THE GOLDEN AGE

Part III

By Desmond Reddick

The Journal of Niles Caulder
May 7^th, 1915

The bastards sunk the Lusitania.

The past two weeks have been an exercise in maintaining a stiff upper lip for what remains of the Doom Patrol. We mourned Captain Grim for a day. His death was sudden, and, though I have only known him a short time, it has affected me deeply. I owed the man my life. I was unable to give him that. And, in dying, he bequeathed the Doom Patrol and the ship it used as headquarters to my guardianship.

I can only imagine what the others are feeling as they too had been rescued by the man they called Captain, and they had known him far longer than I. We were single-minded in our quest for vengeance from the beginning.

The Lady Justice led us in our quest, chasing the U-boat that housed Captain Zahl and minions of The Baron. But the ship, as so often the very spirit of justice itself is, was too late. This afternoon, Larry received the SOS and informed me of the attack. As we had already been chasing the submarine, we were close, arriving shortly after the first Irish fishing vessels.

We took part in the rescue operation: Nadir righted lifeboats from the sunken ship with the power of concentration, Larry coordinated further rescue by amplifying the radio signals on our ship with the others in the area, Bill and I pulled survivors onto the decks of the Lady Justice, and Rose found them blankets and tea.

The day was long and the only words spoken were those of comfort levelled at the rescued. When sufficient rescue ships arrived, we began to escort our rescued survivors to ships more suitable for passengers. While the Lady Justice is far larger on the inside than it seems by looking at it, there is an air of disquietude and an eerie feeling that comes on not long after boarding.

For us outcasts, the feeling goes away when we become at home on the ship. But our fate is not to be shared with those who so narrowly escaped death. Our fate is determined by the strengthening of our earlier mission.

We would hunt down The Baron and his men and all those who serve evil until life is taken from us.

And now, as I write this, the Doom Patrol is below deck, resting in preparation for what is sure to be a hectic day tomorrow. I will stay at the helm through the night, for sleep will not come to me. Weary as I am, I need some form of retribution before my mind will allow any rest.

May 8^th, 1915

We found them.

I stood at the helm through the night though the ship propelled itself. I wanted the satisfaction of seeing the bastards first. And I saw them in the minutes before five this morning when the sky was still dark.

It was a blinking red light that gave them away.

We had chased them around the entire outer rim of the British Isles when I saw them run ashore at a lagoon on the west-facing side of a small island off the coast of Wales.

Within moments, the Doom Patrol was at my side on deck, having been awakened by the ship. Even Rose, who spent much of her time alone and sullen, was interested. We distributed arms and watched as the sun rose while we approached the beached submarine.

The closer we got, we could see the crew of the U-boat milling about on the shore. It was only shortly after we saw them that they knew we were coming. I gathered from their original attack on the Lady Justice that they were after my immortality elixir and not merely the destruction of the Doom Patrol. They could have sunk us then and there. Today, I imagine, their capability to do so was hindered by the circumstances of their ship, so they could not sink us if they wanted.

I gave the helm to Rose and stood at the bow of our ship with Nadir, Larry and Bill. We waited to leap into battle once we were at the coast. But The Baron’s men began firing on us before we got close enough to leap to the rocky coast. Instead, we took cover behind the wooden wall of the Lady Justice, splinters raining down on us as bullets bit into the ship.

“Larry, now!” I shouted. On my command, Larry stood and his body seemed to vibrate. A buzzing sound that appeared to emanate from Larry joined the gunfire. I worried for a moment before noticing that the bullet passed through him, as if he were made of radio waves and electricity, and he was.

From the distance we stood at, Larry had warned me earlier that he would be unable to do anything but buy us time. It was a back-up plan if we could not storm the coast without being attacked. That initial plan was a long shot, but we were well prepared for our back up. Larry told me he could disarm them close up, but would do his best from far away. And that’s what he did.

With his arms outstretched, he affected a squealing noise in the radios of The Baron’s men. It was a piercing shrill noise that hurt our ears on the ship. The men on the beach lurched, and some even dropped their weapons.  With another wave of Larry’s arm, the remaining guns fell to the ground. Somehow he was able to control the magnetic field of the island enough to pull the guns out of their hands.

And, with that, we attacked.

Our opening volleys cut down a full half of the more than thirty men on the shore. We had made our own way onto the island and were able to hide behind some coastal rock before the others recovered their weapons. Larry stayed aboard to keep us in radio contact with Rose in case we needed to make a quick retreat.

What I told no one was that I was not prepared to retreat. I was going to end it on this day despite the favorability of the outcome. Thankfully, I did survive, but only just barely.

I stepped out from our rocky refuge and fired at the men up the beach with Captain Grim’s pistol. Looking back on it now, I realize I was not thinking of self-preservation in the slightest, for I had stepped out too far. I could not have corrected myself quickly enough even if I wanted to.

I never felt the bullet enter my body.

In fact, I never even knew I was shot until I stumbled around with little control over my body. I hit the pebble-laced sand face-first. Nadir laid down covering fire while Bill pulled me to safety. Once again behind the rock, I took stock of what had happened.

The bullet entered just above my pelvis and must have severed my spine. I was bleeding profusely and a dull pain began to surround the area around the bullet wound. I tapped on the peculiar ear piece Larry had given us all and I heard him respond in my ear. I asked him to put Rose on. When I spoke, he could hear me through the small microphone he placed in my collar.

“Niles, is everything alright?” Her voice was quiet but her elocution was excellent, befitting a woman of her social status.

“Rose, we need your help,” I answered.

“Do you want me to prepare the Lady Justice for departure? If so, we are already ready to go.”

“No, I will try to be clearer. Rose, I know what happened the night Captain Grim died. I know that you helped us all survive that night. And I know that you feel ashamed. But right now, my dear, we don’t need your help. We need your friend.”

There was silence on the other end as Bill and Nadir looked at me with puzzled expressions between bouts of stepping out from the rock and firing at our enemies.

“Rose?” I asked again.

“Thorn, Niles.” The voice came not from the earpiece but from right in front of me.

It was not Rose that came to our rescue, though the facial structure was similar. The woman that stood before me was pale but had a sickly pallor with none of the ruddy-cheeked charm of good ol’ English Rose. She was dressed unlike the sweet shrinking violet we had come to know as well. She wore trousers and a shirt and vest befitting a pirate, black as coal. Her hair hung wild and black as well with dark rings around her eyes. Long, lithe white arms tapered into thinly conical black fingernails at the end of elongated fingers.

She was quite a sight.

“Rose thought you sounded pretty rough, n’ said ye might need this!” Her voice was shrill, with a cockney accent and not the upper crust posh accent we had come to know.

After saying it, she threw me vial of immortality elixir at me. I caught it in my empty hand.

“Thank you,” I said. “But leave Captain Zahl to me.”

With that, she was gone. I uncorked the vial and poured its contents down my throat. The taste was shockingly horrific; it was both a balance of oil of oregano and sulfur. I choked on the elixir, hoping that it wouldn’t kill me, for it felt like I would die from the taste. Without proper medical care, I would surely die from the wound in my gut.

Then I began to feel better.

In fact, I felt younger than I was. I was bursting with energy. But when I tried to stand, I could not. The vial made me feel quite grand, but it did not cure me of the injury to my spine.

Once the terror of whether I would live or die subsided, I began to hear shrieking from behind me. Turning, I noticed that Bill and Nadir had stopped shooting and simply looked on in horror. I pulled myself up on the rock and looked over like the other two were doing to see Thorn at work.

She dashed remarkably quickly across my field of vision, raking at the faces and stomachs of our attackers. The men screamed, groaned in throes of death and hit the ground. To a man, Thorn eradicated our enemy in a way that was frightening to behold.

When it was over, she held Zahl by the lapels of his black jacket. He dangled from her talons, but he levelled the luger in his hand at Thorn’s head. Before any of us could shout to warn her, she raked her thorny hand across his, throwing the pistol to the rocky sand below and shredding his skin to ribbons.

Zahl screamed and clutched the wounds on his hand and wrist while Bill and Nadir helped me get to him.

“You’ve lost, Zahl,” I told him. “You tried to kill us all, and you failed.”

“Tell me where The Baron is. Your war is doomed to failure. Save a lot of lives, my people and yours, and give up The Baron.”

“If you think that this is all about your ‘Great War’ then you are sadly mistaken,” he said, remaining defiant though it was clear the pain was intolerable to him. “There are things on earth far longer-lasting and more important than the wars of man, Caulder. You, of all people, should know that by now.”

With that, he spat and choked on blood. Wheezing and sucking in air, his death seemed imminent. I levelled the flintlock pistol at him.

“Captain Grim is not here to say goodbye, Zahl, so I will do it for him!”

I killed him. The shot rang out and he fell limp. But his words, I fear, will stay with me for a long time.

“That’s it?” Cherry was shocked. She had been rapt with attention for God knows how long reading and listening to the Chief’s journal while watching the old photographs played like a slideshow. She not only couldn’t believe it, she was still having trouble wrapping her head around it.

“That’s it for the first one, anyway lass.”

It startled Cherry. The voice was deep with a thin brogue and came from behind her. She verbally “eeped” when she saw what was behind her.

Her mind raced back to when she was first wandering through the halls of Premiani Manor. She recalled looking out the window to what should have been a look down into a courtyard in the middle of the mansion, but was instead an impossibly large field that could have been on the Serengeti. There was a golden gorilla there in the distance that waved at her.

And now it was right behind her, talking to her. Even for the past few days of psychics, shape shifters, robot men and whatever the hell the bandaged guy was, this exploding girl was still shocked to see a talking gorilla.

“It’s alright,” he continued. “I’m used to it by now.”

“Uhm…k.”

Cheryl swallowed and breathed deeply.

“So, that was the beginning, but what happened to everyone? Nadir, Rose…”

“Nadir left. I don’t have the heart to tell you why, but he is gone. Rose and Larry are still here in the building. Larry is…different now. He is throughout the building. Rose doesn’t leave her room much.”

“What about Bill?” Cheryl asked, referring to the one member of the Doom Patrol the gorilla had yet to mention.

“You’re talking to him, lass.”

The silence between them was palpable.

“You’re a monkey, now?”

“Gorilla, actually. Technically an ape. But ‘spose  I’ve been called worse.” Bill smiled. “I’d tell you my story, but I think you’ve had enough strange adventures for the day. Let me just say that if you spend long enough as a member of the Doom Patrol, you end up transformed by the experience. Isn’t that right, Larry?”

Cheryl shook her head in disbelief.

A klaxon blared and the screen before them flashed red.

“That’s a local alarm,” Bill said making his way to the operating station for Legacy. Before he could engage the controls, the screen sprang to life. Staring back at Cherry and Bill was The Chief. He was dishevelled and bleeding from the forehead. The cabin of the Doomjet behind him looked as if it had been tossed by a very powerful force.

“Bill! Thank goodness! The Doom Patrol has been defeated. We need you! And bring Buzzy!”

The image on the screen flickered and died. Bill seemed genuinely confused by what had just occurred.

“Who’s Buzzy?” Cherry said to the golden gorilla in front of her.

“Ye’ll meet him in a moment! Time’s a’wasting, lass! Let’s go!”