Incidental Superhero
Part 9
“Three!”
I pull the trigger and hold it for a beat, sending a burst of three bullets downrange, let go, slightly adjust the stock on my shoulder, and pull again. Rinse and repeat, just like my father taught me, shooting his rickety AK47 in the field behind our house on the far outskirts of Smolensk, a lifetime ago.
“Moy malen’kiy voin,” he called me. His little warrior. He imagined some impossible military career for me and was so disappointed when I became a physicist.
Would you be proud of me now Papa? I ask no one as the bullets stream out of the barrel of my rifle in tight groups, leaving tiny black dots all over the front of the target, like God’s invisible hole punch.
I’m about to reload when it begins to happen. A faint glow lights the black orifices created by the bullets and grows steadily brighter until plasmodic energy spews out of every hole, the foul nuclear demon testing its prison.
The intensity increases from within, turning the missile casing red hot, then white, and finally into fine vapor, revealing the central conflagration in all its fell beauty, a small, expanding sphere, not a meter in diameter and made of pure, unbridled energy – an infant sun born over the Hudson.
I swing around toward Henry and yell out in surprise.
“Henry?!”
Henry is frozen in space falling off the side of the support tower, his eyes wide in terror, mouth agape mid scream. His rifle has made it to the asphalt below and I can see it down there shattered into pieces.
Willing the laundry list of questions from my mind I race into action, throwing my rifle to the ground and bending down to grab Henry by the ankle. Thankfully, as we had encountered dozens of times over the last few years, people frozen in middair can be freely manipulated as though in zero gravity. Objects, once we touched them at least, did not seem to conserve their momentum, although we’d never tested that theory on people.
With an easy tug I swept Henry back onto the support tower and flipped him over so his back was to the steel, forcibly flattening his body up against the flat surface. Then I waited, unsure how to bring him back from stasis. I took a look and saw that the orb of nuclear fire had doubled in size already.
Henry wakes mid-scream. I look down at him, staring back at me utterly confused, and grab him by the forearm.
“What just happened?”
I pull him to his feet and he wobbles up worryingly. “We need to go, now.” I see him see the miniature sun floating where the missile used to be, shoot him an “oh shit” look, and the two of us bolt toward the exit.
I’ve always felt at ease in high places, and the top of a bridge is no different. I must have gotten several meters down when I hear him call my name.
I turn around and there he is at the top of the cable, teetering up there like an injured baby bird. “I can’t.” He chirps helplessly.
I try to be forceful about this, I really do. “Come on!” I yell and then wave him down toward me like some Hollywood war hero. But I can see it plain as day, written all over his shaking limbs. “Come on.” I say it again, but I know he isn’t making it down that cable.
I also know, almost immediately, that there is only one alternative.
“Get out of here. I’m OK. I’m OK with this. Just, if you see my family.” He’s saying something but I’m not hearing it – all the blood has rushed into my head in terrible anticipation. I’m striding heavily back up towards him now. I take only the slightest notice of a brief roar and a flash of light, but don’t even slow down.
I’m nearly beside him and I hear what he says next, loud and clear. “When you see my family, tell them I tried my best.”
My little warrior. I wipe away some tears and kiss him hard on the lips, hoping not for the last time. “Do you trust me, Henry?” I ask.
But it’s basically a rhetorical question because I’m pushing him as hard as I can before I finish the sentence.
“What?”
No time to answer. He takes his hands off the handrails to try and resist, but that just makes it easier for me, and with one final, horrible push, he is in the air again, this time falling, fast.
I see him seeing me as his face shrinks away toward the ground and I prepare myself for what I had to do if my gambit failed, if whatever power guiding us failed to save him. My heart beat in my throat as he kept falling, his body flipping around, flailing in mid air, until he faced the pavement. Still he fell and for a moment I knew I had killed him and I readied myself to follow. I stepped one foot up onto the handrail and was about to step up with the other when he stopped cold. He couldn’t be more than a foot from the ground, but he was frozen, the soles of his shoes facing up at me.
I let out an exultant yell and began racing down the main cable, taking long gazelle steps, hardly touching the steel, stabilizing myself actively with the wire handrails, my heart overcome with relief. Beside me the fireball grew stutterstop and by the time I reached the road the edge of the energy was no more than a body’s length away from the bridge.
I jumped to the asphalt from the cable, sprinted to Henry and found him frozen in space, his face only millimeters from the ground. I sent a silent thank you to whatever power we were tapped into and floated him over to the passenger side door of the van, flipping him over and cramming him as best as I could into the seat, strapped him in, slammed the door and raced around to the drivers side.
The engine started immediately and I peeled out, racing down the length of the bridge toward New Jersey and the primary evacuation point. Behind us, the expansion of the explosion increased in speed, and began to consume the edge of the bridge.
Out of the corner of my eye I see Henry stirring in his seat, his head lolling around on his neck. “Henry! You’re awake!” Except, he wasn’t, more like briefly semi-conscious. He passes out again after looking in the rear view and when I do the same I see an epic wave of destruction gaining on us quickly, consuming the bridge as we drive.
The suspended roadway begins to buckle and shake and I struggle to keep control of the van. I have the gas petal pinned to the floor under my foot and I force the boxy delivery van to break 100 miles per hour.
Ahead of us I see the bridge’s end, the path of the highway cut between the massive rise of the palisades, leading into New Jersey, down south towards the meadowlands or northwest, further inland. The evacuation point is about 20 miles northwest of the city, and I need only look in the mirror to know we won’t make it, not by a long shot. The crest of the explosion is catching up to us. Whatever power we had been relying on for so long was at its limit. Time was up.
As I get to the end of the bridge and onto solid ground I see a thin lane leading to a padlocked gate maybe 100 feet ahead. The sign reads “Service Tunnel”, and the road veers slightly rightwards towards the thick stone bluffs of the Palisade cliffs. Without thinking, I get into that lane and smash through the gate, the padlock lodging itself in the windshield, send pellets of shattered safety glass and torrential wind into the van, the maneuver eating a lot of speed.
Ahead I can see the entrance to a small tunnel. The structure seems wide enough for cars but it isn’t intended for them. Instead it has a wooden front with a locked, person sized door in the center.
The roar of the explosion is audible now, as is the beginning of the heat. Inside the cabin of the van the temperature is rising and the glass side windows are shaking from the noise and behind us death closes in.
I check my seatbelt, double check Henry’s at a glance, and then, lining the front of the van up with the entrance to the tunnel, I accelerate. I have no idea what’s behind that entrance, whether the van will even make it through, but I have to try.
The impact rattles my bones, shaving off the sideview windows and implanting shards of wood in what remains of the windshield – but the van slams through the barrier, shattering old dry wood and hurtling forward into the tunnel.
Inside it’s just wide enough for the van, but the impact activates the airbags and I can’t see anything. Still we need to get as deep into this tunnel as we can before armageddon catches up behind us, so I keep my foot on the gas, and the van ricochets against the tight confines of the walls, racing forward blindly.
Seconds later, from behind us, there comes a massive sonic assault as the fireball hits the entrance. At the same moment the walls get too tight and the van begins to slow down forcibly, sparks flying as metal shrieks against stone.
The van finally comes to a halt just as the tunnel entrance collapses somewhere back where we came. Eventually, after an eternity, the terrible roaring and rumbling stops, in the silence there is only our meek breathing and darkness.
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