The Good Fight 4: Homefront Read online

  The Pen & Cape Society Presents:

  THE GOOD FIGHT 4

  HOMEFRONT

  An Anthology of Superhero Tales with stories by:

  Nicholas Ahlhelm, Stephen T. Brophy, Samantha Bryant, Frank Byrns, Shielding Cournoyer, Adrienne Dellwo, Warren Hately, Ian Thomas Healy, T. Mike McCurley, Christofer Nigro, Palladian, Scott A. Story, and Jim Zoetewey

  All stories Copyright 2018 by their respective authors

  Published by Local Hero Press

  Kindle Edition

  Kindle Edition, License Notes

  “Family Reunion” Copyright 2018 Nicholas Ahlhelm

  “Love Vigilantes” Copyright 2018 Stephen T. Brophy

  “Coming Out As Leonel” Copyright 2018 Samantha Bryant

  “Next of Kin” Copyright 2018 Frank Byrns

  “The Mind Reader” Copyright 2018 Shielding Cournoyer

  “Impulses” Copyright 2018 Adrienne Dellwo

  “Zephyr: Windsong” Copyright 2018 Warren Hately

  “The Scent of Rose Petals” Copyright 2018 Ian Thomas Healy

  “A Wight on the Town” Copyright 2018 T. Mike McCurley

  “An Un-Bear-Able Day in Cuyahoga” Copyright 2018 Cristofer Nigro

  “Consent” Copyright 2018 Palladian

  “Skorned” Copyright 2018 Scott A. Story

  “Clowns and Curry Fries” Copyright 2018 Jim Zoetewey

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the authors’ imaginations or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  This book is the property of Local Hero Press. Its contents and its characters are the sole property of each story’s respective authors. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without written, express permission from the authors. To do so without permission is punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Cover art by Scott A. Story

  Book design by Local Hero Press, LLC

  Books From Local Hero Press

  The Just Cause Universe

  Just Cause

  The Archmage

  Day of the Destroyer

  Deep Six

  Jackrabbit

  Champion

  Castles

  The Lion and the Five Deadly Serpents

  Tusks

  The Neighborhood Watch

  Jackrabbit: Big in Japan

  Arena

  The Path (Summer 2018)

  Just Cause Universe Omnibus, Vol. 1

  Just Cause Universe Omnibus, Vol. 2

  The Bulletproof Badge

  Pariah of Verigo Novels

  Pariah’s Moon

  Pariah’s War

  Other Novels

  Assassin

  Blood on the Ice

  Hope and Undead Elvis

  Horde

  Making the Cut

  Rooftops

  Space Sharks

  Strings

  Starf*cker

  The Guitarist

  The Milkman

  The Scene Stealers

  Troubleshooters

  Collections

  Airship Lies

  High Contrast

  Tales of the Weird Wild West, Vol. 1

  The Good Fight

  The Good Fight 2: Villains

  The Good Fight 3: Sidekicks

  The Good Fight 4: Homefront

  Caped

  Nonfiction

  Action! Writing Better Action Using Cinematic Techniques

  All titles and more available wherever books and ebooks are sold.

  Table of Contents

  Clowns and Curry Fries - Jim Zoetewey

  A Wight on the Town - T. Mike McCurley

  Coming Out As Leonel - Samantha Bryant

  Consent - Palladian

  Love Vigilantes - Stephen T. Brophy

  Impulses - Adrienne Dellwo

  The Scent of Rose Petals - Ian Thomas Healy

  Family Reunion - Nicholas Ahlhelm

  Next of Kin - Frank Byrns

  The Mind Reader - Shielding Cournoyer

  Zephyr: Windsong - Warren Hately

  Skorned - Scott A. Story

  An Un-Bear-Able Day in Cuyahoga - Cristofer Nigro

  Clowns and Curry Fries

  Jim Zoetewey

  When you see capes on TV or video clips on YouTube, you don’t understand what it’s like behind the scenes.

  I should have had a better idea than most. My grandfather told me stories about his life as The Rocket, but he didn’t quite manage to pass on the feeling of the day-to-day, how you come to appreciate the moments of normal life between disasters, the way you half expect it to erupt into violence anyway, and how you should never come within half a mile of a bank even in civilian clothes.

  It’s just tempting fate.

  It was spring in Grand Lake, Michigan, the last week of April, the week before final exams. On Friday at a little after four, Haley and I had both handed in the last of our papers and decided to get dinner together—off campus and far from the cafeteria.

  Maybe we should have been studying for exams instead, but there would be plenty of time to study over the weekend, and besides, we needed to eat.

  We’d walked downtown from Grand Lake University’s campus. GLU was near downtown, so it was only a matter of crossing the river on the south side of campus and we were downtown—a ten-minute walk at most.

  We went to one of the nice parts. Think big, shining skyscrapers with mirrored glass mixed with buildings from Grand Lake, Michigan’s first boom time—the mid-1800s. Then it had been all about harvesting trees and all the things that could be made from them like furniture, paper, ships and houses.

  Now Grand Lake’s money came from other sources. We passed law firms, banks, the local headquarters of a health insurance company, restaurants, a flower shop and a comic book store. Without Haley, I probably would have stepped inside and spent the next hour or two checking out the comics.

  Haley and I stopped in Heroes’ League Park, a memorial to our grandparents. A small park near the center of downtown, it had an amphitheater, trees around the edges, and a bronze plaque with a brief summary of the original Heroes’ League’s service in World War 2 and the thirty plus years that followed.

  We both looked at the reproduction of a photo of the League from 1944. In the middle of the group, her grandfather, Night Wolf, stared into the distance. Behind him, Ghostwoman and the Rocket (my grandparents) held hands. Only two of the original League’s members still lived, and neither of our grandparents were among them.

  We exchanged glances after a few moments and walked toward the trees, sitting next to each other. I put my arm around her shoulders and she leaned in, laying her head on my chest
.

  It felt good, leading to a number of thoughts that we couldn’t pursue in a public park.

  Haley laughed. She couldn’t read minds, but some emotions are primal enough that they provoke physical responses that she could sense—my heart beating faster as we touched for one, and smells that I didn’t even know existed.

  I wouldn’t have been surprised if I reacted more strongly than usual. With school being crazy, we’d barely seen, much less held, each other all week.

  She put her hand on my chest and moved it toward the bottom my t-shirt. Then, as I thought she might move her hand under my shirt, she stopped and rubbed the material between her fingers.

  She raised her head to look at me. “Nick, are you wearing what I think you’re wearing?”

  I’d invented a material that passed as normal clothing but reorganized itself into a costume with light armor at the press of a button.

  “Yes,” I told her, moving my hand down her back. I could feel the heat of her body through the silky material of her shirt. I didn’t need to ask if she was wearing her costume. I’d never figured out how to make my material imitate that texture.

  Lowering her voice, she said, “We’re going on a date, not patrol.”

  “I know,” I said, glancing around to see if anyone was close to us. “I’m just paranoid. It seems like things go wrong on dates—”

  “Not that often,” she said.

  “Yeah, but when they do . . . I mean, remember my high school’s prom? Plus, we got attacked by faeries on the Fourth of July last year, and then there was the group date where we learned that Jillian was dating a supervillain? That turned into a chase with speedsters, police cars and mecha. It’s just . . . You can dodge bullets, I can’t.”

  Haley frowned. “Ok, point.”

  Trying to recover the mood we’d had, I said, “You mentioned a restaurant you wanted to try. Which one?”

  She grinned. “It’s not exactly a restaurant. It’s a food truck. I don’t know if you remember Zach Patel? He used to work at one of my family’s restaurants as a cook, but he wanted his own place. He started last month and he’s been getting good reviews. I thought it might be fun to try.”

  I nodded. “What does he make?”

  She lifted her head from my chest and looked into my eyes. “It’s a little different. He’s experimenting with fusion between Indian foods and US? The hamburgers, fries, and condiments use Indian spices. And you know chili fries? I think his are covered with curry. Oh, and he uses Indian breads instead of buns.”

  She paused, looking me over. “Do you still want to try it?”

  I thought about it. “Once, at least. I don’t dislike Indian food. It’s just that it burns.”

  “I’m sure he serves something that doesn’t burn.” She leaned in and we kissed. Then we kissed again.

  I wanted to do more, but couldn’t. It was a public place and that meant that she risked her identity being exposed.

  Haley transformed when afraid, angry, and sometimes when making out. It wasn’t as if she turned into the Incredible Hulk, but her hands and feet became claws, she grew fangs, and gained a couple inches in height. Plus, her eyes turned yellow and slit like a cat’s. It was a subtler change than most shapeshifters. Loose shirts and stretchy pants handled the majority of it, but as her feet widened and the claws grew she lost a lot of shoes.

  Walking back to campus for new shoes after she changed back, combined with the mood she’d be in, would kill the date.

  We kissed one more time before she pulled away. While still brown, her eyes had a yellow tint.

  “We should stop,” she said, blinking and looking down, “And not just because of . . . you know . . .”

  When she brought her head back up, she said, “I remembered something important. He only takes cash right now. He was going to get credit cards going before he started, but something happened and he’s still waiting.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? That’s got to be a pain. I guess we’ve got to go find an ATM.”

  I sat up and so did she. Then Haley pointed out of the park and across the street. “There’s one. It’s even your bank.”

  I followed the direction of her arm. She was right. First of Michigan had a small bank branch no more than forty feet from me. Even better, it had an ATM built into the wall to the left of the front door.

  “Then I guess we’d better get money.” We got up, crossed the street, and walked up to the ATM.

  The ATM’s screen showed the words, “Temporarily Out of Service.” I leaned sideways, checking through the bank’s glass door. There were people inside and the lights were on. Well, I decided, I could walk into the actual bank and told Haley as much.

  The door dinged as we walked through and within seconds I’d noticed two cameras (one hanging from the far exit, the other hidden within a mirrored half-sphere above the lobby).

  It wasn’t a very big branch. The tellers’ counter went to the middle of the space. After that the customer area narrowed to a hallway with wooden doors labeled “Office,” “Employees Only,” and “Restroom (Customers Only).”

  There were four people in line, two in line in front of each teller. Plus, a woman in a red business suit was talking with a balding man in a blue business suit. The gold, metal name tag pinned on the man’s suit jacket said, “John Wilson, Bank Manager.”

  I didn’t pay the slightest attention to what they were saying though. I was too busy stepping up to the table in the middle of the front area that held deposit and withdrawal slips.

  I pulled one out, noticed the pens on top of the table and picked one up, finding that it was on a short metal chain and that I couldn’t use it unless I moved closer.

  As I discovered that I’d have to stand next to the table and lean over it to be comfortable writing, the bank manager told the woman, “If you’ll step down the hall to the door marked ‘office,’ we can talk about your loan.”

  That’s the moment when everything went pear-shaped.

  “Crap,” Haley said, turning her head toward the door, and then four people burst into the bank, all of them with matching uniforms. That wasn’t good news. Matching uniforms usually meant superheroes or supervillains. In this case though, it might have meant that a circus had lost its clowns.

  They wore black and red checkerboard pants, jackets that were red on one side and white on the other, and black masks. From the sheen of the material and what I could see of the weave, their clothes appeared to be a knockoff version of bulletproof material my grandfather designed twenty years ago. So, they were prepared, if not up to date.

  Two of the four appeared to be regular guys. I dubbed them Clown One and Clown Two. The third guy had a square jaw and lean, muscular body that would have fit on the cover of Sports Illustrated—or a romance novel (well, except that clown romances are definitely not a thing). I nicknamed him Bro Clown. The fourth person was a blond woman who wore a white lab coat over her clown costume—which made her . . . Dr. Clown?

  From the shape of her body, I couldn’t help but notice that she might have posed for the cover of romance novels too (or possibly Playboy)—but her eyes were wide and her pupils small, leading me to wonder what kind of drugs she was on.

  Haley glanced over at me, raised an eyebrow, and said, “Seriously?” Between a best friend who read minds and a girlfriend who could notice that I found someone else attractive by my smell alone, I’d long ago realized that mental privacy was a thing that happened to other people.

  Bro Clown saved me from replying when he shouted, “Everyone on the floor, we’re robbing this bank!”

  Clown One and Clown Two pointed semi-automatic pistols at us. Haley and I looked at each other and lay down on the fake marble flooring.

  “John Wilson, Bank Manager” gave a gurgling noise and dropped to the floor. The woman he’d been leading to his office glanced at him, shaking her head, but dropped along with him.

  “Arms stretched out past your head,” Bro Clown said. “If I
see any one of you go for your cell phone, I’m going to break your arm.”

  Next to me, Haley started breathing slowly through her nose, letting the breath out from her mouth. I knew the technique. We’d learned it from my martial arts teacher. It was a good way of controlling your emotions—mostly by distracting you.

  I glanced over at her. Her eyes were golden and slit like a cat’s, the muscles in her arms tensing. Voice low with a hint of a growl, she said, “It’s like they put our dates on some kind of supervillain events calendar . . .”

  The businesswoman glared at her. “Shh . . .”

  The bank manager stared at the floor.

  Haley glanced over at the businesswoman, frowned, and over at me, still frowning.

  We were covered by cameras, so Haley couldn’t change without outing herself as a super. We couldn’t call in the rest of the team without grabbing our phones. Could I use my equipment? I mentally catalogued what I had—a bullet resistant costume that currently looked like clothes. When activated, the costume had sonic weapons, limited camouflage, and gave me added strength. At present, it acted as armor, but I might be able to use the sonics.

  As for Haley, she still had better than human strength, speed, senses and hidden poison claws before her transformation even if it wasn’t as much.

  The smart choice was to let them rob the bank, call in the rest of our team and let them handle it. Making an inspiring last stand for money that’s already insured made no sense at all. All we had to do was lay low and stay normal.

  Haley had already figured that out too—or so I assumed. She sighed as her muscles relaxed and her eyes faded back to normal.

  I’ll grant you that it’s not the most inspiring or exciting plan, but while taking on supervillains in a bank full of terrified civilians makes for a great scene in a movie or a comic book, it’s a terrible idea. In the real world, supervillains will start shooting at you or take hostages. Worse, if they start shooting at you, they might hit civilians whether they took them hostage or not.