Wild Cards

“What I advise you to do,” said the lawyer, “is seek legal counsel as soon as possible. I can make some recommendations. The reporters will file their stories and forget about you, hopefully, so long as you keep your head down and don’t start fighting crime or something stupid like that. But even if the government doesn’t come sniffing around, somebody will. Be careful, TT.”

And that was pretty much that for TT’s debut as a superpowered construction worker. Catching the falling I-beams then lowering them to the ground had been easy compared to all the bullshit that followed talking to the union and the construction company and the lawyers and the reporters. But at the end of the day, TT found himself in the mobile locker room with the rest of the crew, like usual.

The trailer was big enough for twelve showers and a bank of lockers, and the crew was big enough that it was always crowded in there come five o’clock. But today, TT noticed, he didn’t have to elbow his way to his locker and wait in line for the shower. The other guys kind of made way for him in a way that wasn’t comfortable at all.

Finally, he said, “C’mon, what the fuck is this? You assholes going to treat me different now? I didn’t ask to get the virus and if any of you motherfuckers had been paying attention in sixth-grade science you’d know it ain’t catching. At least I didn’t grow three more cocks or something.”

Bell, one of the riveters, said, “That’d give you a total of three, then,” and the other guys all laughed and then it was more or less back to normal until TT pulled his phone down from the little shelf at the top of his locker and saw that he had a hundred and nine missed calls and forty voice mails. Most of them from Ma.

TT lived in a room above his mother’s garage, and it would take him about an hour to get home, where she’d be fixing supper for him and for whichever of his sisters and brothers would be coming over tonight. On a Friday night, there would be more of them than usual. Hell, on a Friday night when one of the siblings had been on the local news all afternoon for being a fucking ace all of them might show up. Ma would have to put the extra leaf in the dining room table.

That piss-drunk son-of-a-bitch Father Dobrzycki would probably wander over from the Polonia Hall, too. Better stop for extra wine, then.

He was always one of the first guys to arrive on the site in the morning, which meant his truck was parked at the far end of the row. Parking was tight enough that there was a rule that you took the farthest space available when you arrived. TT had the same We Build Chicago bumper sticker that most of the other trucks and cars did on his F-250, and his wasn’t even the only F-250. So TT figured it was either just a coincidence or because his vehicle was the most secluded from the street that the old man had crawled into the plastic-lined bed of his truck.

TT thought he was just some homeless dude at first sight, but then the old man rolled over and those three gaping wounds were still bleeding on his face from where the tiger man had clawed him. The old man looked different, though. His arms and legs weren’t so heavily muscled. In fact, his coveralls hung off him like they were a couple of sizes too big. He’d actually fucking shrunk since his fight up on the crane.

Somebody yelled at him to have a good weekend and to try and stay out of the papers and TT threw up a hand, waving in response. The old man looked out at him from his hiding space, held up a finger in front of his lips asking TT to keep quiet.

This was a fucked-up situation.

TT walked over to the driver’s-side door of the pickup and stepped up on the footrail where he could lean in and open the toolbox behind the cab. He looked around, but nobody was close.

“What’s up, dziadek?” he asked.

The old man gave him a ghastly grin. TT could see some of his teeth through his torn open cheek.

“I have no wnuki that I know of,” he said. “But I have been called grandfather before. Recently, in fact. Or, rather, ten years from now.”

Oh yeah, this was making more fucking sense all the time.

“I’m going to get you to the ER, old man. And you should try not to talk. It makes you bleed more and it ain’t too fucking pretty, neither.”

“No,” said the old man. “No hospitals. No police. No authorities. I will heal in time, Hardhat.”

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