Devious Origins

CHAPTER 27

My eyes were burning and my mouth was filled with a bitter, ashy taste. I was on the floor, disoriented and briefly amnesic. Voices cut through the ringing in my ears, and with them came memory. I had to get out of here. I had to find Dee. Someone grabbed my shoulder, and I lashed out, thinking it was Red again.

"Barry, it's me. Crawl this way. Stay low and keep your eyes shut." I crawled toward Dee's voice. It was barely more than a whisper. The thugs stumbled and yelled around me. There was a loud crash, and something hit me on the back. I crawled, and my hand squished down onto something hot and sticky. A slice of pizza. I drew a breath and immediately regretted it. My lungs burned, and I began coughing. Dee hooked an arm around me and heaved me out the door. We stumbled down the hallway and away from the apartment.

I opened my eyes and looked backwards as we fled. My eyes watered, but I could make out a blurry image of The Mook spilling into the hallway behind us. Orange smoke billowed around him like he was a demon freshly birthed from hell.

We ran. To the end of the hall and down a stairwell, we ran like our lives depended on it. We tore through a lobby littered with paint cans and scraps of drywall, out a set of double doors and toward the street. Parked there was an old Subaru station wagon. On top of it perched a fiberglass statue of the iconic Piranha Pizza logo, a large fanged fish devouring a pizza like some sort of aquatic pacman.

"Where did you..."

"You don't want to know," Dee interrupted, "I was improvising. An opportunity presented itself." She opened the passenger door and dove across to the driver's seat. I quickly jumped in after her. We were already pulling away when The Mook emerged from the building. My vision was still blurry, but his enormous frame was hard to mistake. I half expected him to pull out a gun and start shooting at us as we sped away, but he just stood there and watched us as we escaped.

"What the hell was that thing."

"Tear gas bomb," Dee answered, "well, near enough. It's my own recipe actually. Had a bit more kick than I expected. Sorry about that. Here, pour this in your eyes." She handed me a bottle of milky liquid. I did as she instructed, letting the excess liquid dribble down my face and onto my shirt. My eyes felt better, and my vision began to clear. I turned and looked at Dee.

She was wearing her goggles, which explained how she had escaped the worst effects of her bomb. She wasn't wearing them when she entered the apartment, so she must of have slipped them on as the bomb was going off. Her hair was completely tucked inside a bandanna. She still wore the red windbreaker and oversized jeans. As disguises go, it was pretty thin, but somehow she had carried it off.

"I didn't know it was you."

"That was the idea," she replied.

"You didn't even sound like you."

"Yeah, pretty cool, right?" She answered using the pizza guy voice. It was low and masculine and nothing like her normal voice. A chill ran down my back.

"That is just freaky,"

"It's just a skill, one I picked up during my ventriloquism phase." She said it using the same low voice.

"OK, you can stop that now."

"Spoilsport," she complained, but with her normal voice again.

I looked behind us and saw nobody pursuing. "I think we're clear. Where to now?"

"First we need to ditch this pizza wagon, then I could really use some coffee." Dee drove a few more blocks until finally pulling up behind her distinctive yellow scooter. We got out of the station wagon, and she immediately slipped out of the windbreaker and baggy jeans, leaving them on the front seat of the car. She was was now wearing just her superhero body stocking and goggles. She popped open Martin's storage bin and pulled out the suit jacket she had worn earlier in the day, fished a wad of cash out of a pocket, and tucked the money under the jeans in the car.

"We never got paid for the pizza's," she explained, "I don't want to get the guy in trouble." Finally, we put on our helmets and rode Martin away toward The Intergalactic. As we gained speed I looked back and saw a young man wearing only a t-shirt and boxer shorts running toward the Subaru.