Sidekicks (The Enemies Trilogy Book 3)

By P.K. Gardner

In the thrilling conclusion to the Enemies Trilogy, not even superheroes are bulletproof. To keep the legend alive after Good Guy is murdered, his sidekick Ajax Gadzinski is asked to put on the mask. Only Ajax is more interested in avenging his friend than joining the long line of heroes who died for the cause.

Besides, if the rumors are true, the original Good Guy is back, saving people like he never left.

Or, you know, it could just be the evil twin.

• Language: English
• Publisher: P.K. Gardner
• Release date: Jul 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310251931

P.K. Gardner

P.K. Gardner is not a zombie.

Book preview

VOLUME ONE:

Sidekicks

Second String #1

The superhero business has the reputation for being all about glamour, swirling capes and the American Way. Maybe for the actual superheroes, that’s right. For the sidekick to the legendary Good Guy, not so much.

Are you ready to have your entrails turned inside out, private? Dr. Dreadful’s voice drifts through the red haze of pain.

That’s me. The private. No capital letter.

You mean they aren’t already? I try to check, but that’s hard to do when strapped upside down in one of Dr. Dreadful’s doom machines. We’re somewhere under the baseball stadium. Visitors side, I think. Wouldn’t be such a problem if baseball was in season. Someone would have noticed the evil lair well before things got this bad. Unfortunately there’s no one tossing a ball around who might hear me scream. Just zombies in parkas playing catch with severed heads.

I have the worst night job. I don’t even get paid for this.

You see, Dr. Dreadful pontificates, this device will not only kill you, it will make a zombie out of your still-bleeding corpse and prepare my post-murder coffee. If I pull this lever, the spring will launch into this series of dominoes and—

Dr. Dreadful and the Legion of Doom, huh? I interrupt. You’d think three years on the job would get me used to the monologuing, but I really don’t care to know details about how his doomsday machine is going to kill me. The fact that it will is plenty enough threat. I remember that band. I totally had one of their CDs.

Dr. Dreadful pauses mid-explanation of the world’s deadliest Rube Goldberg machine. The ghost of a smile plays on the edges of his mouth. You’ve heard of us?

Figures he’d be part of that Dr. Dreadful and the Legion of Doom. Since when did this town go insane? I swear the villains weren’t this cartoonish when I was a kid. I’m only twenty-two, but that’s apparently more than enough time to turn a front man into a mad scientist bent on world domination.

He certainly looks more mad scientist than hard rocker. A shiny bald head in place of the mullet. A white lab coat instead of the torn T-shirt. I’m pretty sure his back-up singers didn’t use to be zombies, but you can never tell with heavy metal bands. The secret laboratory does look suspiciously like a recording studio.

Heard of you? Of course I’ve heard of you! Sucking up is definitely a valid stall tactic. Buy Good Guy some time to cut through the zombie hordes to get to me. He’s never been the picture of punctuality. I can’t count the number of times I’ve passed out from blood loss because Good Guy stopped for a photo op. "I freaking loved you back in the day! Raining Fire was the first album I ever bought. Though that song Mind Control and Zombies makes way more sense now. As more lyrics start playing through my head, I stumble across another distressing possibility. Please tell me The Soul Eaters isn’t supposed to be taken literally."

Dr. Dreadful scowls, but no torture, no countdown to my imminent demise. I count this as a win.

"The Soul Eaters, he bites out. Mind Control and Zombies. Raining fucking Fire. We put out album after album and all anyone remembers is Raining Fire! What about Hellbound Blues? What about Lights in the Sky?"

"Crap, except for that single… What’s it called? The Idiot and the Oddity."

I’ve been hanging upside down for over an hour. I can’t be blamed for anything that leaves my mouth. The taste of copper hangs on my tongue and a head wound steadily leaks blood through my hair. If I’m going to die anyway, I’ve always wanted to say this: You guys sold out.

Sold out? Dr. Dreadful hisses. Steam curls off his head as the sweat hits the cold air. Probably a bad sign. "That’s what they all said. That we sold out. We never sold out! Some of our best songs—my best songwriting—came off Lights in the Sky. I know this. The Legion of Doom knows this. Soon the rest of the world will know it, too!"

So. I cough, and the taste in my mouth intensifies. Good Guy better get off his ass so he can save mine. Let me get this straight. You resurrected a bunch of dead guys, stole a priceless diamond for your doom machine and killed a dozen people so you could score a comeback tour?

Yes.

I start to laugh. Not appropriate for a person who hopes to continue breathing. Dr. Dreadful has this elaborate set-up where pulling a lever causes a domino effect that eventually ends with a spear through my chest. Not a single electronic piece in the contraption. He’s done his homework. Goodbye, private.

In a perfect world, I could slip my bounds and crawl off to warn Good Guy about Dr. Dreadful’s diabolical scheme. But ever tried slipping bounds when hanging upside down from the ceiling? With just about every joint dislocated and no super strength?

It’s a lot harder than it looks.

According to Dodger, our resident superhero psychic, I have enough power to be doing this solo instead of just sidekicking. Probably he’s mistaking me for someone else. There’s a big difference between having a superpower and using it competently.

Then again, if I screw this up bad enough, maybe I can get out of the sidekick business for good.

Well, that or I’ll be dead. Don’t get me wrong. I’d prefer to keep breathing, but if I’m going to die today, it would be better to skip the torture and cut to the finale.

Dr. Dreadful runs a hand over his shiny bald head. Now if you will, dear private, prepare to meet your doom. He turns away, pristine white lab coat swirling out behind him in an unseen breeze as he starts the chain reaction that will destroy me.

This is typically the point where I roll my eyes and let him entertain his delusions, but this time feels different. Good Guy tends to wait until the last minute before staging his rescues, but he usually has the good grace to sneak in and throw me a wink before implementing his plan. I don’t think he’s going to make it in time. And I’ll be damned if I go out under an alias. Actually, I say, pausing for, you know, the melodrama, it’s Ajax. Ajax Gadzinski.

The lab shakes with the force of his answering laughter. I don’t need this kind of ridicule. It’s been a really bad day.

I’m sorry, I snarl. Was that funny?

A-Ajax? Dr. Dreadful chokes through his guffaws. Come on, private. You can’t expect me to believe that’s your real name! What kind of a sidekick is named Ajax? You hero types are supposed to be purebred American. Gadzinski is the name of an immigrant’s son!

I am an immigrant’s son!

Probably. It’s not like the Gadzinskis are alive to give me the family tree. Dad was a philanderer, and Mom smothered him with a pillow when I was six years old. After, she capped her night off with a bottle of sleeping pills. We’re a small and mostly dead clan. Are you insulting my parents?

I mean, they deserve it, but Dreadful doesn’t know that.

I’ll bet you ate pierogi and kielbasa at all your family gatherings!

Inside the Rube Goldberg machine that will eventually kill me, a cup fills slowly with water. When it reaches a tipping point, a ball will topple out and roll down the ramp where it will careen into the bad leg of an old wooden chair and…

What exactly is wrong with pierogi?

Dr. Dreadful cackles.

It’s not funny, I say. You know this country was built on the backs of immigrants!

My blood starts to boil. The lights overhead flicker madly. Dreadful, wiping tears from his eyes, doesn’t notice.

And then a shower of sparks shoots out from under his lab coat. Panic sweeps through my veins, which only exacerbates the problem. Dr. Dreadful isn’t laughing anymore. He’s stumbling towards me, half-mad, muttering, You’ve killed me, private.

He clutches his chest, tearing the lab coat aside and, oh god, those sparks are coming through skin. He’s got a pacemaker.

How could I know he had a pacemaker?

Behind him, the chair in the device collapses. A weight drops, pulling the spring’s support back. The spring sends a spear screaming through the air toward Dr. Dreadful’s exposed back.

I want to tell him to duck—except if he ducks, I’ll have the spear through my chest instead of Dr. Dreadful coughing blood into my face. His body jerks with the impact. I watch his death rattles as he topples to the ground, trying to get myself under control before my useless superpower blacks out the whole city.

Not thirty seconds after Dr. Dreadful meets his death, Good Guy swaggers into the lab using what looks like a zombie’s severed head to gain entrance through the security checkpoint.

Private! he calls gallantly. Private! I encountered something rather disturbing regarding Dr. Dreadful’s Legion of Doom. As I heroically punched my way through the hordes, they all mysteriously died. Do you have any notion what could have caused such a catastrophic failure?

In Dr. Dreadful’s pocket, the zombie controlling device sparks and the lab coat catches fire. I’d have been impressed with myself if I had known the thing was there.

Private? Good Guy prods. Any ideas?

Sure, Good Guy, I reply. When Dr. Dreadful kicked the bucket, his zombie machine shorted out. You wanna maybe let me down? He left the keys by the doom machine.

Good Guy doesn’t even look at the keys. With barely a grunt, he grasps either side of the cuffs on my hands and pries them loose. Next, he hovers three feet above the ground and does the same with the chains on my ankles. I topple gracelessly into his arms, trying not to swoon. Always fun to be today’s damsel in distress.

Good Guy sets me down, standing tall, that iconic glint in his eyes. He’s wearing his full costume. White helmet masking his face. Skin-tight white suit, brown underwear on the outside, a cape swirling out behind him. I swear when I was a kid the costume made more sense. I mean who uses suspenders to hold up underwear?

My own costume is simpler. Army fatigues, combat boots and a mask. I wouldn’t wear any of it if not for Good Guy’s insistence. It’s this whole thing about the uniform representing an ideal. I always argue that it’s hard to be inconspicuous in costume.

Dr. Dreadful, dead at the hands of his own creation, Good Guy says. An oddly fitting end.

My left eye twitches. Above, one of the fluorescent lights sparks. I stumble forward on unsteady legs. Dr. Dreadful had a pacemaker. I had an episode. There was an unfortunate accident. Can we go now?

Another fine day for Good Guy and the private.

I touch the mess of raw flesh that used to be my wrist and wince. Yeah, sure. Hey, why did you need to fight the zombies anyway? Can’t you fly? Seems like that might have got you here to rescue me sooner.

Good Guy claps a hand on my dislocated shoulder. The force of it nearly makes me black out. Oh, dear private, you have so very much to learn.

Whatever, I mumble. I think I need a hospital.

That breaks him out of character. He drops the aura of Good Guy, caped defender, and goes back to being Clifford Awesome. His touch gets a lot gentler and without asking he snakes an arm under mine for support. I lean my weight into him. Aw, hell, Ajax. How bad is it?

I can walk. My knees try to buckle, but Cliff keeps me standing. What do you say we get me out of this costume and into the hospital so they can pop all my bones into place and swab out these cuts before I get gangrene?

It’s an old argument, but after three years of this, we have an rhythm. Hospitals have this funny little problem with keeping medical records. If it gets out Ajax Gadzinski is the private, someone will connect me to Cliff. As the breakable member of this duo, I try to stick to the research. I find out who the bad guys are, and more often than not, how to beat them. Then I pass the information to Cliff, who swoops in with his pretty boy grin and takes all the credit.

I’d be bitter if the thought of fighting for my life didn’t make me sick to my stomach. Right now I can barely walk. I’ll pass on the glory if it means functioning limbs.

Dodger was the one who paired me and Cliff as a crime-fighting duo. He likes to put together people who know each other in civilian life. I’d met Cliff my first semester at college and by the second we were roommates. I’m still not sure why I never gave him the boot after the first semester living together. He was better than me at everything. Finished college in three years while I’m stuck doing a victory lap. In my defense, I get hospitalized a lot more than he does.

Still, I can’t really bad-mouth Cliff while he’s in the process of hauling my ass out of Dr. Dreadful’s lab and in the direction of medical attention. By this point I don’t trust myself to get there on my own. Despite our differences, Cliff won’t leave me to trip over the corpses littering the outfield.

I don’t really want to think about the zombies. They’re a symptom of a far bigger problem. The last big spell of uprisings happened before I was even born. Zombies were supposed to be things you only saw in museums.

Cliff doesn’t seem worried, instead steering us out of the ballpark and onto the street. The farther away we get, the worse the neighborhood becomes. The city built the new stadium in the middle of the Warehouse District in hopes of revitalizing an area best know for housing supervillains. It’s a losing effort. They’ve revitalized maybe two blocks in the last five years. Cliff and I are here fighting bad guys at least three times a week. We’ve got some street clothes stashed about a mile from the stadium. While Cliff is perfectly willing to fly me to the hospital in full costume, his secret identity is more important than my safety.

Changing into street clothes before getting admitted often pushes me to the brink of unconsciousness, but I manage as well as I can. One of these days I’m going to bleed to death while pulling on my pants. That would be a fine way to go out. I can see the headlines now, Pantsless private DOA.

You need help there, Ajax? Cliff asks as I struggle out of my jacket.

My right shoulder’s screaming something fierce, but I’ll be damned if I ask for help. I’m a big kid now, Awesome. I can dress myself.

Whatever, dude. Cliff pulls his pack of clothes from behind a dumpster and starts exchanging spandex for civilian wear. Did you really fry Dreadful’s pacemaker?

Not on purpose. I stifle my cry of pain. Besides, the spear killed him, not me.

Lucky, Cliff says. You know we’d be in big trouble with Dodger if we did kill the guy. Remember that mess with the Sting?

Not really. That was the month of the gaping head wound. But I do remember X’s heyday. Now that was a hero with a body count. Dreadful’s death’s not that big a deal. I pull on my jeans and try not to collapse in the process. My shoulder throbs. Nothing to tarnish Good Guy’s reputation. Unfortunate accident with a doom machine. Stuff like that happens all the time.

God help us all, that’s true.

Steady now, Cliff says. You look like hell. Blowing off class again tomorrow?

Gonna tell them you and I run a fight club. Easier than keeping track of all my excuses. How the hell do you come out of a fight looking this good?

Cliff shrugs. He has this ability to emerge from a fight looking like a poster boy for GQ. His hair is parted just left of center, his face clean-shaven, blue eyes sharp and focused. He wears a white long-sleeved dress shirt, complete with tie. The sort of clothing he wears daily for his law-school internship. I manage a ratty pair of jeans and a gray sweatshirt that was smudged with dried blood even before I pulled it on. Probably won’t be salvageable this time around.

Can you walk on your own?

I’ll manage, I grunt, staggering forward.

Cliff reaches out a hand to steady me, because despite the fact that Good Guy is a tool, Clifford Awesome is a decent person.

Thanks, I say grudgingly.

It’s nothing.

So there we are, walking through the darkened streets of the city’s warehouse district at about three in the morning, looking like a couple drunk college kids stumbling home after being tossed out of a bar. If we—and by we, I mean Cliff—were still in costume, no one would have bothered us.

But Cliff Awesome supporting an already bloodied Ajax Gadzinski draws some attention.

The mugger is pale, blond and maskless. He also has a gun.

What do you think you’re doing? Cliff asks in his infuriatingly calm I’m a superhero, don’t mess with me voice.

I think I’m mugging you.

My hearing’s cutting in and out, but his accent sounds way too polished for this part of town. In the distance, I can hear the wail of police sirens.

Your wallets, if you please, the mugger says.

Cliff doesn’t budge.

Go mug someone who isn’t heading for the hospital, I mutter.

Or how about this: Go mug someone who isn’t a superhero, you moron. I’m looking forward to watching Cliff kick his ass. Hell, if I wasn’t foggy with blood loss, I’d lend a hand.

Funny, the guy says. You’re quite funny. Now cough it up.

Wallet’s in my other pants, Cliff growls.

You probably have more money than I do, I add.

Right, the guy says. Time to end this farce and get to the real business. Was only supposed to find one of you, but never let it be said that I’m not thorough.

Before either me or Cliff have the chance to move, the crack of the gun pierces the air. Then a very small red hole appears in the middle of Cliff’s forehead. He collapses as if in slow motion, his weight pulling me down with him. A second shot rings out in the darkness, slamming off the side of my scalp. It would have undoubtedly been a head shot if Cliff hadn’t knocked me over.

I must black out, because when I wake up, the guy’s long gone and the distant roar of sirens is now a scream. I flip Cliff’s body off me and grope for a pulse. A disconcerting amount of blood coats the pavement. Too much to fool myself into thinking I’d imagined the bullet ripping through Cliff’s forehead. I start CPR anyway. I don’t know what else to do. Cliff was a superhero. Untouchable. He’s not supposed to get killed in some dingy back alley.

Because if Cliff’s dead, Good Guy’s obvious replacement is…

Me.

Only Sleeping #67

Sally Suzuki likes funerals. Back when she was a feared supervillain, before she wandered down the path to redemption, she was known as Worst Nightmare.

There are no nightmares at funerals. No fights. Just memories drifting on the tear-stained air. They’re places of sorrow but not terror, filled with the possibility of what could have been. At funerals for the young, the worst has already happened.

The funeral for Clifford Awesome is well attended. The heroes hide in the crowd like they always do. Katherine Shilling, better known as Torch, sits by herself as she watches the faces of the grieving. Xavier Zimmerman and Kyle Aucoin are in the back of the crowd, one in a gray suit, one in a black. They’re both swaying on their feet, sneaking drinks from a shared flask. Save the scar tissue on their faces, no one would ever guess they were X and SuckerPunch, a pair of vigilantes who had left a trail of bodies in their wake.

To the far left sit the curiosities. One is a plain-looking woman with dark hair and perfect skin. Jess Hendricks. Possibly the most lifelike android in existence. Next to her is the one-time speedster and supervillain, Malcolm Quick. Nowadays he looks exactly like Alex Manners, the original Good Guy. A botched assassination attempt on Alex had left Mal inhabiting his frenemy’s body and a successful one left him stuck there. After Alex’s death, Mal wouldn’t hear of taking over the role of Good Guy.

Mal has never quite gotten the hang of schooling his feelings from Alex’s face. His expression is raw. This is the fourth funeral he’s attended for Good Guy, but Sally knows he’s still smarting from the original’s death ten years ago.

The part of Sally that will never stop being Worst Nightmare inhales every nuance of their demeanors, picks out flourishes she can add to her illusions. She was a villain for a long time, spent her teens spinning nightmares through the world, and instinct is hard to break. She leans back in her chair, unfolds her hands and drinks in the sorrow that overwhelms the nightmares.

Ajax Gadzinski stands at the lectern at the front of the church. He looks nothing like his father, but Sally’s memories of Indestructoman are distorted through the lens of youth and madness. Indestructoman had been a huge man with a thick black mustache and kind eyes. He’d died when Sally was just fifteen. Gadzinski is a scrawny kid who’s barely old enough to drink, with rounded shoulders and a panicky demeanor. His eyes catalog every exit to the church, the sweat dripping down his temples onto his ill-fitting