Chapter 74

Chapter 74

"Will you quit laying around? You've got work to do!"

The brassy strains of Glenn Miller's 'String of Pearls' strummed in the background. Somebody kept poking at him.

"Peggy?"

Whoever was trying to make him wake up, they were persistent. He opened his eyes and recognized the stamped tin ceiling of the Stork Club. With a groan, he sat up. Was he dead … again?

"Who else would it be?" Peggy gave him a hand up. She was wearing that red dress he liked, although lately he found himself fantasizing more about the pretty blue dress Bernice had worn that night they had first danced together at Pepper Potts birthday party rather than the dress her grandmother had worn.

The band in the background grew louder, the dancing couples swirling around in a dance that was jazzy, but neither too fast nor too slow. The kind of music that was perfect to get to know the gal you were dancing with, something modern night clubs seemed to have forgotten was the whole -point- of going out to dance with their too-loud music.

"We've got to stop meeting like this," Steve said with a grin. He stared down at his World War II dress uniform, the reassuring feel of fine wool and a tailored cut much more natural than that ridiculous stretchy armor they made him wear in 2012. Peggy had her arm held out waiting for him to take her elbow, a universal gesture of a gal dropping a hint she wanted to dance.

"I'm not going with you Valhalla," Steve said. "They need me."

"Then quit dying on me!" Peggy's dark eyes flashed with humor, but also with a sense of urgency. "Don't worry. It's only a dance."

Her hand slipped into his, moving into his dance space as naturally as though they had danced an entire lifetime together. In a way, they had. The dance no longer had that dreamlike quality it had possessed before, all those times he had dreamed of dancing with her, longing for something he had never been meant to have. They were two old friends, dancing together in this place the way two old friends might play a game of golf. He followed her lead as she led them into the thick of the dancing couples.

His mind kept wandering back to Bernice and that ridiculous dance she had tried to teach him that first night she had danced with him, the Badonkadonk. Tonight's band was not a full big band, but a guy on a modern synthesizer made it seem like the band had more members than they really had. There was also a bit of a hip-hop strain to the music now and then, as though any moment a DJ would take over and transform the Stork Club into the modern age. Dancers kept bumping into them, as though the room was far more crowded than it really was.

"Why do we keep meeting like this?"

" You're the one who keeps conjuring it up this way." Peggy shot him a wolfish grin, her lips turning up in a smile that was so much like Bernice's it made his heart ache. "Whatever you want to see when you're drifting between the realms, that is where you go."

"I have to get back," he said. "They took Bernice."

"Don't you worry about Bernice," Peggy said. "An old enemy has seen the error of his ways."

"Who?"

Peggy just gave him an enigmatic smile. Although she was not wearing the armor of a Valkyrie right now, Steve knew what she really was. There appeared to be -rules- about how much information messengers such as Peggy were permitted to tell people who were still alive. She had told him not to worry about his wife because an old enemy was helping her. Whatever that meant, it was both important, and probably the only information he was going to get.

"Excuse me?" Somebody tapped on Steve's shoulder. "Can I cut in?"

He looked eye level into the blue-green eyes of William Miller, Peggy's husband. Although the man wore a neutral expression, Steve could tell he was less than pleased his wife kept meeting with her old flame here in this dance club. He could see the echo of Bernice's nose in her grandfather's face, and the way the man studied everything he looked at, memorizing it for a later work of art. Steve reached out to shake William Miller's hand.

"It's an honor to meet you at last, Sir," Steve said.

William Miller looked surprised. His grip far stronger than one would think it would be for a man so tall and thin.

"Thank you for taking care of her when I could not be there for her anymore," Steve said. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go rescue my wife."

Giving Peggy a quick peck on the cheek, he placed her hand onto her husband's arm. She gave him a quick nod and smiled. Her arm slid up around her William's shoulder, dancing in perfect harmony as they whirled out into the dance floor. The music changed to play 'In the Mood,' the tempo picking up. Other dancers moved around Peggy and her husband, obscuring them from his view. He stood there, not sure what to do. The dancers elbowed him, and then elbowed him again. Every time they bumped into him, they grunted. It smelled like…

"Crap," Steve groaned. God! It stank in here! He opened his eyes and stared into the eyes of the 'dancers' who had been bumping into him.

The pigs snuffled at his body with their flat snouts, grunting with curiosity at the superhero that had crashed through the roof of the tractor trailer which had been transporting them to market. Not everybody was experiencing bad luck from the alien invasion. These little piggy's had gotten a temporary reprieve from the slaughterhouse while, outside of the tractor trailer, aliens from outer space slaughtered humans.

"Hey?" Steve asked the curious pigs. Sunlight streamed through the slats of the animal hauler, which meant there was still a planet. Which meant he had better do what Peggy had just told him to do. Get up and quit laying around!

He was still strapped into the ejection seat of the F-35, probably the only reason he was still alive. With a groan, he unstrapped the harness and lurched to his feet, swaying until the pigs stopped flying in his head. His stomach threatened to hurl the contents of his breakfast, but it smelled so awful in here that may have just been the pig manure. Luckily the door had a latch to get out from the inside so he didn't need to crawl back up through the jagged hole his crash landing had created in the roof. He opened the door, letting the pigs out to roam amongst the abandoned cars littering the California freeway.

He squinted through the smoke and ash raining down from the sky, appearing very much like dirty grey snowflakes. The sensation of nausea he had felt while inhaling pig manure was nothing compared to the feeling that sat in his stomach like lead as he stared at the charred, twisted remains of the Los Angeles skyline. At least there was no sign of the Chitauri mothership. Had the Sherman shot it down? Or had it simply moved onto the next Earth city? The City of Angels appeared to be deserted.

He spied the smoldering wreckage of his fighter jet just off the freeway. Hiking down to the nearest off ramp, he was dismayed to see the radio had been destroyed along with the plane. The only saving grace was his shield had been thrown clear, the paint a little worse for the wear from the fire and smoke, but otherwise intact. At least he had a weapon. He strapped the shield to his back and tucked his helmet under his arm. He was south of the city. The nearest military base was the Los Angeles Air Force base attached to LAX, which also happened to be adjacent to the Stark Industries Los Angeles campus. He began to trudge west on the streets that ran adjacent to Interstate 105, fearful a glider might spot his red, white and blue armor walking on the highway.

"Psst!" An old man gestured to him from a building which had every piece of glass blown out of it and a huge crack through the bricks, but which had otherwise survived. "You one of them superheroes fighting the aliens?"

"I was," Steve said. "My plane got shot down. You wouldn't happen to have a police radio or something, would you?"

"They hit all the police stations," the old man said. "Fire stations too. National guard. Edwards Air Force Base. Camp Pendleton. Miramar. Gone. All gone."

"I've got to call into whoever is still in command," Steve said. "Let them know I'm still alive."

"Come here, then." The old man had to be in his late eighties, nearly as old as Steve technically was. He shuffled into the cracked building. "This here building is built from brick. None of that stucco the young people are so enamored with today. It don't like the earthquakes too much, but it took a hit from that blast them aliens let loose just fine."

Other faces peeped out from doorways on either side of the hallway. Still alive. Whatever the aliens had hit the city with, it appeared to have been designed to destroy infrastructure rather than the magnitude of a nuclear weapon. The old man led Steve into his apartment. Glass crunched beneath his red boots from the shattered windows, but even in December this part of the country was reasonably warm. The old man had an old citizen's band radio jury rigged up to CB antenna propped in front of the window.

"Good thing I salvaged this from my car when the kids took away my car keys last year," the old man said. "Used to be a trucker. Been relaying messages back and forth to civil defense, or whatever they call it these days. I'll just tell them you're here and maybe they can help you get in touch with them people who took down that alien ship."

"They shot it down?" Hope ignited in Steve's chest.

"So they're saying on the radio," the old man said. "Said they shot it down when it tried to hit Bakersfield. The rest … it's all just rumors. None of them cell phones or nothing are working right now. But one of the guys relaying messages also has a ham radio. Said he heard the Chinese shot one of them down, too."

Two down, thirty-four to go. Plus the twenty-three they had just flushed out of volcanoes. God! They were doomed.

"Civil defense, this is Hogtied Peterbilt," the old man called into his CB. "Shoe Dog! You still got your ears on, buddy?"

"Ten-four," a voice came over the radio. "Hogtied Peterbilt, this is Shoe Dog. You got new traffic for me to pass on?"

"I sure do!" the old man said excitedly. "I got me here none other than Captain America."

"Captain America got shot down," Shoe Dog said.

"Yeah, he did," the old man said. "But he's still alive. He's looking to hook up with his unit so he can go kick some alien poontang in the kisser!"

"I can hear Crazy Chevelle from here," Shoe Dog said. "Her pa's the one with the ham radio. She's been relaying news as it's been coming in on the airwaves. Maybe her pa can raise the military. Los Angeles Air Station has been destroyed."

"Could you ask him about Stark Industries, Sir?" Steve asked the old man.

"Shoe Dog," the old man asked. "You hear anything about Iron Man's factory?"

"Was the first place the aliens hit," Shoe Dog said. "Smart little buggers. Must have figured if anybody was going to stop them, it would be the Iron Man."

It made sense, but Steve still felt disappointed. At least it appeared people at the edge of the city had survived and were simply laying low. The two CB'ers bantered back and forth a few more minutes, relaying messages to this Crazy Chevelle. After half an hour or so, Shoe Dog relayed back a message.

"Got a message here from a fella by the name of Fury," Shoe Dog said. "Said to get your spangley rear end out onto the 105 where they can see you and someone will be along shortly to transport you to the Sherman."

With the old man's permission, Steve picked up the microphone for the Citizen's Band radio, which had required a license to operate back in his day, but which now could be operated by anybody, and thanked them. By the look of the amplifier Hogtied Peterbilt had jury rigged to his ancient 22-channel CB, it was getting a lot more distance than the 2-mile radius modern CB radios could broadcast.

"I kinda thought you'd be older?" the old man said as he handed him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a can of soda pop. "Did you really punch out Adolf Hitler?"

"Hundreds of times," Steve said. "But it wasn't the real Adolf Hitler. Hitler was just a puppet for the real villain. This guy called Red Skull. Him I killed."

The old man grunted, his dentures slipping as he smiled, making his mouth look like a wrinkled old prune. "Well you look mighty good for an old man."

"So do you," Steve said. "Thanks. I couldn't have gotten hold of them without you."

Trudging back up the elevated highway he had avoided, he continued his journey west. It only took about ten minutes for a silver speck to appear in the sky. With the roar of miniature pulse reactor engines, the silver suit plunked down right in front of him much the way Tony Stark's suit did, only this one had a machine gun mounted on one shoulder. The mask popped up. A serious looking African American man peered out from the Mach 2 suit and stuck out his armored hand to shake Steve's.

"Commander Rogers," Colonel Rhodes shook his hand. "It is an honor to finally meet you."

"Colonel Rhodes," Steve said. They were technically approximately equal in rank, although different branches of the military. They hesitated a moment, and then Steve saluted Colonel Rhodes, falling back on the old Army adage, 'when in doubt, salute.'

"That six-fingered alien friend of yours finally figured out how to get the Chitauri mothership you guys captured to work," Rhodey said. "We're supposed to rendezvous with Tony and the rest of the Avengers."

Steve did not relish the thought of being carried through the air dangling like a rodent caught by a silver raptor. "How am I getting back to the Sherman?"

"Oh … sorry," Rhodey gave a grin. He pointed towards two gliders moving towards them, piloted by Marines Steve recognized from the Vanuatu mission. They landed, shook hands, and then doubled up on the larger of the two gliders so Steve could fly to the rendezvous point. It was a ways to Bakersfield, but the gliders moved fast.

Steve circled where the U.S.S. Sherman had landed to float in the sizeable lake outside of Bakersfield, which the hostile mothership had tried to hit after decimating Los Angeles. The captured Chitauri mothership sat on the shore near the Sherman. Bakersfield had only been minimally hit, but the smoldering wreckage of the mothership which had hit Los Angeles filled the air over the city with smoke.

Men rushed around the friendly mothership like ants. Somewhere near the tail end of the oval-shaped flying saucer, several men had gotten out a ladder and were painting the biggest star they could find in a circle to mark it as a United States airship and not hostile.

"How did they finally get it to work?" Steve asked Colonel Rhodes as soon as he plunked down next to him in the Mach 2 suit.

"Beats me," Rhodey said. "I was on my way to be briefed the same as you when the call came in to do a little detour and meet up with you. I guess we'll just have to go to the briefing and find out together, won't we?"

Steve decided that he liked Colonel Rhodes attitude. He had always felt much more comfortable with the enlisted men than babysitting the oversized super-egos of the other superheroes, but unlike Colonel Rhodes best friend Tony Stark, the man appeared to be pragmatic … and humble. They marched together into the Chitauri mothership to be debriefed.

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