Rocky - Origin - Chapter Two

When morning's light hit the alley, it found drying clothes strung between brick and clapboard all the way to the roof. It also found Sh'ead Andrews sprawled against a wall. His clothes were rumpled. A bottle in a paper bag, the only trash in view, was lying loosely on his outstretched hand, and snores rang up and down the crumbling but clean walls.

A girl's torso popped out from one of the upper windows, checking on the clothes. She heard the rumbling below and called her, "Hey! That guy's still out here! And still making a racket!" A boy's head appeared in the next window, gave a snort of disapproval, and withdrew. It was the same boy who had fought off Jim Wildman the night before.

Sh'ead watched through half-closed eyes until the girl disappeared, then grinned. "I've got them all fooled but good, Jim." Anyone watching would have thought him crazy, but then they couldn't see the microphone hidden in his overcoat. "Still nobody in or out. Of the door anyway. I... wait, it's that kid." He resumed his snoring, a little quieter.

"Hmpf! Well. If he ain't a sight and a half." Footsteps approached Sh'ead and a hand shook his shoulder. "Hey, buddy. Come on, wake up. If you sleep in the sun, you'll wake up with a sunburn."

The boy's voice turned cajoling at the end and Sh'ead cracked his eyes open and let out a pained groan. "Easy now, fella, you'll live." A pale hand picked up the bottle, shook it. "At least I think you'll live. This was full five hours ago." He raised Sh'ead's head and opened one eye. The boy abruptly dropped the head and stood up.

"Faker! Let's go. On your feet. Or do I hafta call a cop?"

Sh'ead opened his eyes a little wider and slurred, "Whaddaya mean, faker?"

"I mean, Faker! You ain't drunk or my name ain't Rocky Markona!" A none-too-gentle toe punctuated the hollering.

Sh'ead pulled up one knee and draped an arm over it, his pretense gone. He looked up at the kid with obviously clear eyes and drawled, "Rocky, huh. Well, that's one thing I know now that I didn't last night." He rose languidly to his feet and they stood for a moment looking at each other.

Sh'ead Andrews was five foot two at most, with shoulders that seemed to be a yard across and a chest a foot-and-a-half deep. His legs bowed, his arms came closer to his knees than one would expect possible, and his shaven chin seemed the only part of him not covered in wiry, rusty hair.

The boy who called himself Rocky Markona put his head down and shook it slowly. He was only ten or eleven, but already stood several inches taller than Sh'ead. He appeared soft and pale, like he never got to play in the sun. His blue-green eyes peered out from behind spectacles, adding to the scholar image. His dark hair slicked straight away from his face, pulled back and twisted into the last thing Sh'ead ever expected to see on a guy of any age, a chignon, like a woman would wear.

He finished shaking his head and looked back up. "So. Is there any particular reason you chose this alley to collapse? If you're a truant officer, I have to remind you; this is Saturday."

Sh'ead held out his hands, to forestall further accusations. "Naw, kid, it ain't like that at all. I just needed to sleep somewhere last night, and I was afraid if crooks thought I was just thrown out of my house, they'd try to roll me. You can't blame a fella for what his wife does, can you?"

He was about to go on, inventing his cover as he went, but Rocky stopped him with a gesture. "Naw, mister, I guess a feller cain't be blamed fer what his old lady does. D'ya think she'll let ya back in this early? I wouldn't want ya ta get popped for vagrancy, now that it's morning." His accent had appeared suddenly, like he’d only just remembered to use it.

A hand on his back deftly guided Sh'ead into the basement stairway. They pattered about wives and their misperceptions and how bad it was that Sh'ead had to sleep in an alley. The pale boy pulled the name Joe Anderson from Sh'ead, who almost gave his real name, so subtle was the question. Soon, they were sitting around a wooden table in a corner of the basement, sipping milk and eating omelettes.

Various children, boys and girls from two to sixteen, wandered in and out, asking Rocky questions as they went. Here inside the building, he seemed to have no accent at all. He answered them all clearly and knowledgeably, and each went away satisfied. The questions were mostly homework problems; mathematics, sciences, literature; the boy showed a decent grasp of them all.

Sh'ead did detect a slight mistake in one of Rocky's chemistry answers, and had to bite his own tounge to keep from correcting the boy. His current persona would know nothing of chemistry, Joe was an accountant with a downtown firm. He and Rocky conversed for an hour before he suggested that his wife would be expecting him to come crawling back soon.

Rocky led him back out into the alley and back onto the main street. "If she does that again, and you'd better not give her a reason to, you go to this address." He produced a card from his pocket. "He'll put you up for the night." They shook hands, and Sh'ead went on his way, catching a cab back to Wildman's skyscraper headquarters.




When Sh'ead came in the door, Remy had his feet up, reading a newspaper behind the oversized inlaid desk in the reception room. Remy Wickham was quite a sight. At six foot eight, his frame carried only two hundred pounds, but the true marvels about him were his hands. These were the size of three men's fists in every direction. He was known to punch walls to frighten people, or just for fun, knocking holes even in sheet rock. "So, how'd it go?"

"I'm not sure. Where's Jim?"

"In de lab."

"Thanks." With a nod to his large friend, Sh'ead navigated the rooms between himself and the lab and entered quietly, so as not to disturb whatever experiments were going on. "Jim?" He called out softly.

"Back here," came the reply and he followed the voice to a far corner where Jim and Tom, the electrical expert and radioman were bent over a wireless set. "What did you do to your transmitter?" accused Tom. "We lost you when you entered the building."

Robert Thomas, Jr., called "Tom" by his friends, was entirely unassuming. His height was average, his build normal, his coloration generic. This blandness helped him blend into crowds and infiltrate organizations, but it made him stand out next to Jim Wildman's exceptional size and unique coloring. He was an electrical genius second only to Jim, able to construct amazing devices with few parts and less time. Now his face held annoyance and puzzlement.

"Nothing. I think," said Sh'ead. "Did you pick me up when I came out?"

"No. And you're not transmitting now." Jim waved him to a seat. "Let's look at that thing." The two men stripped their friend's coat off and examined the gear underneath. "Aha! See here Tom? The wires have been snapped."

"But nobody touched me!"

"The kid's probably a pick pocket. These wires were fiddled without disturbing the shirt underneath." To his friends, Jim sounded impressed, which he seldom was by anything. An outsider wouldn't have noticed any change in tone. "Describe what you saw."

Sh'ead spoke without hesitation, painting a picture of a large gang of kids, living some kind of Peter Pan existance where grownups need not interfere, a pre-teen boy leading them all. When Sh'ead finished his narration, he pulled a calling card from his pocket and handed it to Jim. "As I was leaving, Rocky gave me this, in case I needed a 'real' place to stay for the night. Here." He handed the card to Jim. "We might be able to use it."

Jim looked at the card, and only his training kept his jaw from dropping. However, a strange noise pervaded the room for a moment, a whistling, humming sound that Jim made when his brain worked too fast for his body to keep up. "I don't think so," he said dryly, handing the card back to Sh'ead.

"Huh?" Sh'ead finally took an actual look at the card. "Well I'll be... This is your card! What gives?"

"I gave this to Rocky last night, suggesting I could help him with his fighting."

"Does he know we're together?" Sh'ead put the card gingerly on a table, as if it would bite him.

Jim ignored the question, as he did with all questions he wasn't ready to answer. "Sounds like this boy Rocky has developed a pretty good imitation of the backyard tree house, only on a much larger scale. The only remaining question is, who's sponsoring them?"

"Sponsoring?" asked Ham from the doorway. The man asking the question was medium height, thin, and dressed to perfection. He carried an umbrella despite the clear weather. This concealed a rapier-like sword, which he kept tipped with a knockout drug. Hamilton Temple was a lawyer, and had the respect of his peers the world over.

"Yes. There has to be an adult, or possibly a group of them, involved. The lookout last night ran away from a rich family several months ago. The parents were away on a pleasure cruise." A faint hint of disgust tinged his tone. "The boy told the servants he had permission to stay at a friend's house. He continued going to school, so it wasn't until the parents returned that they realized he was gone.

"The really odd thing was, he kept going to school until detectives tried to grab and return him. And now, his work appears, finished, and in his own hand, on his teacher's desk every day."

"How in the world did you know all that?" demanded Sh'ead. "You been following his case the whole time? Or did you look him up when you got back?"

Jim let out a slim smile. "The parents tried to call us in shortly after they returned, but I sent them to our detectives. I've been receiving updates ever since."

Tom elbowed in to the conversation, "Sounds like a kid's dream alright. I see why you think a grownup is in charge. It's hard to imagine any kid making any other kid do homework. Other than that it's idyllic."

"Their idyll isn't going to last much longer." The assemblage looked as one man at Ham.

The expression on his friends faces prompted him to explain. "The building in which those kids are dwelling is scheduled to be demolished tomorrow afternoon. It's been condemned for the last two years, and it seems that this gang has been staying there since shortly after that.

"The men on the force I talked to had not been able to prove that anyone lives there. It seems that anytime a patrolman gets near the place, they clear out. They distract him long enough to get everyone out, and when he gets inside, the place looks completely abandoned."

Ham sank dejectedly onto a stool, "I tried to get a blueprint from city records, but they've been removed since the place is departing this vale of tears tomorrow. No one has been able to figure out where they go when they disappear, or where any of them came from in the first place."

Jim absorbed the narrative without showing any signs of having heard, as he rummaged in a large cabinet. When Ham was done, Jim turned around with climbing grapples for all of them. "Well. We'll just have to convince them to leave, won't we."

Still with us? Try Part Three
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