Guide To Ruin
Chapter VI: Reap The Whirlwind
DISCLAIMER: If I wrote Calvin and Hobbes, it wouldn't be half as insightful or funny, and I'd have gotten so many lawsuits we'd be seeing them play out to this day.
…
"What Malefidians fail to understand or choose to ignore is the basic contract implied by demanding obedience. Those who obey are not punished, those who disobey are. In this sort of fashion, there is incentive to avoid punishment via obedience. This is the basic of the basics in getting children, in my case students, to do what I want. 'Obey or be punished.'"
"If you remove the "or" and replace it with an "and", the basic incentive goes away. Even in prisons, compliance is rewarded with non-punishment. If punishment occurs whether or not a person disobeys, they have no obligation to follow the contract."
"Malefidians believe they should be allowed to walk up to any child, theirs or not, and begin beating them and demanding their obedience to whatever whim they have. That they are so inherently deserving of respect as to be authorized to coerce it physically from anyone younger than themselves. This is not the behavior of a "wise and wonderful" person, it's the behavior of a sadistic bully."
"Calvin Halgins' warnings of a society dedicated to the torture and murder of children in the name of pure sadism should be pure victim complex combined with a paranoid imagination. But the Malefidians have put me, his principal, in the sorry state of having to admit that the boy is right- that there really are complete monsters out there who will rape, torture, and kill children for their own sick pleasure."
"I watched, over the course of several months, a mischievous underachiever, brilliant but lazy, go from a lackadaisical youth to a very angry, very bitter young man who unfortunately has some very legitimate grievances against society. It was not pleasant to watch the light slowly dim in his eyes. It was not pleasant to hear how he explained killing, even in self-defense, eats at your soul. It was not pleasant to hear how he couldn't function at school after Highweller's attack, because of the painful memories."
"This brings me to my point, why the idea Malefidians hold dear is a fatal mistake: When Calvin bore witness to Highweller's response to a charity event- attempting to blow up a school and framing the girl responsible for said charity as an accomplice- his response was utter annihilation. There was a town named Highground in Texas, where Highweller's most devoted followers congregated. It is gone now. Highweller is in prison. Those who weren't killed in Calvin's… rampage were arrested. And where Grindstone Camps are concerned, there's at least one dead due to his direct action and God only knows how many more. That's the result of one child being pushed too far."
"If other children follow in Calvin's footsteps, there will be nothing left of Malefidians and their allies but fire and ash."
-Robert Spittle's response to a letter to the Newden Times praising Malefideism.
…
James Malefides felt he could not catch a break.
He had gone to Florida to interrogate the boy who was assaulted for running a lemonade stand, Travis Windgate. It had begun poorly with finding out the boy was using the funds to help pay for his sister's chemotherapy, a cause that no matter how you swung it was sympathetic. Then he had found out the cop he was going to paint as a stern but fair enforcer of the law had prior incidents of violence towards young children and everything went downhill from there.
People had found out he was in the area very quickly, and it was after the first two gunshots hit his car that Malefides decided that his verbal crucifixion of a little boy was best done someplace far away from here. A few days prior, he would have walked into the frothing mob and let death take him, but that was before Goabes had explained that him dying now would mean everything would be for nothing.
He had stopped at a hotel to catch his breath when there was a knock at the door.
Mary Gathwells and Barry Wilkins greeted him with somber expressions.
Mary he knew- who in R.A.W. didn't? The boy he had only heard rumors of. The children he had seen in R.A.W. so far were in agony or being worked to death. This boy didn't appear special- black, with fuzzy hair, and an innocent looking face.
But he knew for a fact many people had innocent looking faces, like someone who might have been a host for a children's show, and then you found out that R.A.W. had recruited them after they had burned someone else's daughter to death because they felt like it. What a child would have to do, have to be in order to be recruited into R.A.W. was perhaps best left a mystery.
Gathwells had told him to sit down, with the same solemnity of someone about to deliver bad news, and Barry stood by the door, hand on an automatic pistol.
Mary was a horrible visage to behold. It was said that in prison her fellow inmates had taken exception to how she had treated students when she had taught, and ripped off her face. It was not far from the truth- her face was a crisscross of scars and healed gouges, one nostril slightly torn wider, a scar across her right eye where someone had tried to blind her.
"Mr. Malefides… we have some bad news, and we felt it best you got it in person rather than over the phone." She began softly, a gentle voice belying her grim visage.
…bad news?
Bad news?
He struggled to keep a neutral expression, keep himself from laughing. He had been reduced to changing his face to start over, slaving for the cult from hell, and within a month he had hated even more than Wellfields had ever been. His daughter wished death and damnation on him, and the only allies he had were the kind of people you would expect to see on America's Most Wanted. All he had left was an organization that considered him expendable and a wife that was a hollow husk of a woman…
"Your wife is pregnant. One month, to be precise."
He didn't need to feign shock, his mouth fell open. "But we… we haven't…"
Barry's lips thinned into a sympathetic grimace. "We know. It… it wasn't you."
Gathwells spoke before he could even form coherent responses to that. "During her time at R.A.W., there were periods where your wife was… unsupervised while we looked to see what duties we could safely assign her. There are several potential candidates for who may be the father, but right now we don't know who. Those involved will be punished, I can assure you."
He knew that the decision to sign on with R.A.W. had caused massive damage to their relationship as Husband and Wife- the bunker they were in was Spartan and utilitarian- but he had remained faithful to her and had expected the same.
And now, it was clear, that same courtesy was not done for him.
Like mother like daughter.
His entire life, he had strove to do good, even when others didn't have the stomach for it. It was he that put forth the idea they should start punishing Faith daily at 13 to ensure she didn't grow up rebellious. That had earned him a traitor of a daughter. It was he that preached that his congregation should beat their children daily, lest they become like the… hypothetical version of his daughter that stole cars and got in satanic orgies. That had earned him a top spot on the FBI's most wanted and the hateful glares of what was left of his congregation. When his daughter's betrayal loomed overhead and he sought to protect his congregation, he had found R.A.W. so they might be safe. That had earned him what amounted to slavery and being forced to redo his face.
Through it all, he had remained loyal to his wife, looking out for her as best he could, happy when they got the promotion not so much for himself, but for her safety…
…and this…
..this was how he was repaid. By his daughter. By his congregation. By the world. By his wife.
By his God.
"Where is she now?" The words were wrung out of him, like a balloon wheezing its last gasps.
Barry frowned. "That's the second problem. We don't know exactly, but we fear she may be trying to contact your daughter."
"Of course." He said out loud, an exasperation of such a dull thud it might be comical, that's all it was, really- if he was watching this on TV it'd be a lovely bit of satire, look at this schmuck, throws away his entire life and he still can't catch a break…
Except it was happening to him.
And the comedy wasn't comedy at all, it was now like he was watching the news, knowing it was real life, and screaming that this was an OUTRAGE, something that had to be corrected no matter what the cost…
In these dark moments, he was supposed to turn to God. But God was not with him- ever since he had begun punishing Faith the feeling of His hand on his shoulder had grown steadily weaker and weaker, and now…
…someone else's hand was on his shoulder.
Telling him he made two mistakes. Not his fault, really, innocent blunders of having too much faith in humans and too little scrutiny, but mistakes that would kill him nonetheless…
…if he did not erase them.
He knew, as he asked Mary Gathwells if he could be supplied a gun, and she nodded knowingly, that this new guidance was The Enemy that he had been warned about as a little boy.
But one of the oldest laws was "The enemy of my enemy is my friend", and God had become his enemy…
One inhalation, one mental Yes, show me how…
And all that was left of Matthew Wellfields died.
Only James Malefides remained.
There were only a few traces of his former life left to sweep up now…
…
"Incidents regarding "warpers" or persons who had the ability to consciously change reality without resorting to involuntary magical invocations or super-tech are rare. Usually all warper incidents boil down to one of three things- subconscious magical influence, experimental nanotech, or illusions/holograms/hallucinogenics that gave the appearance reality was being changed."
"One such rare case was that of Claudius Crashcup, who possessed the ability to create items and intelligent life by merely drawing them on a blueprint, a chalkboard, and in multiple instances, thin air. The hows of this phenomenon are still inconclusive. While some mana burn was observed by Leonardo Crowley, his "assistant", there was not enough to suggest that Crashcup was a bonafide subconscious magical transmutation prodigy."
"Of greater interest was the blithe disregard for the laws of physics, thermodynamics, biology, and time his inventions possessed. In one baffling incident, a trombone produced by Crashcup could not produce any noise whatsoever until he "invented music", by drawing a musical note on a sheet of paper. In another, he somehow produced a live, fully healthy chick that lived to maturity and died of natural causes, all by holding a match to an egg. In perhaps the most disturbing incident, he created a time machine that caused events in a small area to go backwards- Leonardo Crowley required emergency treatment after the incident after trying to acquire a sample of the machine's "core"."
"Crashcup was 'employed' as an inventor and kept in an isolated artificial location to minimize damage and leaks of his phenomenon. His duties were kept mostly to recreating supplies of needed but already invented items, as an attempt to develop a cancer cure failed and left him clinically depressed for the better part of three years."
"Long term study of more sapient beings created by Crashcup- a wife, plumber, horse, and several "townsfolk" revealed a few unusual qualities- the horse was of unusual intelligence, able to understand (though not speak) human speech, for example, feats far beyond the scope of any known homunculi projects."
"Unfortunately, no concrete cause of his abilities could be determined, and he died of natural causes in 1961. The new "warper" incidents, reported by Andrew Derkins, while adhering to different "rules" than that of Crashcup's, bear investigation as to whether or not they are a danger to humanity as a whole…"
-Excerpt from dossier describing the "Halgins Incidents"
…
Calvin regarded the response Spittle had written about him coolly.
Granted, the man had every right to be afraid. In the last year, as those more inclined to scatological terms would be inclined to say, "shit got real".
And in all fairness, what he personally had done in reaction to certain attacks went well beyond the pale of what one could reasonably expect a 13-year old boy to do.
When R.A.W. attacked him the first time, he had left one man crippled and his parents left one dead. The second time, he had killed one and crippled yet another, then he had merrily strolled through a compound and killed whoever was unlucky enough to cross his path, and it really disturbed him, for some reason, that he couldn't correctly recall exactly how many he killed that day…
Then there was the Highweller business and 30 more dead, and God he really, really hoped that murdering someone hell-bent on killing an innocent girl wasn't the same as killing a random person in the big guy's eyes or he was screwed…
They killed innocent people. Of course it's different.
"I did what was necessary." He said aloud.
"You know, every time you say that, it's sounding more and more like you're trying to convince yourself." Hobbes noted, reclining on his bed.
Calvin leaned back in his seat- algebra homework could wait until the headache passed.
"They're calling them martyrs, the people who died in the rape and the kidnapping." Calvin groaned.
"Of course they are." Hobbes responded. "Your kind is the enemy, remember? Every kid, every teen, every single person under 21 or 18 or whatever arbitrary number they have in their mind is an enemy combatant. One man's martyr is another man's terrorist- surely your lessons about 9-11 taught you that. To them, Susie is an aider and abettor of the enemy who does PR work to make the enemy look not so bad. Jason, to them, is a violent psychopath who selfishly put his life ahead of the Concerned Elders' wants. And you are the Osama Bin Laden, the Hitler, the Lord of Darkness and Misery. It's demonization, pure and simple. If they can think that you can do nothing but evil, then justifying killing you becomes easy."
"But we're not demons." Calvin protested. "We don't spend our every waking moment finding ways to ruin lives, they do-"
"How many people have tried to kill you? Now how many of those people are still alive and out of prison? Yes, the kills were justified. Yes, it was in defense of yourself or to save someone else. But every time someone tries to kill you and not only fails, but winds up dead or in prison, it adds to the legends about Calvin Halgins being able to call down lightning on anyone who pisses him off."
"They don't say that-" Calvin blinked, then searched for the words "Calvin" and "lightning"…
Oh God.
There were stories.
That he was an avatar of God or a god. That he was a master of black magic. That he was just so smart he knew there would be a lightning strike and deliberately led Highweller to the roof to kill him.
The lunacy was spreading on both sides- Malefides was convincing his side that every single child was a future mass murdering sociopath in the making that needed to be crushed down so they wouldn't fight back, and his supporters now thought he was either a master genius who could schedule a near-fatal electrocution or simply call down lightning.
He needed to put a stop to this, the gun ran off belief, and he wasn't comfortable with those sort of rumors backing it up or the potential of it to get out of hand…
Why not?
The thought pierced his brain, making him sit up straighter.
The Malefidians weren't pulling any punches.
R.A.W. wanted him dead.
People like Highweller didn't give two shits about whether or not they caused collateral damage, or worse, reveled in it…
Didn't the situation warrant… or even mandate that he not hold back? All things considered, there was a war brewing. Torture had been employed. Deaths of innocents had been tallied. Multiple attacks on civilian and neutral targets.
Susie spoke of final accountings, sometimes. She wasn't a bible thumper, but she firmly believed that each and every person would be made to explain what they had and had not done.
To have the power to stop a tragedy and not use it…
…wasn't that just as bad as creating the tragedy?
…
This was all a mistake, Gregory Wilkins told himself.
A coma-dream. He'd hit his head and would wake up soon.
But every ache from working, every scream he heard, everything about the dreary and God-forsaken halls of the compound he was in told him different.
After they had patched him up when Jason Fox had perforated them, it was made clear that the choices they had were to serve R.A.W. or be retired. There was a dread lingering on that last word, to make it clear without explicitly saying so that it was not simply a dismissal, but something more permanent and potentially far more painful.
So Gregory and Diane Wilkins had accepted their new home and new jobs, their new lives.
Gregory, clad in a uniform too small for him, exhausted from days of labor with too little rest between, trudged between whatever menial jobs they had.
He had sacrificed his job.
Working at the DMV required a very narrow set of skills that did not translate well into those required to advance quickly in R.A.W. Those who had been recruited out of merit had backgrounds in chemistry, psychology, interrogation, torture, combat, and engineering, along with a fierce desire to inflict pain on children. People like Greg, adopted as grunt labor with no deaths or suicides caused to their name, had little to offer besides limit physical labor for cleaning and maintenance.
At his old job, he was upset if there wasn't a pot of coffee ready. Coffee was a distant memory here, a commodity reserved for people more advanced than he. Water and restroom breaks were strictly managed. You learned to either get it all out or pinch it off, to put it crudely.
Already he had seen those who would not- or could not- do the work dragged off, not seen again. It became readily clear that he was not so much a laborer as he was a slave, and his wages were stale, lukewarm meals, ill-fitting clothes, and a cot that sagged and creaked, ready to break if he flopped too hard on it.
He had sacrificed his home.
There was no leisure time, at least not anything comparing to what he knew of leisure. Cigarettes were a thing of the past. TV was prohibited, lest workers be demoralized by what the outside world thought of them. In the rare, rare moments he was not working, eating, bathing or using the toilet, Greg tried to desperately catch up on rest- there were no weekend breaks. Every so often, however, one lucky worker would be chosen to join in on beating whatever child they were using as a "training dummy", mostly kidnapped from third world countries and a few from first world countries. Those who quailed were "dismissed". Those who enjoyed were marked for potential promotion.
The grey-metal and plastic labyrinthine corridors he was allowed to traverse were either cold or sweltering, sterile and foreboding. There were doors people like him were never allowed to enter, hallways he was never to walk or even look down, and all and all the area he lived his life in now was about the total area of a small gymnasium. There was no art, no amenities beyond the absolute necessities, only rules and warnings and painted lines indicating where they were to stand, blaring pages for workers to report. No music. No sunlight. No way of telling what the weather was.
There was talk that the compound was underground and connected to others through the crust of the earth, a massive interconnection of safehouses and compounds that spanned from the United States to China, to Russia, to England and back again. Or maybe it was a single one out in a desert. It didn't matter- grunt workers weren't allowed to know, and the rumor was that even the upper crust didn't know- escorting off the premises was done only by trusted agents and under absolute secrecy.
God, the metal everywhere. Metal under his shoes. Metal walls with exposed pipes. Grey, grey, grey.
Humming was forbidden. Writing for leisure was forbidden. Walking around aimless was forbidden. They were expected to act like machines and treated thusly.
He had sacrificed his life.
Though he had not seen any news programs or even a newspaper, Gregory Wilkins was no fool. If Curtis survived, he had blabbed about his involvement, and all his old friends were now demonizing him even worse than before- they had not agreed with the draconian discipline he had started using on Curtis ever since the inauguration incident, and this no doubt confirmed what they believed- that Greg hit Curtis because he enjoyed it.
Even if he did escape, he would be sought on two sides- the government of the US, and the agents of R.A.W. If by some miracle he did find his son, Curtis would kill him on the spot. There was no two ways about it, trying to execute someone's girlfriend burned bridges.
He had not seen his wife in months.
Was she still alive?
Men and women were separated to minimize the distraction of sexual intercourse, and any homosexual relationships resulted in either separation or death- not because R.A.W. was intolerant of orientation, but because they were machines, and machines had better things to do than bump uglies.
And Barry…
Oh, God. Barry.
There were many, many things now that Gregory did not look forward to explaining to God when he died, but Barry was the magnum opus of his failure.
He had worried, initially, that his youngest son would be used as a training dummy, tortured for research into torture, or simply killed and incinerated.
R.A.W. had done something worse. They had twisted him into one of them-
Or maybe he was always like them, and it was here, among his brethren that Barry could finally drop any pretense of basic humanity…
Very rarely were his own efforts given praise, but more often he was praised by the overseers for what they considered his finest work, Barry, the first Neo-something in nearly a century.
What that meant was that Barry happily and willingly advanced their agenda to spread torture and murder of children, so devoted to sadism and infliction of pain that he had done the impossible, broken the unbreakable barrier of age that separated R.A.W.'s perception of someone as either victim or ally. There was no mercy given to children or teens here, no effort withheld in ensuring their final days were long, painful, and miserable.
He was told his son had made a speech that determined whether he would have lived or died, and that the unanimous decision by a throng of child molesters, child abusers, men and women who had dedicated their lives to that nameless god of destroying children and teens in mind, body and soul…
…they had decided, with cheers and applause, Yes, he is one of us.
He had tried to push it out of his mind, one son is safe, leave it at that, but still the question, the terrible question in the back of his mind remained there, like a jagged splinter that the flesh had healed over, but festered and gouged…
How evil did one have to be to gain their acceptance as a child?
He had asked himself: where, oh where, had he gone so wrong?
And he knew.
It had been the times he had blatantly favored Barry over Curtis, and Barry realized he could get away with anything. It had been the times he had ignored reports from teachers about Barry's behavior. It had been the ice cream and the separation of "Barry is Good, Curtis is Bad", it had been the meeting with the now deceased Harry…
Bit by bit, he realized as he mopped a floor futilely, trying to erase a stain that weeks on weeks of scrubbing had not done one iota to lessen, he had forged an atrocity. A sane parent would had gotten Barry help. Failing that, institutionalization. Heartrending as that might have been, it would have at least prevented him from God only knew what he was doing now, probably recruiting child molesters…
He was religious, once. Now he clung desperately to a new, nihilistic sort of hope, that nothing mattered and that good and evil were just words, and there was no heaven or hell, just a ceasing of existence…
And he could forget and be forgotten in turn.
…
The attack was supposed to be simple, straightforward.
It was four grown men versus one boy, one mother. It was solemnly agreed that escape was an afterthought, a nicety that would not likely be feasible.
Above all else, Calvin Halgins had to die.
Peter Nerricks had suggested the attack be on a road. More bystanders, but less time for anyone with a gun to come to their aid. Less time for them to react.
The hardware they had at their disposal was less than impressive. A shotgun meant for hunting. A few handguns. Several Molotov cocktails. They had considered putting out a request to the other Concerned Elders for assistance in getting better guns or explosives for at least an efficient suicide attack, but it was agreed that this attack needed to be kept silent. There was too much of a risk for outsiders to hear of the plans.
They would have to make do. Pull up along-side the car, open fire, blow out a tire, run them to the side, light them up with a Molotov, keep firing until it was certain they were both dead. It was grimly suggested each man save one round for themselves- it was no secret that Concerned Elders did not fare well in prison.
Peter felt a sort of melancholy as they piled into one SUV, checked weapons. They were a mix of what could be called "society's refuse". Jeffery Cane, a thin, unshaven, unkempt wreck was just recently out of rehab. Mark Butcher, heavyset and muscular, had three failed marriages, all due to his tendency to use his fists rather than his words. Fred, no last name given, alluded to gambling debts he left his family with.
And Peter recalled his own unhappy tale.
He had a wife and a daughter, once. He hadn't meant to become… abusive. But from the first time he had spanked her over a spilled cup of juice, he had felt a surge of power.
So he had watched her like a hawk for mistakes, anything he could use to justify another spanking. Three swats became ten. Then twenty. Hands became paddles, then belts, then whatever was handy. First it was clothed, then he started making her strip to her underwear, then bare skin. When his daughter's life became desperately obeying every letter of every word, he began to make up offenses, anything to feel the surge of power that came when he hit her…
His wife had threatened divorce several times but never followed through, right up until his daughter called him abusive.
He had slapped her, and his world had gone red.
When his vision cleared, his daughter was bloody and screaming, clutching at her left eye… and there was something warm and moist in his fingers…
He hadn't meant to do it.
He told her he didn't mean to do it, as she screamed for her mother.
He told his wife over the phone he hadn't meant to do it, as she brandished a knife and drove off with her daughter to the hospital.
He told his neighbors, appalled and disbelieving, that he hadn't meant to do it.
What happened was that she hadn't understood his need for that power surge, she knew she was killing him by denying him that rush he got, she knew all along and she was planning this to hurt him because she was a demon from hell…
That didn't stop a judge from giving him ten years in prison. Ten long, horrible years of beatings and stony beds and praying that his cellmates would just think him too pathetic to bother killing…
Ten years for one moment of losing control, which was his daughter's fault. There was no justice in the world.
Today, at the age of 53, he was going to try and remedy that.
Calvin's mother took him every Saturday to see a therapist downtown. It was agreed that the return trip would be the ideal time to make the attack. It mattered not one iota to Peter, but he was suspicious that one or two of the others were somehow deluded into thinking they were all going to kill Calvin and come out of this alive.
Let them cling to false hope. Whatever got them moving.
They were all out-of-towners, living in two cheap motel rooms on dwindling funds, and unfamiliar with Newden's roads. Getting familiar enough with the drive had taken a few days, as had covertly running recon the route Mrs. Halgins took.
Finally, one Saturday morning when they were certain they could be planned no better, they drove down the highway to the complex where Calvin saw his therapist, drove into the parking garage, and waited…
Knowing it was the last day he'd be alive made the hours crawl by. If a cop came by, they were done. If Calvin or his mom got suspicious, they were done. They used empty bottles to relieve themselves, enduring the stench as stoically as possible- leaving the car was not a luxury they could afford.
After two agonizingly long hours, Calvin and his mother reappeared.
He had suggested, during their meetings, that the parking garage was the ideal place to make their attack, but that suggestion had been ignored. There was an unspoken but palpable idea of "maybe, just maybe, we can get out of this alive". He had dismissed it as correct for the wrong reasons- leaving the mother and her child in a flaming, tire-shredded metal coffin full of gas would dramatically increase the chances of killing the brat.
They waited a minute, then followed.
It was all or nothing, now.
Every stop light they had to hit meant the Halgins got further away, every one they were stopped near them made his blood pound in his veins.
Then, suddenly, they were on the highway, and it was do or die time.
"Okay," Peter said, taking charge. "Fred, pull up to the left side, everyone else get ready to fire, windows down. Mark, get ready with a Molotov, we'll shoot out a window and you toss it inside."
Fred accelerated, Mark took one of the Molotovs, and Peter cocked his gun…
Then he saw Calvin turn and look behind him, and even from here he saw his mouth open in realization…
"He saw us OPEN FI-"
FWOOM.
And suddenly Mark was screaming and on fire.
It took all of two seconds for Peter to suddenly conclude that perhaps, just perhaps, they shouldn't have had all the Molotov cocktails in one place, namely under Mark's feet, who was now screaming and stamping.
"NO GODDAMMIT MARK GET OUT GET OUT-"
Peter did some more mental arithmetic as the front of the car erupted into inferno, and decided that however devoted he was to killing Calvin, that devotion did not include dying in a fire if at all avoidable.
He tucked his gun into his belt, unbuckled his seatbelt, opened his door and jumped, twisting as he fell-
When the rolling hell of pavement ripping his flesh from his arms and torso stopped, he forced himself to sit up, opened his right eye, undamaged from the fall…
He had prayed, the night before he had signed on, that if he was doing the wrong thing, God would send him a sign.
The massive big rig barreling towards him seemed to make up for its tardiness with the clarity of the answer it provided.
…
When all was said and done, and his mother was calm enough to make a phone call, and he had convinced the poor truck driver not to jump off the overpass, Calvin took stock of his latest handiwork.
Lucky, that no one else plowed into the flaming wreck of a car as it slammed into the concrete barrier and flipped upside down. Lucky, at least, for anyone outside the car. At the very least, the cremation process was halfway done.
The one poor sod who jumped faired a little better. The impact from the big rig's bumper had both decapitated him and crushed his skull.
He was surprised that as fiery as the crash was, the gas tank hadn't gone up-
BOOM.
Ah. There it was.
He picked himself up off the ground and dusted himself off, having gone flat reflexively.
Sirens, both police and fire filled the air as the stench of burning fuel, rubber, and something that smelled like meat…
Oh, good. They would have to do this after he got done with his therapist…
…
ATTACK ON CALVIN HALGINS CALLS MALEFIDEISM INTO QUESTION
"The already controversial book "Get With The Program!" and the following dubbed 'Malefideism' by both critics and followers alike has come under more scrutiny today after what investigators are calling an attack on Calvin Halgins by four self-called "Concerned Elders" went awry, resulting in the deaths of all four and requiring a massive cleanup on the Ohio Turnpike."
"Witnesses claim that the car pulling up next to the vehicle both Calvin Halgins and his mother were riding in suddenly burst into flames, an event attributed to what investigators are claiming were crudely made Molotov cocktails meant to be used in the attack. Multiple firearms were found in the wreckage of the car as well, supporting the claim this was a planned ambush."
"The four deceased, Peter Nerricks, Mark Butcher, Jeffery Cane, and Fred Heki all had various criminal records, including domestic assault, assault and battering of a child under 18, drug trafficking, and credit fraud. A note left at the motel room used by the four attackers read thusly:"
"'Our wisdom has guided us to the fact that Calvin Halgins is a cancer that must be cut out by any means possible, yet the world refuses to see. By the authority granted us by Malefides' law of External Parenting, we will see to it that this menace, long unchecked by the authorities, the media, and his own unfit parents, will finally answer for his many crimes against the sovereign holy authority we, the Concern Elders of America, hold over all children.'"
"How wise and wonderful I am!
How wonderful the world will be,
When everyone can understand
The wisdom that can come from only me!"
"How wise and wonderful we are!
Our perfection is plain to see
We outshine the brightest stars,
We will set the new world free!"
"Earlier attacks by Concerned Elders included a kidnapping attack on hero Jason Fox, the kidnapping and rape of a minor, and a police officer assaulting a boy over a lemonade stand."
-News Report by Channel 21 News
…
It was another emergency meeting of the two Judges, Barry, Derricks and Gathwells, concerning Calvin Halgins, and his infuriating habit of not dying.
Granted, it hadn't been their project, so no one was in danger of losing their head, but still, the thought of having some random maniacs do their work for them would have been a welcome change in the trend of how things were progressing.
"How," Barry asked, exasperation getting the better of him, "is this asshole still alive?"
"You answer that," Landers said, smiling ruefully, "and you'll be a judge."
Well, there was motivation…
"The neoidentified has a point. There is no reasonable explanation for how Calvin Halgins manages to repeatedly escape scenarios that should result, at the very least, in crippling him. In this particular case-" Derricks mused, "the responsible factor seems to be pure and simple idiocy on the part of his attackers. Apparently one of them tried to throw firebombs out of a moving vehicle full of more firebombs."
Really? Barry refrained from asking. Really?
Did these Malefidians look to Saturday morning cartoons for their plans?
Focus. Back to the matter at hand.
"Permission to pose theory." Barry asked.
"Permission… permission granted." Grant was clearly struggling with a headache, gulping down two advil.
"Calvin Halgins is not surviving on pure luck, or skill, or his enemy's incompetence. He has something else, which I theorize to be a metahuman power."
The room went deadly silent.
It was clear that posing the idea that Calvin Halgins, one of R.A.W.'s top targets to eliminate once they had reestablished some stability after the disaster of 2012, was a metahuman was a terrifying idea.
"The exact nature of this hypothetical ability is unknown, though I believe, after referencing our files on current metahumans and supernatural phenomenon, that he is using some means of altering reality."
He waited for Grant or Landers to pronounce him insane and sentence him to a slow death in an acid bath. Instead, Grant, horror-struck, breathed out a single word. "…what?"
"The repelling of an attack operation on his home. The escape from two retrieval agents. The incident at the compound. His ability to get in completely undetected. The sudden disarming of the self-destruct charges. The incidents with Highweller, including one weapons misfire by Moe Caldern suspiciously similar to the compound incidents, escape of a kidnapper when he was bound hand and foot, the defusing of the bombs at the junior high, the inexplicable rapid-travel from Ohio to Texas and the resulting firefight that left multiple armed adults dead, the traces of radioactive materials at the hospital thought to be a hoax nuke, and now a car full of attackers catches on fire, crashes without any collateral damage, and explodes, killing three of the assailants."
Barry paused to let his words sink in. Grant seemed to have a slow sort of dawning horror of what it could mean to have someone like that directly opposed to R.A.W. Landers had gone ashen, and Derricks looked to be struggling for anything to refute his argument. Gathwells…
Gathwells looked to be in some sort of morose state of almost comical acceptance of the bleakness of the situation, not too unlike Wile E. Coyote staring despairingly at the viewer before some aberration of the laws of physics culminated in his injury.
"I propose a solution to this potential dilemma." Barry continued. "I am well aware of my lower position here, but I hope you understand I submit this with humility and after considering the fallout that might come of a failed attempt."
He waited for a full minute. Grant's eyes bored into him. "Proceed."
Barry breathed in. "Highweller had the right idea. Poor execution, but the right idea. As it stands, Newden is a holy ground for those who would rebel against us. Calvin Halgins' home. Susie Derkin's home. The home of Verdant Junior High. The hospital. If we are to have any measure of fear, we must show the world that those who harbor enemies of R.A.W. will be utterly annihilated."
"Ladies, Gentlemen, I propose we nuke Newden off the map."