Hero Worship (18 page)

Yvonne kneels next to a man who's sprawled out on the ground. He has a nasty cut on his forehead and, judging by the unnatural position of his arm, a few broken bones. Yvonne rests her hand gently on his forehead and closes her eyes. The man's face relaxes and he stops moaning in agony.

The sound of sirens approaches in the distance. I look up and see a handful of ambulances and police cars driving along the shoulder of the road toward us. Kent lumbers over to me, buttoning up his pants. “We better get outta here.”

“No. There are still people trapped.”

“But what about the cops?” he asks.

“We'll deal with that once we're done,” I say, going back to work.

“Okay.” He smiles. “You're the boss.”

That's when I hear a stern voice behind me say, “I think you've done enough here.” Sling and Rocket are standing on top of a pile of rubble. “You three are coming with us.”

Just at that moment, I feel the blackness come up behind me, snaring me like a trap. I lose all strength and drop to my knees.

“Marvin?!” Yvonne screams.

I fall forward onto the ground. Everything goes black.

THIRTY

My eyes flutter open. A rich darkness blankets me. Pushing myself up, I look around. I immediately recognize that I'm in Eliza's Roisin shrine. An empty shrine. The queen-size bed I'm in is the softest thing I've ever lain on. An IV drip attached to a metal roller rests by the side of the bed.

I swing my feet off the bed and plant them on the floor. I stand up and wish I hadn't. I'm lightheaded and topple back onto the bed. My butt sinks into the down comforter.

“You're up,” Yvonne says, rushing to my side. She takes my hand in hers. “How do you feel?”

The room is spinning. “I'm dizzy,” I say.

She squeezes my hand and says, “I'm so glad you're awake.”

“How long have I been out?” When she doesn't answer, I open my eyes and fix them on her. “Yvonne?”

She blinks repeatedly, as if trying to hold the waterworks back. “A month.”

“Come again?”

“You've been out for a month.”

“And we're at Eliza's safe house?”

“After the ruckus, this place went back to being forgotten about.”

“What happened after I blacked out?” I ask. “I remember Sling and Rocket, but that's it.”

“Kent and I made a deal that we can't tell you about it until we're both here,” she says.

“Why?”

“You'll just have to wait,” Yvonne says.

“Where's Kent?”

“He's out rustling up some food.” Yvonne removes the tape covering the IV syringe and gently pulls the needle out of my arm. “Are you hungry?”

“Yeah,” I say. My stomach growls, as if seconding that statement.

Yvonne coils up the tubing. “You've been living on a liquid diet for a month, so I imagine you could use some real food.”

Motioning to the IV, I say, “Where did you get that?”

“I borrowed it from an emergency room,” she says.

I poke the nearly full bag of liquid hanging from the IV stand and say, “What have you been pumping into me?”

“Everything a growing boy needs,” Yvonne says. “A cocktail of saline, vitamins, and protein.”

“Sounds delicious.”

“You had us pretty scared, Marvin,” she says. “We didn't think it was safe taking you to the hospital. Kent and I did the best we could on our own.”

Rubbing my arm where the needle was removed, I say, “I'm alive, so that says something.”

“It was touch-and-go there for a bit.” Her body trembles and she begins to sob uncontrollably. I pull her to me and hold her. She recoils and pounds her fists against my chest. “Don't you ever do that again! Do you hear me?! Never again!”

I give her my best reassuring smile and say, “I promise.” She wipes the tears from her eyes. “So you missed me, huh?”

She laughs despite herself. “Don't get a big head. I just didn't want to be left alone with Kent, that's all.”

As if speaking his name summoned him, Kent strolls into the room. “Dude, you're up!” He falls on top of me. His soft body spreads out and blankets me.

Struggling, I manage to move my head out from under his flesh. “It's good to see you too, Kent,” I croak.

“You're going to suffocate him,” Yvonne says, peeling him off me.

“When did he wake up?”

“Just now.”

“You didn't tell him yet, did you?” he asks.

“No. I waited for you.”

“Dude, we're famous.”

“What?” I say.

“We're like totally famous.”

Yvonne nods and says, “It's true.”

“How's that?”

“Do you remember what happened at the overpass?” Kent asks.

“Not really.”

Kent rubs his hands together gleefully. “Dude, this is so cool. So Rocket and Sling arrive on the scene. They start posturing like peacocks and threatening us.”

“But then all the normies we helped came rushing over,” Yvonne says. “They surrounded Rocket and Sling and screamed at them that we were the good guys.”

“That lady you saved in the car?” Kent says. “She runs over holding her kid and yells at them. She tells them we're heroes, how you saved her and her son. They looked like scolded children. And so they just took off. Up and bailed.”

“And we grabbed you and got out of there,” Yvonne says. “We bounced around for a bit but finally landed here.”

“Show him the press conference,” Yvonne says.

“Yeah, okay,” Kent says, jumping up. He inserts a DVD into a small television and presses
play
. The screen is blue at first, but flickers as a recording of a news broadcast begins to play. A female news anchor sits at her desk. She presses her fingers to the concealed earpiece in her ear and listens before finally saying, “We will take you now to Mystic's press conference, already in progress.”

The image on the television cuts to a small stage where Mystic stands behind a podium. Chief of Police Wooden stands at her side. She looks down at her prepared remarks and reads, sounding stifled and uncomfortable. “I'm here to set the record straight regarding the events of the last three weeks.”

“When was this recorded?” I ask.

“About four days after you turned into a vegetable,” Kent says. “Now shoosh! You're going to miss the best part.”

Mystic looks up from her statement and stares directly into the camera. “Chief of Police Wooden and I want to make it crystal clear to the citizens of Loganstin and all the viewers around the world: Eliza Todd, a.k.a. Roisin, was the lone culprit in orchestrating the murder of Lieutenant Mercury, as the footage anonymously given to the police chief shows.” She stares at the camera for a beat, as if letting her words sink in to the millions of viewers listening to the broadcast. “Marvin Maywood, Yvonne McCalmon, and Kent Patterson had nothing to do with the planning of this heinous and ghastly crime. These three young, extraordinary IWPs were thrust into a plot and have been wrongly implicated. As demonstrated the other day, at the collapse of the overpass, they are heroes. And my deepest desire is that the three of them will one day think of me as a friend.”

Kent nudges me in the ribs with a soft elbow. “Can you believe it?”

“No. No, I can't,” I mutter.

Mystic looks back down at her notes and continues to read. “It has also come to light that some members of the Core were engaged in illegal activities. As the new leader of the Core, I am working closely with local law enforcement to investigate these allegations, as well as bring about the swift capture of Eliza Todd. It is believed that she has fled Loganstin. We are asking for the public's help. If anyone has any information as to her whereabouts, please contact the Loganstin Police Department. Thank you.”

Mystic and the chief of police make a hasty exit from the stage, leaving behind a flurry of questions from members of the press.

Kent stops the recording and turns off the television. “What do you think?” he asks.

“I … I don't know,” I say.

“We're off the hook,” Yvonne says.

“Can you believe it?” Kent says. “They're calling us heroes.”

“Who is?”

“Our adoring public.”

“Heroes,” I say, liking the sound of it.

My friends look at each other, silently petitioning one another with raised eyebrows. “You say it,” Kent says to Yvonne.

She turns to me, smiles, and says, “We've got something to tell you.”

Kent has a big cheesy grin plastered on his face.

“What?” I ask.

“We like being heroes,” Kent says.

EPILOGUE

The Midtown Café breakfast crowd has thinned out. Waitresses sit at the counter, tallying their receipts and counting out their tips. The new busboy, Ben, scurries around cleaning off the tables. I've met Ben a couple times now, and he seems like a nice-enough guy.

He spots me and nods his head. “Hey, Marvin. Gus is in his office.”

I knock on the office door.

“Come in,” Gus calls from the other side.

I open the door and peer in. Gus looks up from punching in numbers on a calculator. He leans back in his chair.

“So?” he says.

I smile and say, “We're in.” I shut the office and take a seat across the desk from him.

He stares at me for a few moments before slapping his hands down on his desk. “Great!”

“You knew what I was going to say, didn't you?”

“The second you stepped through the door,” he says.

When I first came in after all the excitement and asked Gus for my job back, he told me that he was an IWP too. A dirty, at that. He confessed that since he's a mind reader, he knew all about me and my friends. When I asked why he never mentioned my powers, he explained that he was waiting for me to come to him. It was my secret, he said, and secrets should be shared, not stolen. Then he told me that Yvonne and I couldn't have our old jobs back anyway. We're famous now, and if word got out that we worked here, it would attract too much attention. Every two-bit thug wanting to make a name for himself would come gunning for us.

Today,
Gus reaches into his hip pocket to retrieve his wallet, pulls out some bills, and slides them across the desk to me. “Here's a little something to help you get by.”

“I don't want to take your money if I don't work for it,” I say.

“You are working for it,” he says.

“You know what I mean, Gus.”

“Marvin, you and your friends are going to help me way more this way than you ever could by cleaning up dishes,” he says. “I've done things in my past that I'm not proud of—and what we're planning to do together is something I have to do. I
have
to.” He flashes me a warm smile. “So please take the money.”

I reach out and take it.

“Good.” Gus opens a desk drawer, pulls out a notepad, and flips through the pages. “I've got a lead on a real dirt bag who's trying to buy plutonium to make a dirty bomb.” He rips out the piece of paper and hands it to me. “Are you hungry?”

“Always.”

He pushes back from the desk and stands up. “Then let's go get you something to eat.”

It never ceases to amaze me how unpredictable life is. A month ago,
I was Public Enemy No. 1, and now I'm a hero. I think there are two types of people—those who view life's uncertainty with dread and fear, and those who recognize that this unpredictably is what makes life worth living. If we could see every twist and turn in the road, what would be the point of taking the journey? I, for one, believe life's unpredictability ushers in more joy than pain. When times are bad—and my friends and I have had our fair share—I never give up hope that things will eventually change for the better. It can't always be bad, and the trick is to hang in there until it turns around. It takes the sour to make the good all that much sweeter.

Yvonne, Kent, and I—and now Gus—are a family, a strange and sometimes dysfunctional family, but a family nonetheless. I know that no matter what comes our way, we'll face the challenge together.

Gus and I walk out of the office. As he shuts the door behind us, a troubling thought begins to form in my head, but I quickly think of something else. I don't want him reading that thought.

THE END

Photo by Jamie Reese

About the Author

Christopher E. Long's comic book writing has been published by Marvel Comics, IDW Publishing, Boom! Studios, and Image Comics. He was born in Seattle, Washington, raised in North Logan, Utah, and currently lives in Southern California with his wife and son. Visit him online at www.christopherelong.com.