The Ultimates: Against All Enemies (30 page)

Gail fed the goats the rest of the feed they'd bought from the vending machines near the entrance to the bird enclosure, which was closed for some reason. "Steve," she said. "We've both had way too much time to think about what might have been different, and all of that time to think hasn't done either of us a lick of good. You were wrong? Fine. You were wrong. Let it be the lesson it is, but don't let it change the things about you that made Nick Fury want you out there in the first place. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's a wishy-washy man. Now take me back to the hospital."

And he did, walking her back up Fifth Avenue in the deepening twilight and thinking that maybe she was right. You couldn't be wishy-washy. If you were wrong, you were wrong, and you admitted it to the people who mattered. But when the bugle sounded and you were out there in the field defending America against all enemies foreign and domestic, what you had to go on was your gut. Acknowledgments

Thanks first of all to Millar and Hitch for giving me such a rich field to work with. Also to Jen Heddle for thinking of me, and to the ever-anonymous copyeditor for some excellent catches. And thanks to P and t and L, for superhero conversation and for being the people I can count on. About the Author

Alex Irvine is the author of the novels The Narrows; The Life of Riley; Batman: Inferno; One King, One Soldier; and A Scattering of Jades. His short fiction, published in Salon, Vestal Review, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Trampoline, and elsewhere, is collected in Unintended Consequences and Pictures from an Expedition. He has also written comic books and online narratives. He has won the Locus, Crawford, and International Horror Guild awards for his fiction, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the World Fantasy Award. His fiction has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Czech, Polish, Hebrew, Russian, and Chinese. In 2005, he was awarded the New England Press Association's top prize for investigativejournalism, and that same year was part of a writing team that won a Webby and the International Game Developers Association Innovation Award. He is an assistant professor of English at the University of Maine.

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