Zephyr 14.4 “Apex Predator”
I STALK OFF a distance, ready to acknowledge to no one but myself that I’m uneasy about the state of play as well. I killed one of these men in cold blood just hours ago, but that was in the heat of battle and not like some rebel army executing the Opposition once victory’s assured, hearts hardened, Nietzschean parables all coming true. It’s hard to reconcile, but the sounds of ongoing combat ring out across the city and we don’t have the luxury these philosophical debates require. I find myself oddly fixated on the image of a metal weathervane protruding like a thrown spear from the engine block of a parked government limo, the silver cockerel on the end like some harbinger of an ancient and most resolute doom.
Snapping my eyes away, I look to the other members of my squad caught in their own awkwardness and introspection. I scan Volt and Lynx.
“You OK?”
Volt nods back, still out of breath. Lynx looks fine. More than fine, in fact, the feeling of stirring loins odd not just because we’ve only just escaped the frying pan and we’re still at the fire’s edge, but because however lissom Lynx might be, you’re talking about a cat-faced, 100 per cent fur-covered hardbody, her spotted tail waving slightly in the air to the same beat as her playful smirk, green eyes twinkling as I awkwardly look away, not the sole apex predator in this particular jungle it seems.
“Alright then,” I say, remustering my mojo with difficulty. “Hero, next stop?”
Heracleon doesn’t like the epithet however much it doesn’t suit him, compliment that it might be. With a truculent flutter of his lashes, he rolls his eyes up inside his head as he consults with his oracle, then moments later lifts a finger and points, Juju style, further into the entangled streets of the inner city.
“Someone called Strike is holed up in a book depository.”
“Let’s roll.”
IT’S JUST COINCIDENCE that I give Lynx a lift, carrying her in my arms as she gracefully and quite willingly curls her arms around my shoulders and her tail around my thigh. I mean, the girl can’t fly and what’s a fella to do?
We motor over the rooftops, just a hop, skip and a jump from the last scene. Heracleon, Manticore and Syzygy flying, Volt propelling himself along in a similar fashion that, like so many things, are based on radically different physics.
There’s three Titans with their eyes on this Strike kid’s location. I’ve never heard of him before myself, maybe just a whisper or two, nothing I can actually drudge up to provide useful details other than obviously he’s got some kind of natty distance attack, evidenced by the way his enemies have positioned themselves on separate flanks from his position, two on roofs overlooking the brick building from where they lob everything from torn-out fire hydrants to Japanese convertibles. In reply we glimpse the purple flash of Strike returning fire, but it’s an impasse – an impasse we’re more than happy to tip over.
At little more than a hand signal, our increased squadron divides in three and Heracleon and I arc down towards the closest of the Titans, black-caped for some reason, alternating between cover and firing his red eye-beams at the corner where Strike’s ensconced. The interloper barely has time to swivel about before I slam my left across his jaw and his legs smash through the lip of the wall protruding above the rooftop and then he goes over the edge, catching himself halfway and flying back in a double-fisted ram raid that has me bending aside like I’m in the Matrix, Heracleon diving for cover like the Nancy I am rapidly realising he is, our black-caped attacker turning on a dime to open up again with the eye lasers as I scoop a handful of bricks and concrete powder and throw them at him as I time-lapse forward and deliver possibly the most impeccable left hook ever seen into the bastard’s ribs, the bones crunching under my assault, wonderboy gasping and his eyes popping out as he’s lifted off the ground and then takes my right across his jaw in bone-snapping impact that sends him across the roof, rebounding off an air-conditioning unit and then disappearing in an awry tangle of senseless arms and legs off the edge of the building.
“Zephyr!” I hear Volt’s yodel. “Heads up!”
Heracleon and I dance again as one of these brothers from another mother come barrelling towards us, flying with a vintage-era Morris Minor he tosses like a retarded kid bowling, the dangerous missile cartwheeling across the surface athwart the tenement building and us making scarce as it goes by dislodging side mirrors and panelling and bits and bobs, finally crunching to a stop over near the far side before the whole roof lurches and then collapses through into the next storey, clearly a canny way of uncovering structural faults, throwing a fucking car at it; and into that surprised gap I fire a lightning bolt our attacker narrowly avoids, turning tail so I chase him across the block to the rooftop of the book depository so we duke it out beneath one of those giant billboards erected for no other purpose than some architect sold the city council on his ability to invoke the heritage values of the neighbourhood erased by the Kirlians in ’84.
Up close, this latest incarnation smells like he’s been rolling in soiled underpants and I’d tell him as much except he seems to have some pretty serious dance moves on him, schooled in some freaky martial art I don’t recognise, instead of being just a tough brawler like the others of his ilk. After blocking a few goes at my head, I manage to get the guy in a headlock and a foot behind one leg and we go plunging backwards into the door from the top of the building, suddenly in the dark as we crash and tumble down the staircase into the building’s gullet, the sweaty bastard not letting go nor letting me choke the life out of him as he lets rip with a few experimental bursts of his eye heaters and I probe his ribs with my elbows and finally wind up on something resembling level ground, both hands under his chin as I flip him bodily over my shoulder, tumbling across the room into the storage space from a forgotten office supplies business, old photocopiers, decrepit 1990s-era electronics, broken telephones and faxes and strange curly-corded devices I frankly don’t recognise in the heat of the moment as Titan swims about like a man just finding his footing, and the good sense occurs to me to jet straight into him so that we smash through the metal shelving and the wall its screwed to, sunlight from dirty great panes of the upper warehouse floor bathing across us as we bounce like billiard balls over the chipped and paint-stained concrete one finds beneath old carpet once its removed, a hand under the guy’s belt as I rain punches onto the side of his neck and head before I have to bull him off by main strength alone, cheek burning as a sustained burst from his eye beams threatens to cook my head like a barbecue. My knee goes into Titan’s solar plexus and he grunts, heaving, then actually barfs soapy fluid all over my right foot as he gasps for breath, and I take the momentary reprieve to channel a small power station into the back of his neck and he lays down like an animal surrendering to slaughter in the grisly contents of his own stomach and, well, perhaps I lay the boot in a few times for good measure before I become conscious of the slow pad of booted footfalls echoing across the abandoned open-plan space.
THE KID IS not really a kid, but he’s built like one, an Asian guy in what at first flush appears to be a black-and-purple body suit made of a thick rubbery material stretching right up into a mask that covers his mouth, chin and nose and contours into wide goggles covering his narrowed, suspicious, hesitant eyes. Loose, sweat-moistened black hair somehow masks his appearance rather than defining it as he moves a heavily gloved hand to his waist where he wears a Han Solo-style utility belt and holster where the thick black handle of some kind of blaster protrudes.
“You’re Zephyr?”
“Uh-huh,” I nod slowly. “That’s right. You’re Strike?”
“Yeah. You heard of me?”
“Not really. It’s what the other guy said.”
“That guy?” Strike motions with one thumb at the unconscious Titan.
I shake my head. “A different other guy.”
“OK.”
“You’re helping out?”
“Yeah,” Strike says. “It was all over the RSS feeds.”
I nod like I know what the fuck he’s talking about as I become aware of the prickly sensation of Strike’s secretive gaze picking slowly over me, not so much lecherous as like a snake looking for a crevice to crawl into.
“You’re part of the defence effort,” he asks, I realise, quite tentatively.
“Yup. Like you, huh?”
I don’t get the verbal sparring, but anyway. . . .
“I just thought I’d see what needed doing,” he answers. “These guys hijacked me on my bike. Took out one of them, but they had . . . back-up.”
“Bike, huh. What’re you riding?”
Strike only looks at me a moment.
“You’re part of the defence effort?”
“I said that already.”
“Hmmm, OK.” An unfortunate dream-like quality to the kid’s voice as he distractedly pulls his gaze off me and looks to the window as Heracleon, then Manticore and Lynx swing through.
Strike moves off a few steps and holds his hands out in a weird way. From his palms we watch as a complete motorcycle quickly assembles itself, constructed of the same purple-and-black colour scheme as Strike’s suit, the purple parts now glowing darkly in tune with similar panels along the phantasmal bike until they stop just as quickly as they’ve started. Strike throws a leg over his ride and nods to me, coolly looking across to the others as they shuffle into the warehouse space.
“Thanks for the save,” the kid says. “See you next time.”
I barely notice the purring engine of the motorcycle as he takes off across the concrete, lifts the front wheel and hops it up and smashing through the back series of glass windows and just as quickly disappears from view.
“Was that Strike?” Heracleon says.
“What, you don’t know?” I ask in mock surprise.
I am briefly distracted by Manticore kneeling to lobotomise the unconscious Titan before he stands and nods to me and I look back to Heracleon’s clear discomfort. Lynx stands at my elbow purring, Syzygy and Volt entering in Strike’s wake.
“There’s a storm coming,” Heracelon says.
I briefly “feel” the air and shrug. “No there’s not.”
Somehow during the latest fracas, day has dawned, but now the soft cold glow of morning darkens again as we see Heracleon’s storm gathering overhead.
Like refugees hiding from the Gestapo, our rebels move to the broken windows and look out to see the sky dotted with dozens upon dozens of Titans moving across the city. I can scarce believe what we are seeing, but I look to Heracleon and furrow my brow.
“What about the other groups?”
“There’s another battle nearby,” Heracleon says. He points. It could be yards or miles distant for all I know, judging by the look on his face. “Your daughter is there.”
I shake my head at the inevitable, shoulders hunched like a boxer.
“Tell me where,” I whisper.
Zephyr 14.4 “Apex Predator” is a post from: Zephyr - a webcomic in prose
