Almost Infamous: A Supervillain Novel (9 page)

“Supervillains like Bad Bug and Otis Shylock? Fuck no. But the supervillains they’re going to want on this team to push around? Yeah, I’d say you guys are perfect.”

Both Iron Bear and I stood up to object.

But before an altercation could arise, a crashing at the edge of the forest stopped everyone in their tracks.

“It sounds huge!” I exclaimed, running to the other side of the fire with Firewall.

“I’ve heard bigger!” Iron Bear laughed, unwrapping several shards of metal from his armor and hovering them like spears at the ready.

No monster came out of the trees, at least not any that were native to the island. It was only the giant boy made of crystals. He cradled another villain in his arms, setting them down by the fire. Though they ran off, the crystal boy stood looking at us for a moment while breathing heavily. Finally, he smiled crookedly.

“
Hola!
” he said, conversationally, collapsing on the ground. The crystals began to retreat into his body, shrinking him down to a slender, handsome boy maybe slightly taller than me in a tattered soccer jersey and shorts with about a week’s worth of black stubble.

“Are you all right, friend?” Iron Bear asked.

“Fine, I’m fine,” the boy said. “Just exhausted. Spent all day searching the waters for those in need of help. I found some, but not a lot wanted help. Can you believe some actually took shots at me?”

I don’t know why he sounded so sad. He shouldn’t have been surprised.

“Have you eaten? Had water?” Iron Bear asked.

The downed boy shook his head. He looked on the verge of death.

“Apex Strike and I will get you some food and water.”

“We will?” I asked, surprised that he recommended me for this expedition.

“Yes. And you two will watch him. Make sure he does not lose consciousness,” motioning to Odigjod and Showstopper.

“With pleasure,” Showstopper said, pulling Odigjod over to sit by the boy. “Now, have you heard the one about the bloke who tried smuggling cane toads up his bum?”

Though I would have been more comfortable sitting by our bonfire, I walked with Iron Bear, ignoring Firewall’s echoing call of, “Sweethearts!”

“Why did he do it? Why are we doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“Helping
them
, helping
him
? Isn’t this a competition? Doesn’t it help us to go every man for himself?”

“In something like this, no. We will be a team, remember? We are to depend on one another someday. I think you can only benefit from playing nice,” he proposed.

On paper, what he said made sense. In reality, it sounded hard as hell. People never liked me. They’d never really disliked me, either, and usually just walked around me. Playing nice would take the effort of pretending to be interested in them.

I shook my head. “This sucks.”

Iron Bear laughed, playfully punching my shoulder. “Nobody ever called being a supervillain easy. Come on, you get the water, I’ll get the food.”

We went our separate ways, both of which were long and winding. I hoped that as the competition went on that they’d figure out how to speed this along. I mean, we’d starve out here if we had to wait like this
every
day, wouldn’t we?

It had only been a few hours and I already heard people fighting in the food line. There was some shoving, some accusations about getting seconds when some people hadn’t had firsts. Someone defensively saying they were getting food for a friend.

This was a problem that was going to get worse before it got any better if nobody took control of the situation.

With all the commotion, the forest went silent with the sound of screams, followed by a loud gurgling and someone laughing loudly. Everyone ran out of the water line to see what was going on. I cut to the front, grabbing a couple canteens before seeing what had happened.

Everyone stood in a circle around Carnivore, as blood ran down his cheeks and neck. Another boy lay dead in front of him, with a large pool of blood spreading on the ground. His dead eyes stared out blankly into the night.

Iron Bear.

Carnivore had ripped out his throat.

Suddenly, Carnivore’s body went rigid. He let out a high, yipping scream, grabbing at his chest and falling to the ground in a violent seizure.

Blackjack’s voice echoed across loudspeakers on the island, “We told you kids, no killin’. This time, y’all got a warning. Next time, we set the Creepers to kill. Now somebody bury that poor SOB before he stinks up the place and get on with your party. You’ll want this free time while you still got it.”

Carnivore stopped seizing and crawled away, grumbling.

Nobody wanted to touch Iron Bear, but because I’d spent the most time with him, everybody expected me to do something. Sighing, I focused, dragging his body across the ground while still keeping my distance so I wouldn’t have to smell him, or look at all the blood.

Or the guy I thought might’ve been a friend.

Odigjod simply hissed a low, “Oh no.” when I brought the body back by our fire.

The crystal boy took the water from me gratefully, but sadly. “If he hadn’t been getting me food… it’s my fault.”

“Yeah, it is,” I said. Firewall chucked a small piece of metal at the back of my head, shooting me a harsh glare.

Weakly, the boy stood up, transforming one of his arms into a crystalline monstrosity. “I will bury him.”

“Odigjod will help,” Odigjod said.

“We all will,” Showstopper said, standing to join us. Even Firewall set down her work long enough to suit up and join them.
Great, now I’ll look like a dick if I don’t help.

Between the five of us and our powers, it didn’t take long to bury him. Showstopper even made a simple cross out of a couple sticks and stuck it in the ground.

“Think he’d have liked that?” he asked.

“I think he’d have liked being alive more,” I said.

“But… never mind,” Showstopper said, turning to Odigjod. “Did he go to hell?”

Odigjod shrugged. “Not my department. Odigjod will looking him up when visiting home next. Maybe put in an good word, if I can, if he’s there.”

“What do we put on the marker? Iron Bear or… what was his real name?” Showstopper asked. Nobody knew. Firewall probably did, but she wasn’t saying.

“Seriously?” Showstopper asked. “None of you even took a second to ask his name?”

“Did you?” I asked.

He grumbled. “That’s not the poin—”

“Supposed to use our codenames,” Odigjod said.

“You don’t,” Showstopper said.

“Don’t have one, yet,” Odigjod said.

“His name was Sacha,” a voice said from behind us.

It was Ghost Girl.

Her eyes glowed vaguely gold behind her mask. “Sacha Sakalauskas. He wasn’t evil, he just worked the black market so he could provide for his sister. She’s been ill for a long time. He hoped he’d make the team so he could provide a better life for her, maybe smuggle her into France. Even though she wouldn’t remember him, he would have done this. He was a good man. He’s sad to have died, he’s sad that he will never see his family again, and to have died without anyone knowing his name.”

Suddenly her name made a lot more sense.

“You see ghosts,” I said.

“I see lots of things,” she said.

It was quiet by our fire as we took in what she said.

Then the crystal boy spoke, “Felix Platero.”

“Nick Nesbit,” Showstopper said.

“Helen Campbell,” Firewall said.

“Emma Hendriks,” Ghost Girl said.

At last, they all looked to me. Sighing, I said, “Aidan Salt. Just don’t go spreading that around too much, ’kay?”

I barely slept that first night, as I was afraid of what was ahead. What if I screwed up? What if I freaked out? What if I failed? That’d all be a one way trip to the Tower.

I couldn’t handle that.

Those thoughts were rough. Almost as rough was realizing just how much I missed.

I missed having a bed that wasn’t rock hard and swarming with mosquitoes and other weird bugs that kept trying to burrow beneath my skin.

I missed technology.

I missed all the familiar sounds of home.

I think I might have even missed my family some, though there’s every chance that was just some side effect of missing home.

I missed having dreams that didn’t include people dying. Since I didn’t sleep much, there weren’t many of them, but the few minutes I caught here and there were full of them. Icicle Man. The people on the boat. Iron Bear. Even the scaleface.

But most of all I missed sleeping in a roomy bedroom, and not having to share it with forty other guys. They were always moving, tossing and turning. Some snored. Some wept softly. Every so often we’d hear something horrible in the jungle and everyone would wake up, cursing.

And the sex…

They started meeting up around one in the morning, when they thought everyone else was asleep. Usually it just meant a girl sneaking in, meeting up with a guy, and them heading out to do their business. Some were less discrete, getting busy on a cot.

Most of them kept it down.

Some didn’t.

So mixed in with all the tossing and turning and snoring and crying you’d occasionally hear the low and not-so-low moans and grunts of people fucking.

I tried to block it out by wrapping my head in my pillow. But it’s easier said than done when there’s a couple screwing right next to you.

“Yeah, tell me how amazing I am!” Artok whispered, his voice still somehow shrill.
So, I guess one of the girls bought his shtick.

“You’re all right,” the girl said.

“Just all right?” he asked.

“That remains to be seen,” she said, her accent foreign and sultry.

I could focus, tilt his bed over, and mess things up for him. Atlanteans were supposed to be good fighters, but he seemed weak and there was no way he could take my power.

It’d be easy. Fun. Maybe even help me sleep.

I rolled over, ready to take him down a peg.

Then I saw her.

She was completely naked, straddling the Atlantean’s hips and riding him slowly. Her skin was pale white, practically glowing in the moonlight, offset by a large number of ornate tattoos that covered her back and arms. Long, perfectly straight jet-black hair rolled down her back, with a few odd locks spilling over onto her amazing breasts.

This was the first time I’d seen a naked girl in person.

It looked better than it did on the Internet.

She turned to me. Her face was serene, unlike Artok, who kept grunting and shrilly muttering about how awesome he was. Her lips, painted black, matching her goth goddess look, curled into a confident smile.

Then she winked at me.

She winked at me!

Arching her back and rocking her hips, she gave a hell of a show. Then, before anything could get real good, she stroked a tattoo on her arm. Briefly, it appeared as though all of her tattoos had come to life, dancing about her body before a swirling flock of black birds burst from her arm, surrounding their bed and blocking it from view.

“Show’s over,” some guy with an Irish accent said from across the room. “Time to get some sleep.”

There were scattered mutters of agreement. Not from me, though. She winked at me! Maybe that meant she knew who I was! Maybe that meant I stood a chance! I mean, she was putting out on the first night, so I guess that meant anyone—and by anyone I mean I—had to stand a chance at nailing her too, right?

#Supervillainy101: Locust Lad & Illusor

All the best superheroes had their rogues’ gallery of villains. I’m sure a lot of them would want you to think that they had some major vendettas against these particular heroes, but more often than not it came down to them being unable to afford working any city other than the one their particular hero operated in.

Of all the heroes that operated in the last days of the Silver Age, before the War on Villainy, perhaps the most colorful rogues’ gallery belonged to Locust Lad. Though Denver was not as illustrious a center for superheroism as Los Angeles, New York, or Amber City, it attracted a surprising number of mad scientists specializing in experiments gone awry, giving it one of the highest populations of supervillains per capita in the United States. Though only possessing the powers bestowed upon him by a radioactive grasshopper (or was it a mystical grasshopper totem? He’s never been clear on his origin), Locust Lad fought them all for years, even when his voice started to break and he redubbed himself Locust Man.

The least respected of all his villains was Illusor. An ex-magician, he was utterly pitiful in a fight, instead relying on parlor tricks and flashy illusions to escape. He rarely engaged Locust Lad in direct fights, preferring to distract him to the opposite side of the city from where he plotted his evil schemes, and when he did have to engage the hero, it was with a shotgun.

No weapon themed to his outfit, no witty quips, just a shotgun.

Purist villain fans hate him for having some of the most boring hero-villain fights of the War on Villainy.

I think his record speaks for itself.

Of the forty-two villains usually counted among Locust Lad’s rogue’s gallery, Illusor was the last one captured. He used his tricks and illusions to stay hidden until long after the War on Villainy ended and the Digital Age of Superheroes began, surrendering himself in 2009. Apparently, after a cancer scare, he found God and decided it was the “right thing to do.”