Metahumans vs the Undead: A Superhero vs Zombie Anthology (33 page)

Now he could hear the moans and the soft sound of scraping on the rock.

The monsters filled the darkness, their foul hisses sending the sound of demonic serpents through his heart and stomach.

Firm hands gripped him on the right and jerked him sideways. Axiom-man lunged out with his fist, catching something with his knuckles, but it was too soft to be a head. Another pair of hands grabbed him from behind and pulled him back so far his body couldn’t take the arc and he fell on his backside. With a scream, he let loose the energy from his eyes, stood and spun in a circle. Bits of rocks and debris from the tunnel wall sprayed out, several of the pieces cutting into him. Shrieks echoed in the tunnel, then silenced.

Axiom-man let the light fade from his eyes, now nothing but black pitch around him.

A raspy groan.

Ignoring the sting of over a dozen cuts, he relit his eyes again, just enough to see what was around. The undead were coming toward him from either side, emerging from shadows along the side walls and from the black abyss further down the tunnel.

There was no way out.

Bouncing on his toes a couple of times, he decided it’d be too dangerous to try and take them on all at once, even with his eye beams. Though he wasn’t one to retreat, it was his only option.

He turned around, facing the direction he just came from and rose up into the air, his body hugging the rough and jagged ceiling. The ceiling’s terrain was uneven and he had to be careful not to snag his shoulder or back or even head and neck against a small outcrop of rock otherwise he might quickly find himself face first on the hard floor, or worse, spilling blood into the open maws of the creatures below.

He moved as swiftly as possible, flying above the heads of the undead, the underside of his body scraping against fingers reaching up to grab him. A low drop of the ceiling appeared in front of him. Axiom-man took a quick mental snapshot of what it looked like, then fired up his eyes and dropped his flight level by half. Immediately he was submerged in a sea of the dead, their filthy and rotten bodies crowding around him as he flew through, his speed too fast for them to get a solid hold on him. Some of the dead stumbled off to the wayside as he plowed through them. A couple others took his fists in the gut and rode with him for a moment like dirt in a plow before dropping underneath him. Blasting hard, Axiom-man shot the energy forth from his eyes and cut down the undead in front of him. Groans and screeches echoed throughout the tunnel.

Figuring he was past the sudden drop in the ceiling, he cut the light in his eyes by half, enabling him to see through a
bluey
haze. A wall came up before him. He banked sharply to the left, nicking his shoulder on the rock. Something cracked inside and a blaze of pain shot through his shoulder, arm and collarbone. All feeling left his arm then came back full force in blinding fury. He couldn’t move it.

Screaming, he instinctively slowed down. The moans of the dead echoed behind. Two creatures were up ahead. Angry, hurt, and his heart quickening from the pain and growing claustrophobic, Axiom-man blasted the undead in front of him. He had already flown past them before he heard the thunk of their bodies hit the ground.

Sweating, heart pounding, he spotted the entrance to the tunnel up ahead, the moonlight from outside brighter than he remembered it. Emerging out of the entrance, he cut the light from his eyes, turned around midair, and landed.

After a quick check for the undead and seeing a few more about thirty feet off, he pumped up the energy in his eyes until there was nothing but blue-white before his vision. Letting loose with all he had, he fired the energy straight ahead then to either side of the tunnel’s entrance. The
thundercracks
of rocky explosions sent his ears ringing. Dust mushroomed from where the energy beams connected with the rocks and rushed toward him, instantly filling his nostrils and mouth. He didn’t care. He took off into the air, cut the energy from his eyes, and surveyed the ground below. Though dust obscured most of it, he thought it appeared like he’d sealed off the tunnel. He took a shot off either side of the main entrance, these ones with a little less force, enough to crack the rocks and force them to collapse in on themselves.

Coughing against the dust that coated his mask, Axiom-man pulled it down, exposing his face to the fresh air.

His arm hung limp at his side. A fresh streak of pain shot through his shoulder. Adrenaline pumping, the need to escape and seal off the tunnel having overwhelmed him, he didn’t realize it had been dislocated.

Shouting from the pain, he knew he had to figure out how to fix it, but not before dispatching the dead stumbling toward the blast site below. Batting most of the dust off his mask with his good hand, he pulled it back in place over his face, and flew close to the creatures and picked them off with his energy beams before going higher in the sky, surveying the town below.

Cradling his arm, his muscles tensing all over from the pain, he didn’t know how much more he could take.

He spotted a couple more straggling undead below and took them out. On the horizon, coming in between a mountain of rock that had been blasted in half way back when the roads were built, were a couple of tanks, military jeeps, a truck and something else that he couldn’t make out this far away.

Finally, the cavalry had arrived.

Flying over as fast he could, he landed on the roadway far enough from the lead tank for it to stop. Its engine rumbled, shaking the ground. A moment later, the top hatch to the tank opened and a soldier decked out in full gear popped his head out.

“How bad is it?” the soldier asked.

It wasn’t the greatest question to broach what was happening, but at least Axiom-man was able to provide them an answer. Wincing, he said, “Better. Most have been sealed off in a tunnel near the mine.”
I hope.
He pointed toward the tall red mineshaft in the distance. The soldier must have seen the dust still floating on the air because the man nodded. “But there are a few stragglers. Was able to stop a bunch of them, but a full sweep of the town and surrounding area needs to be conducted otherwise we run the risk of one or more getting away. The cops . . . all dead.”

The soldier nodded again then put his
walkie
to his mouth. Axiom-man grimaced beneath his mask, the pain growing so much it was all he could think about and couldn’t hear what the soldier was saying.

His arm . . .

“Hey!” the soldier shouted.

Axiom-man looked up at him.

“You all right? I thought you were bulletproof”

He took a deep breath.
Not quite.
“I’ll live.”

The soldier thumbed over his shoulder. “Got a medical jeep back there. Go get fixed up then help us ensure this town goes on lockdown until the threat is eliminated.”

Not caring that he was getting an order, he simply nodded, floated a couple feet off the ground, and went toward the jeep with a female soldier sticking her head out the passenger side window and waving him down.

Behind him, the lead tank rumbled its engine and continued down the road. Some of the other jeeps followed. The tank in the rear rounded the vehicle he was next to.

The woman asked, “Never thought I’d see the day when this would happen.”

“Don’t think that. Besides, no one would’ve imagined—”

She looked at him crossly, as if he just insulted her personally. “I did.”

As firmly as possible, he said, “Waiting for something like this to happen means you expect the worst, means you’ve lost hope.” He didn’t mean to lecture, but his shoulder hurt so bad he wasn’t in the mood for anything else negative.

“I don’t—”

“The world’s a different place now,” he said, thinking back to the Doorway of Darkness and how its emergence into the world changed the fabric of existence, opening up possibilities of disaster even worse than what he went through tonight. He floated back to the ground.

“I guess you’re right,” she said. “The
dead’ve
come back to life. Know how?”

“No,” he said. “Not completely, but I think whatever the answer is, it lies in that mine I sealed off. The real question is if you want to open it to find out.”

“Pandora’s Box.”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

She stepped out of the jeep and felt up and down his arm, his shoulder.

“It’s dislocated,” he said.

She called for a couple of soldiers to come down and help her put it back in place. “This is going to hurt.”

“Just get it over with,” he said.

Gunshots echoed from the town. The blast of the tank went off, thunder on the air.

The soldiers grabbed him, one in the front, one in the back. Without even counting it off, the one in front pulled his arm down and forward, then pushed it back up while the other soldier held him firm. With a loud, dull
thuck
, white pain shot through his arm and shoulder, all sensation gone from his hand and arm.

“Thanks,” he said, though wasn’t sure if he actually said the word.

The soldiers let go of him and he teetered on his feet.

“You okay, bub?” one of the soldiers asked, a big guy at least two-hundred-fifty pounds.

“No, but I’ll manage,” Axiom-man said.

The soldier helped steady him.

Thanking them one last time, Axiom-man rose into the air and headed back toward the town.

He had a job to finish.

Author Bios

Eric S. Brown
is the author of numerous books including the
Bigfoot War
series,
The War of the Worlds Plus Blood, Guts and Zombies
,
Season of Rot
, and
World War of the Dead
to name only a few. His short fiction has been published hundreds of times in the small press and beyond. He lives in North Carolina with his family where he continues to write tales of hungry corpses, blazing guns, and the things that lurk in the woods. Visit him online at
ericsbrown.wordpress.com

Frank
Dirscherl
was born in 1973 and has been working as a librarian since 1992. As well as being a writer, he is also a comic book lecturer, amateur history buff and publisher of Trinity Comics, where he writes the multi-Ledger-nominated
The Wraith
comic book series.
Cult of the Damned
is his third novel. His previous works,
The Wraith
(filmed in 2005),
Valley of Evil
, and the non-fiction,
The Wraith: Eyes of Judgment - The Official Script Book & Movie Guide
, all published by
Coscom
Entertainment. He’s also contributed to a variety of pulp anthologies and edited a non-fiction book on independent filmmaking. He lives on the south coast of NSW, Australia, with his wife Jennifer. For more information on Frank and The Wraith, please visit
www.frankdirscherl.com
and
www.the-wraith.com

Lorne Dixon
lives and writes off an exit of I-78 in residential New Jersey. He grew up on a diet of yellow-
spined
paperbacks, black-and-white monster movies, and the thunder lizard backbeat of rock-n-roll. He is the author of the mummy thriller,
Eternal Unrest
,
The Lifeless
,
Snarl
and the mash-up,
Hound: Curse of the Baskervilles
.

A.P. Fuchs
is the author of many novels and short stories, most of which have been published. His most recent books are the first three installments in the
Blood of my World
vampire series:
Discovery of Death
,
Memories of Death
,
Life of Death
. He’s also author of the zombie novels,
Possession of the Dead
and
Zombie Fight Night: Battles of the Dead
, in which zombies fight such classic monsters as werewolves, vampires, Bigfoot, and even go up against awesome foes like pirates, ninjas, and . . . Bruce Lee. He is also known for his superhero series,
The Axiom-man Saga
, and the author of the shoot ’
em
up zombie trilogy,
Undead World
. Fuchs lives and writes in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Visit his corner of the Web at
www.canisterx.com