Metahumans vs the Undead: A Superhero vs Zombie Anthology (2 page)

One of the undead rounded the corner of the house they had just exited, a fat man in a stained wife-beater and nothing else, blood smearing his entire face and dripping from his chin. His moon-white eyes settled on the women. He snarled, grinning savagely and dropping the slimy piece of intestine he’d been half-heartedly chewing. He charged toward them with a garbled roar, fat, bloody hands outstretched.

Spectrolite leveled the shotgun at his head, but Ametrine beat her to it with just a thought.

The zombie froze in place, as if suddenly cast in stone. With a minor lift of her chin, Ametrine shattered the undead man into a million
shards
, imploding his body like a bomb-blasted building.

“Nice going, Sis,” Spectrolite said dryly, lowering her weapon once more. “Saves me ammo.”

From behind the wild tangle of dark hair that fell over her face, Ametrine somehow managed a slight smile.

The two sisters, while not identical, looked enough alike that people sometimes confused them with one another, but that only happened when they were out of costume.

In costume, the world knew each of them for their own identities. Ametrine, in her violet and gold. Spectrolite, preferring more earthy tones, wore dark green and gray, the eye insignia on her chest impossible to miss.

They were both Kinetics since puberty, their super-human abilities stemming from a toxic combination of synthetic drugs tainting the water supply of their parents’ generation and a highly unusual combination of
neuro
-chemicals.

There weren’t many Kinetics in the world, but there were certainly enough.

Although tonight, Spectrolite thought, they could have used an entire army from Gen Rx and still she wouldn’t have bet on them winning this fight. Even if they managed to defeat every last undead creature, there was still an entire town that had lost the majority of their population. No matter what happened from this point forward, Spectrolite would not be able to call it a victory. But she was not known for her sunny disposition either. That was her sister. Together, they were a perfect, functioning, self-contained unit. Yin and Yang. One dark, one light. The way it had always been and, she imagined, always would be. The sisters Stone, Laura and Lindsey, forever entwined.

Another scream yanked Spectrolite from her thoughts and she warily peered through her goggles, searching the dark landscape for the screamer.

“There’s too many of them,” she told Ametrine. “And most of them seem to be inside. How did they all get in the houses?”

“They probably turned indoors,” Ametrine replied. “What we’re hearing now is the sounds of the undead eating their own families.”

Spectrolite winced. “Going from house to house will take too long.” She scanned the neighborhood, thinking. After a moment, she said, “Can you collapse the structures? Make it easier for us to get in and the victims to get out?”

Ametrine scowled at her. “I could, but I don’t think bringing roofs down on people’s heads would be particularly helpful.”

“What about just a front wall?”

“We’d still have to go from house to house, Laura. We need to figure out another way and fast.”

Seconds ticked by. More agonized screams echoed throughout the night. “We’ll have to lure them out, then,” Spectrolite said at last. “But how? All we know is that they like eating people.” The absurdity of what she’d said made her feel like cringing, but she’d have to think about that later.

“We have to split up,” Ametrine said. “I’ll go east, you go west. We don’t have any other choice.”

Spectrolite considered objecting, but knew her sister was right. She nodded and raced for the nearest house to her left while Ametrine ran off in the opposite direction.

There was no time for niceties. When she arrived at the front door, she kicked it in with one heavy, black boot and barged into the house, weapon raised and sweeping back and forth.

The foyer was empty, but she heard the sound of a television coming from a nearby room. Lifting her goggles so they rested on her forehead, she cautiously moved in the direction of the noise. A sporting event was on by the sound of it.

Passing through an empty kitchen, she found no signs of disturbance. Maybe no one was home?

She continued to explore the house until she came to a den where the television was. A man sat on a sofa, his back to her, facing the TV. From what she could tell he appeared to be in his late twenties or early thirties.

“Sir?”

No response.

She spoke louder. “Sir?”

When she still didn’t receive a reply, she stepped to the side of the sofa to get a look at the man’s face.

Marble-white eyes remained fixated on the television screen while drool dribbled down his chin. He wore a blue and green jersey with the number 44 across the chest, and in one hand he held a can of beer, rested against his knee.

He was clearly like the others they’d seen tonight, but without the bloodlust. Instead, he seemed to be in some kind of trance, unaware of anything except the television.

Without taking her eyes off him, Spectrolite moved to the TV and shut it off. The man jerked as though something had surprised him. The beer can slipped from his grasp and fell, spilling beer and foam onto the braided rug at his feet.

Raising the shotgun so it pointed at his chest, Spectrolite said, “Don’t move.”

The man blinked furiously, brought the heels of his hands up to his eyes and screamed.

“What the . . . . Sir, are you okay?” She wasn’t sure how to react. So far, every person with white eyes had been a reanimated corpse, seemingly oblivious to pain.

When the man dropped his hands from his face, blood dripped from the corners of both eyes, but the irises were now a bright, regular blue. He regarded her with a confused expression until his gaze found hers and then, due to her own supernatural eyes, he became entranced again. A look of placid content overcame him; he sighed deeply and his breathing slowly regulated.

“Dang!” She lowered her goggles once more, reached down and shook the man by the shoulder.

He snapped out of his new stupor just as quickly as he’d fallen into it. “Where’s Stephanie?” he asked, glancing around the room.

“Stephanie?”

“My girlfriend. She was right here. Who are you?” His eyes moved up and down Spectrolite’s body, no doubt confused by her costume.

She ignored the look. “I don’t know. I think she must have . . . left.”

“Left?” The man shot to his feet. “In the middle of the
Superbowl
?”

“The
Superbowl
?” It was Spectrolite’s turn to be confused. She looked at the blank television screen. “Everyone in town must have been watching,” she muttered thoughtfully.

“What?” the man said. “I don’t know. Probably most people. Why? And who are
you
? Why are you in my house?”

“Most people,” she repeated before returning her attention to the man. He wore a football jersey. On the coffee table were several bowls of various kinds of snacks: chips and pretzels, as well as a couple more unopened cans of beer. “But for some reason, you’re immune. I’m guessing not completely, though, based on the state I found you in.”

The man’s brow furrowed. From his expression it was clear he thought the costumed woman before him was insane.

“Stephanie!” he shouted again, seemingly not wanting to take his eyes off Spectrolite, his eyes snapping between her goggled face and the weapon she held.

“Stay here,” she told him. “I’ll search the rest of the house for Stephanie, but I doubt she’s still here. Unfortunately, I damaged your front door, but once I’m gone I want you to barricade it behind me. Understood?”

When he didn’t reply, she added. “Don’t worry. I’m here to help.”

“Help? Help what?”

She exited the den without replying. Luckily, the house was a small bungalow and only took a few minutes to search. She found nothing out of the ordinary and no other people. Before she left, she peeked back in on the man, who was toying with a cell phone. When he saw her, he barked, “I’m calling the police. I want you out of here now!”

“Just do what I said. Barricade the door.”

The sound of him swearing at her followed her back out onto the lawn. As she ran to the house next door, the wheels of her mind spun frantically. Something about the TV signal, then. Whatever had happened to this community had been done intentionally and done at the optimum time, when most of the population would be glued to their television sets.

It was genius, really. But who could be behind it? And why? Some kind of controlled experiment? Was it visual or auditory? Whatever the signal had been, it had fried the brains of the viewers or listeners, and then what? Rebooted them?

It didn’t make a lot of sense but it was a theory, at least, though not one she could contemplate for long. She was just mounting the front steps of the new house when two children, a boy and a girl, came racing out the door, their expressions terrified, tears streaming down their cheeks. The girl, no more than nine, ran ahead of the boy and seemed to have not even seen Spectrolite, slamming into her lower body at full speed.

Managing to keep her balance, Spectrolite gently grabbed the child by a shoulder and said, “Whoa! It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

The girl seemed stunned for a moment, then began to scream, struggling to be free of Spectrolite’s grasp, while the boy, maybe a year older, attempted to rescue his sister by pounding Spectrolite’s ribs, hips and thighs. Anywhere his small fists could find to make contact, they did, and all the while he shouted through his sobs, “Let her go! Let her go!”

“I’m not one of them!” Spectrolite insisted. “Calm down!”

The children either were too hysterical to listen or just flat-out didn’t believe her, because they both continued to fight and shriek. She was left with no choice but to shove her goggles back up with her forearm.

Making eye contact with the boy first spared her any further blows to her body. He froze in place, arms falling limply to his sides. He would remain in that position until she made physical contact with him again. Potentially, if she was to leave, he would stand in the same spot until he dropped dead of dehydration and, even if moved by another party, would remain in an almost comatose state. He could, in fact, be treated as a coma patient for the rest of his life, being fed intravenously but fully capable of breathing on his own.

With him subdued, Spectrolite was able to concentrate on the girl, though she had to grip the child by the chin and force her to look up into her eyes. She regretted having to scare the child even more with her actions, but she had seen what was loose in the neighborhood and couldn’t risk the kids running headlong into one of those things. Bad enough they were probably already running away from one or more of them.

Once both children were mesmerized, Spectrolite quickly scanned the street for any action and, deciding the kids would be safe on the porch for a couple minutes, she entered the house, weapon at the ready.

What she walked in on was something she would not soon forget.

In the living room, all crouched on the floor, two men and a woman were all feeding on a second woman, hands dug into her guts and greedily yanking out strings of greasy gray intestines and what Spectrolite could only guess was at least part of a liver.

The fact the children had most likely also witnessed this scene was almost enough to break her. Whether the kid’s mom was dead and being eaten by their father or if she was the other woman doing the eating probably didn’t matter much to their future mental health. Either way, those kids were going to be screwed up for life.

Spectrolite watched the undead feasting for a moment longer, disgustedly fascinated, but that wasn’t the only thing making her hesitate with her finger on the trigger.