Chapter 36: Monsters

December 31, 2014

Frankenstein had been one of Winter's favorite books as a teenager. Well, he at least remembered the fact of it, though he no longer felt any sentiments towards it. Old Winter, back when he was James Buchanan Barnes, thought that the story of Dr. Frankenstein building the perfect body and bringing it to life, only to then find it hideous and uncontrollable, was an incredible story about the power of science and the arrogance of man. And also, it seemed like some Howard-Stark-level-shit, creating a body out of nothing but parts. Perhaps he would have managed it later in life, if he hadn't met Winter.

The first time the words had started wearing off and the situation started setting in, Winter had thought of Frankenstein again. He had fallen apart, and now German scientists had pieced his body back together, only for his mind to crack in the process. No, his mind didn't crack - it was broken by hammers and chisels and needles and electricity. And just like Dr. Frankenstein, Hydra didn't care to fix him. They just wanted him to behave. He wondered, randomly, how the book would have ended if the doctor knew about the power of words.

Now, Winter leaned heavily against Summer, his chest pressed to her back as they both tried to get their labored breathing under control. He moved just enough to separate them, but her hand - warm, for once - held his tightly, keeping his arm around her and preventing him from pulling away. His mouth dropped to her bare shoulder, giving her something between a kiss and a bite as they came down from their high. The cold mountain air seeped between the flaps of their tent, but with no wind it wasn't strong enough to keep them from sweating. The metal of his arm clicked as he leaned back, pulling her with him so they could sit. She repositioned slightly, making him groan as she brushed against overly sensitive parts of him. Her pinky finger was off at an odd angle, dislocated when he'd gripped too hard with the metal hand. Without word or warning he reached up and popped it back into place, earning nothing but a sharp intake of breath from her.

"Sorry." he murmured into her hair. She flexed her hand a few times before resting it on his knee, her fingertips lightly tracing the indents from the rocks underneath them.

"Don't be." she said, squeezing his fingers again, hard enough to elicit just the slightest amount of pain. It almost sent a shiver through him.

Frankenstein's monster had asked for a woman, a equal, a partner. His request was denied. At least Hydra had given him Summer.

A dull crack echoed from somewhere far down the mountain, making them both sit up straight and shake the last bits of happiness from their shoulders. Their pursuers were catching up again; it was time to pack up and go.

"I thought the cold would slow them more." Summer said, standing up and reaching for her discarded pants. They slid on a little too easily, telling of how their diet had suffered over the past few weeks.

"Don't think they feel it." Winter said, following her lead and getting dressed. She rolled up the sleeping bag while he put their meager belongings in their packs, tossing them out of the front of the tent. She pulled her boots on, stepping out into the snow and beginning to break down the tent while Winter stepped out with his knife in one hand, and hers in the other.

"The number is increasing." she said, jerking her head towards the edge of the mountain pass. Winter stalked towards it, his jaw already set and his mind shifting towards the battle ahead. Below them, nine reanimated corpses ambled up the path, their uncoordinated feet slipping as they trudged through the ice. Their tenth companion lay some feet below, its leg broken at a terrible angle. But that did not stop it - it just started using its arms to climb instead. All of them had a black circle on their forehead held to their skin with spider like legs, the dried blood tracks telling them that the devices were either applied right after death, or when the victims were still alive. A red light blinked in the middle, its tempo increasing as it got closer to their target.

"You'd think they'd run out of those." Winter said with a sigh, flipping the knife in his right hand to get a feel for it. He was a talented combatant, yes, but it still felt just slightly wrong to use Summer's knife. Perhaps it was because if he had it, then she didn't. She stopped her movements, standing ramrod straight as she looked down.

"Unless someone has been collecting them." she said. He stiffened at that; how could they not think of it before? "We need to start destroying them afterwards."

"Yes, ma'am." he replied. The words were somehow foreign and familiar, and he could tell by the way she blinked at him that she had the same sense of deja vu. They shared a fleeting glance, somehow having an entire conversation - act first, reflect later.

Winter nodded, turning and jumping down onto the ledge below them, the soft landing allowing him to spring towards his first target, slamming his knife through the eye. Black blood oozed onto his metal hand but he paid it no mind, wrenching the knife from its hold and continuing on to the next one. This one got a knife through the temple, the corpse's face going slack as the brain died again. The spray of blood was cold and unnatural, so thick and sticky that instead of making the handle of his knife slippery, it glued it to his skin. Hands reached towards him - two pairs of them - and he easily knocked them away. He slammed both knives under the jaws of the dead men, but before he could pull them out three more pairs of hands grabbed at him from behind. He sent a leg out behind him without looking, feeling the satisfying weight of his foot landing home. He was able to turn and throw one knife into the corpse's head, slamming the other into one's skull. The third he grabbed with his metal hand, squeezing roughly until the skull gave up. The next two had upped their pace, but they couldn't match his skill or speed, especially when it seemed like their mission was to capture him alive.

The first four weeks after they'd left Cero, Hydra had sent scouts and assassins to try and capture them, underestimating the strength and training they'd given to their soldiers. Then, they started sending these zombies (Summer had remembered the word first) to try and outlast them. The undead didn't have to sleep, or eat, or stop to rest. They could continue relentlessly towards their target. The mountains at the border of Georgia and Russia offered enough resistance to give Summer and Winter time to recover fully, but the range was short, and soon they would have to make a mad dash for the Taman Bay. They weren't even sure if the zombies could swim or not.

Once Winter dispatched the one army crawling and leaving a trail of black blood on the ice, he ripped the device from its head with his metal hand. Summer was right; each spider had layers of gore on the long legs, a record of its usage. It immediately came to life, the legs scrambling in search of another host. It attempted to sink the needle-like ends into his arm but just glanced off the metal, its movements becoming more frantic with each passing moment. Winter threw it onto the hard ground, quickly crushing it with his boot before it could scurry away. The legs spasmed and half-heartedly reached towards his foot in a last effort before sagging and dying. He half expected there to be blood when he picked his leg up, but of course there was only crushed machinery, the red light finally dim. He would have to be careful removing the other ones.

Summer jumped down behind him, and he could spot their packs and collapsed tent neatly piled together up on the ridge above them. He'd assumed she saw him remove the first spider, but a bolt of horror went through him as she reached for the one nearest to her. "Wait." he said, his voice louder and more commanding than he meant for it to be. She looked up with fire in her eyes at the order, but it dissipated when she saw his expression. He jogged back up the path, stopping with the once-again-dead body between them.

"What?" she asked, impatient.

"The legs. They'll grab for you." he explained. He held up his metal hand. "I got lucky."

"Luck isn't real." she said, once again an echo of her former self. But neither one of them could conjure the memory. He let out a breath, the only way to express his frustration. The corner of her mouth twitched, and soon he realized that she was trying not to laugh at him. Dammit.

He reached down, pulling the spider out just enough so he could grab onto the legs. He held them tightly, twisting the body so that the wires sparked and tore, separating the two. The legs fell lifeless onto the dead man's forehead, but the red light continued to blink. Only then did he drop it and crush it like the first one. "Be careful."

"Got it." she said with a nod. He held his breath as she went to the next body, copying his exact movements and achieving the same results. Only then did his hands relax, now that he knew that the spiders wouldn't reach out and grab her. They went to each body, removing the device from its roots and crushing it, but by the time they made it to the last one, Summer paused.

"Perhaps we could use this." she said, not looking as he came up to her. She was turning the spider body over in her hands, the light blinking rapidly since it was so close to them. Besides that, there was nothing except for the black octagon shaped body - no markings, no serial numbers, no screws.

"They'll be tracking it." he pointed out. She didn't respond, only reached out and pulled her knife from the holster on his thigh without looking at him. The edge was barely fine enough to fit into a crevice, the spider breaking in half as she twisted it. He moved closer, his head right next to hers as they both tried to make sense of the wiring inside. There were, of course, no clues that they could decipher, no way for them to tell how the things enslaved the corpses they attached to. Summer dropped it with a huff, stomping it hard enough to make an impression in the ice and the ground below it before going back to their camp, climbing up the ridge with the same hand holds Winter had created yesterday. He gave one last look at the carnage before following her, feeling like a sniper sight was trained right between his shoulder blades.

They shrugged on cold weather gear and grabbed their packs, continuing the trek up the mountain. The wind found them then, dark snow clouds rolling ominously in the distance. Darkness would fall long before the sun did, and their journey would have to continue after that. Trees and stone made the wind groan around them, but something underneath it made them pause and look back. In the distance they could see the sea of red, blinking lights, marking upwards of fifty undead coming towards them. Instinctively they unsheathed their knives, the grip feeling slightly awkward through the thickness of their gloves. They'd wait until the last moment before removing them, giving them full use of their hands.

"Not yet." Winter said, turning and continuing up the path. They walked with renewed fervor then, their breath rising in great white puffs as they climbed higher and higher. The air was getting thin, but they could see the turn point where they would start going downhill, so they ignored the oxygen deprivation and focused on climbing over the mountain. Adrenaline held off any pain and the serum that affected their genetics fought off any fatigue, allowing them to push despite the environment. With impressive speed, they reached the summit.

And were met with another sea of blinking red lights.

Winter looked back and forth, his mind telling him that he was just hallucinating. But no, there really were fifty more blinking lights down below them, their movements jerky as the zombies stumbled up towards them. A hundred eyes stared at them, the wind carrying their moans and grumbles. Hydra had killed all these people just to get the two of them, and if they weren't careful, it would work.

"This may be it." Summer said, though she didn't sound convinced. Distant thunder rolled and white flurries started swirling around them, getting caught in her hair and his beard and melting immediately. Without a thought they pulled out their baseball caps, figuring it was enough cover for now.

"Someone has to be leading them." Winter said, his mind already whirring with plans. They would have to use the terrain to their advantage; whatever the spider did to these people, it left them with only basic reflexes and instincts. Their enemies had no weapons, but Summer and Winter didn't have enough ammo to utilize their guns. Even then, the sounds would be too loud, bring too much attention to their location. Hydra could estimate where they were now, but with muzzle fire and a convergence point of the two undead armies, their estimation would turn exact.

"The same someone that's following us." she said, twisting her hair to keep it out of her way. Used to when she twisted it like that, it would be into a tight little bun at the base of her neck. Now, she just stuffed it under her baseball cap.

"You're right. This is it." he said, diving into his backpack and pulling out every knife he could find, strapping them to his person. Summer followed suit, her eyes never leaving him as she waited for an explanation.

"Explosives?" she asked, pulling out the flat discs that adhered to any surface, exploding when the motion sensor triggered. He shook his head.

"We need to save those." he said, unstrapping the tent and pitching it haphazardly. It didn't need to be perfect - the one good thing was that their enemy was easy to trick. "Grab kindling."

Summer nodded, going to the bare trees and shaking the newly dropped snow from their branches. The wood was slightly damp, but it would do. "I thought fire would be too obvious."

"A bonfire with a hundred corpses means forensic processing." he said, piling the wood she brought in the corner of the tent.

"All it takes is a metal detector to know that your arm isn't here." she pointed out, making him pause for a moment. She could see the wheels turning in his brain, and wondered if it was steam coming off him in the cold or if there was actual smoke coming out of his ears. After a moment he stood slowly, pulling around his beloved rifle. To anyone else, the way he held it might have been sentimental, but Summer knew what really was making him hesitate: he was a certified sharp shooter even before the serum enhanced his abilities, and losing the rifle would be like losing a limb. Eventually he sighed, and used his metal arm to bend and twist it until it vaguely resembled the shape of it.

"It'll have to work." he said, pulling the magazine. The snow was coming faster now, starting to stick to the frozen ground; it would give them more time to prepare, but less time to make an escape. He tossed the magazine to Summer. "Break the bullets. Gather the gunpowder."

"We shouldn't waste ammunition." she said, appalled that he would suggest such a thing.

"Are you carrying any other accelerants?" he countered, making her clamp her mouth shut again. Perhaps she didn't have an alternative, but that didn't mean she had to like the plan. So she started breaking the shells as if she were snapping open pistachios, letting the gunpowder gather in two bags. She couldn't bring herself to toss the actual bullets, and instead put them in her pocket for later. She didn't know what she was going to do with them, but it made her feel that much safer to have them.

"They're following the scent. And the heat." she said as he finished organizing the wood in the tent. Now that they were closer, she could see how the zombies downwind tilted their heads up, taking deep breaths and adjusting accordingly. The ones on the other side of the mountain didn't seem to follow their movements with their eyes, but when Summer and Winter were next to each other they seemed to move a little faster.

"Good." he said, tearing his coat off and hanging it on the outside of the tent. Summer followed his motions, ignoring the biting cold. Soon they would be running and that would keep her warm enough. The red dots were close now, dangerously close, and the snow was coming down fast, making visibility even more difficult. Winter described the rest of his plan; it would take a miracle to work, but perhaps fate was on their side today. He stepped into the tent with his lighter, holding the open flame to the carefully arranged sticks.

Nothing happened.

"Fuck." he said, louder than he should have. He held the lighter closer, steam coming off the sticks, but none of the flame sticking. They were simply too wet. He could feel panic setting in; he'd failed Summer, failed himself-

"Use this." Summer said, pulling out the trashy paperback novel she'd gotten months ago. The pages were folded in multiple places and a large tear went through the cover, but it was still mostly intact. Winter hesitated; that was something she enjoyed, something special to her. As if she could read his mind, she grabbed it in both hands and ripped it in half. "I can get another one."

"I'll get you a whole shelf of them." he remarked, the words escaping before his mind caught on to them. Neither one of them acknowledged the statement, instead focusing on tearing up the novel and spreading the pages around. They could hear the ragged breaths of the zombies now, meaning their window was rapidly closing. Winter didn't bother being careful, instead just throwing the lighter into the tent and hoping the flame caught. He and Summer separated, their skin cold enough and the tent just warm enough to trick the zombies. They climbed onto tall rocks next to the path, settling like stone gargoyles in the night. The undead continued their trek towards the jackets and the tent, which was now glowing orange and casting long, deadly shadows towards them. Steam was billowing out the front as the pages of the book caught and dried out the wood, the snow swirling through the front adding to it. As the zombies filed past, Summer and Winter sprinkled them with the gunpowder; with the heavy snow falling, the zombies couldn't tell the difference. There wasn't enough to coat all of them, but there was enough to make the fire spread.

The first few pushed into the tent, their growls loud enough to be heard over the storm. The growls turned to low howls as the fire caught them, latching on to the dead and dying skin. Little flares popped up as the gunpowder did its job, and the other zombies assumed these noises were sounds of victory, following them and rushing to join their comrades. The snow around the tent started melting as the fire grew, the zombies that were burning stumbling around and taking the flames to the others. Winter waited until every one caught flame before signalling to Summer, and both of them started sprinting down the path.

If any of the zombies noticed, they didn't make it far, as the fire grew like a sun in the darkness. Their screams echoed, but there wasn't enough power in their voices to send the sound through the mountains. Summer and Winter didn't look back, instead using what little light they had to run down the path at breakneck speeds. If it weren't for their enhancements they would have surely broken an ankle or fallen to their death by now, but for once the serum came in handy.

They ran until the screams died down, and the fire was just barely a glow in the distance. Only then did they stop, resting their hands on their knees and taking in deep lungfuls of cold air. Once Summer's hands stopped shaking, she held one out, gesturing with her fingers. "Give me your scope."

"What?" Winter's brain was trying to catch up with his feet. What did she need a scope for when there wasn't a rifle attached to it?

"Your scope!" she said again. He nodded, digging into his bag and pulling out the scope that once rested on his favorite rifle. She put it to her eye, slowly scanning the area around them.

"What do you see?" he asked. She didn't answer, still looking through the dying light for the source of their pursuers. She stopped cold as a single blinking red light appeared in her vision.

"I found him." she said. She could tell by the shape that it was a man, though he was far more decomposed than the rest of them. She stared hard, resting her elbows on a rock and adjusting the scope so she could see more clearly. What little flesh the man had was barely hanging on, age coloring it terrifying shades of black. She couldn't make out any features, just the curve of his bones that shone white in the darkness. He was in old Army fatigues, and on the jacket sleeve, barely hanging on by decades old velcro, was the name patch. Well, part of it at least. She could just catch the last few letters: -llens.

"What is it?" Winter asked, noting how still she was. Her breath caught, memories of the cages coming back to her. She could feel the arm around her waist, his nails digging into her skin as she tried to fight him off. How on earth did they still have his body after all this time?

"Mullens." she said in a rush. If they were trying to throw them off, trying to distract them with a piece of their past, then it was working. Almost. Winter held out his hand, and she wordlessly handed over the smaller, less powerful rifle that she had.

"Told him I'd kill him someday." Winter said darkly, and though the words were threatening, he sounded more like Bucky Barnes than he had in a long time. She watched through the scope as Mullens' body turned this way and that, trying to figure out what was going on in the distance. He clearly had a little more wherewithal than his minions, but just barely. Winter took a deep breath, and then another, then grew unnaturally still just as Mullens looked right their way. Winter squeezed the trigger, the single shot ringing out into the night - and hitting Mullens right in that damn blinking red light.

Another bang sounded, and they both dropped, checking their bodies for bullet wounds. But the sound wasn't from a gun - it was from fireworks, their bright colors spread across the distant sky now that it was dark. More went up, exploding into a spectacular array.

"What day is it?" Winter asked, wracking his mind and trying to remember the calendar. Summer blinked for a second, trying to picture it in her mind.

"New Year's Eve." she replied. More fireworks went off in the distance, their presence easily masking their one gun shot moments before. If only they'd remembered what day it was, then they wouldn't have to worry about guns or explosives being conspicuous.

"Happy New Year." Winter said, the words making something shift between them. He found her eyes in the darkness, the green of them turning rainbow as the fireworks reflected. She reached out, holding his metal hand for just a moment before picking up the scope again, confirming their kill.

Silence fell over them. This is what Hydra was doing - using their darkest resources to try and reclaim their lost assets. Summer and Winter needed to move faster now, and find a way onto the black map. They weren't giving up, but neither were their enemies.

It was down to who could outlast the other now.

If you ever don't know where to go with your story, just add some zombies!...in actuality, stuff from here will play out in later chapters, I promise.

I know this chapter was a little different, but I had fun writing it, and I hope you had fun reading it! The mechanics are probably a little fantastical but hey, we're all here to have fun, right?

I can't express my thanks enough for y'all's love. I def notice the names that pop up in reviews, and I love love love hearing your thoughts on each chapter. I love seeing new names too, it always excites me! Long story short, I love feedback, like any other writer haha. Please let me know what you thought of this chapter, and if you have any hypotheses for the future!

-XM