Read Metahumans vs the Undead: A Superhero vs Zombie Anthology Online
Authors: Eric S. Brown,Gouveia Keith,Paille Rhiannon,Dixon Lorne,Joe Martino,Ranalli Gina,Anthony Giangregorio,Rebecca Besser,Frank Dirscherl,A.P. Fuchs
Tags: #Horror
Metahumans vs the Undead: A Superhero vs Zombie Anthology (10 page)
With a sigh and a quick check of his injured arm, he set off, jumping and gliding from rooftop to rooftop to his car, knowing he was getting closer with each step to catching whoever was behind the zombies and their rash string of bank robberies.
Sitting in his lair, the Cowl studied the map on the computer screen in front of him where a small red light blinked in the center of the warehouse district. His arm bandaged and his battle suit repaired, he was almost ready to leave to finish the mission.
After some quick research, he found that the warehouse the robbers retreated to was owned by a dummy corporation, but the trail had gone cold once it led overseas.
Whoever owned the warehouse had money, there was no doubt about it. After the robberies, he knew the money wasn’t gained lawfully.
After restocking his utility belt and having a quick bite to eat, he walked across the lair. This time he passed by his car and continued down a long hallway. Eventually the hallway ended and he climbed a flight of steel stairs, his heavy combat boots echoing with each step he took. At the top of the upper landing was a reinforced metal door. His pressed his thumb to the print-reader on the side of the door and the latch clicked, the door popping open with a faint hiss.
Entering, he looked on his pride and joy, a slight smile creasing his lips.
His jet plane sat before him, painted black with sleek lines and an engine that could break Mach 1.
The entire hangar was built under the land he owned, the exit built into the side of a cliff. A massive sliding door hiding the opening was camouflaged with trees and rocks. Even when the door was open, from the ground it was difficult to see unless the viewer knew exactly where to look; the exit was recessed back into the cliff side so the natural rock of the cliff barrier prevented discovery.
He needed stealth on this part of the mission, and with the police on full alert after his car escaped the barricade, he knew he’d have to take to the sky to remain undetected.
Minutes later, he finished his pre-flight check and was soaring through the tunnel and into the night sky. Adrenalin filled his system as he flew over the treetops with the city’s skyline only a few miles away.
When he reached the city, he stayed below radar detection, flying close to the rooftops. Banking west, he aimed the nose of the jet toward the waterfront.
He was there in minutes.
Setting it on autopilot so the plane would circle the area, he pressed a button on the joystick and the canopy began to retract. As the jet slowed to stalling speed, he punched out when he was over the warehouse where he knew the robbers were hiding.
Even with his full bodysuit and oxygen mask on, he could feel the icy cold slap on his skin beneath the costume. His cape flapped in the wind until he flexed it just so, causing the membrane lining it to snap into position. Using the cape like a hang glider, he began his controlled descent to the buildings below.
Checking his wristwatch, he noted the round orb now had a small red dot blinking just off center, indicating the tracker was working and that he was in the right place.
It took mere minutes to reach the warehouse, and as he retracted the membrane, allowing the cape to become flexible again, he tucked into a ball when he was twenty feet above the roof and came in harder than he would have liked. He rolled for more than thirty feet on the gravel-covered tar, knowing his speed could easily break a limb. He only spread himself out when he knew he was about to go off the edge of the roof. He calculated almost perfectly, but it still wasn’t exact, and as he opened his body, he found he was only mere feet from the edge.
As he slid off the roof, his hands reached out and he managed to grab the edge. Even with his thick leather gloves, the metal lip of the edge bit deep into his palms.
His legs flew over the side to stop with a jerk in midair and come back down, his entire body slapping the side of the building hard. He hung by his fingertips. Barely.
Though the wind had been knocked out of him, he slowly began to pull himself up, his mouth set in a tight grimace. Only his indomitable will kept him from falling, and a lesser man would have let go and tumbled to a painful death on the hard ground below.
As he pulled himself over the edge, he let himself take a moment
to
rest,
inhaling
the
cold
air
as
his
heart
beat
in
his
temples.
For a full minute he did nothing but breathe, sucking in great
lungfuls
of air to suffuse his body with oxygen. But he couldn’t stay like that all night. He had a job to do.
Rolling to his knees, he scanned the rooftop for signs of movement. When he found none, he rose and walked until he found a skylight. It was dirty and he had to rub one of the glass panes with his glove to see into the building below.
Using a pair of night goggles taken from his utility belt, he peered into the warehouse. His mouth fell open at what he saw.
If he wasn’t seeing it with his own eyes, he never would have believed it. Below, more than a hundred people stood together in the center of what seemed to be a massive room. From what he could see, it looked like it was some kind of meat packing factory. There were long, stainless steel tables surrounding the crowd on all sides, looking as if they had been pushed out from the center; there were even large gouges in the floor where the tables had been carelessly dragged. On all sides of the group, the tables were still in neat rows, and he could tell the area in the middle had been cleared . . . but for what purpose?
As he studied the crowd, he saw each one wore the same kind of mask the bank robbers had.
He sat perfectly still, his dark outfit making him just another shadow. While he was watching the crowd, a section shifted and he saw a mangled body, reminding him of the teller back at the bank. More than a dozen of the “people” were feeding on the corpse, tearing parts away like they were wild animals. As he scanned the rest of the crowd, he witnessed similar groups huddled over what he could only assume were more bodies.
He zoomed in on some of the faces of the crowd, and as he did, he gasped in shock. They weren’t wearing rubber masks as he’d once thought. Those faces were
real
, with gaunt expressions, slack-eyed stares, some with mortal wounds and skin the color of dried parchment.
The rumors of the dead robbing banks was true, and, worse still, there was an entire army of them hidden inside the warehouse. But who was keeping them? Who was pulling all the strings? Who was the criminal mastermind?
It was while he was running through the names of his villainous foes in his head that he picked up on gravel crunching beneath a pair of shoes.
Someone was behind him.
Pulling his eyes away from the carnage below, he spun around in time to see one of the dead coming at him. Its arms were out, making it look like a Frankenstein imitator, and the Cowl hesitated for the briefest of moments, not sure what to do. He didn’t know if he should kill it or leave to come back with reinforcements after being discovered.
But the decision was taken from him as the zombie charged straight at him, wrapping its arms around him and sending him falling backwards, right into the skylight.
With the sound of crashing glass and air rushing by him, the Cowl found himself falling again, and all the while the zombie was trying to sink its teeth into his exposed neck, ignoring the fate it too would share when they landed on the cement floor below.
Twisting and forcing his body mass to the side, he reached for his gun, drawing it from the holster at his hip and raising it the best he could while in a bear hug of death with the undead. He pulled the trigger and the grappling hook whizzed through the air to loop through one of the steel beams supporting the ceiling, the three-pronged tip catching as the wire began to slide. With a sudden jerk, he came to a stop when his weight, and that of the zombie, met the end of the wire connected to the grapple. The zombie had just
leaned
in for another chance at the Cowl’s artery when the wire let loose and the creature continued falling while the zombie’s meal remained suspended in the air.
Moaning and pawing at nothing, the zombie dropped into the center of the crowd of undead below, landing on three of its dead partners, causing a messy splatter of guts, blood, and intestines. The goop coated those standing close by and they grunted and turned their heads back and forth, confused as to where the falling zombie had come from.
One of them finally looked up and spotted the Cowl, only a few feet away. It groaned its find to the others and soon the entire crowd was looking up.
The Cowl knew he was spotted when all the zombies started groaning and moaning, pawing and clawing at his feet, only a few feet from their grasping hands. Swinging and kicking, he tried desperately to stay out of their grasp. He pushed the button on his gun to try and go upward, but remained where he was instead.
Silently cursing, he saw that part of his gun had been damaged by the excess weight of two bodies and the sudden stop a moment ago. It would hold him aloft, but it wouldn’t move him.
With frantic eyes, he looked around for a way to escape. There was a four-foot-thick scaffolding that went from one side of the building to the other, and as his gaze fell upon it, he saw one of his arch foes appear.
