4.
Private Nick Denton woke up in a hospital far from Vietnam. He was surrounded by a contingent of dour doctors and dour officers. They stood over Nick and whispered. Several times a day, different doctors and different officers entered his room. They all ignored his questions. He was too weak to raise from his bed and force them to answer him. On the third day, his door opened and in addition to the usual suspects, there was a new figure. It was a man he recognized, one that every American recognized. Dressed in red, white and blue, Sgt. Freedom, the greatest hero of World War Two, sat down next to his bed.
“Hello, son,” the hero said. He had a smile full of perfect white teeth. His face–at least what showed beneath the mask–was unlined, tanned and healthy. “I understand you’re a special young fella.”
Nick said something. It came out as a garbled whisper.
“What’s that?” Sgt. Freedom said.
Nick coughed. He motioned for the hero to lean closer.
The founder of the Legion of Freedom smiled at the onlookers. Someone took a picture. He bent forward, his ear near Nick’s mouth.
“I said,” Nick croaked, “why the fuck didn’t you super guys end this war in two days?”
Sgt. Freedom jerked upright and looked around to see if anyone had heard the impertinent question. He smiled and patted Nick on the shoulder. “Now, now, son. I appreciate that you’re upset. I really do. But you‘ve got to appreciate something, too. “
”What’s that?”
Sgt. Freedom leaned toward him again, and whispered, “Because, you ungrateful little shit, you’re a ‘super guy’ now.”
***
They let him go home for a while, before his training was set to begin. They told him that his ability worked like a battery. He’d been storing power, from solar radiation, for eighteen years. Now he was drained, so it was safe for him to be around people. The training, they told him, would include the implanting of devices that would enhance and control his power. He also learned the implants were derived from alien science. Since the Krayll had landed here in the first half of the century, other races had shown up, particularly the Runelleans and the Tast. Some had offered to freely exchange technology. Others had to be convinced. And soon, Nick would carry it around within him.
He came home to Radiance as a hero. The military had told the country that Nick had demonstrated amazing courage and an incredible new ability by stopping the communist threat at the ancient citadel of Hue. The war was nearly over. All that remained was mopping up. And Private Nick Denton, U.S. Marines, had been accepted into the Legion of Freedom training program.
There was a parade. There was a big picnic on the courthouse lawn, where Nick was presented the key to the city (a city that he and his friends had terrorized a few years earlier). There was a commemorative dinner at the Elks. And, finally, he was allowed to be home with his parents. His father was almost gone then, from the cancer. The once-intimidating figure was a frail skeleton on the couch in the living room, drifting in and out of lucidity, surrounded by an odor equal parts medicine and urine. His mother had aged. She was never a very happy woman; now her sadness was worn like armor. Her face held no warmth for Nick–or anyone else. He wanted to talk to her, to tell her about what had happened, about how frightened he had been and how scared he still was. He tried to find his friends, but Talmadge Green had joined the army and was still in ‘Nam. Bart Cooley’s father had moved his family to Canada rather than let the government take his son. Nick ran into a few kids he had graduated with. Most seemed scared of him.
Except for Grace Fleming. She had barely spoken to Nick in high school. Now she was a student at Marshall University, as pretty as she had been when he saw her leading cheers at football games when he was a freshman. She seemed fascinated by Nick’s experiences and wanted to know every detail. He realized that she was only interested in him because he was a celebrity. And that was okay with Nick. He was desperate for companionship. Having a beautiful girl pay attention to him was more than satisfying. So when she let him take her to the lake and show her the caves in the woods, and take off her clothes and lie down next to her, he felt that maybe he deserved all of it.
Weeks later, when he was in the midst of painful testing and training at the Legion’s hidden base in Cheyenne Mountain, he received the telegram. His father was dead.
After the funeral, when family and friends were milling about the house, eating fried chicken and laughing like they were at a birthday party, Grace showed up and told Nick she needed to talk to him.
In the back yard, sitting on the patio in old lawn chairs, Grace said, “I’m pregnant.”
Nick’s head began to ache. Only the implants, freshly installed beneath his skin, and the training he’d already received, prevented him from unleashing a fiery bolt of destruction. He was able to bring his pulse rate and his blood pressure under control. Finally he said, “We’ll get married.”
Grace nodded. They held hands and watched the sun go down.
***
When John was born, Nick was in Russia, along with other rookies from the Legion, battling a squad of Soviet soldiers who guarded a weapons plant. Nick was now Ra, the Sun God, wearing an elaborate Egyptian-inspired headdress and armor. The outfit was as hot as hell. Nick hated it. But the headdress had a visor which focused his eye beams, allowing him to control the duration and intensity of the blasts. The mission was a success, over quickly, with no casualties on their side.
On the plane ride back, Nick sat next to The Serpent, a skinny kid from California who could produce a dangerous venom from his fingertips. He was useless at a distance, but deadly at close range.“Man, that was some kind of fun, huh? I nailed six of those suckers.”
Nick didn’t answer. He was too busy trying to remove his damned helmet.
"I heard they send all of us rookies over here to beat up on the Rooskies,” The Serpent said. Nick wished the kid would shut up.”It’s easy, and it builds up our confidence. Plus, I hear The Crusader and The Flying Spy watch us from a couple of miles up, just to make sure nothing happens. How many did you kill, Nick?”
Nick finally got the helmet off and tossed it in the aisle. “I need a beer,” he said. “I just became a dad.”
***
He got back home as often as he could. Grace and the baby were living with his mother. Grace’s parents had wanted her to “move away” until the baby was born, then give it up for adoption. She refused, so they kicked her out. Nick’s mother had taken her in with the same stoic indifference with which she handled everything in those days. Grace went to work at the clerk’s office in the courthouse and his Mom took care of the baby. When Nick was home, he cared for his son, as best he could. While he didn’t love Grace–and he was sure she didn’t love him–they had a certain respect for each other. And Nick had an obligation to provide for them His salary from the Legion was much better than military pay, and he sent most of it to Grace.
When he was working, he availed himself of the affections of the Legion groupies. He wondered sometimes if Grace had another man. He decided that he hoped she did.
On one visit home, when John was two, Nick’s old friend Talmadge dropped by the house with a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon. The two of them proceeded to get drunk. After the beer was gone, Talmadge pleaded for a demonstration of Nick’s power, which Nick was happy to provide. He intended to vaporize a stump in the back yard, but he stumbled, twisting his ankle and falling to the ground. When the blast was released, it took out the top of Mr. Callihan’s garage next door.
The next day, as he nursed his hangover amid his humiliation, Grace came to him and said, “I don’t think you should come back.”
***
He still sent most of his check home to Grace. They never divorced. And when his mother died soon after, he made certain Grace got the house.
***
The years blurred together. Ra and his colleagues fought communists and mad scientists, time-traveling despots and sentient plant life, undead creatures and–during the Reagan years–villagers in small South American countries, whose desire for freedom from oppression ran contrary to the USA’s alliances in the region. Nick quit for awhile after that (preceded by an argument with Sgt. Freedom, which almost came to blows), going freelance. He found out there wasn’t much money in the freelance life, at least until he started doing commercials for a major heating/air conditioning company. The money was good, but the first time he actually saw the spot–which revolved around a family trying to hire Ra to heat their home for the winter–he took the Legion up on their offer to return.
Over the years, he made it back to Radiance as often as he thought was reasonable, always with Grace’s permission, to spend a few hours with John. On his son’s thirteenth birthday, Nick showed up in a Legion shuttle and proceeded to give the kids in the neighborhood a ride across the country and back. As his son got older, during his high school and college years, Nick visited less, though he did make it back for Grace’s funeral (she was taken by cancer, just like Nick’s father), and John and Sara’s wedding. After 9/11, he and the rest of the Legion were too busy to look up for at least two years, tracking down every last terrorist they could find. Over the last few months, Nick had gone from executing Osama Bin Laden in a cave in Afghanistan to the battle with the Runellean Armada. He was told he would never use his power again. And he learned his son was dead.
No wonder he was feeling old.
5.
He walked up the asphalt road, past the turnoff to the boat ramp and the lodge, past the camp ground and the swimming area. He skirted the western edge of the Lake and followed the well-worn path through the woods. He saw no deer, no squirrels, no birds or raccoons. He stopped at the entrance of the largest cave. It was the first time he had stood there since the night Grace had gotten pregnant. The cave wasn’t large, certainly not by Kentucky State Park standards. But it was big enough. Nick cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Trick or Treat, scumbags!”
The only response was the echo of his own voice.
“Okay, one more time. You come out, or I come in. And you won’t like that very much,” Nick bluffed.
He heard a faint shuffling noises and soon spotted the two pinpricks of yellow light, growing larger as they approached. The Tast drone stopped six feet from the cave’s entrance, remaining well out of the direct sunlight. Its skin had the color and texture of a plucked chicken and it smelled like a dead animal. The Tast examined Nick, its head drifting from side to side on the tall stalk of a neck. Two tongues, flicked out of the mouth to caress the long, sharp teeth.
“We know you,” the drone said, its voice like wind whistling through bare-limbed trees.
“Good,” Nick said. “Then you know what I can do. You know who I can bring with me. And you should know that this town is under my protection.”
The head of the alien began to bob up and down. “Yes. And we have heard that you aren’t the...man...you used to be.”
“Really? Want to test that?”
Nick took a step into the cave. The Tast drone backed up, it’s head swaying from left to right.
“What happened? Did you crash nearby? Are you part of an advance force?” He took another step forward. “And where’s your queen?”
The drone stepped forward, hissing at Nick, reacting instinctively to the mention of the hive’s matriarch. Its tail swung around from its place of concealment behind the body, the razor tip slashing toward Nick’s legs. Nick leaped up and forward, slamming the drone to the ground, the smell of decaying flesh smothering him. He hammered his fists into the alien’s face again and again, until his knuckles were split and his hands were coated with the Tast’s thick, black blood.
He dragged the drone out of the cave, where its pale skin began to redden and smolder in the sunlight. As the alien screamed from its broken mouth, Nick returned to the cave’s entrance. In the distance, he saw dozens of the yellow eyes in the distance.
“You killed my son, you alien pricks. I’m coming back for every one of you and your queen.” He walked away from the cave, stepping over the now-smoking body of the drone. The screams had stopped. He made his way to the path and started back toward town.
***
Sara seemed a little surprised when he returned for lunch. “Hey, I said I’d be back.” Chelsea ran from her room, Shouting “Grandpa Fly Guy!” When he squatted down to hug her, he saw Sara looking at his scraped knuckles. She didn’t say anything.
After lunch (Campbell’s tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, Chelsea’s favorite), Nick carried his duffel bag to the back patio. He unzipped it, and dug past the helmet of Ra (which had been modified several times since its debut), the rolled up socks and underwear, the other components of his uniform, until he located a small device the size of an I-Pod. He activated it and punched in a seven digit code. The device beeped twice as the display lit up, revealing the face of a young woman in a domino mask. Her blond hair was short and spiky.
“Ra,” she said, without any warmth.
“How’s tricks, Myrtle?”
“Only code names on open channels. You know that.”
“Oops. Sorry.” Nick smiled. “How’s tricks, uh, Dangerous Ass?”
The young woman looked like she’d walked in on her father and sister making love. “Danger Lass! Danger. Lass.”
Nick slapped his forehead. “D’oh! My bad. Getting old, I guess.”
The blond girl absently ran a finger over a bump on her forehead. that makeup had failed to cover. “What do you want?”
“I want to talk to someone who doesn’t use acne cream. Who else is there?”
Myrtle turned red, sputtering something that Nick didn’t hear. The screen went dark for a moment. When it activated once more, Myrtle’s face had been replaced by the red, white and blue cowl of Sgt. Freedom. While the soldier looked decades younger than his true age, the effects of plastic surgery and alien skin care procedures could only do so much. He appeared to be only years older than Nick. “Ra. How are you feeling?”
“What are you doing there?” The Legion’s founder was usually only trotted out for publicity appearances these days. The leadership of the group rotated through the membership. Even Nick had chaired the Legion for a year in the late Eighties. It wasn’t the finest phaseof his career.
“The United Nations Security Commission is touring here today. You know, you quite upset Danger Lass.”
“She’ll grow out of it. Listen, I’m back in Kentucky, looking into what happened to my son.”
Sgt. Freedom adopted an expression of sympathy, honed through many years of wartime visits to families of dead soldiers. “A real tragedy, son.”
“Anyway, he was killed by a group of Tast drones, hidden in the caves a few miles from here. The Tast have nabbed a few other residents, too. You know what that means. They’re feeding their queen. They’re ready to expand their hive.”
Sgt. Freedom smiled contentedly, his eyes unfocused, his thoughts seemingly elsewhere.
“Hey, flag-face, you gettin’ all this?”
The old soldier looked directly into the screen. “I really have to run, Ra. Is there anything else?”
“Hell, yes! I want two assault shuttles, fully stocked. And one of the big guns, Hammersmith. Or Peace Officer. We’ll clean out the nest in no time. Save a few lives, maybe. Remember when that’s what we did?”
“Request denied,” Sgt. Freedom said. “I can’t justify the waste of resources. Besides, we’re monitoring the Tast situation. The Kentucky cell is small and poses an acceptable threat at this time.”
“Acceptable threat?” Nick said.
“Oh, and don’t use this channel again, unless you’re rescinding your latest resignation.”
“Wait! Let me talk to Hammersmith. Or The Corpse–”
The connection had been closed.
Nick was on his own.
To Be Concluded
Originally published in 2004 at Adventure Fiction Online.
Revised version © 2007 Mark Justice
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