Hero

FRIDAY.

It all happened so fast.
It felt like zero to sixty in four point two.
When in actuality it was 32 feet per second.

“If you’re going to win back the heart of your wife, you’re going to have to put yourself out there.” Vinnie said to me as he pulled the truck to a stop a few blocks north of city hall. This was only my first night of do-gooding, and I still wasn’t convinced that this was a good idea.
“What am I supposed to do?”
He sighed as he put two cigarettes between his lips. “You’re supposed to patrol. You’re supposed to look for someone that needs help. And when you find the person that needs help,” He lit them and handed one to me. “You’re supposed to help them.”
“This city is crawling with Metas. There’s no less than thirty would be heroes out here at any given moment ready to make a name for themselves. What if they beat me to it?”
“Are you going to do this or not? Who cares about other people? You’re out here to make an impression am I wrong?”
“No.”
“You’re six-four almost three hundred pounds. If you want the save, who’s going to argue with you? Forget everyone else. Focus on what you’re out there to do and do it. Head over toward those spotlights.” He points toward downtown.
“The West. You want me to go over to the ritziest hotel in town dressed in a tank top and ball cap? I look like I’m about to lift weights.”
“You want recognition?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you go where the action is. You want to be such a huge celebrated hero that your wife will take you back?”
“Of course, but you can’t crash a classy party in red sweatpants and sneakers.”
“That’s better than fruity looking tights if you ask me. Now did you figure out your name?”
“I’ve got it narrowed down. I’m stuck between two of them.”
“Hit me.”
“Ok. The first is The Type O Hero.”
“Perfect. Go with that.” He pushes on my shoulder.
“But the other one is--”
“Don’t worry about it. I like that one. It works.”
“It’s kind of joke with Bernice, see my blood is type O, and when you donate--”
“Ernie listen. You doing this or not?”
“Yeah, I’m doing it. I just wanted to tell you how I--”
“Ernie, the night isn’t getting younger. And I’ll be honest, I have a date.”
“No you don’t.”
“I kid you not, I do.”
“What’s her name?”
He shifted in his seat, looking around; indications to me that he was trying to come up with something, but not necessarily an indication he was lying. “Theresa.”
“Mother Theresa maybe. What’s her name?”
“Alright, ya know Tom Darnell?”
“Tom Darnell. As in our boss.”
“That’s the one.”
“Please tell me what you’re about to say does not in any way involve his wife.”
“I can’t do that Ernie.” He looked out his window.
“What’s the matter with you Vin? I mean, are you insane? Mentally…insane?”
“Anyway, you want to get out now? There’s got to be someone out there that needs rescuing.”
“Yeah, and its going to be you.”

“Yeah, ok. Have fun tonight huh?” He reached across me and flipped open the door. “Come back in one piece.”
“If you’re going to do this, stay off the couch at least? I have to sleep there.”
“Don’t be retarded.” He said firing up the truck. “I’m not bringing her back to my place.”
I slid out of the seat and shut the door. I wrapped my fingers over the window sill so he couldn’t take off right away. “Be careful, ok? Regardless what you think, this isn’t a game.”
He smiled at me, “Is that pep talk for me or you?” He put it in gear and drove away.

I spent an hour patrolling the residential area north of downtown doing only one good deed: scaring off a couple raccoons from someone’s garbage cans. Every so often I’d see the beams of light from downtown bouncing off the clouds and circling one another.
Destiny City’s elite were gathered for some kind of party or event. There were probably plenty of rich and famous types getting together to celebrate how great one of their own is. And you can’t have famous people without paparazzi.
Maybe Vinnie was right; If I was going to do this hero thing, then maybe I was ahead to go where the action was. Even if I saved someone here in this neighborhood chances are I wouldn’t make the paper. Like it or not, for this to be successful, I had to go downtown.
As far as heroes go, the last thing I would consider myself is super. At the most I can only really be considered an ample hero. The mutation virus X-8 didn’t bless me the way it did others. Of course, I could just as easily be dead right now. More people ended up dead than they did changed so I’m grateful to be counted among the latter. And while my leaping skills are fun they aren’t really sufficient for hero work.
I don’t have fire hands or ice breath, or mind control or anything that comes in handy in a fight. All I have in that regard is a powerful ability to take a beating. I spent my college days as a wrestler. I wasn’t the best, but I could hold my own in a fight.
I took a deep breath and let it all out shaking away my nerves. “If you’re going to commit to this, then you need to commit to it.” I told myself, tightening the Velcro on my gloves and turning my ball cap backwards. “I feel like Stallone in Over the Top, but I got this. This is for Bernice.”
It took three steps and two jumps to get me six blocks onto the roof of City Hall with a perfect view of the West two blocks down Grand Avenue. From my perch I could see the four spotlight beacons spinning around and around on either side of the long red carpet leading under the gold canopy and into the lobby. Behind the spotlights on both sides were roped off boxes crammed full of rabid people with flashbulbs snapping their pictures and screaming at people as they exit their limos. I could hear them all the way up here.
As for the people exiting the limos, they no doubt are the pictures of perfection, with designer clothes costing more than I make in 2 years and accessories costing just as much if not more. Destiny City, although a quarantined populous of infected mutants three years ago, is suddenly the hottest spot for all things “in.” It’s become the rich and famous’ most frequented city. Quite a few of them even own ungodly expensive houses and apartments here. While they might have claims here--some of them a few blocks from my house even-- we don’t inhabit the same city. At best I’m lower middle class. It’s how I was raised and probably how I’ll die. These people don’t live how I live, I work construction out in the blazing sun all day. If they do go outside, they have at least one lackey at their heels with an umbrella shielding them from the sun.
“Who am I kidding?” I asked no one in particular. “Even if I managed to save someone from something, they’d run me off, the way I’m dressed.” I took off my hat and ran my fingers through my greasy blonde hair. I turned my back to the circus and put my hat back on, ready to jump back toward Vinnie’s house when behind me I heard someone screaming.
I spun around to see a woman falling down the front edifice of the West while others were yelling down at her from the roof. Without a moment’s hesitation I pivoted back around and pushed off the ledge, flying up through the air toward the hotel.
The wind was rushing past my face while I tried to keep my eye on the woman. As I went rocketing toward the building, I started gauging where we might cross paths and realized I should have planned this out prior to sending myself on a nonstop trajectory that would put me up against the building about three seconds after she already passed.
I didn’t have time to correct my momentum, only to turn in such a fashion that my back would take the main force of the blow to the concrete wall. I did however slam my body against the wall just a half second before she went screaming passed me, head first. In the only split second that I was allowed to react, I reached out and grabbed her by the ankle as we now were both careening toward the ground.
I tried to raise my arm higher to at least pull her up so that the first things to hit the red carpet were my shoes and not her pretty face. Thanks to her need to keep up appearances, she hardly weighed anything, so getting her high enough that I could grab her around the waist took little effort. She was still upside down, and her skimpy glittery skirt was bunching around her waist right at eye level. Despite the circumstances, I still had time to get embarrassed before we ripped through the golden canopy and I came to an immediate halt on the red carpet.
Being used to the fall, I landed perfectly flat on my feet, but the sudden stop and the additional weight caused my knees to buckle a little. I started to fall forward and my grip on the woman slipped loose. I heard her yelp when I bumped her head on the carpet.
As I kept falling forward, I tried to side step so as not to land my foot on her head which caused me to fall awkwardly on my side and roll over on my back.
It wasn’t the loss of my balance or the adrenaline from the event that caused me to become disoriented as I lay there staring up. It was all the flashing as a barrage of photographers jumped the velvet ropes and started documenting every conceivable angle of what just took place.
The shouting and chaos finally started to take shape as most of the paparazzi finished with me and moved on to the woman I saved. I laid there another second trying to clear the flashes that were still lingering in my eyes. I pulled myself up to my elbows seeing if my efforts actually did save her.
As someone helped her to her feet, the chaos and overlapping shouts finally formed one word. “Tiffany!”
She turned around and I saw her face for the first time, still framed underneath all that perfectly styled light brown hair. (She must have some serious chemicals in it to keep it place.) I tried to envision her the way I last saw her on Vinnie’s pullout poster from his monthly subscription to Overdrive Magazine. She wasn’t bent over a car, and I had to imagine her with a wanting look wearing nothing but a mesh bikini and camouflage panties but it was her. Tiffany O’Shea, the crowned princess of Destiny City was in front of me, waving and flaunting for the cameras.
She looked down at me, “Thank you for saving me!”
My whole body started shaking. It wasn’t the adrenaline from the fall, the thrill of the rescue or the disorientation of the photographers that caused me to. It was the mind-blowing realization of the public relations tornado that I literally dropped in the middle of. It was the shock of opening Pandora’s glittery-skirted, airbrushed, Versace-wearing box.
There was a guy under each of my arms helping me to my feet. I stood there petrified.
“What’s your name?” she smiled, holding out her hand.
The first thing that came out of my mouth was, “Oh. Crap.”
If I was looking for the front-page, I had just found it.