore, and she sank down onto a rooftop sobbing. Faith put her arm around the frazzled, exhausted teenager and tried to console her. The four years’ age difference between them felt like a vast gulf to Faith.

“I don’t even know if my family’s okay,” Irlene said between sobs.

“How far away are they?” Faith stroked the girl’s hair.

“I don’t even know what street we’re on,” cried Irlene.

Faith told her the last street sign she remembered seeing.

“Maybe a mile, mile and a half.” Irlene wiped her eyes. She’d already discarded the raspberry-colored mask as impractical, complaining it interfered with her vision.

Faith pulled out her radio. “Then there’s no reason we can’t go check on them. We’ve been running at top speed for close to two hours now. I’m calling a break.”

Irlene sniffled. “I thought that’s what we were doing up here.”

Faith shook her head. “Bobby, are you there?”

“
Yeah, babe. How are you guys doing out there
?”

“It’s bad, Bobby, really bad. I don’t know how much of this side of town will even be left by the morning.”

“
Things are bad all over. People are acting like animals. I’m afraid of what the death count will be when this is all over
.”

“Listen, we’re going to go check in on Imp’s family. We’re not far from them.”

“
Ten-four. Hey, what’s that noise?”

Faith stopped and listened. She heard the crackle of flames, people shouting on the street below, and glass breaking. “Just normal rioting sounds, if there is such a thing.”

“
No, beneath that. Deep, almost subsonic. Rhythmic. It almost sounds like—
”

Faith still couldn’t hear what Bobby was describing. “Like what?”

“
Like Godzilla
,” said Bobby.

Faith didn’t laugh. Over the years, she’d learned to trust Bobby’s parahuman hearing without question. “I wish you were here so you could pinpoint it.”

“
I wish we were both in Aruba
,” said Bobby. “
It’s getting louder. Or closer. If I can hear it over your radio, it’s got to be close enough you could hear it any second
.”

Just then, Faith felt a vibration in the building’s rooftop that tickled the gravel against her ass. It repeated, accompanied by a low thud.

“I’ll call you back,” she said and tucked away the radio.

“What is it?” Irlene leaned in close.

“Do you feel that?”

“Yeah.”

It came around a corner like a Detroit engineer’s fevered nightmare. People on the streets screamed at the twenty-five-foot-tall fire-breathing monstrosity. One woman dropped an armful of looted clothes, turned, and ran face-first into an overturned car to fall unconscious beside it. Other people ran past her to save themselves. A dog ran out, yipping and barking at the giant until a heavy mechanical foot stomped the animal into pulp.

Faith stared at the behemoth in frank disbelief. Her brain tried to resolve what she could see in the reflection of street fires. Four massive articulated legs carried two huge Peterbilt semi-tractor cabs stacked atop each other. Two arms lay flat against one cab while two others spread out to foment destruction. One arm rang like a bell with a huge rotary saw blade. It screamed and threw a cascade of sparks as the machine sliced the roof off a car and the heads off its occupants. The other featured huge hydraulic claws that snipped off streetlamps as if they were tulip stems. Every few steps, it released a blast of liquid fire to set a car or building on fire. Headlights ringed the upper cab and displayed the results of the machine’s destructive path.

A burning man leaped from an ignited car and rolled on the ground, screaming in pain. Overturned cars, buildings going up in flames, and people screaming in fear, panic, and pain all competed for Faith’s attention.

“Jesus,” whispered Faith. She realized Irlene stood beside her, staring with equal shock down at the hellish intruder below. “Can you you shrink it down?”

“Oh, hell no,” said Irlene. “It’s too big. Look at it. I don’t want to get anywhere near that thing.” The machine used its huge pincer to reach up and pull down a darkened rooftop sign for Wendell’s, bulbs shattering amid the wire frame and glass raining down onto the pavement. It flung the sign across the street through the unbroken panes of a diner and then sprayed the front of the building with more napalm. More screams erupted from within the diner as those who’d sought shelter there were crushed or burned.

Faith grabbed her radio again. “Bobby, come in. Oh God, are you there?”

“
Faith? What’s the matter
?”

“It’s some kind of giant machine. It’s destroying Harlem. I don’t think we can take it down. We need help. Send everyone.”

“
Everyone
?” With a roar of hydraulics and Diesel engines, the behemoth hurled a telephone pole like a spear. It smashed through the side of a three-story building and out the roof to burst open a water tank in an explosion of mist and debris.

“Yes, everyone!” screamed Faith into the radio. “Get us some fucking backup!” She was shaking in fear. The machine punched a tenement building and knocked the entire brick facade down about its ankles. People cried out amid the wreckage as bricks rained down onto them.

“
I’m dispatching them now. Where are you exactly
?”

“Just follow the fires,” said Faith, and shoved her radio into her belt. She turned to Irlene, who had curled up into a fetal position on the rooftop. She hauled the frightened girl to her feet. “Irlene, don’t freak out on me now. I need you, girl. You’ve got to save people. Forget the machine, forget the buildings and cars and fires. You’ve got to save lives. You’re perfect for that job.”

“Why, what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to try and stop it.”

#

Harlan floated in a glorious rapture of destruction as he guided the suit down the street. Outside, people screamed like panicked ants and buildings crumbled under his onslaught, but Harlan only heard the roar of the Diesels and the hiss of hydraulics. Blasts of flame ignited stunted trees, parked cars, and storefronts, but Harlan was cool in air-conditioned comfort.

The suit felt like an extension of his body. He moved his legs and it walked. He reached for things with his right hand and the great claws closed around them. Pulling a trigger rewarded him with a burst of his junkyard-made napalm from the pressurized tanks below him. The saw blade on his left hand sliced through brick and metal like a hot knife through butter.

The more he tested the suit’s capabilities, the less he felt he was wearing it. He was leaving behind the pupa of his defenseless, powerless self and giving birth to his true nature. He was Destroyer, and the screams of the fallen were like a fanfare announcing his arrival into the world.

He reached down with his claw, crunched it into the side of some kind of small imported car, and heaved. Destroyer threatened to overbalance and he had to widen his stance, but the four legs held him firm. The car’s tires came off the ground and he hefted it up to show the horrified onlookers. Before he could hurl it into them, the sheet metal failed and the car smashed to the pavement. No matter, he thought with glee. He braced three of his legs and booted it with the fourth. It didn’t sail like a football, which Harlan would have loved, but it did flip into the side of the Korean grocery store, pinning several people beneath it.

He hosed them all down with napalm for good measure. If they’d had any sense, they’d have run away long ago. Now they were getting what they deserved, just like the whole neighborhood. Urban renewal, Destroyer-style.

He sauntered across the street, pure attitude on four legs, and sliced through a streetlamp with his buzzsaw. It made a satisfying crash when it fell and an even more satisfying crunch when he crushed it underfoot.

Harlan giggled. He couldn’t ever remember having this much fun in his life. If only Gretchen could see him now, wouldn’t she be impressed. She could be his Fay Wray and he could be King Kong. Except in Harlan’s story, the giant monster would bring down the whole city.

Something on his main monitor gave him pause. A figure stood in the middle of the street, facing him without running away. He touched a couple switches to activate the servomotors and focused a pair of searchlights from an old police car.

It was Pony Girl of Just Cause, and she was in his road. Soot and sweat stained her face and costume, and she looked like she’d already had a hell of a fight without his help. Instead of fleeing like any intelligent being, she stood her ground.

It would have been so easy to just unlimber the bolt guns and turn her into so much hamburger, but Harlan’s curiosity was piqued. He flipped on the external microphones.

“Hey, is there somebody inside that thing?” she called.

The question caught Harlan off guard. He’d expected empty threats and demands. He activated his own microphone. It processed his voice through a vocoder and several effects pedals he’d found in the wreckage of a van that had once belonged to a band called Shrew Tamers, according to the garish paint on the side. “Yes,” he said. Destroyer’s speakers gave his voice a delicious baritone that shook dust from cracks in building walls.