Don't Be a Hero: A Superhero Novel

26: The Long Way Home

“Yes?” a strange voice answered.

She frowned. “Where’s Wallace?”

“He has important business elsewhere at the moment. This is Constable Hinerau. Can I help you?”

“Yeah. Tell him if he visits a Schuster Meat Solutions up north he’ll find the supercriminal known as Doll Face. He’s dead. But that can wait. A meta called Sam Oppen…Sam Julius may be a risk to the public. He’s just a boy, and he’s not himself, but he is extremely powerful. I don’t think he’ll be hard to find. Tell Wallace that the boy needs to be taken into custody. But if Wallace harms the kid, he’ll have me to answer to. Tell him I’ll be contacting him again. Tell him I want to help him in this.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “Uh…who can I say is calling?”

“The vigilante bitch.”

She hung up.

She knew what she had to do now, but her stomach clenched at the thought. After one last puff, she stubbed out the cigarette and returned to the car. The Carpenter hadn’t moved. She got behind the wheel, turned the ignition, and pulled back onto the road.

The drive was nowhere near as long as she wished it was. She’d give anything to delay the moment. But all too soon she was pulling over again in an isolated cul-de-sac. She left Solomon in the car again and walked with heavy feet up to the door of the weatherboard villa, pulling on her mask as she went. Three knocks on the frosted glass. Then she waited.

Kate Doherty looked as beautiful as ever. Her blond hair was full-bodied, her beige dress crisp and clean. The polite smile on her face cracked the instant she saw Niobe. “What do you want?” she asked, crossing her arms.

“Kate. I….” Her tongue felt three times its normal size.

“What?” The annoyance in Kate’s face faded. “Where’s Solomon?”

The words wouldn’t come. Bloody hell.

Kate’s face dropped, and for a moment it looked like her legs would follow. But then the woman straightened. Kate took Niobe by the lapels and shook her. “Where is he?” she said, her voice sharper than Doll Face’s knife. “Where is my husband?”

~~~

Niobe never felt the strikes that Kate landed. The woman was no fighter. She was just a girl who’d married a superhero.

It took both of them to get his body inside. Kate broke down sobbing as soon as they had him laid out on the bed. Tears ran down Niobe’s face as well, but they were swallowed up by the fabric of the mask. Kate had nothing to hide behind. Grief and hate took turns swallowing her features. Niobe couldn’t do anything but stand by and watch.

They say kids don’t understand death, but these ones did. Riley, the oldest at ten years, tried to be brave for his little sister and his mum. But she knew the pain in his heart. She still remembered how she felt when she found out her parents had been killed in the blast that destroyed Auckland. The Blind Man hadn’t taken those memories from her.

After a while, she left the family she’d broken to its grief. She returned to the car and sat behind the wheel without starting the engine. The street was quiet. The garden that Solomon had tended so lovingly still stood, but it seemed colourless, empty. Bloody hell, she couldn’t stand this silence. She switched on the radio, hoping for music. She got a news bulletin instead.

“…man found murdered in the cell wearing the costume of the Manhattan Eight superhero has been confirmed as the original Omegaman, Frank Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer was the brother of J. Robert Oppenheimer, also known as Dr Atomic. The Metahuman Division is refusing to offer any more details at this time.”