“My name is Volkang, and I will be your executioner today.” An uppercut sent a rising Roarke reeling. Stumbling backward, Volkang easily ripped Roarke’s bandolier off. Roarke had let go of the nail gun after Volkang’s first strike. His attacker kicked that further away.

  “Too bad you weren’t more of a challenge,” Volkang said while he spun like a human top on one leg and literally bowled Roarke over as he once again tried to stand. “I’m hoping there’ll be more like you. Well, better suited for this sort of thing actually. What’s the point of Dr. Knightgloss turning me into this marvelous machine if not to show off her abilities?” Hands on his hips, Volkang gloated over Roarke’s prone form, the tip of one of his silly slippers touching his forehead.

  “By the way,” Volkang asked, bending down, his hand holding Roarke’s masked face up in position, pieces of his goggles falling away. Volkang’s other hand held the poised butterfly knife. “Which one of McLeash’s new buildings would you like to be entombed in?”

  “Next to you.” Roarke plowed a spike with as much force as he could manage into the man’s foot. It was the kind used for staking out property lines with those little plastic flags and twine. He had some in a holder around his ankle.

  “Fuck,” Volkang roared.

  Roarke hoped that had been heard upstairs. Still on the ground, he punched the speedster in the groin and as he dived for his nail gun, yelled, “McLeash … Jameson … Mannheim.”

  “What’s going on down there?” a bald man demanded. That was Mannheim. He and several others, including a drunk Weaver, looked down over the temporary railing erected for safety.

  Volkang rushed Roarke, but his foot wound didn’t allow him to reach top speed as quickly as before. Roarke busted out several of his teeth with the butt of his nail gun.

  “Cocksucker,” Volkang said.

  Underhanded Roarke threw a steel plumb bob into Volkang’s open mouth. As the speedster choked and sputtered, Roarke pounded the pry bar into Volkang’s Adam’s apple, and he went down, gasping and heaving for air.

  Turning, dropping to a knee, squinting and blinking as sweat ran into his eyes, Roarke shot a nail into Bruce Mannheim’s upper torso. He was the publisher of the Daily Examiner, the newspaper of note that was a booster of the Nova Park development. Notedly, McLeash hadn’t been at the railing.

  “Oh my God, somebody’s shooting down there,” a woman cried. “Bruce’s been shot. It must be some horrid gang member or drug addict.”

  With the Shadow in mind, and dipping into one of his bandolier’s pouches, Roarke scattered smoke pellets bought from a magic shop in the Valley. The blue-black stuff provided cover as the security guards ran over. He dropped back into the sewer. The echo of dogs barking had him looking up at a gorgeous, dark-hued, black-haired woman in white mink and a matching fur pillbox hat. It was the woman he’d spotted down the block from the Exeter. Her two Chihuahuas on their twin sparkling leashes growled at him, their fangs reflecting moonlight.

  “Dr. Knightgloss,” he guessed.

  “And what shall we call you? For I know about transformation, and you are no longer the mere Kafka-like anonymous paper shuffler you once were, Roarke.”

  He’d written down several combinations of names one night, but none of those seemed appropriate now. He announced, “The Remover. Those like you and your boss McLeash must first be torn down. I’ll remove his fingers from the people’s pockets, and dismantle his influence over policy and the courts. Then I intend to rebuild, to create structure so that what should have been in place, is.”

  Her throaty laugh was infectious and rang above the cacophony of shouting and scurrying. “My, does that make you a Marxist or an Objectivist?”

  “I am who I am.” Isn’t that what Popeye said? He’d have to work on his tag line.

  A guard appeared beside the doctor and, huffing and puffing, shot into the sewer. When he’d previously gone up the metal ladder built into the wall, Roarke had undone the hex bolts with his socket wrench. This wasn’t too hard given the service ladder like the pipe was new and not rusted over. Descending, he’d pulled the ladder loose from the wall. And holding onto the top, his weight bent it away from its moorings and he rode it down to the water. They wouldn’t be following him.

  Roarke splashed away, sirens approaching. He could hear the echo of the doctor laughing again and her surgically altered dogs snarling. That night in his sleep, his dead wife Josephine climbed out of the rubble of the collapsed balcony of the reconditioned theater. A then up-and-coming contractor named McLeash had cut corners on the material to pocket more profit.

  Her body wasn’t broken and her busted bones weren’t splitting her skin. She held out her arms to him and smiled.

  In the morning, driving to work, the news informed Roarke the plan he’d put in motion last night was unfolding. There was no way he’d accomplish anything but a headline if he had suddenly barged into the party accusing McLeash and getting beat down by his guards.

  Yet wind up an egomaniac like Mannheim, that was different. The publisher would want answers. And he’d have his reporters look into the allegations Roarke sent last night in his blast e-mail from a 24-hour Kinko’s to various media outlets. Mannheim couldn’t ignore the allegations if only to keep up with his competitors. He was the story and he would milk it. Roarke had no romantic illusions this alone would bring down McLeash. But piece by piece, like the concrete that broke killing his wife when that balcony gave way, a crime that McLeash was able to blame on subcontractors, Roarke would remove that bastard’s supports until he too toppled, never to rise again. Yet there was one immediate victory last night. He’d implicated Weaver in his e-blast, and the crooked inspector was suddenly out on sick leave.

  On his desk in his cubicle were a clutch of long-stemmed black roses, thorns intact. A card in a precise feminine script read: “I eagerly await our next engagement.” Dr. Knightgloss no doubt.

  He put the flowers in a borrowed vase and sat, staring at them. One, he was going to have to get a transfer—what was the good of being a costumed do-gooder if the bad guys knew where you worked? And two, he was going to have to return to the Exeter. It held a secret to McLeash, and Roarke had to know what it was. There would be the added bonus of seeing Elmira Bustamonte again. Maybe he was projecting, maybe she didn’t feel anything for him as he knew he did for her. After all, he was better at “reading” stone and plaster than human beings. Still, he couldn’t put her in jeopardy, so he had to be careful for both their sakes.

  His path was set, The Remover would remove again. No, no that wasn’t a good catch phrase. He was definitely going to have to work on that.

  DRED

  by JERRY A. RODRIGUEZ

  Johnny Grande’s men systematically moved kilos of cocaine and heroin from an enormous moving truck onto three different cargo vans. The warehouse in the Hunt’s Point section of the Bronx was the main distribution center for Grande’s vast narcotics enterprise.

  Overseeing the efficient assembly line was a team of enforcers in red tracksuits, brandishing high-powered machine pistols.

  Carlos Vega, Grande’s right-hand man, checked his Rolex while he leaned against his metallic blue BMW. Barely thirty and dressed in a dashing, single-breasted suit and black leather coat, his chiseled brown face remained stoic. Maybe tonight would go off without a hitch after all.

  A strange subsonic hum filled the warehouse. The noise was so overwhelming Carlos felt as if he were standing in front of a ten thousand watt subwoofer.

  The skylight shattered, forcing Grande’s men to scramble for cover as gleaming shards rained down on them. The team trained their automatics upward and fired a volley.

  Carlos waved his arms and yelled, “Hold your fuckin’ fire.”

  All eyes were locked on the wrecked skylight. Carlos drew his 9mm Glock. He expected a DEA tactical team to rappel from the busted out opening. Grande’s street soldiers tensely waited.

  There was a dazzling flash of light, followed by a glowing blue orb about the size of a basketball. This zoomed down like a mini-meteor through the skylight and hit the furniture truck, turning it into a massive fireball.

  Another mini-meteor followed and burst into tiny blue fireballs, which skittered outward in random directions. A chorus of shrieks erupted from the men as the blue fireballs cut through them like shotgun blasts. Others were engulfed in flames and roasted alive. Some of the human torches ran blindly, and others rolled on the ground frantically trying to put the flames out.

  Carlos was crouched behind his car, wondering what the fuck was going on. It must be her. The men’s screams of agony made him shudder. Boom! Another van blew up. Carlos pressed the palms of his hands against his ears. This was a massacre.

  The ear shattering explosions ceased. All you could hear was the hypnotic crackling of fire, and the hushed cries of dying men.

  Coughing and gagging, Carlos struggled to his feet and watched clouds of dense smoke literally part as a woman in a hooded cloak strutted his way. Little Black Riding Hood, Carlos thought, as he reached for his smaller automatic, tucked in the small of his back. He barely touched the gun’s handle when the woman vanished. Then reappeared right in front of him. Grabbed his arm and snapped it at the elbow. He cried out and dropped to his knees.

  “How?” he wheezed. How could she move so fast? How could she effortlessly take out an army of deadly street mercenaries and break bones as if they were Popsicle sticks?

  Wondering why he could no longer feel the ground beneath his feet, Carlos realized the woman in black had him aloft by the throat. Fuck, her grip was like a vise. She pulled down the hood, and a Roman gladiator-style helmet covered her face. Carlos was disgusted at his terrified expression in the reflection of the shiny metal. He didn’t want to get any closer to the sharp spikes. It was difficult staring into her eyes, which were intense pools of electric blue.

  “I want you to send a message to your boss,” she said in an ethereal voice. “He’s done for. I’m takin’ down his whole operation.”

  So the rumors were true. Word was all over the street. A bitch with super powers. In the fuckin’ South Bronx of all places.

  She flung Carlos and he bounced off a cement column and landed on the hood of another car. It felt like there were several broken ribs, and though he was in excruciating pain, he had to get moving before the warehouse burned down to the ground with him inside.

  From a rooftop a couple of blocks away, I watched orange flames from the warehouse sensually lap at the night sky. It reminded me of the days when fires in the South Bronx were as common as sunrises.

  I was fighting to control my tremors. I steadied my hand and stared at my arm as the needle of the syringe entered the vein. I pressed the plunger and the effect of the heroin was immediate as a glorious sense of serenity devoured me like a reckless lover and my body submitted.

  I let out a laugh. Some fucking “superhero” I was. A junkie was going to save the city. Yeah, right.

  At the drop-in center of the New Horizons Community Action Agency on 149th Street and Morris Avenue, I chilled in a wheelchair being pushed by my running partner, Pito. He parked me in front of the doorway of the needle exchange program. I got on my feet. The cripple act was a scam that made it easy for Pito and me to panhandle around the ’hood so we could scrounge enough money to feed our heroin addiction. I also liked the fact that I didn’t have to walk if I didn’t feel like it. Pito never complained. Pito never said much of anything.

  “Go upstairs and get yourself somethin’ to eat,” I said over the clamor of obnoxiously loud voices and then snatched a brown paper bag from him. Inside were used syringes.

  My eyes swept across the crowded room with the bright aqua green walls and amber-colored sofas. There was the usual cast of characters lounging in the drop-in center.

  Nodding tecatos-junkies, hyperactive crack heads, flamboyant trannies, faggots, hookers, you name it. I could never say those words out loud, though. New Horizons urged participants to use politically correct descriptions like sex worker, active drug user and transgender. It was a Harm Reduction program. They didn’t tell you not to do drugs; they just made sure you did them safely.

  It was a safe haven for the lost and the forgotten. No matter how screwed up or how crazy you were, at New Horizons you were treated with compassion and genuine respect. Made you feel like a real person.

  You could grab a hot meal, shower, get medical help, counseling, catch a movie, shoot the shit or just find shelter from the brutal winter weather. I never went to any of the city-run social service agencies because they treated me like a freak. The right side of my face was terribly scarred from the time a bitch at a women’s shelter threw acid in my face. I had a blind, milky-white eye, and several teeth were missing. My ample lip was curled in a permanent sneer. Some people called me Two-Face, like that villain in the Batman comic books. Most others called me Dred. It was short for Mildred.

  After I exchanged the syringes, I demanded to see my case manager, Ian Perez. He was half Irish, half Dominican, and I developed a mad crush on him since he started working at New Horizons a year ago. Those luminous green eyes, reddish hair and flawless bronze skin made me want to eat him up.

  We were at his desk in his cramped yet tidy cubicle. Funny that Ian, who was the fastidious and methodical type, worked for an agency that operated as organized chaos.

  “How’s your T-cell count?” Ian asked. On the front of his black T-shirt it read: AA IS FOR QUITTERS.

  I’d been living with HIV/AIDS for nearly seven years. There were the bad days when I could barely stand up. My good days were due to Ian and the medical staff at New Horizons who constantly encouraged me to take my retroviral meds and get regular checkups.

  “They’re pretty good,” I lied. At the rate I was going, I probably had a year or two left until I deteriorated into a human shell connected to a respirator. There’d be no one to mourn me when I finally slipped away and became another dead addict buried in Potter’s Field by a Riker’s Island work detail.

  “You look like you put on a coupla pounds.”

  “Yeah. Tryin’ to eat betta.” I scratched my messy, matted hair, which looked like somebody hacked it off with a knife. My outfit was composed of a torn bubble coat, stained sweatshirt and ratty jeans. “I wanted to ax you, pa’.” My voice was grating. Somebody once described it as a heavy meal record played backwards. “I wanna get out of that SRO. Get an apartment.” Truth was, Pito and I couldn’t go back to the shithole single room occupancy hotel since we owed heroin dealer money. Crazy fucker already threw a dead cat through our window and promised to do a lot worse to us if we didn’t pay up.

  “You sure? Gonna have to talk with your HASA case manager.” HASA was the City of New York’s HIV/AIDS Service Agency. Provided housing and other benefits for people living with the virus.

  “Aw. Come on, pa’,” I said. “That Nigerian bitch. She talks to me like I’m ga’bage. Don’t do a fuckin’ thing to help. Makes me wanna scratch her eyes out.”

  “That’s not gonna get you far.”

  “Makes me feel fuckin’ betta, though.” I sipped sweet coffee from a Styrofoam cup. “Can you talk to her for me?”

  “Sure.”

  “I like that shirt, pa’,” I said and gave him my best flirtatious look. “Like what’s underneath, too.”

  “Behave yourself, Mildred.”

  Ian was one of the few men that didn’t make me feel like a monstrosity. Hell, if he’d met me ten years ago—before the heroin addiction and the HIV, when I was the fiercest bitch in the boogie-down Bronx—he would’ve immediately fallen head over heels.

  I was bursting with an unrelenting desire for Ian. Wanted to hold him close. To know what it was like to feel the brush of his moist lips against mine. If only one time.

  Instead, I had to settle for greasy-haired, near mute Pito. At least it was better than being alone on the cold, unforgiving streets of the boogie down.

  The fat lady in the yellow overcoat was counting money and stuffing it in her purse. As he studied her, even Pito figured it was a dumb thing for her to do while strolling through a housing project late at night. He’d been creeping around for the past hour, freezing his culo off, trying to find a quick and easy victim. Pito didn’t like mugging old ladies. But he had no choice. Dred told him either get some bank to score some manteca-dope, or don’t come back at all.

  Pito noticed there wasn’t anybody else around, so he emerged from behind the scrawny tree and bum-rushed the fat lady and grabbed her purse, but she held on for dear life and screamed a litany of obscenities in Spanish. Pito didn’t want to hurt her, but he knew if he didn’t score, Dred would have his balls.

  Besides, he was starting to fiend for a fix, so there wasn’t much choice.

  Pito shoved the old gorda harder than intended. She tumbled backward and fell. The back of her head slammed against the edge of a wooden bench. The cracking sound made Pito wince. She didn’t move. A crimson halo formed around her head. Pito muttered nonsensically and dashed off with the purse tucked under his arm.

  “I’ve been working on this potion for years,” Titi Felicia said. My aunt was nearing seventy-five but she looked a hell of lot healthier than I did. Barely a wrinkle on that exquisite ebony skin of hers.

  I kicked back at the wobbly Formica table opposite her, scrutinizing a glass filled with glowing blue liquid.

  No way I was drinking that shit.

  “Juss loan me some money, Titi,” I said. I doubted bonehead Pito managed to get his hands on any cash.