So Far So Fast
Chapter One
1
Friday, May 25th --- Jump City, 9:27 PM
Tim Wayne stared at the truck full of their belongings. A five-day road trip across America hadn't been the fun it had sounded. Actually, it hadn't even really sounded that fun, but he'd managed to fool himself into being optimistic about it.
Five days in the un-air conditioned cab of an 18-wheeler spending at least ten hours each day on the road but never really getting anywhere defied all optimism. Oh, sure, after the first day, he'd still had a little hope, but when they did twelve hours the second day and hadn't left Ohio, he'd realized that this trip was going to suck.
On the third day, as his father proved that he had no conversational skills whatever (because, really, what fifteen year old knows or cares about the crime rates in Saint Louis?) and Tim had read every Dean Koontz book in existence, as well as listened to as many Anne Rivers Siddons novels on audio-book as he could stand, Tim had lost all hope. Forever. About anything.
Watching his older brother go free, riding alongside them on a motorcycle, only rubbed his nose in the fact that he was the one stuck in the truck with their crime-obsessed father.
"Tim!" Dick shouted. "Hey, Tim! Aren't you supposed to be helping?"
Helping. Right.
Tim strode forward and helped Dick to lift the couch. Struggling and swearing, they somehow managed to get down the ramp without killing themselves, and then hauled it up the stairs and into the living room. They threw it in the general direction of down.
"Damn, that thing was heavy," Dick swore. "Why did we cart that thing across America, anyway?"
Tim shrugged. He headed back to the truck.
The truck still had furniture in it. He called to Dick, and they began to move it out. Most of the pieces went in the proper rooms (or near them— but then again, when you're carting around a heavy wooden object, your acceptable proximity to the destination is dependent on how tired you're getting).
He looked at his watch, and wished he hadn't. The sun would start setting soon, and that would suck because their father would want to get all the boxes in before going to bed.
"There's no way we're gonna get this all done tonight," Tim sighed.
Dick only laughed. "That's why we got here on a Friday. We can have the whole weekend to do it."
They looked out at the truck. They looked at each other.
This was going to take the whole damn weekend.
Sunday, May 27 --- Jump City, 11:52 PM
Tim dropped his second-to-last box on the floor in his room. Across the hallway, he heard a corresponding thud as his father set a box down.
This was such a load of crap. In two days, he hadn't met a single person. Not one person had come over to say "hi," or "welcome to Jump City." And Dad was a police officer! He'd transferred over to the JCPD. That was why they'd moved all the way across the country— so he could join the JCPD and make himself feel better by improving their murder solution rate. Cops had their own little community, and nobody from that community had come to visit, either!
This had to be about the unfriendliest little town in America.
Tim slapped his hands together, a habit he'd picked up from his mother, and headed back downstairs. He found his last box and hauled it up to his room.
With that done, he began to unpack. Somehow, they'd managed to get the bed frames and mattresses in before they started fiddling around with the boxes. So now all he had to do was take everything out and find a place for it.
His new room was smaller than his old one, and about a third of his stuff wound up going into a box again.
He could hear his father swearing from his room. Whatever the mistake was, Bruce Wayne obviously thought it was an incredibly stupid one.
"Damnit, I left my standard issue in the glove compartment of the truck and Dick's got my only backup in his motorcycle."
That's odd. Dad hates his gun. . . Why would he care where he left it?
Outside, something connected with something with an incredibly loud CRACK, and then he heard that unique sound of shattering glass.
Both he and his father rushed into the hall and to the window at the same time.
A group of teenagers had surrounded the 18-wheeler. One of the held a baseball bat across his shoulders, while the smallest one had apparently clambered in through the broken windshield and was now rummaging around inside the cab.
The problem was that the smallest one was about a foot shorter than the cab of the truck because the cab's owner had put some monstrous-ass tires on it, and the hood had a curve, making the windshield would have been a bitch to reach.
The kid was agile. More agile than Dick— and Dick, their parents had adopted from a Romany circus. He'd been one of the circus' flyers.
A world class, professional gymnast. By the age of two. And they'd adopted him at the age of six, shortly before Tim's fourth birthday.
"Sons of bitches," Bruce snarled. And then his face turned stock white.
The little twerp had opened the glove compartment and found the gun. He held it up for his friends to see. And then he clambered out of the truck. The group headed toward the house.
"Tim, go get up in the attic. Let me handle this."
"With what? A chair? Dick probably brought your backup in with him."
That was when they heard the pounding of Dick's heading down the stairs from his loft.
"Fath, what's going on?"
Fath. The closest Dick ever came to calling Bruce 'dad'. In all the years Tim had known him, Dick had never come any closer. Not 'father', not 'pops', not 'old man.' It had always been 'Bruce,' or 'Fath.'
"Do you have my backup?" Bruce asked.
Dick pulled the Glock from his back jeans pocket and slid back the safety.
"I'll handle this. You two stay out of it. Go up to the attic."
Below them, the group of teenagers had finally managed to get into the house. They had to be tossing things around and kicking over boxes or something, to make the kind of noise they were making.
But Dick didn't hand Bruce the gun. Instead, he just stared at their father and crossed to the stairwell.
Oh god. Oh god. Tim's heart leapt into his throat. "Dick—"
"—Dick, what are you doing? What do you think you're doing?"
"Taking care of this," Dick replied.
Despite the years he'd known Dick, he'd always been a bit alien. He just didn't react to things the same way anybody else he knew would. It was almost as if he wasn't capable of feeling fear.
And then Dick vanished down the stairs.
2
Monday, May 28 --- Jump City, 12:41 AM
On the living room floor laid two dead men. The police hadn't removed the ski masks. The ski masks would stay on until the autopsies. So far as Tim knew, that wasn't normal police procedure, but it looks like the JCPD did things differently around here.
Tim could sort of see their reasoning— if a culprit had died, then what did his identity immediately matter? Why care until you absolutely had to do so? It wasn't as if you could prosecute him, or send him to jail. He wasn't going anywhere but to an autopsy room and then six feet under in a cheap coffin. His name would go into a case log as a mere side note, and maybe a mention in a newspaper article nobody read.
Both of the men had died in odd ways: Dick had somehow managed to flip onto the bookcase and shoot one through the back of the head, and had then shot another from a low angle, the bullet going upwards. He hadn't died of a wound to the brain. The bullet had somehow grazed through a major artery, and had gone up through the man's Adam's apple. Another bullet had gone through the hollow in the same man's collarbone.
"So, Richard went downstairs, and you didn't know what he was doing until you heard the gunshots, right? You both stayed upstairs?" The police officer's nametag read Slade Wilson. "Why did you stay upstairs?"
"What would have been the point in going downstairs?" Bruce replied. "We wouldn't have been armed. If Dick was going to handle it, then it was better to let him handle it. I know my son. I knew he was competent enough to handle the situation. I didn't think he'd have to actually kill anybody."
Officer Wilson sighed. "Well, this appears to be a cut-and-dried case. What happened to the other three?"
Bruce shook his head. "As soon as I heard the gunshots, I ran downstairs, but the other three were already leaving through the window. I had to wrestle Dick to the floor to keep him from giving pursuit. I didn't get the chance to go after them."
"Well, it's a good thing you didn't. This group is probably the same one that's been plaguing this part of Jump City. They're extremely dangerous. Even a veteran officer couldn't hope to take any of them in unarmed. I'm surprised the one with the gun didn't manage to shoot Richard."
"I'm not. I told you, Dick is a competent young man."
Competent. There was a word to describe Dick. At the moment, though, Dick looked anything but competent. He looked almost. . . Afraid. Sick.
Lost.
There was no way Dick was going to have a good reaction to this. No way.
Monday, May 28 --- 9:34 PM
In the lowest level of Our Lady of Sorrows, the largest local hospital, lay the JCPD's only forensic autopsy center. For such a large city, the police department had a ridiculously small level of funding.
Two corpses lay abandoned on their gurneys, the plastic sheeting pulled over them to keep from disturbing whatever poor intern might mistakenly find his way into the forensic autopsy area.
The plastic covering the smaller of the two rippled. Any observer would have assumed that the motions came from the wind the air conditioning blew in.
But under the opaque plastic sheeting, the corpse twitched and jerked as bones broken in the transportation or inspection reset themselves and incisions knitted back together.
After a few moments, the plastic covering over the larger corpse also began to move. The wounds to the collar and throat of the corpse healed, as well as all the incisions the forensic surgeon had made to inspect the corpse.
The gurney rolled a little as the massive man sat up under the plastic, slid his legs over the side, and stood up.
He paused at the door, waiting for his green-skinned companion to join him as they fled the hospital.
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
—from Man, ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE