Hero's Call

Chapter Four

The Buckland Retirement Home was more than what it seemed. Most of the occupants were elderly people without much time left for this world like a typical retirement home. Most of them required constant care, while others could move about freely, but required oxygen tanks at their sides at all times. It was a generally depressing place to be that reeked of death, neglect, and tapioca pudding.

But there was also a different kind of occupant in the building. When The Dreadnaught Virus took hold, the government built a place that would be a safe haven for Heroes in their old age while top scientists from around the world worked non-stop to put an end to the virus. At one point, Buckland was filled with Heroes hoping to find a cure so they're children's children could take up their mantle once more and defend the innocent. Slowly they passed away without seeing any progress. Milo's great-grandfather, Captain Amazing, was the only Hero inhabitant left at Buckland.

Milo and Bill pulled up to the bike rack outside of Buckland, and chained up their bikes. The building stood gloomily in front of them like a sad puppy eager for someone to play with it, but too depressed to chase the ball that was thrown. It was a soulless two-story brick building with a few windows here and there. In the last window on the left of the top floor, an old woman gazed out blankly just as she always had. Milo guessed she was either waiting for one of her family members to come and visit or just plain crazy. Milo referred to her as Whistler's Mother as she sat motionless without blinking in a black dress for hours on end.

They walked through the double glass front doors and the reek of tapioca and Ben-Gay wafted under their nostrils. The walls were a sickening shade of taupe. The floors were covered with a layer of the thinnest, cheapest carpet imaginable, the next worst thing to walking on solid concrete. A small reception desk sat just inside the door, with a miserable looking middle-aged woman, Agatha, sitting behind it. She was reading a copy of Cat Aficionado.

"Hey, Milo," she said to Milo as he and Bill walked through the door, taking her eyes off of the magazine only briefly to see exactly who had just entered.

"Hello, Agatha," Milo replied half-heartedly and walked swiftly past her.

Just behind the reception desk and a small barrier wall was the common room. There was a big screen television against the far wall playing an old episode of Murder, She Wrote. A few feet in front of the television was a worn down purple couch with two elderly people sitting on it. One of them was watching the show intently, as if taking her eyes off Angela Lansbury would mean the end of the world as we know it. The other was staring absently into space babbling about cat steaks. Against the wall to the left of the couch was a small circular table where the occupants could play checkers or chess to their fancy. On the opposite wall stood a magazine and newspaper stand holding several out of date magazines and the latest edition of the day's paper.

Milo and Bill took a left down the nearby hall. At the end of the hall, they took a right and took a quick jog up a set of stairs. The third door on the left, Room 219, was where Milo's great-grandfather lived. It was a miserably small room covered in pictures of Captain Amazing and his old Hero buddies, or of him busting up a bank robbery or capturing a Villain. On the wall above his bed was his old uniform, framed and hermetically sealed even thought it could have been left in a landfill for a century and still come out looking exactly the same.

The Captain was sitting in a small chair looking out the window with a bored look on his face. His skin was sagging and wrinkled. His once great civilization of chestnut hair had thinned considerably and faded to a silvery hue. For being well over a century old, the old hero really didn't look a day over eighty. He was wearing a fading blue bathrobe and a pair of maroon pajamas. Milo knew he found less and less of a reason to put on normal clothes as the months went by.