No Heroes Here

Part Two: 2-Ton and Blast

Part Two:   2-Ton and Blast

The men had reached an uneasy level of familiarity by the time they reached Chinatown. It was destroyed and burning to the ground just like the rest of city. One hollowed out building had puffs of white steaming coming from it and smelled of broth and spices. Raphael pointed towards the building and nodded. When they entered through a large hole in the wall, A.J. closed his eyes and tried to bring himself back to a time when there were warm restaurants to gather in and food that didn’t taste like ashes.

They heard the clink of dishes touching and followed the sound through the dim dining room back to where the kitchen had once been. An abnormally large man was balancing on a tall bar stool pulled up to a counter, hunkered over a bowl of pale noodles swimming in weak broth. He slurped each noodle up hungrily, pushing them up to his mouth with wooden chop sticks that looked tiny in his large hands.

A.J. cleared his throat to make their presence known. The large man just grunted and continued eating without looking up from his bowl. Bits of noodle and broth dribbled out the sides of his mouth. He had sandpaper skin and sad eyes.

A.J. tried again, “Hey, 2-Ton, going to eat the bowl too or just stop at the noodles?”

Hearing the familiar name for the first time in a good while, the man’s grip on the bowl tightened until the sides of the thing cracked. Broth seeped out from the new cracks. He raised his huge head and leveled his eyes at the men for the first time. Recognition swept across his face, followed closely by rage. He chucked the ceramic bowl at Warren’s head, it missed and hit the wall with so much force that it exploded into a million pieces.

“Ed Harrington?” Warren confirmed the identity of the man, as if he really needed to. Ed “2-Ton” Harrington was one of St. Helen’s former residents, just like A.J. had been. Ed wasn’t a mental patient though; he was brought over from a small county hospital a few miles out, suffering from the ending stages of lung and throat cancer. A.J. remembered all the blood the man had coughed up in front of him. It had spilled over his cupped hands and splattered across the staff’s white coats.

Ed lumbered towards Raphael next, casting his 6’5 shadow over the man, swallowing him up in its wake. The ground shook. Ed was tall and carried an impressive amount of muscle and tissue with him. Since the experiments, he had become more lethal than an out of control Mac Truck. His strength and power were immeasurable, his bones unbreakable and his skin impermeable. He was nothing less than an indestructible force of nature. It was his stature that earned him the nick name “2-Ton” on the ward, and that was before they learned what he would later become capable of.

Before A.J. could even think about talking him out of it, 2-Ton took hold of Raphael’s scrawny shoulders and picked him up several feet off the ground. He stared into his eyes with an icy hatred and uttered a primal growl. Raphael moaned in pain and then promptly passed out from fear.

“Just let him down big guy, I’ve already checked them out. They didn’t come here to fight, they’ve got some ideas. Some good ones, I hate to admit.”

2-Ton grunted and let go, letting Raphael fall to the ground in a heap of dead weight.

“Ouch, that’s gonna hurt in the morning,” A.J. said, shaking his head. He couldn’t bring himself to feel all that bad about it though. “Where’s your buddy Calvin, he can’t be far, you two were always damn near inseparable.”

Without taking his eyes off the heap on the ground, 2-Ton shoved a thumb in the direction they could find Calvin and as if on cue, Calvin came around the corner carrying a second bowl of piping hot noodles.

“What the . . .” Calvin started to ask before dropping his bowl and holding out his left hand towards Warren, a blue pulsing ball of light immediately forming at his palm. A.J., who had seen everything that was about to happen about three seconds earlier, shoved Warren to the ground just in time to save him from getting his noggin exploded to bits all over place.