Zephyr I Read online

  My flight resumes. I’m keeping Senator Ivory Keenan waiting. It’s a year since the Innsmouth Rail Disaster. I saved fourteen lives that day and nearly lost an arm. If ever I was a hero, it was on that day. A little girl, a Vietnamese immigrant, was saved by neurosurgeons thanks largely to my persistence. Ted Turner took out paid ads in three national papers hailing my efforts. And three months later, with dogged persistence and detective-work that would’ve made Batman proud, I uncovered proof that a truly sick mind was responsible for the derailment. A serial killer by any other name, I tracked down the creature who used to be a man, by then in the habit of calling himself the Smilodon. I don’t think those who cheered could have stood witness to the end I gave him, there beneath the New Jersey Turnpike on an isthmus of trash only scavengers and the homeless ever venture across.

  Today, the senator’s office has requested I attend the memorial. Thankfully, I don’t have to say anything, just raise my hand as usual. They know even our voices could give us away in this day and age. The media will be there in force, of course. I don’t know what her chief-of-staff was trying to imply when he assured me there would be no other “costumed adventurers” present.

  As long as Nightwind isn’t laying the wreath, I’ll be happy.

  Zephyr 2.1 “The Good Courtesy To Be Dead”

  SOME TIME LATER and it is only minutes until I’m meant to be at lunch with Nautilus (my old teammate Aquanaut) at the Silver Tower overlooking the bay. Instead, I am looking for batteries for the DVD remote as my sniffling daughter stands in the doorway in a nightshirt and socks, a scarf heightening the sick ward theatrics completely unselfconsciously.

  As I proctor the couch, the phone rings. Driven by teenage instinct alone, Tessa hurries for it only to halt at a glimpse of the caller ID. Just in time to make an ass of myself, I lift my head and grunt for her to “answer the damn phone already”.

  “It’s Astrid.”

  Her mother has banned all contact with the other girl. Tessa looks at me with her big cow eyes and I glance at the clock, guestimating not only how late I will be for lunch, but when her mother is due home. I, of course, promised to spend the day in. Tessa and I have already arranged a cover story if Elisabeth calls while I’m out. It’s not like I could blame it on having to save innocent lives or anything.

  “Ten minutes, Tess. You know what your mom would say.”

  Tessa hugs me and snatches the silent phone, calling her alleged girlfriend back and promptly disappearing into the bedroom. I’m smiling wryly because she reminds me so much of her grandmother Maxine today I’m almost inclined to drag her around there for a visit. It occurs to me that it was snowing last time we headed to the ‘burbs. I still haven’t set a time for dinner and wonder what Beth will say.

  I slam the front door and double back through the bathroom and inside of a minute-and-a-half I am bursting from the side window and up and across the town.

  The Silver Tower is hard to miss. When the east coast was largely flattened during the Kirlian Invasion of 1984, property developer, philanthropist and – as we call him – “super-friendly” technophile Amadeus Chancel proposed an ambitious project backed by many of the surviving supers at the time. The Kirlian Monument became forgotten as soon as the Chronicle dubbed the slender high-rise the Silver Tower. The only skyscraper of its kind on the whole eastern seaboard, the upper part of the needle hosts a function center, two prestigious restaurants, the home of Chancel’s record label and a nightclub, eponymously named for the building itself. A security center and radar station backs up a dense cluster of sensor apparatuses feeding live to any number of local and national authorities, making the top of the tower an eye-in-the-sky for the government and anyone else concerned – like most the city’s “costumed adventurers” – with airborne threats.

  For various astute reasons, Chancel also has a gentleman in his employ who goes by the call sign Stalemate. When the dignified black head of security is in the house, no-one within a quarter mile can employ their powers in anything except the most fundamental ways. Fortunately there’s a big landing pad and an external elevator built three-quarters of the way up the spire, concealed by a fold in the organic-looking walls.

  Here, at least, it is good to be known. The maître d’ escorts me to the table overlooking the internal shrubbery, water feature trickling harmlessly into the koi-studded pool. Nautilus stares down like a benevolent uncle until I walk across the brushed concrete floor and then we meet in the middle of the room, shake hands and move to the bar. The city’s movers and shakers wrestle with their feelings of inferiority as we stride manfully up into the carpeted area that rings the back of the restaurant, and Nautilus orders two beers and two shots and takes a stool and I lean on my elbow, aware of the hardbody waitress watching us like a hawk.

  “To the Kirlians,” Nautilus toasts, raising his slim European bottle.

  I grin and return the gesture. “The Teslas were my favourite.”

  “Who were the other ones? Lichtensteins?”

  “No,” I say, “that’s a European country. I think Chancel owns it. You’re thinking about the Lichtenbergs.”

  “That’s right,” Nautilus snorts and nods. “Damned things.”

  “Before our time,” I note, sipping the beer, something homoerotic in the gesture.

  In the bar area, the wall is covered with framed photographs of the different Kirlian invaders in action – basically sentient light-waves inhabiting armored attack vehicles, brought to a messy end mostly thanks to the president’s Star Spangled Squadron – but not before the east coast took a serious pounding. Still, it’s funny how people move on. I was twelve years old at the time and it only increased my interest in masks. I don’t know what it would’ve been like for me if I hadn’t become one. Maybe I’d be one of those sad freaks like Nightwind, trying to get by in the shadows, living off the fame of others. One thing’s for certain: I didn’t have Chancel’s money or Chamber’s brain, so building myself a super-suit wasn’t ever going to be an option.

  Chancel’s Chancellor armor looms over the proceedings, a discreet copper plaque reading “1996-1999”. Amadeus is a better record producer than he was ever a hero.

  I wave when the egg-headed motherfucker finally looks my way, but he looks distracted and returns to a fork-waving conversation with Jeb Bush and a guy who looks like a Nosferatu.

  *

  WE ORDER STEAKS and side salads and a bottle of red and I ease back in my chair, placing Nautilus’s business card on the table in plain sight. I’m sure Stalemate is somewhere in the vicinity, but I don’t know how his powers work that I couldn’t let fly with a lightning bolt in here, yet I know my souped-up metabolism still won’t let me get even the slightest bit tipsy. Nautilus is the same, so when the red comes we drain it off like it’s no-one’s business.

  “So?”

  “I’ve been thinking about when I saw you last.”

  “Man, that fucking robot.” Nautilus scowls a grin.

  “Yeah. Look, I wanted to speak to you about getting an agent.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah,” I say more defensively than feels natural. “Why? Do you think I’m joking?”

  “No man, not at all.” Nautilus lifts his hands for peace. “I’m just surprised. I thought you were too cool for that shit.”

  “I’m not after the publicity,” I say and feel like a liar, even though I mean it when I say it. “I want to get my game on board. It’s not the 90s, you know? I feel like things would be better if I had someone helping manage my affairs.”

  I hold up my hand before he can say anything.

  “Hear me out, man. I have to, you know, maintain the whole secret identity thing. But I think there are opportunities I haven’t scoped, in all these years, just because it’s too difficult, you know, to balance being me and, uh . . . being free?”

  “Like?”

  “Like . . . like my phone deal,” I say, and briefly explain some of the complications involved in getting back
to someone in the company when there’s the whole identity verification stumbling block in the way.

  “I guess I figured if I had an assistant, an associate manager or something, things could run way smoother.”

  “I could talk to Saul, I guess. . . .”

  Nautilus looks unenthusiastic to say the least.

  “Well fuck, man, you look like someone’s trying to screw your puppy. I’m not trying to get in on what you’ve got going,” I say. “I thought maybe your manager could suggest someone?”

  Nautilus nods more soberly and clicks his webbed fingers.

  “Pass me a couple of those business cards of yours.”

  *

  I’M ON MY way home when the cell rings. Elisabeth and I have had a fiery argument about the Tessa situation and she nominated me to call the school and demand an appointment with the registrar to do something to salvage Tessa’s place at the academy, and also her good name, whatever that means exactly, Elisabeth actually using the expression “the family name,” reminding me of her mother who has at least has had the good courtesy to be dead these last few years.

  I don’t bother with the caller ID and just answer. It’s Red Monolith.

  “Zephyr man, how are you?”

  “Monolith,” I say like the straight man in a buddy sitcom. “What’s happening?”

  “Where are you?”

  “In the air,” I reply. “Over the Commsec Tower.”

  “Man, we really could’ve used you today. Darkstorm and Sky Blue and Stiletto and me just got back from some fucked up alternate reality. Man, we almost got smoked. The people there, man, it’s like New York never got toasted by the Kirlians, man. I think the world was ruled by winners of American Idol or something. It was hell weird.”

  I keep flying.

  “Uh-huh. What were you doing there?”

  “Uh, Darkstorm was like, following up those homeless dudes that’ve been disappearing down around the harbor? You heard about that?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, they’re still disappearin’. We didn’t really get anywhere with that. He called me an’ Stiletto up to help, but I think, you know, him and Stiletto kind of have that love-hate thing going so I think I was just there under false pretenses, you know what I mean, dude? It was like a bad Clive Owen film.”

  “Is there such a thing?”

  “I only liked Shanghai Noon,” Red Monolith says.

  “I think you mean Owen Wilson, dude.”

  “Do I?”

  “Man, you are a bad Owen Wilson film.”

  I groan and alight atop a tenement on the outskirts of what used to be called New Jersey. Red Monolith laughs as usual, like my almost-sick-of-you banter is a weird, backwards kind of compliment. He begs me to come over to Transit. They have a table. Sky Blue is buying everyone shots. It is about 3pm. I feel myself bristle.

  “You never said how you ended up in this other place?”

  “Oh, it’s some old enemy of Stiletto’s. Darkstalker? Dark Water? Dark Talker?”

  “Darkwatcher,” I say.

  “Yeah. Anyway, between him and Darkstorm, I don’t know, they cooked up a big cloud of blackness pretty bad. Darkstorm kind of explained it, but I think, you know, maybe he was talking out his ass. All that negative energy shunted us sideways instead of teleportin’ around like Stormy normally does.

  “It’s cool though, we got back,” he says.

  “And Darkwatcher?”

  Red Monolith inhales through his teeth.

  “I don’t know, man. Things weren’t looking so hot for Darkwatcher last time I saw him. He leaves those portal-things behind, right? I got a look at the skyline, looked like a heap of crucifixions going on.”

  “Couldn’t happen to a nicer fella.”

  I beg off the afternoon’s entertainment and field a call from a reporter trying to get Mastodon’s number which, in a pique, I refuse, and then I’m over the apartment once more. I trigger the window with my remote and shimmy in, unpacking my utility belt and putting batteries in the recharger for my handheld police scanner and dropping Nautilus’s card on the desk beside the PC.

  Beyond, the apartment is as quiet as a morgue. I call Tessa’s school on Zephyr’s mobile just to get a few more minutes before the inevitable confrontations, and eventually I manage to convince the registrar’s secretary to make time for me in the morning. I sign off, crossing my fingers no citywide disasters intervene and thinking instead maybe that’s exactly what I should pray for.

  *

  Zephyr 2.2 “Ridiculous Only In Hindsight”

  ELISABETH WATCHES WITHOUT expression as I emerge from the bathroom trailed by the sound of flushing. For a moment I think she’s simply not gonna speak, and then her eyes crinkle a little and she says, “I could almost make believe like you were in there the whole time.”

  “You can, if you want.”

  She has her shoes off and client files spread across the coffee table. The widescreen’s on mute. Oprah interviews Paragon. Every time he laughs Oprah has to shield herself from the light coming off him. I grimace and sit so I don’t have to watch.

  “Did you ring the Academy?”

  “I rang the Academy. I’ll see old Mrs Wiselmann tomorrow.”

  “It’s Weesleman,” Elisabeth says.

  “I’ll see her tomorrow.”

  “I can’t believe they had the nerve to send me an invoice for next term’s fees today.”

  “Did they?” I ask. “I didn’t see any mail this morning.”

  “The account comes to my office.”

  “Oh.”

  “If they’re going to expel Tessa, I’m claiming back the rest of the term. You’ll tell her that, won’t you?”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to tell her that? You seem pretty angry.”

  “Joe,” Elisabeth says, and does that thing where she drops her eyes until I stare, like an evil hypnotist’s victim, directly into them with my own mouth shut.

  “Mmm?”

  “You have to get these people to see they’ve made a mistake.”

  “Have they?” I ask, which I know immediately is a bad idea, so I make it worse by trying to justify the comment. “It’s just two good friends getting to know each other better, honey. Don’t a lot of girls do this sort of thing?”

  “In your dreams, Joe.”

  “Well, I’ll just explain it’s a bit of a family tradition. You know my moms.”

  “You’ll do no such thing!” Elisabeth stands and immediately sits again. “Jesus, Joseph! Do you want to prejudice the school against her completely? You need to convince these people it’s a mistake. Their mistake. And it is a mistake. Tessa’s no such thing.”

  “Hmmm,” I reply, nonplussed as I often am at times like these, perhaps my worst failing being to fail to get angry. Despondent, hopeless, yes. Fiery? No. There’s something wrong with my wiring when it comes to my wife.

  “What sort of thing?” I ask.

  I am such a sucker for punishment.

  “A lesbian, Joseph,” she growls in frustration.

  “Come on, babe. You’re better than that.”

  “Hey, I don’t care if she wants to date Willie Nelson, OK? I don’t care if she’s into girls or . . . flipping burgers . . . but I will not have those . . . motherfuckers . . . treat my daughter like a disease.”

  “Jesus, you’re so sexy when you’re angry. . . .”

  “Joe! Now is not the fucking time, alright?”

  Playful usually gets me everywhere, at least behind the mask, and I can’t switch it off so I start crawling across the table, hedonistic, but careful not to scrunch the precious documents, saying, “I don’t know about that, baby. It seems like the time to me.”

  Only it looks like Beth is playing for keeps. She stands up and away from the table, refusing to engage, leaving me like an idiot on all fours on the coffee table. At least I’m fully clothed this time. Normally at this point the table would break, so in a way I’m just kind of grateful when she simply
walks away shaking her head and leaves me there.

  I sit, forgetting about the TV, and see Paragon jumping up and down on Oprah’s couch like a madman. He’s gesturing and I realize Lady Macbeth aka Jocelyn is there hiding at one end of the couch. I can hear my phone – which is to say Zephyr’s phone – ringing, which means I’ve forgotten to close the secret door to the wallspace yet again.

  “Fuck.”

  Right about then Elisabeth screams.

  I’m out of the chair so fast I actually make steam. Part of me is freaking. The other part, the backseat driver of my psyche, coldly calculates whether I’ll get to play hero back into my wife’s good books. I find her in the bedroom with its panoptic views.

  Only this time the views aren’t quite up to their usual. This is because the outside windows crawl with moths and a thousand other insects – bees, wasps, dragonflies, even crawling things like ants and silverfish. Beth hates bugs, among other things, including lesbians apparently, and I move up behind her with a reassuring hand on the back of her nape only to get slapped away.

  My eyes track hers.

  There are clouds of them wending their way over the city.

  “Go and do your thing,” she says, sickened, like her disgust includes me.

  *

  THE BUGS GATHER, or they seem to be gathering, in People’s Plaza, the shoreline auditorium-cum-botanical gardens honoring the ruins of neighboring Manhattan. The silver cylinders and multi-shelfed monstrosities of the city’s new business nightmare cast shadows ten blocks long over the water.

  The sky ahead of me as I fly is overcast with insects. I clip the scanner to my belt and an earpiece feeds me a picture of the city descending into chaos. As the city’s finest seem intent on repeating in astonished voices to each other over their radios, the worst thing about the storm of insects is that even the most genteel of the bugs are intent on biting the hell out of anyone they encounter. I’m fairly safe in my leather gear, but a butterfly, of all things, lands on my face and immediately sinks something sharp under my eye before I flatten it.