Killing Capes (Book 2): Leaving New Haven Read online

  Zhu’s hand waving in front of Dwight’s face brought him back to attention, “Hey, shithead. Earth to hitman.”

  “Oh, hey,” he stammered, “Sorry, lost in thought there.” He grabbed for his phone and started typing a message.

  “Where’s your car? We need to get going if we’re heading to the airport.” Zhu pointed down the street to what Dwight figured was the direction of New Haven International.

  “Don’t have one,” Dwight corrected. He continued to type away on his phone. “And we’re not flying. Too expensive.”

  “What the fuck, Knolls? The site is halfway across the country. How do you expect us to get there?” His new partner obviously didn’t understand how the Referee worked.

  Dwight finished his task and put the phone away. He turned to Zhu’s puzzled face, “Look here, Mr. Void, this isn’t exactly the Guild at its finest here. We’re one step above vigilantism from the public’s standpoint, and there isn’t a budget to speak of.”

  Glitch interrupted, “Wait, you don’t get paid for this? What kind of idiot are you? There has to be some kind of expenses account.”

  “You greatly overestimate the forethought and dedication of Wulf to this little enterprise. Any expenses come directly out of my pocket. If he hasn’t already sent the resources, or I think I can get away with slipping them by under the radar, I pay for everything. That’s how it has always worked.”

  She crossed her arms, “Your job sucks.”

  Dwight started walking in the opposite direction of Zhu’s pointed finger, “Tell me about it. I just booked us four tickets on the next bus to Sierra Grande, but we’ll have to move if we’re going to catch it.”

  “Four?” she questioned, following his pace.

  He patted the rocket launcher perched on her shoulders, “Sure; did you expect me to stow this with the rest of the baggage?”

  It was a twelve-block walk from the diner to the bus terminal on the city’s west side. Void complained the entire way. At first, the complaints centered on Dwight’s reckless and sloppy methods. Then, after a time, his cantankerous ranting switched to Guild politics. Finally, as they entered the dilapidated station, he completed his rambling about the lack of morality of today’s Powers. Dwight and Glitch remained silent the entire way, not wanting to fuel his frustration.

  They boarded their cross-country bus without drawing so much as a single skeptical eye. They took their seats: the two Capes on one side, Dwight and the extra seat across the aisle.

  Zhu broke down and asked, “No one is going to stop you from getting on the bus with military hardware?”

  Dwight leaned back in his seat, resting the weapon in the aisle seat beside him, “These people aren’t heroes, Void. They assume that if something was amiss, your kind would swoop in and stop it.”

  He tipped his wide-brimmed hat over his eyes. Its pink floral print clashed horribly with his brown jacket and jeans, but it was the cheapest he could find at the terminal. It would keep the sun out of his eyes, which was all he really cared about. Being stylish was never one of Dwight’s priorities; he left that to the people in spandex costumes.

  “Truth is, your existence makes being nefarious very easy as long as I don’t wear tights.” And with that, Dwight let the bus lull him to sleep, full and happy to be back on the job.

  The journey took the better part of two days. They only stopped briefly at the end of the first day to switch drivers. Very little was said between the three as mile after mile passed by. Dwight spent the majority of the time reading the rocket launcher’s manual from his phone. He had even begun to affectionately refer to the weapon as “Ivan.”

  Every few hours, Glitch pulled an unlabeled bar of brown gelatin from her pack and devoured it. It was after the fourth of these miniature meals that Dwight found the desire to ask her about it. He leaned over the launcher and into the aisle, “Frequent snacker?”

  She tucked the empty wrapper into the rear flap of the seat in front of hers, “They’re the only fuel this body will handle. It can’t process normal food. A friend developed these after I got sick of spending six hours a day hooked up to a charging station. She even made a few flavors for me.”

  Dwight pondered this for a few seconds before asking, “Your friend, what’s she like?”

  There was hesitation before she answered, “Batshit crazy, but brilliant. Lives out on the docks.”

  That was enough; Dwight had suspected that a cyborg like Glitch would require the mind of a real mad scientist, and as he’d guessed, they knew the same one. He rolled up his jacket sleeve. “This is also one of Ellis’s. I didn’t know she could do a whole body. How long have you been seeing her?”

  “Only a few years,” she inspected the arm. “I’ve been artificial since I was 15. This is…” she thought for a moment, “…Mark 6. I stopped going to my last supplier when the bodies starting looking more like sex dolls than real people.”

  “And you decided to become a Cape out of some dream of helping people?”

  She scoffed, “Fuck no. These things are expensive and only last a few years at most. Even the most advanced model I’ve ever had broke down eventually. Why do you think they call me ‘Glitch’?”

  She held out her hand in front of him for a few seconds before it began minutely twitching. Gradually, the shaking intensified, before she pulled it back and massaged it with her other hand. “The nerve connections fail, and I’m left a shaking mess until I can get another body. The Guild offered to finance my combat chassis as long as I was on their payroll.”

  “And I’m guessing our mutual friend is giving you a hefty discount as long as she sees your condition as a challenge.”

  She nodded, “You’ve got it. Ellis is a real piece of work. I’m still not sure whose side she’s on in all this.”

  Dwight replaced his sleeve, “Her own.” He decided to leave it at that.

  The remainder of the trip was uneventful as the fields and flat plains of the Midwest gave way to the rugged badlands of Sierra Grande. The rural wasteland had once been part of an urban sprawl that surrounded a bustling metropolis, but that had been an age ago. Some long-forgotten disaster had transformed the entire valley into an empty desert. Perhaps, Dwight thought, Wulf remembered what became of the city at the center of Sierra Grande, but it likely would do him no good to ask. The tyrant liked to keep his secrets.

  Their bus stopped as scheduled for fuel at the lone gas station along the highway that cut through the crater. The huge “Fuel for All” banner blew limply in the hot afternoon air as they stepped down under the overhang. Dwight’s confidence in his floral hat purchase was growing by the second. Looking out, all he could see was parched, cracked dirt interrupted by the occasional crumbling structure.

  “What a shithole,” blurted Void.

  Dwight tipped the launcher to Glitch, who took the cumbersome load, “Yep, perfect place for a hidden base.” He started walking away from the station and into the wasteland. His companions followed closely behind.

  As they walked, Dwight dug through the briefcase, looking for the map that Wulf’s satellites made for them. Finding the glossy paper at last, he pulled it free and held it against the sandy wind. From what he could see, they were still a few hours away from the hill he had marked as their objective. They trudged forward, Dwight and Glitch mostly silent as Void griped on, his elderly rambling their only company in the harsh badland.

  By the time they finally reached Dwight’s goal, the stars had begun to come out with the setting of the cruel sun. The temperature plummeted from uncomfortably hot, to bearable, before becoming shockingly cold in the span of an hour. The only advantage they could find of trudging through a post-apocalyptic wasteland, as it turned out, was a surprising ease with which one could find scattered lumber. It took no time for them to build a large enough heap to construct a fire.

  Dwight searched his pockets for a match while Glitch did the same. Both turned up nothing before Zhu groaned audibly and stepped in front of the pi
le. The vortex of energy churning securely within his eye socket increased its rotation briefly before expanding outward over a four-inch diameter. A single ray of light burst from the portal and blasted the lumber, instantly igniting it into a roaring bonfire. The old man took a seat next to the blazing stack while the others stared in awe at the energy field, which had already retreated back into its host’s ocular cavity.

  “Haven’t seen anything like that before,” Dwight said, holding his hands up to the flames. “Is that the extent of what creepy purple portal can do, or should I watch myself?”

  Void gave him a frustrated grimace, “How about you mind your damned business and I’ll manage the dimensional anomaly, like I always have?”

  Glitch joined in, “He’s just asking so he knows what we’re capable of in a fight. We’re supposed to be working together.”

  That must have gotten through, “Fine, I don’t know. I’ve had this for forty years now and every time I think I’ve seen everything it can do, it does something new. Last time I thought I’d figured it out, I ended up here.”

  “You mean New Haven?” Dwight asked.

  “…I mean this timeline,” his voice became so quiet Dwight was unsure if he’d heard correctly. “I came here thinking I could change the past to be something better. I thought I’d succeeded, but I was wrong.”

  Glitch tossed a few more scraps on the fire, “What happened?”

  “I watched myself die. That shouldn’t be possible if I’m still here. It took me a while, but I reason that I couldn’t have gone back in time if the past me died; I must have gone sideways to another timeline.”

  “Well, you’re still here, so it can’t be all bad,” Glitch tried to offer in support.

  The vortex’s rotation intensified, as if the memories were triggering it. “You try watching yourself burned to ashes in front of you, then live with the fear that any second you could blink out of existence, and see what it does for your sunny disposition. I remember what it was like when I should have been a young hero saving the day, surviving. Something changed. I lived that day in my time, but he didn’t. And I’m left with no idea why except ‘shit happens.’”

  His words hung in the air for a time. It was Dwight who finally spoke up, “Alright, that’s enough existential crises for one evening. I’m going to sleep.”

  He removed his jacket and folded it into a makeshift pillow. Setting it against the rocket launcher, Dwight laid back and listened to the soft crackle of the flames against the silence of the forsaken ruins.

  Three

  Dwight woke to the rising desert sun. He rolled over and stared into the smoldering remains of their fire from the night before. The gray ashes still produced what little heat and smoke they had left, but the lively flame was now just as dead as the wasteland around them. After a few moments, he sat up, looking for his partners. Glitch was curled up a few feet away, her head resting on her backpack. He found Zhu already up, sitting against the remains of a concrete wall a dozen feet away from the camp. Dwight dragged himself to his feet, his muscles stiff from the poor sleeping conditions.

  Slipping the jacket over his shoulders, he approached the time traveler, “Early morning, old man?”

  “Don’t sleep anymore. Haven’t in years; something to do with my powers,” he responded, his single eye never leaving the horizon.

  Dwight turned toward the light, removing a pair of cheap plastic sunglasses from his coat pocket. He put them on, and began trying to assess their direction. “Sounds convenient; you make a good watchman.”

  “Not really; just means I have too much time to think.” He almost cracked a smile. “You’ll get there, if you live as long as I have.”

  Across their makeshift camp, Glitch began to stir. Before she opened her robotic eyes, she was already digging through her bag for one of her nutrient bars. When her hands found one, she tore into and consumed it in seconds. She casually tossed the wrapper aside. It blew away in the morning breeze and rolled off into the wasteland.

  “That’s littering, Ms. Hero,” Dwight called over.

  She sat up, her hair a total mess against her groggy face. “Ain’t no one protecting this hellhole. Fuck it.” She yawned.

  Dwight walked past her to the rocket launcher, “Nonsense.” With an audible grunt, he hefted the weapon over his shoulder, “if that were true, I wouldn’t need this today.”

  A few minutes later, the three trudged on north into the badlands. In the distance, the silhouettes of fallen skyscrapers materialized in the morning glare. The lesser structures surrounding them cast an eerie atmosphere of the calamity that had emptied the city of Sierra Grande. It wasn’t long before they found themselves following the patches of ancient broken asphalt into the ruins. The abandoned streets remained recognizable in spite of the decades of erosion they had suffered.

  Dwight turned to Zhu, “Do you know what happened here?”

  He shook his head, “No one remembers. These ruins weren’t even here in the timeline I was from. Just a myth, not even a physical place by then.”

  Eventually, they came upon the remains of a small office building. By then, Dwight had grown tired of dragging his heavy weapon and gave it over to Glitch, who carried it effortlessly. Beyond the shattered façade, Dwight could see the structure of four floors beneath the fallen roof. He pointed to it, “That should be close enough.” He pulled one of the maps from the briefcase. His finger traced a line across the page before he stopped a block away from the office in front of them. “They’ll be coming right over the next building.”

  “How long?” Glitch asked.

  He checked his phone. This deep in the badlands, he didn’t have a signal. Thankfully, he didn’t need one for the time. “We’ve got about two hours, if Wulf’s estimates are correct.”

  “Those estimates didn’t come from Wulf,” Zhu corrected. “They were provided by the Guild.”

  They made their way cautiously into the building, their path made precarious by the fallen debris and concrete. All around them, the discarded remnants of whatever businesses once resided here lay in their way. Cracked monitors filled derelict work cubicles lined with hastily forgotten personal touches. An occasional still-recognizable photo or desk toy reminded Dwight that whoever had worked here probably wasn’t still alive to miss them.

  Glitch found the entrance to the fire escape first, but it was Dwight who tried the handle. There was no give to the door, despite the steel latch moving freely. He pressed his body against the solid barrier, but still couldn’t push it open.

  She put her hand between him and the obstacle. “Allow me,” she said, guiding him a dozen feet back.

  He gave a courteous bow, “If you insist.”

  Passing him the launcher, she squared off with the barricade for a few seconds before bursting into a sprint, her artificial limbs propelling her forward with impossible speed. She leaped and collided with its surface like a blonde cannonball. Instantly, the steel folded inward, the hinges screaming before tearing loose. Glitch landed on her feet in the now-open doorway as the twisted metal fell into the stairwell. A cloud of stale air drifted into the room with them as she dusted her hands. There was a rumble from the dilapidated framework. They exchanged panicked glances before the shaking stopped.

  Zhu had a disapproving scowl instead of his usual irritable one, “You could have brought the entire building down on us.”

  Glitch adjusted herself, brushing the dirt from her sleeves, “Sure, but we needed to get through.” Her hands produced a small cloud of dust around her.

  Dwight moved past his partners to examine the newly-opened pathway. He checked for what had been blocking the unlocked door. “Hey, guys.”

  They stepped over and examined the obstruction. A heap of bones choked the stairway, the remains of whoever had been working on the upper levels of the building during the catastrophe. This had been their final resting place, trapped behind the stairway access in this abandoned office. No one said anything more about the sc
ene. They worked their way through the unexpected tomb in silence, carrying their gear over the piles and up the stairs. Every few steps, a foot would land on bone, sending an echoing crack up the fire escape to reverberate over and over.

  At last, they found the landing of the fourth floor and with it, the open sky above. The morning sun rose higher by the minute, bringing with it the hot desert winds. It made a screaming sound as it whipped through the steel skeletons of the towers of Sierra Grande. They set up at the north edge of the building, facing out between two sagging skyscrapers. The structures hung out over remnants of the street below, creating a huge metal arch.

  Zhu grabbed a filthy office chair and had a seat, staring out into the apocalyptic landscape, “How much longer? I want to get the hell out of here.”

  Dwight had already begun adjusting the settings on Ivan for the distance and conditions of the ruins. “Looks like we should be only a few more minutes.” He was thankful that the last scraps of Lia’s Russian lesson were still clinging to the corners of his mind. He could just make out enough to read the digital viewfinder of the weapon. At this point, the language felt like a distant memory, as if it had not been used in years.

  “How many shots do you have?” Zhu asked.

  “Just the one,” he tapped the tube and pointed at the number on the launcher’s side display.

  Disbelief covered his face, “You didn’t think to bring more? How unprofessional can you get?”

  “It’s not like I could go to the store and buy ammo for a discontinued Russian rocket launcher.” Dwight worked himself into position as he tipped the weapon on its nose and placed his shoulder against it. “Besides, I won’t miss. You really can’t with these things.”

  Zhu continued his rant, “And if you do, what then? We came all this way for nothing; a wasted operation. How are you going to explain that to the Guild?”

  Dwight shrugged, “It won’t be the first time I’ve had to improvise on the fly. It’s not my favorite thing, but I suppose that’s why I have the title and the de-facto leadership here.”