Ice Cream and Venom (4 page)

We got back to earth via Mars, which had a small group of scientists and things on it. Mars was still pretty much what Mars had always been thought to be: a sterile, lifeless desert planet with a half-dozen domed towns from a half-dozen nations on earth. Some of these were studying the Bradburyesque remains of Martian ruins, but it's unclear if these had always been there, or if they'd been placed there by some retcon or another. Space ships were old hat, of course, slow, expensive, and dangerous. Instead, people came to and from the red planet by a hyperspace bridge, maintained by the International Space Agency.

We hopped the bridge back to Earth from Mars.

The planet was all but unrecognizable. Continents had been moved, created, destroyed, and sea levels were different. The superheroes had divided in to roughly political camps, with the more reactionary ones fighting the more proactively liberal ones, and the super villains fighting both sides. Societies had fallen apart, infrastructure was gone. I think of that dull, hopeless look I used to see on the evening news when I was a kid, when people were being evacuated from some disaster or war in East Bankruptistan or some rag-ass banana republic, the look of people who've lost everything, even hope; the look of people who are dead, but haven't quite realized it yet. I know intellectually that there was a time when you never saw that look on the faces of Americans, but I've seen so much of it since I got back that, try as I might, I can't remember it clearly. I think of my mom, of my wife, of my son, of my sainted, long dead father who passed when I was a boy, and my present experiences have filtered back to corrupt my memories. All of my beloveds have that same dead eyed, hopeless expression in my memories, even ones who logically couldn't have looked like that. Their faces—even in happy memories of birthdays and weddings—stare at me like mourners at a funeral. I don't spend much time remembering anymore, as a result. Probably for the best.

And of course education was gone. Why should the gods waste time teaching gorillas like us to do tricks, after all? Waste of resources. Illiteracy was at like fifty percent when we got back, but among the younger generation, it was more like ninety percent. And more esoteric knowledge, like history or how a Wankel Rotary Engine works? Forget about it, it's just gone.

After some initial consternation, Blacknight, Deadpan and I signed up with the super villains. Haberdasher put us on his private army. He was a men's finery-themed super villain from back in the day, a screaming fop, totally twee, but he had such neat toys. He claimed he had an umbrella for every occasion, and a hat for every crime. I never understood what that meant, but we were loyal subjects of Haberdasherystan, a small super villain kingdom consisting of most of what had been the state of Wyoming back in better times. By the time he was killed, and his kingdom fell—victim of an evil betrayal by The Abortionist, his girlfriend, or more likely his beard (I was never quite sure)—the conflict had evolved in to a humans-versus-post humans struggle.

The Humans lost, of course. Not all at once, and not overnight, but no denying the outcome. Deadpan had brokered some kind of deal with the New Originals, and Mars disappeared from the night sky, with the scientists and their families on it. To this day, we don't know where it went. Deadpan wouldn't tell me, and in the end he clearly doesn't remember anymore, but it is evidently a protected planet now, one of the New Original's 'nature preserves' for the minor races.

Which isn't as ideal as it sounds. One thing our scientists on the red planet had quickly discovered was that humans couldn't breed in low gravity. Fetuses spontaneously abort there, they won't go full term. It's not a solution to the problem of continuing the human race, but at least it's a safe place to sit for a while and figure out our next step. It's a crappy old universe, as I said, but it's better than nothing.

Meanwhile, your Doctor Baroques and Psychic Surgeons and Man a 'la Medicals and others all tried to fix humans, make us good, make us behave, make us nice little thralls of the superhero gods. It never worked, and eventually, to no one's real surprise, they decided to simply wipe us out like the Olympians had done millennia before, and start over from scratch.

The central irony of all this is that super villains, by their very nature, were the only thing standing between the human race and extinction.

But they were never really very good at their job, were they? I mean, the villains always lose in the end, right?

It took me two days to make it to the burned out ruins of Pill Hill. Atlanta was finally destroyed a couple years ago in the final dance of death between the Evil League and World Hero Federation. That battle royale had lasted a month, and more than a hundred heroes fell in the carnage, and all the major villains died. Ultimately, it was the Tet Offensive of the superhero wars: It was big, impressive, and destructive, but it didn't really accomplish any of its objectives. Quite the opposite, it steeled the determination of the heroes to off us mere mortals, and of course the villains had left their home territories undefended, so the last billion or so of humanity had expired quickly after that.

Our little band had managed to hold up in an old Air Force base underground for most of the carnage, but with supplies running out, we started our zigzag perambulation across the continent, seemingly at random, but in fact, we were always coming to Atlanta, because there was something here that could help.

Parts of the city are still burning with eerie green Eldritch flames that water cannot put out. They'll burn until all the mana in the area is exhausted, I guess.

I have to climb in to the old Center for Disease Control building through a broken second floor window. It's a nice day, sunny, no clouds, a slight chill in the air. In the distance, I can see the remains of the Peachtree tower stabbing up in to the sky like a broken finger. They'll find me soon. I don't mind. I have many happy memories of the CDC, and despite the dust and the raccoons scampering around inside the building, it doesn't look all that different. I'm happy to be here. It feels like home, after a fashion.

I've been dropping false clues for a couple days—attaching psychic transmitters to rats and things I've captured, then sending them scampering away, setting off remote controlled holographic projectors, that kind of thing. All crap I swiped from Blacknight's utility belt. The rest, the more useful stuff, I gave to Homer and Ivan. If they're going to make it, they should make it soon.

No point taking chances, though. I reach in to my bag and find Nick O'Teen's Magical Murder Helmet. It's psychic-proof, and can't be removed by force, since it's magical. I put it on, they can't read my mind, and they can't take it off. Nick was a crazy evil bastard fond of killing sprees. He used to run the good guys ragged with this thing back when the good guys were still theoretically good, and the super villains were unquestionably bad.

It's close and tight, and smells of stale blood, it makes me feel hemmed in. I hate the thought of what he did while wearing this thing, and I start to have a panic attack. I run around frantically, and nearly black out, when I suddenly realize that I'm in the second floor cafeteria, and I calm down. I think, rationally, that it will give me some pleasure to use this helmet to save lives, not take them.

The security in the CDC was never what you'd call good. It operated on the theory that since the place was full of nasty bugs, no one would want to break in. The Terrorist Wars of the early 21st century proved that wrong, but for some reason, security never improved. I worked at an insurance office just inside the overpass exit, and when I discovered the CDC had a better cafeteria than any of the restaurants around, I repeatedly snuck in with a clever disguise consisting of (A) sunglasses, (B) a clipboard, (C) a tie, and (D) a scowl: the unquestioned symbols of authority in pre-metahuman America. No one ever bothered me. Thirty years later, I find some stale Coke in glass bottles behind the cash register. I guzzle it down, the first thing I've had to drink in two or three days.

But of course they're waiting for me. They file in, while I'm there. I don't even try to escape. The semi-blasphemously named Demiurge himself actually comes in. "Hi, John," I say to him. He hates it when you call him by his real name.

"So, wait, let me see if I've got this straight," I said to Blacknight, "The plan is to get something from the CDC that can shut down the metagene and take away their powers?"

"No," he said, "The real plan is..." He was dead twenty-four hours later.

They had me up on the roof. They'd not gotten around to beating me up yet. Mostly, they were showboating. They're gods without worshipers, after all, and I might be their last chance to impress upon someone how much better than me they are.

"We know all about your little scheme," Hivemind says in his German accent. Is there still a Germany, I wonder? Is there still even a Europe? No matter. He holds up a diagram I'd torn out of a book, and one of my semi-legible semi-burned handwritten notes. "I can read your thoughts in this. I
have
read your thoughts in this" and he indicates the paper that I'd so painstakingly pretended heavily at a couple days ago.

It's possible to record thought waves in organic matter, but the quality of the recording is crappy, and hard to reassemble.

"Never seen it before," I lie.

"You lie!" he snaps, "Your thoughts are all over this diagram." I smile—I actually peel back my cheeks and genuinely smile for the first time in who knows how long—because he knows I'm lying, but he doesn't know the nature of my lie, the purpose behind it. That looks good for me. Well, bad for me personally, but good for my overall scheme, anyway.

"I will kill you for what you did to Clarion," Demiurge says. I steel a quick look at Superjunge, who's wearing sunglasses and avoiding my gaze. Clearly the truth isn't out, and I can't expect any further aid from that quarter.

"Probably," I say, "But it'll nag you forever that you'll never know how I did it." I'm just stalling for time now, keeping them distracted enough by their hatred of me that they won't notice fifty or sixty refugees aren't anywhere to be seen. I look at Superjunge, "She died horribly, and it took a long time," I say. He looks away.

"Your plan was to find the metagene blocker, which would take our powers away, and render us mortal. You hoped to find it in the vault here at the CDC," Hivemind says, "It is a puny plan."

"It is a puny plan," I say, honestly agreeing with him.

"You will explain this diagram to us," he says, "and how you came to possess such information."

"Ok, sure. Well, firstly, that diagram is a page I tore out of the Starfleet Technical Manual, published in 1975. I got it in a comic book store in Buckhead. I think it's a first edition, not that it matters now." I'm honestly telling the truth here, but they don't realize it. Hivemind looks at me in annoyance.

"Get that helmet off him," he says. It won't come off, though they try of course. Presently Demiurge hits on the idea of having the others torture me until I take it off. They break my hands, a finger at a time, poke holes in me with their own steel-like fingers. I hold out as long as I can, but of course I give in. Probably I only lasted for a few minutes, but it felt like it went on forever.

Hivemind squints at me as he reads my mind. "Mars is still attached to Earth?" He says, incredulously.

"Mars is still attached to Earth?" I say, incredulously.

"Yeah. Wherever they put it, there's still a physical connection via the hyperspace bridge. One end of it is on Marsdome One, the other end is at the NASA center in Atlanta," Blacknight explains.

"But the city's destroyed, there's no power," I say.

"The bridge facility was underground and blast proof, the power comes from the Martian end. Oh, God, I hurt," he says. He's dying.

"So it should still be working?" I ask.

"I haven't got much time left here," he says, "Please try to be a little smarter. Your purpose..."

"...Is to distract them in to thinking I'm going to the CDC while the refugees make it through the MARTA tunnels to the old NASA facility."

"Yes," he whispers, then looks around himself, "Is this a psychiatrists office?"

"Yeah," I say. He laughs.

"Oh, God, that's funny." He winces, his eyes are cloudy.

"I'm scared all the time," he says.

"I'm here," I say, and take his shattered hand in mine gently.

"I'm scared all the time, but this is much worse," he says.

"I'm here, I'm not leaving," I say.

"I wasn't going to go to Mars with you," he says, wheezing.

"I know," I lie. It's news to me.

"No room for heroes in the new world, just plain folk."

"For the best, I agree, but David," I say, "You're plain folk," I say, "You're not like them."

He smiles at this. He tries to say something, but I can't make it out. I put my ear right up against his lips, and even then it's like he's whispering in another room.

"Thanks. You're. Not. So. Bad. Yourself. For. A. Breeder."

He kisses me gently on the earlobe, and then he's gone.

I clean up the body as best I can, and leave.

"Mars is still attached to Earth?" Hivemind says again, less incredulously, and more angrily. I'm too weak and beaten up to move. As if on cue there's an explosion in the distance, and a building down town starts belching smoke and flame. Real flame, not that sickly Eldritch crap. I quickly feel him walking through my memories. I notice, awkwardly, that I've got a raging erection, no doubt from the overabundance of pheromones wafting around in the present of ten or twenty superheroes around me.

"He gave them explosives, and told them how to set them to go off after the Bridge had sent them to Mars. These will have destroyed our end of the bridge. The planet is now completely cut off to us. We cannot get there, and the explosions mean they must have gotten away."

"You lose," I say. They're furious, they're stomping around.  The ones with laser vision are blasting things on the horizon, while the fire-based ones are bursting into and out of flame. Hot Chick—now looking a bit saggy and old, truth be told—screams and flies like a comet in to the next building, knocking it down.

"It is of no matter," Superjunge says, "They can survive there, but they can't breed. They're still doomed."

"Not my problem," I say, "My people, and any surviving scientists still on Mars, might be able to work around that. Maybe they'll figure a solution, maybe they'll invent artificial gravity, maybe they'll find another place to live, or maybe they'll invent some crazy Flash Gordon technology and come back here and kill all your asses but good. I don't give a damn." My voice is slurred, they'd pulled out my remaining teeth during the torture, "The point is that they're free, they'll survive for a little while longer in peace, and maybe they'll last beyond that, maybe they won't. You don't know."

"We will kill you for this," Demiurge says.

"Duh," I say, hazy from the pain of the beating they already gave me, "But it doesn't matter. I won. I beat you. I led the last remnant of humanity on Earth out of your grasp. You, sons of Olympus, done in by an out-of-work insurance adjuster from Dahlonega. I'm the new Moses," I say, then pause with a realization that none of those idiots I saved will remember my name. I never told it to them.

Oh well.

This is too much for Demiurge. He snatches me up by my throat, and holds me over the edge of the building. I'm surprisingly calm. I've known the end is coming for a long time, and now that it's here, I'm ready for it. It's reassuring.

"You got any last words, new Moses?" he screams at me.

"Yes!" I scream back at him with every last ounce of defiance and venom in me, not sure where the strength is coming from, but hiding my fear under a veneer of derision. I give them my last word on the subject. Conscious that I'm about to say man's final words on planet earth, I holler, "SUPER HEROES ARE GAY!"

He squeezes his hand effortlessly, and all goes black...