A Once Crowded Sky (11 page)

“An attack,” Pen says. “Someone attacked it. That’s why my wife called, that’s why.” Oddly seamlessly, Sicko joins the quiet crowd gaping up at the TV, his unlit cigarette clutched between his fingers. For just a moment Pen forgets this man most likely needs to die—we’re all human on a day like this; no man better than any other—for just a moment.

Sicko starts banging on Pen’s arm with the side of his hand harder than is really appropriate. “Dude, dude, we’ve got to go. What we waiting for? You seeing this? This is hero shit, right here, gamer shit. Like the old days! Fuck yeah.”

“Man, I don’t—”

“Woopah!”
Sicko circles his arms around his head, imitating the way he once whipped the Fire-Chains of Chota from his wrists. “C’mon, we’ll
ride in my truck. It’s an off-road motherfucking machine.” He punches his fist into Pen’s chest and makes a
poof
noise. “Last player, right here, PenUltimate! Time to play the motherfucking game!”

This is it. Pen’s ready, and an amazing fourteen of the fourteen points are dangling off this—how old is he?—man. Pen removes the fist from his chest. “Dude, that’s not my thing anymore. I don’t do this anymore.”

“What? Come on. Let’s roll!”

“Look, I don’t—”

“What?” Sicko shouts. “Dude, this is it!”

“Look, you got to be quieter . . . more quiet, whatever, people’re staring.”

“Oh, fuck
that
shit. They should be looking, yo. People want this.”

“I don’t—”

Sicko eyes the crowd. “They all know, man, they all know. Fuck, we all fucking come motherfucking back.”

“C’mon, let’s just go.”

Sicko’s eyebrows arch happily up. “People need this shit, man,” he says as he mounts a bar stool, which whimpers under his weight. “They fucking need it.”

“Dude, don’t—”

“Citizens of this establishment,” Sicko addresses the crowd, and Pen attempts to shrivel into his own chest. “My friends, do not fret.”

The heads of the patrons tilt toward Sicko as Pen ducks his eyes farther away.

“I know you are worried,” Sicko shouts. “I repeat, I know you are worried, but you don’t have to. Not no more. People, people, you know who this is? You know who this dog here is? You remember Ultimate, who saved all our asses. This is his partner. This is PenUltimate! This is a powerful-ass hero right here, yo!”

A murmur in the crowd breaks their long-held silence. They look to Pen, who looks at them and then looks away.

“You know me. I am famous. I am Sicko. I was a hero, and I have come back to you. And this is PenUltimate, and he’s a hero, and he’s got mad powers, and him and me’s going out there and we’s going to save the day, yo!”

Some mild claps trickle out of the audience. Someone whistles.

“That’s what I’m saying! I’m Sicko! He’s PenUltimate! Give it up!”

“PenUltimate, all right!” someone shouts.

“Yeah, PenUltimate, the man with the powers. He’s still got it! And he’s going to go out there, and he’s going to find the fucker that did this, and he’s going to pummel him into the next world, yo!”

Someone in the audience shouts out, “Yeah!” and Sicko points to him and smiles.

“That’s right! That’s right! Let me tell you, this guy here learned from Ultimate. The Man With The Metal Face! He knows, trust me, when Sicko talks, Sicko talks truth. My man here knows how to kick the ass. And he’s got the power to do it!”

Sicko starts clapping his hands. Others in the bar join him.

“All right, see, that’s what I’m talking about. Little love, Sicko’s digging it!”

“Hell yeah!” Another scream from another patron, which builds into another scream, and another, and another. “Hell yeah!”

Sicko grins. “We hear you! We know what the peoples want! We’s going to put some boots into some asses. ’Cause that is what heroes do!”

The audience screams out in pleasure.

“Hell yeah,” Sicko says, and after a few air pumps, he grabs his keys out of his pocket and jingles them in front of the crowd. “It’s time they felt our metal! We out!” Which you would think would mean done; however, before leaving, he slaps a waitress on the ass and gives a
woo
shout, and only then is he finally gone.

Dozens of eyes trace to Pen, who stands alone. A pathetic “I don’t” is all he can manage. Then the cheers, and his shoulders jerk back and forth from a thousand pats on his back. Women drape around him, say they prayed for him. The waitress—the one who just had her ass slapped—kisses him on the cheek.

“You don’t understand . . . ,” his voice trails, but it doesn’t matter anymore: no one can hear it anyway; they’re all too busy wishing him luck and shaking his hand and massaging his neck and laughing and yelling and telling one another it’s fine—a hero’s here now, and it’s all fine. An eight-year-old girl in a jean jacket wants his autograph. She says her name’s Stephanie.

A honk booms near the front door. Pen should say something. He
was never good with words. Maybe he should tell them no one can feel his metal anymore. He was just a kid then. He was so small.

Stephanie waves at him, and Pen pushes forward through the crowd, to the door. Forget all the rest of it; he just wants to get out.

Halfway there, he glances back to see if they’re still showing Big on the TV, but they’ve moved on; instead, they’re running pictures of the hospital employees taken from some sort of hospital yearbook. She hated the pros, but he doesn’t see her up there. Maybe she’s gone, found a better job, something better—maybe that saved her.

Or maybe he looked back too late, and right now she’s one of those burnt sticks planted in the farm grass. Or maybe she’s trapped in the newer West Building Three, which hasn’t yet fallen—because it was built with Arlington Steel, which melts at a 20 percent higher temperature than the Altono Steel in the already collapsed main building—but even Arlington steel gives in, after a while.

Maybe she needs a hero, the guy the crowd called for. Maybe she needs him. Maybe Pen can be something again, be good again, like he’s been doing with Strength, helping her, saving her. Sins can fade, he knows they can. They have to. He can come back. Right? That’s the rule. Right?

He squints into the sun as he emerges from the restaurant. Just this once. I’ll do some good today. Because the crowd’s already here, and I can’t let down Stephanie, and the nurse who hates the pros because it’s fixed, and he was in that alley, and that’s what heroes do—it’s what they goddamn do.

For the first time all day, Pen finds his hatred toward Sicko slackening. The man’s enthusiasm, if nothing else, is all right, and Pen’s got to admit he appreciates it. This one time, he means. It’s so weird. Sicko actually really likes this.

And Pen never liked it. He always dreaded the sky, the distance between the board and the ground. Every time, he was afraid that this would be the last time, this would be when the metal didn’t hold, and he would fall, and he would crash, and he would die.

Ultimate told him this was the greatest job, the greatest honor, any man could have, putting the good of them over the good of just himself. But all Pen wanted to do was go home, be with his wife. Sicko, this was his life. Doing this, helping others with his abilities, thrilled him, made him high. Well, that’s not all bad. It’s better than Pen anyway.

A screaming, prolonged honk scrapes across the parking lot. “It’s on, motherfucker!” Sicko thrusts out his tongue and waves the double-handed devil sign outside his tinted window, and Pen realizes he’s fucked.

Ultimate, The Man With The Metal Face #570

“You know who this is? You have any idea who’s riding that chair, Officer? Take a look. Uh, that’s PenUltimate, last player in the game. Y’know, of Ultimate and PenUltimate. Maybe you’ve heard of them? Maybe? . . . Yeah, that’s right. So you want to shoot us? Take your shot. But we’s got things to do. Hero shit.” Having said all that needs to be said, Sicko stomps the gas, breaking through the striped-red barriers standing between the world and the wreckage.

Signs informing them of the dangers ahead are easily ignored, and they pass them with increasing velocity as the truck bumbles toward the hospital. Pen clutches the loop hanging above the passenger seat and watches the smoke twirling out of the hospital complex, winding up and out of view. There should be a plan. Pen should be coming from the sky—a sudden bump; the car lurches, and Pen’s head slaps the ceiling. There should be a plan. He ducks his chin to his chest and holds it there.

It’s been too long since Pen’s played, besides stopping Strength from her little suicides. His skills have dropped a shameful 73 percent; however, by any objective measure, he’s the most powerful man on the planet. Yet he still shouldn’t be here. He could’ve just told Sicko to screw himself. Maybe it was the funeral, all those people staring at him, expecting something. They never understand; over all these stupid years, they’ve never understood. He’s just not good at this.

He’s ten, training, and Ultimate throws him against the wall, and he gets up, and Ultimate throws him against the wall, and he gets up, and Ultimate throws him against the wall, and he gets up, and Ultimate throws him against the wall, and he lies still, not bothering to wipe the blood out of his one working eye.

Without a word Ultimate leaves to patrol the night. Left alone in the Metal Room, Pen eventually rises and limps to the bathroom to clean himself up. Blood, water, and soap blend, circle, drip down the drain. Each leg is calcified in ache, but still he climbs the ever-impressive front staircase to one of the living rooms, finally dropping into a rarely used
antique chaise. The cushions wrap around his damp skin, and almost immediately, a concussioned exhaustion comforts him.

From behind sloping eyelids, Pen peers out a near window. The Arcadia night expands outward beneath their mansion on the hill, its thousand lights obscured by the fog of all those fires set by all those villains. In an alley in the dark, while Ultimate is single-handedly defeating the next monstrous robot, a woman coughs and dies because Pen couldn’t get up. Maybe she’s got a daughter and that girl has to go the rest of her life without ever hearing her mother’s blameless tone reading her that one favorite story, the one that invites the better dreams.

The gym’s not that far off. Pen shoves the pain into the parts of himself that can take it. He stands and goes back down the ever-impressive front staircase. Maybe a few more reps’ll make it easier tomorrow night, and maybe then Ultimate’ll agree he’s ready, will agree to take him out. Maybe then Pen’ll get up and be a hero.

They’ve arrived. The car windows dim with soot, and Sicko hoots triumphantly as he turns the wipers on. Pen bends forward, tries to see what’s coming. Half a dozen buildings burn around them, coating the air with heat and smoke. Some are flat, some are tall, fifteen or more stories. The few faces that decorate all the broken windows look frightened but calm, as if they’re waiting for something.

As they’re trained to do, Pen’s senses begin to solve the mystery. The bombs came from the sky, like rockets, that’s clear enough from the patterned debris, the way it seems to be retreating from deep craters in the ground. With those angles it would have to have been a plane or—and Pen stops the wires, reminds them that someone else is responsible for all of that. He’s just here for a moment. To save a few and then go home.

Unsure where to go, Pen and Sicko loop around the destruction while Sicko repeatedly demands to know how they’re going to “get it started.” Pen tells Sicko they should just ask someone; however, apparently disappointed by this call, Sicko aims the vehicle at one of the collapsing buildings and accelerates with a shrieked “Whoop.” For whatever reason, Pen doesn’t object.

The few emergency personnel in the area of the chosen target keep their distance, setting up a delicate perimeter over a dozen meters out. No one appears to be entering or exiting the structure, which twitches
with an agitated rhythm. An overturned fire truck—clearly damaged by some type of explosion—lies at the west side of the building and tells the story: the crews don’t know if the attacks are over, and they can’t go inside for fear the building’s Arlington Steel girders will finally give in.

Flames play happily up and down the few first floors, carelessly blowing out windows and bounding across walls. On the highest level, just above where the fire escape has twisted off, a pair of hazel eyes track Pen and Sicko’s approach. There’s fear in them, a fear Pen’s seen so many times before he interprets it not as an emotional reaction to all this tragedy, but as an indication of how long, precisely how many seconds, Pen has before she jumps.

Sicko’s going on about this or that thing he’s going to do if one fireman gets in their way, telling stories of dudes interfering in his badass battles with the dreaded scum of the who-gives-a-fuck. And the wires etch each letter of the speech on Pen’s brain even as he indicates the exact angle of approach to the building, ordering Sicko to accelerate. Of the four sides, the southeastern has the best topography for the climb; the minute crags studded there can act as handholds between floors.

With the car still jumping and Sicko still espousing, Pen opens his door and rolls out onto the grass, the green ground spotting his gray polo shirt. At least he’d remembered to slip off his loafers and socks—it’s better when your feet scratch the ground.