Rhino let me down onto the pavement about fifty yards from the 7-11.
I'll let you in on a little secret. Rhino's fast. Maybe he's a little slow upstairs, and his fighting style is more in line with that of a sledgehammer then a katana. But you let him get a head of steam and a straight path, and there's nothing on the face of this planet, and I'd be willing to lay money down the same's true among the stars, that he can't bowl over when he gets a full head of steam. Mainly it's his mass, but years of carrying around that armor that's bonded to his skin give my friends legs like pistons. When he goes all out in a sprint, Aleksei can move.
He's panting a little as we stand side-by-side on Degrosses Avenue. It had taken six minutes, total, to cover the four blocks. This time of the evening, Lower Manhattan was almost deserted of automobile traffic. After making our way out of the warehouse district, the streets had been clear. One car passed us along the way, going southbound towards the Battery as we headed north. I wonder what the driver thought as he saw this grey beast running up the West Side Highway with a guy tucked under his arm. It wasn't the most glamorous way to travel, and every time I bumped against his arm or his side, my contact plates would go off. It bounced me around, and somewhere in my head I knew I'd feel it the next morning. But it got me and him where we needed to go, and that was the important thing.
Along the way, I had noticed that the things...yeah, I know they're zombies, but at this point, it hadn't quite sunk in yet. It screws up the narrative, but hey, I'm telling this story and this is how it all went down. Don't worry. In just a bit, we all start throwing around the "z" word with impunity. For now, though, my brain understood the concept of a zombie, but it hadn't worked its way into my conscious thought yet. The things were just that. Things. Assailants. Murderers. Ghouls.
And before arriving at our destination, they had been conspicuous by their absence.
There had been three, live and in vivid color, at SHIELD HQ. My last look at the TV has shown probably thirty of those creatures at the intersection, and half of them had been moving towards the 7-11. Based on those numbers, I had expected to have run through and dodged past a decent-sized amount of ghouls. We saw two, maybe three, along the way. I say "maybe" because the third might have just been a drunk homeless person in a dumpster.
Standing next to Rhino, it was easy to figure out why the numbers had been low. All those ghouls we should have passed had made their way here in the hopes of joining the buffet. Or maybe they were drawn by the sound of the ABC 7 traffic copter.
"Jesus," I said quietly. There were two small groups of maybe five things each. One group, about thirty feet away from where we stood, was huddled next to the blue car, crouched on the ground. The other group was near the driver's side door of the furthest car. Both groups were quiet, the occasional snarl or growl eminating. If I didn't know what was going on around the world, by the way they knelt and crouched, arms moving and jerking in their small circles, it would have reminded me of a basement craps game. It was the pair of legs sticking out of the nearby circle that killed that image, though. One foot still had a loafer on it, while the other foot was missing. The entire lower leg, actually, below the knee, was gone.
Past that closet circle, a group of creatures pushed against the glass store-front of the 7-11. The inside was still lit, but that's all I could make out through the pounding hands. "Tell me you got a plan, Herman," Rhino asked me. Beside the small groups and the mob attacking the store, I would have guessed maybe ten more of those things stood between us and the 7-11. The ten were all moving very slowly, even for those creatures, something hampering their mobility. But they still walked, pushing towards the storefront. So intent on their goal of attacking whoever was inside, the guy in the brown-and-yellow quilted suit and the seven foot tall armored tank went unnoticed for the moment, even by the helicopter filming the scene overhead.
"They're so slow, Aleksei...I think we can just walk right past most of them." I pointed towards the glass. It was holding solid, but I couldn't see if anyone inside had made any barricades or "improvements." "If we get close enough, you watch my back and I'll get everyone out. Can you handle these guys?"
The sound of cracking knuckles was like rifle fire to my ears. "Easy," Rhino replied. "And I bet they can't break my skin, either."
"Don't get cocky," I warned him. "Now come on." We started moving towards the store, moving to our left towards the sidewalk. The storefronts leading up to the 7-11 were dark, a few of them with shutters rolled down for the evening. Sidewalks were clear all the way to the storefront. I remembered hoping that maybe the few parked cars and shadowed awnings, mixed with the cover provided by the helicopter's noise, would give us a free and clear walk right to the mob.
Our plan didn't survive five feet.
One of the things in the nearby circle must have glanced up or heard the sound of Rhino's footsteps. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her stagger to her feet, staring directly at the two of us. In her hands, grasping it like a piece of watermelon, was a lower leg missing its foot. In the wash from the helicopter's spotlight, I saw that the woman was missing her lower lip...and the blood from the pieces of the leg she had devoured was running down her chin like rain from an overflowing gutter.
She dropped the leg, and raised a hand to point at us. I saw her mouth open, a gush of red liquid escaping. Immediately, the group turned. In nearly one fluid motion, save for the poor guy who was missing half his neck, four heads (five from No-Neck) turned to look at us. Four sets of eyes gazed at us, but instead of the trance-like stare that I'd had seen outside the Bar with No Name, they were locked directly onto myself and my friend. I know it couldn't have been more then a second, but I felt like I was being eyed like a roast hanging in a butcher's window.
As one, all of them lurched forward. The guy in the ripped Nets jersey tripped over the leg still attached to the body, and smacked face-first in the pavement. The others, though, stumbled, trying to stand up at the same time they reached for us. Their upper bodies twisted as they stretched their arms for us, their legs still trying to push themselves up to a full staggering position.
The harsh spotlight was now shining directly on them. The reporter had either noticed the sudden motion of the crowd, or the arrival of Rhino and myself. The glare washed out their features, details lost in the white light. Six black forms, now almost fully upright, staggered towards the two of us. The enhanced audio sensors in my mask picked up, over the helicopter blades slicing through the air, a low moan that pushed through the noise. Almost immediately, the guys in front of us joined in. It was...I wouldn't go so far as to call them the screams of the damned. But the noise scraped across my brain, a mix of animal growling...and want. A primal need, a soul desperately craving something...
A hand fell on my shoulder. "Come on, Herman," Rhino said. "If we stand here..."
My friend didn't need to finish that sentence. I turned away from the crowd moving towards me. There were six of them, but there were moving really damn slow. One of them shook like a seizure patient with a broken leg as he walked, and the other weren't much faster. But there were coming towards us, and that was enough for my ass to get in gear. I ripped my gaze away from the six schmucks stumbling in the spotlight, refocusing on the 7-11 in the distance. "Alright, we can just..."
She was only ten feet away and staring right at us. If she had been more then fifteen, I would have eaten my proverbial hat. Pretty thing, the very definition of jailbait. Shoulder length blonde hair. A tight yellow t-shirt. Hiphuggers and heeled boots. And one blue eye staring directly at the two of us, the other socket hollow and caked with dried blood. With a snarl, she stalked towards us, her hands claws, moving with driven purpose.
"Oh, crap."
X
Here's where I'm supposed to give you the standard "I plowed into the heart of danger, ignoring my fear and counting on my strength and my cause to carry the day."
Instead, I'll tell you what I was really thinking.
"Notgoodnotgoodnotgoodnotgood!"
I had dealt with two of these things before, back in Alphabet City. Both times I had assumed they were drug-driven psychos who had a hard on for attacking women and little kids. Now, though, here it was...in my face. Coming directly for me. Teeth bared like Sabretooth. And playing off the fact that she only has one god damn eye.
Zombie.
She was a zombie, this fifteen year old girl who would have spurned a debate between myself, Boomerang, and Speed Demon about whether or not jail time would be worth it (and, for the record, my answer would probably have been yes). She wanted me. My flesh. My blood.
Jesus Christ, I was in a Max Brooks novel. The opening salvo of World War Z ground bursting right here in Lower Manhattan.
Boomerang. Right now, that bastard was probably popping open yet another beer and watching me freeze up live on national television. And I can imagine the smirk on his face. "Told you so, Herman," his voice said in my head. "Playing Boy Scout? Bad idea. Getting smashed? Good idea. And let's keep in mind, mate, the helicopter overhead is still broadcasting to a worldwide audience. So they're gonna see one of two things. The Shocker, famed criminal and renowned safecracker, turning tail and running away from a fifteen year old girl. Or the Shocker, famed criminal and renowned safecracker, getting torn about and eaten by a pack of wild zombies. Devil and the deep blue sea, mate..."
Third option. Do what I came here to do, rescue those people in the 7-11, and not look liked a fool or a damn coward...or a corpse...on national TV.
The girl is about five feet away, reaching for me with blood-caked fingernails, when I raise my glove and give her a level one-blast to the chest.
The girl staggered backwards a couple of steps before managing to right herself. I really didn't expect anything different, after seeing the abuse the Wrecker took earlier that evening, but it did give me momentary pause when she staggered right back towards me, making...or needing...no effort to shake off my attack.
Fine. This time, I held the trigger down a little longer, a level-two vibration, wider in scope and stronger in effect. I catch her in the same place I did before, right in the middle of her chest. This one knocked her down, as she rocked backwards before tripping over her feet and landing ass-first on the street. There, I thought, starting to move forward, that should keep...
As I watched her get back up, bearing her teeth at the meal in the quilted suit, I was faced with two options. Both choices came from deep within my brain. Normally intellectual, inquisitive, and informed, the primal portion of my mind decided to take over. One part was screaming "flight," turning tale and running from this girl who just wouldn't stay the hell down. I recognized that voice. It had been in my ear the past few weeks, whispering sour words about how I blew a job again, or how I had barely gotten away from the NYPD without anything to show for it, or how Paladin landed those redhead twins down in Miami during my last attempt at a score. Right now, instead of playing the calm, cool, collected devil on my shoulder, it had grabbed a firm hold of my ear, forgoing slickness for volume.
"She's a teenager! You blasted her twice! She's still coming for you! And there's about a million more of her surrounding you! Get the hell out of here!"
The other half of my brain, the part that chose the "fight" option...it knows me better. It's the part that's kept me in the business all these years. Instead of screaming, it whispers its words, slicing through all the fear and volume and cutting directly to where it'll get my attention most.
"Spider-Man wouldn't run."
Level three. It's enough to knock out an unprotected target with a direct hit. Both gloves, side by side, aimed directly at this little teenager who had her decaying mind on Shocker tartare. The ensuing shockwave was enough that I could see the zombie flanking her to the right side, about seven or eight feet back, stumble slightly, and its long black hair billow from the vibration of the air.
A level one shockwave feels like a direct punch to the jaw. A level two shockwave feels like a direct punch to the nose. A level three feels like I punched you in your kidneys. Both of them. Level four is like I went through your sternum, grabbed your kidneys, and crushed them like a grape. And level five? You don't have kidneys anymore. Or a sternum. It'll liquefy your organs like an overpressure wave from a fuel-air explosion bomb.
If you think about it, the human body's an amazing piece of work. A level five blast will annihilate a storefront completely. A human body? The skin will stay intact while the organs, and some of the smaller bones, become jelly.
The shockwave, at this range, slams directly into her chest. It lifts the girl off of her feet and sends her flying backwards. She slams into another zombie, and both of them fall to the ground in a tangled heap.
I don't care if you're dead or undead, no one gets up from...
...she's getting back up.
Her arms are broken. I can see that as the girl kneels on the ground, trying to push herself up with limbs that can't support her weight. Her radial bone is sticking out from her left arm, and each time she puts weight on it, I can hear it crack a little more. But it's not her arms I'm really focusing on...it's her face. Her remaining eye is fixed on me, and her teeth...several are missing, either from the impact of hitting the pavement or from the vibrations catching her in the jaw. Still, she's snarling at me, a wolf preparing to pounce on its prey, even if she can't make it to a standing position...
The helicopter was still above us. The spotlight was illuminating me, Rhino, and the two zombies my last blast had knocked down. The whole world had seen me smack this girl three times, and each time..."God damnit," I cursed, getting ready to let loose a level-four vibration. "Why the hell won't you stay down!"
"Because you're not getting them in the head!"
I half-turned, then fully turned my head to look at my friend towering above me. Rhino was looking at the girl, his eyes focused on her efforts to get upright. "Colonel Fury shot the Wrecker in the head, Herman. Try shocking them there!"
Click.
Of course! Oh, I'm a bloody idiot.
The guy falling on the fire hydrant. Speed Demon slamming the guy into the side of the school bus. The bladerang to the back of the head. Fury shooting the Wrecker's eye out. It's the brain, I realized...ok, ok, Aleksei realized it. I had spent my entire criminal career training myself to always aim for the center of mass, to ensure the largest possible surface area would get caught in my vibrations. As such a close range, my vibrations didn't have a chance to spread out like they normally died. I kept upping the power, but it all went into the zombie's chest, and I could wail on that all day and not stop the creature.
Kill the brain, though...and you kill the ghoul.
It sounded reasonable. And what I had been doing the past few seconds... would you believe all the above blasting, theorizing, hand-wringing, panicking, and rationalization happened in the space of fifteen seconds? Time slows to a crawl when you're having this much fun...it didn't phase me at all. I had a new plan. I knew how to adapt.
My feet moved of their own accord. I closed the distance between myself and the girl with the useless arms. I was barely aware of the helicopter overhead, the harsh white light just not registering to me at that moment. Remember earlier when I said I wasn't going power walk out of the warehouse? When I saw the video later, I was striding towards this girl, who just a few scant seconds before had almost caused me to run away like...well, a little girl. I looked confident, proud...and sure of myself.
And why not? The tumblers had fallen into place, the lock had been turned. I had this situation in hand. That little voice of panic that had been screaming into my ear was muted, and the voice of reason, of confidence, was up to freakin' eleven.
She reached for me, but with broken arms, her hands just hung limply towards the pavement. Broken teeth and an empty eye socket tried to lunge forward, but to no avail.
I put my right hand out, thumb on the trigger, aiming directly at her forehead...
Level two blast. Just to be sure.
Click.
At point blank range, the blast snapped her neck. I could hear her collarbone break as her head rocked backwards. The air around my fist shimmered slightly as the vibration slammed into the girl's face. Her snarling stopped instantly, and her body fell forward. She landed chin-first, her body in a crushed upside-down v on the pavement, her lone eye staring into the distance, past me, her former just-out-of-reach-Biggie-Sized-meal. A thin trickle of blood pooled from her nose, dripping onto the pavement. But most importantly, she wasn't moving, she wasn't getting back up, and she wasn't trying to eat me.
Problem solved.
Yeah, I felt proud for putting down a fourteen year girl with two broken arms and little to no cognitive thought process. In the supervillain world, you took your pimp moments when you could get them.
Next to her was the zombie that had been knocked down by her impromptu flight and almost back to his feet. He was about seven feet away, I judged as I threw a level two at him. From that distance, his head didn't snap back, but he froze in place for a second before falling to the ground. Good. If I had to throw level threes and fours around, my gloves would go dry in a hurry. I could keep level twos up for a good long...
I felt something fall onto my shoulder. My contact pads activated immediately brushing whatever it was off of me. I quickly spun around. In front of me, just two feet away, a middle-aged man missing his jaw was reaching out for me again. His $1000 suit was covered in blood and gore. Where the lower half of his mouth used to be, what was left of his tongue slowly moved back and forth, and the best he could offer was a strangled gargle as he tried to grab me again...
I remember reaching back, and smacking him in the forehead with a palm thrust. The metal of my vibro-smasher clunked dully against his forehead. Jawless staggered backwards a few feet before hitting a wall. But he was still up and mobile. I had hoped that any type of head trauma would be enough to knock these things down for the count, but from the looks of things, the brain had to be completely scrambled before the dead would die again.
The guy pushed off from the wall...a seven-foot gray wall.
Rhino simply reached out and grabbed the guy by his shoulders. Massive gray hands squeezed tightly as my friend spun around. Jawless left his feet as Aleksei played 'discus thrower,' spinning around once before letting the zombie fly...right past me. Well, three feet past me, but still, ravenous undead creature, a bit too close for comfort. I followed the thing's flight...which ended abruptly, as it slammed into a group of three zombies that had been staggering in our general direction. I quickly looked around, and realized, that in the past thirty seconds or so, Rhino and I had become surrounded.
God damned tunnel vision. I had focused so much on the problem of the little girl who wouldn't stay down that I had allowed the two of us to be cut off. Don't get me wrong, there was room to move, and a good solid level three or four would probably mow these guys down like wheat before the reaper...
(I had to wonder, very briefly, what the Grim Reaper was up to...but quickly slammed that Pandora's Box shut)
...but still, being surrounded by thirty members of a slobbering horde of flesh eaters was a situation to be avoid at every single cost possible. The helicopter's spotlight shining down upon the two of us, lighting us up like a big neon buffet sign to the crowd, didn't help matters.
"Let's move, man. Clear the way." Aleksei moved in front of me, where a former Mets fan was dragging a broken leg behind him as he came for the two of us. With a swing of his arm, Aleksei knocked him off of his feet. The limper flew through the air, coming to a halt when he crashed into the side window of the SUV, sending safety glass tinkling onto the pavement.
My gray-skinned friend moved at a light jog, his large feet stomping into the pavement with every step. He swung his arms to clear the path to the 7-11 of the undead, each motion a wide, sweeping attack. Those few zombies that managed to avoid his blows I'd finish off at close range. I stuck with level two blasts, powerful enough to put a zombie down without putting a serious drain on my vibro-smashers. By the time we reached the sidewalk outside the store, about ten zombies were motionless behind us, clearly marking our path of destruction.
A couple of zombies had been pounding on the full-length glass windows that ran along the front of the store. As Aleksei and I had gotten close, most of them turned to face us. One, however, kept pounding on the front door. He was either oblivious to the pondering footsteps of Rhino, or was that focused on the prize waiting him inside. There was one zombie to the left, and one to the right as well, that were now stumbling towards the two of us. "I got this guy on the left, Rhino. Get the other two."
"On it, Herman." I watched as Aleksei took two steps forward...and punched his zombie in the face. A light jab that packed a lot of power regardless, the zombie's head snapped back from the impact. His body slowly toppled, falling like a domino to the pavement. "Damn," my friend exclaimed, "these guys are fragile."
"Well they're dead, Aleksei." I had my fist pointed towards the zombie that was stumbling towards me. This close to the store, I didn't want to risk a vibration damaging the plate glass window that was right beside me. I had to tell myself to be calm and a little patient, which was hard to do when there's an undead cannibal in an "I 3 NY" t-shirt bearing down on you. Damn tourists...
I think of a level one blast at a shot from a .22 caliber pistol. It isn't messy, but at close range, it still has a lot of stopping power. The poor schmuck just dropped. Behind him, only one lone zombie stumbled up the sidewalk between the parked cars and the storefronts, far enough way that I decided to save a charge and deal with him when he got closer.
The zombie that had been pounding on the front door finally decided to give us his attention. Behind him, the 7-11 could have been open for a normal night of business, save for the coolers and shelves that had been piled in front of the door. A Red Bull case formed the first line of defense, followed by a ice cream cooler, a round ice chest with the Pepsi logo emblazoned on the side, and then a few more displays. Beyond that stood the first row of shelves. Just over the top of overpriced boxes of Lucky Charms (and as an aside here, $5.37 for a box of Lucky Charms? No wonder I agreed with Fred that we should rob a supermarket), I could see a crown of blonde hair, hiding behind the collected goods.
I was wondering how we were going to put this one down without breaking the front door when Rhino, in his own direct way, solved that problem. With one hand, he grabbed the back of the zombie's head, entangling the greasy black strands in his fingers for a moment, before simply hurling the creature to the ground. I didn't even have a chance to register anything specific before Rhino lifted one massive foot.
"Skull damage, right?" Then Aleksei drove his foot down onto the guy's face.
The way the guy's head exploded under Rhino's stomp reminded me of the old comedian Gallagher. It was like using a sledgehammer to crush a watermelon. Bits of skull and a whole mess of blood and brain matter splattered everywhere. It dripped down the lower half of the front door to the 7-11, sprayed out into the street...and all over my ankles. "Oh, that's freakin' gross, Aleksei," I said, shaking one of my legs to get as much of the gore off as I could.
"Sorry, Herman," he said. "I just figured...you know."
"I do, and it worked. Just watch your blast zone next time."
So there I am, shaking one leg, and then the other, keeping a hand on my friend's chest for balance. And then I realized...the spotlight was still shining on us, showing the whole world my attempts to combine dry cleaning and the Hokey Pokey.
The pilot had to be as low as he dared to go. Under my mask, the electronics in my ears washed out the sound of the rotors. But the prop wash was sending bits of paper and other debris scattering around the intersection, and whipping the hair and clothing of the remaining zombies. I took a brief moment to scan our surroundings. In our little trip from the edge of the mess to the front of the store, fifteen, maybe twenty zombies lay in our wake. That was the good news. The bad news was that there were still twenty, maybe twenty-five more about. But the good news from that aspect was their distance. 30 seconds, tops, before any of them were close enough to cause Rhino and I any serious distraction. And only one zombie stumbling up the sidewalk, our planned escape route.
We were going to pull this off.
"Keep an eye out, Aleksei, and yell if they get too close." I knocked on the door with my vibro-smasher. "YO!" I banged a few times, careful not to break the glass. "Hey! You guys in there! We're here to rescue you!" The glass shook a bit under my efforts. When no one peeked up from behind the shelves, I banged a little louder. "Hello! Come on, guys, we're on a bit of a sch..."
Someone rose up from behind the shelf. A young punk rocker, a spider-web tattoo on his neck and piercings in nose, spit in my general direction. "You're not robbing this store!"
My eyes went wide under my mask as he leveled the shotgun in his hands at me.