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Prologue
California’s governor and legislature are rushing to replace the iconic Golden Gate Bridge, which was destroyed in a battle between police and a superpowered mutant calling himself Knightmare. . . .
—The New York Times
The Port of Los Angeles is still conducting damage assessments following the battle involving several mutant creatures, but early estimates run to the billions of dollars. . . .
—Press Office, Port of Los Angeles
The president has issued a tweet criticizing late-night comedy shows for portraying him as paralyzed in the face of this novel threat. . . .
—Associated Press
Ministry of State Security (MSS)
People’s Republic of China
Electronic Communications Intercept (ECI) #42-8909
The following conversation took place between Deputy Undersecretary of US Homeland Security Peter Stroudwell (PS) and Angela Britten (AB), a senior advisor to the Homeland Security General Counsel, at a restaurant in Washington, D.C.
PS: The president has suggested asking the population to take direct action. His words. Direct action.
AB: What action? Does he want the whole country hiding in shelters indefinitely?
PS: Not that kind of action. He’s calling for a Second Amendment solution.
AB: You’re kidding. He’s suggesting every gun nut in the country go on a mutant-killing spree? Come on, Peter, you must know—
PS: Of course I know! Jesus, Angela, why do you think I’m talking to you? You’re in the counsel’s office, you’re a lawyer, you need to do something to head this off.
AB: Right, because I can somehow stop POTUS. I need a drink.
END OF ECI
Madam Chairman, to be honest, we haven’t got the first goddamned clue how to stop these monsters.
—Secret testimony of FBI director
CHAPTER 1
It Rhymes with Villain
“HEY, FREAK? WHAT are you looking at?”
The drunk tank, the catch-all common room used as a first stop for drunks and druggies, was a large space lined with a wall-mounted steel bench. The floor was bare cement, sloped down to a drain in the center of the room. There was a single window with both bars and thick wire over filthy glass, allowing neither sunlight nor cheer, but a grim, gray reminder that there was an outside world.
The walls of the drunk tank were painted a sickly yellow, the color of baby puke, which went perfectly with the reek of vomit.
There were maybe fifteen adult men in the room, and the barely eighteen-year-old Dillon Poe, and Dillon felt very, very bad. Bad to a degree he had never felt before.
Is this what a hangover is? Oh, my God!
Dillon being Dillon, part of his mind was already looking for the potential humor in the situation. And it wasn’t hard to find. He’d gotten very drunk the night before, after walking into a bar and asking for whiskey like some cowboy in an old movie. Having no choice or will of his own at that moment, the bartender had poured, and Dillon had gagged down the first fiery shot, then another, and . . . and the next thing he knew was right now, waking up with throbbing eyes and aching head and a mouth that tasted like he’d spent the night eating roadkill.
No, not roadkill, that was generic. It was funnier to be specific. Like a dead beaver? Like a dead opossum? Rats were overdone. Like a dead raccoon?
Yeah, dead raccoon. His mouth tasted like he’d spent the night chewing on dead raccoon.
It was an absurd situation: an eighteen-year-old walks into a bar. Like the start of a joke where a priest, a rabbi, and an imam walk into a bar. . . . And, yeah, he admitted wearily, his brain was not quite up for writing jokes.
“I’m nah lookin’ chew,” Dillon managed to say to the belligerent man, a sandpaper tongue thick in a cotton mouth. Dillon sat up, rubbed sleep from his eyes, and instantly vomited on the concrete.
“Hey, asshole!” This from the same man who’d challenged him. He was a big, very hairy white man, though it was hard to comment on his complexion given that he was almost entirely covered in tattoos. Including the tattooed tear at the corner of one eye that testified to a murder committed. Chest hair that included some gray sprigs spouted from a lurid chest tattoo of an American flag where the stars had been replaced by swastikas. “What’s the matter with you, boy?”
