Ice Cream and Venom Read Free Page A

Dakota, Bryghtsyde walked right up to Blacknight—no idea how he got there, or knew where we were or anything like that—and politely explained in that sonorous-yet-menacing voice of his that what he'd done to our friend was an act of mercy. Then he let us go. No idea why. Pawns in some larger game that the superheroes and the gods are playing amongst themselves, or just some sick concept of mercy from a destroyer god who's only approximately human shaped, and has no empathy at all? It's unfathomable. Don't ask questions you can't answer, just keep walking.
    Note that I've said 'gods' and 'superheroes,' as if there's some kind of difference. There isn't.
    I ask the lady who leads Homer by the hand if she can lead Deadpan too, but she can't, he's too damn old. In a bit he'll start de-aging again. Eventually he'll be a baby, and I can carry him myself, but for now he's too bulky and frail. We lost our stretcher a couple days ago, so we lose a lot of time trying to make a new one out of a door, but it's dry-rotted through, and when we put 'Pan on it, the old man breaks through and falls three feet to the floor, landing painfully and crying like a toddler in an ancient man's body. Which, of course, is exactly what he is. There's nothing left of his mind. I scoop his head and shoulders up in to my arms, and he calms down a bit. I shoot him up with some Feelgood, and he calms down more. His ancient face looks at me, his yellow, cataract-covered eyes as wide as a baby. He reaches out and touches my face like a newborn, and coos. A streamer of drool comes out of his toothless mouth. It's sick and wrong. I force myself to smile and look calm. I fight my revulsion, and conjure up images of my own long dead son when he was a baby.
    "There there," I say, "Who's a good baby? You are! You are! Yes you are, yes you are, you're so good!" I pinch his sagging, leathery cheek and he giggles and crows, and I tell the others to find a better door.
    Someone, Ivan I think, complains about this, and says we should just leave him behind. I think about killing him for bringing it up. I've been hanging out with the two best fighters in the known history of our species for quite a while now, so I've picked up a few things. I could easily do it.
    Instead, without meeting his eyes, I say, "That's two strikes, Ivan." He backs away apologetically, frightened. Deservedly frightened.
    After everyone's finished their pill food rations—swallowed dry, since there's no water around—I head out in to the lobby, and look around. Convinced it's safe, I turn around and yell back in to the inner room for everyone to file out, it's safe. Then I turn around and...
    Remember when I was speculating about who the flyer was I saw in the distance? It was Superjunge. Damn, but he's fast! In the time it took me to turn around and yell two sentences, he flew up silently behind me, and landed. I turn around to find him staring right at me, his face an inch from mine.
    * * *
    The first superheroes were street-level types. The first ones—like Blacknight and Deadpan—weren't technically superheroes at all, more like world-class athletes and prodigies. The later ones—Corporeal Punishment and Captain Canada and Hot Chick and the Six Billion Peso Mexican—were basically modified humans who'd been diddled with by various governments to make super-soldiers. These started showing up just about exactly ten years after I got out of college. Then came the 'genuine' metahumans, though it's never entirely sure what 'genuine' means. Were they product of a more advanced genetic diddling? Were they a new stage in human evolution? Were they covertly adjusted by forces beyond man's knowledge? Were they the result of time travelers re-writing our history? Undoubtedly any and all of those were true. But when they started showing up, things changed. No longer did we have simple souped-up humans and cyborgs, now we started having things that used psychic powers, that had different senses,