TG Story - Wilhelmina Scream! Issue #1

The events of that fateful twenty four hours captured the hearts and minds of the British people more so than any other day since the War. When fire fell from the sky, monolithic ships hung among the clouds, radioactive rain dooming the teeming millions to slow and painful deaths, and at the centre of it all, in a halo of crisp clean sunlight, two angels fought. Black bodies, in shadow agains the light, they fought with no consideration for the people below. One a hero, staunch in his conviction, and the other a villain, in the same mindset. Neither could compromise, and after hours of brutal destruction, only one stood. He climbed to his feet, saw the damage he had caused, and then left, tumbling into oblivion. Not stopping in the sky, as he often did, no smile and wave and sunshine. That day he headed for deep space, with no intention of returning.

For most of the population of London, that was the worst day of their lives. The press, at first, had no idea what to refer to the event as. It was only in the ensuing weeks of cleanup that the 19th October 2015 became known as the Maze Hill Massacre, after the apparent location of the beginning of the fight. Everyone lost somebody, but for Carl Cordeira, safe in the Northern suburb of Thamesgreen, he lost everything. While the air became so thick with ash only miles away, he had an entirely different battle to fight. Surrounded by his shell shocked family, in a morning of blitzed activity, he said goodbye to his mother for the last time. Taken by cancer, aged fifty one. The battle above the city was invisible to the Cordeira clan, saying farewell to a strong and inspiring woman, who fought an enemy she could not defeat.

By the end of the day, the hospital was a swarm, and beds were needed sorely. His mother was denied the rest in state she was owed, and packed off to a morgue thirty miles away in the countryside, to wait for the chaos to die down. The death toll was staggering, first in the tens of thousands, before the dead numbered almost half a million. For weeks the city lay desolate. She was spared the mass funeral, but that was no solace for Carl, his father, or his young brother. They had lost her all the same.

The human spirit is an inspiring one, and the pace at which the city was returned to a functioning level was only half a year. The radiation was cleared at the expense of the United Nations, with the donations numbering in the trillions, and coming from every nation on the planet. The displaced were rehoused, the damage was repaired, but a monument remained. One square mile at the centre of the carnage, lingered in its old state. The dangerous energies were removed, but nothing else. Static. A moment in time, not to be forgotten.

Carl’s own monument was the bedroom in the house that he had found her. His parents had regretfully, mournfully, been unable to keep their marriage from falling apart. Thus, his father had moved two boroughs over in order to emphasise his distance from his former wife, Carl had been the only one there. He passed the doorway to her room to discover her struggling to breathe, purple faced and puce, the morning of his first day of University. It was his house, as far as he was concerned, she had left it to him and his brother. Though at just past eight years old, Robin was in no state to be owning anything. The Victorian townhouse they had shared would be theirs at least until both Cordeira’s could decide what to do with it. In the mean time, Carl was the sole occupant of its empty halls, with the whisperings of ghosts in every corner. He hated it there.

He was one of the first to return to the Second Inner Zone. The city had been broken into one Outer, five Inner, and three Core Zones. As far as the government was concerned, the core zones were, for the moment, inaccessible and thoroughly out of bounds. The radiation had not completely dissipated as of this writing, but that didn’t stop the conspiracy theories from reverberating around the world. Just what was the Edmondson Administration hiding behind the twelve feet high walls that surrounded the epicentre? Or indeed, what were they searching for?

Food came first by truck, in aid parcels. Then as the water, gas and electricity were connected once more, the stores started opening up. By Christmas, Thamesgreen was back to normal, missing one in fifteen of its population, Muriel Allaena Cordeira included. Carl even managed to get back into his studies, making the best of a terrible situation. He struggled, he worked hard, and as the weeks went by, he started to achieve.

Throughout his whole ordeal, he was not alone. Though his father had his hands full taking care of the child, Carl did have one he could confide in. Tom Barnes was half a foot shorter than Carl, bookish, with large milk bottle spectacles, a penchant for comic books and a hunger that could only be sated by tuna sandwiches and cheese and onion crisps. Not a popular chap at school, but fiercely loyal, intelligent, and not lacking in direction. An engineering student, to Carl’s Art History, the two complemented each other perfectly. He had taken the attic room in the house in Thamesgreen, and had converted the dank darkness into a combination audio-visual extravaganza/photograph production suite/kitchenette. Carl heard some strange sounds coming from up there at night, but it was far preferable to not hearing anything at all. The house had been too quiet since the death, and he had lost the will to fill it himself.

It had been Tom’s idea to venture out one night in March, six months post the Massacre, to a regeneration party at the border of the Core Zone. A smorgasbord of celebrity and light had been brought to bring life to the lifeless stretch of scorched earth beyond the walls. Tens of thousands were in attendance, a party paid for by those who had suffered most. A way to remember the dead, and to celebrate the living. Carl hadn’t been in the mood for such trivialities, but he hadn’t been in the mood for much for too long. He let himself be persuaded on the understanding that he be guaranteed a good time.

“I can’t promise you that,” Tom laughed, “but I can promise you a change.”

For Tom’s part, he genuinely just wanted to go and check out the festivities, but at the same time, Carl was worrying him. Too long he’d secluded himself, and he seemed to be getting worse, not better. Some fresh air could do him good, and some adventure was exactly what he needed. They spent an hour or so in the dense crowd at the foot of the stage, dancing to whoever came out. It seemed like every musician in the world wanted a shot and entertaining the biggest crowd in history. When Durance Merd took the microphone from Delia Smiles, the two knew it was probably time to be making tracks. This was no longer their music, and no longer their party. They left the festival grounds, sure to take a t shirt and headband each, as well as some more for the road. Carl threatened to call a cab, but Tom had better plans.

“Carl, if you call up a Rideaway, I think I’m going to kill you myself,” Tom warned. “We might be done with the show, but I’m not done with you yet.”

“What’s this mean? You’re kidnapping me?” Carl smiled slightly, uncomfortable at the change of plan.

“No, I mean in a way maybe, but I just want to take my buddy for a drink, somewhere it’s not going to cost me the equivalent of buying a whole house around here.”

They looked around. On one side of the road was a normal line of shops, with the smoke of a century removed in the cleanup operation. On the other was the demilitarised zone. You could almost hear the chill on the air.

“I don’t know, around here I think a drink might be more expensive.”

They peered through one of the plexiglass screens, to the centre of the square, where the monument was mid-construction. It was hallowed ground in a way, Carl took it in. He’d been so far away during the actual fighting that day, he’d barely lived it. Maze Hill had just passed him by. The hill itself had been completely levelled, and the ensuing crater had been filled in, leaving only… nothing.

“So empty…” he said, thinking too of the other stillness in his life. A graveyard in the countryside, where the wind seemed to halt itself just as much as it did there. She was at peace though, even if he wasn’t. He waited for something from Tom, but there was only more silence. Until he heard the struggling.

There was no one next to him, but the sound wasn’t next to him. Not exactly. Instead it was above, as a short, overweight young man continued to attempt to scale an eight foot wall. It took a few more moments of exertion, but soon the erstwhile Barnes was on one side of the window, and Cordeira was on the other.

“Tom! What the hell are you doing? There’s… Radiation!”

Tom wasn’t hearing any of it.

“They’re building the thing over there. I’ve seen them! No radiation suits, no nothing. Just normal workers. Come on, it’ll be fun.”

Carl looked up and down the wall, seeing at least three potential security cameras. Tom realised what he was doing.

“There’s ninety thousand people packed into the streets of London mate, they’ve got worse things to worry about than us.”

Carl scanned the skies for a second too. There’d been no sign of any superhuman activity since the Massacre, but just being there, so close to the centre of it all, his brain was telling him to be wary. Whatever happened there, it was beyond the limits of human imagination. He felt as if there were still wonders in store, lurking just out of sight. As he hopped the fence, he hoped he was wrong.

His friend had already begun the journey across the ashen field, and so Carl had to hop into a jog to keep up. The dust was thick, flattened initially by an industrial vehicle, and then left alone for a good long time. It felt like he might be swallowed up in the dirt. The smell was strange too, and so he began to wonder just what it was the new layer of soil was composed of.

“Where are we going?” he wheezed, unfit, anxious. Tom didn’t turn back.

“Does it matter?”

It didn’t. They were past the threshold really, and were already in a whole heap of trouble.

“Dude, do you see?”

He did. Carl squinted at the construction site in the centre, where the black marble was being assembled. From the outside it looked like a monument under construction, but on closer inspection, it seemed more like an excavation.

“Are they…?”

“Digging?”

The ramp descended at a forty five degree angle. Too steep to descend in the dirt, but they could still slide down without a problem. Getting up was a problem they didn’t consider. Only the fall, and what came after. Carl stood first, uncharacteristically leading the charge, with Tom taking a moment on the floor to gather his bearings. They had dropped into the unknown, hoping to see something out of the ordinary.

They saw something amazing.

“Is this…?” Carl wondered.

“Looks like alien tech…” Tom answered, deciding on the question before Carl could finish it. “I think this is what they were fighting over.”

There were three consoles, tall rectangular blocks, light metallic blue in colour, with a number of red blinking lights on each, and an antenna out the top. Dials shot back and forth in random order, screens blurring static. This was what the government was hiding. They stood root still, necks craning upward to take it all in.

“Was this worth it?” Tom whispered. The top of the ramp was so silent. “I don’t think that’s…”

Carl was stepping forward, not content to simply look, he had to touch too.

“Dude, I’m just thinking…” Tom pleaded a little more fraught. “Maybe you shouldn’t…”

Carl continued, curiosity, and a lack of self preservation. That feeling of already going too far, a little further couldn’t hurt.

“What are you thinking?”

“I agree Tom, was it worth it?”

He didn’t get to hear an answer.

Touching a finger to the obelisk shook it into life. The ground began to shake awfully, rock and dust scattered, as boulders fell from the ceiling. But Carl was kept in place, by some random force.

“Run!” he screeched to his friend, who did not do as he was told. “I can’t move!”

Tom grabbed his friend, who was now hovering a few inches from the ground, and pulled him backward as hard as he was able. This set off more sirens, as whatever was happening ground to a halt. The sirens stopped, and the room returned to silence. Tom fell to the ground, while Carl kept his balance. He faced the machine and smiled.

“Dude, if you were thinking of a change of scenery, then this would…”

A dart shot from an unseen orifice in the machine. It hit Carl straight in the chest, puncturing the skin, muscle, and then the soft innards. His lung deflated as his face contorted in horror. Tom heard the coughing from the ground, starting slow, growing harder and harder, before turning to hysterics. Then one final wheeze, and the sound of his friend collapsing in the last place in the world he should have collapsed.

Tom was frantic, hearing not just the coughing dying away, but the sound of his friend breathing also. He heaved over to Carl’s stillness, and without knowing any form of medical procedure, proceeded to pound on his chest, until the light returned. Thirty seconds went by in the duration though. Carl wheezed, and coughed even harder, shaking and doubling over. He tried to speak, but spat blood instead.

“Come on, we need to get you help.”

Tom forced Carl to the dirt ramp, and the two effectively swam their way against gravity’s current to reach the top. It took five agonising minutes, with a lot worse still to go. Carl continuously threatened to collapse once more, but his friend would not allow that. They had to get somewhere he could be helped. He wasn’t being left behind.

They limped the mile to the wall they climbed over, elevated slightly on that side, but still a daunting six feet of air to ascend. By this point the coughing had worsened to the point where the blood was coming automatically, splattering around Carl’s mouth and shirt, and dripping to the floor.

“Shit, shit, shit. How am I getting you over this?”

Carl was turning bone white, and was struggling to remain standing. When he heard Tom’s voice, he looked upward, and painfully, leaned into a particularly strong cough. The beams of the wall splintered, as the force carried the panel clean across the road. Tom stood shell shocked for a second. That was hands down the most incredible thing he’d ever seen, but couldn’t even enjoy it. He still had a job to do.

“Tom… I can’t feel my legs…” Carl slurred. He wasn’t able to walk on his own any more, teetering onto Tom’s shoulders. The blood was coming even quicker, with the whiteness spreading at an alarming rate. Tom caught a flash of red in his friend’s hair.

“What the hell’s happened to you?” he cried, shoving Carl into an alley while the sirens started to sound.

-

Murcielago Maddox was a rockstar. Crossdresser, drag queen, she didn’t care at all what you called her, because deep down she was always a rockstar. Six foot seven in height, an ebony goddess, long white wig and heels making her even more of a towering presence. She’d been playing the Kit Kat Club when the explosion went off. Most of the regulars scattered, rightly assuming that the commotion was linked to the former Maze Hill. She was different though, ending her act early, apologising to those who remained, and launched off out of the bar, and into the night.

The air hung heavy with dust, and the sirens were abound. She would have continued toward the fulcrum of the smoking square, but she saw the two limping lads rushing away from the scene, and knew that they needed help just as much as anyone else. Being able to run in heels was a skill she’d picked up over many years of poor, but nevertheless, rewarding, decisions, but she needed all the speed she could get. Stashing them beneath a car for safekeeping, she tore down the asphalt even quicker, reaching the two just as they ducked into an alley.

They were both young, about twenty years her junior. One was hurt. Bad. The other sustained some scuffs and bruising, but as he was lacking a punctured lung, didn’t feature too high on her priorities list. He was pushed aside, lowering the other boy down to the ground, and tearing open his shirt.

“Ok honey you’re going to do everything I tell you if you want this one to live,” she instructed in her American twange. Tom fought his surprise, and ducked down to listen. “I’ve never done field surgery in my best gear before, but I have gotten covered it covered in blood. So listen up. I need your hoodie, tear it up into a tourniquet, he’s not getting far if we don’t stop the bleeding.”

Tom took off his shirt, and did his best, ripping the material enough to fashion into a bandage for Carl’s chest.

“Press it down, firm, not hard, you don’t want to splinter the bone.”

A police car passed the top of the alley, but didn’t notice them at all. They were focused on the damage. Tom did his best, holding the thick cotton in place.

“I’m going to need to know what happened, and he needs to go to a hospital.”

Tom considered the eccentrically dressed man before him, as he understood it. An Atlanta drawl, something off the tv, so out of place in this part of London. He might have come out of nowhere, but he clearly wanted to help. Tom knew he could trust him.

“We were…”

He nodded toward the wall.

“And…”

Tom slipped some, and the material squashed into the open wound. Blood seeped through, and Carl yelped in pain. The coughing started up again, and as Maddox leaned over the body, Tom pushed her back as hard as he can. The ensuing explosion only just missed.

“And that.”

“This boy cannot go to a hospital.”

“I figured.”

“Ok, ok, you keep the bleeding down, and try to keep him quiet. I can give him something for the pain, in my purse. You got anywhere we can take him?”

Tom just looked up, confused.

“I’ll take that as a no.

-

The townhouse in Thamesgreen was a surprisingly short drive from the alleyway, with Maddox driving more aggressively than anyone else Tom had seen. Sober to a point, there had been one too many near misses for Tom’s tastes, but he wasn’t in any position to complain. Carl was laying on the back seat, gurgling, warbling, but not coughing. His mouth had been gagged to an extent, and the bleeding had mostly stopped. They had carried him into the living room, cleared the whole table, and placed him down there. Tom was struggling to keep up, but Maddox could definitely keep focus. It was as if she had done this a million times before.

“Is he going to be ok?” Tom asked.

“He’s in pain, but the Oxycontin will slow that down some, don’t ask me why I have that. The puncture is on the outside, so he’s not going to choke, you just need to keep him positioned so blood doesn’t fill in the crack. I don’t like that white creeping up his fingers, it’s on his throat too. What is that?”

Tom didn’t know.

“Well that’s not a right now problem, right now we’re stopping the bleeding. Get me as much petroleum jelly as you can get your hands on.”

Maddox laughed internally seeing the terrified look on the young man’s face. She didn’t think he’d spent much time around drag queens before.  

“Do what I say!”

Tom scurried off, without realising he’d never scurried before. Maddox did her best, administering to Carl, who was slipping in and out of consciousness, a significant loss of blood, coupled with powerful opiates will do that to you.

“I do not like this white stuff one bit.”

She touched the skin, finding it soft and smooth, but not in a positive way. The flesh felt burned, scorched even, without appearing so. Carl’s eyes were rolling in his head, and the temptation remained to take him to a hospital. He might spend the rest of his life being experimented on, but at least it would be a long life. But she’d seen a lot worse, and come out of it relatively unscarred, she knew she could help him where she might have failed others.

He righted himself slightly, coming around for a second, the pain welling up once more. He yelped, but despite Maddox’s flinching, did not cough. She relaxed, restraining him, but his anxiety rose higher, realising where he was, what had happened, and what was going on. His face contorted, his pulse raced and his wheezing breath turned up to eleven.

“Relax kid, or you’re going to pop.”

Her skirt was straining against bending over, the material wasn’t exactly made for field medic work, it was for looking fabulous, not gangrenous. She shifted her bra slightly, making sure she could work unhindered arms free, and then set about making sure Carl wasn’t going into shock. There was some distinct evidence of trauma in the chest cavity, with at least a concussion on the head. Those blasts must have had some recoil, it was a wonder his head didn’t come clean off.

She stroked his face, noticing the spread of the whiteness was only increasing. She didn’t know how to stop it, trying in vain to calm him, but there was nothing anyone could do. The coughing started up again, rising to dangerous levels, until one particularly heavy blast splintered the ceiling into tinder and rubble.

“Come on, you’re going to kill us all!”

Fireworks were firing outside, which wasn’t helping his condition, but were thankfully covering the sounds of his screams, and hopefully some of the booms. But he wasn’t done with the surprises for her that night. Giving emergency medical attention to an explosively superpowered guy with a punctured lung was something, sure, but she hadn’t seen everything.

As the white completely covered his body, reaching the top of his forehead, and all across his chest and body, she knew something else was about to happen. The lines were too neat, connecting up in an unnatural way. As they did, he started to judder and spasm, eyes truly rolling back in his head. This wasn’t a bad reaction to the medication, this was a full on death throe. She tried to touch him, but her hand smouldered and burned just from the contact, she leapt back, crashing her two hundred pounds into an armchair, smashing the back in the process. She remained on the ground for a beat, reeling in pain and scared of what she was about to see next.

Carl’s spasming continued, the sounds coming from within were ghastly. Muscles were reforming, bones snapping, cracking, and then forcing themselves back into place. Maddox stood to see his face completely turn to jelly, a grey, empty slate.

“What the hell? Oh my god what the hell?”

Everything about him was fleeting, musculature, facial features, height, weight. They were all changing rapidly. Reforming. His pants tore in the process, leaving little else but his groin covered. The reaction died down after a while, as the body lay completely still, smoking, and raw. It was like she was staring at a golem, a statue in progress, with nothing specific yet.

“Kid, whatever you’ve done to yourself, I can’t help you.”

The bleeding had stopped at least, with the wound in the chest cavity healing itself in the process. After the storm, came the calm. The formless clay turned hard, cold to the touch, which Maddox was reluctant to sample again. What the hell was the glasses kid doing? He must have heard the commotion. She began to worry as more and more smoke came from the body, rising and discolouring the ceiling, backing into the doorway. She’d seen what the kid’s coughing could do, if he was going to explode, he was going to take out a city block. But just like the throes, the smoking died down, until silence returned, punctuated by the fireworks outside.

A crack in the exterior of the mould, then another, and another, until the whole thing shattered like an egg. Carl was no longer inside, where he had gone, she didn’t know. In his place lay a sleeping girl, about the same age, naked and shivering slightly. Her face was free of the pain that had so covered the boy’s, free of everything. Most striking were the red locks fell about her shoulders and down to her breasts, shrouding her face almost completely. The whiteness remained, only darkening slightly as the moments went on. Such a delicate form, a slight freckling across the nose.

“Honey, you make one hell of a lady, and that’s coming from one hell of a lady.”

She was breathing, and seemed to actually be in good condition, though Maddox would take no part in waking her. She’d seen and done enough for one night. Tom shouldered his way through the door, petroleum jelly in hand, in time to see Carl’s body and, after a pause for effect, curled up on the ground, fainted.

“What did you do?” he slurred whilst dreaming.

“I don’t know! I definitely picked the wrong night to do a shift. Goddam it.”

She made her way to the door, making sure it was locked, before returning to the living room. Despite her innate urge to run, she stayed put. Someone needed to keep a cool head, and there was going to need to be a lot of explanation in the morning, on both sides. Something told her she wasn’t going to like what she was going to hear.

It had been at least an hour since they’d arrived at the house, and ten minutes since the conclusion of the transformation. Judging for travel time, they were safe. If anyone had seen them leaving the scene, at least immediately, then they would have arrived by that point. But the concert must have been enough of a distraction. This was unwanted attention for someone who so craved attention. She did not need the law on her back again. The Atlantic was a big enough gap to travel to avoid chains, where was she going to go next? Moscow? Cape Town? She probably wouldn’t be very well received there.

Still, the excitement of being this close to a real life superhero was an enticing enough excuse to let her boyfriend sleep the night alone. He was getting boring anyway. Murceliago Maddox took a seat and turned the tv on quiet, feeling very out of place in such a fine house in such unfine clothes. But she’d been in worse scrapes before.

Come to think of it, maybe she hadn’t.