He bent his will to going insubstantial, to allow the powerful blow to pass right through him.
He didn’t go insubstantial.
Fury spiked in him. That bastard Meadows stole Cosmic Traveler! Then a fist like a medieval mace clipped the side of his head and sent sparks bouncing off the inside of his skull. Tom spun down hard on his face on dirt worn bare by passing boots and compacted hard. The world reeled crazily about him. His stomach lurched.
Sheer anger drove him to push off from the merciless ground, snapping himself upright with unnatural strength. He found himself facing his attacker. The dude looked like the Tin Woodman on steroids. He had a lower jaw like a steam shovel. “So you’re the fella they call the Radical, huh?” the metal man said in a loopy Minnesota accent. “Tough guy. Well, it’s high time you picked on somebody your own size.”
Tom tasted blood, turned his face to spit out a tooth. Then he slammed an uppercut into the rusted-over steel plate that covered the metal dude’s gut. Iron groaned and buckled.
The metal man oofed and bent over. “Felt that one,” he said.
Tom slammed an overhand right into the bucket jaw. The metal man flew backward through the corner of the same wall he’d just burst through. A corner of the barracks slumped on top of him.
Tom turned to look for new enemies. There was a terrific commotion coming from the far side of the Red House, toward the west. By the light of flames he saw what looked like the branches of a huge tree looming above the high-pitched slate roof.
I don’t remember a great big tree there when I was here before, he was just thinking muzzily, when something like the steel jaws of a trap closed on either biceps.
He jerked his right arm forward. Skin beneath rust-roughened steel fingers. Tom slammed his elbow back against thick metal plate, felt it give. The iron man gasped in pain. The grip on Tom’s left arm slacked.
He ripped free, spun to begin trip-hammering punches into the metal monster. The armor began to dent in on itself, the steel man to sag.
Then suddenly there were wasps whining around his ears, stinging his arms and neck and cheeks, and trying for his eyes.
Bursts of automatic gunfire erupted to the south as the local soldiers regrouped. Cameo and Bugsy crouched behind the ruins of a jeep, its front wheels still gently spinning. “This is not going according to plan,” Bugsy noted.
“The earring,” Cameo said.
“What?”
“Ali’s earring. Simoon can force them all into cover.”
Bugsy took the chance of peering over the jeep’s fender. A bullet hissed by, and he ducked back down. “It’s in Central Park somewhere,” he said.
“It’s what?”
“Well… we broke up, you know?”
Ellen said something under her breath. She fumbled with something in her pocket, then the ruins of the fedora appeared. Nick lobbed a ball of lightning at the attackers, following it with ten or twelve marble-sized shockers as the first detonation was still rumbling. “Go!” Nick shouted. “Distract them, at least.”
“I’m on it.” Bugsy dissolved into an angry, living cloud. He flew in a funnel toward Weathers, weaving through the air in tight spirals, dropping low and racing to the sky, no tendril of wasps so dense that their loss would be crippling.
Tom Weathers’s fists rose and fell, Rustbelt shuddering with every blow. A lightning ball exploded just to the Radical’s left, illuminating him like a flashbulb-hair plastered to him by sweat, lips drawn back in an expression of inhuman rage.
Bugsy went in for the kill… or if not the kill, the serious annoyance. Fifty, maybe sixty wasps got in close enough to sting.
The Radical turned, shouting. Beams of terrible power leapt from his hands, sweeping the air, driving Bugsy back.
One beam hit Cameo.
Michelle came out of the Red House with Fire Boy in tow. Rusty was lying facedown in the dirt next to the front stairs. A blast of light came from Tom Weathers and streaked across the open lawn. She saw Cameo collapse. Bugsy was beside her, surrounded by wasps. Oh, God, Michelle thought, horrified. They shouldn’t be here.
And she was scared. Scared for them, and scared for herself. After what had happened in New Orleans, she knew Tom Weathers was capable of doing anything.
She ran down the steps and knelt beside Rusty, dropping Fire Boy’s hand. “Wally,” she said, gently touching his shoulder. Rust flaked off beneath her fingers. “Can you hear me?”
He opened one eye, sort of. His metal skin was cracked and red with rust, and leaking blood. “Bubbles,” he said. “How’d you get here?” His voice was weak.
“Oh, the usual,” she said, trying to keep her voice light. “Teleported to Africa with Noel. Came up the Congo. Found some remote labs. Killed Alicia Nshombo. Heard there was a party going on here.”
He tried to smile, but it came out as a wince. He rolled onto his side. “We gotta get rid of the lab. And Gardener…”
“The lab is done.” She wasn’t going to tell him about Jerusha. Not any more than he probably already knew. “Now you stay down and let me take care of Weathers.”
“You betcha,” he said with a groan.
Fire Boy tugged on her pants leg and then pointed to Rusty. “Friend?” he asked and he managed not to set anyone, or anything, on fire.
She nodded. The boy sat down on the steps near Rusty. Michelle wanted him to be in a safer place, but there was no safe place here.
She ran toward Weathers, releasing a barrage of bubbles. As they hit, his flesh ripped open. Ha! Michelle thought. An angry scream came from Weathers. It was frustration and fear. And it made Michelle smile. Now you’re scared, too. You bastard.
She hurled more bubbles. She made them heavy and fast. Weathers dodged the first few, but then one caught him and propelled him backward. He looked like a cartoon character, his legs splayed out, body doubled over. He landed in the shredded lawn and rolled. The next bubble exploded by his ear, and half of his pretty face was stripped to muscle and bone.
He popped up like a jack-in-the-box. “You bitch!” he screamed. A nimbus of yellow light surrounded him, bright as the sun. The beam that flew from his fingers was blinding, too bright to look upon. It hit her, threw her back, and made her fatter.
She lumbered to her feet and released another round of bubbles at him. “Why is it when a man is getting his ass kicked by a woman he has to call her a bitch? I mean, can’t you use some imagination, Weathers?” Anyone else would have been down. Anyone else would be dead. She didn’t know if she could stop him. And if she couldn’t, what would happen to everyone else?
Her bubbles threw him back again. He gave another shriek of frustration. “You slut! That hurt!” Then he hurled a light bolt at her. It lit Michelle up like Christmas. She blobbed out a little, and felt herself get denser. The power was fire in her veins again.
“Again!” She fired a huge, heavy explosive bubble at him. “With!” Another bubble. “The!” Another bubble. “Lame-ass!” Another bubble. “Remarks!” Another bubble. His face was hamburger, his clothes were rags, his lean torso sheeted in blood, but still the light poured from him. He would not go down.
“Great,” she said. “I’m going to have to keep listening to your blather even longer.” Her hands trembled. She kept bubbling. She had to stop him.
“You fat whore!” Another bolt of light. Michelle rolled her eyes as it hit. Her clothes were smoking.
“That’s horizontally challenged American to you,” she yelled. “And I’m not a whore. I’m just popular!”
God, I hate this guy. She hated him for what he’d done to Drake. She hated him for what he’d done to her. Hated him for helping turn children into jokers, killers, freaks. Hated herself for failing. For always failing everyone. She couldn’t be a hero. She didn’t even know how.
She put all the hatred into a bubble and let it go.
There was movement inside: someone coming toward her, not fleeing from the destruction. Jerusha opened her eyes wide, alarmed.
