Auxiliary Hero Corps: Collection of books one, two, and three in the Auxiliary Hero Corps series. (Superheroes Of The Hero Union Corps), Page 2

  “How are these two doing, anyway?” Hippie glances over at me and Daphnia. “Are they going to make it to the big show?”

  “Is anyone ever ready? But they’ll muddle through and make it to the home stretch,” says Smokey, turning to look back at Daphnia and I. He likes to talk like he’s a baseball manager when he’s assessing us, and I think he must watch too much sports on TV. “If they’re lucky, they might even earn a Super Hero name, even a nemesis of their own someday.”

  I take the opportunity to speak up. “I intend to make it out of the Auxiliary Corps and into the Hero Corps someday.”

  “A voyage should last a lifetime,” says the Old Hippie, turning to face me. “Maybe we’ll sail off the edge of the world before this is all over.”

  “What does that mean?” says Smokey. “I can never figure out anything you say.”

  Daphnia interrupts. “All right, boys, I’m going on ahead. It’s way too cold for me to be standing around listening to two old men talking all night.” She shakes her head, and I assume her next words are directed at Smokey. “I can’t believe I asked you out to have some fun. What was I thinking?”

  She walks over to me and her hands reach for my jacket, which she zips up to my neck. She looks me in the eye. “It’s cold out here. We can’t have you catching a bug.”

  The two older heroes pay no attention to her, and I watch as she walks down an even darker city block than the one we came from.

  “Should I go with her?” I ask.

  “She’s a big girl,” says the Old Hippie. “She can take care of herself.”

  “Booster Rocket. The Four-Hour Energy Drink! And Your Lady Will Love It Too!” exclaims a billboard above us, on top of an old cold-water flat.

  Smokey resumes his conversation with Hippie, from back before I interrupted them. “Like I was saying, I really don’t want to fight with my old nemesis anymore, and I hope he never shows up.” He’s lying. “It’s too much hassle. Always having to look over your shoulder. It’s more work than it’s worth.”

  “That’s what the man wants you to think,” says Hippie. “Someday he’ll be back. It’s your fate. We are almost…”

  As Hippie continues with his usual prophesying, Smokey listens,Smokey listens to friend, and hee believes what his friend is saying. He needs to, because he needs to believe in the Hero Code. .

  Daphnia had already left and the two decide to follow her.At last we start moving again.

  It couldn’t can’t have been more than three minutes since she Daphnia walked off on her own. She’s left our usual route though, and might’ve moved down an alley. It’s darker than it should be, even for this time of the night, and Smokey tells me to slow down while we wait for the Old Hippie to catch up. The older hero doesn’t see as well as the two of us at night.

  While I wait, I call out for Daphnia. But there’s no response. I fear we let her get too far away from us. I’m beginning to wish Smokey hadn’t let her out of his sight.

  There are times when we don’t need to speak, and this is one of them. I push back my sleeve and take off the first tattoo on my right arm. The small pistol always feels good in my hand. It’s like the snake: steel when it animates, and cold to the touch. Not like the others, which are always warm. I like the compact design of my Beretta Tomcat because it fits so easily when it’s wrapped around the front of my forearm.

  After a few blocks, I spot someone lying on the ground, and I run up to them. It goes against my training and my gut, but I know its Daphnia, and I want to help her. When I get closer I see she’s lying on her back. She’s still alive, thank goodness, and she points her finger to a building on the other side.

  That’s when I see him. He’s standing in a corner. He’s wearing a grubby sweater and a black woolen cap, but the cap is too small for his head. He smokes a cigarette, and he clearly isn’t afraid of me, even though I have the Tomcat out and pointed right at him.

  “Move where—to where I can see you better. I want to see your hands,” I say, and straighten my arms. I can hear a wheezing sound coming from Daphnia. Her breathing is ragged, but I can’t look at her right now.

  “No, square cat, I don’t think so,” says the man. His voice isn’t ancient like the Old Hippie’s or Smokey’s. It’s young, like mine.

  I wish I could get to Spike, but I’m wearing a jacket and a shirt, and Spike can’t get free until I expose my skin to the cold air.

  “I saw you, Walt Whitman. Pawing at the meat, grubbing for all the young boys,” says my new enemy, spouting off a few lines of poetry. A few moments of standing there have helped my eyes, and I can make him out better. I feel that if I could pull the trigger, I might have a chance of hitting him with a lucky shot.

  “While we walk through the streets, we might find shade among the trees, but we are lonely, so lonely, especially the boys amongst men,” continues from the man on the other side of the alley. He throws his cigarette aside, and I can see the weapon he holds in his hand. It’s a pistol, an old-fashioned Luger. “Why don’t you wait patiently for me, Walt?”

  That does it. I can’t move. I want to squeeze the trigger of my own pistol, but his verse has frozen me.

  I hear Daphnia. Weakly, she says, “Don’t listen. Don’t let his words . . . They’ll poison your ears.”

  Too late. I’m already in his poem’s grip. I can’t move. I want to fight, but I can’t. Somehow I manage to pull my pistol’s trigger, but his poem throws off my shot. I miss.

  “Too late for you, Walt,” he says. “You should’ve shot at me sooner. Maybe then you would’ve had a chance.” He pauses, and then starts with his poetry again. “We drop to our knees; we wait for an America that’s forever gone. One that’ll never be. An America without a chicken in every pot.”

  My body doesn’t listen to me. There is nothing I can do. I’m solid, and I drop. I’m on my knees and I listen to him. I can’t even squeeze the trigger of the Tomcat again. It’s too difficult. I must be still, and listen to his insane poetry.

  He’s almost on top of me when he says, “Home to our duplexes, condos, and our mini-mansions, where the lights will go permanently out.” He raises the arm that holds the small pistol. I finally know the villain. I realize who it is. It’s Hippie’s nemesis, the Beat, and I know he’s going to kill me.

  I need to rip off my coat if I’m going to survive. I want to help Daphnia, I want to help myself, but to do those things I need to get off my coat so I can release Spike. He can help me in this fight. But if I don’t do it soon, I’ll end up just like Daphnia. Or worse.

  I’m going to fight. I know I’m strong. I start to get off my jacket. He moves toward me from the back of the alley. He’s smaller than me, and fast. I still have the Tomcat in my hand, and I know I need to squeeze the trigger, but before I can fire my weapon, the Beat snaps two fingers—and the sound knocks me backward and onto the ground.

  I’ve lost the pistol, but I’m free for a moment, and I reach out to try and find it. It’s a mistake I shouldn’t have made. I should be freeing Spike instead.

  I try again to unzip my jacket. It doesn’t matter how cold it is at night, I still know better than to go out on patrol and not be prepared. I should have had the jacket open to begin with, and I’m sure Smokey will have something to say to me about getting caught in a bad situation. That is, if I survive.

  “What are you doing, my pretty? This isn’t Kansas anymore,” the Beat says. “Toto is tucked safely away. There’s no doggy to run at Dorothy’s side on the yellow brick road.”

  He knows about Spike. He’s standing over me now, and I can’t save myself.

  It’s Smokey who saves me. The man-bear charges at full speed. The force of Smokey’s tackle throws the Beat backward, and together they splash into a puddle of rainwater. Smokey has the Beat in his grasp, and his paws are starting to get at the villain.

  I get to my feet. I know I need to help Smokey in this fight. He isn’t as fast as Daphnia or me—although I’m surprised by just how fast th
is old bear can still move when he needs to.

  The Old Hippie joins us in the fight. His style is different than other heroes I know. He tries to daze and confuse his opponent. He uses images and sounds as his weapons, sending forth a generated psychedelic hallucination.

  He spreads his arms apart, and fills the whole alley with pulsating sights and sounds. One time I heard him describe his powers as a heroic kind of LSD. He called it his Loud Sensory Disturbance, which made me laugh. But this is the first time I’ve ever been inside his psychedelic storm, and I know I’m going to get a good blast of it. I need to get to Spike and forget about the handgun.

  His LSD floats around us. His power not only slows the Beat, it also slows Smokey, who had gained the upper paw. Unfortunately this means Smokey’s advantage has been lost, as the Old Hippie’s LSD has neutralized all of us.

  I float in and out of the Hippie’s melody. It takes me a while, but I’m finally able to remove my shirt. I touch the tattoo, and Spike jumps to life.

  He bites at the hallucinations around him, not knowing what they are, but Spike is a Super Hero in his own way, and I know he’ll keep up his attack until he finally gets to the dazed poet. When that happens, the stunned villain will no longer have the ability to fight.

  It happens sooner than I thought. Spike’s large jaws bite into the man’s leg. I can see the blood spilling onto the bricks. Spike’s attack negates the effects of the Hippie’s trance, and the Beat snaps out of his daze. His first reaction is to strike the dog with his fist, but Spike’s jaws are too powerful. The Beat won’t gain his freedom by punching my dog.

  I find the Tomcat. I realize that we have the chance to finish off the Beat once and for all. My weapons have the ability to do so. Around me, LSD twists, swirls, and flows. The Old Hippie can only hold the LSD in the air for so long, and his power is beginning to weaken. The blackness of the alley is begging to creep back in. Smokey is waking up, moving once again toward our opponent.

  The Beat sees he’s outnumbered, but he’s occupied with fighting off my dog. I’m now close enough to shoot him. I raise the gun and take careful aim. I’m going to finish this villain off forever.

  I begin to squeeze the trigger—in fact, I think I’ve already shot the bullet—when I’m knocked sideways by a blow from a large paw. My gun goes off, and I miss my target. I fall onto the damp bricks of the alley and look to see who hit me hard enough to knock me over. I’m surprised to see Smokey standing over me. He’s still full of fur, but he’s returning to his normal ugly self.

  “What did you do that for?” I ask. “I could’ve killed him!”

  I want to raise the Tomcat one more time, but I can tell by Smokey’s face that he doesn’t want me to.

  “It’s not our fight. Put away the gun,” he says. “Stay here and protect yourself. I’ll take care of Daphnia.”

  “But,” I say.

  “He isn’t your nemesis, Val. He’s Hippie’s.” Smokey goes over to Daphnia, and takes a knee next to her. “There isn’t anything else for us to do. Someday you’ll understand. When you have an arch of your own. I’m going to help Daphnia, but you stay next to me.”

  He looks over at me, and says loudly, “And call off Spike.”

  “It isn’t a fair fight,” I say. “We could kill him.”

  Smokey scowls at me. “Shut your mouth. It’s the code. The Code of the Hero Corps. It isn’t about being fair. It’s about following the rules. Now call off your dog.”

  The Hippie is finished and exhausted, but so is the Beat. The two foes are drained; they have nothing left to continue the fight.

  “Come here, Spike,” I call, then turn my attention back to Smokey. “I’m not a hero,” I say to him as I stand up. “And I don’t know how I’m ever going to become one with you around.”

  “You’re going to be a hero someday, like those few who are lucky enough,” says Smokey. He’s trying to help Daphnia, but he doesn’t know what to do. “Someday you’ll hang on to the code, because sometimes it’s the only thing you got. It’s the hero’s code that keeps us going, even if we are only in the Auxiliary Corps.”

  I hear the Beat laugh as he leaves us in the alley. He slowly walks away. There’s no rush.

  * * *

  By the time the paramedics get to us, Daphnia lies dead in a puddle of dirty water. The Beat has defeated us. The Hippie stands patiently beside me and our fallen comrade. We’ll wait for the police to arrive. There will be questions, and we’ll have answers, and hopefully, they won’t ask the important question: Why did you let your friend die? Because I know we don’t have a good answer.

  I want to take Daphnia’s arms and pull her out of the dirty water, take her home, or somewhere, but the paramedics are still going to try to take her to the hospital. I’ll stay with her as long as she’s here.

  As I wait, I realize that I don’t understand what’s going on. Why is the Beat so young? Shouldn’t he be older than Hippie?

  I understand one thing though: I’m going to kill the Beat the next time I see him. His heart will stop beating because of me. I don’t care what Smokey says. Even he isn’t going to stop me.

  Book One Chapter Two

  Excerpt from My Observations of the Superheroes of the 20th Century

  By

  Steven Luther Hoffman

  Section 18 The Sixties – The Anti-Hero

  My fellow scholars often tell me that the Golden Age of the Superheroes is the 1940’s. When I hear them say that, I always reply to them by saying the same thing: “While there might be some truth in your statement . . .”

  I always point to another decade. “It was during the 60’s when our idea of the hero changed forever.”

  That’s the decade when almost everything we knew about heroes took on a new and radical form. I like to quote the memorable cinematic traitor Cypher, in the 1999 film The Matrix, who says to Neo: ‘Buckle your seat belts, Dorothy, ’cause Kansas is going bye-bye.’ And so are my observations of the heroes from this turbulent decade.

  Never before has a culture changed as much as did the culture of heroes in the second half of the twentieth century. While it might be true that a generation of heroes had never been so pampered, well fed, and lacking for wants, from clothing and housing, the heroes born of this time were also generally overexposed to television. There were many failed heroes who came from this time period: The Grub, The Garbage Can Family, The Domestic Welder, and Commando Nanny. Yet there were some successful heroes that came into their own during this decade, and were a real change from those heroes of the past. The most notable ones were Dr. Marcus Von Pepper, M.D.; the flamboyant police heroes, the Hawaiian Hang Five; the lighthearted caped duo of Gowan and Morton; and, finally, The Hippie, who would later become known in our time as The Old Hippie.

  The Old Hippie was an army vet who was wounded during the early years of the Vietnam conflict. He didn’t discover his powers until after he returned home from his military duty…

  * * *

  “I’m surprised we haven’t seen the Hippie yet,” says Smokey.

  I’m secretly hoping he won’t find us. I want to get another a chance at the Beat on my own. I’m walking along with Smokey, and I realize what I need to do. It didn’t matter how many nights we met up or we went out on our patrols. I know the Beat won’t come out until one of us is on our own, vulnerable. That’s how he had attacked Daphnia earlier, but I didn’t care.

  “Smokey, we could separate. I could go on by myself, and maybe he’ll finally come out and fight us. We could be as old as Hippie before we get a chance to fight the Beat again if we keep going on like this.”

  Just as I say it, I look and I see the Old Hippie, faithful as a geyser at Yellowstone. There he is, and I’m disappointed. He shuffles toward us. I stare at him as he comes our way. He’s crossing Ash Street next to a corner bar and some of the local patrons are standing out in front smoking cigarettes. A few of them have brought their drinks outside with them as well. When a cop comes by later on, I
know he’ll usher those with their drinks back inside.

  The Old Hippie passes by them with his slow, shuffling stride. Night after night Hippie follows the same route to meet up with us. One of the women standing with a group of young men offers him a dollar. With his shabby looks, she probably thinks he’s homeless.

  The woman and her friends start to laugh, and I can hear her say, “Listen, bum, if you want this dollar you’re going to have to dance for it.”

  This sometimes happens to the Hippie, but he doesn’t care what people say or if they’re being mean. He’s not the kind of guy to get too upset.

  We’re standing in front of the old Vogue theatre. A movie hasn’t been shown on its screen in years, and the abandoned movie palace gives me the creeps.

  I’m watching Hippie, but Smokey is still talking to me about my suggestion. “I keep thinking about the night when we lost Daphnia, and it reminds me of those stories the Vietnam vets told me when I worked at the VA hospital. Did I ever tell you how the Viet Cong used to kill off green American soldiers while they were on patrol in the jungle?”

  “So you weren’t always a part of the Auxiliary Corps?” I ask. I’m not paying as much attention to Smokey as I should; I’m still keeping my eye on the Old Hippie down the street. Out of the corner of my eye I can see Smokey turning to look at his friend as well.

  “Nope, I tried the civilian life just like everyone else. I was out of high school, and I got a job as an orderly in the veteran’s hospital. That’s where I met Hippie. He told me stories about the war.”

  “If he’s truly a peace-loving hippie . . . wouldn’t he have been against the war?”

  “Sure, but those were different times. There were a lot of soldiers who marched for peace when they returned home. It hasn’t always been the sameway it is today. We treat our veterans better now than we did back then. It must have been difficult for him returning back to a country of anger and hate.”

  I want to make sure the Hippie is okay. I don’t think he has seen us yet. He’s distracted by the patrons in front of the bar.