Checked Out
An Avengers/MCU pre-Civil War OC genfic

Chapter 18: Gasoline or whatever

Snow hugged Dee and turned around. It felt like there was a thunderstorm on her back. Snow hunched over Dee.

The thunderstorm ended after three or four seconds. Snow turned to look. The camo guys were all reloading.

Dee leaned around Snow and said, "Wow, you guys really messed up." She blasted them with some kind of beam from her hand. They all went flying. They bounced into the SUV, and the SUV rolled over onto its side. Dee's hand beam looked like shaky air. Like the exhaust from a jet engine or something, only narrow and focused. And strong enough to knock the hell out of a big truck.

Snow wondered out loud, "What the fuck?"

The camo guys were moving, but they didn't seem ready to get up yet. They got a little more excited when Dee shot one of them. She shot the next and the next and the next, all in a quick line. Then she put her pistol in its holster right above her butt. She turned back to Snow. Snow was staring at her.

"ICER rounds!" Dee said. She held her hands up a bit. "Just ICER rounds! Stun rounds! Autoregulated dendrotoxin dose to keep them out without, you know, taking anybody out.

Snow thought about what to say. She said, "I know what ICER rounds are."

"Yeah," Dee said. "Your file said you were close with an agent?"

"Yeah," said Snow. "Close." She stared at Dee some more. "You're. SHIELD."

"Yeah," said Dee. Snow lifted into the air. Dee called, "Wait-Snow! Please!" Snow kept going until she couldn't hear Dee anymore.

Snow looked and listened. She heard popcorn, here and there. She didn't see many lights on the road. Police and ambulance lights in a couple places. A lot of windows were lit up in the residential area. The wreck of the grocery store was lit up by portable floodlights. There were a lot of cars on the streets around it. Snow didn't see much movement there, though. Wet Mountain Storage didn't have any cars around it. The sheriff's office was still lit up, but no cars there either. The high school had two cars in the parking lot. They weren't going anywhere, just sitting there with their lights on.

Snow looked at the two pairs of headlights at the high school. All the other headlights she could see were going somewhere. The headlights at the school got closer. It was a pickup truck and a car. They were parked at the edge of the lot nearest to the school itself. The headlights were pointed at two people doing something next to one of the entrances. There was a big barrel next to them. As Snow watched, they opened one of the entrance's double doors.

Snow landed on the sidewalk between the entrance and the lot. Her gigantic, blurry shadow spread across the school. The two people at the entrance turned around. They were camo guys. Well, a camo guy and a camo girl. They held their hands up to shield their eyes. Snow walked towards them.

"You shouldn't be here," said the camo girl.

"Get out of here, kid," said the camo guy. Snow didn't say anything. She kept walking.

"Warned, you, dumbass," said the camo girl. She drew a pistol out of the holster on her hip. She shot Snow in the chest. Snow walked up and tried to slap the gun. She accidentally slapped camo girl's hand. Camo girl screamed. Camo guy shot Snow in the side of her cheek. Snow grabbed his pistol and squeezed it. It shattered to pieces with a really loud bang.

"Ah fuck ah fuck!" yelled camo guy. He turned and started to run. Snow flew up and grabbed his arm before he could go very far. Camo girl was grunting. She'd gotten her pistol into her other hand. She shot Snow in the stomach a few times. She was holding her right arm up to her chest. Her wrist was flopped to the side.

"Stop shooting me, idiot," Snow said. Camo girl shot her in the throat. The top of her gun went back and stayed back. Snow dragged camo guy over. She grabbed camo girl by the collar of her shirt. Camo girl grunted some more and hit Snow's arm with the empty pistol. Snow said, "Really?"

Camo girl said, "Earth is for humans!" and spat in Snow's face.

Snow said, "Aw, gross!" She let camo girl go and wiped her face. "What is wrong with you?" When she looked up, the girl was trying to reload the pistol with her good hand. She had the pistol clamped against her ribs with her other arm. Snow grabbed her good wrist and said, "I swear to God I'll break this one too." Camo girl dropped the pistol.

Snow said, "Come here," and walked over to the barrel they'd been setting up. It was a big metal barrel, with old blue paint. There was a big plug in lid. The barrel smelled like gasoline. There was a tablet on top of the barrel.

Camo guy and camo girl were being quiet. Camo guy looked pale. Camo girl looked like she was thinking about spitting at Snow again. Snow didn't know what to do with them. She thought about interrogating them. She was pretty sure they wouldn't tell her anything. They might try to erase the tablet, if Snow tried to make them show her how to use it. She thought about killing them. She remembered the dispatch lady. She thought about the way her whole head had jiggled when a bullet went into it. She thought about how the dispatch lady had kept so calm. How getting shot hadn't even mussed her makeup. How she'd been bleeding and dying, and how her only thought was to get a gun and fight back. Snow looked at camo guy and camo girl and thought about how their faces would look when she squeezed their necks.

Snow said, "Take off your boots." She let go of them. Camo guy dropped to the ground. Camo girl thought about running. Snow stared at her. Camo girl sat down on the ground and started untying her laces. Camo guy was still looking up at Snow. "Go on," Snow said. "Boots. Off." He drew his legs up and started untying his laces.

Camo girl got her boots off first. She stayed sitting, with her broken arm cradled in her lap. When camo guy got his boots off, Snow picked one of them up. She ripped it in half. The leather made a sound like tearing paper, only lower and louder. She picked up his other boot and ripped that one in half. She picked up one of camo girl's boots and ripped it in half. The rubber sole parted with a loud pop. She picked up camo girl's other boot and ripped it in half, too. She dropped the pieces on the little pile of torn boots she'd built between them.

"Go away," Snow said.

Camo girl said, "What?"

Snow said, "Go away," again. "Turn yourselves in, if you're smart. Or don't. Keep fighting, with no shoes and no guns. Die like your friends at the sheriff's office." Snow thought about killing them again. She thought about stepping on their faces, one at a time.

Camo girl got up and started running. When she got to the parking lot, her steps got shorter, but she kept running. Camo guy watched her for a second. Then he got up and ran after her.

Snow picked up the tablet from the barrel. It didn't have a screenlock. The app filling the screen had a street map, done in green lines on a black screen. There were red circles in some places. Snow recognized the map. She'd seen it from above. It was Westcliffe and Silver Cliff. There was a red circle at the school. Snow tapped it. It popped up a dialogue box. The box said, |Enter arming code|.

Snow said, "Oh shit!" and tapped |cancel|. She wondered what the hell to do. The app the tablet was running could probably run on almost any tablet or phone. Anybody who had the app and knew the right code could arm this barrel, or any of the others on the map. Snow thought about the explosion she'd seen near the helicarrier. How the fire had stuck to everything. The whistling sounds that came from the guy's throat. The smell of cooked meat.

Snow wrapped her arms around the barrel and tried to pick it up. It was too big to get a good grip on. She tried squeezing it to get a better hold, but the metal started to deform. She didn't know how firmly the cap was in place. She could picture squeezing too hard, the cap popping out, gasoline or whatever hosing all over the place.

Finally she tipped the barrel forward, got her toes underneath it, and leaned back. She could lift it easily, supporting it with the whole length of her legs and torso. She pushed herself carefully into the air. It was difficult Not physically, but mentally. She'd always flown around Superman-style. Now she was trying to fly almost feet-first, on her back. It was almost like trying to jog backwards. She could feel parts of herself where the lift seemed to be centered. One was high in her chest. She could feel it holding her up. She had two more, one in each foot. She normally had to kind of push with her feet, to move. Now she had to do it backwards. Pulling with her feet, sorta.

She got up about twice as high as the treeline and looked around. She twisted a little over ninety degrees, then started moving. Silver Cliff and Westcliffe passed beneath her. She wasn't sure where the border was.

The wreck of the Westcliffe Super Market was a mix of deep shadow and blinding light. All of the streetlight poles were pointing in crazy directions. None of them were on. Around the edge, there were pole-mounted floodlights. They were powered by noisy gas generators. The area smelled sort of like a dead refrigerator. Despite all the lights and cars and trucks, there wasn't anybody around. Snow guessed they had all found more important things to do.

The sinkhole crater had broken up most of the parking lot directly in front of the store. It had pulled the store itself partway down. But the part of the pad next to the store, to the left, was mostly in one piece. Snow landed carefully and levered the barrel off her feet. She looked around. If it went off, there wasn't anything to burn. And if it spilled, most of it would stay on the cement. Snow wasn't sure how bad it would be if barrels of gasoline or whatever soaked into the earth. She was pretty positive it wouldn't be a good thing.

Snow picked up the tablet. The school circle was now the Lowes circle. There was a circle next to the sheriff's office. There was one that she thought was by the Silver Cliff Town Hall. There were two in the middle of Sheriff Mills's neighborhood, about five blocks apart. There was also a cluster of three or four circles, all together. The cluster was a bit west of Sheriff Mills's neighborhood.

Snow thought about it. The barrels weren't hard to move, but they took time. She couldn't move more than one or two at a time. It would take two or three trips to get rid of the cluster. Until then, if the barrels went off, the destruction around the cluster would probably be about the same no matter how many barrels were there.

She pushed herself into the air and headed towards Sheriff Mills's neighborhood. She got to the block where the barrel was. She looked around. No camo guys visible. She put two fingers on the tablet screen and spread them. The map zoomed in. She studied it and looked around some more. Then she flew down into somebody's backyard. She could smell gasoline. It got really dark at night, here. In New York, DC, and Seoul, the night was always lit up by the city. This backyard was almost pitch black.

Snow fiddled with the tablet and turned on the flash. She shone it around. She found the barrel next to a big plastic play castle with a pink slide. Snow set the tablet on the barrel. She got her toes under the barrel, tipped back, and flew up into the sky. She dropped it off next to the first one, then went back to Sheriff Mill's neighborhood.

She checked the tablet again. The cluster had moved south and east. One of the circles had been dropped off, a little bit south of town.

The other one was in between two houses. She got lucky, she spotted it without even having to zoom in on the map. One of the houses had a light on the side of it. The barrel was almost directly beneath the light. Snow flew down, put the tablet on the barrel, and got her feet under the barrel. She accidentally scraped the barrel against the house as she flew it away.

Halfway to the parking lot, the tablet beeped.

Snow checked it when she landed. All of the circles were mostly filled in. They were all little pie charts. The empty slice was widening. It looked like a bunch of Pac-Mans opening their mouths. Snow said, "Fuck fuck fuck" under her breath.

The parking lot shrunk, then the sheriff's office grew. Snow landed hard enough that the pavement shattered. She looked around. The barrel was next to the front door. Snow walked up to it, got one foot underneath, and boosted it into the air. She slapped her hand underneath and gripped the bottom rim. She leaned back so the barrel fell against her shoulder. She steadied the barrel with her other hand as she lifted into the air again. The sheriff's office shrunk. Silver Cliff shrunk. About halfway, she started pulling with her feet, the way she'd learned to do carrying one barrel at a time. The southern edge of Silver Cliff grew. She checked the tablet as she arced down. She looked around. There was a gas station down there. Snow aimed for it.

She landed at a run so she wouldn't break the pavement again. The barrel she was carrying joggled, but she held onto it. Snow looked around the gas station parking lot. The gas station was closed. There were some security lights on, so it wasn't pitch black. There were trash cans next to all of the pumps. Snow checked them. The one closest to the road had two trash cans. One of them was a barrel. Snow checked the tablet again. The cluster was moving north again. It was about three blocks east, and a few blocks north. She dropped the tablet on the ground.

Snow did her hoist-and-grab move again, with her other hand. The barrels went bong once or twice while she got them balanced. Holding two of them like this, they completely blocked her view ahead. Snow lifted into the air and flew sort of diagonally. Forward enough that acceleration pushed the barrels against her face, sideways enough that she could see a little bit. She went three blocks east, following the road. Then she turned northeast and flew north. She stayed a bit off to the side of the road. She stayed pretty high up, but low enough to clearly see individual cars. There weren't many cars on the road anymore.

One of the cars that was on the road wasn't a car. It was a big truck with a fenced-in bed. It had some barrels in the back.

Snow landed in the back. The truck jounced hard. Snow tipped her barrels forward and let them clangclangclang into the others. Then the truck shrank. Then the truck grew again. The hood came up and hit her feet.

The windshield exploded, and the hood folded and tore. The engine block dropped to the ground scraped against the street. All the tubes and pans and stuff connected to the engine screamed and twisted and sprang apart. The engine jammed against the undercarriage and skidded. Snow stood on it. The walls of the engine compartment came up to her hips. It was like a wading pool. She kept the truck from tipping over as it swerved and squealed to a stop.

When it stopped, Snow tore her way out of the side of the truck. She accidentally booted a wheel across the street. A camo guy was getting out of the driver's side. Snow kicked the door into him. He bounced off the side of the truck and fell to the ground. Snow picked him up and tossed him into somebody's yard.

The passenger's side door was open. Snow didn't see whoever had been in the passenger's seat. She got down on her hands and knees and crawled under the truck. The truck was leaning catty-corner because of the missing wheel. Snow centered herself as best she could figure. She pushed her back into the truck's undercarriage. She spread her arms to the side to distribute the weight more. Carefully, she got her feet underneath herself. She kept her torso curled forward. She wanted as much of her back against the truck as possible. Snow stood up.

The truck was heavy. Her legs didn't want to straighten. She made them do it anyway. She locked her knees so she could stop and catch her breath. She wasn't really out of breath. Her muscles didn't ache, either. She didn't feel tired, the way being tired usually felt. But she could feel something inside her, that kept her going. She didn't have much of it left.

Snow pushed. She pushed harder. She centered herself in her chest. She focused on her feet. She pushed with everything and got up into the air. It didn't get easier. She kept pushing. Silver Cliff slowly got smaller. Snow didn't waste energy turning. She just shifted something in her feet slightly. She sort of pushed a little less with one foot, and a littler harder with the other. She started drifting west. She drifted faster and faster.

The Lowes parking lot slid under her feet. Snow had kept the same altitude the whole way. She didn't want to lengthen the trip by trying to descend before she got to the parking lot. Now she loosened her chest a little. The parking lot got bigger. She was having trouble thinking straight. She wasn't sure exactly where she'd set down the rest of the barrels.

She was still trying to find them when the truck exploded.

This was a really fun chapter to write. I love trying to figure out what the actual effects of superstrength would be. You always see superstrong guys pulling trees out of the ground and stuff, but to someone who's superstrong (and supertough, which is at the very least a necessary side effect of being superstrong unless it's "tactile telekinesis" or whatever) things that us normies think are solid—like the ground—are almost more like a really thick liquid. If Superman tried to pull a tree out the ground without using his flight, he'd most likely end up driving himself into the ground instead.

That's what I spent the majority of my time writing this chapter thinking about: how to do stuff with superstrength. Like I said, it was a lot of fun.

See you on April 15th! Thanks for reading!