Super Steve

By Doug Cudmore

It starts like just another in long string of Friday nights: after a grinding workweek, Steve Janson again fools himself into a stress-busting, head-clearing run, only to end up at the local Sav-N-Lo picking up a pack of Doritos. But when he ends up bleeding on the floor after a robbery gone wrong, and a mysterious stranger steps in to save his life, he finds himself living every man’s dream. Or is that nightmare? In either case, he’s a superhero.

The darkly comic Super Steve asks: what if a regular person suddenly found himself stronger, faster, smarter than his fellow mortals? If nothing else (and, increasingly, there is nothing else), Steve is that average man, someone who clings to his sense of stand-up-guyness. He still puts in the overtime, even as the desks around him empty at the soon-to-be-extinct Metroburgh Green Pages. He makes sure his deeply pregnant wife and his baby-to-be live comfortably, even as his mountain of debt grows Himalayan. Sure, being the calm face that keeps everything alright gnaws at his slowly expanding gut some days, but it’s nothing a couple of MetroLagers can’t numb.

And at first, saving school busses and pulling kittens from trees suits Steve perfectly. But as crime grips the city – an agitated former Occupier freeing the people’s money; a disgruntled ex-geologist with a knife to grind; a military man determined to keep the streets safe, no matter how unsafe they get in the process – the demands grow unbearable. As Steve’s wife grows suspicious of his late-night activities, as his boss threatens his job if the absenteeism doesn’t end, as his finances spin out of control after a gadget-buying spree, he is forced to ask himself: Must he sacrifice Steve Janson to be a hero? Or does he have to sacrifice the city in order to live with himself?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Doug Cudmore
• Release date: Jan 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9780993993503

Book preview

Before the credits

Forty-five highly classified minutes east of Las Cruces, an MP’s gloved fist cut the 2 a.m. air, pounding the door and shuddering the prefab home’s plate-glass windows. Headlights from the Jeep idling in the driveway lit the golden 4 beside the peephole. Number four of four bungalows on a tiny, nonexistent street, just tumbleweed and rock if you looked on Google Earth. Dr. Przynsky, open up, sir, the MP yelled, due to impatience rather than any need to be heard. There was no-one else out here tonight but Przynsky, no-one else for 50 square miles except rattlesnakes and coyotes and the men and women out at the fort. But the MP yelled again. Dr. Przynsky, sir! We have an emergency.

Inside, Dr. Jerzy Przynsky opened one eye. He could see nothing. His head was covered by a thin, blue, motel-strength blanket. Usually, as he fought for sleep these days, he would end up wrapping himself in its darkness to help drown the worry. It was hard to get real rest out here in the silence, but what he did grab came courtesy of this sad little comforter.

Dr. Przy —

Yes, yes, I’m coming, he barked. He tried to wake up, collect his thoughts, get his story straight. Then he shouted another Yes, yes, coming, for good measure.

He popped his face — his dishevelled, grey-streaked hair and increasingly unkempt beard — from beneath the blanket, took another moment to let his eyes adjust. Then, with a Coming, just a moment to get decent, if you will, he returned to the formality that was his preferred mode of communication. He slid out of bed and picked up his sweat-soiled terry cloth robe, threw it on and tightened the belt, stumbling briefly over the plate of half-eaten pimento loaf sandwich on his bedside floor. Took a deep breath, ran hands through hair, walked the dozen steps from his roll-out bed to the door.

Coming, coming. He flicked the lock and opened, squinting into the high beams. How can I help you, young man?

Situation at the fort, sir. Your astronaut. You didn’t respond to the phone. Colonel Wright needs you a-s-a-p.

Of course, of course. Apologies, I must have slept through the ringer. Just give me a few moments to get decent —

Sir, there isn’t time —

Some pants, son, pants, if you will. Przynsky stepped back into his unkempt abode, with its floor full of half-dirty laundry and scattered papers coated with unfinished equations. He located a pair of dry brown slacks and pulled them over his bedtime boxers, slipped on cotton socks and desert shoes, keeping the robe on to serve as a shirt. Might I ask what all of this fuss is about, son?

I’m just here to bring you in, doctor.

Well, my goodness. I suppose I’ll have to wait, then. Przynsky grabbed the bag he’d set at the foot of his bed for exactly this occasion. Thank you, son. Off we go.

He walked into the night, not making the effort to close the door behind him, and hopped into the Jeep’s passenger seat. The MP, with the brush-cut black hair stubbling from beneath his helmet, backed the Jeep out, flipped it into drive and moved into the black, featureless wasteland.

It was a conversation-free ride, 10 miles to Fort Endurance. Przynsky’s ears were as full as his eyes were empty — the wind and snapping gravel overwhelmed what little the headlights could illuminate. They drove for a seemingly endless eight minutes, until the Jeep rumbled around a bend and the doctor saw searchlights in the distance, waving over the barbed-wire fence and its fallen checkpoint. More distressing, he saw smoke passing beneath the floodlights’ glow. Smoke, alarms, and gunfire.

Part 1 — Good morning, Metroburgh

If you wanted to get inside the lower intestine, gall bladder and a fist-sized chunk of the liver of Steve Janson, you’d do well to be a hollow-point bullet slicing through a bag of Classic Lay’s in aisle five at the Eighth St. Sav-N-Lo.

Steve Janson had other organs that were almost as interesting and which were not about to be near-mortally wounded, of course. If you wanted to get inside his brain, for instance, you’d smack snooze on the 6:30 alarm earlier that day, choosing seven more minutes of sweet sleep over another round of undone crunches on your bedroom’s hardwood floor. At 6:37, though, you’d strip off the sheets and rise into your bedroom’s under-insulated humidity; any more rest would mean the difference between arriving at work early and unnoticed, and sliding in slightly late to the damning stare of Bryce Andrews.

You’d pad quietly down the hall, careful not to wake your wife, and embrace the sweet release of your 60-second pre-breakfast pee before continuing down to the kitchen, where you’d prepare two strong coffees, an English muffin and a bowl of an antioxidizing fruit. You’d flip through the tablet as your first coffee turned lukewarm. Then you’d shower, shave, dress in your best approximation of professional, making a margin call on an Arrow shirt with a fraying collar.

The first signs of life from Sally would come around the shirttail tuck-in; her stirring beauty would merit a deliciously drowsy kiss. Then you’d jog back downstairs and, after grabbing a bagged lunch and gulping down half of your second coffee, you’d leave your semi-detached and head into one of the shrinking islands of middle-class life in the teeming, booming, thriving expanse of Metroburgh.

To dig deeper inside Steve Janson’s brain, you’d walk the eight blocks to the subway station and into the commuter mass (the speakers overhead would mumble something about a mmdimcal mmergenmcy). Boarding would be subway roulette: the train would fly into the station, slowly come to a stop with a door five feet to your left, you’d inch your way closer until the car was full, then wait for the next train to arrive, this time with a door three feet to your right. You’d play the game again, finally starting your journey to work with train number three.

Miraculously, you’d find an empty seat as you climbed aboard, but you’d immediately give it up to a mother-toddler combo who’d foolishly entered this madness. As you stood clutching the sweaty pole, you’d imagine them sharing a That time we took the subway during rush hour horror story at playgroup this week, where you’d be called that chivalrous stranger as the mommies forced their little jewels to do tummy time on the play mats.

You’d travel on for a dozen stations, past Metroburgh Central, just off Gazette Square, where the three-storey MegaSport, a four-storey TGIF and the giant cupcake of Cupcakes Cupcakes Cupcakes left the tourists slack-jawed. Along the canyon streets, tower after sparkling tower filled with sharp-suited men and women — the taxpayers, as His Worship Mayor Bryan McCain, Jr., called them in his folksy twang — as they stretched toward the rising sun. At street level, the morning chai line would already be snaking through Bulgarotti’s organic-produce aisles, while fresh salmon were brought in the back door across the street at Le Grande.

You wouldn’t stop there.

Metroburgh Uptown, a blossoming circle of reclaimed warehouses and glass high-rises, each designed to minimalist, pine-and-off-white perfection to create the perfect home for Metroburgh’s creative class, the lumberjacky bloggers and chunk-framed web designers who gave the city its skinny-jeaned edge. In the spaces between these towering homes, the thick-bearded baristas at Rocket Café served fair trade coffee, while the halfway point in the six-month lifespan of Angry Cats Performance Space passed without a crowd.

You wouldn’t stop there, either.

Old Metroburgh. Where the buildings were still concrete, budget-conscious grey or dark, light-soaking brown. Not Victorian brick russet. Not décor-accent chocolate. The unfortunate brown that appealed to the men who raised buildings in the late 1960s. Blocks and blocks of mid-rises (nothing too tall; those men didn’t dream big). Buildings erected when Metroburgh was a sensible city doing sensible things; buildings long relegated to those same sensible people doing those same sad, sensible things.

This is where you’d get off. Three blocks south, through the lobby, up four floors, wave as you pass Gus Petroni at the security desk, past a growing lake of empty desks. Sit at your open-concept workstation labelled: Steve Janson. Assistant Print Editor, Print division, Metroburgh Green Pages. Your One-Stop Resource for Phone Information in the Greater Metroburgh Area and Beyond.

You’d log on, wait for your terminal to come to life, its unupdated software whirrs reminding you how low you were on IT’s priority list. You’d know your work here would be wrapping up soon — it was just a matter of when. You would have even taken an eight-week app design course at Metroburgh Community College in the spring, have updated your LinkedIn resumé — hell, you’d even, on your own time, write a report titled, How the Green Pages can cash in on geographic technology, which had been sitting for three months in Bryce’s office.

You would be a man trapped on a small, sandy career island that was eroding away. Your only options would be dive into the ocean and hope there was another, larger island somewhere just past the horizon, or stay and hope the waves stopped rising. And you were the type to grab a palm tree and pray.

You’d work away at your desk this Friday, save for a sneak next door for a foot-long Tuna Supreme from Señor Sub, with a Coke and Doritos to aid the gentle expansion of your midsection. And finally, after the last AAAA Auto Service ad was laid down, you’d take the commute in reverse, back to your semi-slice of heaven.

Key in the door.

Yes, if you did that, you’d be deep, deep inside the brain of Steve Janson.

Once you turned that key and opened that door, though, you could try Steve’s heart. Because, like usual, you’d see Sally Janson sitting at your little dinner table. She would be sipping a diet iced tea and battling an iPad Sudoku in her pale green scrubs, but as you crossed the threshold she’d get up to meet you in your home’s tiny entryway. She would have had one hell of a day — hauling the kicking person inside her was enough for any woman in this late-summer heat, but she, god bless her, would have found the time to hit Target, grab another carful of unidentified baby gear for you to assemble, and then, as her feet swelled, would have got groceries and done the dishes. And still, when you arrived, she’d rock herself up, walk over and give that kiss. You’d kiss her back and ask, How was your day?, smell the clean of her sandy-brown hair and, lately, feel the growing bulge of her six-month belly as she pressed against you. Then you’d gulp down the night’s meal together before it was time for her night shift as a paediatrics nurse at Metroburgh West General. You’d give her another good, solid kiss goodbye, not just lips this time, and she would head out the door.

If you took in those 60 minutes, plus the off-nights together and holidays as they came, you’d get inside the heart of Steve Janson.

Then you’d be back on your own until 6:30 crashed down again.

But if you wanted to get into Steve’s lower intestine, gall bladder and fist-sized chunk of the liver, you’d need to be that bullet.

Steve Janson would have the idea — actually, Sally Janson would have the idea, which she would repeat so often that it became Steve’s idea, as well — that he was going to be around for a long, long time, if not for himself then for her and their son or daughter. And so, to battle his days of inactivity broken by short bursts of glucose and cheese, Steve would have to exercise.

That early-August Friday at 9:16 p.m., Steve would slam his home’s ill-fitting front door and perform a quick succession of knee bends and hamstring stretches. He would feel fresh, strong — he liked the idea, if not the practice, of late-night summertime runs — so he would take the three porch stairs in one leap, tune in to Songza and take the first, too-fast strides of the evening. The Sign would blast through the headphones; Sally had left the playlist set on Early ’90s Bubblegum. He would stop, scroll quickly to something more masculine before his ears were hooked, but by the time he found Jock Anthems, Ace of Base would have taken over. He’d head down the block to Life is demanding without understanding.

After the first four dozen power strides, Steve’s body would, per usual, start to despise him, a hatred that only grew for the first 10 minutes of each workout. One of two things always happened after he warmed up: either he would be ready to push, and his legs would kick, his heart would settle into its familiar pace and the world would float by; or he would not, at which point a pallid film would form across his forehead, his legs would sputter, and he would use the emergency five dollars in his pocket to hunt for snacks.

No matter how brilliant he felt at the start, option two was the almost guaranteed winner on Friday nights, leaving him searching for something salty at the local Sav-N-Lo.

That would be the scenario tonight. He would walk through automatic sliding doors and the sweat he’d worked up would evaporate as the heat was replaced by perfume-laced mid-sized-box-store air. Steve would walk down Aisle 4 — Oral Care and Shaving Supplies — until he reached the pharmacist’s counter at the back. He’d turn right, passing a thick-bearded man with an ER’s worth of home medical supplies crammed into his shopping cart. He’d arrive at the snack aisle, pause in front of the Doritos, trying to decide between Cool Ranch and Zesty Cheese.

That is all he’d have to do.

And hollow-point you? You’d have to coil silently in a handgun, tucked inside a windbreaker pocket, hung on the frame of a more drunk than angry young man riding shotgun in a black 2001 Honda Accord pulling into the Sav-N-Lo parking lot. You and your gun would sit cozy as your owner and his two associates hopped from the car, threw black balaclavas over their heads and strutted through those sliding doors. Then you’d be running and, as you approached the checkouts, you’d be thrust toward the ceiling, shining in the fluorescent light as your owner yelled:

This is a robbery! Everybody be cool, nobody gets hurt.

Back at the chips, Steve would freeze, and slow-motion-drop the fiery orange package he’d selected. He’d think, What the hell am I supposed to do in this situation?

Empty your fuckin’ registers, gimme your fuckin’ wallets and purses, ahright? Quick quick QUICK! your owner’s friend Jack would yell, pulling out canvas bags and tossing them on the treadmills of the two storefront checkouts. Get with the fuckin’ program! The panicked clutch of customers nearby, and the two dowdy checkout ladies in their pale blue Sav-N-Lo pinnies, would start to comply.

Then some woman, a decade past middle age, with large, round bifocals and shining burgundy hair, the one clutching an InStyle, would not get with the fuckin’ program. She would defiantly refuse to release her floral-print handbag. There were pictures of loved ones in there. They weren’t going anywhere.

So Jack — and his temper — would whip out a pistol and get involved.

I said give me your purse, bitch. Your purse, he’d yell.

No, please, no, please. My grandkids …

Give me your fuckin’— and his pistol would make solid, fleshy contact with her skull. "I said give me your purse, bitch." Jack would laugh, stoop over her unconscious body, grab the handbag, toss it in his sack.

As the woman lay on the floor, your owner would aim you down for a second. The plan was, as had been discussed at length during the drive here, that the guns were for show. Taking out old ladies was not part of the plan. But your owner couldn’t argue niceties when the shit was going down.

Burgundy Hair’s friend Henrietta would start to scream, looking at the small pool of blood, but — Shut the fuck up! — her screams would turn to panicked whimpers. "Anybody else get any ideas, this is what we got for y’all. Now give us our money!"

The loot bags would fill up, from the tills and the pockets of those standing nearby. And then you and your gun would wave at the onlookers, make sure no one got close as your owner and his other accomplice, the non-angry one who was high as hell and just there for the laughs, backed toward the exit. But that pistol-whipping would have riled Jack up. He would be an aisle into the store now, well within sight of the still-frozen Steve, yelling and demanding more money.

And Jack would have the car keys.

What the fuck you lookin’ at, old dude? he would yell at the homeless man. Jack would smash the shopping cart over, sending gauze, syringes, ibuprofen everywhere. A roll of medical tape would scoot past Steve’s running shoes. I said what. The fuck. You lookin’ at. Old dude.

The homeless man would stand straighter, taller, and calmly ask, What are you doing?

"What did you say, motherfucker?"

I said what are you doing? Coming in here, terrorizing people? Do you know how violence ends, my good man? Do you? Because it doesn’t end well. Then the old man would grab a clutch of bills from inside his jacket pocket, toss them at Jack. There, sir, is your money.

Jack would stand speechless for a half second. He’d flinch toward the old man with his gun, stop, move to pick up the scattered tens and twenties at his feet. But just as quickly his anger would trump his greed, and he’d slam the butt of his gun into the side of another head. "Fuck you, he’d yell, blood splaying off the old man’s temple as he crumpled to his knees. Fuck you." And the robber would raise his pistol for one last smack.

But before he would connect —

Steve would bolt. If you asked him later, he wouldn’t be able to tell you why, exactly, against three armed men. But he sprinted to his right, in an impossible attempt to save a life.

And this is where you would shoot into action.

Your owner would have almost backed out the front door by now, on his way to freedom, hoping his damn accomplice inside would be out in the 60 seconds before the police likely arrived. But then he would see some guy, 5’10" or so, black hair and running gear that only drew attention to his small mound of belly, bursting toward your associate. And your trigger would be pulled.

Crack.

And you’d be flying through the air, spinning at a speed imperceptible to the jaw-dropped cashiers. You’d shoot past the magazine covers (People had Teen mom of Denver star shares exclusive baby pics; the Star went with Darren left me: teen mom postpartum heartache); past the Archie Double Digests; past the salted and unsalted nuts; you’d pass down the aisle, burst into the back of a package of Classic Lay’s, shatter through dozens of greasy chips, and at almost the same instant explode through the front of the yellow bag.

And then you’d be inside the lower intestine, gall bladder and a baseball-sized chunk of the liver of Steve Janson.

That’s how you’d do it.

And, as you lay there, torn to shrapnel, you’d hear Oh fuck, oh fuck, bro and the sound of sneakers running, and the rev of the black Accord disappearing into the Metroburgh night.

Steve would grab his bleeding belly and, through the thick haze of shock, would rasp the words to nobody nearby: Tell Sally I love her. And he would start to feel the warmth of death’s arrival.

Then the crazy old man would right his toppled cart, his smooth hands would hoist the fading Steve Janson into its basket, and the two of them, and you, would sprint into the darkness of the Sav-N-Lo parking lot.

***

Gasp.

As the squeal of tires and the flash of headlights shoved him back into consciousness, Steve bolted upright.

Gasp.

GASP.

He grabbed for his shredded belly, to stanch the deadly flow of blood, to reach in, search for the bullet, dig it out. But he couldn’t free his hands; they were pinned to his body, tightly wound in something. He couldn’t tell.

As his mind battled to make sense of the situation, his eyes struggled into focus. Everything was black, save one piercing white light overhead. Its glow flipped left to right as Steve rocked in a bid to free his arms and stop the life from pouring out his gunshot wound.

In the kind of few seconds that seem like forever, he worked both arms free and shot his hands to the bullet hole just above his navel. His fingers prepared to grope intestine and organ; instead, they hit skin. Soft, nacho-fed, lightly haired skin. His digits looked for that fatal gap that must be somewhere … there … on his torso … up … left … right … but found nothing unusual except for a thin, inch-long cut just below his bottom left rib.

He was certain he had just been shot. Or fairly sure, though he now lacked evidence. Maybe that was just something that had entered his heat-stroked brain after too many wind sprints … no. He didn’t do those anymore. And he was bound by something, left in the dark. If that much had happened, he had likely been shot. Probably. He concluded that, if he didn’t want to get probably shot or bound again, he’d need to get out of here.

He gasped another big hit of air — the oxygen blended with the sinus-pinching taste of anaesthetic and a rusty hint of blood, making him nauseous even as it cleared his brain. He gasped again — each breath tasted better — and looked at that light. Its glow turned from formless orb to floating ball to the familiar form of a Metroburgh municipal streetlight. Steve followed its pole to the ground — his stare caught on to a string of decorative porch lights as they disappeared down a street in the background — and to the black ground below.

So there was a streetlight here, he thought. What else? His eyes couldn’t make that out yet, and his legs didn’t have the strength to explore.

So instead, his eyes teamed with his fingers to determine the identity of the restraint: a simple cotton sheet, soft, warming but industrially rough, like you’d find on a low-rent hospital bed, light yellow with pink-and-white stripes across the top. It had been swaddled around his torso and upper legs, and still bound his calves tight. It felt fresh, clean, except for the part that had once been around his belly but now drooped to the side. That was crusted with something dark, like a giant scab. Blood? His fingernails scraped; he brought a sample up to his nose. Yes, blood. Dried. A lot. Steve’s brain panicked again and his hand shot back to his belly; no, still just soft pink flesh and a tiny cut.

And then Steve’s brain provided a fresh reason for concern — why was his hand hitting skin? Why not the sweat-wicking runwear Sally bought him last birthday? He looked down quickly, making his head swim again. Once he recovered, he got an eyeful of his full, naked self, upper thigh straight on up. He grabbed the folds of blanket off the bench and covered his shame.

So now his panic had a thick overlay of creepy. Steve’s mind shot back through the last few items in his memory. Running. Snack food. Yelling. Gunshot. No getting naked on the list. Dear god, what had he, or somebody, done in the interim? he wondered.

As he wrapped the blanket folds around him, ensuring all important bits were covered, Steve forced himself to concentrate. He was shot. Or not. But most likely. Just not wounded. But wrapped. In something bloody. And he was naked. Where? Horizontal brown boards. A bench — a park, most likely. He looked to the horizon again and objects finally started to clarify … the sturdy steel A of a swing set … a couple of baby swings hanging down … a big red corkscrew slide … by his bare feet, which he now determined were sitting on sand, a broken pink Fisher-Price play kitchen, stacked high with filthy toy pots and pans, buckets and shovels … a worn yellow Tonka truck … a couple of Frisbees that had been converted into digging devices.

Steve knew this spot. Bryan W. McCain, Sr. Urban Play Parkette, tucked away two blocks from his semi. He was close to home. Thank god. Still, he was in a playground. At night. Naked. Except, of course, for a blanket covered in dry blood.

C’mon, give me another pull, asshole.

Calm down, man … alright, here you go.

Ah, that’s the shit. Got this from some hopped-up Moldovan dude downtown, bro.

Steve jumped to his feet, momentarily dropping his blanket. The mumbled conversation of two hoodied just-past-teens hit his ears; it sounded as though they were right next to him. He swung his stuttering gaze 360 degrees, until he spotted them approaching. They were still a good quarter-block away, though, passing under the last streetlight before the parkette. Their smoke wafted up, hung in the humidity.

Steve made himself an impromptu diaper, bunching the blanket around his groin, and darted for the hedge at the parkette’s south end. He crouched between its evergreen prickles and the seven-foot security fence behind, tied the blanket in place. Then he crouched further, into a ball, and waited.

Lucas Stumph, just off his shift at GasMart, and his cousin Nick DeBergh, not currently working nor interested in the concept, slouched into the parkette and dropped onto the bench Steve had occupied just seconds ago. They enjoyed a nice, long joint and the inane conversation that it brought — cars they’d never drive, lingerie models they’d never screw. After five minutes, Nick, his 259 pounds living on the border between husky and obese, was taking one long last pull when something caught his eye.

The park light glimmered off a big, light yellow form behind the bushes.

Nick nudged Lucas, whose sallow cheeks and sunken eyes gave an outpatient impression, nearly knocking him onto the ground. Bro, he said, pointing, what is that?

What?

Behind the bushes, bro. Nick got up, pulled down the bottom of his Area 51 T-shirt so his belly was covered. Check it out. Looks like … a dude in a diaper!

Oh fuck, yeah, Lucas said, laughing a deep, ganja-laced laugh. Hey, Diaper Dude! he called. What’s in the bushes?

Steve could now see he was hardly hidden. He was cornered, though; the two men stood between him and the parkette’s gate, and as they strolled toward him his escape route was slowly, stumblingly cut off.

Hey, Diaper Dude! Nick called, delighted at his discovery. What you doin’ in there, man?

Yeah, uh, hey, guys, Steve responded with an understated wave. How’s it going?

Hey. Lucas was curious. Are you one of those dudes who dresses up like a baby and have some chick change your diaper?

Yeah, you a perv?

Hey, it’s nothing like that —

But Lucas’s face turned angry. Yeah, what the fuck, bro. Doesn’t your niece play at this park?

The two not-quite-teens now walked more quickly toward Steve’s failed hideout. Yeah, fuck, dude, Brytney plays here all the time. Hey, get the fuck out here, pervy Diaper Dude! Nick demanded.

Steve stood, put his hands out to the side in a plea. Look guys, I — But there was no point in trying to reason. Lucas ran the last 10 steps left between himself and Steve, pulling out a small pocket knife as he did and saying, Let’s fuck this dude up.

Steve was out of options — couldn’t reason, couldn’t run, couldn’t do much damage against a loser with a knife. But in the last millisecond before his torso took its second blow of the night, an electric surge shot through Steve’s legs, while another hit his brain. And he jumped, up, back and, with unknown energy exploding from his quads, he cleared the fence behind him with room to spare, just as the knife sliced the space where he had stood a half second before.

Steve came down in the ankle-deep sod of the unkempt backyard behind the fence and, in disbelief, stared Lucas in the eye, this time with the safety of a seven-foot sheet of metal diamonds between them. What the fuck? Lucas said.

And just as fast as he’d cleared the fence, Steve came to his senses, turned, ran. He needed to get home, back to safety, but he couldn’t take the streets and risk the neighbours spotting him. With this bizarre new strength coursing through his legs, apparently allowing him to clear fences in single leaps, he could take the back route. So he sprinted across the first, dark, 24-foot-wide backyard and hurdled with ease over the five-foot privacy fence at the other side. Stuck the landing. Good, he thought, now there were two fences between himself and the stoners. He could take time to gather his thoughts. Until the motion-sensor light snapped on and the chihuahua in the rear window began a piercing yip.

Steve hurled himself over the next fence, again with ease, but this time crashed down on an above-ground pool; the sound of his body hitting the water was loud enough, but coupled with the clatter of the now-collapsing structure and the whoosh as gallons of water poured into the yard, it was enough to stir more neighbours. Backyard lights flicked on almost instantly up and down the block. Any second now, annoyed homeowners would come out with their dogs or cats or baseball bats.

As Steve cut through the rushing water, he realized he needed to cross just one more yard and he would hit the back alley that dissected his block, leading straight to his backyard. As the demolished-pool owner slid open his screen door, Steve cleared another fence. And again he stuck the landing, onto an upturned rake.

Hey! yelled the pool owner as Steve disappeared.

What? yelled the owner of the final yard, who was sitting on his candlelit deck, enjoying a glass of chilled Cabernet with his wife’s best friend.

Ahh! yelled the wife’s best friend.

And Damn it, yelled Steve as two rake prongs shot into his bare right foot. He leapt over the last fence with such force that he topped it with five feet to spare and, with the alley on the other side being blessedly empty, turned right, toward home, and broke into a sprint, a dead sprint, faster than he’d ever sprinted before. Then it occurred to him that his bleeding right foot would leave a track leading to his own backyard. So he broke into a hop, a dead hop, faster than he’d ever hopped before, to the safety of his own gate.

As he arrived at the back of his house, Steve realized his key was exactly wherever his running clothes now resided. So he picked up a fist-sized rock from Sally’s decorative garden and, as quietly as possible, punched it through a glass pane on his door. He reached through the resulting hole, slicing the side of his hand in the process, and turned the knob from the inside. Then he pushed open the door and allowed himself the sweet, agony-filled relief of a collapse on his