Title: Zombie Swarm
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Ben, Kevin, Gwen, Cooper
Words: ~2,900
Summary: The team leaves the desert and heads for the next zombie-infested town. But something's not right…
Disclaimer: Ben 10: Alien Force and Alien Swarm © Cartoon Network and created by Man of Action. I'm just stealing the characters temporarily and sticking them in the midst of a zombie uprising.
Warnings: More gore, thanks to Ben's accelerated plasma blaster and Gwen's sudden awesomeness. And I had issues writing this, so some paragraphs are choppy. Sorry.

Zombie Swarm
By Minty Chinchilla

Chapter 3: Gran Turismo

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The four teens carried all of the weapons Kevin had selected back to the Challenger outside in the canyon. Cooper was about to dismantle his suit, but Kevin pulled out the pocket dimension generator and they fit the suit inside. Ben and Kevin went back inside the Cave to get Ben's motorcycle as Gwen and Cooper settled into the car.

"What's taking them so long?" Gwen leaned her head against the window. Cooper shrugged vaguely, too engrossed in staring at her hair shining in the afternoon sunlight coming in through the window. Ben and Kevin finally came out of the doorway in the cliff.

Kevin double-checked that the door was hidden and then hopped into the Challenger as Ben swung his leg over the back of the motorcycle. As he started up the car, Kevin looked in the side view mirror and caught a glimpse of Ben putting his helmet on. Kevin rolled his window down, pulled the car around, and started driving along the canyon, back the way he had driven in. He heard the motorcycle before he saw it. Ben sped past the car and up the canyon. He rode the bike in the middle of the dirt road, and dropped back just enough to keep Kevin from speeding up past him.

"Damn, he's teasing." Kevin smirked. He pressed down on the accelerator and the car gained on the motorcycle. He tapped the pedal a few times, the engine responding with a well-tuned growl each time.

"Kevin! Don't do that! You're going to run him over!" Gwen reached across the seats to smack Kevin upside the head but he ducked before she could hit him.

"Watch it! If you hit me, I will run him over!" Kevin dodged another attempted smack. "And not on purpose! Stop it!"

Cooper was merely enjoying Gwen's leaning all over him so she could reach across to the front. He was a little disappointed she gave up so soon and leaned back into her seat next to him.

Ben had noticed Kevin's car right on his tail, so he sped up and pulled ahead of the car again. Kevin wouldn't let Ben get too far away, so he continued to dog the green-jacketed boy. They sped up and slowed down in an oddly graceful dance until they got out of the canyon. Ben drifted left and rode alongside the car, glancing over his shoulder to look through Kevin's open window. Kevin was accelerating more, able to go even faster without worrying about cliffs on either side of his baby. Ben kept pace, and the two green machines burned rubber down the desert road.

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The Challenger skidded across the pavement and came to an abrupt halt right before hitting a light post. Kevin got out and opened up the trunk. Cooper donned his new battle suit, and Gwen tried to see what Kevin was arranging inside the pocket dimension generator. Ben took off his helmet to talk tactics with the other three.

"The monitor Grandpa Max gave me says that the zombies here are mostly on the other side of town." Ben pointed down a street. "We've got to work together so we can finish them all off quickly and move on to the next town. Cooper and I will stay out here. Coop's got his suit to protect him and I can out run a zombie if I use the Omnitrix. Kevin, you and Gwen take the car and stay safe, OK?"

Gwen agreed with the plan, but Ben had to stare Kevin down when the older teen tried to protest.

"Just do it Kev."

"Fine." Kevin growled as he reached into the trunk. He pulled out a small tech and handed it to Ben. "It's an accelerated plasma blaster, level 5. Tiny, but packs a punch. Shouldn't be too hard to handle while on the bike."

Ben put the blaster into the back of his waistband. Kevin reached back into the trunk and took out the sawed off shotgun he had Gwen carry earlier that night.

"Gwen, you're in charge of this."

Kevin and Gwen got into the car. Kevin started it up again, and with a mock salute, drove off down the road Ben had pointed down.

"You ready Cooper?" asked Ben.

"Yup. Race you there?" Cooper's suit powered up and a large jet pack ignited, lifting him up a good five feet off the ground.

"You're on!" Ben revved the motorcycle's engine and sped off after Kevin's car, Cooper close behind. When the two boys arrived downtown, the zombies were already in full force. Kevin was driving the wrong way down the street to let Gwen aim through her window. The Challenger easily ran down the slow-moving zombies. Many of them lost their heads to the car's screeching tires, which effectively killed them. Others still struggled to move even after being run down. Ben rode down the street after Kevin, weaving in and out of the corpses littering the road. He pulled the blaster out and took a few practice shots at the still moving dismembered bodies. Bright bluish purple blasts of super heated something arched through the air and fried the legless body Ben had managed to hit.

"Sweet." Ben sped up and caught up to the car, blasted an arm and half of a torso that was hanging onto Kevin's door, then took a turn at an intersection to track down more zombies. Cooper followed behind him, hitting as many zombies as he could with the freeze ray and kicking them with his over-large metal boots. Icy zombie shards lay lifeless behind the blonde boy's robot suit as he stomped on after Ben.

Ben continued to fry zombies as Cooper came up from behind and froze the first zombies in the incoming horde. A large pick-up with a ramp bridging the bed and the cabin was parked at the side of the road.

"Perfect." Ben accelerated towards the ramp, hitting the throttle at just the right moment, and the motorcycle soared up and over the truck, flipping completely upside down. Still in the air, Ben took aim with the plasma blaster and shot multiple zombies before the bike landed, right side up. He vaguely heard Cooper yelling "AWESOME!" Ben let the rush of jumping the bike fill him and he sped on, just barely missing being cut with icy shards as Cooper round-housed the wall of frozen zombies Ben had jumped.

Kevin continued to drive down the wrong side of the road. Going at about 60, he hit the zombies with enough force to prevent them from getting up again. Gwen was a bit clumsy with the shotgun at first, but once she got the hang of it, nothing stood a chance. Buckshot sprayed out of the barrel and completely destroyed the heads of the zombies that were within range. Gwen let a maniacal grin spread across her face as she took out four zombies at once. Kevin never thought she would enjoy wreaking havoc as much as she was.

"And you said I was the only one who was going to like this."

"Shut up and hand me another round."

Three hours later, the car met up again with the robot and the motorcycle in front of the town's library. Cooper jumped out of his battle suit and went to see if Gwen was all right. He started telling her about all the stuff he and Ben had managed to do as they fought off their share of zombies. He waved his arms around and made sound effects for moments when he couldn't think of words to describe what he wanted to say.

"And then Ben did the VROOM thing up the back of the pick-up truck and it was the COOLEST THING EVER. He shot ten zombies before he hit the ground! TEN!!! It was all PEW PEW KZZZZZZAAT!!!! Them zombies didn't stand a chance!"

"So, what?" Kevin turned to Ben. "Did Cooper suddenly switch his fanboying from Gwen to you or something?"

"I hope not. It'd be kind of awkward."

"He'll probably go back to crushing on Gwen when he finds out she was pretty kickass too."

"Shotgun worked?" Ben pointed at the shotgun Gwen was still holding, even after she had gotten out of the car and there weren't any more zombies.

"More than worked. Obliterated. I don't think she's going to use anything else until we run out of ammo. I'm kinda proud of her."

Ben laughed as they walked up to Gwen and Cooper.

"Hey, Gwen, can you call up Grandpa? He'd probably want to know our progress."

"Oh, sure." Gwen pulled out her Plumber's badge and zeroed in on Max's badge, bringing up a holographic image when he answered. "Hey Grandpa! We just finished up another town."

"Good work guys." Max's hologram smiled up at his grandchildren, but the smile quickly turned into a frown. "Unfortunately, I've got bad news. It looks like most of the zombies are congregating not too far from where you are now. You four are the closest and it's going to take Manny and me a while to drive up there. Can you guys handle it, or do you want to wait for us to back you up?"

"Depends." Ben spoke up. "How many are 'most of the zombies'?"

"Too many for one cemetery. They're swarming all over Ashfield, mainly in two places in the town. The scans can't tell me what kind of places the zombies are going to though, and they can't tell me why." Max's signal started flickering. "Just head—zzzt—try to find out where the zomb—zzzzzt—going, but la—zzzzzzzzt—get there."

The hologram fizzled out. Gwen couldn't reestablish a connection. The four teens stared at the Plumber's badge for a moment more then Gwen put it away and turned to the boys.

"Well, you heard him. We're going to have to go to Ashfield." She hoisted the shotgun and opened the car door, climbing into the back seat. Cooper hopped out of his robot suit and Kevin helped him put it back into the pocket dimension generator. Kevin then took Ben's motorcycle and put it into the pocket dimension too.

"Hey, I was gonna ride that!" Ben hit Kevin in the arm.

"No you're not!" Kevin rubbed his arm where Ben had punched it. "Gramps said all the zombies were heading to this Ashfield place, so there's going to be a heckuva lot more of 'em on the road. I'm not risking you getting attacked."

Ben was about to talk back, but held his tongue before he could say anything that would piss off the much larger teen. He took a deep breath and calmed down. As he got into the passenger seat, he smirked across the roof of the car at Kevin.

"You'd just miss me if I died."

"Shut it Tennyson." Kevin rolled his eyes. "We already went over this. I have better things to do with my time than go to your funeral."

"But you would go to it." Ben chuckled as he closed the car door and buckled his seatbelt. Kevin just shook his head and started the car up. The Challenger's tires squealed as the car took off up the road leading out of town. Kevin drove to Ashfield, taking care to run over any zombies straggling along the way.

Night and fog fell as they drove into the city limits; a typical "Welcome to Ashfield!" sign loomed up out of the mist. What was atypical about it were the large smears of what could have been blood across the bottom half.

The four teens stared at the sign for a moment, but their attention was torn away from it by a purple glow coming from Ben's pocket. Ben reached into the glowing pocket and took out the cube he and Kevin had found in the pile of alien tech back at the warehouse in Bellwood. The odd rounded symbols on the sides were shining brighter than before. Kevin pulled the car over, and Gwen reached out from the backseat to touch the cube.

"Its energy is a lot stronger than this morning. Something's not right. It has got to have something to do with the zombies." She concentrated on the cube, her eyes glowing pink for a moment. "I think it absorbed the energy from the zombies when we killed them."

"What's it gonna do with the energy now?" Kevin asked. A sudden flash from the cube answered him, leaving them all temporarily blinded. When their eyes readjusted to the darkness in the car, the cube had dimmed to a dull purple glow.

"What was that?" asked Cooper. He couldn't make heads or tails of the cube.

"No idea," Ben replied. Kevin resumed driving into the city, but all three boys jolted when Gwen let out a small scream.

"Gwen! What's wrong?!" Cooper's lower arm was clenched by Gwen's hand in a death grip sure to leave angry red marks. Ben peered around his chair at his cousin, and Kevin stopped driving, looking back at the panicking girl through the rear view mirror.

"There's something here. Aaaah!" Gwen squeezed her eyes shut and her grip on Cooper's arm tightened. "It feels like the energy from the cube! It did something, created something here!"

Gwen's eyes glowed pink as she tried to block out the massive surge of the dark, partially alive energy. She heaved a sigh of relief as the pain disappeared behind her mental shields.

"Gwen, we don't have to keep going. We can stop and wait for Grandpa Max and everyone else if this is hurting you." Ben's were wide with concern for his favorite cousin.

"No, we can't," Gwen shook her head. "Whatever that thing is that just grew or whatever in that town is too dangerous to wait on. We have to stop it. Now."

She leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. Cooper was still freaking out over her sudden paroxysm. Neither Cooper nor Gwen noticed when Kevin reached over the gearshift and tightly grabbed onto Ben's hand.

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Notes:
Uh... this version was significantly revamped from the original. Some people may remember the original. I dunno what I'm doing with this quite yet. Although I am quite certain I will be beating down on some more zombies.

How'd you like it, reader?