On The Road 

Johnny was beginning to think the wormhole put some kind of car curse on him. Every time he’d been near one of the things in the past week he’d been read the riot act. And it was getting worse : at least the last time Reed and Victor had been too tired to talk. 

“In summary,” Said Victor from the driver’s seat, which he’d commandeered from Roberta’s satellites as soon as he got into the car. “To create a social collective, the populace is required to place a number of their more dramatic freedoms, such as the right to violence, in the hands of a new power.” 

“The sovereign,” Reed, sitting shotgun, responded. 

“This sovereign then gains the right to use these freedoms as they see fit for the good of the people.” 

“I think ‘as they see fit’ is debatable, but essentially, yes.” 

“So, at the house, who is to say that I was not the sovereign in that particular situation?”

Reed sighed exasperatedly. “Because nobody voted for you , honey.” 

“But I did manipulate the freedoms of the people around me for the greater good of all?” 

“Well, I suppose--” Reed started, before what Victor was trying to do registered. “No! Altruism does not justify dictatorship!” 

“I see. So democracy justifies corruption?” 

Forty-five minutes of this, nonstop. He realized that he forgot his earphones before they even got out of the neighborhood, but Reed and Victor wouldn’t turn the car around. The neuro-whatever vibro-thingies have worn off now, if we go back we may not be able to leave again.

Stupid nerds.

And Sue was no help: she’d managed to find her walkman from high school in her old room before they left and had been blasting the greatest hits of nineteen ninety-something through her chunky, dust-covered headphones since Reed put it in drive. 

Stupid Sue. 

Don’t go to space, Johnny. Don’t talk to reporters, Johnny. Stay in Nowheresville, USA while I move to New York City, Johnny. Be the only gay kid in like a forty-mile radius andtake the nerdiest classes you can every single semester, Johnny, because that’s a recipe for high school success. 

And he wasn’t an idiot, alright? He knew she meant well, in her own weird Sue way. The whole small-town normal childhood thing— it was everything she wanted and never got to have, picking up after their dad since she was like, born . 

It’s like when your dog brings you its favorite toy and expects you to love it too. Like, you get it, the dog wants you to be happy, it’s trying. But it’s a dog, and you’re a person, and this raggedy-ass beach towel isn’t gonna cut it.

And yeah, this one was kind of a major fuck-up. But when life gives you lemons and those lemons come with like a million people thinking you’re cool, you make lemonade! What was so hard to understand about that?

There was a bone-rattling knock from the metal wall behind the backseat. 

With a frustrated groan, Johnny slid the horizontal peephole separating the people part of the limo from the horse part open. “ What ?” 

“Has she picked up yet?” Ben asked. 

“For the last time, no !” Johnny yelled, slamming the peephole shut.

The limo had one of those old-timey car phones and Ben had been making him call Debbie like every five minutes the whole ride over. You’d think after the first five straight-to-voicemails he’d have figured out it wasn’t working, but no , maybe she’s busy, Johnny , maybe the line’s busy . 

What even was a line? Crazy that he was the guy protecting the country from terrorist Godzillas. Or whatever the Air Force did. 

Back up front, Reed and Victor were still going at it like the world’s dorkiest alley cats. 

“That’s a false equivalency and you know it.” Reed challenged. 

Victor countered, “Is it, or does it beg a question that you don’t want to answer?” 

Reed huffed, “We’re discussing the rights of the individual under the rule of a commonwealth. If you want to debate the ethics of a moral dictatorship versus an immoral democracy we can, but it’ll count as a loss for you in the yearly debate score.” 

“Oh my god , I’m jumping out,” Johnny told them. “Did you hear me? I said I’M JUMPING OUT!” 

“We have food at the apartment, Johnny,” Victor told him offhandedly, before turning back to Reed. “It is only March. Tell me, my darling, would you rather be subject to a kind king or a cruel senate?”

Before Johnny could decide if he was really gonna do it or not, Ben slammed the peephole open. 

“HEY! WE’RE COMING UP ON THE TURN, GET OFF THE EXPRESSWAY!” He bellowed. 

“ Ow, ” Johnny moaned, covering his ears. 

“The GPS says to stay on 495 until 37th Street,” Reed replied like Ben hadn’t just burst Johnny’s eardrums. 

“I KNOW! IT’S TRYING TO TAKE US THROUGH THE TUNNEL! WE NEED TO GO TO WILLIAMSBURG SO I CAN GET DEBBIE!” 

“We are going to the Baxter Building , Grimm,” Victor reminded him. “We already discussed this–”

“THAT WAS BEFORE THE NEWS GOT AHOLD OF IT! WHAT IF THEY SWAMP DEBBIE LIKE THEY DID MARYGAY? I AIN’T LEAVING MY WIFE TO THAT, NO WAY NO HOW!” 

“STOP! YELLING!” Johnny shouted. 

“DON’T YOU SHOUT AT ME, KID!” Ben yelled back. 

“BOTH OF YOU, SILENCE!” Victor roared, whipping around in his seat. “We are at maximum five feet away from each other, you shall speak at normal volumes or not at all!”

Sue threw her headphones down impatiently. “What’s going on?” She asked. She was in the middle of I Want It That Way ; stopping the song in the middle of the chorus caused her physical pain. 

“Ben won’t stop screaming at me for no good reason!” Johnny answered.

“ What? ” She asked again. 

Reed translated, “Ben wants us to get Debbie before we go to the Baxter.” 

Sue made a face like she had just swallowed a lemon. “No way. Spring break started two days ago, downtown’s going to be a madhouse.” 

Victor waved an arm at Susan in vindication. “Thank you!”

“Where would we even park the car?” Sue asked. 

Ben groaned. “It’s ten minutes, tops! Reed, back me up here.” 

“I agree with Sue and Victor, actually,” Reed said. “And even if I didn’t, you punched my fiancé in the face twenty-two hours ago.” 

“Et tu, Bru-tay?”

“Sponsus pulsasti, culus,” Reed responded.

Victor hid his smirk in his palm.  

“I don’t know what that— WATCH OUT!” Ben hollered, completely undermining Victor’s earlier orders as the car in front of them unceremoniously halted in the middle of the freeway. 

Reed slammed the brakes, shaking the seatbelted passengers unpleasantly. Ben, who hadn’t the luxury of a seatbelt back in the horse section, did a little more than shake. The inertia threw him clean through the sheet metal divider between him and the others. 

Ben put his arms out, attempting to steady himself with a grip on the sides of the car, but only managed to smack Johnny in the head with an errant hand.

“ Ow, ” Ben groaned, rubbing his forehead where it had slammed into the center console. He did his usual post-crash body check: arms and legs in place, nothing blurry, nothing hurting; he was still made of rocks, but otherwise—

Ben realized that he had just hurtled into stainless steel going upwards of seventy miles per hour, and he didn’t have a scratch on him. 

“ You?” Johnny yelled. “ You ow?” 

Still pinned against the window by Ben’s gargantuan palm, it was really more of a distressed mumble than a yell, but it was still more than enough to buck Ben’s bone-chilling observation all the way to the very back of his brain. Ben took his hand back, shimmying his way back to his seat. 

“Fuck, sorry. You okay, kid?” 

“ Ugh,” Johnny said, rubbing his face in disgust. It felt like he just fell face first into a sandbox . 

Wiping what he really hoped was sand off his cheek, Johnny asked, “What just happened?” 

Reed hummed in acknowledgment of the question, rolling down his window to get a better look. Approximately two hundred yards ahead of them,  a band of striped plastic police barricade had sectioned off all four lanes of the westbound expressway. Beyond them, Reed could see at least five distinct vehicles crumpled into a single mass. Based on the lack of movement, Reed estimated the crash extended approximately a mile. In the distance, the wails of ambulances and police cars could be faintly heard. Reed saw no first responders milling about, taking statements or other less pressing tasks, which meant this crisis was either incredibly recent or occurred hours ago. 

While Reed examined their surroundings, Victor surveyed the damage. The exterior of the car was unmarred, but the same could not be said for the interior. Besides the cartoonish hole in the cab wall whose razor-sharp edges Grimm was attempting to bend over, it was apparent that anywhere Johnny’s skin touched the window had heated the glass to somewhere around two thousand kelvin, leaving a slight but unquestionable warp in the shape of the boy’s head. 

Victor swore in Latverian. There goes the security deposit. 

Outside, Reed spotted a police officer duck under the barricade and begin jogging rather frantically toward them.   

Reed reacted to this development as he had been taught to do so since he was a child: 

“Cop, cop,” Reed said urgently. 

Attempts had been made, by both Reed’s father and Ben, to teach Reed a subtler way to alert others to the presence of a police officer. They had not stuck. 

Victor and Ben both instantly straightened. 

“Keep your eyes down,” said Victor, while Ben barked, “Everybody be cool,” at the exact same time. The pair looked at each other strangely for a moment, before the officer stopped in front of the car. 

Well, less stopped and was made to stop, hitting the side of their truck with a clunk.

“Sorry, sorry , are you guys okay?” The officer asked, panting. His uniform was drenched in sweat, and his nameplate so askew that Victor wondered if the pin was even still fastened.

“Are you? ” Johnny asked voice pitched low enough that the cop wouldn’t hear. 

Susan smacked him on the arm. 

“What? He looks like he just ran a marathon!” 

Johnny yelped as Sue smacked him again. 

“We’re fine, officer,” Reed answered the question calmly and politely, despite the amateur Three Stooges act going on in the backseat.

While of the pair of them Victor was on the whole the more socially gifted, there was no question that when it came to figures of authority, Reed was-- well. The authority. The police of the United States may have traded the inky jackboots and tan uniforms of his childhood for false promises wrapped in puce ties, but the core of them was still the same, and that core was designed to serve men like Reed. 

The officer, Nelson, if his distressed nametag was to be believed, relaxed visibility. “Oh, thank god. You take a forty-minute nap and all of a sudden all hell breaks loose!” 

Nelson laughed. Reed did not laugh, as that was an irresponsible action from an active police officer that he did not find humorous.

Nelson backtracked, “I-I’m kidding.” 

“That’s good to hear,” Reed replied, genuinely glad that such negligence wasn’t propagated by a state-sponsored officer of the law. 

Unfortunately, the difference between his “unimpressed and somewhat worried” and “glad” faces was virtually undetectable by the uninitiated. Victor suppressed a smile. 

Nelson coughed into his fist, clearly uncomfortable. “A-Anyway, we’re redirecting traffic onto 278. Do you know how to get where you’re going from there?” Nelson asked. 

“Yes, sir,” Reed responded. 

Inside the car, Ben thumped his fist on the roof in triumph. Victor mentally added another zero to the repair check he had been calculating in his head. 

The officer nodded back, before turning around and sprinting back to the scene of the accident. 

“Well, that settles that,” Said Ben. “Hey Vic, when we get Debbie, you’re gonna switch with her, right?” 

 “ Excuse me ?” Victor asked. 

“Well, she can’t exactly sit back here with me, and it ain’t like you and me really need seatbelts, seeing as we’re--”

“We are not picking up your wife!” Victor insisted. 

“Why the hell not? We’re already goin’ her way!”

“Did you not hear me when I said ‘imperative that we get back to the lab as soon as possible,’ or can you simply not process any word larger than two syllables?”

“Reed, back me up here!” 

“Again, punched my fiance,” Reed replied. But even Ben hadn’t, logistically speaking, trying to get Debbie right now was a very dumb idea. 

The closest public parking structure to Yancy Street was fifteen blocks away and required at least twenty-five dollars for a pass. None of them have the money or the identification needed to pay it. Walking fifteen blocks to Yancy to find Debbie (assuming that Debbie was actually there) and explaining the situation would take at least an hour, during which the car would almost certainly be towed, meaning they would have to either walk another twenty blocks to the Baxter or ride the subway, which, as Sue had mentioned, would be flooded with tourists alongside the rest of Manhattan for the school break. 

“ Grimm ,” Victor began, hoping against hope that slowing the speed at which he spoke would somehow give Grimm the gift of comprehension. “We have all been diagnosed with a novel disease--” 

Ben groaned in annoyance. “It’s not like we’re dyin’ or anything!” 

”Radiation sickness has a latency stage, you idiot!” Victor shouted, “Symptoms cease for a brief period before increasing exponentially. We could lose whatever control we’ve gained over our mutations, they could expand in scope—” 

“Wait, what?” Johnny cut in.

It was at that moment that Victor remembered that Johnny was in the car. 

“ Victor ,” Sue hissed between gritted teeth. 

“What’s he talking about?” Johnny asked his sister anxiously. 

“ Nothing ,” Sue insisted, shooting Victor a nasty look as she did so. “It’s—“

Ben cut her off. “Reed. What’s he talking about?”

All four pairs of eyes in the car turned to the man in question. 

“Well.” Reed swallowed. “Uh, technically--”

Technically, Sue had ordered them, on pain of death, not to mention the symptoms and stages of normal radiation poisoning to Johnny and Ben. Despite the fact that their mutations were caused by extreme radiation exposure, Sue noticed early on that their lymphocyte counts were all well within the norms for their ages, sexes, and builds, and most importantly, stayed within those norms on every test. Given the lack of other symptoms, Sue decided that unless any of them started experiencing a downturn, Ben and Johnny shouldn’t be informed to avoid a potential nocebo effect. 

It wasn’t the most ethical choice, especially when considering the requirements for informed medical consent as defined under Canterbury v. Spence, but Reed understood why she had made it. Especially now. 

Johnny had squeezed himself into the corner of the car, as far away from the others as he could get without opening the door. His chest was heaving. 

“When the fuck were you planning on telling us this?” Ben asked. 

Never .  “At 500 roentgens, you’re dead. Instantly.” Sue explained. “We were exposed to something like 50,000 roentgens. We should be piles of goo right now, but we’re not. We’re—“ 

Sue gestured to all of them. 

“This. There have been way too many variations to use radiation sickness as the playbook. Our lymphocytes are too high, our radiation levels are getting lower by the day—“

Johnny knew what Sue sounded when she was confident in something and when she was just lying to try and make him feel better; whatever science mumbo-jumbo she was spouting, she believed in it. Johnny relaxed. 

But—

“But there’s a chance?” Johnny asked.

Sue hesitated. 

Ben said what she couldn’t. “There’s always a chance, kid.” He sighed. “Well, if I’m kicking the bucket, I’m damn well seeing my wife beforehand.” 

“ Ben,“ Sue chastised. 

Victor scoffed. “Myopic fiu de târfă ,” 

“Guys! ”  Reed said sharply. “Statistically speaking, yes, the odds of us deteriorating further are small. But our present mutations are more than enough to warrant immediate medical attention, and as previously discussed, going to Yancy Street is not feasible right now. We’re going to the lab.” As the driver, Reed’s was the final word. 

“Fine,” Ben grumbled. “You know what? Just tell me when we’re close. I’ll jump out.” 

He’d do it. Compared to jumping out of a Poseidon jet at twenty-five hundred feet, it was a cakewalk. 

“Ben,” Reed said, pained. He was still mad at him, but not mad enough at Ben to be okay with him jumping out of a moving car. Honestly, there was almost nothing Ben could do to make him that mad. 

“Spare us all the dramatics, won’t you?” Victor said, rolling his eyes underneath his hood. 

“You-- me, spare the--” Ben stuttered. “How ‘bout I spare you an ass-kicking?” 

Johnny unbuckled himself preemptively. “If you guys are gonna fight again, I’m switching seats with Victor.” 

“No ,” Sue yanked the seatbelt out of his hand and shoved it back into place. 

Reed shot a look at Victor. Victor shot a look of his own back. Thirty seconds later, Victor sighed. 

“We can make a brief stop on Yancy Street,” Victor said. ”Grimm shall exit the vehicle while we continue to the Baxter. Grimm, you shall be at the mercy of the New York City transportation system to find your way back to us.” 

Ben paused, taking that information in. “Gee, thanks,” He said finally, sarcasm dripping from his voice. “Hey, Vic, you more of a firstborn child or a roomful of golden straw kinda guy? Just planning out my thank-you.” 

“I generally take basic decency, the kind children are capable of, but seeing as that’s beyond you I suppose that stumbling attempt at an insult will have to do.” 

Johnny barked out a laugh, pointing at Ben as he did so. “He fuckin’ got you!” 

“You know what? I’m done.” Sue pulled her headphones out of her walkman. “I don’t want to hear anything from any of you for the rest of the trip. Quiet game, starting now.”

Johnny groaned. “Sue, come on , that was the first cool thing he said since we left the island!” 

“The what game?” Reed asked. 

“QUIET. GAME.” Sue repeated. “Or I’m gonna plug in the Walkman and I swear to god, I will Backstreet Boys each of you to kingdom come!” 

“Susan--” Victor began. 

“Susie, are you--”

Sue brandished the aux cord threateningly.

……………………………………………………..

About six miles, or twenty minutes and thirty-five seconds of boy band-enforced silence later, the pony truck lurched to a stop. 

With a grunt, Ben rose from the hay bale he’d been using as a seat, but before he could get more than a couple steps, Sue’s kid brother’s head popped through the hole Ben’d made when they stopped on the highway. 

“ Psst, ” Johnny whispered.  

“You know she can see ya, right? What’s the point of whispering?” Ben asked. 

“Do you really live here?” Johnny asked, still whispering. 

Ben answered, “Born and raised.” 

Johnny’s entire face puckered like he’d just gone bobbing for lemons. “There’s like, a rat giving birth on the sidewalk over there,” 

“Where’s he supposed to go, the rat hospital?” Ben retorted, “Mind your own business.” 

And with that, he got out of the trailer, bare feet touching down on genuine Yancy asphalt. 

Yancy Street wasn’t like other Manhattan neighborhoods. 

While most politicians, cops, and real estate moguls would agree: yes, it’s worse , Ben Grimm and everybody else on Yancy knew the truth. They were just about all that was left of the real Manhattan . The tired, the poor, the hungry, people without a penny to their name, hoping to do better. The Gromacki family had come over on a ship from Poland a hundred years ago, and the Grimms had been struggling to make rent on a tiny tenement apartment ever since. 

About fifteen years back, for whatever reason, living packed in like sardines came into style for the richie-riches of the world. They started buying up whatever city property they could get their grubby hands on, talking nonsense about the “history,” how “charming” it all was. Last time he checked, the “history” of a ninety-year-old sweatshop where at least three grandpas on the block lost fingers wasn’t the kind you wanted in a place you slept in, but what the hell did he know? 

All across the island, people were getting priced out of their homes, fifty-year-old neighborhood staples turned into artisanal gingerbread boutiques, but not on Yancy. As long as the Maggia needed people dumped in the Hudson, they never would. 

He hadn’t been there when Lubowski cut the deal with Silvermane; Petunia and Jake had dragged him out of the gang kicking and screaming by then. If they hadn’t— well, smart money said he’d be dead, but at least the gang wouldn’t have turned into the Maggia’s muscle. 

If Danny could see what they’d become. Petty hitmen just to keep the rent low? Good grief, rolling in his grave didn’t cut it. If Danny were still alive, he’d have taught Lubowski a lesson or two about pride. About morals. About how far a man can go before he needs to look at himself in the mirror and wonder if all the blood was worth a forty-five-dollar piece of glass just to gawk at his stupid sellout face. 

Of course, he knew Lubowski would say Danny’d do the exact same thing to him. Funny how that works out. 

“Ben!” Reed’s voice pulled him from his reverie. He had rolled down the driver’s window and stuck his head out of it to call for him. 

“What?” Ben asked.

Reed motioned him closer, and when Ben got there, Reed pulled out the pied-piper ray he and Vic had cobbled together back at Marygay’s.

“You should take this with you,” Reed told him. “It seems like the news has left this place alone, but if that changes--” Reed pointed to one of the dials. 

“This controls the range. It goes from five feet to five hundred. The one next to it controls the size of the insulator bubble, be careful not to mix them up. Press this to activate the soundwaves--”

“Reed,” Victor said. His meaning was clear: they didn’t have the time to do a gizmos-for-dummies class. Still, Reed took the time to do it for the guy who just fed his boyfriend a knuckle sandwich. 

Reed nodded, leaning further out the window to place the device in Ben’s hands. 

“You sure you wanna give a pinhead like me something this fancy?” Ben asked. 

Reed shrugged. “Pretty sure there’s worse people I could hand it to.”

“You really know how to make a guy feel special, huh?” Ben said with a laugh. He took the box out of Reed’s arms. 

His head already all the way out the window, Reed scanned the street they were standing on. 

“Not too busy,” He noted. 

Ben clucked his tongue in agreement. “It’s noon on a Wednesday, everybody’s either at work or already drunk.” 

“You know, we could probably--” Reed began. 

Victor cut him off. “No.” 

“But--” 

“ No, Reed.” 

Reed looked like he wanted to argue, but if they hung around handing weird-lookin’ metal boxes to giant guys in overcoats outside of cars much longer and somebody was gonna call counterterrorism. Or worse: the gang. 

“Thanks, but no thanks,  Stretch. I can find my own way uptown.” 

“You know how to get the Baxter, right?” Reed asked. “Take the M to Bleeker, then--”

“Switch to the six.” Ben finished for him. He may have been away from home for a while, working for Uncle Sam and all, but he hadn’t been gone that long. “You ain’t exactly out in the boonies.” 

“Right, yeah.” Reed’s head bowed slightly in embarrassment. “See you later.” 

“See ya.” 

Pied-piper ray safely under his arm, Ben Grimm stepped onto the sidewalk. 

For a moment, he just took it all in. The fire escapes he’d been climbing since he was old enough to walk, at the graffiti Mr. Kaminski at the Yancy Market used to pay him a buck-twenty to clean off on his way home, had always filled him with-- something . Pride, when he was younger. Hate, when he was a little less young. He spent so much of his time at this base or that nowadays, flying whatever death trap they would let him, laying on eyes old one-seventy usually filled him with the kind of relief only weeks of sleeping on army-issue bedsheets can spark. But at this moment, Ben felt nothing. No pride, no hate. Not even relief at seeing the place after nearly blowing up. 

His old preflight checklist kept running through his head. 

Canopy, check. (Nope.)

Harness, check. (Nope.)

DEECs, check. (Nope.)

Explanation for why I look like something out of a dime-store paperback-- 

Victor’s voice echoed through his head: Symptoms cease for a brief period before increasing exponentially, expanding in scope--

Like Reed would ever let that happen. He had been building working rockets when everybody else their age was trying to figure out pull-ups. There wasn’t nothing the guy couldn’t do if he really put his mind to it. 

You know what, Ben decided, the why and how didn’t matter. Reed was gonna fix it, that’s all Debbie needed to know. That this was all temporary. 

Debs, give Reed a couple of weeks and it’ll be like this whole thing never happened. 

That was good. Debbie could do a couple of weeks. Hell, she’d done months without him, back when he had been testing out stealth planes in the Gulf. 

“This is nothing ,” Ben told himself and marched his rocky ass to the call box. 

Reed waited until Ben had entered the building to drive off.