No Heroes Here

Part One: What Used To Be

Part One: What Used To Be 

           A red mist blanketed the pavement as blood splattered across what was once Michigan Avenue. It was early evening in downtown Chicago, just about time for the scavengers to come out in full force. A.J. walked up to the man he had just shot in the head and kicked him in the shoulder with his heavy boot. He bent down and stripped the dead man of his weapons and valuables which consisted of two worn quarters, an unopened pack of AA Batteries and a stack of food pantry vouchers. The vouchers were probably fraudulent, but A.J put them in his pocket anyway.

            Something exploded behind him, sending red walls of flames up into the air. It was more than likely a pipe bomb, a booby trap of some kind. Without flinching, A.J. picked up a small blood soaked suitcase lying at his feet and continued on his way. It took a lot more than pyrotechnics to unsettle him these days. A.J. had long brown hair to his shoulders and wore a lot of black leather and silver chains. He wasn’t someone most people would have messed with even before the “American Apocalypse” happened.

            As he walked down the war-torn streets a chunk of metal from a dilapidated building came loose and plummeted to the ground. A.J. stopped just in time to miss the falling object, and then walked calmly around it. In three seconds a scavenger would leap out at him from behind that same building and try to tackle him, but A.J. would be ready for him. He was always ready. Staying just a few seconds ahead of the rest of the world was how he had survived this long on his own. It was also how he had managed to escape from the guards at St. Helen’s a few years ago. He could blame St. Helen’s for a great deal of the world’s current pain and suffering but he couldn’t do so without also recognizing the usefulness of the gifts the institution had bestowed on him.

            St. Helen’s was a hospital, a loony bin to be precise. It specialized in the long term care of mentally unbalanced young adults whose own families had long since given up on them. The building itself had been quite old, giving the impression that it was a sad little underfunded operation, ready to close its doors on any given day. However, underneath that building laid hidden a high security, state of the art laboratory and suite of operating rooms and exam stations. It was there in that hidden labyrinth of hallways and well-lit rooms that a private-sector pharmaceutical company quietly labored for decades in hopes of becoming the first to find a cure for cancer. They had no idea that being successful in that endeavor would also unlock a host of potential special abilities buried deep within human DNA.

            The test subjects for all experimentation were the residents of St. Helen’s, some of which had been diagnosed with some form of cancer while living at the institution and others who were brought there from other medical facilities when their patient list got too low. It was an unlawful and unethical practice that included coercion, deception and outright force at times to gain test subjects compliance. As the scientists tweaked and tested a serum delivered via dangerous levels of chemotherapy, they started to notice some unintentional results. Before long it became clear that the patients that survived treatment were not only cancer free but now aged differently, healed differently and developed several seemingly random extraordinary gifts.

            The new discoveries were marked with both excitement and trepidation by all parties involved as no one could predict how the world would react to such a finding. The world, as it turned out, was not amused. Several governments secretly joined forces to bomb the US into oblivion, hoping to eradicate the “cure” and all related data, information and people involved with its creation.

            A scavenger, skinny as a rail but full of rabid determination, scrambled out of a broken window and lunged towards A.J., grasping for his jacket, his shirt, anything that he could get a hold of and take him down with. At mid-lunge the scavenger’s eyes filled with terror when A.J. stuck a large double barrel sawed off shotgun in his face.