A Once Crowded Sky (21 page)

“What is this?” Jules shouts at his patrons. “Get out! Get out!” A dozen customers peer up at Jules. “Get out of here! Go, people, go! Go!”

This voice of authority seems to have some effect, and a few people finally start to move. “Go, people! Go!” Jules continues to shout, and a few more, thank God, start to go to the exits, crowding the aisles of what now seems like such a small deli.

Jules runs at the crowd, finding those that lag, who seem to look
almost longingly at the destruction and death—those fools get a quick scolding from the old man who’d invited them in the first place, who had every right to tell them to get out of here, to leave for God’s sake.

Jules does what he can, clears out whom he can, and then Jules makes to leave himself, glancing back only once to see what poor souls have to get left behind.

And there’s Mashallah, wrestling free of the protesting Soldier, rushing back toward the center of the attack. And there’s Pen, bending over Burn and Chimera, scraping dust from their bodies, looking up every second to see what’s coming next. And there’s . . .

David. Where’s David? Where’s the boy? He isn’t here; he wasn’t one of the ones Jules cleared. Where’d that boy get to? Where the hell did that boy get to?

Crack.

More debris pouring in near Pen now, more hunks of tables, plates, silverware, swerving through the air, landing anywhere at all, more noise leading to more noise as Mashallah wades into the mayhem, ducks down, bends down over a boy, over Jules’s boy, his good grandson, lying there on the broken floor, lying not too far from Pen, plates and silverware and food covering him every which way; and part of the roof starts to fall right on top of the two of them, even as Soldier runs to them, screaming.

Pen is there—he jumps, puts his back between them and the diving metal and concrete, busting it from one piece to many, creating a burst of gray that buries him, that pushes Pen back to the ground on top of Mashallah and David, a burst of gray and food and plates and silverware that buries the three of them equally.

The great Soldier of Freedom arrives too late. Dropping to his knees, he begins scratching at the new hill, does nothing more than scratch his finger into it. That’s all he can do, and there’re tears in the man’s eyes.

Crack.

Another explosion. And another. Between Jules and the heroes, the diner quakes as plates and silverware and food crumple together.

Crack.

Another explosion, and Jules’s legs give, and he’s flat on the floor, his nose stuffed into his own floor, his back only feet from the exit.

Jules is old. He tells people he’s eighty-three, but really he’s
eighty-five. During the war he fought good. If anyone got in his way, this was no problem at all. If they hurt him, he’d heal the wounds, and if they stayed around after that, he’d turn the pain back on those bastards. But the war was so long ago. He can’t do anything now, not since—he’s an old man for God’s sakes!

But in front of him, his grandson lies under a pile of rubble that needs to be moved, and he can’t be helpless now; he can’t; he won’t allow it. Years ago he bargained with God for power. And he only knew God had been listening the day Soldier freed him. And when Jules’s son went as he did, Jules knew that his price had been paid.

After the war, Jules decided not to use the powers that condemned his boy. He wasn’t the hero. Not anymore. He’s just the man who makes the food at the diner. He’s just the old man who promised some poor people that if they came here, to this place, to his diner, they would have some peace.

But that doesn’t matter anymore. Decisions. Promises. Peace. What are they? All of it worthless. What is important is David. Someone has to save David. Oh, God, please, I have to save him. But I don’t have enough to help him anymore. I need you. Please, I’ll do it again. I’ll deal. I don’t have much, I don’t have too many years left, but I’ll give you what I’ve got. I’ve given you my son. Now you must take me. Take my life. Only let me save the boy.

Oh, God. Please. Please. Please.

A quiet, high voice sniffs beside him, tiny peeps filtered through rough sobs. “Sir, sir. Do you need this? Will this help.”

It’s the girl, the new greeter. She’s quivering, the poor thing. He wants to reach out and brush at her face and tell her it’s going to be fine.

And in her hands rests the repulsor ray gun that Techno—The Greatest Engineer of the Twentieth Century!—made for Jules after losing a bet that that fatass could eat two pastramis on rye in one sitting. No one could do that. It’s ludicrous. Who did he think he was kidding? But Jules needed something for the robberies, something with some extra oomph considering his unique clientele, so who was Jules not to accept such a wager?

Jules lingered at the periphery of the game for so many years, supporting those men more worthy than he ever was. Not since the war did he ever think to walk the radius from the edge to the center. But here is
the gun, a good gun that could dig through the pile; here is God in the child’s hand, responding to his request, offering him again the contract to do good, to earn his grandchild.

Jules reaches out and signs his name, takes the weapon from the girl, tries maybe to remember training from sixty years ago. But what time is there for such thoughts? His knee drags under his body, and he settles one hand on the floor pushing against the cold tiles. With his other hand, he pats the child on the head.

“Thank you, Tiffany,” he whispers.

Thank God, thank you, God. Weapon secured, Jules Gold stands up. Thank God. Jules steps forward, and though it’s been a while, The Freedom Fighter reenters the fray with the vitality of a man at least two years younger.

The diner still rumbling around him, Jules hustles as much as a grown man can be expected to, forcing his way up to Soldier, who’s still scratching at a pile of junk with his small hands.

There’s no need to say anything, not that anyone could hear over all this ruckus, but still Jules has nothing to say as it is. All he does is tap the butt of the gun up against Soldier’s shoulder, gives him the type of nudge Soldier would remember from all those times the two of them chased Nazis across Europe, the type that meant that Jules had something, had an idea that needed executing, and it was time for Soldier to get out of the way.

Of course, without even a glance, Soldier moves back. Jules doesn’t want to notice how much the man’s shaking in all the wrong places, but he does, but Jules puts that junk out of his mind because it won’t do any good now anyway. There’s only one thing that’ll do any good, and that’s the gun in Jules’s hand.

Cracks rage around him, and with Soldier out of the way, Jules cocks the gun good and hard, the way he used to, as if it were nothing new at all. Techno made the thing fancy, so that it could fire a wave of force, and Jules aims it at the pile, not directly, but not indirectly either, direct enough to do damage, but not direct enough to hurt these people. He remembers how to do this; it’s all things he’s done before, during the war. Or at least he hopes he remembers. No, forget that. Your name’s signed. Your life is gone. You remember good enough.

Jules pulls the trigger, and the gun crashes back, hitting him hard
across the chest just as another crack goes off, blaring somewhere to his right, blasting food and plates and silverware into the air again; and the one shot wasn’t enough, didn’t dig out enough, and though the wind’s left him, left him weak, Jules cocks and fires again.

And there’s Pen; there’s a sliver of Pen poking through the pile, part of a back, and part of an eye looking through the gap the ray gun has dug, looking right back at Jules, and Jules raises his aim and fires again.

More of the rubble falls away from Pen, and though the boy is cut bad, he’s still moving, still pushing, wires under his skin humming and glowing as he screams and screams and pushes some more. Another crack goes off, and Pen screams, and he pushes up, arches his back, pushes away from the ground, brings what’s left of the pile cresting down off his back, away from him and down.

Pen rises like such a good boy, like Ultimate’s boy. And beneath Pen, protected from the fall by the boy’s hard body, lie Mashallah and David, both not moving, not moving at all.

Jules drops the gun, tries to go forward, but he too cannot move. The cracks, which’d been so insistent on enforcing their will on his diner, finally go silent, seem now to retreat back into the sky without a thought in the world for what they’ve done.

But who cares for that? What can that matter? Cracks. Another thing. Who could care less? Not Jules. Certainly not now.

Jules wants to get to his boy quickly, but he can’t face this truth, this is something no man should have to confront. He already lost a son, lost him so long ago. This blow would be too much. No man, no matter what he suffered, could take that and keep walking, keep moving forward.

Had he given enough for this bargain? He wasn’t so sure, how could any man be sure?

Eventually Jules moves, he goes forward a few steps and bends down over his grandson. “David, David, son, are you okay? Son you need to talk now. Are you okay, boy? You’ve got to be okay. Your grandmother is not going to accept this, she is not.”

There’s no noise. All is silent. Jules squeezes his grandson, first tenderly and then with desperate force, gripping him and turning him toward himself, tugging the boy’s body onto his own. He needs to see it. He needs to see the promise broken, so Jules can know he’s finally free to curse that damned, pitiful finagler.

David’s eyes blink open. “Grandpa. Grandpa . . .”

Thank God, thank God. The boy’s all right. Jules has seen hundreds of wounded men, and he knows which ones make it and which don’t. Enough fighting and you get that eventually. And the boy is all right. Thank God. Thank you.

“Grandpa, Grandpa—you got to—Grandpa, Grandpa.”

“Eh, what’s this complaining?” his grandfather answers. “How will this help to get the place cleaned up any faster?”

3

Ultimate, The Man With The Metal Face #576

Soldier paces up and down the hospital wall. “You should come with me,” he says.

“C’mon,” Pen says, looking up from a magazine, “this isn’t my thing. This is your thing. Ma’s your . . . whatever she is.”

Soldier stops and looks over at him. “You ought to come. That was all a long time ago.”

“Man, for you, everything was a long time ago.”

Soldier grunts and goes back to his pacing. A nurse eventually comes and ushers him away. As Soldier leaves, he asks Pen again if it might be more appropriate for them both to go and see her. Pen laughs and folds his magazine over.

Pen considers going to the next ward to look in on Sun. Soldier’d already gone and said Sun was pretty messed up, tied to a machine or whatever. Pen flips to another article and resolves to visit Sun tomorrow.

Some time passes; Pen has his head resting back on the wall behind the bench. He barely notices the girl with the red hair slip into the room
and then go out, not saying a word. He’s not quite sleeping, but he’s not quite awake; instead, he idles in the in-between, in the place where you can still hear the voices, but when you ask what they’re saying, they fade and are gone.

Soldier and Mashallah—Pen and Strength—Ultimate and Pen—Starry and Star-Knight—Pen and Starry—Mashallah and Strength—it all goes on forever, or at least . . . Pen drifts away, his fingers slipping off something cold and metal.

“It’s done,” Soldier says, and Pen jerks to attention.

“Yeah?” Pen yawns and stretches out his arms; wires in his biceps purr softly.

“She’s in bad shape,” Soldier says, “but she’s tough, tougher than this game.” He gets his trench coat from one of the chairs.

“Shit,” Pen says, blinking hard. He looks up at Soldier. “Could she at least say something, you know, about why she needed to meet so bad?”

“C’mon, get going. There’s been another one. Case you haven’t heard. On the highway.”

Pen stands, arches out a kink in his neck, and grabs his own coat. “All right. Highway—shit. All right.” He throws the coat around his back, tangling his arm in his sleeve.

“Hurry,” Soldier says, and he walks over to Pen, snatches the top of Pen’s coat, and yanks it up; Pen falls into place within the jacket’s lining. Soldier turns and walks toward the exit, forcing Pen to jog a little to catch up.

“Dude, what—”

“Star-Knight knows something,” Soldier says, keeping his eyes forward. “Starry told her, before he got hit. That’s why she called us. That’s why she came back. For me. To warn me. Star-Knight’s hiding something, something that might help. But there’s things we need to do before we get to that.”

Pen stops, but Soldier keeps walking, and after a few seconds Pen again jogs back up to him, walks with him in silence through the white hallway toward a faraway door.

“Hey,” Pen says after a while, “she came back to warn you. That’s got to mean something, right? With everything else, that’s good.”

Soldier opens the door, lets Pen walk out first. “No,” Soldier says, as he follows Pen into the light, “it ain’t good at all.”