Supervillainess (Part Two) Page 11

  The driver shot him in the chest again, and Kimber smashed into the car behind him.

  “Fuck that hurts!” he cried as fire tore through him. He bent over, gritting his teeth.

  The truck began to pull away.

  I can’t fail again. Not yet free of pain, Kimber forced himself forward. He caught the back bumper of the truck – and then dug in his heels. The truck dragged him for a few feet before he perfected his stance and began pulling. The truck’s transmission groaned. Its axles creaked and then snapped.

  Muscles bulging, he used sheer strength to drag the truck to a stop. Smoke poured off the screeching tires, and the air was filled with the scent of burning rubber. The truck jerked back towards him, and silence filled the night. Surprised his plan worked, Kimber released the truck.

  He raced around the side, back to the space between cab and truck. This time, instead of bothering to pull every individual wire, he ducked beneath the front of the trailer and squatted. He braced its underside against his shoulders.

  The sound of the cab’s doors opening hastened his movements, and he released a breath as he did the world’s most epic squat and pushed upward. His thighs burned. Wires and metal snapped as he tore the cab and trailer apart.

  Someone shot him in the thigh.

  “Fuck!” Kimber dropped to the ground. The trailer slammed down, and he instinctively raised his arms as the shooter came within view. Wounded, he hobbled away, back towards the cars lining the streets, and threw himself down behind one. Muttering curses, he looked down to see which injuries still bled. His chest wounds were no longer painful and had begun to heal over, but the gunshot to the thigh would keep him down for more time than he cared to wait.

  Twisting, he lifted his head over the hood of the car to see if he’d successfully managed to disengage the trailer.

  The driver and passenger stood to the side of the mangled backside of the cab.

  “Stay here. I’ll bring help,” the driver said and hurried to the cab. He started the truck and drove off, leaving the trailer. “Guard the delivery!”

  Kimber almost sighed. He sat where he was until his thigh had stopped bleeding and moved well enough for him to go to stage two of his plan.

  The guard was walking around the trailer in quick circles, weapon at the ready. Kimber waited until the guard had passed before launching to his feet and creeping up behind him. Heart racing, he tapped the guard on the shoulder.

  “Just don’t know when to stay down, do you?” the guard snapped as he whirled.

  Kimber punched him. As usual, it was too hard, and the guard went flying. He landed ten feet away, unconscious. “I’m tired of staying down,” Kimber replied and straightened. “Tired of being afraid and tired of getting my ass kicked.”

  But he wasn’t tired of caring, and he trotted forward to check the man’s pulse and make sure nothing was broken.

  Returning to the trailer, Kimber crouched under it again and hefted it over his head. Precariously balanced, he began to walk down the street, in the direction of the local police station.

  “Got it,” he grunted.

  “Excellent!” Igor exclaimed. “It’s just four blocks to the police.”

  Kimber didn’t respond. He could handle the weight of the trailer well enough, but it was the balancing aspect he struggled with.

  One block. He turned right precariously and managed not to drop or hit anything as he started down the second block.

  “Do you have a superhero catchphrase?” Igor asked.

  “A what?”

  “When you drop off the drugs, you’re supposed to say something witty and superhero-like,” Igor explained. “Like … here’s looking at you.”

  Two blocks.

  “That’s … that’s from Casablanca, Igor,” Kimber replied.

  “I’m pretty sure it’s from a superhero movie.”

  “No.”

  “Hmm. Okay. How about, I’ll round up the usual suspects?”

  “That’s also from Casablanca.”

  “No, it can’t be.”

  Every once in a while, Kimber wondered if Igor really knew what superheroes were supposed to do, or if he were just guessing, same as Kimber was. But the oversized nanny had been far too kind for Kimber to disappoint him, even if he often felt foolish doing what he did.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll think of something,” Kimber replied.

  Three blocks.

  As he neared the cement building at the end of the block, Kimber began to grow excited at the prospect of his first real triumph as a superhero. Several officers were outside. When they spotted him, they alerted more officers. Soon, a small crowd had gathered alongside the road to watch him.

  Kimber lowered the trailer in front of the police station and ducked out from under it. He stood, a little surprised, when he saw the thirty people standing on the sidewalk, watching him. Their expressions ranged from curiosity to awe. He’d never been one to stand in front of a crowd and had grown even more self-conscious about drawing attention to himself since Chicago.

  It was so quiet, he didn’t know what to do.

  “This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” he found himself saying and then added hastily. “Between us.” Goddam it, Igor! I can’t get ‘Casablanca’ out of my mind!

  Someone began to clap, followed by another person. Within seconds, everyone on the sidewalk was clapping.

  Kimber stood awkwardly, uncertain how to react. Finally, he waved and then trotted away, at his limit with being on display. He raced down the street, waiting until he turned a corner to slow.

  “We did it!” he breathed. Exhilaration streaked through him, and he began to smile uncontrollably. “Igor, we did it!”

  “You did, Doc,” Igor replied proudly.

  “Can you text Keladry and tell her, Reader: three, Doctor: one?”

  “Of course!”

  “I’m headed back now. How ‘bout we get some celebratory tacos? Or maybe, we can –”

  The ground beneath Kimber’s feet shifted. He halted in place, a feeling of dread sliding through him. The tremor of the earth was followed by the distant sound of an explosion.

  Kimber whirled and watched, astonished, as flames taller than buildings stretched towards the sky from the center of the city. It appeared as if an entire block was being bombed. The force of the explosions set off car alarms all across the city.

  “Igor, what’s happening?” Kimber asked, amazed by the scope of the destruction before him.

  “I’m trying to find out.”

  “Let me know.” Kimber began to run back the way he had come, back towards the center of town. Black smoke poured into the sky above the destruction while secondary explosions sounded up and down the block targeted.

  Sirens soon filled the air, and Kimber ran harder. First responders were going to need all the help they could get. As a physician and someone possessing super strength, he was in a perfect position to help.

  At least, he thought so, until he reached the edge of the crater where buildings used to exist. One city block had been engulfed in flames – and then collapsed in on itself as a crater formed beneath it and sucked in everything that once sat on the surface.

  He stood, staring down into the dark hole that steamed and smelled of burning metal, unable to see a way anyone had survived either the flames or the fall. Horrified, Kimber glanced directly across the crater at the emergency vehicles just reaching the hole in the city.

  “Igor,” he said. “An entire block is just gone. There’s no one to rescue. They’re all just … gone.”

  How many lives had lived on this block? How many people would never wake up?

  Kimber gazed into the dark crater. He’d been happy to stop a truck full of weapons, while someone else was laying the explosives to take out a block of the city. Even when he won, he still lost.

  “I’m tired of losing,” he whispered, stricken by the idea he could’ve saved hundreds of lives. “Igor, tell me who did this.”
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  “General Savage. He was targeting one of Reader’s weapons stashes and decided to send the city a message.”

  Somehow, Kimber already knew who was responsible. He’d returned to the city with the goal of helping people and had been thus far floundering.

  The city deserves better. I have to be more than I’ve been, he thought. He didn’t have the necessary resources or the insider knowledge of General Savage to guess what the villain mastermind was planning or capable of. His blindness meant he wouldn’t be effective against the supervillain and would definitely never defeat the General if he couldn’t get ahead somehow.

  “Igor, we have to stop him,” Kimber said quietly. “Whatever it takes.”

  “Even if you have to work with Reader?”

  “Even if I have to work with Reader. We have to stop her father. This can’t … won’t happen again.”

  “I’ll let her know.”

  Kimber was silent. He couldn’t wrap his head around the idea there was now a hole in the middle of the city. It seemed too fantastical, too villainish, to be real. But it was real, and he was one of the only two people who could prevent more craters from destroying the city.

  As unprepared as he felt for the job, he had no choice. He couldn’t spend his life training, when General Savage was planning on a scale that far exceeded the one Kimber had been training for. Had he been blind not to realize General Savage was far more dangerous than he could imagine? Had it been stupid to ignore Reader’s advice about working together, when she fully understood the threat, because he believed in some idealistic notion that evil could never be used for the purpose of good?

  It was true that her existence was a problem, but in this scenario, when compared to her father, Reader was closer to a superhero than a supervillain.

  “Reader says she’ll meet you tomorrow, same place and time,” Igor said.

  “She’s not free now?”

  “No. She says tomorrow.”

  Feeling helpless to stop General Savage, Kimber turned away from the gaping hole and trotted to the first responders nearest him.

  “You guys need help?” he asked.

  They exchanged looks with one another then looked at him. No one spoke for a moment, long enough for Kimber to be grateful he was wearing a mask in case they turned him away, and he walked home in shame.

  “Yeah,” one of the fire fighters said finally. “We have reports of another building starting to collapse. Can you hold it up until we can clear it?”

  They want me to help. Kimber was so stunned, he barely heard the question. “Yes!” he said. “I can do that.”

  Ten: Superheroes are only as strong as their supervillains force them to become

  Despite his resolve, the next day started the same as the last, except Kimber was struggling from only sleeping two hours after a night helping fire fighters and the police clear debris from the area around the crater. Kimber trained in earnest with Officer Ford, managing to beat his best time and impress the pragmatic lawman with a more valiant effort than usual.

  While in no mood to watch movies, Kimber nonetheless could think of no other way to occupy his agitated thoughts. He joined Igor after his morning workouts for another marathon of superhero movies and episodes of television series. While Igor took notes, Kimber struggled to stay focused on anything at all. His mind replayed visions of the explosions, and the crater, and he couldn’t help thinking something else bad was going to happen tonight, when the nocturnal supervillains became active again.

  Two hours into the marathon, Igor’s phone rang.

  Kimber glanced at him as he stood and took the call in the kitchen. His gaze returned to the Christopher Reeves versions of Superman on the TV, and he absently wondered if Superman had trouble paying for his rent and bills, or if the superhero in blue spandex could sell off the crystals from his secret hideout when he needed cash.

  “Someone called our superhero hotline,” Igor said, returning to the living area.

  “We have a superhero hotline?” Kimber turned off the television.

  “Well, it’s a one eight hundred number. I put an ad in the paper, and it ran today,” Igor replied.

  “Smart. And?”

  “Someone needs you.”

  Kimber stood slowly, not sure how he should feel about the news. “What’s wrong?” he asked, anxious to have something to do while also concerned someone was hurt. “Car accident?”

  “No.”

  “Reader or General Savage?”

  “No.”

  “Is someone about to jump off a bridge?”

  “Nope.”

  “Is there a cat stuck in a tree?”

  “School.”

  His brow furrowed.

  “They had a cancellation in their assembly presentation and want you to come and talk about bullying,” Igor explained.

  Kimber absorbed the information. “Okay. I can do that.”

  “But here’s the thing. You’re supposed to talk about not bullying,” Igor said. “It’s the opposite of the kind of speech Reader would give. I’m afraid I can’t give you any tips.”

  Kimber tried hard not to smile. Igor was still growing accustomed to the idea of not being a villain anymore. Every once in a while, Kimber recalled how different it must be for the nanny to live on the good side of the fence after so many years on the evil side. “I think I can handle that,” he said. He started towards the stairs leading to the second floor, so he could change into his uniform.

  “I’ll call a cab.”

  Oh, to have my own transportation again. Kimber hurried upstairs to change. By the time he returned to the living area in full uniform – including mask – the taxi was outside waiting for him.

  He was taken to an elementary school on the outskirts of town, where a pretty teacher with strawberry blonde hair met him on the sidewalk. Nervous about his first official appearance, Kimber didn’t catch her name when he trailed her into the school.

  As he walked, he couldn’t help thinking what he imagined every superhero thought about. Was his disguise enough to keep people from guessing his true identity? Would the kids be interested in him? What if someone asked a question he couldn’t answer or worse – about his past? Was his uniform too revealing for children?

  What did he know about anti-bullying anyway? He’d always been the biggest – and nicest – kid in his class. Bullies never picked on him.

  By the time he made it to the gym, he was ready to leave, afraid to disappoint anyone and feeling less capable of handling the responsibility of being a role model than he was doing normal superhero duties. What kind of role model did a former drug addict make anyway?

  The noise of the gym fell quiet as he entered. The teacher led him to the empty chair between two other teachers and a lectern. He felt the gaze of everyone in the entire school on him. Some of the students were whispering, while others simply stared.

  One of the people near him stood and went to the lectern. After adjusting the microphone, the man began to speak.

  “Students, for today’s assembly, we have a very special guest. Not only is he the first superhero in Sand City in fifty years, but he also hit the ground running and has already begun to stem the flow of narcotics into the city. Here to speak to you on behalf of our anti-bullying campaign is the Doctor.”

  The students clapped politely.

  Kimber stood and went to the microphone. He gazed out at the sea of faces and froze, uncertain where to start or what to say. After a long moment of silence, he decided to talk about something familiar to him.

  “I grew up in different cities all over the world,” he began. “I was born here in the States, and my mother was an employee for the State Department. By the time I was two, I’d lived in three different countries, which sounds …” The words began to flow as he related his own history of seeing the world. While he spoke, he furiously thought of how to address the bullying issue. It took seven minutes of talking before he’d figured out what to tell the kids.

>   To his surprise, they listened to him speak without stirring or interrupting. He managed to rope a brief, but firm, anti-bullying message into his story as he finished and then stepped back.

  “If you want to answer questions, you can,” the teacher who introduced him said with a smile.

  “Sure.” Kimber stepped up to the microphone again. “If you have any questions about how to handle a bully, please feel free to raise your hand.”

  Hands shot up across the bleachers.

  “You.” He said and pointed to the first he saw.

  “What’s your superpower?” the boy asked.

  “Um, well, it’s super strength,” Kimber replied.

  More hands went up. He chose another student.

  “Can you pick up a train?” the girl asked.

  “I’ve never tried, but I’m pretty sure I can,” he said. He selected a third student.

  “Are you going to challenge General Savage to a one-on-one fight and defeat him in a bloody battle at midnight where you almost die before you rip his head off?” the little boy shouted.

  That’s a little graphic for a seven year old. Kimber stared at the kid whose head wouldn’t reach his waist. Before he recovered enough to answer, more questions began flooding out of his audience.

  “Have you fought Reader?”

  “Can you pick up a building?”

  “Can you run fast?”

  “Have you ever tried to pull someone’s leg off?”

  Overwhelmed, Kimber glanced at the teachers on either side of him. The one who introduced him stepped up to the lectern and hushed the over-excited kids. Kimber returned to his seat and waited for the assembly to end. When it did, he was swarmed by students. Some had villain collector cards they wanted autographed while others shouted questions at him. Uncertain what to do, Kimber mumbled a few answers and looked beseechingly towards the door.

  “Hey! You guys wanna see a demonstration!” the teacher who greeted him shouted above the noise.

  A chorus of yes! was deafening.

  “Give him room so he can go outside. I want him to pick up my car!”

  The kids parted instantly, their eager gazes on him.