Welcome, Grandfather. It was an honorary term.
The swelling of the earth abated. The ground slowly sank, the crevices sealing up. The radiation of heat diminished. The cloud thinned. The volcano was returning to quiescence. It would be a while before things were normal, but there would be no eruption.
“Wow!” The Bull exclaimed. “That was some thrill ride!”
Lavender disengaged her lava from the ground and reshaped it into a human posterior. She stood. “Don’t touch me yet,” she warned. “I’m too hot.”
“I’ll say!”
They walked across the ruined landscape toward the bus. When she had cooled enough, Lavender put her clothing back on.
“Did you get what you sought?” he asked.
“Yes. There are three volcanoes we have to check.”
“Three! What ones are they?”
“I do not know.”
“But—” His mind was all confusion.
“I have a map.”
“Oh.”
In due course, they reached the bus, now parked in the safe area. Brookstone came out to meet them. “We were afraid we’d lost you!” he said.
“You forget my origin,” Lavender said, stifling her urge to be smug.
“Any more volcanoes we have to visit?”
“Three.” She loved the mental cringe she felt.
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know!”
“Now I need a globe of the world.”
“We can show one onscreen.”
“No. A real one.”
“We’ll do what we can.” He no longer questioned her needs; his arrogance had been replaced by frustrated respect.
They drove to Flagstaff and found an old fashioned curio store. It had an old fashioned globe. Lavender focused on it, aligning the map in her head with the one of the globe.
She found one of the sites. “Pinotubo,” she announced.
“Pinotubo!” Brookstone exclaimed, punching it into his genius phone internet connection for information. “That’s the one that blew out so much ash it cooled the whole planet by a degree for several years!”
“That must be the one,” she agreed.
She found another. “Thera. Or Santorini. Both names are on it.”
“And that’s the one that destroyed the empire of Crete over two thousand years ago. Those cones are dangerous.”
She found the third. “Mount St. Helens.”
“And that’s the one in the state of Washington that wiped out a whole landscape.”
“The gas bomb is in one of those,” she said.
“One? Then why did they go to three?”
“I can tell you that,” The Bull said. “They wanted to hide it so we couldn’t just zero in on one and nullify it. By the time we check all three, spaced around the world, the real one may go off. And I’ll bet that even the animen who placed them don’t know which of the three is the real one, so Lavender can’t read any minds and get it that way. And I’ll bet further that they’re not just sitting there. There will be animen guarding each one. Even your Navy Seals will have trouble handling bear or tiger or orca men.”
“So might a bull man,” Brookstone said, recovering his snideness.
“And suppose one’s telepathic?” The Bull asked.
That set Lavender back. She had been the only telepath involved in their mission so far. What would she do if one of the enemy could read her mind as readily as she could read others?
This mission promised to be more of a challenge than she had first thought.
Chapter 8: Battalions
“Stay here,” said Brookstone, pulling out his phone. He stepped out of the curio shop and into the bright Arizona sunlight, where he proceeded to speak with what appeared to be some urgency. No surprise there. I watched him with some urgency, too, if that was possible.
“Where does he get off telling us to wait?” said Lavender, hands on her hips and steam literally coming out of her ears.
“He’s the one who controls the planes out of here,” I said. “Unless you can sprout lava wings, we’re grounded until we figure out what to do next.”
“Some superheroes we are, at the mercy of some bureaucratic ass.”
“For now,” I said.
“And, yes, I can sprout wings, for your information. But not for flying—for gliding. I used to do it as a kid. I would jump off my grandfather’s highest point, and glide down for nearly an hour. Pure heaven.”
“Okay, now that I gotta see!” I spun the globe idly. “So what’s he saying out there?”
She shook her head. “His mind is shielded. I think he does it automatically, out of habit, and I don’t read lips.”
“And he’s out of my hearing range,” I said. Bulls may not be known for their hearing, but we can pick up high frequency sounds beyond normal human hearing. Trust me, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Try sleeping when you can hear your neighbor’s snoring from across the street!
“Oh, boohoo,” said Lavender, reading my thoughts. “Try explaining to your classmates that your grandpa is a volcano.”
I spun the globe again, this time faster than I’d intended. It leaped off its axis, and shot down the aisle of the curio shop, knocking over a postcard display case and grazing the bum of the old lady who ran the shop. The globe finally came to a rest at the far end of the store, leaving a minor trail of destruction in its wake.
“Oops,” I said.
“Like a bull in a china shop,” said Lavender, laughing.
“If you two are done screwing around, it’s time to go.”
I fished out a couple of twenties from my workout sweats that I tended to favor these days. There wasn’t a shirt on earth that would fit me, unless you wrapped a bed sheet around me. And there was no way in hell I was walking around in a bed sheet. I am who I am, and what I am is a beast of a man, in every sense of the word. I left the twenties on the counter.
When we were were settled in the mini-bus—and after my horns were guided carefully through the open windows on either side—Brookstone explained. “We have teams converging on all three locations as we speak—”
“But—” began Lavender.
“But nothing. You two are new to the hero game, and you have served your purpose, for now. You gave us intel that would have been impossible to get otherwise. Now, let’s just sit back and let our teams take down the animen.”
“And what about Villainous?” I asked.
“We have another team of heroes searching for him. A proven team of heroes. We can watch the action unfold from the base.”
***
And so we did.
We took a seat in the Command and Control Room, or C&C, which was located deep in the base, and could have doubled as NASA’s mission control. Banks of computers were everywhere, manned by what Brookstone called “spooks,” or data intelligence gatherers. Massive screens surrounded us on either side. Most prominent were the three screens before us, which featured a very grim President of the United States. Other screens displayed the heads of other states. There was the German Chancellor, the British Prime Minister, and Russia’s President. There were others, too, all watching their own feeds, all waiting and seeing just what would happen.
“We have three teams on standby, waiting to hear from our remote viewer in Langley, Virginia.”
“Remote viewer?” I asked.
“Distant seeing. It’s a form of clairvoyance. Don’t ask me how it works, but once our guy locks onto a target, he can scan it from a distance.”
“What’s he looking for?” I asked.
“Something that would indicate a viable threat. Possibly a thermonuclear warhead. Now sit here quietly and watch the fireworks,” said Brookstone. “Oh, and don’t touch anything.”
The representative left to join a group of men at a long table near the front of the command room, leaving us alone. “I’m really beginning not to like that guy,” I said.
“
I didn’t like him the moment I read his mind,” said Lavender. “He’s hiding something. I’m sure of it.”
“Well, we might as well watch the show. There’s nothing else on TV. Hey, do you think there’s a vending machine around here? I’m starving.”
***
I had barely come back with my bag of M&M’s when we got the first round of bad news. As I took my seat next to Lavender, the entire C&C was in an excited uproar, including the heads of state who were consulting now with those closest to them.
“What did I miss?” I asked.
“They’re not saying much, but I can pick up the general thoughts of the room. From what I gather, the distant viewer confirmed the package deposited inside Mount Pinatubo is a fake. The team there is going to engage the animen anyway.”
She pointed to the screen to the far right, and what I saw was a barely discernible mess. The images were mostly from head-mounted cameras, and I caught brief glimpses of flashing gunfire—and teeth and claws. The animen there were putting up a furious fight. Until one after another, the head gear winked off. One such gear landed on its side, and I realized I was looking at a fallen soldier. A bear-beast appeared in frame, bounding over the rocky soil. It stopped at the fallen soldier, raised a mighty paw, and slashed down. The image turned black.
I looked away. Poor bastard.
“More US and British soldiers are pouring into Pinatubo,” reported Lavender. “Meanwhile, the focus now is on Mount St. Helens in Washington State, where a joint US and Russian team is waiting on standby.”
I marveled at my new girlfriend—and just saying that sounded strange and exciting—whose head jerked this way and that, as she continuously scanned the thoughts of those in the room. The action on Pinatubo continued, until I finally looked away. I might be a new superhero, but I didn’t like watching men die... and so viciously, too.
“Mount St. Helens is a fake, too,” reported Lavender. “The teams there are engaging the animen, as well.”
And so they did. I saw gunfire and explosions and twisted bodies and death everywhere. I looked away.
“The focus is now on Thera in Crete, where a battalion of European Union commandos is waiting.”
We waited. Meanwhile, the action on the other screens continued, as good men died, fighting against creatures that were nothing short of monsters. Creatures like me. How long before I was viewed as such a monster? How long before the men in this room turned on me as well?
The group of top brass closest to the big screen leaped to their feet.
“Confirmed in Thera,” reported Lavender nearly as fast. She sat forward. “A thermonuclear warhead is buried deep in the magma there. It’s not quite on a timer. Instead, it appears set to go off once the outer shell of nickel has been melted away. According to the distant viewer, we are hours away from an explosion. The battalion is engaging.”
And the animen were waiting, and they were many. They appeared on screen from seemingly everywhere, bounding over land and bursting from the sea. Great cats and gorillas and sharks. Creatures I couldn’t quite recognize. As the slaughter continued, I wondered how the other animen had formed. I thought my situation had been a fluke, with the lightning strike. Perhaps the lightning had just been on the way. Or perhaps the lightning hadn’t been such a fluke after all. I considered that maybe Villainous had created his own soldiers, and somehow I got caught up in it. Perhaps an errant lightning strike, all while he was creating his soldiers elsewhere. Something to ponder.
More explosions, more carnage, and from what I could tell on the big screen, the European soldiers were being decimated. At the least, they were making no progress, and time was slipping away.
“The distant viewer just confirmed that the volcano is lined with poison. Megatons of poison. All set to explode into the atmosphere as soon as the nuclear bomb goes off.”
“This just keeps getting better and—”
“Shh! Hold on. They’re talking about us, Bull. They’re desperate. There’s something here, on the base. Something highly experimental.” Lavender looked at me. “It’s a teleporter.”
“A tele-what?”
“Teleporter... and they want to send us into the volcano.”
Chapter 9: Burning Lady
“Send us to Thera?” The Bull asked. “What can we do there that their crack troops can’t? We may be animen, but we’re just two to their dozens.”
Lavender cobbled her answer together from what she was reading telepathically and her own thoughts. “You’re an animan. You could mix with them and they’d think you’re on their side. I am in a similar form, a cowgirl. In all the rush of battle, they wouldn’t think to check our authenticities. I am also telepathic. I can read their minds to discover whether there is any way to turn off that bomb before its casing melts. Usually there’s a way, in case the personnel are delayed getting out; I pick that up from the minds here. If we turn it off, the eruption will melt it instead of setting it off, and there will be no nuclear dispersal to impregnate the entire mountain with the poison. Their end-of-the-world bomb will fizzle.”
He shook his horny head. “I may be bullheaded, but even I can see that this is risky as hell. There may be no way to turn it off, but if there is, there may be no animan there who knows it. If there is one who knows, they may recognize us as not in their group, if they have cohorts that know each other the way regular military units do. You can’t read any minds if they attack us the moment they see us. Maybe we can be teleported in, but I’ll bet we can’t be teleported out again. We’ll be on our own in hell.”
These were apt thoughts. How were they supposed to get out, once the mission was done? She searched the local minds. What she found was not reassuring. If they failed, the bomb would detonate, triggering the eruption of the volcano, and they would be vaporized along with everyone else there. Which might be just as well, because the rest of the world would suffer horribly before being wiped out by the poison. If they succeeded, they would quickly vacate the mountain, because the eruption was building regardless. There was a hidden speedboat that would take them to Crete, where they would contact the authorities to arrange transport home. Assuming the animen did not discover the boat first. If so, they were on their own. Like all jury-rigged plans, this one was not completely tight.
“I agree,” she said after a moment. “But what happens if we don’t risk it?”
“Mankind dies.”
She nodded. “So it’s a choice between a bad risk, or outright doom.”
“I hate your logic.”
Brookstone appeared. He opened his mouth. “Yes, we’ll go to Thera,” Lavender said with resignation.
The man paused, taken aback. Then he remembered her telepathy, and wondered irrelevantly whether she had been with him that way when he used the head. She was tempted to tell him yes, though she hadn’t been; she wasn’t much interested in how men peed. “Uh, thank you,” he said. “This way.”
The teleporter was a disappointment. There were no fancy futuristic dinguses, no flashing strobe lights, no mysterious symbols. It was just a small empty chamber. The operative machinery was outside, all around it, focusing on the inside. There was barely room for the two of them. Barely was the word; they had to doff their clothing, because the animen were unclothed and apparel of any kind would give them away. “Aren’t we cozy,” Lavender said as he put his arms around her bare body.
“Yeah. I wish—”
Which was the trouble with males. In the presence of female nudity, their thoughts were limited to a single subject. “After the mission is safely over. Then I’ll cool my core.”
“Great!”
There was a zzapp! and they were in a dark tunnel, part of the labyrinth made when the animen were planting the poison. They unclasped, stood, and looked around as well as was feasible. The darkness was not complete.
“The action is that way,” Lavender said, pointing.
“Someone’s coming.” He was picking up on the footfalls.
“A w
olf man and a cat man,” she said, reading their minds. “They don’t like each other much, but they’re on the same team. They’re running to reinforce the ones fighting the human troops.”
“We’ll join them.”
“Neither knows anything about the bomb. But their leader may.”
The two animen loomed out of the darkness. Both were fully furred and roughly human in outline, but had canine and feline facial features, pricked ears, and tails. “Where’s the action?” The Bull called. “We’re lost.”
“Down ahead,” the wolf man answered. “We’re going there.”
“You’re speaking English,” the cat man said.
Oops. This was Europe; English was their second or third language. “We’re from the Brit contingent,” The Bull said. “We got separated.”
They were doubtful. Then Lavender spoke. “We liked each other’s looks and we may not see each other again, considering the danger of this mission. We paused alone for just a few minutes, thinking it no harm. And took a wrong turn getting back.”
Now the animen saw that she was emphatically female, her light fur not concealing anything. They were interested.
“There’s no time,” Lavender said.
The animen agreed, regretfully. “After this—” the wolf man said.
“Maybe,” she replied, though “never” would have been more accurate. He needed to find himself a bitch—a female wolf—instead of a cow. Lavender’s femininity was distracting them from questioning her identity. Maybe it would help with others.
They ran on to the action. There in a chamber were half a dozen other animen. “Reinforcements? About time you get here,” a rhino man said. His epaulets, tacked to his thickly creased hide, indicated he was an officer. “The humans have lasers. They’re messing us up. We need shields, not more bodies.”
Lavender read his mind. He was a group leader. He knew about the bomb! It could be switched off. It was a manual lever beside the control panel, there in case of emergency complications. But where was the panel?
Rhino paused. “You and you,” he snapped at The Bull and Lavender. “You’re foreign.”