| #209: Untold Tales of the Zero Street Mission: The Night Hell’s Bathroom Burned (Part One) The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse Note This story contains violence and bad language (albeit bad language with many asterisks), and is not suitable for minors or those upset by such things. The punk in the frayed denim jacket stood in line and watched as the trouble started. Over on the other side of the battered church hall where the queue for the needle exchange was waiting to get to the pharmacy trestle, some hopped-up idiot had decided it was a good idea to do a little dealing to the waiting junkies. And Laurie Leyton had caught him. “You know the rules,” Laurie told the pusher. “That crap doesn’t come inside these walls.” “Hey Lisette,” the guy replied with a smirk. “I got your video.” “Hey d*ckless,” Lisa’s former sidekick replied, “I got your free ride to the hospital. Drop the bag of crap you’re peddling and get out.” She caught the sudden movement the kid made towards his jacket and caught his wrist. “I don’t care how high you are. You reach for a hidden weapon and I will put you through a wall.” Something about her tone or the look in her eye penetrated the drug haze. The pusher let his hand be dragged away from his coat, and stood dumbfounded as Lisette patted him down for the plastic bags he was carrying. “You can’t…” he began. “You want me to call some cops to do this?” Lisette challenged. “You want to be the guy who made the cops come down here on a Saturday night? Cause a lot of the people here wouldn’t be thanking you for that.” The angry glares of some of the people waiting in the needle exchange queue, and the others across the room looking for their homeless survival packs warned the kid that his personal health was in extreme jeopardy. “Get the hell out of here,” Laurie Leyton told him angrily. “I don’t want to see your zit-ridden face on this street again.” Behind the trestle Jenny Tolliver watched Lisette frog-march the pusher out of the hall and throw him into the street. “Wow,” she told the returning hero, “How do you do that?” “Leverage,” Lisette answered. “Two kinds.” Jenny shook her head. “I could never do that,” she confessed. “People frighten me.” Laurie shrugged. “Hey, you’re sitting helping out in the Zero Street Mission on a Saturday night surrounded by unwashed kids, drunks, and drug addicts. You’ll do.” “That’s because I see me in every one of them,” Jenny admitted. “A few years back, that was me. If I hadn’t been brought here. If I hadn’t been saved.” The punk in the denims had seen enough. He accepted his cardboard box of necessities for living rough – the church hostel was already full to overflowing – and left the mission before anybody tired to make him sing a hymn. The “emergency kit” wasn’t that much. A comb, a toothbrush, some toothpaste, some soap, a pack of sandwiches and a candy bar was about it. The punk pocketed the chocolate and tossed the rest into the alley as he walked back to Scalpel. “Well?” Scalpel asked. He was only a few years older than the punk, but half a foot taller. His face was prison-pale, with a thin scar down the left side where a homemade knife had done its work. The guy on the other end of the knife was found cut up in his cell the next day. “She’s there,” the punk reported. “Handing out exchange needles, can you believe it?” “And the kid?” Scalpel asked. “Did you see her kid?” “There wasn’t no kids there. But I hear they’ve got some kind of crèche goin’, so maybe…” “I heard she kept the kid,” Scalpel interrupted. “She left it in an alley at first, cause she was scared an’ dumb, but they found it and brought it back to her. Her kid.” The gang leader crushed the Coors can he’d been drinking from and tossed it onto the roof of the church. “My kid.” By eleven it was all over. A couple of hundred of the desperate denizens of Hell’s Bathroom had been through the doors of the mission church; some for food, some for counselling, some for somewhere to go out of the cold; one or two even for prayer. Now all that was left was sweeping the floor and locking up. “Thanks again folks,” Reverend ‘Mac’ Fleetwood called to his volunteers. “See you next time.” “Here’s your little sweetheart, Jenny,” Lisette called out, leading a golden-haired toddler from the crèche room and handing her to her mother. “They say she’s been a little angel.” Jenny swept her daughter up into her arms, and as always she held her close and remembered how bad things had nearly gone. “Debbie!” she whispered, exchanging embraces. Then there was the Admiring of the Drawing. “It’s just like CrazySugarFreakBoy!” Jenny assured the child, examining the green and orange scribble. That was when the hall doors slammed open and Scalpel and the Slumtown Bloods walked in. “We’re closed now,” Mac told them, sensing trouble. “Come back tomorrow.” “We’re not here for you,” Scalpel answered, pushing the clergyman aside. He jerked a finger at Jenny Tolliver. “I’m here for my girlfriend. And my kid!” Jenny had gone deathly pale. “J-jimmy?” “Yeah. So you remember me then, bitch?” “That’s enough,” Lisette warned him, stepping in between the gang leader and the frightened girl. “You were told we were closed.” “And you can suck my…” “Is there a problem here?” Hatman asked. He and CrazySugarFreakBoy! had just collected in the gear from the basketball court and were blocking the doorway. “Yeah, there’s a problem,” Scalpel answered. “You’re in my face, and that’s a problem. This is between me and my bitch and you can stay out of it.” Suddenly CSFB! was right in Scalpel’s face. “Hey, ***wipe, I think you’d better shut the **** up before somebody teaches you how to talk properly to a lady. In fact I think you’d better apologise.” Hatman slowly and deliberately pulled on his Steelers cap. “I think you’d all better disperse right now or I’m arresting you for breach of the peace. Don’t give me an excuse.” “Ooh, scary superheroes,” Scalpel mocked. “Okay, I’m going. But this ain’t over. Jenny, you got till tomorrow night to come see me, and you bring my kid. You got that? Don’t make me come looking cause you and everyone you know’ll wish I hadn’t.” “That’s it,” CSFB! exploded, grabbing the gang leader and pushing him hard into the wall. “Body search. Let’s see if you’ve got concealed weapons.” “Back off,” Hatman warned the others. “If you guys don’t know by now that Zero Street Mission is protected I’m sure happy to teach you the hard way.” “Switch-knife,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! discovered, tossing the weapon to Lisette, “and either this guy really likes coffee creamer or this bag here is something very naughty.” “Mac, call Don Graham,” Hatman declared. “Tell him we have a contribution to his jail cells.” “I’m still a bit puzzled,” Jay Boaz admitted as he chatted with Mac Fleetwood at the church door the next day. The morning service was over and Hatman was on his way back to the Lair Mansion, but the professional in him liked to tie up loose ends. “That guy Graham arrested last night, what was his deal?” “Did you ever hear about that time a few Christmases back when Sarah Shepherdson found a baby abandoned on her doorstep?” Fleetwood answered. “The mother had run away from home and had panicked when she’d given birth in an alley. The girl was fifteen.” “That was Jenny?” Hatman realised. “Her parents haven’t spoken to her since she got pregnant,” said Mac. “More or less threw her out, told her she was an abomination to God, let her rot. She lived rough on the streets, you know the story.” “And that Scalpel guy? I checked his record sheet, he’s a hardcore dealer and he’s just served three years for assault.” “He’s the father. Jenny told me all about it last night. She was a foolish fourteen year old girl who didn’t know what she was getting into. When she left home to stayed with him for three days but ran away from his abuse. Then he was busted for carving up somebody’s face and he was gone from her life.” “Well after his parole violation yesterday he’s gone again,” Jay smiled. “I hope Jenny gets over her upset.” “Laurie’s with her,” Mac assured him. “Those two have a lot in common.” “Couldn’t think of anyone better,” Hatman agreed. “See you Thursday, Mac, unless we’ve got to save the world again.” “Take care, Jay.” As always, Jay Boaz ducked into the alley before pulling on his Jets hat. He didn’t like to draw attention to himself coming out of church. He was thinking about what Mac had said and for a moment his guard was down. Then the baseball bat hit him in the stomach and he folded over. “Got him!” “Grab his hands. Hold him. Don’t let him put on no *&%$ing caps!” “Hit him again! He’s a strong guy!” “Won’t be so tough when we’ve done with him.” The baseball bat caught Jay on the jaw, shattering it. He tried to stay conscious. The third swipe took out his knee. “Big time super hero,” somebody laughed. “Not so super now, huh?” Hatman tried to lift his arms to fight, but they felt like lead. It was hard to breathe, hard to see. Rough hands dragged him to the floor, sending new spasms of pain through his body. Scalpel leaned over him. “Told you this wasn’t over,” the gang leader said. Jay tried to struggle free, but there were thugs holding all his limbs, even atop his shattered leg. Scalpel pulled out the instrument that had given him his nickname and started to carve across Jay’s chest. He had a message to deliver. The bloody letters read GIVE ME JENNY. “Anybody want a last piece of the big superstar before I cap him one last time?” he grinned, grinding his foot down on Hatman’s shattered ribs. He pulled a Saturday Night Special from his waistband and pressed it to his victim’s forehead. The gunfire came from all around, surprising the gang. Scalpel flinched away, ducking low as his instincts took over. “Book!” he shouted, and the thugs broke in both directions, racing out of the alley. With the gun no longer pressed to his head Hatman couldn’t continue making the gunfire sounds. In fact he couldn’t stay awake at all. His face was laying in something sticky and too late he realised it was his own blood. Then he remembered nothing. Sir Mumphrey Wilton wasn’t in a very good mood. He’d just finished expressing his views to Special Agent Herbert P. Garrick on the US Metahuman Affairs Think Tank’s new ruling that the Lair Legion was required to have at least one member named Jessica when Hallie’s hologram flickered into life in his office. “Hatman’s in critical at Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital,” the restored artificial intelligence warned with no delay. “Mac Fleetwood found him in an alley off Zero Street. He’s been carved up pretty badly.” “A supervillain attack?” Mumphrey scowled, reaching for his coat. “As best we can tell, a gang hit.” Hallie paused. “The evidence is pointing to a drug dealer called James Brayshaw, street name Scalpel – which is what was used to carve a message onto Jay’s chest. Hatty and CSFB! arrested him last night.” “Then why was he on the streets?” the leader of the Lair Legion demanded. “He was bailed,” Hallie answered. “By Sneek Grabbitt and Thuggery.” Sir Mumphrey’s eyes narrowed. “The Lynchpin’s shysters.” “I won’t lie to you,” Dr Whitwell told CSFB!, Nats, and Uhuna. “Hatman’s injuries are critical. One lung is collapsed, his kidneys are crushed, I think there’s spinal damage, and his jawbone is in around seventy pieces. He’s going into surgery as soon as we can stabilise his vitals. If we can stabilise them.” “Let me at him,” Princess Uhunalura begged. “I can save him!” “You can’t heal people, Uhuna,” Nats reminded his Abhuman girlfriend. “Your power lets you swop injuries from one person to another, or to yourself. That’s all.” “Right,” agreed CrazySugarFreakBoy! “So Uhuna’s gonna shift the wounds to me, okay? I heal pretty fast, even stuff that other people couldn’t heal at all like kneecaps and jaws.” “These are very serious injuries,” Dr Whitwell warned. “There’s no guarantee even you could…” “Hatty’s a very serious friend of mine,” CSFB! replied. “Uhuna, can you do it?” “I think so. Yes. But it will hurt you a lot.” “Then let’s go.” “There,” Bethany Shellett told Jenny. “Little Debbie’s fast asleep. She went down as good as gold.” Laurie Leyton handed the house guest a mug of steaming coffee. “Here. Now you can settle back and relax.” Debbie accepted the drink and managed an uncertain smile. “You’re being very kind.” “It’s just practical,” Lisette told her. “You couldn’t very well stay at that rat-hole you call a room in Hell’s Bathroom tonight. And Beth here has a habit of taking in wayward strays. Like me.” “She’s mostly housebroken now,” Beth confided to Jenny, gesturing to her flat-mate. “She’s hardly ever sick on the mat and she’s stopped burying stuff in the windowbox.” “Plus I’m useful for giving Beth fashion tips,” Laurie countered. “What kind of paper bag she should wear on her head, that kind of thing.” Jenny laughed at her hostess’ banter. “Thanks. I needed this. I was… well I was terrified when Jimmy showed up again.” “That Scalpel guy?” Beth replied. “When Goldeneyed and the Legion catch up with him he’ll wish he’d never been born.” “He seemed so cool when I first met him,” Jenny confessed. “So unlike the boys at school. It was only later, when… well, then I found out what he was really like. And he’s worse when he’s high.” “When the LL catch him he’ll never bother anyone again,” replied Laurie Leyton. “Ever.” “So the big superheroes are looking for us,” Scalpel told his posse. “Big whoop. They got the fancy super-powers and they think that’s gonna do it for them. But tonight we’re going to show them just what we think of their spandex asses.” “Perhaps we should lay low?” one of the Bloods suggested. “Until they’re less mad?” “And perhaps we should knit them some pretty lace doilies to apologise to them?” Scalpel mocked. “Everyone in this town has been conned into thinking these super-friends can do anything. But they can’t. Tonight we’re gonna show them where their limits are. Show them good.” “What do you mean, Scalpel?” The gang-leader flicked off his points on his fingers. “One. They can’t be everywhere. There’s what, ten, twelve of them and two hundred of us. They can’t stop us all at once. Two, they got this code that says they help people. So we give them plenty of people to help, screaming ‘save us, cape man!’. Plenty of people. And three, bein’ super-duper ain’t that special nowadays. Not when we got a new shipment of Shazam, the stuff that gives a guy super-powers for a couple hours after he snorts it.” “We’re really gonna take on the Lair Legion?” “Give free samples of the crap to anybody in Hell’s Bathroom who wants to try it. Unship that bazooka we scored off Factor X. Find me a gas tanker, a full one.” Scalpel stubbed his cigarette out in his palm. “We’re gonna make history.” Continued… Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2005 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2005 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
| #209: Untold Tales of the Zero Street Mission: The Night Hell’s Bathroom Burned (Part Two) The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse Note This story contains violence and bad language (albeit bad language with many asterisks), and is not suitable for minors or those upset by such things. Harry Flask, the Lynchpin of Crime, had taken a break from being the most powerful gangster on the Eastern seaboard to lever his thirty-six stone bulk behind a reinforced table to enjoy his mid-afternoon meal. He had a standing order not to be disturbed when he was feeding except for dire emergencies, and he enforced this vigorously by breaking the fingers of whichever minion bothered him unnecessarily. So he was particularly annoyed as he was tossing aside his second chicken carcass when his intercom buzzed. “What?” he demanded irritably, hammering his pudgy hand down on the reply button with ill-restrained rage. “S-sorry boss,” came back the nervous voice of his administrator, Winsley. “But you’ve got a visitor. From the Lair Legion. Sir Mumphrey Wilton.” The Lynchpin’s meal was about to get ruined. The brewery on Beatitude Street had been shut down by Prohibition back in the 20’s, and again by the G-Men a couple of years later, contributing to the economic conditions that has made Seedytown what it was, a ghetto of desperate people with no jobs, no future, and no way of getting out. The vast sprawling shell of the abandoned building was long scheduled for demolition, but the site was tangled in a mire of ownership problems and legal claims. Now it was derelict, burned out, but still a shelter for hundreds of the homeless who clung to existence in a violent, complicated subculture of their own within its grim brick walls. The emergency call was reported anonymously at 18:22: “Sh*t man, you gotta get down to the Glory Brewery! On Beatitude! It’s burning man. Burning good! All the stairs are blocked and there’s people caught upstairs and in the cellars. Kids screaming. You can smell the flesh cooking, man. You can smell it!” In accordance with procedure, two tenders from Sheldon Fir Station Seven were dispatched to attend, but waited on Third Street for a couple of squad cars to join them for security. Hell’s Bathroom wasn’t a safe place for men with uniforms to enter. The way into the cobbled alley where the brewery rotted was blocked with a burned out SUV, but the lead fire truck edged it out of the way. Already the firefighters could see smoke and flame from the grim shell ahead. A radio call brought backup units from Sheldon Eight and Central Third and Fifth. Police officers and cars were diverted and cops strapped on riot gear and armoured vests to protect them. The original team drew up outside the high glass-topped wall that ringed the Glory Brewery. Officer Jim Mahoney, 29, with a wife and three kids was first off the truck to check the fire hydrant. The first of the remote explosives went off in his face, sending him away from the sabotaged water main in fragments. The other two charges were planted right beside where the fire trucks had drawn up, and the two engines went up in balls of flame. One of the police cars had been flipped over, but the cops from the other vehicle raced out to offer assistance. It was far too late. The Slumtown Bloods concealed on neighbouring rooftops opened up with AK-47s and cut them down in the street. The Brewery burned on, access to it blocked by the flaming shells of the first two fire trucks to die that night. It had started. “Code 60! Code Sixty! Repeat, this is a 10-100, major emergency. We need help! We need it now. We’re getting slaughtered down here! We need…” Commissioner Don Graham flinched as the recorded message was abruptly shut off. “Jessop?” he asked of the man whose voice he’d heard. “We’ve not found him or his vehicle,” the worried Sergeant answered. “Hell’s Bathroom’s in chaos at the moment. We have multiple fires now, and half the roads are blocked. People on the streets, looting, rioting. It’s spreading into Shelton. We have a whole bunch of officers down.” “A set up?” Graham wondered, looking over the reports. “The first call-outs seem designed to cripple our emergency services, targeting fire trucks and ambulances. This was a deliberate trap.” “We can’t get a copter in low enough to check what’s happening,” the Sergeant reported. “We… we lost one chopper already. Fired at from the ground.” Graham closed his eyes for a moment. “Commissioner, I don’t know how we can ask more men to go into that place right now.” “I know, sarge,” Graham admitted. “But I don’t know how we can’t either.” There were almost half a million people packed into the tight labyrinth of Hell’s Bathroom. The Commissioner made a decision. “Get me the Governor,” he scowled. “I want the National Guard. I want the armed forces. And then get me the Lair Legion.” It was about then that Scalpel flicked off the safety latch on his M-12 Shoulder Mounted Assault Weapon, focussed its 3.8x telescopic sight on the exact window of Don Graham’s office in the Central Police Headquarters, and dispatched the surface to surface missile with deadly precision. The LairJet came in steep, flanked by Nats running interference. Bill Reed caught the expected surface-to-air missile that spiralled up from the tenements below and crushed it telekinetically. “I’m on it,” he told Yo, and plummeted down into the tangle of windowless buildings where the ambushers were lurking. “Is good,” Yo told the others as the LairJet set down. “Shoggothing, Trickying, you are to be being firefighting. To be finding the worst of the blazes and to be stopping of them, yes?” “I should be able to suppress the combustion processes by smothering any such matter energy exchanges with my biomass,” judged the Shoggoth. “An I brung some extra foam arrows and some blast tips so’s I can make me some firewalls,” Trickshot agreed. He checked the grid map on the monitor. “I figure we try and make a break on Second Street an’ maybe git a safe escape route fer some of the folks whut are caught between the blazes.” “Is yes,” agreed Yo. “Dancer, De Brown Streaking, you are to be on rescuing. Be to be getting all of trapped people to safe places Shoggothing and Tricky are to be making, yes?” “We’ll find a way,” Dancer agreed, looking out at the scene from hell. Flames were visible over the roofline now, and the screams were audible even inside the LairJet. “You coincidence me finding ‘em, I’ll get them out,” De Brown Streak promised her. “And you, Yo?” Al B. asked from the pilot’s chair. “What will you be doing?” “Yo is to be finding of nasty uncutes who are to be doing this,” the pure thought being answered grimly. “Yo is to be talking with them.” At 22.51 the phone rang in Beth Shellett’s apartment. All three of the women in the house were awake, watching the coverage of the Hell’s Kitchen blaze on the TV. Laurie answered the call. “Yeah?” “Beth? Is Beth there,” a distraught young voice asked, nearly in hysterics. “Sure,” Lisette replied, thumbing the handset to speaker. “Go ahead.” “Diane, is that you?” Bethany Shellett called out, recognising the voice over the phone as one of the children she taught at St Jude’s Orphanage. “What’s wrong.” “Beth, there are people here,” the girl sobbed. “Bad people. They broke in. With guns. I think Mrs Patterson is dead. They took her into her office and she was all screaming…” Beth went chalk white. “Mrs Patterson…?” The voice on the other end of the line changed. “Yeah. She died, but I guess she died happy, number of guys she had on her,” Scalpel boasted. “So listen good, bitches. You got exactly twenty minutes to get my woman and my kid down here before I give this little girl you just been talking to to my posse to play with. And we got plenty more kids here what don’t need their eyes an’ ears and stuff.” Jenny Tolliver’s coffee mug shattered on the floor. “We see any heroes, we got this whole place wired up real good. We got C4 strapped to the kids chests. If we see cops or super-cops we gonna make these kiddies into roman candles. You got that?” “We understand,” Lisette answered. “Then you three mamas better get hustling if you’re gonna be here in nineteen minutes from now,” Scalpel laughed. “Oh yeah, be sure to wrap the kid up warm. It’s a bit chilly out tonight.” Scalpel had a few moments to spare, so he went with the group he’d picked out to deal with the Zero Street Mission. He’d got special plans for that place. What was good about the target was that everyone thought it was protected. Lots of the mindless sheep who jerked their lives away in this craphole neighbourhood ran there when there was trouble, so that God or the Lair Legion could protect them from all harm. Scalpel had a stolen gas truck with a wired accelerator that said differently. “Listen to ‘em.” He snorted to his crew. “Hidin’ in there while their homes burn around ‘em, pleading and praying.” He laughed then. “We got the answer to their prayers. Jojo, you aim this truck at them front doors and jump clear before it hits. If the gas don’t go up at once you got your flares, right? EZ, you and Frankie get over there with your Uzis. Anybody comes out of the burning wreck, you cap ‘em. Let em choose between fire and lead. Tobby, you keep a watch out for the super-dupers. You see them coming you trigger the remote on those charges we set on Second Street, right? Row of tenements collapsing’s gotta give the capes a few hard choices. And if you can waste one of ‘em, bonus points.” “Got it,” Jojo acknowledged. “Hey, you not staying round for the big bang?” “Gotta get back to the orphanage and greet my visitors,” Scalpel grinned. “Got me a big bang of my own all set up just waiting for the ladies.” Shazam was the latest designer drug. Based on advanced genetic recoding techniques, the narcotic not only offered a huge high but made temporary changes to the user’s DNA, gifting them with enhanced strength, speed, stamina, and sometimes other weirder abilities drawn from their latent gene structure. In other words, for a couple of hours, Shazam could make a superhuman. A whacked out, head-case superhuman with a twenty percent chance of dying when the drugs wore off, but some people felt the high was worth it. Shazam was still very rare and very expensive, a rich man’s folly, but the Bloods had liberated a case of the stuff from the burning 23rd Precinct House, and now three hundred metahuman lunatics were doing whatever they wanted in the burning streets of Slumtown. Yo and Nats went in to stop them. “Guess you guys can’t count,” slurred the man holding the car over his head. Nats telekinetically detonated the gas tank. “Sure we can,” he growled. “Sixteen practise sessions a week, learning to use our abilities.” He barrelled into the two goons behind that were ripping the cage off the front of the pawnshop. “Hundred seventeen arrests so far this year.” He slammed the thug with the sledgehammer through the wall then hurled he weapon at the guy creeping up behind him. “Juiced up punks who think they’re special because they screwed up their bodies with Shazam – zero,” the flying phenomenon concluded. Yo stepped into the way of the man in the gang colours who had grown horns and claws as a side effect of his mutation. “Is no,” the pure thought being told the addict, flipping him casually over his head then somersaulting atop him to render him unconscious with a single kick to the cranium. “Is not cute and is not clever.” “Graaah!” the next berserker screeched. The left side of his face was already burned away, but he was feeling no pain. “Oh, you poor man,” Yo told him as s/he gently crumpled him to the ground. De Brown Streak raced into the blazing overturned shell of the fire truck, moving as fast as he could in the confined crumpled space before the heat from the metal cage could transmit into his body. He had around a tenth of a second. Most of the firefighters were dead already, some by the blast that had toppled their vehicle, others from the heat of the burning truck. But Josh found a couple that were still alive. He picked up the one that was still moving, although one side of the man’s body was a red char. “Stay with me,” DBS begged him, and accelerated out of the vehicle to the Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital. “Another one!” called Grace O’ Mercy, the Night Nurse struggling to bring order to the crowded Emergency Room. “Third degree burns. I need a trauma team here stat!” Josh Clement didn’t wait to hear more. He pushed his mutant powers further, burning off body fat to sustain his speed, plunging back into the fire truck’s blazing wreckage. He saw even then that there wasn’t anything he could do to save the other fireman. The wreckage had pinned and pierced the rescue worker’s body. The fire was already cooking him. “I’m sorry, man,” Josh Clement told the hero, and snapped his neck. Outside, Dancer was directing confused and smoke blackened people away from their homes, encouraging the able to carry the injured, somehow bringing a veneer of order to the seething chaos. Her face was smudged with char and she had livid scorches on her arms. “Come on,” she called to the stragglers who were trying to drag an old TV set with them out of the burning tenement. “Keep moving!” “That look like a superhero to you?” Leroy Hooper grinned to his gang-brothers. “I think I’ve seen her on TV.” “Tha’s Dancer,” Tito answered. “She’s Lair Legion. Big time.” “She bulletproof?” Leroy wondered, aiming his XM-8 assault rifle and switching it to machine gun mode. “How about those feebs she’s helping?” But the weapon misfired on the first bullet. The barrel exploded in Leroy’s face, sending him screaming backwards clawing at the shrapnel. Dancer cartwheeled over a burning school bus and kicked the weapon’s twin from Tito’s grasp. “You picked the wrong side tonight,” she told the Slumtown Bloods. “And the wrong time to interrupt me.” Then she stood and waited for them to attack, and she wasn’t smiling at all. Trickshot used the last of his blast arrows to bring down the deli at the corner of Second and Miller. That created a natural fireblock and stopped the flames spreading across to where the cops had erected a roadblock to protect Carrington from the rioting. Commissioner Don Graham hailed him with a loudspeaker. The irritating archer sprinted over. “Commish? We heard you wuz dead!” “My office is dead,” the grim old policeman answered. “If these gangs did their homework properly they’d know I wouldn’t be sitting on my backside behind a desk while my boys are on the line. I was already in a car over here when the attack started.” “Good fer you,” approved Karl Bastion. “So whut’s the game plan now?” “We’ve got the National Guard forming up and they’ll be heading in in a couple of hours. Special emergency response units from out of state too.” His face darkened with anger. “GMY refused to help.” Graham’s Sergeant called from behind the armoured police vehicle. “Sir, we got more reports of a big armed force heading this way. Fifty or more in gang colours, and they’re carrying at least one anti-tank weapon. It looks like the big breakout we were expecting!” Graham glanced at his battered forces. “Okay, we hold the line here.” Trickshot also looked at the exhausted, smoke-stained officers. “Nah, tell you what. You get the next one. Leave this to me.” “To you?” Graham blinked. The archer also looked dead on his feet. “Well, when I say to me, whut I actually mean is…” The first rioters appeared from the alleyways. The first shots took out the police spotlights. Trickshot pulled his last arrow from his quiver, and attacked a glass bulb to the tip. He fired it in a high arc to shatter amidst the attacker. A great translucent blob welled up from the broken sphere, multiplying its mass again and again, oozing round the rioters, twisting, writhing, washing them backwards in a gelid wall of slime. “Whut I actually mean is I’ll be usin’ my Shoggoth arrow on ‘em,” Trickshot concluded. Reverend “Mac” Fleetwood heard the air horn then saw the lights through the stained glass of the church. Then the runaway gas truck broke through the wall at sixty miles an hour, ploughing through the nave and crushing the people clustered there before skidding sideways and bringing the roof down. Then the whole mass exploded, taking out the remaining walls of the Zero Street Mission and killing everyone inside. “Score!” shouted Jojo as he watched the church crumple into the inferno. Then the flames froze in place. The shattered walls rebuilt themselves, toppling in reverse. The truck slid backwards out of the building, pulling the bricks into place after it, and shot away on the exact same course it had come. Sir Mumphrey Wilton took his thumb off one of the studs of his old gold pocketwatch, noting that he’d pretty much exhausted the chronal charge that the Chronometer of Infinity held to rewind local events. He still had enough left to shift the mechanism jamming the accelerator down a way into the future so that the gas truck slowed as it approached the church and was brought to a halt by the wall of the mission. “The Zero Street Mission is protected,” he told the gang that menaced it. Jojo levelled his gun at the eccentric Englishman. “And who’s protecting you, grampa?” Mumphrey faced the six thugs with guns, and he had very little power left in his temporal pocketwatch. On the other hand, firing pins are very small, and freezing them in time was only a matter of depressing a single stud. Sir Mumphrey took off his jacket and assumed a boxing stance. EZ pulled a switchblade. “You gotta be kidding us,” he mocked the leader of the Lair Legion. “Put down that knife,” thundered Mac Fleetwood, striding from the mission to stand beside the eccentric Englishman. “Walk away now, while you still can.” Jojo snorted and went at the preacher with the same baseball bat that had crippled Hatman earlier. Mac Fleetwood ducked it, hammered a rock-hard fist into the gangster’s stomach, then shattered JoJo’s nose. Five years as chaplain to the Navy’s SEAL teams at Coronado CA was useful training to a preacher intending to work in Hell’s Bathroom. EZ came in with his switch against the old man in the geyser tweeds. He didn’t notice until too late that Sir Mumphrey Wilton was grinning. “You’re not thinking of going in there?” Laurie Leyton asked Beth Shellett in disbelief. “You’re not thinking of leaving those kids to die?” Beth shot back at her room-mate. “You know what’ll happen if we surrender to the Slumtown Bloods.” Beth swallowed hard. “I was kind of hoping you’d find a clever way of turning the tables on them and kung-fu-ing them into unconsciousness. But… they’ve got kids wrapped in explosives Laurie. What else can we do?” Jenny clutched her daughter and watched the two women argue. While they were still distracted she kissed Debbie and whispered to her. “You just stay here with Beth and Laurie, okay sweetheart. Mommy has something she has to do. Mommy loves you very much. Mummy will always love you.” A moment later Lisette noticed Jenny was gone. “Hey Scalpel. Your squeeze is here!” The gang-banger with the sawn-off shotgun dragged Jenny Tolliver into the orphanage dining hall where his leader was holding a lighted cigarette over the flesh of one of the older girls. He’d been getting bored. Scalpel threw the terrified child back onto the floor where the others were cowering. “Where’s the kid?” he demanded of his former girlfriend. “You don’t get her,” Jenny hissed. “You never get her.” Scalpel smacked her to the ground almost casually. “I get whatever I want,” he promised. His face twisted into a wicked grin. “I been wanting you for a long time, Jenny. Ever since you ratted me to the slime.” Jenny cupped the side of her face. Behind her the children were wailing. “I never…” she vowed, and it was the truth. She’d wished ever since that she’d had the courage to make the call. “Don’t matter,” Scalpel told her, producing his weapon of choice. “I wonder what our little girl will think the next time she sees her mommy?” Hatman dropped through the skylight, sending glass shattering down. As he fell he used his con-ed Hat to cut the power of the remote control detonators to the booby-trapped children, then used his Bluejays cap to land without harm in the midst of the Bloods. “She’ll think her mommy looks happier because the scum that threatened her won’t ever be bothering her again,” the capped crusader suggested. A dozen weapons were turned on him. “Don’t point them there,” Scalpel snapped. “The kids. Point them at the kids. Hero-man won’t be doing anything if its gonna get the poor babies all shot to bitty pieces.” Hatman snatched off his cap and stood bare headed, sneering at the gang-leader. “You don’t think much of superheroes. I don’t think much of you. You’re hard when you’re hiding behind your boyfriends and your weapons and attacking by surprise with plenty of help. I’ve come to see what you’ve got on your own, facing somebody who’s ready for you.” Scalpel snorted. “What is this, a 1950’s western? You think we go one-to-one here because you’ve challenged my pride or somethin’?” “I think so, yeah,” Hatman mocked him. “because if you don’t, your guys here will always have that little shadow of doubt in their minds that maybe you ducked out. Maybe you weren’t man enough. And then one day those doubts will be big enough, and one of them will stick a knife in your back.” “Won’t happen,” Scalpel said; but his eyes were flickering over the faces of the men he led. Hatman gestured him forward with his fingers. “You and me. If you dare. If you’re able.” “Right,” Scalpel snorted. “You and me!” And he pulled a Magnum .45 from his waistband and shot Hatman six times. Jay Boaz flinched as he saw the muzzle flash, but the bullet never arrived. He didn’t stop to question his good fortune. He just moved forward and hit Scalpel. The bullets hung in midair where they were being telekinetically held. Everyone was watching Hatman and Scalpel. Nobody saw the children vanishing from the room one by one, as if carried at super-speed. Scalpel was bigger than Jay Boaz, and he was a brutal, dirty fighter. Hatman started by dislocating his opponent’s left shoulder, and worked downwards from there. “Bastard!” screeched Scapel, slashing out at his enemy’s face with his signature weapon. Hatman broke Scalpel’s wrist and headbutted him in the nose. “Aagh!” screamed the gang-leader. “That does it. That does it!” He staggered back, seized an AK-47 from one of his boys, and sprayed the room. Dancer broke from nowhere, dancing between the bullets. They sprayed around the children but not a single one hit. Trickshot pinned another thug to the wall with a well-thrown knife. Yo dropped down and executed a splits kick to down the two punks heading towards the explosives pile. And the Manga Shoggoth bubbled up through the floorboards to envelop the children in a thick protective coating of glutinous goo. Lisette dropped through the broken skylight and shimmied down a nylon cord to stand protectively over Jenny Tolliver. Hatman stood over Jimmy ‘Scalpel’ Brayshaw and kept hitting him till the criminal lost all interest in moving, and perhaps a little bit longer. The fires would still be burning for another twelve hours, but with the first grey morning light the emergency services were able to get through cleared streets to start dealing with the disaster. The Lair Legion and other heroes were prominent in the neighbourhood, and a blitzed silence fell over Hell’s Bathroom. People wandered in shock, homeless, ruined, unsure of what to do next or where to go. Many of them found their way to the Zero Street Mission. Those who got there found comfort and safety, aided by Mac Fleetwood and Jenny Tolliver. “I’ve heard from Bill,” Uhuna told the hospitalised Dreamcatcher Foxglove. “Jay brought down Scalpel. The situation is contained.” CrazySugarFreakBoy! was already healing, the broken bones starting to repair themselves, the missing teeth regrowing, the ugly chest scars scabbed over. “And the people who got killed? The cops and firefighters, the ambulance guys, the everyday folks caught up in it all?” CSFB! asked. “And those that lost everything? Who contains that stuff?” Uhuna took the hand of the injured man. “Nobody can do everything,” she told him sadly. “Even heroes. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do something. And that’s what the LL did. Something. Okay?” “Okay,” agreed the wired wonder. “But tomorrow we do something more.” The Paddy Wagon taking Scalpel to the Safe was held up by the rush hour snarl on the Sheldon Underpass. The road chaos was even worse because of the no-go areas around Hell’s Bathroom. That made it easy for Gamona the Assassin to slice out the side of the vehicle and render the three armed guards unconscious. Scalpel was strapped up by the field medics when he’d been arrested. He was conscious now, and handcuffed despite his injuries. “You took your time getting here,” he told the alien mercenary. “But I guess they Lynchpin sent his very best to bust me out.” “I’m not here to bust you out,” Gamona told him. “Mr Flask is very displeased. Mr Flask’s operations have been disrupted. His real estate has been damaged. Attention has been drawn to things Mr Flask would prefer had not been noticed. Superheroes have been involved.” “I made ‘em squeal,” Scalpel boasted. “I made ‘em see how feeble they really are. And when I get out I’ll do it again.” “Mr Flask wishes to indicate that this would not be a good idea.” Scalpel suddenly realised he was in mortal danger from the deadly green woman. “Okay. I get the message!” Gamona shook her lovely head. “No. You are the message,” she explained, coming in to do her job. Scalpel had plenty of time to scream before the end. The Lynchpin has been quite specific. Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2005 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2005 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |