The Dummies Guide for Superheroes: Introduction

Morning over Santa Clara was clear and beautiful, without a hint of an afternoon storm. Joachim watched the city pass outside the bus windows. He’d made it to his apartment in time for a shower and change of clothes. When he went looking for his car, he couldn’t find it. He tried to ask the apartment manager about it, but she opened the door, went pale, screamed, and slammed the door in his face. He realized he was going to have to take the bus to get to work, something he loathed. It made him even more determined to press every charge he could dig up against Ray and the monks.

The bus stopped two blocks from the precinct and Joachim got off. He headed up the sidewalk to the front doors. Before he reached the doors, he met several officers and greeted them with a smile and hello. The ones that knew him stopped and gawked, but Joachim was too angry to notice.

He walked inside and stopped at the front desk, waiting for the officer-acting-as-receptionist to look up.

“Can I help you?” the officer asked without looking up.

“I need buzzed in. My wallet and badge were stolen.”

The officer looked up and his eyes bugged. He leapt to his feet, knocked over his chair, drew his gun, and aimed it at Joachim. It signaled more officers to do the same.

Wind began blowing around the station, and above it clouds started to form – but the weather remained localized around the police station. The strange weather phenomena intrigued people’s curiosity and drew them out of offices and stores to watch.

“Jeff, I’m tired, my head hurts, and it is going to take all day to get arrest warrants for a bunch of monks. Just let me in.”

“Who are you?” Jeff demanded.

“You know who I am. Let me in now or I will have your badge, rookie.”

“WHO ARE YOU!?” Jeff demanded.

“Joachim Yardam. Who the hell do you think I am?”

Jeff vehemently shook his head. “Uh-uh. Detective Joachim Yardam is dead. Who are you?”

“I am Detective Joachim Yardam,” Joachim snarled through gritted teeth.

“No you’re not. We all went to his funeral,” someone behind Joachim said.

Outside the wind had increased to a dangerous gale, and while it caused some breezy blowback in the streets and buildings around it, the focus was the precinct. The clouds overhead were dark and heavy with rain. Outside there was a low rumble of thunder. Traffic came to a standstill as people stopped and stepped out of their cars to watch the peculiar, choleric storm foment.

Inside, Joachim turned and was grateful to see his partner, Gary Tipton. Until he noticed that Gary’s hand rested on his sidearm.

“Gary, I’m not dead. If I were dead, I wouldn’t be here.”

“Joachim is dead! Who the hell are you?”

“I want to get back to work, Gary. I—”

“Detective Joachim Yardam is dead! Who are you?”

Joachim looked at each face around him. They all believed he was dead but he found that impossible. All he remembered was being shot, and how much it hurt. He didn’t remember dying.

“I am Joachim Yardam,” he told them, turning back to Gary. “You and I go off to Reno every J month of the year. I puked all over the limo at your bachelor party.”

“You are not Joachim Yardam. He is dead.”

“I am!”

“Prove it.”

The storm found an open window and as it drifted into the building, it expanded into every room it found. Police, victims, and criminals ran into offices and slammed doors behind them, or dove to hide under desks and counters. Inside the building the thunder was a deafening, crackling roar. Lightening sparked across the clouds, occasionally zapping items, and killing anyone unlucky enough to be hiding in the wrong place, or caught in the open. The strong wind blew papers easily, toppled heavier items, and rattled anything bolted down.

The officers in the lobby didn’t notice the encroaching storm. They were focused on an imposter that looked and sounded like the deceased Detective Joachim Yardam.

“Like what? You want a DNA sample? I can give you that.”

Joachim reached up to pull hair from his scalp. A nervous officer across the room pulled his weapon’s trigger.

“HOLD YOUR FIRE!” Gary screamed.

Joachim felt the bullet go between his shoulders. He stumbled forward before he toppled over. The pain was incredible. It felt like someone was holding his left lung in a fist, slowly suffocating him.

The storm intensified to mini-hurricane strength, although there was nothing mini about the devastation it was causing to the property and people inside.

Blood began to fill Joachim’s throat. It trickled over his tongue, leaving a sweet-metallic taste. He saw his blood ooze around him. It coagulating quickly at the edges and ran over the concentric lines as it spread.

Joachim stared at the lines as his heart drew out its final beats. It was hypnotizing. It allowed his mind to relax and he could clearly recall his last life, and first death.

Joachim stopped his car outside a dark, condemned, apartment building.

“Are you sure this is the place?” Gary asked him. “It doesn’t look like there’s anyone here. He’s probably lying.”

“Donald wouldn’t lie to me.”

Joachim grabbed his flashlight off the seat and got out. He waited until Gary walked around to join him before locking the car. The two started across the empty street.

“Where is everyone? This place is usually crawling with druggies and homeless,” Joachim said.

“We had a drug sweep through here today,” Gary answered. “Didn’t you get that memo? Joey, Donald might not be here because of that sweep. Let’s go and catch up with him tomorrow.”

Joachim shook his head. He reached down and unfastened the safety strap on his gun.

“You won’t need that,” Gary told him.

“No chances,” Joachim said. “This isn’t the kind of place Donald would pick unless something was really wrong.”

“Joey, I really think this is a goose chase. I mean, I know Q.E.D. isn’t squeaky clean, but do you really believe they’re bribing police officers? And they’re using corpses for computer parts? Maybe in some horror movie that works, but this is real life, and besides, how does that have any bearing on dirty cops? Donald’s been hitting the meth again, Joey. You can’t trust anything he tells you.”

“You’d be surprised how reliable he is.”

At the bottom of the apartment stairs, Gary grabbed his arm and stopped him. “Donald would lie to you. He’s done it before. Let’s just go get supper and focus on that stack of cases sitting on our desks. Besides, even if you could find a lawyer dumb enough to take on Q.E.D., their mob squad of lawyers would bury you in miles of red tape before you lost everything you have to that company.”

Joachim pulled away, starting up the stairs. “You have been against this meeting since I told you. Why?”

“It’s a complete waste of time. None of it makes any sense.”

“Does to me.”

Gary followed Joachim. They squeezed through the door into a dark hallway. Joachim turned on his flashlight, shining it on the first door. Gold aluminum numbers read 101.

“Gotta find 105,” Joachim told Gary.

He started walking, his feet crunching and grinding against the trash and used hypodermic needles on the floor. It made walking a little difficult, but he stayed focused on the door numbers.

His flashlight found number 105. He drew his gun, passed his flashlight over the top to rest on the barrel, and pushed the door open.

Abandon broken furniture and trash filled the room. Then the beam of the flashlight found a man in his late twenties on the floor in his own blood. Donald the Informant had been murdered.

“Shit,” Joachim said. “Gary, call an ambulance and backup.”

Gary said nothing.

Joachim turned to call for him and found four revolvers aimed at him. He couldn’t see that they had the serial numbers filed off them. He couldn’t see that the hands holding them wore gloves. All he could focus on was the faces of three uniformed police officers and one Gary Tipton, his trusted partner of twelve years.

“You should have taken the hint, Joey,” Gary told him, “because I won’t let you ruin my retirement plan.”

The four emptied their guns into Joachim.

Joachim looked up. Gary was crouched beside him.

“You… Killed… Me,” he whispered.

Gary started to shake his head. Joachim snapped his hand around Gary’s throat and with his superhuman strength, drug him close enough to hear him. Gary gagged and struggled to get free.

“You… Are a... Murderer.”

Gary struggled to get free. Joachim smiled, showing teeth covered in blood. He looked insane, psychotic – dying twice can do that to a person.

“Gary,” Joachim crooned, “I did die. I came back. Now…” Joachim gagged on his blood until he cleared his throat long enough to tell his partner, a man he never dreamed would turn bad, “Gary… Look… What I… Can do.”

Joachim ordered Mother Nature to send a bolt of lightning through Detective Gary Tipton’s heart. And then he let the dead detective go.

As his last breath exhaled, it seemed to blow the freak storm away with it. The wind, thunder and lightning stopped abruptly and the storm escaped back outside. Over the precinct, the clouds dissipated, returning to a clear and beautiful day, without a hint of an afternoon storm.

Luke kept his head down, hiding most of his face in the hood of his jacket. He entered a nursing home through a rear entrance to avoid encountering the staff. One day they might discovered that the back door didn’t lock, but he doubted that would happen until a resident found it and someone who cared enough missed them.

He made his way through the halls. The geriatric patients and their underpaid, bitter caretakers paid little attention to him. He hated this place but it was all he could afford. Most of the people here had been abandoned and already looked dead. Life left them when the people they cared about had stopped caring about them.

Even though he despised his father, Luke couldn’t abandon the old man. Like other things in his life, he held onto the relationship with his father despite there was no logic. Perhaps it was because this man was the last relative Luke had, his last attachment to a life that had been good for a while, until his mother vanished, until his father decided Luke’s brother was the good son and only he and his comic books deserved his attention. He’d forgotten about Luke long before his memories faded.

Luke pushed his hood back as he entered his Tackett Peterfeso’s room. The old man sat by the window in his rocking chair. He spent his waking hours staring out the window, waiting for something or someone.

Luke crossed the room and crouched beside his father.

“Dad?” he said.

The man’s eyes turned to him, but there was no light of recognition.

Luke didn’t care. He had to tell him what had happened.

“Did the nurses tell you I’m… That your son, Luke, is dead?”

“Luke isn’t dead. He’s just late, as usual!”

Losing his memories hadn’t made his father any less obnoxious

“That’s right. You tell ‘em, Dad.” Luke wasn’t really in the mood to make it sound like a joke. Dying and coming back to life seemed to be a real humor killer.

“Luke’s a scientist, smart as a whip.”

Luke looked up at him, staring at the Tackett’s craggy face. Where was this coming from?

“Luke isn’t smart. You know that.”

“The hell he isn’t!” his father spat at him. He glared at Luke. He gripped the arms of his chair, looking like he was about to lift out of it and beat Luke into a pulp. “My boy is as smart as they come. Smarter than most. I’ll be the crap out of you if you say otherwise.”

What was his father even talking about? Luke sighed. He had come here with a purpose, and this wasn’t it. “Okay. He’s smart, dad.”

His father relaxed, looking back out the window.

“I have to tell you a secret, Dad.” Luke reached out, laying his hand on his father’s arm. He looked down as he continued. “I did die. I was shot and fell off a cliff. They tried to erase me but this computer brought me back to life. It’s crazy. Hey, do you remember your comic books, Dad? That series Dupuis bought when I was a kid?” Luke looked up at him.

Tackett stared at him. For the first time in years, Luke saw a spark of interest in what he was saying to his father.

“Do you remember those comic books, Dad?”

“Yes. Are you a fan?”

“I will be. I remember you always complained that most comic book superheroes dressed like fags and prostitutes. You went on for hours about that. Not exactly your most politically correct moments, but you got your point across. Maybe I’ll take a look at them now.”

“Do you like my comic books?”

Luke smiled, squeezing his father’s arm a little. “We’ll see; maybe. Do you want to see something really weird? I’ve been practicing with it most of the night. Here, stand up, Dad. Stand up with me.” Luke stood, holding out his hand.

His father didn’t take it. Luke leaned over a little, holding his father’s eyes.

“It’s okay, Dad. You’re safe with me. You always are.”

His father put out and retracted his hand several times before finally placing it in Luke’s hand. Luke stood, pulling up on his father’s arm. The old man rose onto his feet, unsteady for a moment before gaining his balance. Luke balled his other hand into a fist and looked down at a picture on the bedside table. It was taken when he was nine, when his family was whole, and life made sense.

Around them, the room changed to the kitchen the picture was taken in. Luke and his brother sat at the table laughing. It was a dreary, overcast Sunday morning, but his mother somehow made it seem bright and sunny. She was making pancakes with fresh blueberries, and humming as she popped one at a time in her mouth.

Through a door, their father ran in armed with a camera.

“Boys!” he called.

They all turned and as fast as he could, he snapped off a photo. The boys laughed as their mother chased their father around the room, getting an occasional smack on his rump with the spatula.

“Her robe was blue,” Luke’s father-of-the-present said.

Luke looked at him, then his mother. Her robe was red.

“No. It was red.”

“It was blue. I bought it for her when she was four months pregnant with James. She didn’t have any nightgowns that fit and she wanted blue.”

Luke looked back and forth. Was his father right? Did he have the memory wrong? Did that mean… He could manipulate memories?

Having lost his concentration, the altered room snapped back to the nursing home room. Luke’s father pulled away, walking toward where the table had been.

“What happened? Where’d they go?” He turned, glaring at Luke.

“It was just a memory, Dad. Mom and James are both gone. They weren’t really here.”

“You took them from me! Where are they?”

Luke walked toward his father. The man retreated but stopped when Luke laid his hand on his shoulder.

“It was a memory, Dad. I won’t do that again okay? I have to go. I’ll try to come back again.”

Luke walked to the door.

He was reaching for the door handle when his father said, “If you’re going to be a superhero, don’t forget the mask. You have to hide who you are.”

Luke turned. His father stared at him.

“Why’s that, Dad?”

“A superhero wears a mask to protect the people he loves from his villains. If a villain finds out who he is, those are the people who suffer. And remember that a good superhero doesn’t fight for the world; that’s too big, too impossible. A good superhero fights to save a person or two, the people he loves. The world is an afterthought. That’s how it always was with the Chocolate Giant.”

Luke pulled his hood up. “I’ll keep that in mind, Dad.” He turned to wrap his hand around the door handle.

“And another thing.”

“Yeah?” Luke didn’t turn this time.

“Never, ever forget the basic rules.”

“What are those, Dad?”

“Read the books! You can’t go off being a superhero blind. Geeze. Who raised you?”

Luke looked back. His father was still staring at him. Any other time Luke would have found this conversation ludicrous.

“For once, I’m grateful you raised me. Bye, Dad.”

Luke turned and left. In the five years that Alzheimer’s had erased him from his father’s memory, this was first conversation they’d had where there was a spark of connection. He never would have guessed that connection would be based on comic books that Luke had never given a second thought about.