The raw jangling of the alarm clock dragged him from a haven of memories disguised as dreams. His eyes opened to the pre-dawn darkness and he forgot for a moment who and where he was. But only for a moment. He shuffled across the small room to find the light switch, the bare bulb illuminating the small room without mercy. Fat black cockroaches, disturbed in their midnight foraging, scuttled toward the shadows with their familiar soft rustling. Setting last night's cold coffee on the single functioning eye of the stove, he struck a match to light it. 'Flamestrike could have lit that Just by pointing at it', he thought wistfully. But Flamestrike was dead these past twenty years, caught in the dramatic explosion of a gas main while trying to control a fire that had already consumed two city blocks. Dead, like most of the rest of them. Lucky devils. Dumping a drowned roach out of the chipped cup, he rinsed it and poured it full of simmering coffee. Stale and black as Nightmayre's heart, but hot at least. He dug through the laundry tossed on the chair till he found a clean white shirt and pulled it on. It must have shrunk in the wash; he didn't remember the buttons straining open like that. Smoothing the wrinkles out of his suit, he put it on, pulling on some socks and his tired brown loafers. Refilling his cup with the last dregs of the coffee he rinsed the pot in the sink and set it on the sideboard to dry. He stood in front of the cracked mirror to knot his tie and drag a comb through his hair, noting ruefully that there was less of it to tame every day. He picked up the wrinkled and much folded newspaper from where it lay on the table, and stared at the employment ads he had circled in red ink three days ago as if he could somehow change what they said. Most were crossed out already; the few that were left offered little encouragement. Convulsively, he crumpled the paper and threw it into a corner, disturbing two roaches that scuttled briefly into the harsh light. Maybe there would be some new jobs in today's paper. Maybe they'd have something for him downtown. He stuffed his remaining clothes, clean and dirty, into the duffel with his worn boots, the chipped coffee cup, and the tin pot. His rent was up tomorrow, and he had no desire to face the condescending smile of the landlady. The cockroaches were welcome to the place, and to her for that matter. Turning off the light, he opened the door to the dark hallway. The window at the end of the hall, dingy with years of accumulated smog, admitted little of the rosy dawn glow that had begun to suffuse the city. The halide lights seemed dim against the backdrop of greying sky as he walked to the newspaper vending machine in the doorway of the corner dime store. A police car cruised slowly past as he fished a lonely quarter out of his pocket and dropped it in the slot. The metal handle was ice cold and sent a chill straight down his back when he pulled the door open to get his paper. Tucking the newspaper under his arm, he strode briskly away, breathing puffs of warm white air against his chilled fingers. No sense in letting the lingering police car decide he was a vagrant. Even if, as of this morning, he was. It was still early fall, and already damned cold. There was a time when the cold wouldn't have bothered him, even arctic cold, even space cold. But those days were long past. Maybe he ought to head for the southwest and sunny winters if he didn't find anything soon. He could look up Aura-- maybe talk about old times. That was all he wanted to do anymore, talk about old times. There wasn't anything nowadays really worth talking about. Maybe Aura wouldn't even want to see him, though. Right after the big Sentinels breakup --how the press had loved that--she and Rambler had retired to the Arizona desert to raise kids. Christ, it might be grandkids by now. They had done everything they could to put their old life behind them, changed their names, given up using their powers. They probably wouldn't want some broken down old man who used to be a friend, a comrade at arms, to show up unannounced at this late date. Besides, he'd be damned if he'd go begging at a friend's doorstep. It wasn't far, maybe fifteen blocks to the employment commission, but the cold and thoughts of life on the street made it seem like miles. By the time he got there, he was wheezing and coughing. The line was already long, stretching from the door around the side of the building, and it wouldn't be open for almost another hour yet. He took up the next place in line, behind a handful of workers left unemployed by the factory shutdown. That factory shutdown had put a lot of people out of work, and left healthy young family men working at the menial sort of jobs an old man like him should have been able to get. Everyone in line had the same tired, hopeless look in their eyes, slouched against the wall, some of them drinking beer already, the brown bottles wrapped in paper bags. He shivered, knowing he didn't look very different from them, mostly just older and maybe more hopeless. Opening the paper, he began scanning for a job. Miss Payne stamped a large red "Not Approved" across the paperwork of her last applicant, and then shoved the papers into an overstuffed drawer of her desk. She did not look up as the next man in line handed her a sheaf of grubby, pencil scrawled papers with his gnarled hand. "Sit down, please," she instructed mechanically, gesturing toward the folding metal chair in front of her desk. With pursed lips she translated the near-illegible answers on the questionnaire. "You left the phone number blank." He started to speak, cleared his throat, and said, "I'm sorry, I don't have a phone." "No phone," she repeated slowly, carefully lettering in the response. "Previous occupation?" "I was--uh--the--uhh--Thunderclap," he stumbled with embarrassed modesty. "You know, a superhero." Miss Payne glanced sharply at the man. "A...superhero?" The faint glimmer of a condescending smile hovered at the corners of her straight, prim lips. "You know--blue tights, orange cape, yellow zigzag on the chest, save the universe-- a superhero." The greying civil servant looked over her glasses at the man seated uncomfortably on the other side of the desk. Balding, sagging at the waist, clad in a worn suit ten years out of fashion. His brow was damp with sweat and he twisted his hat nervously in his hands. She shrugged invisibly. With today's technology, any schlepp could be a superhero. Turning back to the application she proceeded, "Did anyone pay you while you served in this--ahh--capacity?" "No. Oh, no. I did it because it was the right thing to do. When I was a boy, you see, I found out I had these powers, and I felt I had a responsibility. You know--a responsibility to use them for the good of all mankind." The words at first had tumbled out of him, but he finished in a quiet, self-conscious tone. "Isn't that what they tell you? For the good of all mankind?" Miss Payne disinterestedly waited for him to finish. These old vagrants always wanted to talk, as if she had nothing better to do than listen to their ramblings. She idly wondered if Charles would ask her to sit with him at lunch today. She had tried several times already to arrange it, but things just kept going wrong. When the old reprobate finally paused for breath, she initiated the next step in the interview. "You were self-employed, then?" "What? Ahh--self-employed?" stammered the old man, lost in himself. "Yes, I guess you could call it that." Picking up where he had left off, he continued. "You know, I kind of figured those powers would stick with me the rest of my life, but they just, well, faded away. I guess maybe one day when I wasn't looking I got old." He seemed to shake himself, and raised his eyes to meet those of the clerk, but she was looking down at his application. "Anyway, I've been living off the income of my savings and a couple of patents, but my savings are gone, and I guess my inventions are outdated, like me. Boy, they sure were something in their day, though..."
The rambling words faded to a pleasant drone as Miss Payne stared down at the application. Perhaps if she waited until quarter past, the lunchroom would be full and she would be forced to sit next to him. But there might be no seats left and she would be left to stand against the wall, left out, as usual. No, she would have to get there early, and in all innocence sit next to his favorite seat. Glancing at the wall clock, she saw that it was almost five till. "Must have been three, maybe four years ago when I saved New York from the Blue Brain and his Encephalo Death Ray. Yeah, that was my last big job. But the year before that ....” Miss Payne interrupted, not having heard a word he said. "Since you were self-employed, you don't qualify for unemployment benefits. However, I will place you in my job file, and if anything turns up you're qualified for, I'll be sure to give you a call." She stamped the large red "Not Approved" on his application. "In the meantime, keep me informed of any change of address or phone number." "I don't have a phone.” he mumbled softly. "What? Oh, yes. Yes, of course, now I remember." As she spoke, she shoved his papers into the desk drawer with all the others, picked up her purse and brown paper lunch bag, then stood staring expectantly at him. "Look, Miss, any job, I don't care what." There was an edge of near desperation in his voice now. "I'm not in any position to be picky, I know that, and I really need the--" "Yes sir, yes sir. We'll be getting in touch with you soon, I'm sure," she said, trying to placate him and eyeing the wall clock anxiously. "Just wait for our call." "I don't have... Never mind." With maddening slowness, he lifted the perspiration-dampened hat and stuffed it clumsily into the worn duffel he carried. Head down, he shuffled toward the sunlit square of the doorway, with its lie of promised warmth. With what seemed an heroic effort, he pushed open the glass door and stepped into the cold brightness. The door snapped shut behind him. Traffic, both pedestrian and vehicular, flowed past him. Busy people with their busy lives, each one rushing to fulfill some unknown task. There was an intent about all of them, a direction, which made him different. The river of people flowed around him as if he didn't exist, no one touching or speaking to him, no one meeting his eyes. Swept along with the tide of moving people, he found himself walking right next to the buildings, pale face and slumped shoulders reflected staccato in shop windows. Walking slowly down the street, he stumbled over the outstretched legs of a wino sitting on a stack of filthy newspapers in a shop doorway. The man blinked blearily at him, mumbling something incomprehensible and stretching out a dirty, rag wrapped hand. The doorway he inhabited smelled of urine and sour wine. The old man tasted bile at his throat as he staggered away from the beggar in brief panic. Not that. No, not him, never that. He'd die first. For the first time in his life, he thought of suicide, staring at the lunch hour traffic whizzing past on the street in front of him. The curb was only a few steps away. Only a few steps, and he could be with all his old friends. It would be like old times, good times. He took an unsteady step toward the curb. The passersby seemed like ghosts. They wore the faces of dead friends, murmured in their voices. Their memories haunted him. The Glory, twenty years his senior, had come out of retirement one too many times, died of a heart attack while rescuing victims of the big quake in Mexico. Empath, once a hero, whose sanity crumbled with her growing power, had been brought down by the alien sniper from the government operated death squad. Then Mister Shadow, arch villain, his personal nemesis, and, in a strange sort of way, his best friend. Their last battle had ended in Shadow's failed acrobatic leap and a ten-story fall. Somehow Shadow had survived that fall, at least in a manner of speaking. The old man, younger then, had visited him a year afterward. Brain damaged, Shadow's lean body had gone to skin and bone, kept alive by sterile, hulking machines. A last gesture of respect, he had unplugged the life support equipment before walking out. Didn't he owe himself that same gesture of respect? To end his life with some semblance of dignity, before he degenerated into another wino beggar fighting the rats for dumpster fare? Things had grown very quiet, it seemed, although the traffic still sped past and the sidewalk was thronged with office workers on their lunch break. It all flowed past him in eerie silence as he took another step toward the curb. He had found a place of peace within himself, a prelude to that great peace he walked toward now. He took another step, quickly, easily. A woman with a handful of shopping bags hurried past in front of him, closely followed by a child pedaling furiously on some sort of plastic vehicle. A small thrill of alarm pierced him at the child's proximity to the deadly curb. The vehicle came to an abrupt stop as it jammed into an uneven place in the sidewalk, and it toppled half over, away from the curb, thankfully. The old man, suddenly back among the living, caught the child and righted him before he fell completely. The child glanced up at him with the terror of strangers children must be taught, and then pedaled after his mother's receding back, loudly emulating a siren. His young voice carried backwards. "Whoo--look out all you bad guys--I'm the Thunderclap! --Whoo!" A sudden transformation overtook the old man. Head high, shoulders straight, eyes bright and proud, he strode around the corner. end
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