Adam concentrated and a beam of light shot from the palm of his hand as he swept it to one side, bisecting several zombies at chest level not a dozen feet from the truck bed they were standing in. "A bit draining," he noted thoughtfully. "Not a lot, but a bit."
"Really?" Meg asked before raising her own hand palm out and copying it, beheading half a dozen. "Yeah, I can zap things all day, but that would tire me out after a while."
"Handy for when we get surrounded though," Adam noted, before going back to making pew pew noises and burning holes in zombies' heads when they got within a couple dozen feet.
"Your aim is getting a lot better," Meg complimented him as she casually sniped zombies at ten times the distance without even looking.
"Practice makes perfect," he said with a smile.
*beep*beep*
The two turned and spotted a black four by four that looked like it hadn't been washed in forever, slowly approaching from down the road, carefully driving around abandoned vehicles and over any zombies that stumbled across its path.
"Survivors," Meg said with some surprise. "I thought this world was empty."
Adam shrugged. "I wasn't looking for an empty world, just one with zombies. Let's go see what they want." He spread out his wings and leapt into the air, Meg following right behind him, while still absently offing zombies with barely a thought.
The pair landed in front of the vehicle, Meg doing a quick scan of the area and killing the seven zombies that were close by before walking around and sniping another dozen that were following the sound of the engine. Adam stepped over to the driver's side and waved, waiting for the people inside to come out.
An older man, wearing a black leather jacket with a red bandana around his neck and a neatly trimmed beard just going gray around the edges, stepped out of the vehicle. "I don't suppose you're here to save us and take us up to heaven or anything?" he asked, something that could almost be identified as hope leaking into his voice.
"People don't need me to get to heaven that happens automatically when you die, but if you want passage to someplace not filled with walking corpses I would be happy to help," Adam offered.
"You're shittin' me!" another man blurted out in disbelief from inside the SUV.
"I shit you not," Adam assured him. "We're not here because of any holy crusade, it's just a convenient place to practice some of our more dangerous abilities, meaning we have plenty of time to help out any decent people that need a legup."
"Is there any place left on Earth where the walking dead haven't taken over?" the man in the jacket asked, before shaking his head. "Where are my manners?" He offered a hand. "Negan Smith."
Adam shook his hand. "Adam Eastman and that's my wife Meg. There probably isn't a place on this Earth, but there are infinite Earths, so finding one without zombies is easy."
"I'm assuming zombies is what you call the walkers?" Negan asked.
Adam nodded. "I'm guessing zombie movies never became a thing here or you'd have known about them in advance and people would have handled things better. Anyway, I can locate a world without undead wandering about pretty easily and open a gate so you can move all your people through without a problem."
"Wouldn't that just spread the problem to a new world?" Negan asked with a frown. "Whatever it is that makes… zombies, we've all got it."
"The gate will clean it out of your system," Adam assured him. "It doesn't matter whether it's something magical, spiritual, or fungal, the gate will make sure it's out of your system along with any other diseases you might happen to have."
"Does that include herpes?" the other man spoke up, shrinking back as everyone turned to stare at him. "I've got a friend…" his voice trailed off, as the man in the back seat started snickering. "Shut up, Wayne!"
"Does it get rid of cancer?" Negan asked intently.
"I'm not sure, but I can handle that," Xander assured him. "Healing is one of my primary abilities."
"You really are an angel," Negan said, a smile slowly growing on his face.
"We kinda are, aren't we," Meg said with a smile.
"Without the oversight," Adam agreed. "Well, let's go heal some cancer and open up a gate to someplace safer."
"Hop in," Negan said, opening up the rear door for the two.
Adam let his wings vanish and climbed in the back next to Wayne with Meg taking the window seat.
"How did you get to be angels?" Wayne asked as they drove back the way they'd came. He was a thin man with three days' growth of beard and the same slightly feverish look they all carried.
"One of the higher ups decided he liked me and snatched me up, offering me power in exchange for helping with some of the threats to various worlds," Adam replied. "It's a really good deal, as long as you don't mind dealing with the strangeness that comes with it."
"About the same here," Meg said with a grin, zapping a couple of zombies with her left hand as they drove along.
"What kind of power?" the man in the front seat asked, turning to look at them while Negan drove.
Adam shrugged. "Whatever type I'd care to have. Naturally I decided that being able to heal people was one of the most useful ones available, so I chose an angel theme and leaned into it."
"How do lasers fit in with that?" Wayne asked.
"We have radiant light that allows us to heal people," Adam said, placing a hand on Wayne's arm and channeling the healing light and causing his hand to gain a shimmering aura.
Wayne smiled broadly. "I don't feel like shit anymore!"
Adam laughed. "Yeah, you are cured of whatever that undead plague is. You can catch it again, since I think it's actually something in the air, but at the moment you are clean. We have golden light," he brought up a hand and knife appeared in it and began to glow like the sun was just beneath the surface, "which kills undead and the like," the dagger vanished, "and finally we have just pure light," he gestured to Meg who was still cheerfully sniping zombies, "which I chose so we would have a decent ranged option."
"What's the afterlife like?" the man in the passenger side front seat asked. "Oh, forgot my manners too. I'm Dave and that's Wayne."
"There are probably as many afterlives as there are Earths," Adam said. "Where you end up is based on who you worship, what kinda things you did while alive, and where you want to go. The better a person you are the more choices you get I believe. I haven't really looked into it, but since eternity kinda goes on forever I think most people eventually choose to reincarnate."
"How good are we talking here?" Dave asked. "With what we've all had to do to survive… not sure where I sit right now."
Adam nodded. "It's all taken into account. No one expects saints in a hell like this one."
"Are we in Hell?" Wayne asked, concerned.
"I meant in the abstract," Adam waved it off. "This place is pretty hellish for people to live in, it's not actually a hell dimension."
"That's a relief," Wayne said with a sigh.
"So where were you thinking of sending us?" Dave asked, as Negan drove around a crashed semi and over a crawling zombie that was missing its legs.
"Would you like a world similar to this where zombies didn't happen or would you like a world that's post zombies, clean but empty?" Adam asked. "In the first you'd have to deal with the government and getting IDs, but that's going to be true of any modern world. In the second you'd have plenty of room to relax and spread out, but you'd have to run everything yourselves."
"Either sounds like heaven to me," Wayne said. "A world like this but with all the zombies gone… we could set up a nice little farming community… do we have enough people for that?"
"We have a little under four hundred people," Negan offered, "three hundred and ninety seven at last count. That's more than enough people to run a small community, but I'm not sure how many generations it would be before everyone was marrying their cousins."
Dave winced. "Yeah, that could be a problem. I mean, distant cousins is fine and all, but when it starts getting too close… not sure we got enough population to avoid that for more than a handful of generations."
"There's no rush to decide now," Adam told them, "I can open a portal to Hawaii and let you guys decompress and tan a bit before you make any final decisions."
"Hawaii?" Negan asked in disbelief as they pulled up to a gate and a handful of people came out and opened the gate to let them into a compound that seemed to cover quite a few acres, that they had fenced in were farming surrounding some kind of factory.
A dark skinned woman dressed in a camouflage jacket and Levis with a rifle on her back came up to the driver's window, another two closed the gate and checked them over, one looking under the vehicle. "Everything good, boss?" she asked.
"Everything's damn near perfect," he told her with a grin, causing her to relax and signal the others, who returned to whatever they had been doing before they had arrived. "Any problems?"
"None to speak of," she replied with a shrug.
"Glad to hear it," he said, "we've got a couple of healers here to look at our sick and wounded."
She smiled, her eyes lighting up. "Glad to hear it, Doc is so used to being a vet that when he checked out my sprained knee he tried to give me a dog chew afterwards."
Negan chuckled. "Should have accepted it, they're about the last thing like beef jerky we got."
"I'll give it a pass, thanks," she said while patting the roof and stepping back so they could drive off.
"Coded phrases so they'd know if you were under duress?" Meg guessed.
"Just the first part," he replied, "Doc actually does offer dog chews to everyone and they aren't half bad. Gives you something vaguely meat-like to chew on while you work." He drove slowly through the small settlement, turning twice until they were in front of a small building made of two shipping containers. "Patients are inside. We have to keep them secure incase someone dies, so they don't kill anyone else."
"Glad someone is on the ball," Meg said as they all got out. "You would not believe how many groups are wiped out by someone getting sick and no one taking any precautions."
"It's just common sense," Negan said. "Can't say it's easy on anyone involved, but just ignoring things ain't going to make it any better." He knocked on the door and waited.
A minute later the door opened and an older man who was losing his hair, wearing a dirty white lab coat over heavy duty coveralls and a long sleeved flannel shirt looked out. "New patients?" he asked.
"Nah, picked up a couple of angels to clear out the ward," Negan said blandly.
"What?" Doc asked.
Adam held up a hand and it began to glow as golden wings sprang out of his back.
"Oh," Doc said numbly before shaking his head. "Come in, come in! If you can actually heal people we've got several I would really like you to get started on."
"I thought everyone was stable," Negan said, a bit of worry leaking into his tone.
"Stable doesn't mean they are getting better, just that they aren't getting worse," Doc replied, ushering them all inside.
The inside of the two shipping containers had been made into a serviceable infirmary, the floor a layer of poster board to even things out and the floor lined with beds on both sides. The patients who were awake looked up, curious to see if one of their family was visiting them while the sleeping ones didn't even stir, and all of them were strapped down, though not tightly.
A pale older woman with thinning brown hair smiled on spotting Negan. "Come to visit me, love?" she asked, not even noticing the golden wings that were projecting from Adam's back as she met her husband's eyes, tired but cheerful.
"I brought someone to help, Lucille," he said as he knelt next to her bed and held her hand.
"I'm afraid it would take a miracle at this point," she said softly, "but then you have pulled off a minor miracle just getting everyone to work together with the way things are outside."
"Ma'am," Adam introduced himself, drawing her attention.
Her eyes widened as she finally noticed the glowing wings. "You really have pulled off a miracle."
"As I told you before, Love, never give up hope," he said.
Adam wrapped his hands around the pair's and a flood of golden light poured into them, the slightly feverish look that all the survivors carried faded away and her eyes gained focus as color filled her cheeks.
"Oh," she said with a smile, "I can feel it! I haven't felt this good since before everything began. Hell, I haven't felt this good even before I was diagnosed with cancer."
"Regrowing limbs takes time, turning cells from cancerous to normal is easy by comparison," Adam told them, "after all it's the same tissue, just with all the growth limiters removed." He released their hands once he felt the energy wash over them without finding any more injuries to repair.
Lucille tried to sit up but was stopped by the straps. "Can you help me with this?"
"I've got it," Negan said, quickly undoing the straps, a bright smile on his face and tears in his eyes.
She gave her husband a hug with strength that had been absent for the better part of the last two years. "You did it, I didn't think it was possible, but you found another miracle." Her stomach growled loudly and she blushed. "I haven't felt like eating much since I got sick, but I could eat a horse right now."
"I'm afraid we're limited in what we have, especially in the way of meat," Negan told his wife, "but how does tomato soup sound?"
"Let me grab Wayne and Dave and I'll see about getting some steaks for everyone," Adam said. "I have a feeling that everyone that gets healed is going to be extremely hungry, especially if they've been stuck eating hospital food or what passes for it here."
"Steak?" Wayne asked hopefully. "You can get us steaks?"
"Yeah, I know a store or two we can clear the meat section out of," Adam told him.
"That would be fine," Negan said, not looking up from his wife's eyes as he held her, "I'll just be here."
"I've still got plenty of dog chews," Doc offered. "They may not be steak, but they'll do for the moment." He shook his head as he saw there were no takers.
"Come on guys, it'll take all of ten minutes to load up a couple of carts," Adam told the two and waved them to the door. "Honey, you've got the rest?"
Meg smiled. "Yeah, I think I've got it. Remember to get beans and bacon as well, it goes good with steak."
"Will do," Adam said before the three stepped outside.
"Pretty sure the local stores have all been picked clean and what hasn't has rotted," Dave said. "Unless you can heal steaks. Can you heal steaks?"
"They'd have to be fresh enough to moo for me to heal them," Adam said waving a hand and opening a portal to LA, "but we've got a number of stores nearby that are filled with fresh meat."
"This that gate that cures… stuff?" Dave asked hopefully.
Wayne rolled his eyes. "Yeah, stuff like herpes."
"It's just a cold sore," Dave said as he hurried for the gate.
Beta by: Mist of Shadows/Rainbows