Chapter 17
They called Baby a terrorist, a scheming two faced psychopath hell bent on burning the Midtown Police Department from the inside out, and it was all his fault. Hat in hand, Zach dropped his forehead against the foggy window pane of Jack's Video and Electronics Store. Inside the display, various TV screens accosted viewers with the raw uncut footage of Reynolds Power Plant as it burned to the ground.
The flames impressed skeptics and pyromaniacs alike, proving that spewing your guts across the city once before didn't make the second wave any less nauseating. Smoke rose with tornadic proportions into the storm above and electricity streaked up and down the roaring vortex from both sides of the funnel. Lightning jumped from sky, to spire, to perimeter fence, sawing bodies in half with heat and light. It was a hellish plasma ball of metropolitan proportions, but instead of neon gas, it was filled with the smoke of burning flesh.
The rain, combined with the metal ingrained into the soil, turned the property into a giant electric chair, frying anyone who stepped inside. The bodies trapped inside of the fence couldn't escape the horror even in death. The electric current surging through the ground underneath them spontaneously caught their clothes on fire and they burned in small piles like vents in a haunted swamp.
Dirt and grass was not exception to the current. They burned from the bottom up, sending up more smoke signals for help, but there was nothing anybody could do for them. The fire was electrical in nature and wouldn't stop until the power was cut off. Which was a problem considering no one could get to the main series of disconnects without getting electrocuted by the weeds. It was a problem the city faced before, but never thought they'd face again because lightning wasn't supposed to strike the same place twice. Tell that to the arc flashes bouncing between the empty police cruisers and fire trucks. They hopped over various emergency responders who dropped dead the moment they stepped out of their vehicles. Their hero complex the cause of countless deaths. Dozens of wailing sirens and not a voice on the radio.
There was no emergency action plan, no escape procedures, nothing to prepare the city for another catastrophic electrical event because Reynolds Power Plant was supposed to be dead. Yet, in a single ear splitting millisecond it rose from the grave, screaming and clawing for any source of life to sustain its own. For years, it was left unchecked to harvest lightning strike after lightning strike without a single regulator or overflow current protector to slow it down. This much rage was ravenous and the plant showed no signs of slowing down. With a hundred or so storm systems in the bank, Reynolds was ready to put up a fight worthy of the undead flesh eating monster it had become.
The scream of its rebirth shattered windows, busted pipes, and knocked out more than half of the power in the city. Anything still hardwired into the old feed lines originally serviced by the plant suddenly reenergized, blowing every transformer, power line, and electrical box for miles. Street lights, traffic lights and security features alike overloaded and shorted, dousing the streets in unprotected darkness.
Car crashes echoed throughout Midtown, popping at every intersection with the ferocity of a hot bag of popcorn. Down in the bottom right corner of the electronics display, a box set television flashed with new footage of the calamity. A dozen domestic fires had broken out across the city, forcing citizens from their homes. People flooded the streets from the chaos, fleeing, looting and preaching on every street corner because the end times had come.
One field reporter attempted to interview citizens, but whoever wasn't crying because of their injuries, were wailing because of the ones they saw and staring wide eyed at a large chunks of manufactured metal that had punched through their living room wall. A different news channel knew the task of wrangling in the public was impossible so they switched their focus from the living to the dead.
Their cameras turned toward the black plastic body bags that lined the sidewalk a block or so away from the power plant. The stack would have been three deep if the blast radius hadn't incinerated a majority of the bodies. The rest couldn't be touched because of the electric current coursing through their veins. One reporter found a bed of bodies the officials hadn't gotten to yet. Someone had draped white sheets over the corpses, but they failed to cover the nature of the victim's deaths.
Blood soaked through the fabric, some in noticeable blotches and sagging fabric where large chunks of flesh or limbs were missing. Others were patterned in a variety of spots where the victim had been peppered with enough shrapnel to best a paper snowflake. Zach would've owned a tombstone in that graveyard had Pantera not jumped on his back moments before the concussion and served him a helping of asphalt instead of slag and steel. Although, there was nothing she could do about the blood dripping from his ears.
The world still sounded muffled, but Zach's hearing was a small price to pay given that the body count ticked by with the seconds. There weren't enough stretchers to whisk the dead away fast enough before the news crews caught hauntingly graphic images of pale limp hands dangling over the sides of the gurneys and waving their last goodbyes to viewers. Souls with less sentiment pointed their stiff crooked fingers at the camera in one final act of condemnation. Some thrice be damned.
Those victims knew the identity of the one truly responsible for such evil, but dead men tell no tales. Not a single person standing in front of the shanty window display of stolen electronics suspected that a criminal stood amongst them. They didn't care that a stranger smelled like burning metal or looked like he'd just run a marathon with a heart condition. Haggard instability was a rational approach to the rest of the populace's pandemonium in the explosion's aftermath. Nothing short of imminent danger could break the Technicolor glow of the city's biggest failure being broadcast in HD across the region. People crowded around each other, bumping shoulders like a mound of diglett trying to evolve into a dugtrio, constantly popping up and down on their heels for a better look.
Zach glanced over his shoulder and growled, establishing his territory with a vein popping glare. An inch of distance quickly spread between them. The other viewers wouldn't challenge his seat by the window if they could still see the red, blue, and white lights inducing seizures in the background of all seven live broadcasts. Zach turned his attention back to the screen and shuddered from the latest news reel as much as the loss of adrenaline.
The camera angles were different and each news channel played to a different demographic, but they all said the same thing: Officer Annie Cofield of the Midtown Police Department, harbinger of death, mayhem, and destruction, lie at the heart of the investigation into the disaster. They blamed her for everything: the explosion, the power outage, the gaping hole in the brick wall of the nearby grocer, and the rivers of broken glass clinking down the gutters. They had an excuse for everything she allegedly did, and the more outrageous it was, the more viewers they got. Their shocking claims picked up speed at heart stopping rates, all because of a meek 120 pound lover of the law that nobody saw coming. The mad scientist who created a monster.
"It is suspected that the explosion was a revenge plot aimed at the police department for the ill planned drug raid that her father's death several years ago," the newscaster in the tailored yellow shirt on the center screen claimed. "A raid not unlike the one that has now resulted in the deaths of at least nine Midtown Police Officers, five emergency workers, and twenty-seven critical injuries, numbers which continue to climb at unprecedented rates. It is believed that Officer Cofield's intimate knowledge of the department and her ability to tamper with evidence allowed her to evade notice for so long."
Zach wanted to strangle that loud mouthed hypno by her oversized pearls. She had no right to talk about Baby like that. None of them did, yet they continued to paint her in the blackest of colors with their reedy pale well-manicured hands.
"This ripple of chaos will no doubt touch the hearts of every soul in Midtown, especially those still reeling from the scars of the original explosion," the newscaster continued. "The exact cause of the explosion is still unknown, but it is believed that several pokemon were unwillingly involved in the detonation."
Voltorb were a nuisance in any electrical box, especially a power plant. They weren't sacrificial pawns to some maniacal scheme. They also didn't take kindly to rude awakenings and a military grade boot to the face was pretty damn disrespectful. The city's brilliant scheme to charge head first into an electric pokemon hotspot without doing their research was bound to fail catastrophically. What did they think would happen? Those idiots blew themselves up, which automatically meant they deserved a memorial parade. Zach only knew of one hero in this city and they treated her like the villain. They ripped through her professional life with such ferocity that there was nothing but juicy personal tidbits left and the media had an insatiable appetite.
Brow furrowed and eyes intent on the camera, the newscaster couldn't afford to miss a single defaming syllable if she wanted to maintain viewers. "Reports of strange and hostile behavior have come to light regarding Officer Cofield's time at the academy," she explained, "Especially her interest and proficiency in ceremonial firearms training and historical weapons."
Baby wasn't just a gunslinger, she was a bonafide sharp shooter. If she wanted someone dead, she wouldn't go around planting bombs or traps. Zach banged his head against the window as a nauseous wince of guilt bent him in two. Back in the power plant before the explosion, he called Baby a traitor and a liar. He was no better than the rest of the cosmetic coated film stars spewing pestilence into the ears of the region.
"Debate over the Department's ability to screen candidates for service has come under scrutiny, specifically their inability to identify psychological trends in candidates that could lead to potentially violent behavior. Just earlier this week, Officer Cofield was questioned by the Department of Internal Affairs for the reckless endangerment of fellow Officer Michael Guerra, a 10 year veteran of the 112th precinct who is currently filing a lawsuit against her for the incident that sent him to the hospital with critical injuries. An incident which is also thought to be connected to the death of Midtown's beloved Ace Trainer, Luke Quinby, also known as-," a no good warmongering titty trainer.
Zach clenched his teeth instead of the sharp ache that suddenly resurfaced in his knee. That ball sucker was dead long before anybody ever knocked on his door and Baby was the one who saved her pants wetting partner from a mauling. Just what sort of slander was the city's best and brightest spewing now? That no toddler, teen, or tottering old man was safe from her evil clutches? Baby was the only one who ever gave a damn about the real people of this city: the depraved, forlorn, and forgotten. The ones nobody cared about until voting season came around.
Baby's academy photo came up on screen and hovered over the reporter's shoulder. "Cofield was immediately suspended pending the investigation, surrendering both her badge and her weapon days before the explosion took place."
Zach placed his hand on the window above Baby's picture. He didn't know she had been suspended. Was that why she ended up in his alley? Zach never asked why she ran away from home. Now, he'd never get the chance because she was blown up into a thousand little pieces by the metal star shards she loved so much. Then again, if he escaped, she might have too. How else would they know she was there when the plant exploded? Zach pressed both hands against the glass. He needed to get closer.
"Questions are being raised as to whether more stringent measures should have been taken after the incident given Cofield's suspected involvement in the Midtown Murders."
Involvement? Baby solved the damn case. She knew there was a Pantherian involved before anyone else ever suspected it was a pokemon. Zach didn't think the defaming could get any worse until it spread to the whole Cofield family name.
"The seeds of instability can be traced back to a series of domestic incidents in the Cofield family household that led to an abrupt and traumatic split between Annie's mother and father. The subject of discord was none other than the Cofield obsession with the badge. An obsession inherited from her grandfather, Arthur Cornelius Cofield, whose reputation has been questioned throughout his entire career and whose mania no doubt filled the void left by Annie's mother when she walked out on the family years ago. The commissioner is expected to release a statement later today-,"
And say what? That Baby was crazy? A criminal? Zach scratched his nails against the glass. Baby was supposed to be one of their own. The very best of them. How could they betray her like that? She gave up everything for them. He glanced down at a smaller television set near the bottom of the display. Its bright red and white breaking news bar captured the headline nobody else dared while there was still so much scandal taking place. It scrolled by underneath Baby's academy photo screaming: "MIDTOWN MURDERER ARRESTED."
Zach snarled and pounded his fists against the window, startling several onlookers and splitting cracks across the pane. Baby was innocent! He was the one they were after. They were supposed to be talking about him, not her. This was a witch hunt. Pure madness. Zach whirled away from the window, rammed a smaller unsuspecting bystander off of the curb, and stormed out into the darkened street. His canine teeth pierced the tight line of his clenched rage. If he didn't forget about Baby now, he might just explode with the same ferocity as Reynolds. It was the only way he'd survive this insanity. What did he care about what happened to a novice reckless checkered hat anyway? Baby was a thorn in his side since the beginning. She was annoying, persistent, and too god damn cheery for his tastes.
He wasn't obligated to help her. She was alive and that alone should have cleared his conscious. So why wouldn't the voices in his head shut up? Zach clamped his hands over his ears. His fingers scratched the dried blood stains down his neck. Even if he wanted to, he couldn't reveal the truth. He'd be arrested on sight. Every single one of those checkered hats hated him, every single one except the one that mattered most, and she currently held his spot in a jail cell. Baby survived the explosion only to get thrown into the tar pits of the justice system with no weapons to defend herself. A novice like her wouldn't know how to swim in the sticky suffocating waters politicians bathed in. She'd drown in that vile muck because of him.
Zach smacked his hands against the side of his head. He couldn't think like that. Baby was his black marheep as much as the city's. She was the perfect pin cushion for every malady of conscious. It wasn't the first time she offered him his freedom at the expense of her own. No one else would make such a willing sacrifice. Who was he to squander it? Baby would be fine. She was still in her home away from home after all, the police station. All Zach had to do was take advantage of her precious gift and escape, but where would he go? Reynold's was swarming with uniformed personnel. People flooded the streets and stores, buying up all of the bread, laundry detergent, and toilet paper in the grocery store. He could go back to his old alley, but there wasn't anything left there but the smell of blood and brick.
Zach would have to leave Midtown. Maybe even Birkdale itself if he wanted to escape. It wouldn't be easy, but he'd done it before, and this time, he wouldn't be alone. He had Pantera to protect him. Baby would be fine. Three square meals a day, hot showers, and a new fashionable striped uniform, she'd be better off behind bars than in that ratty cupboard she called a home. A life on the inside was much more promising than what awaited her on the outside. Even with all of Baby's speed and endurance, she'd never outpace the lies burning her reputation to the ground. Even if the truth came out, the media wouldn't be swayed from their story unless there was a bigger conspiracy to blast through their microphones. Baby would be infamous before the night was through. Officer Annie Cofield: Extremist. Conniver. Killer. But what did he care?
Zach threw his hands down and thrust them into his pockets. He splashed ahead and the sound of his steps grew softer until they stopped all together. The chatter of the TVs quieted. The screams of discord faded into the background. Then, there was only the sound of the rain in the darkness. A single street light flickered to life along the sidewalk just out of reach of the electronics store. Zach stood frozen in the middle of the street beyond it, paralyzed by the thunderbolt that had struck him.
He looked down at his left pocket and slowly pulled out the spheal bandana hidden inside. It dangled limply in his hand, catching raindrops like crystals. Zach carefully stroked them away. Some of the patterning on the bandana had begun to fade. A few wrinkles were becoming permanent, but despite being a little worn and weary, the bandana diligently fought to keep him warm and dry in the storm. Just like its owner.
Zach closed his eyes and gently hid his face in the bandana. It never failed. Anytime he tried to run, Baby found a way to catch him by the coattails. He didn't understand. Strays weren't supposed to care for anybody but themselves, but that damn poochyena had to go and make him feel special, like he was something worth chasing after. Damn her. Damn her to hell like the devil she was. Zach lowered the bandana from his face. He couldn't leave Baby behind. Not ever again. But how could he help her when she was already banging handcuffs against the bars down at the precinct?
With such a high profile case, the moment the car crashes cleared, those mallet knocking bozos would spirit her away to some asylum where she'd never be seen or heard from again. Baby was too innocent and kind to fight for her own life. Those psychopaths, psychiatrists, and politicians would rip her to shreds. It would be an absolute blood bath. Zach couldn't let that happen.
He pulled the bandana between his hands and started rolling and unrolling it around his knuckles. He wasn't smart enough to scheme, but if he survived this long, he should be able to come up with something, anything, to save her. Zach glanced up in the direction of Reynolds Power Plant. The storm was still pregnant with a double downpour so the clouds hung low over the tips of the tallest skyscrapers. Reynolds may have been a skeleton but her bones rose high into the skyline. They had to if they wanted to harness the power of the gods.
The fires inside the spires didn't rise above the city, but the low hanging clouds still caught their glow. In the right light, they even flickered with the blue and white lights of the emergency vehicles swarming below. Zach rolled his hands a little faster. If every acronym in the alphabet was working the chaos in the street then they wouldn't be at home twiddling their thumbs. A disaster as momentous as this required all boots on the ground, not on top of a desk. Midtown PD couldn't afford a single empty checkered square on the board, especially not for the menial task of babysitting an incapacitated suspect in a locked detention cell.
The cops would never expect Midtown's most wanted to waltz in through the front door. They wouldn't recognize him under such brazen lunacy. Zach rolled the bandana with new zeal. Yes, he'd walk right in, maybe even ask for directions to sell the part. They'd never expect him to attempt a breakout. There'd only be a few guards to man the station, but given the amount of chaos running wild, what few guards remained would be armed to the teeth, quite literally when it came to their partner pokemon. Then, there was the issue of the jail cell itself. If he couldn't find a key, he'd have to find a way to break it down.
Outmanned, outmatched, outclassed, and under equipped, he'd need an army to break through their defenses. Zach stopped rolling the bandana. Or maybe just an army of one. He looked up at the flickering street light nearby. Darkness stalked the edge on the other side. Zach didn't have to see Pantera to know that she was there, watching, waiting. Always waiting. He need only say the command. Zach lowered his hands and turned to face the darkness, eyes as deep as the night.
Swirling clouds of steam rose up from the pavement underneath the narrow umbrella of light. They played with the whiskers of the great black Pantherian as she teased the line of materialization. She positioned herself under the line of light so that it cast sharp angles down her face, hiding her eyes and lower jaw with the shadow of a skull. The summons was answered. She had only one question. It was a whisper, barely discernable from her foot falls, but Zach head it loud and clear inside of his mind. It spoke of one thing and one thing only:
Murder.
Zach pulled down the bill of his hat so that it covered his eyes. Unlike Baby, he wasn't an innocent. He was a criminal by choice. What he did next was also his choice. Just a couple of days ago, he never would've considered it, but that was when he had nothing to lose. Things were different now. He had something worth chasing after. Zach tightly clutched the bandana in his fist. Baby wouldn't approve, but what she didn't know didn't hurt her, especially if she never saw it coming and tonight, the city was as black as sin.
Pantera slowly pulled her lips back in a wide razor tipped smile. "Are we going to play a game?" she asked.
Zach carefully tucked the bandana into his pocket and lifted his head, eyes flashing like a pair of cold silver scythes. "Yes," he said. "And I think you're going to like it."