Apex 2: Rise of the Super Soldiers (3 page)

Side
Mission

Molly leaned in closer to the TV. The news was on which meant a lot of doom and gloom was being broadcast. Ever since humanity had nearly been wiped out, the planet had grown morose, and for good reason. A story had aired about a new array of defense satellites scheduled to launch sometime next year, to make sure they were never attacked by surprise again by extraterrestrial invaders. She smiled as that aired. It gave her hope for a safer and secure future. Of course, just because they could see the aliens coming didn’t mean they could do anything about it.

A news anchor touched on the captive alien situation. No one knew for sure how many aliens had surrendered last month because certain countries still held old fashioned distrust towards other countries so they weren’t divulging their numbers. The new estimate was nothing but a shot in the dark that might have been skewed either way by a factor of ten. A devious part of her wished they could just exterminate all of them, if only to be done with all of the fear that holding them brought. She wasn’t alone in her sentiment, but cooler heads prevailed. If they killed them off, then they were no better than the aliens. And if a second invasion ever came, maybe they could use the captives as leverage of some kind. If nothing else, they might be able to garner some kind of intel from the captured aliens to help them survive a second wave.

It was all the same old crap though. Every news hour brought the same stories, dressed a little differently, but the same, nonetheless.

An actual news story about a real human tragedy was what had made her scoot closer to the TV.
Three young mountain climbers were feared dead. They’d set out two weeks ago to scale Mount Everest. They used their sat-phone to stay in touch the first week, but no one had heard from them since then. Then a picture of two young men a young woman appeared on the screen. They were all smiling, full of that new lease on life that the invasion had brought into the hearts of some of the survivors. The picture broke her heart.

When she heard a crackling noise outside followed by laughter, she realized something could be done for those youngsters, if they were still alive on the mountain.

She hollered for Dan, and said, “Bring everyone. I have a mission for a superhero.”

They rushed in, eagerness and curiosity all over their faces.

She rewound the news story to let them see what she was talking about. “Jack, you could be there in less than a second. If they’re trapped, or whatever, Melanie can remove whatever’s obstructing them.”

Dan slowly nodded his head. “I could go with them. Everest is freezing. They’ll need heat.”

Molly shook her head. It’ll be easier for Jack to just teleport them back here than it would be to remain while you warm the place up. You’d probably just burst them all into flames anyway.”

“Hey! I’m getting much better with the fire.”

Jack interrupted before an argument broke out. “I’ll go alone. Even if they’re trapped, I can teleport them or the obstruction away.”

Melanie turned and stared at him as though he’d just betrayed her deeply, but she kept quiet after Dan and Molly nodded their approval.

Molly said, “I really want to give you the new costume I just made, but now that the cat’s out of the bag, you don’t need it. Everyone already knows your true identity.”

Jack knew she secretly wanted him to wear it anyway so he insisted, if only to appease her. She was like a second mom to him and he’d hate to hurt her feelings.

Melanie asked if she had one too and Molly nodded excitedly before rushing from the room and then returning with two brown paper parcels. She handed them each one and then took a seat, saying, “Hurry up. Those kids aren’t going to save themselves.” She looked at Dan and said jokingly, “And that’s another reason I don’t want you going. I don’t want you to burn those fine costumes by accident.”

Dan just shook his head, flipped her off, and then went to the kitchen for a beer.

She laughed at his back. Part of their longevity as a couple was that neither of them took themselves too seriously and both liked to tease the other.

Jack went to the bathroom to change and when he came out, Melanie wolf-whistled as Molly said, “Wow.”

He did a little twirl and Molly added, “You’ve gotten big, Jack. You look like Lou Ferrigno back in the day.”

“Who’s that?”

“The Incredible Hulk.”

“So I look like a green, mindless monster?”

“No. You have the body of the guy who played the green monster. Never mind. It was supposed to be a compliment.”

Dan pee
ked his head around the corner. “Ignore it, Jack. Molly doesn’t know how to give compliments.”

“You’re just mad because I’ve never said you look like Lou Ferrigno.”

“No. I’m not at all mad about that, honey.”

“Whatever,” she said absently as she turned back to Jack. “So what do you think?”

“I love it.”

Melanie traipsed off to the bathroom saying over her shoulder, “I want to see how mine looks.”

Jack sensed that she felt slighted for not being included so when she came back, rocking Molly’s hand stitched spandex, he said, “I want you to come to Everest with me.”

She raised her eyebrows and said accusatorially, “I must not look very good in my outfit if that’s the first thing you thought to say.”

Lately, her lightheartedness had given way to a more surly side. It was no surprise considering what she’d been through.

He smiled and did his best to smooth it over. “I think you look great. That’s why I want you to come with. I don’t want to let you out of my sight.”

She smiled sheepishly and said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that. You should go alone. You don’t need me.”

She was right, so he let the conversation die a natural death.

Molly stared at him for a beat too long and finally, flustered, said, “Get going then. If those kids are alive, you need to get them home.”

Jack had no idea where to start and neither did Molly, so he figured he’d just find them by trial and error. It was a poor plan, but he’d do just about anything to keep the people he loved happy. He nodded and vanished.

He appeared above Everest and immediately regretted ever listening to Molly. He’d be out here for months searching. And how would she feel if he came back empty-handed?

He teleported back to the farmhouse. “I need to see that footage again. I have no idea where their last known whereabouts were; I have no clue where to start.”

Dan rewound the show until the map appeared again. It wasn’t much to go on, but it was better than what he had to work with just a minute ago.

He shook his head and disappeared again.

Above Everest, it was impossible to make out the features of the map shown on the TV. The scales were all wrong. For all he knew, he might’ve been on the opposite side.

He swooped down, through the air, and down the side of the mountain closest to him. All he saw was snow and rock.
At the bottom, he whirled about and faced upwards. He climbed through the air, thirty feet to the left and scanned the ground as he went. At the top, he stopped.

At this rate they’d be dead before he ever got to them, if they weren’t dead already.

He looked around frantically. He was super strong but he still felt heat and cold, and he was starting to shiver already.

He focused his vision the way he did when he was about to teleport foreign objects. He had to be careful not to accidentally teleport entire sections of mountain away, so just as his focus became crystal clear, he pulled back
before he lost control.

It was hopeless, but he couldn’t go back to Molly and throw his hands in the air, saying, “It was just too hard so I gave up and let them die.”

He focused his sight down another face of the mountain, gave up and floated onwards, to a different spot. He stopped and floated in the air, unconsciously teleporting his own body millions of times a second to keep himself aloft.

He focused again but this time, a feeling accompanied the sharpened vision. He felt a weakened, watered down despair
coupled with physical pain coming from the south. He allowed the strange feeling to direct him, floating south as his vision swept the landscape below. The despair increased, becoming palpable, like it was his own. Finally, when he didn’t know if he could handle it any more, he felt a weird surge of elation wash over him. And then he heard muffled voices far below.

He focused and saw three figures waving up at him frantically. Apparently the multicolored costume had helped after all, since it had probably caught their attention.

He swooped down and watched them staring at him in awe as he put his feet on the frozen ground. One of the guys took a frightened step backwards but the other two rushed forward to greet him, or at least to see if he was real or a figment of their fevered imaginations.

Jack beckoned the other guy forward, put his arms over all three of their shoulders, and teleported them back to the farmhouse.

In that moment, he realized that the dread and the elation he’d felt was their dread and elation. He’d empathetically connected to them somehow. He didn’t know what that meant. It was a new ability that seemed a little weak or inconsequential, but he had to admit to himself that it had come in handy at just the right time.

Molly had hand-
knitted sweaters awaiting them when they arrived and Dan had started a humungous bonfire out back.

The hikers were speechless, shivering uncontrollably, with blank stares and stiff legs. The girl’s left hand was black and one of the guys had a nose that had given in to necrosis. They were in bad shape.
But they were safe now.

Molly and Dan tended to them as Jack and Melanie sat at the kitchen table.

Melanie said, “I was surprised you agreed to go. I thought you’d come back a month from now with nothing to show for your troubles.”

“I couldn’t let Molly down.”

“How’d you get so lucky? Everest is huge.”

Jack shook his head, not sure how to describe the new ability that had helped him out.

Molly rushed in and said, “They’re from Nashville. Can you get them to a hospital there?”

“Of course.”

“You should do it right away then. They all need medical treatment.”

“Okay.”

Hero

It took no time at all for the news stations to pick up the story. It didn’t help that Jack had been spotted by dozens of onlookers when he’d dropped off the hikers in the emergency room lobby.

They immediately concluded that the costumed man was Jack
Peterson, the superhero teenager from the news.

The hikers would all pull through eventually, according to their doctors. They said another few days in the elements would’ve probably killed them.

Jack was in deep shit when he got home. His mom was going to be mad as hell that he’d risked his life for strangers. But it was worth it. Molly gave him a big bear hug when he arrived back at the farmhouse and told him that he was her hero.

Hank and Sally

Hank Beltran saluted Commander Watson as they passed each other. He spat at his own feet in a half-assed kind of defiance as soon as the Commander was out of sight. One of these days he’d work up the nerve to give the Commander a piece of his mind.

Hank and his fellow soldiers had nearly died fighting the aliens and instead of receiving accolades or even a thank you, he was stuck in this stinking, cold mountain bunker. His parents had been killed and his sister too, but that didn’t mean the military gave a damn.

When he’d approached them about a discharge, he was told that things had changed and that everyone had lost loved ones in the battles, so his loss wasn’t significant. No one would be discharged based on personal tragedy any longer.

He got to bury his sister but he had to make do with cremation for his parents because their bodies were too ruined for a respectable burial.

Given half a chance, Hank would slap the Commander in his old, ugly face, and then find a way into the holding room and slaughter every last alien within with his bare hands. He’d been told that the aliens were of more use to humanity alive than dead, but he’d yet to see any merit to keeping them around.

Sally
Hopkins, Hank’s only real friend on base, nodded as he approached and said, “The Commander’s sending out a team to try and round up those kids from the news. I asked to go along but he said I still had to prove to him that I could obey orders.”

Hank said, “That’s a bunch of crap. Watson wasn’t there when our commanding officers ran off like cowards and left us to fight alone last month. He has no idea how inept his men are. I won’t be taking any more orders than I have to.”

Sally shook her head and sighed. “I’m the same way. I’m just counting the days until my term is up.”

Hank nodded. “It’s funny how an alien invasion changes everything, huh?”

Sally snorted and said, “I don’t think it changed a damn thing. I think our superiors were always worthless cowards, but it took something of that magnitude for them to show us what they were really made of. Did you hear that Pilkington got a promotion?”

“No way? I heard
that oxygen-thief ran like a gazelle when the aliens attacked.”

“It’s lucky for him that none of his subordinates survived to tell the truth about him then.”

Hank shook his head. Before last month, he loved the military. He loved the way his life was unfolding. But now he was seeing the world clearly, warts and all. Humanity was corrupt, maybe even as much as the alien invaders, and the realization soured his stomach and poisoned his thoughts.

Sally
was a kindred spirit. She’d lost her entire family, including grandparents and extended members like nieces and uncles. What was worse though was that her twin brother had died fighting the big-headed Grey aliens. That haunted her daily; causing nightmares and panic attacks that grew worse as the weeks progressed.

In a fit of anger and delirium,
she’d even tried to trick her way into the alien holding room with her sidearm clutched in her fist.

Watson et al kept close tabs on
her ever since then. She was losing it, but for good reason.

In the old days,
soldiers like Sally would get carted off and dishonorably discharged but the military could no longer afford to lose any more good men and women.

They were prisoners, stuck in a mountain with the enemy living side by side with them. It was a powder keg just waiting for a match to light it. And what was worse was that those superhero kids would be
brought in soon, if the Commander had his way. That could very well be too much chaos for one mountain bunker to contain. It would be entropy in action; the barely contained order would unravel into chaos immediately.

Hank hoped it played out that way. He yearned to kill; to release his demons upon the world and watch it squirm and wither and die, just like his soul had done ever since the invasion had taken everything from him.
He would take Sally by the hand and they’d skip into the alien holding cell and laugh as they executed every last one of the bastards.