In Hero Years… I’m Dead Chapter Two

For your reading pleasure, here is Chapter Two of the Digital Original novel, In Hero Years… I’m Dead.

So I didn’t get through the lock in world record time. I still got through. Pocketing the picks, I slipped into the corridor, closed the door behind me.

Things looked promising. Left was the vault and then the lobby beyond it, though a bend in the corridor hid it. To the right were a staff break room, utility closet, and a couple of offices that would have been below Baker’s office suite. Best of all, at the end of the hall stood a fire door. Opening it would set off an alarm.

First rule of rescue operations: secure an escape route. Not so much for me, but the hostages. The robbers had the front doors covered to keep police out, and the police would have them covered to keep the robbers in, so the fire door would be it. Best part, the bank employees knew exactly where it was.

Next rule: he who has the most firepower wins. I needed weapons. Thank God for the utility closet. The poor man’s chemistry lab. There’d be enough noxious chemicals in there to manufacture weapons of mass destruction. A little ammonia in an air-conditioning vent and eyes would be watering. Hitting anything with those guns would be tough.

Two steps into the corridor and I had to shift to rule three: don’t get caught. One of the thieves turned the corner. “Hey you, pops. Where do you think you’re going?”

Without looking at him, I dropped to my knees. I covered my head with my hands and I slumped against the wall. “Don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt me.”

The guy groaned. Boots clicked as he closed. “Get with this century, old man. No one is going to hurt you. On your feet. “

“Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me. I don’t want to die.” I pumped fear into my voice―all too easily, actually. Very convincing. That was all that mattered.

He stopped and poked my shoulder with his blunderbuss. “You’re not going to die, pal.”

“Oh, thank God.” I spun quickly, hooking the gun’s barrel with my left elbow, jamming it against the wall. My right hand came up fast. Open-palm strike to the groin.

He wasn’t expecting that. He gurgled and squeaked. He jackknifed forward. I caught him by the throat and tugged, slamming him face-first into the floor.

A tooth skittered down the hall. He slumped, moaning.

I smiled. Not bad for an old man.

I grabbed him by his web belt and dragged him to the utility closet. Another trip to retrieve his gun, then I closed us both in. I used some handy zip-ties to secure him, then returned to that firepower thing.

The pistol at his right hip was a taser and a pouch at the small of his back had replaceable electrode packages. Better than nothing. I stripped the gun belt off and tightened it around my waist.

I cracked the blunderbuss open. It had a short shotgun shell for a load. No shot and a weird configuration for the firing chamber.

I set it aside. Another handy rule: never mess around with a weapon you don’t understand. The taser I could use, but that thing, nope.

Had to move fast. The gang already had one man down. When he didn’t return, they’d send two, maybe three to find him. They’d be doing that soon.

I pillaged the closet. I borrowed someone named Jorge’s coveralls. Big man. They hung on me that way an elephant’s skin would hang on a Shetland pony. I didn’t zip the front all the way up, though. I still wanted access to the taser. An ammonia bottle with sprayer went in one cargo pocket and a bottle of cleaning fluid in the other. I set the nozzles for stream.

I appropriated a push-broom with the screw-in handle. I pulled a set of white uTiliPod headphones from a lost and found box, wiped them off and stuck them in my ears. The cord I tucked down into my shirt. Disguise complete.

Almost.

I grabbed a utility rag, folded it into a triangle, and tied it around the lower half of my face. No mirror to check my appearance. Didn’t need one. Ridiculous is easy to picture. Looks a lot like absurd.

Jorge the super-janitor, head bobbing to music only he could hear, emerged from the closet. I was still counting on a search party, so I set a trap. Heading back up the hall, I laid down several lines of industrial cleaner. I retreated toward the fire door, exposing my back toward the lobby, and just started sweeping.

Thirty seconds later, three of them came into the corridor.

“What the…?”

“Hey, old man.”

I ignored them.

The first voice became insistent. “You. Old. Man.”

Yeah, slower and louder always works for the deaf.

My head bobbed. I started dancing. Tossed in a hip wiggle, too, and a quick salsa step. That broom was a hot date in a tiny dress.

Footsteps echoed. Closer, boys, closer. They obliged me, moving into the heart of my trap.

Anger filled the voice. Deafness was one thing, but now he figured I didn’t understand English. “You got three seconds, old man. Comprende?”

I whirled down into a crouch, drawing the taser. “Comprende this, amigo.”

Evolution: the hero’s best friend.

The first flash of that taser gushed adrenaline into their blood. The fight or flight reaction kicked in, all turbo-charged. One fighter, two runners. The fighter came at me, not bothering to draw his taser. Three steps in and he hit the soap. He belly-flopped and kept coming, flailing a bit. He went sliding past. I whacked him with the broom, snapping the head off.

The other two backpedaled hard. That really didn’t work terribly well. The bossy one’s feet flew out and he landed on his head. The way he bounced wasn’t good―he got all loose-limbed and his blunderbuss clattered against the wall.

The other guy went to his knees. I leaped over the nearest soap line and lashed him with the broomstick’s blunt end. Took two hits to snap it in half. He wavered but didn’t go down. I broke his nose with my knee. That took him out of the fight.

Something popped behind me. Two impacts, like fat raindrops hitting a canvas awning. Taser electrodes. They’d stuck in the coveralls. I leaned forward, hoping to make space between my body and the fabric.

My right foot slipped. He who lives by the soap… I went down to a knee, spinning just enough to spot my attacker in the corner of my eye.

“You should know better than to mess with the Twisters, old man.” The fighter regained his feet. “I’m gonna twist you up bad.”

I’ve always hated that about villains. The patter’s obvious and predictable. Worse it’s usually corny. In a hero, especially a sidekick, corny can almost be endearing.

“Shoot already, will you?”

“Oh, think you’re tough, do you?” The Twister puffed up a bit. “This is gonna hurt.”

A little laugh prefaced a woman’s words. “If that’s the tune you want to call…” A bullwhip cracked. The electrode clip flew from the taser’s barrel.

The Twister spun. The whip returned, coiling around his throat. A solid jerk yanked him from my sight. He rebounded noisily from one wall and slipped down against the other.

I came all the way around. She was a vision.

“Fox?”

Can’t be. Tall and slender, with long red hair tied into a pony-tail that lashed her shoulders, the young woman couldn’t have been very far into her twenties. Her costume looked a lot like Scarlet Fox’s, save for the black V on the brow of her red domino mask. The costume had a halter-top and a central strip of cloth that descended over her flat tummy and broadened into a bikini bottom. Knee-high boots, a pistol in a thigh holster and the whip coiling in her gloved hands completed her outfit.

Not Scarlet Fox. Her daughter, though. She approached me, moving with her mother’s supple grace. She casually clipped her whip to her left hip, then slowed. She looked me up and down. She stared, then took another step closer as I rose to my feet.

She touched the side of her mask, and the white polarized lenses cleared.

I saw what she’d seen.

Her eyes. My eyes.

A match.

She dropped me with a backhanded slap.

In Hero Years… I’m Dead comes in two editions. The basic edition costs $5 and contains just the novel. the Deluxe Edition includes a long essay about the process of the writing and the genesis of the ideas. These two links will take you to my store where you can buy the epub format which works on Sony readers, the iPad and the Nook.

In Hero Years… I’m Dead is also now available for your Kindle. Click this link for the basic edition and this link for the Deluxe Edition