The Ultimates: Against All Enemies Read Online Free Page B

The Ultimates: Against All Enemies
Book: The Ultimates: Against All Enemies Read Online Free
Author: Alex Irvine
Tags: United States, Science-Fiction, adventure, Fantasy, Comics & Graphic Novels, Heroes, Movie-TV Tie-In
Pages:
Go to
things... but this might be the hundredth time." He killed his beer and tipped the glass at Steve. "And that, soldier, is what is known as a privileged communication."
    "Understood, sir." Steve sat and nursed his ginger ale while Fury went to the bar and came back. The jukebox started blaring, and Steve's mood soured further. A year after he'd been thawed, he still didn't get the music.
    "So I thought to myself" Fury said when he'd settled in the booth again, "uniforms stick together. And it occurred to me that maybe you needed to have a beer. Or a ginger ale. Whatever." Fury raised his glass.
    "The uniform."
    "Damn right," Steve said, returning the toast. "The uniform." A cheer went up from a group of three people at the bar. Steve saw that they were looking at the TV
    over his head. He turned to see the other TV , and watched a Yankee trotting around the bases.
    "You look like you just bit into something rotten," Fury said. "Let me guess. Dodgers fan?" The depth of his anger surprised Steve. "Hell yes. That's one of the worst things about coming back. Los Angeles? How could they move to Los Angeles? And the Giants moving, too? And who are these Mets?
    That's not baseball."
    "Now it is," Fury said with a shrug.
    "And this designated hitter rule," Steve went on.
    Fury winked his good eye. "Un-American, right?"
    "It is," Steve insisted. 'You play the game the way the game is supposed to be played... " He trailed off, and realized that he was really thinking about something else. "Sometimes I think the uniform's all I have," he said. "I turn on the TV... you know, I was just thinking tonight. Before I got thawed out, I'd never seen a television in my life. Now it's on all the time, everywhere. You can see anything."
    "Except what's really going on."
    "Well. You don't need to see everything. I mean, the average person doesn't."
    "You don't think so?"
    Steve set down his glass. "No, I don't. That's what we're here for. We're here to keep the boogeymen out from under the bed. It doesn't do any good if we get rid of the boogeyman and then put his picture on the six o'clock news for everyone to get scared of all over again."
    Fury was looking at him, and Steve suddenly realized that the general hadn't responded because he was waiting for Steve to figure out the implications of what he'd just said. "No," Steve said. "I don't believe that. I don't believe in all of this mumbo-jumbo about keeping people scared. This is America. We don't do things like that."
    'Well," General Fury said, "we try not to, anyway."
    That's not an America I recognize, Steve thought. And it's not an America I want to live in. The America I believe in doesn't let political squabbling compromise its security.
    And if that's how things really are, then I'm going to do something about it. I've done dirty jobs for this country before, and I'll do it again.
    He felt like he was in dangerous territory. You're coming close to going off the reservation, son, he told himself But if what General Fury was telling him was true, America had fallen a long way since Roosevelt had told the country that the only thing it had to fear was fear itself.
    Fury was looking at him. "I can see the wheels spinning, Captain Rogers."
    "Just thinking all of this over, sir. What do we do?"
    "What do we do? We play the game the way the game is supposed to be played." Fury drained the rest of his beer and stood. "Back to running SHIELD. Shadow military governments don't run themselves. Thanks for coming out."
    "Any time," Steve said.
    Outside, Fury offered him a ride home, but Steve decided he'd rather walk.
    "You sure?" Fury was jingling his keys, obviously in a hurry to get somewhere else.
    "Yeah," Steve said. The only company he wanted right then was his own thoughts, and his own misgivings, and his own sense that something had to be done.
    Fury unlocked the Toyota, but paused before getting in. "Cap," he said. "This country needs people like you, but the people who run it aren't like

Readers choose