NOT THAT KIND OF GOOD GUY

Dedication

As always

For Captain Tamara Long, USAF

Born: May 12, 1979

Died: 23 March 2003, Afghanistan

You fly with the angels now.

#

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I hereby acknowledge that the main character of this book is an asshole and extremely politically incorrect. Give him a break, he was severely abused as a child, and he doesn’t hate everyone. He hates you. Yes, you. Personally. And he hasn’t even met you, yet. If you ever do meet, you should be extremely polite and back away slowly. Do not annoy the nuclear hand grenade with the pin half pulled.

I also sincerely doubt that Hawking Radiation has an effect on nucleosynthesis. All science in this book is entire made up handwavium and should be roundly ignored and even ridiculed.

IT’S ABOUT SUPERHEROES! DUH THE SCIENCE IS MADE UP!

Although there is a theory that for stars to form requires a water layer. Which, if you’re into cosmology, creates a chicken and egg problem.

A NOTE TO MY GENTLE READERS

Michael Edwards, aka various AKAs, is essentially a retread of the character Oliver Chadwick Gardenier. If he’d been raised in a ghetto in the modern era in foster care and there weren’t things that go bump in the night. He has Chad’s smarts and smart ass as well as his redoubtable fighting skills though he’s a bit taller. So, you may see some resemblance.

This is a universe which very much mimics our own with the exception of a few changes, notably superheroes and some of the effects they’ve had. The Nebraska Killer killed Al Gore during the 2000 election which just gave the Left another reason to hate Bush.

Everything else is real. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. The guilty can go to hell.

PROLOGUE

In the blackest moment of a dying world

What have you become?

The Vengeful One

Disturbed

“I should have just jacked a car,” Michael Edwards panted, laying down fire left-handed around the corner.

His HK USP locked back just as the last round hit Little Brown Tattooed Fucker Twelve in the upper chest.

His Sig was somewhere back in the warren of the unfinished Jeffries Building and he was running out of mags for the HK. The bus station was only a block away, but a block might as well have been the moon. If he’d just stolen a car as soon as he heard MS-13 was looking for him, none of this would have happened. Or if he’d gotten fifteen minutes more warning from Gondola.

The only reason he hadn’t was it would have left some poor person car-less. That decency, a reaction to the hell he’d been raised in, was going to get him killed. Damn him for having a sense of morality and decency. Why couldn’t he just be like all the other kids raised in the ghetto and not give a shit about other people?

Michael reached under his sports coat for a reload just as LBTF Thirteen came around the other corner. LBTF Thirteen was toting his AK with his left hand and carrying a machete in his right. He charged the thirteen-year-old, machete upraised.

The only real choice was to try to get inside of it and the blade descended on his left ear instead of his head. He managed to get one hand on the wrist of the MS-13 member then another, losing his empty pistol, and was pushed backwards onto his back. He was just trying to keep from being chopped to death, but the little brown tattooed fuck was strong as hell. Michael let go with his right hand and reached up to gouge an eyeball with a thumb. The blade cut across his face and cheek, and he realized none of this was working.

Taking the chance, he lifted his right knee, so his ankle was in reach, and made a desperation grab for the snubby. He managed to snag the Ruger .357 on the first try and brought it up to the El Salvadoran’s side. One round in the ribs and one in the head and all Michael had to deal with was the dead weight and blood and brains in his face.

Generally, carrying three guns was for assholes and wannabes. Michael was perfectly willing to allow the terms since at this point, he’d used all three in this ‘active shooter’ situation.

He was trying to push Stunt Extra Six off when Stunt Extra Seven came around the corner. He’d dropped the machete in favor of carrying his AK properly.

Knowing the likelihood of it working, Michael nonetheless pointed the snubby at the guy and let loose with all three rounds one-handed while lying on his back with a body on top.

One miss, one shoulder graze and the third by pure dumb luck hit SE 7 in left eye.

“Thank you,” Michael muttered, looking up at the ceiling of the unfinished commercial building.

He tossed the empty snubby, pushed the dead body off and picked up his USP. He was starting his reload, again, when a Muertos Angelica came around the corner carrying an HK 416 in tactical low.

The ‘elite assassins’ of MS-13 were the real deal. Yes, Michael might have gotten the drop on three of them and killed them with chopsticks but that was a completely different situation. Generally, the heavily tattooed killers were extremely bad news.

He was dead. He knew he was dead. It didn’t really bother him. Growing up in the ghetto in East Baltimore was sufficiently suck he didn’t really care one way or the other. Hadn’t for a very long time.

He just hated to lose. Dying felt a lot like losing. It had been his constant problem. If he’d just let one of the many people who had tried kill him do so, this absolutely suck existence would have been over long ago.

And if the doctors at Mercy Hospital would just quit bringing him back from the dead. All this was their fault, really. All of these bodies and bullets were a direct result of them constantly bringing him back to the hell that was 2025 Baltimore. They didn’t even have to have a healer, just really amazing trauma care. If the Storm turned out to be a zombie apocalypse, it would probably start at Mercy Hospital.

Damn them and their advanced medical wizardry!

The only weapon immediately available was the machete dropped by Stunt Extra Six. Michael grabbed it and tossed it at the killer without looking. Maybe it would distract him. He had more important things to focus on.

It was one of those moments when time slows. He felt like he was moving in molasses as he reached back for one of his dwindling supplies of HK magazines. He got the magazine out and did the slowest reload of his life. At least it seemed that way. He was pushing his arm to just move faster, but it was still moving in molasses.

Be very careful about the reload. For some damned reason you’re still alive. Wounded, but still alive. Seat the mag firmly.

Things were moving so slow he could see the slide moving forward as he turned in a two-handed grip to shoot the assassin.

Who was standing there with an expression of ‘That did not just happen.’ The machete was stuck crosswise through his neck, deep enough that there was blood seeping around the blade.

“The fuck?” Michael said. That should not have worked.

The 416 slipped from the assassin’s grip and fell to the ground followed by the Muertos.

There was no time to waste. He was running out of bullets faster than he was running out of enemies, a not-uncommon occurrence in his short and pain-filled life.

He used the 416 to lever up the assassin’s body and examined it briefly. It was magged for Colt and there were at least a couple of those that had been dropped.

He holstered the USP then pulled out the two mags the assassin was carrying and stuck them in his own waistband.

“Sweet,” he said, looking at the fine German craftsmanship of his newest acquisition.

With that he put it in tactical front and kept trying to find a way out of this maze. From the blue lights reflecting in the interior, Baltimore PD had set up a perimeter. All he had to do was get out of the building, alive, and try to get through the perimeter, alive. The rest was what good attorneys were for.

#

He was moving down one of the pre-stressed concrete lined corridors trying to find a way out that wasn’t covered when he got hit. Hard.

As he fell, he caught just a glimpse of the camping asshole who’d shot him. It didn’t really matter. He was hit hard.

He scooched to the wall as more AK rounds pocked it. He wasn’t sure how many bullets had just passed into and through him, but it was too many. He was pumping out blood like a fire truck.

But he was going to get that camping asshole if it was the last thing he did. Which it was going to be.

He pushed on one of the worst wounds, but it didn’t do much good as blood gushed through his fingers. Arterial. Well…

There was a dead body and a dropped M4 with a Beta C one hundred round mag in it just out of reach. He had managed to hold onto the 416 and if he was going to be stupid enough to return fire on the camper, he should just use that. But the Beta C was sooo inviting. A hundred rounds was better than thirty.

He scooched along the wall as more rounds pocked it. The six-inch pre-cast concrete barely slowed the rifle rounds, and they bounced around the open area. One hit him in the calf, and he barely noticed. He had multiple broken ribs, and his stomach wounds were flooding his abdomen with protein eating enzymes. Compared to that pain, another flesh wound barely registered.

He managed to hook the M4 to him with his foot. That gave the guy an idea where he was, and another round grazed his arm. At this point, it was raindrops in a hurricane. He’d dealt with a lot of pain in his life, but this was reaching burn ward levels, his previous standard for ‘this FUCKING HURTS!’

He got angry. He got angry at the situation. At being left in an alleyway by his whore mother. At being left in this fucking hellhole by DFCS. At MS-13 wannabes that thought jumping him at school was a good idea. Why couldn’t he have been born in a suburb? No kid should be raised in foster care in the ghetto! Fuck DFCS! Fuck Baltimore PD for their cowardice in just setting up a perimeter! Fuck the doctors that kept bringing him back to this hell of an existence! And especially fuck MS-13!

So, I used chopsticks to kill three of your Muertos! IT WAS FUNNY! CAN’T YOU TAKE A JOKE?

The anger flooded his body with the last remnants of traumatic stress chemicals. Norepinephrine, oxytocin, cortisol, endogenous opioids. The tightening of his vascular system slightly reduced blood loss. His hands shook from the cortisol but that was okay. He was dying so missing a little wasn’t a big deal.

He got the M4 to him and scooched further along the wall, going in the opposite direction he’d been going before, muttering about fucking doctors and fucking DFCS. He had two rifles, now, and the obvious answer was to just use the M4. But the 416 was sooo sweet. It made no sense to try to switch mags. He was shot to hell.

But he hadn’t gotten to kill anyone with the 416. He was gonna kill that camping asshole and he was going to kill him with this sweet 416 or die trying. He was probably going to just pass out while attempting to switch mags and get chopped to death. He didn’t care. He was going to do it anyway.

Blood loss and traumatic stress chemicals were a hell of a drug combination.

He fumbled out the Beta C which felt like it weighed a ton, pushed the M4 aside and got mag seated. He could hear the camping asshole shouting to someone.

He’d gotten enough of a glimpse of the camper’s position to have a fair idea where he was.

Michael scooched along the wall again then, groaning at the pain, pulled himself up to look over the wall.

The camper had been on an elevated walkway but wasn’t currently in sight. Probably reloading. There was a section of vertical pre-cast that was the only place to hide behind. It was non-structural like the walls around him. Bullets would go right through it.

Michael propped the 416 with the hundred round mag on the top of the wall, sighted as well as he could with blood in his eyes and graying eyesight, and cut loose.

The bullets sprayed all around the obstruction but through it as well and the camping fuck came into view. Another Muertos from the tattoos. Michael’s vision was in zoom, another combat response, and he could see roses all over the fucker. Rapist fuck. He just held the trigger down, the bullets going everywhere but definitely into the rapist camping fuck who danced from the hits, blood splattering the wall behind him.

The mag locked back as the hundred rounds were expended and Michael dropped to the ground, leaning against the bullet pocked concrete wall in a puddle of blood.

He knew he had to reload but his vision was going dim. He’d killed that bastard at least. He wasn’t sure how many of the other little brown tattooed fucks he was taking with him to hell, but it was a bunch.

Three more came around the far corner. They were all carrying their guns and had machetes in sheathes.

Michael just looked at them with dimming eyesight. He was too tired to try to draw his USP. He couldn’t even lift his arms. So, it was going to be machetes. He’d had worse. It couldn’t hurt as much as the burn ward cause it wasn’t going to last as long. And at least his fucking life would finally be over. He’d see what was on the other side. It had to be better than this side.

Hell held no worries to a kid raised in East Baltimore.

He slid sideways on the wall to lie on the ground, leaving a smear of crimson. He’d really liked this sports coat. It was the nicest clothing he’d ever owned. Pity it was shot to hell.

His vision went black shot with a pattern in red, blue and purple. It looked like lightning and was rather pretty. Odd thing to see as your last vision, he thought, muzzily.

A deep basso profundo voice suddenly reverberated in his head:

“THE STORM IS COMING!”

#

Michael took a deep breath and looked around the all-too-familiar room in the Baltimore Mercy Hospital Emergency Department.

Doctor Miller was to his right and Nurse Betty standing by him, per usual, with a very strange look on her face. To his left was another Doctor with the name Howard embroidered on her lab coat.

He looked at Doctor Miller and frowned. This was not where he’d expected to end up and he was not liking it.

“What, exactly, is so hard about the words ‘Do Not Resuscitate?’” Michael asked, angrily. “I was dead again, wasn’t I?”

“Yes,” Doctor Miller said, nodding.

“Again?” Doctor Howard said, frowning quizzically.

“He dies here a lot,” Doctor Miller admitted.

“Who are you?” Michael said, sitting up. He was unusually lacking in ‘discomfort’ to having been shot multiple times. He actually felt pretty good. Also, he should have been waking up in recovery from emergency surgery. Again. He pulled his right earlobe in thought. “You’re new.”

“I am Doctor Bethany Howard, the healer from Johns Hopkins,” the short brunette said, smiling and holding up a handful of lead. “You had quite a few bullets in you, young man.”

“Some of ‘em were probably left over from one of the other times,” Michael said, stretching. There was something weird about the lighting in the room or he was still recovering. He was weak. That was blood loss, but he felt fine otherwise. What was with the flickering colors? “Why this time of all times did I get a healer? I was ready to go. Pushin’ daisies. Pinin’ for the fjords…”

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Doctor Miller said.

“Getting nailed by some camping asshole,” Michael said. “Got that fucker, though. I made him dance. Then three little brown tattooed fucks coming around the corner with calculating expressions and machetes. Then… Oh…”

He held his arms up and realized that one of the reasons for the weird light was he was glowing in a pastel of colors, rippling up and down his arm.

“Oh…” he repeated, examining the distinctive aura emitted by a Super. “You have got to be joking.”

“Boogie Knight gots superpowers,” Nurse Betty said, shaking her head. She turned to walk out the door. “Boogie Knight gots superpowers…What a world…”

“Welcome to the Super Corps, Mister Edwards,” the healer said with a smile.

“Oh, fuck me.”