Hero (7 page)

In the next group of shots, you could tell she'd become chummy with everyone on the League. She'd spent this day wandering around their secret clubhouse snapping candid photos. Elastic Elbert caught with his coiled arm down the toilet as he tried to unclog it; Warrior Woman putting on mascara and slathering on some anti-wrinkle cream—showing that maybe that ageless Greek-goddess beauty didn't come without a little effort; and the Nucleus and his sidekicks, the Electrons, engaged in their weekly poker night, cigars dangling from each of their mouths, brown liquor drinks resting on the table. From the surprised look on all their faces, you could tell my mother had uncanny access, a level of intimacy the mere mortals of the world would never have.

The subjects in the last picture of the series she had more respect for: she'd clearly asked them to pose. In the same fluid cursive handwriting, she'd written on the white border at the bottom of the graying photo, Three generations of my favorite heroes. Captain Victory, the elder statesman of the group, and according to history the world's very first costumed hero, had his arm around his former sidekick, my father, Major Might, who in turn had his arm around his current sidekick, the Right Wing. Each one flashed a handsome smile for my mother, chins held high. Perfect teeth. They each had a raised fist in the air with the three middle fingers up, signifying three generations of the world's most virtuous warriors for truth, justice, and a better way. I studied my Dad's smile in that photo and decided I'd never seen him happier, or more proud.

I remembered the old guy, Captain Victory. He'd been the only one to lend my father money after he couldn't get work and the bank seized our house. Up until a few years ago, when I started to get serious about sports, Dad had dragged me with him to the nursing home to visit his mentor every weekend. All I remember was the rotten smell of that old folk's home, sickly-sweet wafts of disinfectant meant to cover up the putrid smell of decay. The old man couldn't talk by then, so mostly my dad would bring in pictures or read the newspaper to him, stopping after every other story to grimace at the state of the world. Then Dad would give me a dollar and send me down to the cafeteria to get a bowl of Jell-O cubes, and I'd sit there and watch Dad try to spoon a few shaky cubes into the old guy's mouth.

There weren't too many shots of Mom in her costume after that. I guess it was always a challenge to snap a good shot of an invisible superhero in action. Then there was a brief piece in a magazine column that asked, "Whatever Happened to Invisible Lass?" The subtitle speculated that it was "The Ultimate Vanishing Act." Apparently, Mom had been as careful to hide her civilian identity from the public as she'd been in hiding her public identity from me. There was never another mention of the Invisible Lass, and just like that, she was gone. I flipped to another shot and that's where my parents' wed¬ding pictures began. I lifted the picture of Mom stuffing a piece of grocery-store wedding cake into Dad's mouth. The hidden pictures stopped there, back to the normal order of things. After a series of honeymoon pictures, mostly of Mom sunbathing and Dad on water skis, I saw the first shot of my mother in a maternity dress, her belly swollen with me crouched up inside her. She was taking a turkey out of the oven and holding it up proudly, while my dad was pointing at her tummy, a goofy grin on his face. I had never seen that expression on Dad before.

So this was it. This must be why I could do these superhuman things. I had inherited powers from my mother. I wasn't losing my mind at all. I shut out a nagging voice in the back of ] my head that said Thanks a whole lot for up and leaving me on my own right now when I could really use someone like, oh I don't know, my mother to talk to about these major events happening in my life. Instead I held the clippings and pictures in my hand and rested my head on the sticky bus window and looked up at the stars and thought about the future.

I woke up and wiped a thin trickle of drool off my cheek. In front of me I noticed a three-hundred-pound lady in a pineapple-print muumuu, who snorted every time the bus hit a bump in the road. She munched on a Fudgsicle and stared out the window. Beyond her was a young mother with thinning hair threatening to discipline her little girl with an oversize hairbrush. The kid couldn't have been more than five, and she was whining about wanting to go to bed. She had her tiny index finger shoved up her nose, and with her other finger she picked at her long, unwashed hair, in desperate need of some baby shampoo and an industrial-strength detangler. We made brief eye contact, and she immediately stopped complaining, just before her mom smacked her in the thigh with the back of the plastic brush. The little girl howled and yanked the brush out of her mother's hand and moved to smack her back when—

SCREEEECH!

The bus skidded across the highway. The passengers screamed as the rear of the bus fishtailed into oncoming traffic. The force sent the fat lady's face into the window, and her cheek smeared the Fudgsicle across the pane of glass.

The bus had barely come to a halt against the guard¬rail when the door burst open and a flurry of dark capes whooshed in.

Transvision Vamp, eyes glowing, whirled around, flicking her black cape over her shoulder, and glared at us. I had never encountered supervillains in real life before. I didn't recognize this crew, never seen them on the news. They couldn't be A-listers.

Vamp glanced at the driver momentarily, her eyes blazing red.

"Drive."

The bus driver floored the gas, and my head smacked the greasy headrest as we sped off.

She turned her attention to the passengers.

"Keep quiet and no one dies," she purred. Her eyes bored into us, and we felt glued to our seats.

Behind her stare, the bus driver reached discreetly for his cell phone.

"Don't try it, asshole," Snaggletooth lisped around his lone fang. He was hanging from the ceiling by his claws. He dropped down and speared the cell phone with one claw, grabbed the bus driver by the collar with his other claw, and casually tossed the driver out the door. He slipped into the driver's seat and slammed his paw on the gas pedal.

The lady in the muumuu screamed as we watched the driver fly by us horizontally outside the bus. We sped forward past him, and his mouth and eyes widened into gaping ovals. I stared at the driver, suspended in midair for a brief moment, and to my surprise the moment didn't pass. He just hung there, frozen in time, except for the yellow lines that sped past underneath him.

We looked up and saw he was hanging by someone's hand attached to his belt. An elongated arm and hand slowly pulled him around the bus and inside through the back window. I felt something wriggly and slick under my feet, but my eyes followed the long ropy arm as it began to retract and wander past the bathroom, under the seats, and across the aisle, until it met up with its owner—a short but muscular guy in a scaly green outfit—right under my feet!

"We said no victimss!" Ssnake hissed at Transvision Vamp, like a grade-schooler tattling on his classmate to his teacher.

Transvision Vamp massaged her temples with her fingers, and her stare turned a shade of ultraviolet as she peered beyond the passengers into the night behind the speeding bus.

"Do you see him?" Snaggletooth asked in a high-pitched voice, panic setting in. His hands shook on the steering wheel and his claws dug into the hard plastic.

"Shut up, asshole, she's looking!" Ssnake craned his neck out of joint and stretched his head out the driver's side window for a better look. "He was right behind us. He can't be that far."

"Oh man, he's gonna kill me, he's gonna kill me, he's gonna kill me!" Snaggletooth slammed both paws on the gas.

"Wait, I think I see something." Transvision Vamp made her way to the back of the bus.

"What is it, what do you see?" Snaggletooth couldn't seem to get a grip.

"Will you calm down and keep your eyes on the road!" Ssnake brought his head back in the window.

"Screw you, I'm driving as fast as this piece of shit will go. I'm not getting caught by that guy, you don't know what he did to Frank. He caught him robbing that nursing home . . . before the police got there. ..." Snaggletooth wiped beads of sweat from his forehead.

"That's urban legend." Ssnake tried to talk him down.

"Maybe." Snaggletooth inhaled deeply through his nose, shook his head, and pressed his knees together. "All I know is I plan on keeping both balls and using 'em until I'm an old man."

"Will you both shut up!" Transvision Vamp wiped a smear of lipstick off her front teeth and put her hands on the frame of the back window. "I think I can see the trail he left. Ssnake, hang me out the window so I can get a better look."

I struggled to move in my seat but couldn't. With these guys in the back of the bus not paying attention to us, if I could get up, I knew I could take the driver, I just knew it. An old man in the seat behind me began to hyperventilate. I managed to lift my arm up, reach back, and place my hand on his shoulder. I felt my hand burn as his wheezes subsided.

But my toes started to twitch.

Phantom Girl, Karate Kid, Dream Girl ... I had to calm down. I could do this.

My leg muscles tensed, but I couldn't fire off the right signals in my brain to make them work.

Ultra Boy, Element Lad, Colossal Boy ... I yanked my butt off the seat like I was pulling myself off flypaper and stood in the middle of the aisle.

Transvision Vamp and Ssnake were leaning out the window in the back, and Snaggletooth's attention was fixed on the road ahead of him. I struggled to put one foot in front of the other as I made my way up the aisle toward the driver's seat.

The lady in the muumuu covered her mouth with her hand to stifle a scream, and her eyes bulged as she shook her head at me. I kept going.

Matter Eater Lad. . . Light Lass . . .

I was just a few feet behind Snaggletooth now. I looked at his reflection in the rearview mirror, and I could see the panic in his eyes as he blazed the bus forward. With a little luck, he wouldn't look up in the mirror and see me. A few more seconds and I'd be on top of him.

"I found the trail!" Transvision Vamp shouted from outside the speeding bus.

"Oh God, where does it lead to?" Snaggletooth stammered, his eyes still on the road in front of him.

Star Boy . . . Shadow Lass ... I took another step forward and raised my arms to strike.

Then something caught my attention through the front windshield.

"Hold on, I'm following it now!" Vamp shouted, the urgency increasing in her voice.

"Shit shit shit shit shit shit." Snaggletooth smacked the wheel in a vain effort to make the bus go faster.

I squinted and looked carefully through the windshield. A pair of eyes, a piercing gaze, stared into the bus from the darkness outside, like someone was hanging from the top of the bus. The eyes darted around, surveyed the scene as fast as possible.

Then the piercing eyes locked on to mine and I froze, standing there in the middle of the aisle, my arms raised ready to strike.

"I said, where does the goddamn trail lead-—?" Snaggletooth shouted.

Transvision Vamp shouted frantically from the back of the bus. "The roof, he's on the roof!"

Snaggletooth turned his head around to look up at the roof. And he saw me.

I let out a small gasp of air, and I could hear him growl as his muscles tightened, ready to pounce. Snaggletooth sprung at me off his hind legs, claws aimed at my eyes.

Suddenly the front windshield burst into a thousand jagged fragments, and a man dressed in black swung himself into the bus. With lightning speed he leaped forward and tack¬led Snaggletooth before he could sink his claws into my pupils.

The Man in Black, who had just saved my life, rose before Snaggletooth could catch his breath and began to land a flurry of staccato kicks in Snaggletooth's gut. Snaggletooth wheezed for air. The bus swerved back and forth, and the passengers screamed as we were thrown from side to side.

Ssnake slithered between my legs, his body gyrating forward in a swift, liquid line to the front of the bus. He popped up and resumed human form in the empty driver's seat and grabbed the steering wheel, which had begun to drift dangerously out of control. The bus smacked into a small Honda and sent it spinning into the guardrail.

The Man in Black delivered a devastating final kick to Snaggletooth's chin, knocking him up into the air. He landed face-first on the floor, and chipped off the end of his fang.

I stood up, wanting to help. A laser beam of light whizzed in front of me and blew a hole through a succession of seats. It stopped me in my tracks, and the passengers dove in all directions. I followed the beam back to Vamp's smoking eyes. She fired repeatedly at the Man in Black, who flipped from seat to seat, dodging the blasts. He bounced up the seats, making his way closer and closer to Vamp. She backed up against the wall, her eyes glowing green with panic. Ssnake was too busy driving to help; Snaggletooth was out cold on the floor; and she was about three seconds away from a hand-to-hand encounter with the most brutal vigilante on the planet. In desperation, she let loose a torrent of eye blasts at the passengers.

The lady in the muumuu shrieked and tried to wedge herself under her seat, and I dove to the other side of the bus. The mother grabbed her little girl and started to stand. The blasts ripped through their seats.

The young mother's face went white, and the little girl screamed. I saw that the mother suddenly had a chunk missing from her side. She clutched the wound, which was gushing thick, dark blood, like motor oil pouring out of a leaky engine. The Man in Black turned around to help, but I was already on it. I had her flat on the floor, my hands pressing firmly on the wound, my palms smoldering as they began to cauterize the gash. Blood spurted on my face. This was worse than anything I'd ever been able to heal, and I could feel the effort sapping my energy. A wave of nausea bubbled up in my stomach, and I fought the urge to barf. The little girl crawled under the seat and whimpered.

The Man in Black grabbed the oversize hairbrush off the floor and disappeared into the shadows under his cape and reemerged right in front of the screaming Vamp. Before she could react, he swiped the sharp bristles across her open eyes, blinding her in an instant. A scaly green leg wriggled past us on the floor and knocked the Man in Black's feet out from under him. Ssnake's elongated hand followed and kept the Man in Black busy, while Vamp wiped madly at her eyes, struggling to regain her sight.