Once while driving down I-40 through Gallup, New Mexico, Digger had seen a highway numbered 666, extending north into hot, flat nowhere. That, he’d thought, was what AC/DC had meant when they sang “Highway to Hell.” Ever since, whenever anyone told him to go to hell, he’d say, “Okay, but you’ll have to get me to New Mexico, first.” They never got the joke, and by the time he’d explained it, it wasn’t funny anymore.
Then, of course, he’d gone to Hell for real, and the joke had really stopped being funny.
He was reminded of the old joke now, though, because he had decided the real entrance to Hell wasn’t Highway 666. It was Yodaville.
It was nasty hot in Yodaville, and the dust got in his eyes and nostrils and ears, making him feel gritty inside and out. Plus the sand didn’t compact right. Usually the Driller Beam Generators fused dirt and rock into solid, stable tunnel walls; the Yodaville desert sand made loose tunnels that collapsed almost as quickly as he could run through them.
Now he stood within the small space between four ‘buildings,’ poised and listening to the wind, stretching out with his seismic sense. That was what he tended to call it anyway, although it wasn’t exactly an extra sense, more a complex interaction of hearing and touch that functioned like a sort of sonar, allowing him to get an idea of the composition of the ground around him from the vibrations he received from his Driller blasts. He’d learned to use it as a sort of early warning system, a sense of danger approaching. It was one of the things that had kept him alive during those long years in Hell.
And there it was: the pitter-patter of running feet, making his own feet tingle. He spun around, leaned to the side and thrust out his arm, clotheslined a blue-and-yellow streak as it attempted to run past.
Whiz sprawled on the ground at Digger’s feet, rubbing at his sore throat. “How’d you know I was coming?”
“You have a predictable rhythm,” Digger said and punched down at him.
Whiz was gone by the time Digger’s fist reached the ground, leaving only wisps of floating dust.
Digger surged to his feet again, heard the hum of Doctor Jolt’s hoverfans approaching, the loud crackle of a lightning blast. Rev appeared overhead in the gap between the buildings, his force field crackling as Doctor Jolt’s lightning crawled across it. Digger shoook his head. The kid’s force field seemed plenty strong, but Digger would have to teach him that there was no shame in learning to dodge once in a while.
The ground quivered under his feet; Whiz was making another run at him. Digger crouched and plunged his left Driller against the ground. The Driller produced a kind of focused explosion; Digger could vary the focus and intensity of the blast, allowing him to cut small holes through hardened metals or blast large tunnels through loose soil and rock.
He blasted up a wall of loose sand in Whiz’s path. Immediately, the blue-and-gold blur shifted course around the obstruction, swinging a punch at Digger’s face, but Digger was already ducking underneath. He couldn’t run as fast as Whiz, but his reflexes were almost as quick, and he was a more experienced fighter.
Whiz reversed direction, came back for another pass. Digger wasn’t completely sure, but he seemed to be moving more slowly than before. Digger leaped up to stick to one of the taller buildings nearby. Whiz ran right to the base of the wall and then straight up it. He couldn’t stick to walls the way Digger could, but if he ran fast enough, he could get something like the same effect.
Digger blocked a punch with his right Driller as Whiz ran past. There was a muffled clank against the metal and a quiet “Ow!” dimly heard as Whiz kept going up. When he tried to make the turn to come down again, the disadvantage to super-fast wall running became apparent. He couldn’t quite make the turn and his momentum carried him up off the top of the building.
Whiz hung for a moment in midair, arms and legs a windmilling blur, making him look like a suspended torso. Digger leaped up and thumped his fist hard into Whiz’s chest before Whiz’s feet could make contact with a solid surface again. Whiz was knocked away from the wall and fell in an arc toward the earth. “Tag, you’re dead!” Digger said.
Whiz crashed to the ground. Digger landed beside him a moment later. “You’re out, kid. Two minutes in the penalty box.”
“Damn, were you just playing possum that first time or what?” Whiz asked.
This was the second match-up between the teams of Rev and Digger, and Doctor Jolt and The Whiz. They’d started out from opposite ends of Yodaville, 450 meters apart. The first time they’d faced off, the speedster had been in Digger’s face before the echoes of the starting gunshot had dissipated. He landed what felt like fifty punches in the first second, and Digger went down, out cold within two seconds.
Then Whiz had leaped onto Rev’s back and tried the same trick, only Rev was a lot tougher. He just reached back and peeled the kid off his back and then flung him against Doctor Jolt’s force field. The kid fell away from the field, zapped into unconsciousness, and Rev was right there, his fists battering down Doctor Jolt’s force field before he grabbed the Doctor’s throat. Digger’s team had won, but he’d been personally humiliated by a kid ten years his junior. His reflexes had come back quickly after that wake-up call.
“Just shaking the rust off, kid. Penalty box. Go.”
“Shit.” Whiz said under his breath as he struggled to his feet, and then he was gone.
Digger bounded to the roof of the nearest fake building and turned toward the noise of fighting. Rev had Doctor Jolt on the run. The good doctor wasn’t finished yet, though. He’d been working on his gadgets and his stamina in the years since they’d worked together. Lightning crackled out continuously from the doctor’s wand, but it couldn’t penetrate the glowing shield surrounding Rev. Rev grinned and swooped in for the kill.
As he got close, Doctor Jolt suddenly held up a new gadget in his off hand. Digger’s vision blurred as a horrible atonal shriek rattled his head. He saw Rev’s hands clap over his ears, and the force field flickered as Rev’s concentration wavered. A fresh bolt of lightning struck through the force field. Rev was flung back into a shipping container that rang like a huge gong as the side buckled from the impact.
The sound cut off as Doctor Jolt turned to search for Digger, but Digger was already landing on his back. Digger locked his arms around the Doctor’s neck in a sleeper hold, but before he could call for submission, the Doctor hit him with the pain.
Some heroes fought crime with their own unique physical and mental abilities. Others depended on an array of gadgets. Doctor Jolt did both. His gadgets had no built-in power supply; the power to run them was produced by his own body, like an electric eel. It came in handy when bad guys tried to steal his weapons and turn them against him, only to find out they didn’t work. Or like now, when some idiot tried to tackle him.
Doctor Jolt turned up the juice. Digger fought to keep hold as his muscles jerked. Lightning arced through the saliva in his mouth, the tears in his eyes. He curled his fingers around the strap to Doctor Jolt’s goggles and tore them from his eyes. Doctor Jolt recoiled as the light blinded him. He bucked in mid-air and finally threw Digger off his back.
But of course, by then Rev was there, kicking the Doctor square in the chest. His force field absorbed some of the impact, but he still shot like a missile into the strafing berm at the far end of town. He struck the dirt mound in a huge plume of dust and didn’t move again for long moments.
“Yeah!” Rev yelled, punching the air. “That’s what I’m talking about!”
“Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back,” Digger said. “Technically, you should have gone to the penalty box for that hit.”
“Oh, come on , that didn’t even stun me,” Rev said, dropping lightly to the ground in front of Digger.
“It wasn’t supposed to,” Digger said. “This is a training exercise. We were all taking it easy.”
“Yeah, but even at full strength, he couldn’t really hurt me.”
Digger rubbed at his forehead. “Look, you’re really tough, I get it. But you have to understand, the hero business isn’t football. Or boxing. It’s Rochambeau.”
“What?”
“Rock-Paper-Scissors,” Digger said. “Sure, you can take a punch, but that doesn’t mean you’re immune to fire. Or water. Or loud noises, or any one of a million other ways someone with powers can screw with you. You may be tougher than the whole Big Apple Corps put together, let alone some weak sister like Deus by himself, but he’s Paper to your Rock. Go up against him without the proper mental defenses and before you can take your first swing at him, you’ll find yourself standing in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard wearing nothing but a chicken mask and a smile.”
“Come on,” Rev said skeptically.
“Not that that’s ever happened to me or anything,” Digger said. “But that’s one reason we don’t kill guys in this business if it can possibly be helped. Not just because killing is bad, but because if you start killing people, the guys who are next on your list have a really big incentive to figure out what your weakness is and use it against you, hard. And everyone has a weakness.”
“Not me,” Rev said.
“Even you,” Digger answered. “Matter of fact, I could take you down without even firing up the Drillers.”
“Yeah?” Rev asked. “How?”
Digger shook his head as Val swooped in to land beside him. “You’ll find out if I ever have to do it. Just trust me: everybody has a weak spot, and you don’t want to give anybody extra reasons to find yours.”
“Oh geez, is he doing the Rochambeau thing?” Val asked. Rev nodded.
“It’s why you hired me, Val, so let me do it,” Digger said. “Look, the point is, even if the lightning bolts can’t hurt you, dodge them as if you’re afraid they can. As long as your enemy thinks the lightning can take you down, he’s not trying other things. It’s just smart tactics.”
“And while we’re at it, you don’t need to hit people so hard,” Val said. “Doctor J thinks you might have cracked one of his ribs.”
Rev shook his head and stared off into space. “Okay, fine,” he said.
“You understand, this is just a…”
“Just a training exercise, I understand!” Rev shouted. “Jesus!”
He lifted into the sky, shot quickly toward a range of hills in the distance.
Val lifted off, but Digger called to her before she could get much altitude. “Val! Let him go. He just needs some time to process things.”
“Well, he’d better process quick,” Val said. “We’re going public in a week.”
***
Digger awoke to insistent pounding on his door. He glanced at the clock. 3 a.m. Geez. This better not be some idiotic drill, he thought. He’d quit this team right now.
He turned on the light and opened the door to see Val leaning against the door jamb. “Hey, Mace,” she purred. Her breath reeked of tequila. “Wanna party?”
“You’re drunk,” Digger said.
“Not drunk enough,” Val said, pushing past him into the room. A half-empty bottle sloshed in her hand.
“What are you doing here?” Digger asked as he closed the door.
“Angar says he’s tired. Big sissy.” She giggled. “I mean, little sissy.”
“I’m tired, too,” Digger said. “And we’ve got another day of training tomorrow.”
Val stepped up to him, curled a strong arm around the back of his neck to pull his face close to hers. “Come on, Mace. We’ve got how many years between us? We’re all trained up. We can call in sick.”
“But Rev isn’t trained up,” Digger said. “And I’m the one responsible for making sure he is. Your idea.”
“It was a dumb idea,” Val whined. “I wanna drink. And stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
Val leaned in to kiss him softly on the lips. “I’ve missed you. Don’t leave this time, ‘kay?”
Digger didn’t answer for a long time. Finally he asked, “What am I doing here?”
Val giggled again and stumbled back to sit on Digger’s bed. “This is your room, silly.”
“No, I mean, why did you come after me to join this outfit? Was it just for this?”
Val shook her head, leaned forward and set the tequila bottle carefully on the floor. “Don’t flatter yourself. I came after you because I needed you to make this thing work.”
“You mean, you need Rev to make this work. And you need me to make him work.”
She waved the remark away. “Whatever. He’s really strong, Dig. You haven’t seen him turn it all the way on.”
“Yeah I have,” Digger said. “When he was fighting Doctor J today, he had everything cranked up high against the lightning.”
Val shook her head. “That was nothing,” she said. “When we first met with him, Angar and me, they did this arm-wrestling thing, and Angar was losing. So he pulled his trick.”
In times of great need, Angar could invoke the spirits of his ancestors and become imbued with the strength of 100 generations of Dwarven rulers. It didn’t last long, just long enough for one mighty feat of strength before fading away again, but for that moment, Angar was possibly the strongest being in the known universe. “Stupid of him to pull that trick on someone he just met,” Digger said. “He knows better than that. He should be holding that shit in reserve.”
“You know him,” Val said. “He’s proud, and he can’t stand losing. The point is, Rev doesn’t like losing either.So he really turned it on, I mean all the way. Digger, you have no idea how strong he is. It’s scary.”
“Exactly why we can’t afford for me to lose a day wth him,:” Digger said.
Val rolled her eyes and lurched to her feet. “God, when did you become so boring?” She grabbed him and kissed him again, harder this time, her tongue probing between his lips. Â “Come on, don’t tell me you didn’t want this.”
Digger shook his head, rested his forehead on her shoulder. “You can’t seriously expect me to fall back into this like it’s the old days again.”
“Why not?”
“Cause you’re married and I’m retired,” Digger said.
“You were never retired,” Val said.
” I was,” Digger said. “I was happy to be out of it.”
“No, you weren’t,” Val said. “Angar was. He’d have been happy to stay a baggage handler if I hadn’t asked him to come along with the group. Doctor J, too. He was fine just checking dog shit for worms all day. But you? You’ve never been good at anything else. You save people, Digger. That’s what you do. Now I need you to save me.”
“By training Rev?”
Val pushed away from him, snatched up the bottle from the floor and took a long pull from it. “Forget about Rev for a while, would you? Rev will be fine.”
“If you don’t need me to train Rev, then why am I here, Val?” Digger asked. “Why am I really here?”
Val set the bottle down again, flopped back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. “Rusk wanted you. He’s got a lot on money on the line for this thing, and he wouldn’t do it without you for insurance. ‘Our celebrity,’ he calls you.”
“Celebrity? My target audience is six years old.”
“Tell that to him,” she said, looking at him, and her eyes were very old in her eternally young face. “The point is, there’s no team without you, and I’m sick of pretending to be normal. I’m sick of being weak.”
“You’re not weak,” Digger said. “You kicked ass today.”
“That was nothing,” Val said. “I’m not like you, Mace. Your power comes from within. But I’m descended from the gods of Asgard, and our power comes from worship. Only nobody worships us anymore. I get an allowance from Daddy, a share of what he gets every time somebody says his name, but it’s nothing like the glory days. Hell, it wouldn’t be anything at all if he didn’t have a day of the week named after him. I need more.”
She turned her eyes to his. They were so deep and blue. How could he have ever thought of them as icy? “You worship me, don’t you, Mace? You’d do anything I asked you to, wouldn’t you? Say my name, Mace. Kiss me and say my name. Please?”
Her lips reached up toward him, her eyelids drooping seductively, and he felt her name, her true name, forming on his lips. His head spun with the nearness of her, her scent filling his head, her eyes the only thing he could see.
He longed to kiss her again, for hours if need be, her name a mantra of power dripping continuously from his lips while his body entwined with hers. But she was drunk and married, and Angar was his friend. He turned his head with great effort, just enough to peck her softly on the forehead, then he stood and turned out the light. “Go to sleep,” he said and curled up in a chair.
When Digger awoke the next morning, sunlight slanted in through the curtains and Val was gone.
Ah, more insight into our not so dear Valkyrie.