Wonder Guy (30 page)

Probably only minutes passed before the swarming mosquitoes vanished from the area. Good. Odd. He hadn’t killed nearly enough of them to eliminate the threat. He glanced around, and spotted the threatening cloud of the swarm heading north from the lake, toward the heart of the city.

Chapter 18

The widespread terror pleased Elysha. Confronted with their ancient enemy grown to monstrous size, the residents of the city fled in panic. Some fought. Many of the boaters and those near the landing seized paddles, wielding them as weapons, smashing insects out of the air. The ferocity of these defenders pleased her nearly as well as did the fear of those who fled.

She cloaked herself in the shadows of a wooded section of shoreline while she directed her swarming creatures, relishing the waves of horror.

A tall woman, wearing a halter-top with jeans, screamed when a hovering six-foot mosquito grasped the bare flesh of her arm with yards-long legs and struck into her flesh. It drew blood into its proboscis until a young man seized a long wooden paddle from a nearby canoe and used it to crush the fragile exoskeleton of the beast.

No problem for Elysha. She had hundreds, if not thousands more, and the scent of spilled blood maddened her creatures. They darted after the fleeing humans, heedless of a new source of destruction when it fell upon them. When large numbers of her swarm rained from the sky, blasted from above, Elysha scanned the heavens. The pain and deaths of her own creatures produced as much pleasure for her as did that of the human victims, but this came too soon.

Him. She wasn’t ready for him. The Pederson woman wasn’t here yet with the weapon.

But there, an emanation from the north, the energy signature of her other target. Time to beat a strategic retreat here, but this withdrawal allowed her to go after the young woman who’d eluded her last night. There’d be no easy end for the girl this time. She must be taken. The girl must be punished for the pain she’d inflicted on Elysha. Briefly, she relished the vicious tang evoked simply by imagining how it would feel to wring every possible drop of misery from the troublesome young woman before she died.

* * * *

“That’d go with one hell of a sundae,” Hank commented, rocking back on his heels. He stared up at the twelve-hundred-pound, bright red aluminum cherry poised above them on its massive spoon.

“I can’t believe you’ve never seen it before.” Gloria stood beside Aggie’s chair as Hank paced around, getting different angles on the sculpture.

“Not live and in person. I’ve seen photos. Don’t do it justice.” He grinned, showing strong, even teeth.

“Now I can’t help picturing your giant sundae,” Gloria admitted.

“We’d be in the middle of it.” Aggie gestured around them, to the surrounding lawn, right at the edge of the pool below the spoon bridge. “And I wouldn’t care to be scooped up along with the cherry.”

“What’s that noise?” Gloria lifted her head, looking around. Not the ordinary noise of traffic from Hennepin Avenue running along the eastern edge of the sculpture garden. “Kind of a high whining, like the world’s biggest mosquito.” She laughed with her companions. Looking up, she caught sight of what seemed at first a low, fast-moving cloud front. Then it resolved into individual elements and she soon made out their shapes. “Speak of the devil,” she whispered, too stunned at first to register the danger.

“Holy crap.”
Move now. Gawk later.
She turned to Aggie and Hank, gesturing to the south. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

“What is it?” Aggie twisted to look. “Good heavens! It can’t be.”

“We’d better get under cover whether it can be or not.” Hank moved behind Aggie, and pushed her chair back toward the Walker Arts Center, which seemed impossibly far away, through the courtyards and across the road fronting the museum building.

“The conservatory would be closer.” Gloria moved beside them, but they’d only gone a few paces, not much closer to either destination, when the chair stopped short, causing Aggie to lurch forward and Hank to curse.

“What now?” Gloria bent and looked at the wheels. The right front wheel sat at an angle to the others, an angle she recognized. “Oh crap.” The same wheel had gotten stuck before.

The droning sounded louder. Screams and shouts pierced the air and some other patrons of the arts ran for cover, back toward the Walker and the shelter of its solid walls, into the face of the impossible, threatening swarm. Others ran toward the conservatory where palm trees grew even through the harsh Minnesota winters, and a giant, glass-scaled fish reared up on its tail, poised forever in mid-leap. Yet others sought shelter among the many sculptures.

Gloria knelt beside Aggie’s chair. She had managed to loosen the wheel before. She just needed to joggle it...

“Leave it,” Aggie protested. “Leave me! Get out of here, Gloria. Run for it.”

“It’s okay.” Hank bent over Aggie. “Leave the chair. I’ve got her. The greenhouse isn’t far.”

Aggie looked at first as if she’d protest this too, then sighed and lifted her arms to Hank.

The swarm filled the sky directly above them. Gloria looked frantically for something to fend off the monstrous insects diving at them and seized the umbrella hooked over the back of Aggie’s chair before she hurried after Hank. Aggie never went out without her trusty bumbershoot. “Rust, just what it takes to make this chair perfect,” she’d say.

Gloria wielded the umbrella like a sword and darted forward in time to counter the thrust of a three-foot mosquito proboscis aimed at Aggie, who clung helplessly to Hank. Gloria flanked her companions as Hank moved toward the dubious refuge of the conservatory. Already cracks appeared in the glass panes of its walls, where the giant mosquitoes crashed against them in pursuit of people who fled there for safety. The panes were large enough for the mosquitoes to squeeze through if enough of the glass was broken.

She opened the umbrella in the face of one after another of the determined insects diving at them as she guarded Hank’s back. Screams sounded on every side, along with the wailing of small children. Gloria checked the impulse to run to the defense of a six-year old girl who took shelter under a table of sandstone blocks. She couldn’t abandon Aggie. The child seemed safe in her refuge. Gloria batted aside another thrusting, needle-sharp proboscis.

* * * *

Greg followed the retreating swarm, flying above them, picking off the stragglers and out-fliers with blasts of heat vision. Retreating? No. This swarm hadn’t come from downtown. It wasn’t returning there. They advanced. Did they have some target in mind? Where? Just how intelligent were they?

He could aim for the center of the swarm, destroy more of the monsters at once in the swaths of heat blasting from his eyes, but then he’d have smaller swarms going off in every direction threatening who-knew-how many people before he could track them down. No, better do it this way. Make sure they stayed together and pick them off from the edges of the swarm.

The man-sized mosquitoes flew lower when they neared Loring Park and the surrounding area. Not until they began a diving run did their target become clear: the sculpture garden north of the Walker Art Center. What the hell? Did the mosquitoes have something against modern three-dimensional art and its patrons?

People ran helter-skelter among the sculptures, seeking shelter from the attack. Screams sounded shrilly from below.

A stout woman on the lawn near the giant spoon sculpture played tug of war with one of the enormous mosquitoes. With its attenuated, stick-like legs, the insect grasped a screaming toddler by the shoulders. The woman clung fiercely to the child’s legs, fighting to keep it from being hauled up and away.

Zap. Greg fried the brains of the kidnapper mosquito. The woman fell back, child clasped in her arms. Both scrambled away toward cover.

Zap. Zap. He fried the creature about to attack the woman from behind, striking with a proboscis as long and sharp as a sword.

Most people seemed to be faring pretty well, making it to the conservatory or the museum building ahead of the swarm. Some took refuge in the small Flatpak Visitor Center. Others crawled under or hid behind the sturdiest sculptures.

A man ran headlong at one of the punched steel panels forming part of a hedge and dove aside at the last instant. Three mosquitoes in close pursuit crashed into the panel, trapping their proboscises in the holes piercing the panel, leaving the creatures to struggle to free themselves, as they frantically lashed their long gossamer wings.

A wheelchair sat abandoned on the lawn between the spoon bridge and the conservatory. A man carrying a woman hurried toward refuge, and another woman followed, playing rear-guard, waving an umbrella at dive-bombing mosquitoes. Walking backward, she closed the umbrella to thrust it like a sword, parried a proboscis then opened it suddenly to thwart the forward rush of another attacker.

Greg zoomed in with Wonder Guy’s telescopic vision.
My God. Gloria. Aggie. And who the hell is that, carrying Aggie away from her wheelchair?

He would have stumbled if he’d been afoot. Instead, he faltered in midair as the mosquitoes seemed to notice him for the first time. A phalanx broke from the swarm, rising to rush at him like blood-seeking missiles.

When he turned to face the attacking mosquitoes, he spotted another squadron acting in concert to surround Gloria.

With her attention turned to the enemy before her, others closed on Gloria from behind. Rather than strike for blood, four sets of impossibly long, thin limbs grasped her as others tore the umbrella from her grip.

Carried by the huge insects, like Dorothy in the grip of flying monkeys, Gloria rose helplessly into the air.

* * * *

Gloria’s senses reeled between vertigo and horror as she struggled frantically against the elongated legs dragging her away in their sticky grip. This couldn’t be happening. The repulsive insectile bodies had her shuddering, wincing, and choking back bile. The wriggling mouths and bulging abdominal segments pressed way too close to her cringing flesh. The drone of giant wings drowned all other sound.

It had to be a dream. If only. If only she had the refuge of unconsciousness as the bug-eyed monsters lifting her up and the earth fell away below. She had nothing but sympathy for the heroines of old movies who would swoon in the face of danger, but she couldn’t give up. She had to fight for all she was worth. She twisted and tore at the clutching limbs until more creatures secured her arms. She kicked against resilient abdominal segments and scaly exoskeletons. Thrashing wildly, Gloria shouted outrage when she wasn’t screaming in terror.

At least, she struggled until she looked down. The lawns and sculptures spread like a map below her. Far, far below. A fresh wave of vertigo dizzied her. Even if she managed to escape the clutches of her captors, she’d only be dashed to death on the tiled paths or the massive curves of the Henry Moore bronze now directly below. The scene shifted and spun, and now it looked like the Calder would be a good bet for impaling her. The whirling of the scene made her stomach swim in sickening waves. She closed her eyes and stiffened, ceasing her struggles, though she still cringed from the huge limbs holding her.

When she grew still, her captors steadied in flight. With steadier movement and the rush of cool wind in her face, her vertigo eased. She dared to open her eyes again. The mosquitoes, flying in unison, leveled out at last and bent their path as if to head south.
Oh, God.
Now would be a good time to faint. Where were they taking her?

A figure in gold and green blazed toward them from below.

Wonder Guy! Gloria’s heart leapt in her breast.
Oh, thank heaven. Oh, crap.
Her hair must look like hell, whipping and tangling around her face in the wind.

In the next instant, with a series of sharp popping noises and a smell she remembered from summer evenings near a bug zapper, the giant mosquitoes lost their holds on Gloria’s arms. She rejoiced and despaired again immediately, falling free toward the earth below. Her stomach lurched, dropping even faster than she fell through the air. The wind dragged at her hair and clothes, stopping her breath. The pervasive drone of wings fell silent and empty husks of giant mosquitoes filled the air, falling with her. The sharp black point of the Calder sculpture’s support rushed to meet them. Gloria screamed.

Strong, gentle arms scooped her up, and she threw her arms around the hero’s strong neck, burying her face in the warm crook below his clean-cut jaw, trembling in relief.

“Hey,” he said. “It’s gonna be okay.”

They swooped through the air, but this was totally different than flying in the grasp of the giant insects. She lost all fear of falling. Wonder Guy cradled her gently against his solid chest, one strong arm hooked under her thighs, the other holding her tightly to him. She clung fiercely, arms clutched around his neck. How could she feel so–contented? blissful? happy?–in the midst of this craziness? Her face pressed close to the bare flesh where his lower face and jaw emerged from his mask. His scent filled her like the breath of home, human, familiar and safe. She checked the urge to nuzzle him, to nibble her way up to his ear. She relaxed, molding herself to the solid wall of Wonder Guy’s body so warm against hers.