Ex-Heroes, Peter Clines [reading like a writer txt] 📗

I was on Pico when the sedan pulled in behind me. I got a good look at it in the mirrors. An old Caddy with a lot of power, a lot of seating room, and one dumb fuck sitting in the passenger window with a shotgun.

I gunned the throttle and pulled away. They picked up speed. Their car swerved a bit and I could hear them howling and laughing. Drunk or stoned to work up their courage.

A little more speed from the bike. A lot more from the Caddy. They were gaining fast. My timing needed to be pretty good for my next trick to work, but they were so wired I didn’t think I needed to be perfect.

I let my speed drop and swung the bike to the left, heading for an alley a bit up ahead. The sedan swerved to cut me off, gunning its engine again, and I clamped hard on the brakes. The bike shrieked to a halt and spun around.

They oversteered and rushed past me. The guy in the window fired off a blast from the shotgun while one in the backseat shot a few rounds from a pistol. They were barely aiming and none of them came close.

They slammed into the corner of the building, right where the alley began.

Fifty-mile-an-hour impact with no airbags.

I pulled the bike up and let the goggles snap open. Didn’t want to drain too much—all these idiots had hospital time ahead of them. Especially the shotgunner. He’d been thrown out and made a good-sized dent in a blue mailbox. I checked his pulse. His collarbone and left arm were shattered, but he was still alive, lucky fucker.

The driver moaned as I dragged him out the window. The steering wheel had slammed him pretty hard, fractured some ribs, and his face was cut up a bit from pieces of windshield. He cried and cursed in Spanish until the third time his head hit the trunk of the car. “I don’t know nothing, bro,” he spit out. “Leave me alone.”

“You don’t know nothing?” I repeated, denting the hood with his skull again. “You were looking for me, weren’t you?”

“No, man, I swear.” He tried to spin and knock my hand away, but he’d already seen my eyes. He was as strong as a ten-year-old and I had the energy of four people. I twisted him back and pressed his head against the trunk.

“Any second now I’m gonna get bored hitting your face on this car and we’re gonna move to the sidewalk. You were looking for me?”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “Yeah, we were.”

“Was it Rodney? He still too chickenshit to fight me again?”

If my life as Gorgon was a comic book, Rodney Casares would be my archenemy. He would’ve been exposed to gamma rays, found an alien artifact, maybe teleported with a housefly or something. Then he’d get a costume, rob a few banks, try to take over the city once or twice. We’d fight a lot, he’d be foiled and get away at the last minute, all that nonsense.

Instead, here in the real world, he was what you’d think of as the top enforcer of the SS. They had some stupid title for him, but I made a point of not using it. He’d been in court once on murder charges, four or five on assault and battery. He hated my guts for draining his little brother while the stupid kid was out trying to earn his way into the gang with some small-time robbery and vandalism. Once his brother got out, the two of them came after me with a few other boys and I took out all of them. Rodney’s tough, but he can’t fight with his eyes shut. And there’s not much better insult in that community than making someone look weak in front of family and friends.

The Seventeen’s face shifted at the name and he grinned. “You don’t know?”

“What?”

“Rodney’s fuckin’ out, bro. In the hospital. Probably dead already.”

“Who was it?”

The driver shook his head. “Weren’t no one, just some crazy bitch. Jumped on him outside the movies Friday night. She was all biting and shit. Ripped up his neck, chewed off one of his ears. Loco Tommy said she swallowed it.”

“What happened to her?”

“What you think happened, man?” A weak hand came up and wiped away the blood pooling in his eyes. “Shot the bitch fuckin’ stone cold. Word is she was so hopped up she took almost twenty rounds.”

There’d been a piece on the news a few days ago of a woman with multiple gunshot wounds. Gang related. I never followed up on it until now.

One of the Seventeens in the back of the car groaned and fumbled his door open. I kicked it shut, slamming his head on the frame. He slumped back in his seat. The idiot on the trunk tried to leap up again, and this time I let the goggles stay open.

“So who sent you after me?”

He whimpered and his wide-open eyes watered up. I let the lenses close and shook him.

“Everyone,” he whined.

“What?”

“Everyone’s gunnin’ to score on you.” He managed a weak smile. “You’re the guy who shamed Rodney. Take you out, that makes someone new top dog now that he’s gone.”

I flipped him over and pulled his wallet. We went through the spiel, I pocketed his license and the cash, and then knocked him out against the trunk. Ten minutes later him and his two buddies were zip-tied together in a ring, arms to feet. I fastened the shotgunner’s unbroken arm to the mailbox and threw down a flare.

In the sudden burst of light, I saw something across the street. A woman up on the roof. Watching me.

My first thought was club girls. The hot, borderline-slutty ones who make a career out of being the girl everyone wants to dance with, buy drinks for, and take home—or at least out to your car. Some of them used to paint themselves with latex rather than wearing clothes.

The woman on the roof,