Speeding Bullet #4 of 4

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Speeding Bullet:
The Birth of Bulletman
#4: “Man Made Gods”
Written by Don Walsh
Cover by Roy Flinchum

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Offices of Wilson Cassel, attorney-at-law
“What the hell have you done?” James Barr exclaimed as he stared at the scene of carnage. He had just dropped in from the windowsill, eyes wide as he saw the bodies of Detective Carl Doherty and the lawyer Wilson Cassel in front of him.

“I’ve completed my own, small part in bringing forth the new age of gods,” Sandra Janderberry said with a serene look on her face. Short dark hair topped dark skin, soft, large brown eyes looking back at the shocked hero, her nice blouse and skirt stained in the blood of her victims. “Now my beloved can finish the great work.”

“You’re crazy!” Bulletman answered as he stepped forward. Sandra merely stood between the dead bodies, by the blood-soaked desk and pointed the knife at him.

“They say love isn’t rational, so yeah, I guess you might be right at that,” Sandra replied with a giggle and lunged forward with the slim, reddened blade.

Shocked as he was, by the scene and the sudden attack, Bulletman’s hand lashed out, slapping the knife from Sandra’s hand. It spun through the air and tore through the wall while Bulletman’s other hand slapped the side of her head. He held back despite the anger squeezing his chest, and kept his hand open and flat, but there was still more than enough force to make Sandra spin and collapse unconscious to the floor.

“Love isn’t rational?” he muttered to himself as he checked Sandra out, to make sure he hadn’t hurt her more than necessary. Then, crouched where he was, he looked over the office and to her computer. He settled down at it and began to type away, fingers dancing furiously over the keyboard. He gave a grim smile as he saw her computer was connected directly to Wilson Cassel’s.

He continued to fly through files and programs, and then applied his enhanced brainpower and own prodigious skills at getting into the heart of the machine. He continued to type at a tremendous speed until he suddenly stopped and stared at the screen in frustration.

“C’mon! C’mon! Move faster!” he growled as he watched the monitor finally alert him that it had caught up to his commands. Again he sped through, seeking connections, transactions, downloads and uplinks that revealed all of Sandra’s machinations. But again he had to stop short, and his fist crashed into the desk, cracking the wood top. “This is so much easier on television!” His teeth clenched and waited to get the signal to continue, and then again bent to his task.

Money embezzled from the church and funneled into Wilson Cassel’s accounts. Sandra’s efforts to edit and delete crucial information for Cassel’s defense of Anna Obermyer. His eyes grew larger as the information crawled up, information the secretary had assumed been deleted out of existence. Fortunately, she was no more aware of how hard that actually was than the average person seemed to be.

And now private correspondence with…

“Dammit! Doesn’t anything work like it’s supposed to when you put a costume on?” James Barr cried in frustration as again he’d typed too fast for the computer to keep up. He waited, and shook, and finally, the emails appeared.

Jacob Cassel. Wilson had a brother. Sandra’s lover, the one she’d referred to, Jacob Cassel. “Is he the Murder Prophet?” James mused to himself as he compiled the information into a folder and connected to the Internet. “At the least, he can lead me to him. But why? Why?”

He saw the signal for connection and quickly sent the compressed file to his wife, before reaching for the phone.

Office of the District Attorney
Susan Kent Barr looked over the information that Detective Victor Farley had just handed her. He was harried, and anxious, standing at the side of her desk and tugging at the collar of his jacket as she flipped through his summary. She tried to maintain her professional, cool exterior, despite the anger in her. It wasn’t this cop’s fault that James had messed with her office, tried to interfere in her work. It wasn’t fair she take it out on him.

But as she looked up at him after his fourth nervous cough in five minutes. It was growing more difficult to maintain that facade.

“I will admit, Detective,” Susan said after what seemed an eternity to Victor, “what you’ve put together an interesting alternate theory. But…there’s nothing here more solid than circumstantial. Nothing here alone will convince me to call the Governor.” She sighed and leaned back in her chair. “I’m sorry. Really, I am.”

“Don’t you see? If you can say that, then there’s gotta be more out there,” Victor pleaded with her as he leaned in on her desk. “Just give me a little more time. I’m so close, I can feel it.”

Susan turned away and started to give his words serious consideration when his phone rang. “Excuse me, Mrs. Kent.” She nodded understanding and watched him take a few steps back.

“Detective Farley here, wha—“ Victor stopped as the person on the other end cut him off. “Really?” He listened further. “How’s Carl?” he asked and then there was a dread, dark silence that made even Susan look up at the detective, as her skin went icy. She knew the answer to that question from even this far apart.

“I see,” Victor said softly. “No…no, I’m sure you…what? S Barr?” He looked to the District Attorney as he rattled off her private email address. “He says there’s evidence for you there. Why there?”

“Who is that?” Susan asked in a frozen voice. Despite her twisted feelings, she turned to her computer and went to the private email, to find, sure enough, the file from Cassel’s office.

“Bulletman, Mrs. Kent. He’s been helping us on this matter,” Victor admitted. He knew he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Tell her he was working with a masked vigilante, and face her wrath, or lie about it, and face worse when she learned the truth.

“Jim,” she said softly, too softly for Victor to hear clearly as he was speaking to the crime fighter on the other end of the line.

“The only possibility I can think of…might actually fit,” he answered, as he started to think of the connection himself. “There’s a vagrant who has almost a…cult of sorts, calls himself Dirty J. J for Jacob, maybe? Anyway, in Harbordown, he’s got a lot he keeps, where his bums get together a lot. We’ve busted it up a few times but they keep going back.”

He hung up the phone without another word and looked back at Susan, who was staring back at him. “There’s more than enough material in here for me to get the Governor to issue a pardon. I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to use in a court of law to get the real killer. But at least we won’t be killing the innocent woman.”

“I’ve…got to get to Cassel’s office,” Victor said in a stunned, broken voice. “Bulletman…he was too late to…stop things…” He trailed off.

Susan looked at him and pursed her lips. She reached for the phone and told Victor, “Go. Get over there. I’ll cover the Obermyer deal. I’m sorry. I’m very sorry, Victor. Carl was a good guy. And I am sorry this…Bulletman? Bulletman didn’t get there in time.”

Victor nodded, struck dumb by the realization that he’d lost his partner, and stumbled out of the door. Susan stared after him and shook her head, also left speechless by the only possibility facing her. In her head, it resounded like a gong.

Jim has got to be Bulletman.

A broken-down lot in Harbordown
The body of Martin Obermyer hung from the rough wooden fence, arms outstretched, bound against the flat planks by rusted metal links. Across his chest were carved bloody symbols and signs. The blood had long since ceased to so much as ooze from his pale white body, and had crusted into place. He’d become emaciated-looking, drawn and desiccated and hung heavily in the bonds.

“Now, oh God of Murder, oh our Nihilist, come to us, be our god, bring our emptiness to all the people!” the Murder Prophet intoned, kneeling before the gruesome, dead figure. Power surged, dark and primal power, and the Murder Prophet could feel it. For over half a day, it had been building, and now, at last, the power was here, and the time was right and with a gasp from his assembled street people, a finger of the corpse twitched.

As the Murder Prophet started a rhyme of nonsense words (to the ears of the assembled at the least) in a sing-song fashion, the other vagrants stepped back, recoiled a bit in fear as their new god’s head lifted up to stare at them with a dead, steady gaze. With a minimum of effort, he tore himself from his bonds, dropping gracelessly to his feet as the Murder Prophet merely gazed up in adoration. “It has come! The time is here! The gods of the modern day now walk the world! You will be the first, oh Nihilist! And this world will know to fear the faithful again!”

Without a pause, with no visible sign he recognized or acknowledged the Prophet’s words, the chalk-white body of Martin Obermyer gazed at the bum who’d started to hide in the darkness of an alcove, a deep doorway to a battered, decrepit brick building. His hand curled as if around a handle and then there was a straight razor in the ghastly ghoulish grip, a straight razor that slid easily through the neck of the hapless homeless man. This enabled the Nihilist to pull away at the tattered long coat and slide it over his own shoulders.

Just then, a crimson blur plunged down from the skies, and battered into the midsection of the stylized god of murder, sending the corpse hurtling back down the alley and crashing through the heavy wooden fence.

“I will not be late again!” Bulletman swore as he looked over to the Murder Prophet. “I’ve got it all, and you’re going down!”

“You’re already too late, oh Self-Made Man,”[/color] the Prophet said as he stood, calm as could be. “We have done the deed. Found our good and faithful man. Broke down all his walls, ruined his beliefs, left him with only ashes in his mouth. Unjust ashes and the bile of ruination. And as the God of Murder, the Nihilist will bring this foul touch to all those who would fain believe themselves the superior of lost souls.” He gestured to the homeless down the alley, now starting to flee from the impending battle.

“What have you done?” Bulletman asked in disbelief as he landed in front of the Prophet and clutched the top of his tattered, blood-red robes. “How could you do what you did to that poor family, Cassel?”

“Learned the truths, have you?”[/color] Murder Prophet chuckled as Bulletman glanced up when he heard scrabbling and cracking. Nihilist was on his feet and lurching with ungainly speed toward the pair. [/color996600]“I bring the unjust to all because of the very personal nature of my persecution, Bulletman.”[/color] His voice was much angrier than ever now, and lacked the ethereal poetry of earlier. With a sudden twist, he angled away from the hero enough that Nihilist was able to swing his razor down hard and catch Jim’s forearm, blood flowing from the clean slice.

“Gahh!” Bulletman gasped as he clutched his forearm and flew up out of the Nihilist’s reach. He stared back down at Obermyer’s body, now filled with only a black need for death. He dropped down to grab a length of plank and swung it hard into Nihilist, splintering the wood and batting the monster into the brick wall of the building. Quickly Bulletman zipped in to follow up with a powerful axe-handle blow, but he smashed into cold brick, the Nihilist having sunk into the shadows of the wall and now like fluid, reformed near his Prophet.

“What do you think you artificial strength can do against divine murder, Bulletman?” Murder Prophet sneered. “My lord and god is tireless and insatiable for blood. Your strength is great, but you are flesh and blood and will tire!”

Bulletman flew back up into the air and shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. As he listened to Murder Prophet’s words, it all hit him. The purpose of the ritual, the source of the Nihilist’s power and animation, all of it. With a tight line of a smile, he dropped back down directly in front of the god of murder, and with a quick grab, caught the monster’s arm as he attempted another slash of his razor. He stared into those blank pools of deathless black and spoke.

“Anna is going to live,” he said simply. He felt Nihilist start to twitch at those words, and he nodded. “She’s not going to die. We’ve got the proof to the right people. She’s going to go free, Martin. The ritual, all this magic, all this effort…it didn’t get done right. And if you don’t try to kill me now, I can right the last injustice.” He glanced over Nihilist’s shoulder to look at Murder Prophet.

The body of Martin Obermyer staggered back, one, then two steps as Bulletman snatched the straight razor with all of his speed. Quickly he lashed out at Murder Prophet, sinking the sharp edge through the rust-red cloth he wore.

As the dead man staggered one last step and then collapsed face first into the dirty alley ground, Murder Prophet recoiled from the two quick swipes of the blade and then breathed a long, low sigh of relief.

“No justice.”[/color] He grinned and stared at Bulletman. “You did not even succeed in touching me, Self-Made Man.”

“Didn’t intend to touch you,” Bulletman replied as he chucked the razor to the side and stepped back up to Murder Prophet, who was again feeling fear rise in his chest as he found himself unable to step back again. “I just figured out the pattern of tears in your robes. And rewrote them. No teleport. Nope. Now you’re pinned in place.”

“NOOO!”[/color] he screamed as he watched Bulletman give a self-satisfied smile. He glared with fury and looked to his created god, who now lay there, like the dead man he was, another smile greeting him.

“I wager you’ll be here long enough for the cops to catch up to you,” Bulletman said as he tore off some of Murder Prophet’s hood to bind his bleeding arm up, revealing the nearly identical features of the lawyer, Wilson Cassel. Only a year apart, the brothers, so close, and they’d fallen so far apart. The dirty, weathered, angry face of Jacob continued to glare at Bulletman.

“That might be, Bulletman. But I still am a Prophet of Murder. And I see murder in your future. Someone close to you. Someone very close to you. The love of your life, she will die at Sabbac’s hands. You heard that right, Sabbac. And soon. Tonight even, as the cops come to try and battle him. He will crack her bones and laugh while he does it. And wherever your precious police dump me, I’ll laugh too!”

Bulletman stared at Jacob Cassel as he shouted out the prophecy, foam flecking his lips as he practically screamed, bloodshot eyes adding to the look of insane furor. But he couldn’t take the chance. Susan had no business being at the scene of such a situation. But try telling that to Susan.

“That might be what you see,” Bulletman said as he tried to contain his own emotions. “But I won’t let it come to pass.”

“Oh? Why is that?”

“Because I’m Bulletman, and I’m never going to be too late again!”

And with that, he was hurtling up into the night sky, his mission clear in his mind.

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TO BE CONTINUED...
in MIGHTIEST MORTALS #11!

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