The Power Avengers by David Hagerty
from Windmills: a PUNK NOIR Magazine series
We met at dusk on the perimeter of the windmill farm, cut the weak chain-link fence that enclosed it, and drove onto the compound with only a crunch of sand under our tires.
Those towers rose hundreds of feet, the manifestation of government authority in a desert of mountain peaks. Dozens of them spread across the plateau, as imposing as an entrenched army. All were constructed of solid steel to withstand hurricane-force winds, yet they squeaked no louder than a washing machine, barely audible over the whistle of night wind, while circulating an intoxicating scent of blooming yucca and desert mallow.
We’d forged an alliance on the dark web, our unifier a hatred of wind turbines. We called ourselves the Power Avengers, the only resistance to the government’s imposition of “clean” energy. We represented the best of all ideologies. We were libertarians opposed to civic mandates, environmentalists committed to saving the desert from industrialization, animal rights activists appalled by the death of thousands of birds, anarchists devoted to revolution. We didn’t care if it blacked out the whole valley, we had committed to destroying every one of those whirring propellers.
As we assembled at the base of one, we realized the enormity of our mission. Those pillars were thicker than a ship’s mast and the triple blades wider than a bomber’s propeller, claimed Jed, codenamed the Squid, who’d spent six months in the Navy before they discharged him for insubordination. When he knocked on the metal to test its strength, it echoed deep within the cylinder.
Overhead, electricity crackled through the wires, reminding us that anybody could be surveilling us from nearby Palm Springs, whose heated pools and neon hotels sucked up all that energy. So we operated with guerrilla stealth. We maintained lights out and radio silence, speaking in whispers.
Before we amassed, we’d researched the best tactics online. We’d debated in private chat rooms, sought video or news stories as evidence, but came to no consensus. So we’d loaded up for a multi-pronged assault.
First, we tried to loosen the bolts that held one tower to its concrete pad, but Eziah, mission named The Tool, had brought only a standard wrench from his auto shop, which lacked the torque.
Then he tied a chain around the base and tried to dislodge it with a full-throttle acceleration from his diesel pick-up, but the only damage done was to his bumper, which tore loose in a screech of metal.
In frustration, Jethro, codenamed the Nighthawk, chucked a tire iron at the turbines, like Romanoff using Loki’s scepter against him, but the blades deflected that lance with a faint clang as effortlessly as if it were one of those dead birds.
That gave us a better idea. One thread online claimed that a barrage of debris could stop the turbines, so the Squid had picked up a bazooka at the army surplus. Yet when we launched a fusillade of rotten vegetables and dirty laundry, the blades shredded them into filthy, funky confetti.
In despair, we slumped below one tower and stared up at its majesty. Those turbines embodied the government’s silent power. How could we defeat such force with citizen resistance?
That’s when the Squid pledged his life for the cause. He’d heard that the prop’s weakest point was its screw and that he could disable the mechanism with a few snips of wire. After failing to even loosen the bolts, the Tool doubted his stratagem, but lacking a better one, we agreed.
We fastened our belts together to create a harness that the Squid looped through his combat fatigues. Then he shimmied up the tower like a telephone repairman, armed with pliers, a hammer, and a saw. We watched him disappear into the darkness, then marked his progress by the squeak of his sneakers against the metal.
Finally, we heard the ping of his tools, which were barely audible over the scampering of rodents and the call of mockingbirds. We felt like nocturnal predators ourselves, silent saboteurs, hunting by scent and sound.
Then something landed in the sand with a thud. We studied the dark sky but saw not a glimmer of the Squid—until his cry cut through the silence. “Stay strong!”
With a night scope, the Hawk spotted him clinging to one blade. His belt had ripped from his jumpsuit, and he’d wrapped his legs about the thing, riding it like a merry-go-round.
“Quiet,” screeched the Hawk. “Somebody will hear you.”
Rather than risk another man with a rescue, we attacked the tower at its base of strength.
From an online video, the Cook, as he’d named himself, had learned that household chemicals could be combined into a caustic brew strong enough to melt metal, so we poured bleach and ammonia on the pad and watched it bubble. It smelled potent but worked too slow, so we tossed a firecracker at the mix. It just hissed—until it exploded.
Once we’d picked ourselves up and dusted off the sand, we saw that pillar still standing, but a fire had caught in the scrub brush and was spreading rapidly. We watched the flames lick the base of two towers, hoping heat might weaken them, yet it only singed the metal. Soon, though, the smoke rose in a dense column so high it set the Squid to choking and coughing. Too quick to control, fire encircled our whole operation. We tried to stamp out the flames but instead melted our shoes and scorched our calves.
By then it was too late as sirens wailed over the empty desert and strobe lights surrounded our raiding party.
Hours later, as we sat handcuffed together in the basement of some government bunker, a G-man interrogated us.
“Did you propeller heads really think you could take down a windmill with hand tools?”Put like that, it sounded crazy, but all superheroes fight the powers of evil by hand.
This story appears as part of Windmills, a PUNK NOIR Magazine series.
Bio
David Hagerty has published four novels and more than 50 short stories, including three in Punk Noir. He typically writes about crime and often politics from the point of view of the everyday person.
PUNK NOIR, the online literary and arts magazine that looks at the world at its most askew, casting a bloodshot eye over the written word, film, music, television and more.
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was there a writing prompt on this pub for water tanks and windmills, because I just read something similar ...