Action Figures - Issue Two: Black Magic Women (17 page)

“He’s a jerk. And a loser.”

Oh, well, if the stoner who likes to pick on special needs kids says Matt’s a loser...

Malcolm returns with our drinks and, seeing my little dilemma, motions for me to join him. “Excuse me,” I say, rising. “Got to go.”

“Sorry, shouldn’t have left you unprotected like that,” Malcolm says. “Here.”

“Thanks.” I kill the cup in one big swallow. Hi-C and club soda should never taste this amazing. “No worries. They’re too high to be a concern.”

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Malcolm huffs, rolling his eyes. “Meatheads. Football season ends and all of a sudden, they think they don’t have to watch their step. They’ll never get back on the team, the way they’re going.”

“But that’s not your concern anymore, is it?”

“No. No, it’s not.”

“Then you made up your mind?”

“Yeah. I am officially retired from the sport to pursue my intellectual betterment. Still not public knowledge, though, so if you don’t mind...”

“Lips are sealed.”

Malcolm gives me a warm smile. “Are they?”

“Mm-hm. Besides, I have a few secrets of my own.”

“Share?”

“Maybe. Have to earn it.”

“Challenge accepted.”

My, is it hot in here, or is it me? I feel pleasantly light-headed, and there’s a soft buzzing in my ears...

“I think that’s your phone,” Malcolm says, gesturing toward my coat.

Yes. My phone. That’s what it is. Of course it is.

“If that’s my mom,” I grumble, but I pull my phone out of my jacket pocket, and it’s worse than that. Much worse.

“No,” I say, “no, no, not now, not tonight...”

SEVENTEEN

“What?” Malcolm says. “Is it your mom?”

“Yes,” I say without pausing to think about my lie. “Hold on.”

I retreat into a secluded corner of the gym and pick up the call. “Please tell me you butt-dialed me,” I shout over the music.

“Sorry, Carrie, this is the real thing. We need you, ASAP,” Concorde says. “Mindforce is scrambling the Squad, and as soon as they’re here, we’re lifting off. Meet the Pelican en route, he’ll brief you.”

I want to say I can’t because I don’t have my headset, it’s not buttoned up securely in my inside jacket pocket — but that one lie, of all the lies I’ve spouted lately, somehow I can’t tell it.

“I hate you for this,” I say.

“I’ll live.”

“What’s wrong?” Malcolm says as I scoop up my jacket.

“I have to go home, now,” I say through clenched teeth. “Mom’s being weird, I don’t know why, but she decided I’ve been out late too much, blown too many curfews, so she’s pulling the plug on me.”

“Aw, man, that sucks. I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry. This has been such a great night, and you don’t deserve to have it end this way.”

Malcolm takes me in his arms. “Neither do you,” he says, and he holds me. I don’t want him to let go. “Come on, I’ll drive you home.”

“No,” I say, perhaps a little too quickly and insistently. “No, look, I don’t want to drag you away from your friends...”

“I think they’ll survive without me.”

“I appreciate it, really, but I want to walk home, I’m all, you know, pissed off. I need to burn this off before I get home.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. I’ll be fine, I’m only ten minutes down the road. I’m good.”

“Okay.”

“Yeah. Thank you. I’m sorry.”

It isn’t until I’m in the air that I think to myself,
You big idiot. You should have kissed him
.

The Pelican is airborne all of five minutes by the time I catch up to it. Can’t effectively “scramble” a team that doesn’t have a car, I guess.

Nina Nitro pops the Pelican’s side hatch for me. I touch down inside the hold. The Squad is all present, accounted for, and suited up. Sara gives me a sad smile. Thanks, girl.

“Welcome aboard. Say, look at you, hot stuff,” Nina says as I strip off my coat. “Oh, bugger, you weren’t on a date, were you?”

“Valentine’s Day dance,” I mope.

“Welcome to the life,” Nina says, but not without sympathy. “I can’t count the number of times I’ve ducked out on my boyfriend.”

“How do you manage it?”

“With a lot of creative storytelling. It’s hard, believe me. That’s why most super-heroes don’t date outside the business; no need for deception. Most crossover relationships don’t last.”

And thank you for ending my night on such a cheery, upbeat note. “Matt, could you get my uniform?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I’ll try,” he says, “I mean, I need to remember exactly what it looks like, so I —”

“You know damn well what it looks like, so stop screwing around and get it!”

Matt’s mouth falls open. Sara elbows him. He pulls his gloves on, reaches into his trench coat, hands me my uniform, then my boots. Without a proper changing area to be found, I slip my uniform on over my dress.

“Well? Someone going to brief me or what?”

“We’re heading to Newburyport,” Nina says. “Town’s gone crazy.”

“What happened?”

“I told you: the town has gone crazy.”

The first reports came in a little before nine, courtesy of the Boston media, Nina tells me, and as is often the case with such things, the details were at first sketchy: some sort of riot had erupted in Newburyport, a seaside town on the northern coast of Massachusetts. Cause unknown, parties involved unknown.

The state police cordoned off the town after two news vans foolishly ventured in. One of them was broadcasting live when the mob swarmed on them, gibbering in some bizarre language — a language Astrid identified as belonging to an ancient race of humanoids that died off long before man walked the earth.

(I’ve given up on questioning how Astrid knows the weird stuff she knows. It’s better for my sanity that way.)

That was the sign Astrid had been waiting for. She put out the call to action and, along with Concorde, went to Newburyport to scout ahead. She has yet to report back.

“So what do we do in the meantime?” I ask.

“We wait,” Nina says.

“There could be innocent people getting hurt.”

“I know. I know, but we can’t go in blind. Especially if we’re dealing with magic, because outside of Astrid, none of us know jack —”

The light inside the cabin turns inside-out, becomes impenetrable inky blackness. When it vanishes, Astrid is standing between me and Nina.

“Warn me next time, please,” Mindforce shouts from the cockpit.

“Sorry,” Astrid says. “Guys, it’s bad.”

“What’s going on?” Nina says. “Is it the demon?”

“I think so. The riot’s definitely supernatural in origin. The dark energy, it’s like smog, choking the air. We’re looking at a madness plague.”

“When you say
madness plague
...”

“I’m speaking somewhat metaphorically. A handful of known demonic entities throw off a powerful aura that causes, after prolonged exposure, psychotic behavior. Looks like things finally boiled over tonight.”

“Prolonged exposure. As in, about a week since someone brought a demon into our world,” I say, and my God, it’s scary how easily that all rolled off the tongue.

“Bingo. There’s no protection against it, but when we go in, we won’t all instantly turn into raving lunatics.”

“Small relief.”

“It’s an advantage. So is the fact that the effect is completely localized within Newburyport. Concorde and I talked to the staties working the perimeter, and the afflicted haven’t tried to break through, not once. Everyone is staying within town lines. That means the effect, and by extension its cause, is anchored to the town.”

“Concorde’s back from his initial recon,” Mindforce announces over the Pelican’s PA system. “Patching him in now. Concorde, go.”

“Copy that. Is Lightstorm there?”

“Right here,” I say.

“Good. Enigma, is everyone up to speed?”

“Good to go. What’s the play? Are we helping the police on containment?”

“Sorry, it’s not going to be that easy. It looks like this effect hasn’t hit everyone. The staties have received several calls from people sheltering in place all across town. They’ve tried to send men in, but they can’t get through the mobs, so we need to go in from the air. The staties relayed the GPS coordinates from the civilians’ phones to me, and I’m relaying them to you now, Lightstorm.”

A little pinwheel appears on my headset’s head’s-up display, spins for a second, and is replaced by the message DATA RECEIVED.

“I want you to hit the sky. We’re the eyes above; our job is to pinpoint trapped civilians. Everyone else, you’re going to run interference from the Pelican as needed, and you’ll transport people out in small groups. Minimal force on the affected civilians, people, they’re still innocents.”

“Rescuing people’s all well and good, but it doesn’t take care of the real problem,” Astrid says. “This won’t stop until we find the demon.”

“That’s all on you,” Concorde says.

“That’s the way I want it.”

“Then let’s go. We have people to save.”

The first few pick-ups are surprisingly easy. We hit the State Street area, a long row of brick buildings — businesses, mostly, a lot of them with upper-floor apartments. People have barricaded themselves in their apartments and on rooftops. The crazies (sorry: the affected civilians) can’t get to them, but for us it’s simply a matter of assisting people onto the Pelican, then flying them out to a staging area the staties set up at their highway blockade, on the safe side of the Newburyport/Newbury line. An occasional piece of flying debris pings off the side of the Pelican, but we avoid any direct engagement.

As we start moving outward, to the surrounding blocks, the affected get smart. They set trash on fire before throwing it, and they aim for the civilians rather than the Pelican. Sara does her best to deflect the worst of the assault, and Matt drops flash-bang grenades to keep the mob disoriented, but that only buys them seconds at a time; the mania gripping these people, it’s granting them an almost superhuman resilience.

As nerve-wracking as things are for my friends closer to the ground, it’s terrifying for me to see it all play out. I feel helpless, useless as I watch hordes of the affected surge through the streets, like blood flowing through the angular veins of Newburyport, and zero in on the Pelican. Each time the Pelican returns, Mindforce picks a new target, well away from its previous spot, to grant the teams extra time to make their next pick-up. The affected home in on it, swarm, attack. The Pelican leaves, returns, picks up civilians while dodging flaming garbage, over and over. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The process is tedious. It’s harrowing. It’s exhausting.

The explosion definitely wakes me up.

“What the hell?” Concorde says over the comm system. “God, please don’t tell me that was a gas main.”

It’s Astrid who responds. “I found him! I found the —”

The rest is drowned out by a second, smaller blast. It came from the wharf area to the north.

“Enigma?” Concorde says. “Enigma? Astrid!”

“I’m not doing any good up here,” I say. “I’m going.”

“...Be careful.”

EIGHTEEN

A short burst of speed gets me there in two seconds, “there” being a public parking lot near the wharf. There’s a crater, shallow but wide, in the approximate center of the lot, and acrid black smoke hangs low over the area. A number of cars are on their sides, their roofs, and bear what are unmistakably scorch marks — and yet, there’s no sign of fire anywhere. So what were those huge booms we heard?

My question in answered, deafeningly, when a ten-foot-tall cyclone of black smoke spins into view and — I guess
bursts
is the best word to describe it. The air vibrates with a thunderous
whoomp
that I feel forty feet up. An SUV tumbles end over end across the lot.

A killer cloud, huh? Not what I expected, but it’s something to blast — so I do, and I don’t hold back. I must do something right, because the cloud screams, screams like a helium-filled cat getting run over by a lawnmower, and then it vanishes.

“Neat trick,” Astrid says, causing my heart to leap. Perfectly understandable reaction, when you consider she is hovering three feet away from me. “What did you hit it with?”

“You fly, too?”

“When I need to. Mostly I teleport. What did you hit it with?”

“Energy blast. Coherent white light with a side of focused gravity pulse, according to Doc Quantum.”

Astrid makes a disgusted noise. “Quantum. Stuck-up little...”

“Catty later. Demon now.”

“Yes. Right. LOOK OUT!”

Astrid warps away, and I dive to the side a split-second before a corkscrewing missile of luminous black smoke takes us both out. I brace for a follow-up attack, but this thing isn’t flying; it loses momentum after passing me, and arcs back toward the ground. It lands atop a car, pancaking it, then skitters away.

It’s moving too fast for me to get a lock on it (mental note:
must work on aim!
), but Astrid pops back in, right in its path, and makes a big wax-on-wax-off gesture. The cloud slams into a shimmering half-globe of magical force, ricochets off, and, staggers across the parking lot.