When you've hit bottom, there's one place left to go...

A Prometheans Adventure

by Erin Halfelven and Lainie Lee

 
Chapter 4 - Nuclear Winter
 

"Hey," Vince yelled from the couch. "Is there more beer in there?"

No one answered. The 'family' room, an enclosed and air-conditioned patio as wide as the house, held two couches angled to share the wide screen television, a scattering of chairs and beanbags, a dining table covered with a partially assembled 7000 piece jigsaw puzzle, an empty refrigerator, and perhaps a half ton of debris and garbage including a pile of empty beer cans surrounding the couches.

The smaller couch had a pile of magazines at one end: Old issues of slicks like Starshine and Popular Heroes, news weeklies like Prometheus and Overweek, a few tabloids including Weird World News and National Investigator, even some of the fanzines like Altered Egos and AlienEyeZed, and, of course, Star Science Journal, the publication of the Church of the Starborn. If one didn't know better, the obvious explanation for such a collection would be a family of superfans.

On the larger couch, Vince sprawled; a large, lean, smooth-skinned man with a week's growth of blond beard. He wore nothing but red-white-and-blue striped boxers, displaying his musculature and definition to the empty room. From the evidence around him, he'd lain there all week, drinking beer, watching television and growing the beard.

The television displayed a celebrity golf tournament from Las Puntas, Mexico, featuring teams from Hollywood, Broadway, London and Beijing. The mute was on so no one had to listen to the inane commentary regarding one of the most unnecessary sporting events in history.

Outside, the Nevada sun shone down with bright false warmth on the winter desert. A January wind blew from the northeast, cold and dry. The scrubby backyard amounted to half an acre of brown bermuda grass, sixteen thriving if neglected rosebushes, a lemon tree, a juniper hedge and a swimming pool filled with brown gunk. Near the chainlink back fence, among the roses, a weeping young woman in pink denim coveralls dug with a spade. Beside her, the body of a nearly grown orange tomcat lay wrapped in a dishtowel inside a clear plastic bag. The bag had been carefully closed with a green twist tie and a rubber mouse shared the plastic coffin with the dead cat.

Back on the couch, Vincent Rochambeaux called again. "Who's in the kitchen? Somebody bring me a beer!"

"Get it yourself, asshole," a small voice answered.

"Roger?" Vince asked.

A tiny orange kitten trotted out of the open sliding glass door that led into the main part of the house. It held a fuzzy pink toy mouse in its tiny jaws. The small voice seemed to come from some place just above its head. "You're The Volunteer," the voice accused. "Stand up and volunteer to get your own beer, you damn drunk."

"I'm not drunk," said Vince in a mild voice; his pleasant De Soto County, Mississippi accent made him sound very much like Elvis. He ran his fingers through his beard to conceal a smile that the sight of the kitten with its toy had provoked. "Where's your missus?" he asked.

The kitten stopped to lay the mousie down and wash a white-socked little foot. "Outside, burying the old me." The voice seemed unhampered by the kitten's mouth being otherwise occupied.

Vince frowned. Alicia would be distraught by the death of one of Roger's temporary bodies, even though Roger survived, of course, and had quickly found another host. A distraught Alicia meant even fewer cooked meals and less housework done than usual. Not that Alicia hadn't given up on the 'family' room months ago, simply keeping a pathway cleared through the rubble so she could reach the doors to the laundry room on one end and the backyard on the other.

Roger's recurrent deaths bothered Vince more than he would let on, for that matter. He'd seen a lot of dying, going all the way back to World War II but it always bothered him. Probably no one who didn't know him well even suspected that. Vince was a lot older than he looked, at least half a century older; he'd had a lot of practice at hiding his feelings. "Why is it always cats?" he asked.

Roger's voice snorted while the kitten returned to killing the mousie with ferocious little snarls and growls. On the screen, Tiger Woods missed an eleven foot putt while Prince Charlie grinned in the background. "I'm not going to live in a dog's body and fawn all over you, Vince. Get yourself another sidekick if you want to pull someone's ears."

Vince winced at the unkind remark. Roger knew very well what always happened to The Volunteer's sidekicks. Vince had buried more than a dozen of them in nearly sixty years of adventuring--almost two dozen if you counted wives and fiancees. Not sixty years solid; from 1946 to 1962, and then again in 1989-90, Vince himself had been dead. It wasn't an existence with much to recommend it but still, Roger's method of escaping the voyage over the River Styx gave Vince the creeps if he thought about it too much.

The Volunteer, once the scourge of Nazis, VC and the Republican Guard, considered whether he would get up and fetch his own beer. Alcohol didn't do much of anything to him but he liked the taste; it took something like a quart of moonshine-strength whiskey to actually give him a buzz. Beer he drank like soda pop. He didn't even gain weight from all the calories; ever since he'd left his grandfather's farm near Hernando back in 1938 and 'volunteered' for the super-secret program at the University of Tennessee, Vince Rochambeaux's altered metabolism had helped him achieve and maintain a perfect physique. In his fighting gear he stood six-foot-three and weighed just over 215, same as he ever was.

Right at the moment, he scratched himself through his boxers in an indelicate place and considered whether another beer were worth the risk. If he stood up, he might discover he had enough energy to go get the beer. And if he had that much energy, he might have enough to shave and get dressed and then he might do something stupid like go looking for Felicity or put on his uniform and go out looking for crimes to stop. Or even worse, he might jump on a plane and go get involved in another war he hated. "Nothing more pitiful than a war hero in an unnecessary war," he muttered.

"I wouldn't know," said Roger.

* * *

Outside, the changeable wind had shifted to a warmer, grittier blow from the south, humid with the smell of golfcourses or perhaps the distant Colorado. A dust devil played with candy wrappers and tattered casino brochures on the edge of the rank swimming pool. Alicia wiped teary dust from her eye while she planted Roger's most recent habitation under the rose bushes.

An enormous orange and black form leaped the back fence to land lightly a few feet from her. An anthropoid tiger more than seven feet tall stood up from his crouch. His demi-human smile seemed more threat than greeting but Alicia did not tremble or cower away. "Hello, Genghiz," she said.

"Hello," said Man-Tiger, pitching his voice up, away from the growling tones that caused proud and dangerous men to shiver. He stood quietly to the side while Alicia finished burying Roger's expired host body. His tail lashed and his whiskers quivered but he said very little even on less solemn occasions. It took several minutes until only a mound of earth remained. When dirt had covered the last visible evidence and Alicia had stood up, Genghiz Khan, the fearsome Man-Tiger, plucked an unopened yellow rosebud from one of the bushes and laid it gently on the fresh grave. "Goodbye, Little Warrior Cousin," he murmured.

"Goodbye," Alicia Goldberg echoed.

Genghiz looked toward the house. "Smith and Jones are here."

Alicia shrugged. "That must be why Roger wants me inside." She started around the swimming pool, kicking the toes of her sneakers in the dead grass to scrape off some of the dirt she'd acquired while kneeling. She looked back. "You coming?"

Man-Tiger shook his huge head. "No. Jones is a fool, he always wants to fight me."

Alicia grinned sympathetically; Sierra "Pete" Jones was a fool but he was also only seventeen years old. Marta Louise Smith had her hands full keeping her impulsive partner reined in. Alicia turned back toward the house and broke into a trot; Roger had increased the urgency of his telepathic call--maybe the foolish young speedster Jones had challenged The Volunteer to a fight.

The same thought had occurred to Ghenghiz and he considered whether to follow her inside after all. Jones's superhuman speed against Vince's strength, combat expertise and inhumanly accurate reflexes would be a fight to see. Of course, The Volunteer would win and that was a further enticement--to watch the annoying young Jones being handed a large chunk of humility would entertain Man-Tiger enormously. But no, if he went inside, Jones might challenge him instead and someone really did need to get Rochambeaux off of that couch.

Ghenghiz had fought the Man of Many Wars himself before, twice, and had been beaten both times. It puzzled him but he accepted it; Rochambeaux knew more about fighting than almost anyone except maybe Two Stick. That pair sparred from time to time but had never seriously fought one another. Genghiz settled into a crouch beside the tiny fresh grave and wondered where the ancient Asian master of stickfighting had disappeared to. Perhaps, like Man-Tiger, he had gone hunting. In this time and place, they both hunted men. If Genghiz went out to hunt again, perhaps he might meet his friend.

The dust devil ruffled the fur of the mighty Man-Tiger and made him narrow his eyes against the gritty wind. Genghiz never had liked the south wind and he decided he didn't like this one any better. Dark clouds gathered with lying promises of rain.

* * *

Karl Franz Schubert hadn't intended to get drunk. It just happened. Alcohol alone wouldn't do it; he had to have fructose and plentiful potassium ions along with the alcohol or he just didn't absorb enough of it to raise his blood levels. Probably something about being from an alternate universe where humans had been forcibly evolved by their Martian overlords. Unfortunately, he liked the taste of Stolichinaya, Perrier and cranberry juice.

At least, he hadn't got drunk in uniform. That would have been tragic. The Big Blue Schnitzel, drunk and maudlin in a Las Vegas piano bar at 3 p.m. on a Saturday. The last he remembered was explaining to someone on the next barstool that 'Dynamann' was spelled with two 'n's--ach, nein, bitte--three 'n's.

"And if there were two of you, you'd be 'Dynamannen' spelled with four 'n's," noted the other drunk.

"But dere is not two of me," Karl had pointed out. "Dere's two of you--I t'ink." Then he fell off the barstool, laughing. He hadn't been in costume but everyone, of course, knew who he was--how many two-meter tall hunks with ultramarine hair going cyan at the temples and a High German accent can one find in Las Vegas on a Saturday in January? More than you would think, it's a weird town. But drinking a Cranstoli Perrier Fizz--go with the odds.

How the heck had he got to Las Vegas anyway; standing between a white man and a black woman in the gray and green uniforms of the Nevada State Overman Patrol -- Stompies -- with his legs fastened together by iron bars?

Oh, yeah, he'd been sent to look for The Volunteer, to try to get him to rejoin the war effort. And now he'd found him! There he was, lying on a couch glaring at him. "Leibchen," said Karl, "we miss you, please to come home." He grinned, sloppy with sentiment and sticky from the floor of the bar where Smith and Jones had found him.

"You can tell the Galaxy to go suck on a black hole, Karl," said Vince. "Let him go." He clicked off the television with the remote, ending Charlie's attempt at a birdie. The wind noise from outside seemed louder now.

Pete Jones and Marta Smith promptly released Dynamann, who, smiling peacefully, collapsed to the floor and began to make that soft buzzing noise that had got him short-sheeted back in the camp dormitories of the Hitler Youth. The iron bars wrapped around his knees and ankles did less to cause him to fall than sheer drunken inertia.

"Pete," Vince ordered. "Bring us all beers." That solved that problem, Pete had the beers back almost before Vince finished the sentence. The lanky young man had another freak metabolism, or as his partner put it--he'd been oversampled at about 192x.

Marta glared at both of them with a little to spare for the German and the kitten. "Nobody said you could have one." She popped the top on her Sam's.

"Hey," said Pete. "Man said all." A moot point since the tall blond boy already held only an empty can.

"For Adam's sake, Vince, he's only seventeen. Look at him, he's still got pimples!"

Vince would rather look at Marta Louise Smith. Not quite twice the age of her partner, she still had the curves of someone ten years younger and her smooth, chocolatey skintone made him think of candy. Spicy candy, maybe, she had a temper.

"Hey," said Pete, mildly. Everyone glanced at the windows as a particular hard gust rattled the panes. Wind noise was normal in a Nevada winter.

"Ease off, Nancy Drew," Roger's voice piped up from near the floor. "Joe Hardy's probably already burned off the booze. There's a one-pound bag of Cheetohs in the kitchen cabinet, kid." The kitten nosed at the recumbent Blau Dynamo, then began to bat at a lock of azure curls.

"Awright," said Pete, his mouth already full of salty orange crunch.

"Schatzi," murmured Karl, reaching for the kitten. "Die kleine Katze. Hi, hi, hi." Hands that could twist the barrels of 155mm cannon into pretzels reached for the tiny animal.

"Hey," protested Roger. "I just moved in! Don't break the furniture!"

While Roger struggled to escape the grip that had paralyzed the Patriotic Hero of the People of the Socialist Paradise in Perpetuity, Vince asked Marta, "Why did you bring him here?"

"Prometheus!" snapped Marta. "You think the Clark County drunk tank could hold him? Besides, he was looking for you." She shook her head in that patented South L.A. snap that gave mere males the urge to look around for some appeasing flowers or jewlery to offer. It didn't sound affected when she swore by Adam Starkey or the Comet Prometheus; she could bend iron or steel with the force of her mind, she had the right.

"I guess he can sleep it off here," admitted Vince. "But I'm not going back to Washington with him and I sure ain't going to Tsing Dao!"

"You mean Xinjiang. Tsing Dao is a beer."

"Damn straight," said Vince, drinking from the can. "I'm not going to fight Chinese Muslims in the backside of beyond with our friends the Russians for nobody -- and least of all for that clown that thinks he's president right now." The miscount of votes in Cuba in the last election was still a sore spot with a lot of Americans.

"Ja, ja, ja, ja," muttered Karl.

"Starshine! He's going to sing!"

Pete finished the last of the Cheetohs and a second beer he'd sneaked in a ninth of a second when no one was looking. The television mysteriously came back on and the Prince of Wales made his putt for the lead. The door to the back patio opened and an ill wind blew in with Alicia.

* * *

Genghiz didn't hear much of what went on in the house over the sound of the wind, even with his inhumanly acute senses. He knew Smith and Jones were inside because he had seen their Clark County Stompers van pull up on the street. He liked living on the edge of the city where he had less traffic noise to annoy him and both the city and the desert to hunt in.

While Alicia made her way toward the house, he noticed a black cloud in the southern sky moving very quickly. Impossibly quickly for a purely natural phenomenon, he decided. "Alicia," he called, "something." When she looked toward him, he pointed.

She said a bad word. Then, "Roger needs me but that looks like trouble." They both watched a moment.

"It's not the Vor," she finally said. Genghiz heard the relief in her voice and silently agreed. The Vor did appear as a black shape against the sky but never resembled a fast moving black cloud. Everyone remembered what had happened in Seattle, Los Angeles, Yokohama and Lyons.

"Half a minute, it'll be here," said Genghiz. He stood to be ready, flexing his arms, his feet, his jaws. His tail lashed with curiousity and eagerness. He didn't want to fight with Sierra Jones because he knew he could win if he were willing to hurt the boy. But a fight with a new, unknown opponent might be interesting.

"It looks like it's coming straight here," Alicia commented.

"Yeah, must know our address. You got friends in the city of Djinn?" he asked.

"What?" No one ever caught on to Genghiz's oblique jokes, and Alicia had very little sense of humor anyway.

He looked around. Hadn't there been a whirlwind playing in the yard earlier? The stormcloud had gotten close enough to show the funnel cloud dangling from beneath it. Winds began to buffet the house and the trees, but Genghiz relaxed a little. He knew who their unexpected visitor was now. Less than a quarter mile away, the storm cloud began to break up and a tall man in black ran across the sky, jumping from cloud fragment to cloud fragment getting closer to the ground.

"Bad news," said Khan, louder than before because of the wind n0ise.

"Stormrider," Alicia yelled back, pointing.

"Same thing," said Man-Tiger. He crouched a little, his tail lashing and his ears back. No one enjoyed a visit from Protector Tower's messenger jonah.

Alicia escaped into the house leaving Genghiz to face Stormrider alone. The tall man in black stepped from a cloud to a whirlwind to the top of the lemon tree to another whirlwind and landed directly in front of Man-Tiger.

Jonathan Raven wore high-laced boots, tight-fitting pants and a turtleneck sweater with a long cape plus a top hat. All black. His long, hooked nose and heavy brows made him look like a villain from a melodrama. His cape flowed around him like a live thing. He preferred the codename Cloudwalker but everyone called him Stormrider, or worse. He glared up at Genghiz; well over six feet tall he had practiced sneering down at people for years. It didn't work on Man-Tiger.

"I need to speak to you and your roommates, Khan," said Stormwalker.

"People in hell need a cool drink, Jon Raven. Welcome to Stoney Bottom, Your Beakness," said Genghiz.

Raven ignored the jibe, only wondering if Khan had said 'Beakness' or 'Bleakness'; with Man-Tiger's dental equipment it could be hard to tell. "Are they inside?" he asked.

"Most of them. You didn't bring your dog?" Someone had given Raven a black puffball of a dog, a pomeranian.

"Drang gets airsick. Besides with you and Roger here, I didn't think anyone would enjoy his yapping."

Genghiz smiled, a potentially frightening sight. "You know what, Jonny? People are wrong about you. You really do give a shit."

Raven smiled back, looking tired. "Indeed I do. Shall we go inside?" He started toward the door.

Genghiz followed. "I might as well hear the bad news, too," he acknowledged.

The reason every metahuman, overman, alien, esper, wizard and mutant on the planet hated to see Jon Raven arrive on a black cloud was not his stormriding powers, or even his noisy dog--it was his ability to foretell the future.

* * *

In the empty backyard, the wind still blew, in fact it howled. Dirt and leaves, sticky gunk from the pool, unidentified trash from the city and who knows what from a desert that bordered on Bullfrog County and Area 51, all of it swirling in complicated patterns that slowly coalesced into a form.

Barely descernible at first, a female figure seemed to coalesce in the vortex. Long blonde hair, absurdly large breasts, shapely legs, a round little butt and a cute, if not quite beautiful face--all formed slowly at first then suddenly became completely real. Like an explosion seen in reverse.

The winds died. The girl looked around her. Mountains in the distance, chilly January sun of late afternoon in Nevada, a bit of the city visible between ranch-style housing, open desert outside the backfence, the fresh grave of Roger Felix XXIX under the rosebushes, she saw it all.

She looked down at herself and gasped, raising one slender hand to touch a nipple and gasp again. "I'm back," she whispered. Then Barris Newcombe, the Nuclear Nude turned and ran to the backdoor of Number Thirteen Stoney Bottom Circle.