The Side of Good

By Bryan J.L. Glass

Once upon a time, in a century not too long ago, we all recognized what a hero looked like. What they did. Why they did it. Once upon a time, we were more concerned with discovering the secret of who they were, than what their weakness was or what mistakes they may have made.

People need heroes. They need to remember what it is to stand up

• Language: English
• Publisher: eSpec Books
• Release date: Dec 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781942990154

Book preview

The Side of Good

edited by Danielle Ackley-McPhail and Greg Schauer

eSpec Books LLC

Stratford, NJ

PUBLISHED BY

eSpec Books LLC

Danielle McPhail, Publisher

PO Box 493,

Stratford, New Jersey 08084

www.especbooks.com

Copyright ©2015 eSpec Books LLC

Cover Art Copyright ©2015 Angela McKendrick

Interior Art Copyright ©2015 Jason Whitley

ISBN (trade paper): 978-1-942990-03-1

ISBN (ebook): 978-1-942990-15-4

All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher.

All persons, places, and events in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, places, or events is purely coincidental.

Icons: Mike McPhail, McP Digital Graphics

Interior Design: Sidhe na Daire Multimedia

www.sidhenadaire.com

Dedication

To Christopher Reeve

The Man of Steel

1952 – 2004

Contents

Introduction

Danielle Ackley-McPhail

Ghost Wolf

Gail Z. Martin and Larry N. Martin

Don’t You Know Who I Am?

Bryan J.L. Glass

Fiery Justice

John L. French

Third Time’s a Charm

Walt Ciechanowski

The Hand Job

Kathleen David

Making a Difference

Robert Greenberger

Eight Million Strong

James Chambers

Biographies

The Ranks of the Heroic

Introduction

Good Icon

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. —Edmund Burke

Here I Come To Save the Day! —Mighty Mouse

Once upon a time, in a century not too long ago, we all recognized what a hero looked like. What they did. Why they did it. Once upon a time, we were more concerned with discovering the secret of who they were, than what their weakness was or what mistakes they may have made.

People need heroes. They need to remember what it is to stand up for the little guy, the oppressed, those preyed upon by others. They need to remember that one person can make a difference and it needn’t be about superpowers or expensive gadgets—though we happen to think those things are great—but about the willingness to step forward, put on that spandex suit, and say not today, Evil, not today.

People need an example to live by. They need hope.

We would like to remind you of that bygone era of heroic figures doing what is right because it needs to be done, from the small things to the large, with no need for reward and knowing the cost may be sacrifice. But more important yet, let us remind you that one need not risk life and limb to be heroic, to make another’s life better. Open these pages and watch these tales unfold, then take them with you into the day-to-day, and ask yourself: In what way can I be a hero today?

Danielle Ackley-McPhail

The Hugger

Ghost Wolf

Gail Z. Martin and Larry N. Martin

Ghost Wolf Icon

Go back where you came from. Just for emphasis, the speaker slapped a length of lead pipe against his palm. We don’t need your type. Damn Pollacks and Ruskies.

Six men blocked the sidewalk in a shadowed section between streetlights. They were young and out for trouble. The four men whose path they blocked were older and weary from working swing shift in the foundries and iron works along Carson Street. Their faces were streaked with soot, hair lank with sweat. Just another block and the steep tracks of the Monongahela Incline would take them up Coal Hill to their homes.

Leave us, one of the workers said. We have no quarrel with you. Be gone.

Funny—that’s what we’d like you to do. Be gone, the tough replied, and his friends laughed mirthlessly. They were strong, young men, not much over twenty years old, with muscles built from unloading shipping crates or working in the steel mills. The leader wore his blond hair shaved close to his head, and a scar through one eyebrow and a notch in an ear gave him the look of a junkyard dog.

Go back the hell to where you came from. He advanced, holding his pipe like a weapon. The gang of men behind him produced chains, cut-down two-by-fours, and brass knuckles. Or we’ll send you there in a box.

The section of the city was deserted at this hour. To one side stretched the rail yards, empty and quiet. On the other side was the steep slope of Coal Hill, overgrown with gangly trees and scrub brush, littered with trash. The streetlight overhead was broken, creating a dark area between lights.

We don’t want trouble. The speaker was the oldest of the workers, and in his youth he had been as strong and brash as the bald young man with the pipe. Twenty-five years of hard, dangerous work and uncertain fortune had left their mark. His dark hair was graying and thin, and his features were as much a testimony to his heritage as his accent. The men behind him eyed the toughs warily, holding the lidded metal buckets they used to carry their lunches like weapons. The unmistakable click of switchblades opening upped the ante.

Then you should have stayed where you belong. With that, the toughs surged forward. The workers swung their heavy buckets to keep the attackers at bay, and from the pockets of their jackets produced hammers, knives, and wrenches to defend themselves.

A wolf’s howl echoed down the dark, empty street. There was a flash of gray, a snick like sharp teeth snapping together, and a blur of motion. One of the toughs went flying into the underbrush, hitting hard against the hillside. A gray figure interposed itself between the workers and the toughs. The figure’s face was hidden beneath a wolf’s head and a cape made from a wolf’s pelt fell partway down the figure’s back. The wolf’s eyes glowed red.

What the hell? the gang leader muttered, and swung hard at the gray figure’s head with his length of pipe. The fighter dodged away with inhuman speed and grace, landing a roundhouse punch with one furred fist that broke the gang leader’s jaw with an audible crack and sent him sprawling.

Two of the ruffians dove for the gray fighter, pummeling him with their fists and brass knuckles, to no effect. He stayed a step ahead of them, turning on his attackers with a snarl. Sharp claws extended from the gray fighter’s fists, and one swipe laid open one of the attackers from shoulder to hip, slicing easily through his jacket and shirt and raising four bloody slashes. One of the toughs tried to flank the gray creature, but it slapped him away with a powerful backhand that slashed across the man’s face and sent him tumbling.

Emboldened by this unexpected champion, the older men whooped and dove into the fight, taking down three of the gang members with craftiness and experience more than brute force.

The last of the ruffians ran away, toward the Mon Incline. Five of the troublemakers were down for the count in bloody heaps, while the four older workers appeared generally no worse for the wear than a few split lips and blackened eyes. The gray creature howled and set off after the fleeing tough like a streak, catching him easily and hoisting him with one clawed hand thrust through the collar of his jacket.

Go to hell! the tough shouted, kicking and swinging at the gray man-beast, who held him at arm’s distance before hoisting the ruffian up and looping his jacket collar through one of the uprights of a tall iron fence.

The gray creature turned back to where the workers stared, still holding their makeshift weapons as if afraid their savior might turn on them. Sirens were already sounding, getting closer.

Get out of here, the creature rasped. Then it turned and bounded away, running upright like a man but impossibly fast. The creature leapt up to the steel braces that supported the Mon Incline as one of the funicular cars began to clatter up the mountain, and in another jump landed easily on the top of the car. It paused just long enough for them to see its silhouette in the moonlight, part man and part beast, and to give another feral howl before it vanished into the shadows.

~ * ~

In a quiet neighborhood atop Coal Hill, a figure slipped quietly through the shadows, finding its way to a ramshackle spring house that stood in disrepair in the stretch of woods behind a two-story stone home. The gray man glanced furtively from side to side and then, assured he had not been seen, let himself into the spring house and closed the door behind him. He knew his way in the dark from here. Off to the right, he heard the trickle of water in the cistern. To the left, halfway down the wall, a wooden panel covered with stones slipped out of place, and he crawled backward into a tunnel barely wider than his shoulders. He fit the panel back where it had been and shuffled on his hands and knees until the passage widened and he could crouch. The press of a button activated the red eyes in his helmet, enough light to make his way down the tunnel to where it became a room.

He lit a kerosene lantern from the table on one side of the room, and sat down heavily on a wooden chair. I’m getting too old for this shit, he muttered in Polish.

Off came the furred reinforced gauntlets, and then the cloak and wolf skull helmet. He laid them carefully on the table, then eased out of the specially-built boots. He set aside the shaped buffalo horn that made the wolf-like howl. Finally, he unbuckled himself from the wood-and-metal exoskeleton. Then he set aside his cloak and shouldered out of the backpack of compressed gas cartridges the cloak and costume concealed. Some of the outfit Piotr had put together himself, but the ingenious pieces, the ones that gave him almost magical abilities, had been the covert gift of a local inventor who was one of the few to know Piotr’s secret identity.

He looked up as a door opened on the far side of the room. Mrs. Szabo hustled in, bearing a pot of hot coffee and a chunk of ice wrapped in a dish cloth. Busy night, Piotr? she asked, taking in his disheveled appearance.

Too many busy nights, he muttered. Always the cops show up too late, when the fight is over, or they don’t care who started it and they just come to rough people up. He swore under his breath, then blushed. Sorry, he said.

Mrs. Szabo waved off the apology. No harm done. You should have heard my Oskar cuss when he thought I wasn’t around. She sighed, looking at the bruises that were beginning to purple. Let me have a look at you. There’s supper in the oven upstairs once we get you cleaned up.

No matter how many nights I go out, there’s more to do, and always a fight somewhere I didn’t stop, Piotr said tiredly.

Mrs. Szabo clucked her tongue at him. Enough of that. You’re a hero, even if the Ghost Wolf gets all the credit. Every fight you break up is lives saved, and families that won’t go hungry with their men out of work because they got busted up by ruffians. She winked conspiratorially. The Ghost Wolf is becoming a legend. I’ve heard that just the name is enough to scare off some troublemakers.

If the name alone scared off more people, I wouldn’t get so banged up, Piotr replied.

Piotr winced as Mrs. Szabo daubed at the scrapes and bruises. The ice felt good. His special suit had blunted the killing blows and deflected the worst of the damage, but beneath the disguise he was still flesh and blood.

What happened? she asked, liberally applying the homemade salve she kept on hand for the aftermath of his nightly excursions. Piotr told her, sparing her any details that were unlikely to be in the newspaper, just in case the police ever came to call.

God bless you, she said, and took a break from bandaging up his injuries to hand him a steaming cup of black coffee. Those rough boys would have killed those men, she added. Just like my Oskar.

We make an odd pair, Piotr thought, sipping the strong coffee. Mrs. Szabo was old enough to be his mother and determined enough to stand behind his cause. He was in his thirties, scarred from a life of hard work, first with traveling carnivals back in Poland, and then taking whatever work he could find in America: day labor, steel mill, longshoreman. As a younger man, he’d been a carnival magician and acrobat and then a bare-knuckles fighter, anything to make enough to keep body and soul together. Now, those skills helped him protect his fellow immigrants, so no one else had to lose a beloved husband to roving gangs.

You’re going to have some bad bruises, she fussed, being as gentle as possible though her touch made him catch his breath. Bruised ribs, she added, shaking her head. Oh—that’s a deep cut. I’ll have to stitch up you and your outfit. She kept up a running narrative as she cleaned and bandaged his wounds and wrapped his ribs in strips from torn bedsheets. Her poultice smelled of herbs and tea, and Piotr knew from experience it took out the soreness and kept cuts from going sour. He gritted his teeth as she took black sewing thread, waved her needle through the flame to cleanse it, and set to closing up the gash on his arm.

When this is all over and you’re back in your room, you should have a slug of that whiskey you keep under the bed, she said sagely, with a sly sideways glance that let him know she was onto his secrets. Oskar always preferred vodka.

Mrs. Szabo was a thin woman old enough to be his mother. Her ropy muscles and long, skinny legs made him think of the scrawny chickens back home in the farm towns outside Warsaw. Like those chickens, Mrs. Szabo was a tough bird, capable of taking care of herself in a strange country when the gangs left her widowed and her children grew up and moved away from New Pittsburgh’s smoky valleys.

She’d found him one night, after one of his more disastrous fights. That was before he had his new, improved equipment, when he was just an over-the-hill former prize-fighter with a doomed one-man war against the immigrant-hating gangs that roved the city’s streets. When he awoke, he had discovered himself here, in a room once used to hide escaped slaves, beneath the old stone house. She told him that she had seen him fight off a gang so a group of boys from the neighborhood could get home safely. There had been no one to do that for Oskar. Since then, she had been part landlady, part fussy aunt, and part co-conspirator.

I was careful, Piotr said. No one followed me.

Mrs. Szabo nodded. Good. She was nearly done, with a neat row