The Sidekicks Initiative Read online

  Corey sniffed and wiped his eyes on his sleeve. “Who?” he asked.

  That caught Sam off guard. He swallowed, buying himself a moment. “The, you know, the army. Or the superheroes.”

  “The Justice Platoon is all dead,” Corey said, his voice threatening to break again.

  “But there are others. You know, less… But there are others. They’ll fix all this, OK?”

  “Promise?”

  Sam promised, prayed and hoped, all at once.

  The coffee arrived soon after. Sam took a seat on the couch, and had to hold the mug high off to the side to avoid spilling it as Corey jumped into the space beside him, snuggling up.

  Laura remained standing in what seemed to be a deliberate indicator to Sam that he shouldn’t get too comfortable.

  “So, what happened to you, exactly?” she asked, sipping on her coffee. “Why did they arrest you?”

  Sam puffed out his cheeks. “Just… mistaken identity. They got the wrong guy. We all laughed about it, in the end.”

  Laura frowned. “You laughed about it? The cops tackled you to the ground, locked you up for two days and you ‘laughed about it’?”

  “Well, not laughed, exactly,” Sam said. “But there were no hard feelings. On either side, I mean. Not that… I didn’t do anything wrong, obviously, so why would there be any…?”

  He took a drink of his coffee to stop himself talking, then smacked his lips together and let out a long, satisfied, “Aaah!”

  Laura’s phone bleeped. The word was out of Sam’s mouth before he could stop himself. “Brian?”

  “No.” Laura frowned as she studied the message. “Breaking news. Put on the TV.”

  Sam found the remote on the arm of the chair beside him. “What channel?”

  Laura’s hands shook as she stuffed the phone back into her pocket. “Any channel,” she said. “Corey, honey, I want you to go to your room for a few minutes, OK?”

  “But, Mom!”

  “Corey, please,” Laura urged. “For me, OK?”

  Sam looked down to find the boy gazing imploringly up at him. “You, uh, you should do what Mom says, buddy,” Sam said, his thumb hovering over the TV power button on the remote. “I’ll come through in a minute. You can show me your room.”

  “Fine!” Corey huffed. He stood up, crossed his arms, and stomped off to his room. Sam waited until he heard Corey’s bedroom door slam before thumbing the button.

  The television blinked into life, and the room was filled with screaming and panic. When the picture fully appeared, it showed shaky handheld footage captured from a phone camera. It was hard to make out exactly what was happening, but a crowd of people seemed to be running from something.

  A ticker tape at the bottom of the screen warned that ‘Some viewers may find these images disturbing,” but Sam was merely finding them confusing.

  “What is it?” he asked, glancing from the screen to Laura. “What’s happening?”

  She shushed him and directed his attention back to the TV, just as the reason for the screaming made itself clear. One of the Magma-Mutts had brought down what looked to be a woman in a jogging suit. The footage had been blurred, but the monster was quite clearly tearing her to pieces with its eagle-like claws.

  Sam felt the world grind into slow motion around him. He watched as a photograph of a smiling woman—presumably the same one—was overlaid across the other footage. Sam felt confident that she wouldn’t be smiling now. Smiling required a face.

  A map of the city appeared, with several red dots denoting other Magma-Mutt attacks. The news anchor was talking, explaining the details, but Sam didn’t hear them. Couldn’t bring himself to hear them.

  “Jesus. Jaywalking,” Laura said.

  Sam snapped out of his stupor. “Huh?”

  “The woman. Jaywalking,” Laura said. “And that’s what happens.”

  She crossed her arms, but it wasn’t the defensive blocking gesture it usually was. It was more like she was hugging herself in an attempt to feel better. “What’s happening, Sam?” she asked, and there was a vulnerability to her voice he hadn’t heard in years.

  “The military will come in,” Sam said. “Special Forces, or… someone. It’ll be OK.”

  “Will it?” Laura wondered. “You saw the news, right? What he did to those people? And now these, these dog things. If what they’re saying is true, if Doc Mighty’s dead then… I don’t know. Can anyone stop him?”

  Sam looked at the screen again. It had gone back to showing helicopter footage of the blackened cathedral. The Magma-Mutts that had been padding around outside it were now gone. Sam didn’t want to think about what they might have gone off to do.

  “It’ll be OK,” he said, although it wasn’t clear if he was addressing it to Laura or to himself. “It’ll be fine.”

  He was still trying to convince himself when the front door flew open and a breathless Brian stumbled in. He slammed the door behind him, jammed his weight against it, then seemed to think better of this and came stumbling into the room.

  His face was a ghostly white, his eyes two balls of anxiety that bounced around in his face.

  Sam jumped to his feet, although wasn’t entirely sure what to do when he got there, so he just sort of bounced anxiously from foot to foot, waiting to find out what was going on.

  “Brian?” Laura asked. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  Brian briefly recoiled at the sound of her voice, like he hadn’t realized she was in the room until then. “Oh God, Laura,” he whispered, grabbing her by the arms and pulling her in against him. “Oh God, it was horrible. It was horrible.”

  A flash of surprise crossed his face when he saw Sam standing there, making Sam feel even more conspicuous and awkward.

  “What was?” Laura asked. “Calm down. What’s wrong?”

  Brian fought hard to get his breathing under control, although the results were mixed, at best. “I drove past it. The cathedral. I know, I know I shouldn’t have, but I drove past it, just to see, you know? And, well, I was looking at it—it’s crazy—and I was driving, and I only had my eyes off the road for a second…”

  Sam took a step closer, feeling his stomach bunch into a knot. “What happened?”

  “I ran a red light,” Brian whispered.

  Laura slapped him on the arm. “Jesus! Is that it? I thought you were going to say you’d run over a kid or something. You ran a stop light? Big deal.”

  The rictus of horror on Brian’s face suggested that yes, actually, it was a big deal. “They saw me,” he whispered. “The dog things. They saw me, and… and… they chased me. I floored it, but they kept coming, and coming, and I didn’t know what to do, or where to go.”

  Shit.

  Sam moved to the window. The apartment was first floor, ground level, and looked out onto a parking lot. A bright red muscle car had been abandoned across two bays, but there was no sign of anything moving near it.

  “Did you lose it?” Sam asked.

  “I… I think so.”

  “Don’t think, know, Brian,” Sam said, and the authority of his voice caught him off guard. “Did you lose it or didn’t you? Is that thing coming here?”

  “Here?” Laura gasped. “No. Why would it be coming here? Brian? Did you lose it?”

  Brian gulped down a steadying breath. The color was coming back to his cheeks a little now, and his eyes weren’t quite so frantic. “Yes. I’m pretty… I’m sure I did. The roads were clear. There wasn’t a lot of traffic. Once I floored it out of there, there’s no way it could’ve kept up. It’s gone, trust—”

  The rest of Brian’s sentence was drowned out by a scream. It was loud, high-pitched, and over far too quickly.

  Sam’s guts twisted sickeningly.

  Corey!

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Sam didn’t think. There was no time for that. His body moved instinctively, vaulting him over the couch, his mug tumbling from his hand, coffee and all. He raced out into the hall and hit Corey’s
bedroom door with a flying charge that splintered it off the latch and threw it wide open.

  The first thing he saw was Corey sitting up at the top end of his bed, his knees drawn up to his chest, his forearm jammed into his mouth to stop himself screaming any more.

  The second thing he saw was the monster. It lurked just outside the window, its eyes like two hot coals burning in a bed of black embers, its breath fogging the glass. It twitched violently when Laura’s voice screamed from the hall.

  “Corey? Sam? What’s happening?”

  “Shh. Shut up,” Sam hissed.

  “Don’t you tell me to—” Laura’s voice snagged in her throat as she entered the room and saw the thing at the window. “Jesus. What is that? Is that one of those things from the TV?” She beckoned to her son. “Corey! Corey, come here, honey!”

  Corey began to move. The eyes of the monster outside narrowed and it drew back, preparing to leap. Sam urgently raised a hand. “Corey, stop. Wait!” he hissed.

  The boy froze, his body still heaving with silent sobs. The Magma-Mutt relaxed a little, and Sam kept his hand raised, urging Corey to stay still.

  “OK, nobody move,” he whispered. He heard Brian stifle a gasp as he looked in through the open door. The Magma-Mutt’s eyes narrowed further. “Brian, wait out in the hall,” Sam hissed. “Don’t let it see you.”

  The floorboards creaked as Brian backtracked out of the room. At the same time, Sam crept toward the window, making as few movements as possible. He could hear the monster breathing through the glass as he caught the corner of Corey’s Spongebob Squarepants curtains and carefully pulled them closed.

  Turning, he put a finger to his lips and silently motioned for Laura to get Corey. The boy wrapped his arms tightly around his mom as she picked him up from the bed and tiptoed toward the door. Sam shuffled away from the window, watching it closely. There was a thin gap where the curtains hadn’t quite met, and he got the impression of movement through there.

  At first, he thought the Magma-Mutt was preparing to come through, but when the glass failed to shatter and the monster failed to appear, he realized it was something worse.

  Returning to the window, Sam pulled the curtains aside. He could see Brian’s car out there in the parking lot, but the monster was nowhere to be seen.

  Sam’s pulse quickened. He spun to the door and shouted in panic. “Get down!” just as a different window pane came crashing into the house, and he heard his son scream for a second time.

  Frantically, he searched for something he could use as a weapon, but everything at hand was either plush or plastic. His eyes fell on the bedside lamp and he ripped its cable from the wall before launching himself out into the hallway.

  What he saw there surprised him. The tiger-sized fire-dog was the biggest shock, of course. The glimpses he’d had of them up until now had been horrifying, but there was nothing quite like seeing one up close to make the blood run cold.

  It was easy to see why the press had dubbed them ‘Magma-Mutts.’ This one’s flesh was black and rock-like, with fiery seams of orange visible through a series of irregular cracks in its hide. Add in the burning eyes and the myriad of pointy bits, and you had a hound right from the depths of Hell itself.

  And it was standing right there in the hall.

  The most surprising thing was that Brian was standing in front of Corey and Laura, one hand held out as if to hold the monster back, the other stretching back protectively like he could somehow shield them with his body.

  Sam hadn’t expected that. He wasn’t sure why, exactly. Maybe he’d hoped Brian would be revealed as a sniveling coward, and Laura would never want to see him again. But, no. He wasn’t running from the thing, trying to hide, or throwing himself around in pitiful sobs. He was standing up to it. Standing up for them. Sam wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or disappointed.

  He’d decide later. Right now, he had to do something about the monster in the hallway, which was dropping back onto its haunches, preparing to leap. It might have been coming for Brian, but Corey and Laura were at risk, too, and Sam couldn’t just stand back.

  He threw himself onto the Magma-Mutt’s broad back and looped the lamp’s cable over its head and across its throat. His plan—which was a generous way of describing it—had been to throttle it from behind, strangling it with the cable until it passed out.

  Sadly, he hadn’t planned for the heat. His pants caught fire immediately. Screaming, he released his grip on the cable, then was sent flying through the air when the Magma-Mutt bucked its rear end. He landed on the floor in front of Brian, slapped in frantic, wide-eyed terror at his crotch until it stopped smoking, then shuffled back on his hands.

  OK, so that didn’t work.

  “What do we do?” Laura sobbed. She had Corey clutched against her, one hand on the back of his head as she pulled him in close. “Brian, what do we do?”

  Sam tried not to take that to heart. On the face of it, Brian definitely looked the more capable of them both, and she’d just watched Sam inadvertently set his own testicles on fire, so her lack of faith in him was understandable.

  It stung, though. Sure, not as much as his balls did, but it still stung.

  “It’s me it wants,” Brian said, his voice hoarse. “Sam, you OK down there?”

  “Fine,” Sam replied.

  “I’m going to need you to get Laura and Corey out of here,” Brian said.

  Sam felt that twist like a knife. How dare he? How dare he? They weren’t Brian’s to protect, they were his. His son, his wife.

  OK, ex-wife, but the point still stood.

  “No. Get clear,” Sam instructed, standing. He planted his feet and squared his shoulders in a pose that would’ve made Randy proud. “Laura, get Corey out of here. Brian, too. I’ll deal with this thing.”

  Had the situation not been so dire, Laura would’ve laughed. “You?” she said, more witheringly than she’d probably intended. The high-pitched inflection in her voice drew a guttural growl from the Magma-Mutt. “What are you going to do?”

  “Trust me,” said Sam. “I’m going to deal with this.”

  “OK, but how?” Laura persisted.

  Sam opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again.

  Shit. How was he going to deal with this thing? Maybe he should’ve left it to Brian, after all. If it had eaten him, that would’ve solved a lot of problems.

  Randy’s voice came to him, as if from a dream.

  Confidence is a superpower.

  He’d dismissed it as nonsense at the time—because it was—but Sam didn’t exactly have a lot of other options left at this stage. And who knew, maybe there was something in it?

  Drawing himself up to his full height, Sam wagged a finger at the Magma-Mutt and spoke in his most commanding voice. “Sit!”

  The monster cocked its head a little.

  “Sam, what the hell are you doing?” Laura hissed.

  “Trust me,” Sam replied. He gave the Magma-Mutt his most reproachful look. “You heard me. Sit!”

  The monster lunged, teeth bared, claws swiping. Sam yelped and staggered back into Brian, the heat from the Magma-Mutt’s paw prickling the skin of his face.

  “Shit, no, that didn’t work. Run!” he cried, shoving Brian and sending everyone staggering along the narrow hallway.

  The door to the kitchen was dead ahead, standing open. Everyone bundled through as the Magma-Mutt readied itself for another lunge. Brian grabbed a couple of large knives from a wooden block.

  “Sam. Here.”

  Sam took the offered knife. He managed an awkward, “Thanks,” before the monster appeared in the doorway, the smell of sulfur swirling around the room.

  “Laura, get in the corner by the window,” Sam urged. “Brian, help them get it open. Get out. Keep them safe.”

  “What? No, Sam. This is my fault. It’s my problem,” Brian said. He had grabbed another knife and held one in each hand, blade down, ready to start stabbing.

  Sam shook his head
. He wanted to believe that. He wanted to be able to shift the blame onto Brian, but that would have been a lie.

  “No. It’s mine. I should’ve done something. It’s my fault this thing’s here. It’s my fault they’re everywhere.”

  He raised the knife. “But I’m going to stop it. I’m going to—”

  The next few words were knocked out of him by the Magma-Mutt landing on top of him and slamming him to the ground. All four human occupants of the kitchen screamed, but Sam narrowly took the prizes for both volume and pitch.

  The thing’s two front paws were on his chest, its immense weight pressing down on him, its heat suffocating him like a blanket. He stabbed frantically at its side, the blade chinking off its rock-like hide a few times, before finally finding a crack.

  The Magma-Mutt roared. Pained. Angry. Sizzling saliva rained down on Sam’s face. Its breath was like a blast furnace that dried out his eyeballs and stole all his breath.

  Sam dragged the knife along the line of the crack and the hellhound twisted in pain. He got the impression of movement, then heard a shnick and a triumphant cry from Brian as another blade was buried in the monster up to the hilt.

  More roaring. More twisting. Sam was able to scramble out from beneath the monster as it twisted its head and pawed at the knife handles.

  The doorway was clear. Laura saw it before Sam did and made a dash with Corey, dodging past the thrashing Magma-Mutt and out into the hallway. She raced along it to the front door, then out into the apartment’s communal lobby beyond.

  “Sam, come on, let’s go!” Brian hissed, beckoning Sam over to the kitchen door.

  With a final glance at the beast, Sam ran to the door. He had barely made it out into the hall when the door slammed behind him, trapping Brian inside.

  “Brian? Brian, what the hell are you doing?” Sam demanded. He pushed down on the handle, but Brian had already wedged it closed. “Brian!”

  “It’s me it wants,” Brian said, his voice cracking around the edges. “Get Laura and Corey out of here. Tell them… Tell them I…”