The First Superhero Books 0-3 Box Set Read online

  The front door to the house burst open and Dad came running in. “What’s going on? Are you alright?” he said, running over to me.

  “Yeah, Dad, we’re fine,” I said. “Richter flew by so fast he shattered the windows.”

  My father ran his fingers through his thick brown hair and then rubbed his deep blue eyes. “This is some B.S.,” he muttered.

  “It’ll be alright, Andy,” Mom said in a sweet voice as she placed her arm around her husband’s waist. Even though she tried to shrug it off, worry still hung heavy on her face.

  Dad sighed again, examining the damage with his tired eyes. “When we moved out here I worried about some punk teenagers messing with us because we were so far out, away from the police. I never thought that punk teenager would have superpowers.”

  That got a chuckle out of me, which in turn caused Mom and Dad to begin laughing too. It was so ridiculous that laughing was the only thing we could do. We began to clean up the windows, still chuckling from the shock that our windows had been blown out by a supervillain.

  The Last Supper

  I finished sending a text to my best friend, Drew, as I walked down the stairs. I ruffled my fingers through my curly brown hair, giving it the messy look that I loved.

  “Going somewhere?” Mom asked, based on the way I was walking with purpose.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I gotta go to the shelter. I’m meeting Drew there, and we’re gonna help out for a few hours.”

  Mom dabbed at the sweat beading on her forehead. “Maybe this summer heat is getting to me, but it sounds like you just said you were going out?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yes, Mom, I am. I’ll be fine. Richter is probably on the other side of the world by now.”

  She pursed her lips and shook her head with disapproval. “Still, I don’t like it. I’d rather you be safe at home.”

  “Yeah, you’re right, this house is Richter-proof. I forgot,” I said as I made my way to the front door. “And this house wouldn’t be so hot if you weren’t so anti-AC!” I said over my shoulder with a teasing smile.

  “Air conditioning costs money!” Mom shot back. “And now there’s a nice breeze, thanks to Richter,” she said, motioning to the broken windows.

  I chuckled and went outside. I began walking down the sidewalk, but as I walked past the broken windows, Mom stopped me once again.

  “Kane,” she said to me from inside. “Just be safe, okay?”

  I nodded. “Don’t worry, Mom, alright?”

  She nodded her head and I walked to my car. I climbed into my mid-00’s four-door sedan and began the fifteen-minute drive to town.

  I PULLED INTO THE PARKING lot of Ebon High School and walked to the gym. The front of the lot was full, which meant I had to park in the back. I had a long, hot walk ahead of me. The weather had been hotter than usual as of late, which had led to lots of theories about the correlation between the heat and Richter. Most of them were stupid, like his hideout was in the Sun, which explained both why nobody was able to find him and that he was somehow heating up the Sun. The others were just as ridiculous. However, I guess it could’ve been true. I mean, no one had tried looking in the Sun, so it could’ve very well been possible. I highly doubted it, though.

  I thought that once I reached the end of my junior year, which had happened just a few weeks ago, I wouldn't have to step foot in my high school until the beginning of my senior year. However, thanks to Richter, my summer plans were drastically altered. The gymnasium of the high school had been turned into a shelter for those who had taken too long to evacuate the cities. The hotel rooms had filled up fast, so shelters like ours were the only option. A couple hundred terrified people crammed into a high school gym made for some interesting experiences, that's for sure. It allowed me to meet a lot of interesting people, however, so even though it kinda smelled and most of the people had bad attitudes, it was fun.

  “Hey, man, you ready to enter the lions’ den?” somebody asked as they came walking up next to me.

  I recognized the voice as soon as I heard it. It was that of my best friend, Drew Polar.

  “Lions’ den?” I asked as I gave him a fist bump. The two of us walked side by side up the sidewalk, the heat of the Indiana summer sun bearing down on us.

  “Yeah,” he said. “You didn't see the group text?”

  I shook my head as I reached into my pocket to pull out my phone. Displayed on the screen were a dozen group texts between Drew and my other best friend, Michael Teller. I skimmed them, but Drew continued talking, filling me in on the details.

  “Yeah, apparently Brian Turner was talking to Macy—”

  My blood immediately began boiling.

  “And she told him to leave her alone because she had a headache and wanted to go take a nap. He did, but five minutes later came to her spot and tried talking to her again—while she was lying down trying to sleep!”

  “Holy shit!” I exclaimed. “What an asshole!”

  “I know!” Drew agreed.

  We reached the gymnasium doors and pushed them open, blasted by cool air. Our ears were assaulted by the cacophony of voices. It was getting close to dinnertime, so most people were inside, instead of congregating outside as usual. That meant the place also reeked of body odor and was hotter than normal, thanks to all the body heat.

  “So how is this like the lions’ den?” I almost had to shout to be heard. I was nervous about Drew's answer.

  “Well, you know Brian's best friend, Tommy?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, he told Brian about how Macy's been hanging out with Michael and us, and since Brian’s hated you since you were still in your mother’s womb, he naturally assumes that you and Macy have a thing going on.”

  “But we do,” I said as we walked behind the concession stand that now held the night’s dinner instead of the usual candies and hot dogs it did during basketball season.

  “Somebody forgot to tell Macy that,” Drew teased as he put on his apron.

  I put mine on and rolled my eyes. “You said yourself that she told Michael that she thought I was cute.”

  “Yeah, but so does your grandma, and that doesn't mean anything.” Drew grabbed a plate and dumped the night’s meal onto it, which consisted of mac and cheese, green beans, and some chicken nuggets.

  “You know what I mean, though,” I told him as I grabbed a plate of my own and began doing the same. We loaded up our plates and put them on the counter where a hungry refugee would come and grab one.

  The concession stand was filled with people, and Drew and I had to practically elbow our way back to the end of the line to begin filling up another plate.

  “That's not even the issue here, though. The issue is that Brian wants you out of the picture.”

  “Brian's always wanted me out of the picture. I can take him if I need to.”

  Drew laughed and rolled his eyes but didn't say anything more.

  I felt like I could take Brian if I needed to, but you can take almost anyone of any size down with a swift kick to the nuts. If we're talking a “fair” fight, though, Brian would have me whupped. I'm not that scrawny; I try to run at least every other day and hit the weights every once in a while. But I'm definitely not buff by any stretch of the imagination. Brian’s not all that buff, either. He's got maybe fifteen pounds on me, but he also has years of martial arts experience. Like, this dude could break my arms with his eyes.

  I wasn't worried, though. Brian had a lot of talk, but since his father was the deputy sheriff, it was mostly just that. Talk. He'd never actually do anything, unless he wanted his dad to come down on him. And rumor had it that his father showed him no preferential treatment, which seemed like the truth given the black eye Brian showed up to school with every once in a while.

  Once Drew and I were finished making plates of food for others, we made two of our own. We walked out onto the crowded gymnasium floor and scanned the sea of cots for Macy. Her wavy red hair stood out in the crowd, and her bright green
eyes met my own, sending waves of happiness shooting through me. We made our way down the line of cots and sat down on the ground next to hers.

  “Hi,” she said with a charming smile.

  “Hey,” Drew said as he dug into his mac and cheese.

  “Hi,” I said. I fumbled with my fork and dropped it on the ground. Macy giggled, making me even more self-conscious. “I gotta go grab another one. I’ll be right back.”

  I stood up, and so did Macy. “I’ll go with you,” she told me.

  My heart skipped a beat and I nodded my head. “Alright, cool.” Really? ‘Alright, cool’ is the best you could come up with? I thought. When we were in a group, I was relatively normal around Macy. But on the rare occasion when it was just the two of us, I always did something embarrassing. Even though we were in a room filled with hundreds of people and not technically alone, I could feel my make-a-fool-of-yourself engine revving up.

  “How was your day, Kane?” Macy asked as we wove through the cots.

  “Good, I guess. Oh, shit,” I said, suddenly remembering the day’s earlier events. “I forgot to tell Drew! Richter flew by my house and shattered all my windows.”

  Macy stopped walking, and people around us turned and looked at me.

  “I-uh-I...” I stumbled over my words. I motioned for Macy to follow and kept walking.

  Macy got close enough that I could feel the heat of her breath on my skin. I did my best to ignore it, trying to focus on not doing something foolish. “Are you serious?” she whispered.

  I nodded. “I mean, it doesn’t mean anything. Just that we were in his path. Crazy, huh?”

  Macy scoffed. “Yeah, crazy’s one word for it.”

  I shrugged. “I’m mostly upset that he messed up all of our windows. It’s gonna be a pain putting them back up.”

  Macy placed a hand on my arm and stopped walking. I did as well, my blood pressure going through the roof. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

  I smiled. “Me too.”

  Macy chuckled and so did I.

  Feeling confident, I decided to keep the jokes going. “Hey, I’m perfectly content with only seeing Richter on a television screen.” Shit. That wasn’t a joke at all!

  “I am too,” Macy said.

  We reached the concession stand and I grabbed my fork. We turned around and headed back to the cots, totally unaware of how ironic the conversation Macy and I had just had would be in a few short days.

  Genesis

  I returned home as my father was making his walk back from the barn to the house, having just finished feeding the livestock. He wiped his arms on his muscular body and threw a smile my way.

  “Hey,” I said as I closed my car door and started walking to the house.

  “How was it?” he asked in a teasing voice, and I instantly knew he was talking about my time with Macy in particular.

  My dad was only in his early forties, still young and with his best years ahead of him. He definitely didn’t look like the farming type, that’s for sure. When I was six, we moved from Indianapolis, where Dad had been a lawyer and Mom a teacher, to take over the family farm after my grandfather died. At first Dad was hesitant, but he fell in love with the farming life fast and swore he’d never go back to the city. Still, he looked out of place on a farm. He still carried himself like the corporate lawyer he had been, always making sure his hair was cut and his beard was trimmed.

  “It was good, I guess,” I said.

  Dad chuckled. “You guess?” He shook his head as if to say, Ahhh, teenagers.

  “Yeah.” We walked into the house and began taking off our shoes. “I mean, she’s not going to stay here forever. Eventually, she and her sister will have to move back up to Indy, and I’ll probably never see her again.”

  “Not with that attitude, you won’t,” Dad said with a smile.

  I rolled my eyes and walked through the living room to the stairs. “I’m going upstairs,” I announced as I made my way up. “Goodnight, guys!”

  Mom and Dad echoed their goodnights, and I got ready for the last few hours of sleep I was going to have before my life changed forever.

  MY MOTHER’S SCREAMS woke me from sleep. I jumped out of bed, grabbed a pair of sweatpants, and put them on as I scrambled down the hallway.

  “Shut up!” The yell of a man’s voice I didn’t recognize stopped me in my tracks.

  We were being robbed.

  “Look, we don’t have anything valuable. Our livestock is the only thing of worth. Leave my wife alone, and I’ll take you to them,” my dad said, pleading with the intruders.

  “We don’t want your dumb cows,” a man said. “We want your money, jewelry, anything you got that can make us a pretty dime.”

  I inched closer to the top of the stairwell and peeked down. There was nobody at the bottom, so if I wanted to see what was going on, I’d have to go halfway down the stairs, as that’s where the opening to the first floor began.

  “You aren’t listening to me,” my dad said. “We don’t have anything.”

  “You’re telling me that you haven’t bought this pretty lady”—my mom began whimpering—“a diamond ring? A pearl necklace?” The intruder’s tone was condescending.

  I inched down the stairs one by one, being as quiet as possible.

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m telling you,” Dad answered.

  It wasn’t true at all. My mom had more money than she knew what to do with, and there was a safe hidden in the closet containing over twenty grand in cash. The farm wasn’t bringing in that kind of money; Dad just had plenty left over from his lawyer days, plus Grandpa had left him a lot of money along with the farm.

  But our intruder didn’t know that, and Dad wasn’t going to tell him if he could help it. He was an ex-lawyer; he’d mastered making people do what he wanted.

  I reached the landing halfway down the stairs and peered around the corner. Most of the lights were off, save for the one in the kitchen, which was on the other side of the wide-open living room/den area. There were three intruders in total. One was holding a gun to Mom, another had a knife to Dad’s throat, and the one I assumed was the leader stood between the four of them, facing my father.

  “You got five seconds to tell me where the most valuable thing in this house is, or else I start searching myself.” The intruder whipped out a butterfly knife and walked over to Mom. Her long blonde hair was a mess. She did her best to hold her composure. “Maybe I’ll find something valuable here,” he said as he pressed the knife flat against Mom’s cheek.

  She whimpered, but bit her lip to keep from crying out. Her terror-filled eyes watched the knife blade as it traveled to her neck.

  “Or here,” the leader said with a smile.

  My dad fought against the man holding him back, but the leader pressed the knife deeper into Mom’s skin. I watched in horror as she cried out in pain.

  “Nah-ah-ah,” the leader said, grinning from ear to ear. “Am I getting warmer?” The knife moved down further.

  A hand grabbed my shoulder, and I let out a scream. I looked down, and the toothy grin of a large man looked up at me. I was so distracted by Mom, I hadn’t even noticed a fourth member of the gang sneaking up on me.

  He pulled me down, and I fought against him, kicking and screaming, but my punches did nothing. He was a very large man who laughed at the futility of my struggle.

  “Bingo,” the leader said, pointing his knife at me.

  My dad was going ballistic, but the man restraining him kept his grip, not allowing my dad to escape.

  “Be still or I will shoot your wife!” the leader shouted at Dad.

  Dad must’ve believed him, because he stopped fighting.

  I, on the other hand, did not. I struggled against the grip of my captor, but he wrapped his arms around me, restraining me. I tried kicking him, but it was no use.

  The leader walked over to me and got right up in my face. He was wearing a ski mask, but I could still see his evil eyes, and smell the body odor
emanating from his clothes. His breath, however, smelled of baking soda and mint. A stark contrast from the rest of his body, and a smell I became very familiar with as he leaned in close.

  “Do you want me to hurt your mommy?” he asked in a babyish voice. “Your daddy?”

  I said nothing. I was fuming. Livid. I wanted nothing more than to tear this monster apart. If looks could kill, I would have already killed this dude a thousand times over. My eyes were shooting daggers into his, and I wished they were real.

  “You’re going to tell me where the money is, aren’t you, son?”

  The fact that he’d called me “son” made me want to kill him even more.

  “Don’t do it,” my dad told me.

  I looked at him, confused. Was all this really worth saving a few thousand dollars?

  Police coming, he mouthed.

  Relief washed over me. There was hope. Dad must’ve called them before the intruders got him.

  I turned my eyes back to the leader, confidence radiating from me. “Get the hell out of my house,” I told him.

  The leader let out a bellowing laugh. He leaned back, placing a hand on his chest, laughing as hard as he could. When he leaned back down, however, he brought his knife down deep into my thigh.

  I let out a scream as the pain seared through me. My dad shouted in anger and my mom screamed in fear.

  Anger swelled within me, and that’s when it all began.

  I kicked the leader as hard as I could in the chest. He turned into a rag doll and flew across the room, through the kitchen, and slammed into the kitchen sink, causing pipes to break and water to shoot in the air.

  I turned my torso and threw the man restraining me to the right, and he went flying through the air and slammed into the brick wall, then slumped to the ground.

  The man who had a gun to Mom began to realize what had just happened, and he pointed the gun toward me. Even though he was on the other side of the room, my instinct was to dive at him, so dive I did. I pushed myself off the ground and cleared the length of the room. I reached out and slammed into the henchman before he even knew what was happening. The two of us fell to the ground hard. I pushed myself up, but the man I had tackled stayed down.