Masked

by Lou Anders

Genres: Superheroes; Sci-fi Anthologies & Collections; Anthologies

Synopsis

WELCOME TO THE SECOND “GOLDEN AGE” OF SUPERHEROES AND HEROINES Superheroes have come a long way since the “Man of Steel” was introduced in 1938. This brilliant new collection features original stories and novellas from some of today’s most exciting voices in comics, science fiction, and fantasy. Each marvelously inventive tale shows us just how far our classic crusaders have evolved—and how the greatest of heroes are, much like ourselves, all too human. In “Call Her Savage,” MARJORIE M. LIU enters the dark heart of a fierce mythic heroine who is forced, by war, to live up to her own terrible legend. In “A to Z in the Ultimate Big Company Superhero Universe (Villains Too),” BILL WILLINGHAM presents a fully-realized vision of a universe where epic feats and tragic flaws have transformed the human race. In “Vacuum Lad,” STEPHEN BAXTER unveils the secret origins of the first true child of the space age—and disproves the theory that “nothing exists in a vacuum.” In “Head Cases,” PETER DAVID and KATHLEEN DAVID blast through the blogosphere to expose the secret longings of a Lonely Superhero Wife. In “The Non-Event,” MIKE CAREY removes the gag order on a super-thief named Lockjaw . . . and pries out a confession of life-altering events. Also includes stories by Mike Baron • Mark Chadbourn • Paul Cornell • Daryl Gregory • Joseph Mallozzi • James Maxey • Ian McDonald • Chris Roberson • Gail Simone • Matthew Sturges . . . and an introduction by Lou Anders, “one of the brightest and best of the new generation of science fiction editors” (Jonathan Strahan, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year).

Release date: June 30, 2010

Publisher: Pocket Books

Print pages: 416

Sample

Cleansed and Set in Gold

MATTHEW STURGES

I’m on the ground, trying to breathe through a chest full of broken ribs. The only reason I’m still alive is because I happen to be invisible at the moment. Verlaine is dead. His body is twitching, trying to patch itself up, but the thing that killed him is chewing on his heart, its long tongue flicking. I can hear Verlaine’s fingernails scratching against the rocks.

We all thought Verlaine was immortal. He wasn’t.

Some low-level administrative assistant from the League of Heroes is trying to take a statement from me in my hospital bed. I’m sort of trying to comply, but each time I breathe it’s like someone’s sticking a giant fork in my chest. So I’m not as cooperative as I could be.

“How big was this thing?” he asks.

“Biggest one I’ve ever seen,” I whisper, carefully mouthing the words.

“But still a Ghoul? Same physiognomy?”

“His ‘physiognomy’ is his face. You mean ‘morphology.’”

The lackey scowls at me. “Sorry,” he says.

“If you don’t know what a word means,” I say, “don’t use it. Then you won’t have to apologize.”

He shifts uncomfortably in his seat, looking around the ICU ward, maybe hoping that there’s some more desirable Leaguer that he can pester. But there isn’t.

“Anyway, to answer your question, no. He wasn’t like the others. He was bigger. He. . . his fist was like. . .” I hold up my fist and five needles of pain lace across my chest. I notice that the nail on my left index finger is bent backward, nearly disconnected. They’ve put a bandage on it. This bothers me more than the ribs for some reason.

“His fist was the size of your head,” I finally say. “He put it through Verlaine’s chest like Verlaine was as mortal as you.”

The lackey puts his minirecorder on the table by my bed. His hand is shaking. “How many of them were there? This new variety.”

“I just saw the one. He was leading the others, though. Can you imagine that? A leader. A Ghoul King.”

The next day, the headlines read GHOUL KING KILLS RUSSELL VERLAINE. I can imagine the League’s PR people going back and forth on this. “Is it worse if we admit that there’s some kind of new mutant giant Ghoul running around, or if we imply that Russell Fucking Verlaine was murdered by some regular Ghoul?” I don’t envy them.

After I leave the hospital—against medical advice; which, whatever— I take a taxi back to my apartment. A few unpleasant bites choked down and a potent healing factor kicks in, spreading warmth throughout my battered bones and knitting everything together in seconds. Oh, God. Yes.

I decide that it’s best not to appear too healthy at Verlaine’s funeral, so I take care to walk slowly and gasp for breath every few paces. I’ve even gone so far as to put on fresh bandages around my chest. In case someone uses their X-ray vision to look under my shirt, I guess. Although if they could do that, they could see that my bones aren’t actually broken anymore. It doesn’t matter, though, because all of the people who’re capable of doing so wouldn’t care. And anyway, one of them is lying dead in a box in front of me.

I’m sitting on a cold metal folding chair, pretending to be hurt, watching them lower Verlaine into the ground. It turns out that they need a special crane and a steel-reinforced casket for all of this, because Verlaine’s body is so dense that he weighs just over three tons. The news media are fascinated. Jesus, Russell Verlaine makes good TV, even dead.

When you think “hero,” you think Russell Verlaine. You don’t think of me. I’m not particularly good-looking, I don’t have a fascinating origin story, and I don’t even have a constant set of powers that you can put on a trading card. “David Caulfield, The Wildcard. Powers: variable” is what the League Reserves card they did for me reads. You can buy it for a penny on eBay. Shit, I don’t even wear a costume. I go around fighting criminals and monsters in jeans and an AC/DC concert tee. I am nobody’s favorite hero.

I don’t mind, really. The last thing I need is intense media scrutiny. The less they know about me, the better.

I stay until the coffin is in the ground and the bulldozers have filled in the earth. I’m the only one left except for Jeanie Verlaine, who’s sitting on the ground in front of her husband’s grave. The last thing I’m going to do is go try to comfort her or something, so I whisper my last respects to Russell from my seat and then I get up and try to walk away without Jeanie hearing me.

At the entrance to the cemetery is a woman I vaguely recognize as a reporter for one of the wire services. She’s standing by the gate, smoking, trying to look casual.

“Hey,” I say. “If you’re waiting for Jeanie to come out so you can ambush her, forget it. That’s the last thing she needs right now.”

“Hi, David,” she says, as if I hadn’t spoken. “I’m Toni Evins, from Reuters.”

She intercepts me before I can cross the street. “I’m not here to ambush Jeanie Verlaine,” she says. “Give me some credit.”

“I don’t care what you do,” I say. Why am I being such an asshole? This right here is why they don’t like me.

Toni pretends not to be annoyed. “I’m actually here to talk to you. I heard you were there when it happened.”

“Yeah,” I say. I try to come up with something to follow that with, but I have nothing.

“If you’re interested, I’d like to do an interview with you—get your first-hand impressions, that sort of thing.” She smiles gamely.

I close my eyes, shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t do very well with interviews. I always say the wrong thing. I’ll have to pass.”

The smile fades. Toni levels her gaze at me. Kate Frost looks at things the same way just before she shreds them with her eye-beams.

“Actually, there’s something else I wanted to talk to you about,” she says. “Aside from the Verlaine article, I mean.”

“I really don’t think I’d be interested,” I say, and go to push past her.

She puts her hand on my arm, and her grip is surprisingly strong, however mortal. “Terri Day had invisibility powers, correct?”

“Yeah? So? Terri’s dead.”

“And when you and Verlaine were fighting the Ghoul King, you were invisible. Also correct?”

“I have all kinds of powers. You know: variable.”

Toni’s grip tightens on my arm. “And King Stryker had those green energy blasts. He died, too. About six months ago.”

Oh, shit.

I swallow, trying not to look nervous. “It’s been a tough year for the League.”

“You were sporting some very similar-looking green energy blasts when you and the League were taking out that Ghoul redoubt north of Chicago. I’ve seen video.”

“So?”

“So, I guess I’m wondering exactly how you got their powers.”

I shrug, a practiced shrug if ever there was one. “A guy at UNC did his doctoral thesis on my powers,” I say. “His conclusion was that I absorb them through etheric proximity or something. It’s way too technical for me, to be honest.”

Toni nods. “Yeah, I read that. Chad Lowenstein. The physics are. . . speculative. And he completely ignores what to me is the most fascinating thing about your powers.”

“And what’s that?”

“That you only get them from dead people.”

There’s a pause as Toni and I size each other up.

“You want the interview about Russell, come to my apartment tomorrow and I’ll tell you all about it. Whatever sordid little details you want. Fair enough?”

She smiles, and I do not like that smile even a little.

“Sounds good,” she says. She turns to go.

“Don’t you want to know where I live?” I ask.

“I already know,” she says.

At home there are a few messages. One from League HQ asking me how I’m doing, which is code for when am I coming back to work. One from Jeanie Verlaine, thanking me for coming to the funeral, asking me to return her call. Surprising, that. The last is from Captain Salem, who wants to go over every second of the battle with the Ghoul King. With Verlaine gone, Salem is probably the only Leaguer that I actually get along with. He understands why we do what we do. He also understands that this is not a perfect world. I think Captain Salem has his secrets, just like Verlaine probably did. Maybe not secrets like mine, but still.

At least Verlaine got to take whatever dirty little secrets he had to his grave. I think about Toni Evins and there’s a ball of dread in my stomach telling me that I won’t be so lucky.

The League communicator bleeps and out of nowhere all sorts of tactical information starts pouring directly into my visual cortex. The Ghoul King and his. . . minions, I guess you’d call them. . . are attacking Chicago.

We’re lined up on an el track overlooking Grant Park. It’s apparently cold outside. I can see Captain Salem shivering a little, even with his big blue-and-white cape wrapped around him. I, however, have come prepared; I have the Human Shield’s invulnerability crackling around me, keeping everything in the world at a remove. At home I wavered between Human Shield and the Rock, whose skin is even tougher. But the Rock’s appearance is distinctive, to say the least, and with Toni Evins poking around, the last thing I need is for people to draw any more comparisons than they already have.

As a Reservist, I’m only supposed to get called up for League duty during an emergency, but everything’s been an emergency lately, so here I am.

The Ghouls are approaching our position in a line. Even the small ones are ten feet high. Their arms hang down to the ground and then some, black (metal?) claws dragging along the streets, kicking up sparks. Mostly hidden beneath their matted white fur are those dead eyes that have thrown the entire Midwest into a panic. Some photographer from Time magazine got right up in one’s face last month and took the cover photo that scared the bejesus out of America. The fact that he was eviscerated by the thing five seconds later didn’t help matters.

More worrisome, however, is the Ghoul King, the impressive fellow that dropped Verlaine. His fists are clenched and dyed rust brown with what I assume is dried blood.

“Wait until they clear the buildings,” says Captain Salem, who’s leading the show. “We want as little collateral damage as possible.” Personally, I’m more worried about the noncollateral damage, i.e., the damage to my person. But I don’t say that.

Everyone else on the bridge splits their attention between Captain S. and the Ghouls’ approach. The Captain is an unlikely leader. He’s fat, for one thing, and yet still insists on wearing his form-fitting blue-and-white costume. He’s also balding and not particularly handsome. But he’s smart and he’s confident, and that makes up for a lot. Of all the remaining members of the League, he’s the only one I’d follow willingly into battle. Apparently the same can be said of Kate Frost, Pickle, and the Lyme Twins, because they show no hesitation whatsoever.

“So, what do you make of this Ghoul King?” Kate asks me, really just making conversation. If we’re being totally honest, Kate is good for looking at and for shredding things with rays from her eyes, and not much else. She clearly could care less what I make of the Ghoul King, and I don’t even bother to answer her.

Captain Salem is the default expert on all things Ghoul, since he’s the one who discovered their origin. When they first appeared six months ago, nobody had any idea where they came from or what they wanted. What they wanted became eminently clear almost immediately: they wanted to kill things and eat them, particularly human beings. Everyone had a theory about them, but it was Captain S. who took the time to study them up close, scanning their cracked-open eggs with some device he’d invented and doing sciencey things with the results.

His conclusion was that the Ghouls are a gift from the seventy-second century, sent back in time by some enterprising villain to plague the twenty-first. Maybe this villain’s goal was to murder Verlaine to keep him from stopping a clone of Hitler from taking over the colonies on Mars six years from now. Who can say? For all we know, whatever fiendish plan he’s cooked up has already succeeded and the timeline has been altered beyond repair and we’re all totally fucked.

The Ghouls hit hard and fast. These are not the disorganized hairy zombies we’ve come to expect. They used to come straight at us, fast and furious, with no regard for their own safety. That made it a lot easier to pick them off. Now they’ve got a general and he’s made them more cautious. Captain Salem quickly adjusts tactics, speaking over the radio implants in our skulls. “I’ll take point,” he shouts over the din of the Ghouls’ screams. “David, you cover for Kate.”

Kate, though deadly with her eyes, has no natural defenses, and thus can’t be left to fend for herself in combat. Furthermore, she’s only lethal against the tough-skinned Ghouls in close quarters; no more than ten or twenty feet. So it’s my job to block for her, going in front and keeping her safe so she can do her thing. Since Kate isn’t the brightest girl, nor the most composed under pressure, there’s the added element of fear that she might, in the heat of the moment, turn my skull into pulp. I don’t know if Human Shield’s force field is proof against her, and I don’t really want to find out.

Pickle is an asshole, but he’s good to have in a fight. He bounces around the park, imparting strange momentum to everything he touches, sending Ghouls flying off in all directions, priceless looks of dumb surprise on their faces. One of them impales itself on a light post. When I look back a minute or two later, it’s still squirming like a bug, fruitlessly trying to free itself.

The Lyme Twins are fast, tough, and, most important, capable of beating the shit out of Ghouls as long as they remain within six feet of each other. The Ghouls have yet to figure that out, and when they do, I don’t guess the Lyme Twins will last very long. I want them to survive—they’re good guys, and anyway, I don’t think their powers would do me any good.

I’m doing a fine job blocking for Kate, who’s doing an even better job taking out Ghouls. I count quietly to myself; a nine-second stare from Kate is what it takes to puree a Ghoul’s face. So far, so good.

From my left, I hear Captain Salem shriek in pain. Shriek. I’ve never heard him let loose with so much as an “ouch” the entire time I’ve known him. I sneak a glance in his direction, and I can see him trading blows with the Ghoul King. First of all, this thing is about twenty feet tall, giving it a serious tactical advantage, and second, it appears to be more or less impervious to Salem’s mighty left fist. A fist I’ve seen punch through solid steel. A fist that made Russell Verlaine himself wince during a charity arm-wrestling tournament.

The Ghoul King is making a low, guttural sound. Jesus, is it laughing? Let’s say for the sake of my sanity that it’s growling in pain.

I’ve been distracted for too long, and one of the Ghouls has sneaked past me and taken a swipe at Kate. She’s down on the ground, kicking and scratching. The Ghoul stands over her, swiping with its black claws, eager to disembowel her. If it does, it will lean down into her and slurp her entrails right out of her abdomen.

I leap and catch it off guard. I grab its midsection and we go sprawling down into the grass, still wet with dew. I smell earth. The Ghoul is going wild, trying to spin around in my grasp and claw at my belly. I’m not sure how much longer I can hold it. It wrenches its head around, its neck more flexible than a human’s, and reaches its yellow teeth toward my throat. Its breath is cold, stinking, fetid. A bottomless cave. The teeth sink into my skin and push hard. The force field that surrounds me bends but does not break. I can feel my larynx being compressed and I can’t breathe. Things start to go gray around the edges. Then the Ghoul’s eyes go pink and vanish in a spray of blood. The skin is flayed from its face by an invisible whip. The skull shatters into flinders and the brain melts into gray sludge. Its claws disengage and it falls down hard.

I look up and there’s Kate, pissed off. “You were supposed to be blocking for me, David.” She hits me with a millisecond’s worth of her powers and it’s like being hit in the face with a porcupine.

I stand up, still groggy, and I see why Kate has the luxury of berating me. The Army has shown up and is lobbing mortars at the Ghouls, who now beat feet into Lake Michigan. The Ghoul King shrugs Captain Salem off and follows suit, sweeping his gaze across us good guys. The gaze says, “Next time.” And then he’s gone.

I help Captain Salem up from the ground. He looks like hell. His face is bleeding; one of his ears is practically torn from his head. He says, “One more minute and I would have had him, Dave.”

He goes heavy in my arms without warning and I stumble. He’s unconscious before we hit the ground.

I’m at my apartment watching TV with the sound off when Toni Evins rings the bell. The ticker running beneath the footage of yesterday’s antics in Chicago reads CAPTAIN SALEM FIGHTS GHOUL KING TO STALEMATE. That’s a pretty generous assessment of events as I witnessed them, but we need all the moral support we can get. The alternative headline, CAPTAIN SALEM NEARLY GUTTED BY GHOUL KING, doesn’t have the proper optimistic tone.

Toni Evins is wearing a suit that would be conservative if the skirt were a little longer. She’s wearing makeup, her hair pulled back nicely. She wants to make sure I know how pretty she is. This is supposed to disarm me. It does.

“Nice work yesterday, by the way,” she says, sitting gingerly on my sofa. The place is a bit of a mess, and in a brief fit of passive-aggressiveness, I failed to clean it on purpose. “You paid eight to five in Vegas with six kills.”

“Well, it’s nice to know that I’m exceeding expectations,” I say. I feel like I’m supposed to say something else, but I’ve got nothing. I wonder if this is a journalistic trick, a deliberate silence on her part to keep me talking.

She puts a recorder on the table and the interview begins in earnest. She starts with a few questions about Verlaine’s death. What was it like? How did it make me feel? Describe what you saw, and leave nothing out. This is the sort of interview I’ve done after more than one battle, and the rhythm of it lulls me into a false sense of security.

“You and Russell Verlaine were close, right? In an interview last year, in fact, you referred to him as your ‘best friend.’”

“I don’t remember saying that, but yes. We were close.”

“And it didn’t bother you that Verlaine chose Captain Salem to be his best man?” She pauses, looking me in the eye. “I wonder if maybe you weren’t his best friend.”

“Russ had a lot of friends,” I say. I believe I could come to despise Toni Evins. This is another one of those tricks, I suppose. Catch you off guard; get you to say something incendiary.

Then she goes for the throat. “So, David, how long do you think it’ll be before you show up at some battle with Verlaine’s powers?”

Before she arrived, I felt a little guilty about what I’m about to do to her. But all of my reservations instantly melt away.

“You clearly have some kind of theory about me that you’d like to discuss, Ms. Evins,” I say, with a bit of calculated outrage. “So let’s hear it.”

She stares at me silently for a moment, her gaze flowing over me and through me. More alpha-dog reporter bullshit, I guess.

“Well, the conventional wisdom about you is that you possess an array of powers, and that you can only use one of them at a time.”

“That is what they say.”

“I’m not sure exactly what it is that you do,” she says. “What I do know is that I’ve researched you fairly thoroughly and I’ve noticed a very disturbing pattern.”

I lean back on the sofa, trying to look casual, prolonging the moment for as long as possible. “Which is?”

“That in each instance that you’ve displayed any kind of extranormal aspect, you appear to have inherited it from a recently deceased hero.” Again the alpha-dog gaze. “Or villain.”

“And?” I say.

“I have two main questions. First, do you kill them, or do you wait for them to die?”

She pauses again, waits for a response, and when she gets none, plows ahead. “Second, what do you do to them?”

I can’t resist smiling just a little. Then I choke down the smile and put my hands up in mock surrender.

“Okay, Toni. You got me. You got me dead to rights.”

I stand up from the couch and start to pace the living room. “I’ll tell you everything. But on one condition.”

She perks up. “Which is?”

“That after I tell you, you agree to give me two days to leave the country before you print my story. That’s all I ask.”

Now I’ve hit her where she lives. There’s no way she’ll say no. “Well?” I ask, giving her my own practiced gaze. “What do you say?”

She stands. “I’d say you’ve got yourself a deal.”

Toni’s impressed by the false wall at the back of my closet, and the secret, silent elevator that takes us down to the basement of my building. When the elevator door slides open, the chill of the refrigeration units hits her and she flinches.

“Oh. . . my. . . God,” she says.

There are five tables lined up in the room. A few bare light fixtures illuminate the concrete floors and walls with a harsh, unforgiving light. On each table is a body covered in a sheet. Each body was placed there on purpose this morning, each occupant chosen for the fullest effect. On the far side of the room is a set of freezers with glass fronts, each holding several shelves of plastic containers, clearly labeled.

“What is this?” she says, and for the first time her composure slips. She’s forgotten her alpha-dog moves.

“You wanted to know the truth, and here it is,” I say.

I lift the sheet from the body closest to us. His skin is pale and wan in the harsh light. I put his helmet on earlier to make sure that he’d be instantly recognizable. “The Human Shield,” I say.

I pull the sheet down from the next table. “Terri Day. The See-Through Girl.”

Another sheet. “King Stryker.”

Toni Evins backs away from me, her head cocked to one side. “What. . . what do you do down here?”

I take a step toward her, smiling what I hope is a wicked smile. “I eat them, Toni.”

I take another step and she flinches back. “I eat the flesh right off their dead bones. That’s how I get my powers.”

“You’re lying. You’re just screwing with me.”

I pull the sheet entirely away from the Human Shield’s body, pointing to the neatly carved-out sections of his thighs. “Sorry. No.”

Toni struggles to regain her composure. “How. . . how do you live with yourself?” she asks.

I can’t hold the act any longer. I shove the sheet back over Human Shield’s naked body. “Do you think I like this?” I shout. “Do you think this is what I wanted ?”

I shove Human Shield’s gurney and it rolls a few feet, tapping against the one holding Terri Day. “I am disgusted by myself. Every time I get a call from the League I have to force myself to come down here. I gag every single time I put a piece of them in my mouth. Can you imagine the horror of this? The horror of being me?”

Toni comes a bit unglued. “Then why do you do it?” she asks.

“I ask myself that question every single day,” I say. “But then I see some pregnant mother get shot by a bad guy in pink tights, or some Ghoul tear apart a bus full of kids and. . . what would you have me do?”

I get right up in her face. “What would you do?”

Toni walks the length of the room, reaching out to touch each gurney in turn, but finding herself unable. “You realize that I can’t keep something like this to myself.” She looks back and forth, from the bodies to me. “The world needs to know about this.”

It’s time for this to end. I walk to the far end of the room, to the one body that I haven’t yet uncovered.

I pull the sheet back, gently. Donna Porter’s world-weary face looks blankly up at nothing. “Do you recognize her?” I ask.

“No,” says Toni, forcing herself to look.

“No, of course you don’t. Donna wasn’t much of a hero. She was terrified of fighting, couldn’t stand the sight of blood. Her power was a curse to her. She hated using it, and I think—and this is just a theory, okay?—I think she let herself get killed.”

I pull the sheet down from her, exposing her nakedness, her total vulnerability. “You know what Donna’s power was?” I ask.

Toni shakes her head, unable to speak.

I pick up a scalpel and carefully cut away a square of Donna Porter’s leg. I hold the morsel up for Toni to see.

I pop the bit of meat into my mouth, chew slowly, swallow, making sure that Toni watches it all. Not for her sake, but for mine. “Donna’s power was mind control.”

Toni’s eyes widen. She steps back from the table, stumbling over her own feet.

“Donna could have ruled the world with her power,” I say. “But it disgusted her, just like mine disgusts me. The difference, though, is that I keep doing it, despite how much I hate myself.”

I can feel Donna’s power rushing into me. I can feel Toni’s mind in my mind. It’s like an intricate web, constantly in motion. The tendrils of that web are clearly outlined in my mind, each strand representing a thought or a memory. I can feel the currents in her mind: the disgust, the fear, the nausea. I can sense her decision to turn and run.

“Stop,” I say, feeling the nerve impulse rush down to her feet and stopping it. Toni freezes, wavering.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I say. “You’re going to take your little recorder and you’re going to erase any evidence of your time here today. Then you’re going to go back to your office and destroy any notes you may have about me.”

I take her by the chin, gently, forcing her to look at me. “Are we clear so far?”

I allow her to nod.

“If you’ve discussed your suspicions about me with anybody—an editor, say—and they ask you about me, you just tell them that there’s no story there. Tell them that the UNC student’s dissertation turns out to be right on the money.

“And then you forget all about this. Whenever you think of me in the future, you’ll think about how uninteresting I am. Thinking about me at all will make you feel bored.” I’m saying all this aloud, but the words aren’t really necessary. I’m rearranging the web of thoughts in her mind, putting all of this information directly into her cerebrum.

“You’re going to leave here now, and you’re going to forget