Ice Cream and Venom (3 page)

We're near the end of our journey, one way or another. Win or lose, it all stops very soon, maybe today, maybe tomorrow. I think it through: Basically, if we're going to win—and 'win' is a very relative term for what we're attempting here—then we'll have to do it very soon. If we're going to lose, then any longer period of time will do.

But we're near our destination, and the things Vox Inhumana said last night make it clear that the Superheroes still haven't figured out what Deadpan's plan was. So we've still got that going for us. The "Good Guys" seem to think we're running at random, but we're not. I hoped and prayed that we'd be able to make it downtown before anyone noticed us, but we didn't even make it out of Buckhead.

The music stopped, and Clarion was there, hovering in front of me. A lifetime of heterosexual reflexes was barely enough to keep me from throwing myself at Superjunge, now that same lifetime of reflexes was drawing me to her. She was hopelessly beautiful. No, 'beautiful' is too perfunctory a word: she was gloriously, preternaturally lovely beyond belief. She had those yummy long legs, that ass that really did make grown men cry, the firm, pouting bosom, long, swan-like neck, olive skin, piercing green eyes, and the kind of long, flowing jet-black hair that you dream about wrapping yourself in. Her costume was quite flattering, and really more revealing than any simple nakedness could ever be. I tried not to look at the siren, tried not to meet her eyes, but it wasn't working. I could smell her; feel her fatal loveliness casually wafting through my brain. I heard a chorus of low moans from among the refugees, which I recognized was them spontaneously climaxing—men and women both—simply from the sight of her. I realized belatedly that I had, too.

The funny thing is that while everyone has seen her, in pictures, in movies, in real life, hundreds of times, no one can ever seem to really remember what her face looks like.

My head is muddy with hormones released by my unexpected orgasm. I have trouble thinking. I tighten my grip on my umbrella, and my other hand goes to Blacknight's utility belt, which I took off him when he died, and which I've been wearing since we left the comic book shop. This is going to end badly. The refugees are moving towards her, excepting Homer who's babbling about not understanding what's going on. I have some brilliant kill-o-zap weapon in my hand, freshly taken from the belt, but I can't think of what to do with it.

"You've led us on a merry chase," she says in a mellifluously silky voice that defies description, "And now your reward: A goodbye kiss."

A kiss? That sounds good; I'd gladly sell my life for the touch of her lips. I move in closer, closer. I know she's strong enough to topple a building, to a lift an ocean liner, but I don't care. I know she'll snap my neck with just the slightest of finger twitches from her tapered hands, but I don't care. She is my whole world at this moment, and all that matters is the feel of her hot breath on my neck. It is worth it. It is a good death, a fine way to go, in service of my divine mistress. I go closer, closer, and I become distantly aware of something, a noise far off that I notice only because it isn't her, only because it clashes with the sheets of sex appeal pouring off of her in all directions.

It bothers me, and I focus on it, trying to define it so as to better tune it out, but of course that just makes it worse. It's a human voice, coming from a long way off, getting louder, moving fast. "What the..."

"Yoooooooooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuu Bitch!" Superjunge screams as he flies in to her, slamming her body at barely-subsonic speed. I wasn't touching her, but I was close, very close, and the force of the impact knocks me ass-over-teakettle. The refugees freak out and scatter, and several of them actually were touching her when the alien boy struck. Two of them were killed outright; another lost both arms, and bled to death before we could do anything about it. I screamed at them to run, and we scrambled off in to an old, half-collapsed apartment complex on the intersection of Peachtree and Peachtree.

Inside, we heard the battle raging. Their fists made noises like thunder when they struck; our hovel shuddered several times from the force of the nearby blows. The ground shook when one or another of them piled in to the pavement. The windows shattered. There were screams and curses and sobs from both sides of their battle, and we huddled together and prayed for deliverance to any real, non-profane God who might be out there, and we quaked with fear, and one of the refugees freaked out and ran off, and we never saw him again. Gradually, though the grunts from the warring gods became progressively higher pitched, and the sobs became more constant, then becoming a wracking cry which was more horrible than even the sounds of the battle itself had been. A woman's terrified wail, a teenaged boy screaming profanity and punctuating it with body blows and cuts, and finally Clarion screaming over and over again "Just end it, just end it, I beg you please just kill me," in an unhinged, gurgling fashion, and eventually, after a long time, Superjunge did. Then the wracking cry returned, but it was his this time, not the woman he'd killed, and somehow that was even worse. This went on for a long time in the distance, until finally we heard the sonic boom of him flying away.

We quickly left the apartment complex, and stumbled across her body. She wasn't lovely any more.

I left Atlanta before the Supeheroes took over the world. First I moved the greater New York City area, which, after the takeover became Fille de Pouvoir Land, a vassal state consisting of Newark, Manhattan, and Connecticut, shepherded by a smokin' hot chesty blonde in a low-cut white leotard with a thonged butt and no shoes at all. I don't know why, but the barefoot thing was quite the turn on. Supervillain activity grew worse, so I left for Dahlonega, since I had family there, and not a moment too soon: the Punster blew up the city. Fille de Pouvoir herself survived, of course, with a kicky new 'do to indicate her mourning for the lives lost.

Eventually, the super villainy thing got so bad in Atlanta that they moved all the 'civilians' (Read: Mortals) out of the city. Atlanta remained common territory, a meeting ground for all the supers. After a big protest and some resistance to the forced relocation, they just decided to move us all of us Georgians to the planet Venus. Fortunately, Venus had been retconned by this point.

I got a temp job working at a Venusian gas station on the outskirts of Nyarlethholethboleth Shibop, a thriving metropolis of five million Venusians. Venusians look pretty much like Gumby from the old Art Clokey shorts, only people-sized. And they're shape shifters, too. Ever wonder what the Venusian Vigilante looks like when he's not in human form? He looks a lot like Eddie Murphy pretending to be Gumby on Saturday Night Live.

It was a terrible job, and Venus was a terrible place, but I learned some interesting stuff there. I learned that the whole 'superhero' thing wasn't new, for instance.

Once upon a time, humanity had been a hermaphroditic quadruped species, and fairly advanced. Advanced enough to start monkeying around with technology and genetics, and producing superheroes. They called these "Zeus" and "Hera" and "Helios" and so forth. We know them as the pagan gods, but in fact they were just an earlier cycle of supers, dammit. Doctor Ducaleon re-engineered the gods to have gender and only two legs, which were considered basically a matter of fashion at the time, and they assumed command of the world. The world resisted, so the superhero gods wiped them out, and then Doctor Ducaleon created
our
species from scratch and populated the world with us. The four-legged hermaphrodites were the ones that got wiped out of course, when Ducaleon started his own species; he decided to make them look like the gods. This was around the same time that Diana went from being a super villainess to being a good guy, and put the moon in orbit.

The history is all a bit fuzzy, but either some of the gods themselves rebelled, or else some of the new humans—our own species—turned to lives of super villainy and were successful, but either way the ultimate result was that the Norse gods managed to gain ascendancy over the Greek ones, and evidently the Greek gods are the same as the Vannir in Norse mythology. Eventually they all moved to Venus in an attempt to avoid Ragnarok, but I'm fuzzy on the details, and I'm even fuzzier on whether or not any of this actually happened prior to the retconning.

Venus was pretty as a daydream, but a horrible place to live, owing to the endless warfare between the Norse pantheon and the Greek one. Ultimately, one side or another got pissed off at a lack of enthusiasm from their worshipers, and they jointly decided to simply wipe out the whole species and start over again. Fortunately, someone thought to complain to the earth embassy in Byarlthorn Njebek City, and a few heroes were sent to escort us home before the genocide started. I presume the Gumby aliens are dead now.

It was then I met Blacknight; he was one of the people sent to rescue us, and one of only two heroes I ever met who was ever even remotely heroic. Of course he and Deadpan were entirely human, so perhaps that shouldn't be too surprising.

Someone named Beauford and I have an argument about whether or not we're leaving Deadpan behind. I say we're not, and the guy cold-cocks me with a lucky punch. I go down hard, and by the time I get back up, he's broken the old man's neck. It fixes. Beauford breaks it again, and again, and again, and again, but it won't stay broken. All he's doing is torturing the old man, who screams like the baby he is, and Beauford gets so freaked out by this that he just starts crying and punching the ground.

We don't have time for this. I toy with the idea of killing Beauford, but he's beyond horrified, and I think he's learned his lesson. Part of it, anyway. The trick is that Deadpan has gone past his maximum age of a hundred or so, and is now aging down again to his newborn state. Since he's getting younger, any damage he takes just instantly heals. I sigh, head over, and coochie-coochie-coo the former swordmaster until he calms down, and starts giggling, and then I carefully pick up Beauford, who fully expects me to kill him. And maybe I do too.

But I don't. I look him in the eye, and I say, "We are human beings. That used to count for something. We can't kill Deadpan, I don't think it's possible for him to die anymore, and we will not leave him alone, lost, confused, frightened, all by himself, ok? You don't just abandon a baby, no matter the cost. We will not do it. We paid too much in blood to get him back, and it would cost even more to leave him behind. All we have left is our humanity, and if taking care of that thing that Deadpan's become is the price of maintaining it, we'll do it, ok? And if we die because of it, we die as men and women, not as savages. Do you understand me?"

He nods, and wipes at his bleary eyes, says he understands, but I know he doesn't. Hell, he probably didn't even know half the words I used just then. But whatever, crisis averted.

I go back to tearing a few pages out of some of the books I took from the comic shop, and scribbling a few things down. When I've got what I need, I carefully burn the books and chuck 'em down the storm drain. I explain my plan to Ivan and Homer, relying on Homer to remember it and explain it to Ivan as the need arises, and then I give them most of the items out of Blacknight's utility belt. I keep the belt for myself, though, and one or two other things. I tell them to go on and do it, and they hesitate, then, awkwardly the two of them hug me, and suddenly I'm blubbering. I go over to Deadpan, who's about sixtyish now, and smelling terrible, and I coochie-coochie-coo him one last time. "Daddy loves his baby," I say, "Who's good baby are you? Are you mine? You're mine, aren't you?" His eyes focus and clear, and just for an instant there's something in them—recognition?—Then it's gone, and he's a blubbering geriatric infant again. Did he know me, just for a bit there? Is there still a glimmer of him inside that weird body? Is there hope for him? For us? Probably not. Probably not. Emotions are ragged on this end of history. I'm just imagining it.

I give him a kiss on the forehead, and the others carry him away. In the end, Ivan and Homer and the rest do what they're told. They go in to the MARTA terminal, and disappear into the tunnels. I hold on to a couple of the torn pages, and think really hard, really really hard.

We didn't get back to earth right away. We were hijacked to some dumbass planet called "New Origin," which was involved in some kind of witchwar with another planet called "Eschatelon." Evidently, Mister Bryghtsyde and the New Originals were gods who'd left earth in some even more ancient superhero cycle that the Olympians and the Norse were too young to remember. They were old, millions of years old. Old enough that natural selection of a sort had affected both sides of the eternal conflict, with the New Originals recognizing the need for a degree of self-determination for created beings. Their concept was a bit more like "Nature preserve" or "Zoo" than "Up With People," but dammit, it's a rough universe out there. You take whatever tiny little glimmerings of good you can find, and you don't piss and moan about it.

That's when I met Deadpan. The three of us, and a slew of other refugees from Venus, ended up fighting in their war for two years, mostly on the side of the New Originals, but not always. I'm a former insurance guy, and you can't imagine how highly my skills with mortuary rate tables were valued by a god of death like Mister Bryghtsyde. After that, we were let go. Only the three of us had survived.

I waited by Clarion's body, amidst acres of destruction, and I scribbled notes and then burned half the pages, or smudged them to make them semi-unreadable. Others I simply held and thought really hard at. I was bored and hungry, but I fought the urge to eat another of Retroactive's food pills. I only had a half dozen, I'd given the rest to Homer to keep when they'd left. The problem with the things is that while they give you a full day's worth of energy and nutrients, they don't fill you up or satisfy any of your cravings. I'm as well-nourished as I can be, but I'm skin and bones for lack of bulk. It's an unsettling experience, but I couldn't just go eating up the rest of my supplies because I was bored. It wouldn't fill me up any more, and I'd pay for it down the road. Not that there was too terribly much "Down the road" left at this point.

After a few hours, Multiplantagenet showed up, yammering in that English accent of his. Is there still an England? I'm not sure. The geography of the world has changed quite a bit since Professor Mortality moved Antarctica up in to the south pacific. Then some of the mystical heroes created "Islandia" off the Atlantic coast of Africa, and of course ocean levels rose copiously because of it. Florida is under water, as are most of the Gulf States. It is salt water all the way up to Nashville, which is now a coastal city on the huge new somewhat oxymoronically named "Dixieland Sea." Much of Georgia is relatively high and dry, however, a peninsula jutting out over a drowned land.

Multiplantagenet is one of those guys who can make energy-based clones of himself. It's some kind of hyperdimensional double-talk. He starts talking theatrically about how he's captured me, how Brain Trust will pry my secrets from my mind, how we're doomed, how he's gonna get himself some lovin' from Clarion for his role in all this. Then, of course, he sees Clarion's grotesquely broken form, and he goes livid with rage. He starts making copies of himself, two, four, eight, sixteen, and on it goes. I don't run. I don't even think he knows how many copies he's capable of making, and I'm not in a mood to figure it out. I'm completely surrounded by thirty or so copies of him, all furious. I tighten my grip on my umbrella. Several of him charge me all at once, and I just stab the umbrella tip in to the one nearest to me. He's so angry, so hepped up on adrenalin or the hyperdimensional equivalent thereof that he barely notices, even though it's a deep wound. Another of him tackles me, knocking the umbrella from my hand. None of them seem to notice the low buzzing noise, or the Saint Elmo's fire surrounding the copy I stabbed. Two others knock me down and start wailing on me. The other copies of him move in closer, and I'm just about to get beaten to death when one of him says, "I don't feel so good," and falls over, dead.

All the surviving copies of him stop, and look at the one of who's lying on the floor. Two others are showing the Saint Elmo's fire, and starting to swoon. The others drag me up off the ground by my shirt. One of him gets in my face and screams, "What did you do to us?" The two swooning ones fall down dead. Four others develop the Saint Elmo's fire.

"My umbrella was a present from The Haberdasher," I say calmly as four of Multiplantagenet drop dead, and eight others start to glow. He/they panic, and try to run away. Some of him try to re-combine in to one being, but they die instantly, others try frantically to keep dividing in to more and more clones, but they can't divide fast enough to outrun the effects of the umbrella virus, or whatever the hell it was. Some of them, horrified that they've been brought in to the world only to die in seconds, freak out and in the end there's dozens of Multiplantagenets, all attacking each other.

I dust myself off, and note that I'm missing a few more teeth as a result of the scuffle. I ache everywhere. I'm an old man. I'm fifty-one, entirely too decrepit for this kind of thing. Moving slowly, I plant my papers on the bodies, and discard the umbrella. It's a one-shot weapon, no use to me now. I count the bodies out of literally morbid curiosity: I'd managed to kill thirty-eight copies of the same guy with a one-shot weapon. I got lucky.

As I start to walk downtown, I'm glad I counted the corpses. I've got a touch of OCD, and it's not that I expect to live all that much longer, but it's the kind of thing that would have nagged me to my dying day. By the time I'm a mile away from the bodies, it starts to rain.

Dammit, I should have kept the umbrella, but it's too late to go back now.