CHAPTER
I tossed a bottle into the river and watched it drift across polluted water. I couldn’t see my reflection—nobody had seen anything but brown in the Horton River since the settlers bought this land for pennies, let alone now in the 1980s. But I knew how I looked—like a homeless, raving lunatic wandering Iron City in a costume, begging for change. I’d spent a lifetime lurking in the shadows, and now I could roam down the busy streets and go unnoticed.
The sludge lapped at the concrete pier of Horton Point beneath me, and I wondered what the papers would write after someone fished me out.
THE ROACH RESURFACES IN THE HORTON RIVER AFTER FIVE YEARS.
MISSING VIGILANTE FOUND, WASHED UP WITH TRASH.
Or maybe I would keep floating. The thing might have been dirty as shit, but it had a strong current. My bloated corpse could get dragged for miles, lost in the thick fog until some simple fisherman saw what he thought was driftwood. Man, would he be in for a surprise. Most likely, I’d never be found again, relegated to the action figures on local comic bookstore shelves alongside the far more famous, made-up superheroes. Forgotten.
I think I’d prefer that.
I rolled my wheelchair an inch closer until my legs dangled over the pier’s edge. How far is too far? I'd been asking that question every second of every day for five years now. One last push, and I could finally know for sure.
Some people called me a monster for killing. Some, a hero for who I killed. Not one of them didn’t have it coming, that’s for damn sure.
Now, there was one last life to be taken. What do you think? Should I do it? End this before I’m too old and decrepit to wipe my own ass? More than halfway there already.
All the shipping workers helping to revive my city after its many factories fled overseas had already gone home to their families. An abandoned car factory to my right stood like a rusty temple to some capitalistic god of manufacturing. Its spire, a great iron chimney, was just one of the many across the skyline that had worked so hard to drown the city in an eternally drab haze.
There was a joke that blue skies never shined over Iron City. Jokes are only funny when they’re excruciatingly real.
I sat alone at dusk. My only companion was the breeze, heavy with the familiar, fishy-dead-animal stench of polluted water mixed with roasted peanuts from a food stand around the corner.
Closing my eyes, I pictured the tears running down Laura Garrity’s face. She was the last person I’d ever saved. I imagined the coked-up crotch stain who forced her into an alley lying bloody at my feet, and that rookie cop caught in the right place at the right time putting a bullet in my spine.
My fingers gripped my wheelchair’s worn pushrims so tight my knuckles blanched. I rolled it another quarter of an inch. I was so close to being free… and then I heard it—the familiar squeal of someone in trouble.
“Fuck.”
My eyelids snapped open.
I know, I know. So close, why stop now? But that kind of scream got me salivating like Pavlov’s dog. It was instinct. Visceral.
Another cry rang out, followed by the distinct thud of a body hitting concrete. My chair whipped around before my brain could refuse. My devil of a foster dad always rattled on about how you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Bingo. The asshole was right about one thing.
I raced across Horton Point toward the alley, following the sounds of struggle. The shriveled husks I had for legs bounced as I crossed bumps and potholes. I ran over one of a dozen fliers for Mayor Garrity’s re-election campaign littering my streets, then rounded the corner of an abandoned warehouse on Ferris Avenue so fast I almost tipped.
Two kids were beating up on another. He was no older than fifteen, mixed-race with dark skin, darker freckles, and a mop of curly hair that didn’t quite fit. A pair of thick glasses magnified his dark eyes, and he wore a ratty, bright green Jansport backpack using both straps. He reminded me of the first person I’d ever saved—Steven Dixon—the one kid I was close with back in the foster home where I grew up. Not the way he looked exactly, but the way he cowered like an abused dog.
His bullies had to be seniors in high school, at least. Maybe even legal adults. Probably dropouts. Two future gangsters and wife-beaters from Harborside practicing their trade.
“Just fork it over, Isaac!” the taller of them shouted before kicking their flinching victim in the gut.
“Yeah, Isaac,” snickered the other. “Is it really worth getting your ass kicked again?”
“Leave me alone!” Isaac cried out.
“Or what? You gonna go home and tell your mommy?”
“Maybe I’ll pay her a visit,” the taller one said. “She’s hot for a ni—”
Isaac unleashed a pathetic grunt and charged. One bully grabbed his backpack and yanked it up over his head while the other tripped him. He fell hard, his glasses skidding across the pavement.
“Hey, why don’t you two head on home!” I hollered, my voice gravely from a half-decade bender. The liquor on my breath was so pungent even I could smell it, and my vision was too blurry to even read the graffiti covering the brick walls.
They glanced up at me, and even after all this time, it surprised me when someone regarded me without trepidation. Iron City’s underworld once feared me. I was the Reaper of Iron City. The Haunt of Horton River. The Roach. Fearless vigilante willing to do whatever needed to be done.
Someone stole a purse from an old lady, they lost some fingers.
Someone murdered, they lost their life, too.
Someone took a young woman or a child into a dark room and had their way with them… they lost the part of them they held most dear.
Instead, the two bullies looked like they’d just heard a good joke. They turned away from their groaning victim, nudging each other and sneering like two idiots.
“Go home, gramps,” one said, obviously the leader. Taller, fitter, and wearing a tough-guy tank top under an open, black leather jacket despite the brisk weather, like he was already part of the local chapter of the Iron Riders Bike Club. He probably excelled at sports in school and little else.
“Yeah, this don’t concern you,” laughed his chubby sidekick. He looked like a little Hostess Cupcake ready to get the cream squeezed out of him.
Naturally, I rolled toward them. I knew how I looked. I couldn’t quite remember putting it on before leaving my house, but I wore my old suit made of reinforced leather with a Kevlar weave and some light plating at weak spots like the kidneys. It had too many rips at too many seams to count. The Roach logo on the chest used to instill fear, but it, like me, had seen better days. Faded to a barely legible red splotch.
I must've looked like I’d been struck by a bus on my way home from a comic book convention. Like a joke. I didn’t even have my mask on.
I guess I’d figured when I was fished out of the lake, the ungrateful city I guarded could finally know my face. Not that they deserved it. In fact, the very thought of them knowing churned my stomach. More likely, I’d just drunk too much and forgot the mask.
None of this was well-thought-out. My suit had been locked up for all these years, but some mornings you just wake up, toss back a few bottles of Jack, and it’s clear what needs to be done.
“Back up, old-timer,” the leader said. I’d like to believe I was still middle-aged, but I guess to him I was old as sin.