Zombies, revisited
I needed to cheer myself up and well, YA never fails to bring the love. Needs some spit and polish, but still brings me much joy. Must go check email and go to class...or maybe class then email. Meh.
End of the World
I don’t own Young Avengers, Runaways, and New X-Men…Marvel in general. Sheesh.
Author: Dimitri Aidan
Beta: None yet, but eventually the always lovely and encouraging Mechante_Fille. *Loves*
Rating: Let’s say ‘R’ and move on.
Series: Part of my AU_100 table.
Prompt: 24: Family
Pairings: …aheh.
Warnings: Zombies. Gratuitous use of the word ‘fuck’ while discussing Snakes on a Plane. Gore.
Notes: I was watching Resident Evil. Weird melding shit happened in my brain. I’m quite proud to say this story is all kinds of wrong and is mostly crack, in a dark and twisted kind of way. Also a little mocking of the families as Marvel has set them up.
I also decided that maybe, being in their mid twenties, they’d shed the ‘Ie’ names. Lord knows I’ve stopped allowing people to introduce me as ‘Dimi’ at this point in my life. I refuse to let it spread beyond close friends and family.
Summery: When Skrull Inc and Kree Corp lose control of an experiential virus it sweeps the west coast, with some unforeseen aftereffects. Four years later and the nation hangs somewhere between death and life.
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Prompt 24: Family
Half the Man I Used to Be
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Erik Lensher, who ruled over the island of Genosha after some slightly illegal government deals back when the world had ended, had exactly four grandchildren. When the world had ended he’d done everything he could to see his family and his country protected from harm but, when the call came for every available and willing person to join the fight against what ‘science’ had created he’d let three of them go very aware of the fact he may very well never see them again.
It had all started with Thomas, the oldest and some might say most reckless. He’d talked his youngest brother Simon into following and from there it was just a matter of time before William did as well.
William Lensher, the middle child of Princess Wanda Lensher, really did love his younger brothers even though he also gave them a lot of crap. Hell, he’d joined the goddamn military to be close to them and keep them from getting their insides chomped on, not that either of them appreciated what he’d done or what he’d given up to do so.
Will didn’t think he’d ever fully understand why Tom and Vizh had thought joining up was a good idea, but he’d gotten dragged along, signed up, and become the ‘perfected’ version of what Kree and Skrull had tried to create the first time around, only he had a ‘Property of Stark’ label branded on his ass.
Not literally or anything, because that was a level of weird he wasn’t quite ready to add to his life at any point in the near future, but the sentiment still stood.
After all, trying to break into a secret underground facility in order to hack Skrull/Kree networks and download information about the original experiments in hopes that a cure can be found for those who were infected by the bite of the Zombies was enough weirdness for his taste. A bite could take anywhere from minutes to weeks to kills a person but everyone who was bitten would die and come back.
A cure that would stop more from being infected would be half of their battle right there. Most of the real trouble with the Zombies came from their inability to stop their numbers from going. Yes, they had reached a point of stagnation, unable to get into secure human facilities or cross the boarders but it was only a matter or time. It was everyone’s hope that after a cure was found an anti-toxin that could be released into the air and wipe out the infected would be next and then, maybe, things could become normal. That’s what Will was fighting for, a chance for normalcy.
Sure, he’d never get it what with the figurative brand, but at last he’d be able to pretend to a certain degree.
Seriously, if Will could find a job that didn’t involve beheading and burning corpses he could pretty much die a happy man. He was easy to please like that.
More likely that not he’d die though. Once the world had ended you kind of came to terms with silly little facts like that.
When Skrull Inc and Kree Corp had royally fucked up the world with their joint ‘Super Solider’ project four years before they’d effectively killed most of West Coast, South-West, and Mountain States (as well as parts of Canada and Mexico but the higher ups were still denying that.) There were nations that wanted the newest development in warfare, genetically altered soldiers who’d be capable of overcoming even the latest technology with their various enhancements and Skrull/Kree had been willing to fill that demand. Unfortunately something had gone wrong, a meltdown caused by some crazed hippie types who thought the projects were wrong, and a cloud had swept all the way to the Rockies.
This, maybe, wouldn’t have been so bad if all of the dead people hadn’t gotten back up with super strength and a desire to eat human flesh. Mass murder is something that world governments are willing to look the other way about if they get something out of the idea, but Zombies too stupid and too vicious to be controlled were not ‘something’ anyone wanted.
The mountains had been treated as a natural wall of sorts, the toxin dense and unable to get high enough to escape the area it was contained it. People had grown complacent, willing to ignore the fact that mere miles away dead people were wandering about eating anyone who may have survive the initial contamination. It went on for some time until the inevitable happened: one of the infected slipped over the mountains and began to spread the virus.
Now, four years later, Canada and Mexico had built walls to section themselves off and everyone with the money to get away had and those that couldn’t set up special communities to live in. About two years ago various corporations had set up The Solution, with the goal of eliminating the infected and cleansing the states one city at a time while jointly helping the search for a cure.
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He didn’t know what it was, but it wasn’t half bad. Vision was a fan of playing music while they stalked through the streets of whatever ruined city they were ransacking and ‘cleansing’ that week. Vision preferred mellow, softer rock but wasn’t averse to letting them make requests. Thomas liked Metal, loud and almost mind numbing, Eli liked smoother, richer things like old school Jazz and Blues, Kate went for more off-beat folk and chick rock, and Will, personally, found a little techno was good for going out and blowing up re-animated corpses.
Today was Vizh’s choice and the acoustic guitar and drums set a nice beat that seemed to fit the aimless wandering they’d been doing for the past two days.
He was teamed with his twin, per usual. Fighting the urge to beat the blond’s head in with the nearest piece of scrap metal he could find aside, they worked well together. Twenty-six years spent almost constantly in each other’s company made them more or less the perfect team, able to read each other’s actions, anticipate the other’s moves, and just be in general aware in a way that none of the telepaths they’d encountered had come close to matching.
Vision said it was a mixture of the freaky twin connection, which Will thought was mostly bullshit anyway, and the fact it was impossible to get a lock on minds as random and erratic as theirs tended to be. Will didn’t have any trouble believing that last part.
“Simon.” He called out, adjusting his earpiece just slightly. There was a moment of silence then the music on the other end turned down.
“Simon? Huh. Will, is this the part where you tell me you have cancer or something?” Vision’s voice was teasing but there was also worry in there. “Because I think I can cure that, with enough time and a few samples of the cancerous-”
“No.” Will’s lips twitched in amusement. “I was just wondering where we’re setting up tonight. What the hell is wrong with you? Cancer?”
“It’s your own fault, using first names recklessly.” Vision sounded just slightly offended. “It sounded like the start of some incredibly angst ridden monologue.”
“You know, I really wanted to see this movie.” Thomas announced as he stopped abruptly, eying the side of a crumbling movie theater with a rare amount of wistfulness. He was usually too busy being pessimistic to be anything but sarcastic, but every now and then he could surprise you. The theater had busted in windows, the posters formerly glass cases torn to shreds or covered in bloody smudges but Thomas had managed to find the one left unharmed.
“Snakes on a Plane? You’re joking.”
“Oh, c’mon, snakes on a motherfucking Plane!” Thomas looked at him, green eyes wide and earnest. “You can’t tell me that wouldn’t be classic Will, I refuse to hear it. Vizh, tell ‘im.”
There was a soft chuckle through their headsets. “He has a point Will. It had Samuel Jackson. And snakes. On a motherfucking plane. What’s not to love? If the world hadn’t gone apeshit I would have gone.”
“There is no way we share DNA.”
Will was willing to swear on all that was potentially holy that his brother’s were the biggest embarrassments to be walking the face of the earth. Both were geeks of the highest order, which was a trait Will shared even if his taste wasn’t quite as questionable, but it was their other quirks that usually made him deny all knowledge of them.
Between Vision’s non-existent social skills, amazing genius brain, and -constantly argued about-- OCD and Thomas’ anti-social and violent tendencies, not to mention the fact he’d hit on anything that breathed and sometimes things that didn’t, Will was easily the ‘normal’ son. It was a weird thought since he’d always thought he was the ‘different’ one growing up, but they never ceased to assure him, in their own special was, that ‘The Gay Thing’ was no where near as big a deal as ‘The Crazy Thing’.
“I assure you that you and Thomas share the same genetic code, with slight differences in obvious areas, and that you do indeed share half with me. I’ve seen the files.” There were these moments, that were becoming more and more frequent, sounded less like the awkward genius Will knew and more like the all-knowing computer that he was connected to.
Their mother probably blamed him for letting Vizh do it but he distinctly recalled going ‘No, don’t let Stark Enterprise put weird implants in your brain’. Not that anyone ever listened to him. Not that he’d been the best person to say ‘no, don’t’ considering what he’d signed up for in the name of ‘science and combating the mistakes made by powerful corporations’. Not that Stark Enterprise wasn’t just another powerful corporation risking mistakes; they just had the justification that almost everyone in North America was rotting, flesh eating, and brain sucking zombies to back them up.
“You are the files robot boy.” Thomas said with a sneer. Will didn’t hesitate to each over and smack his twin sharply in the back of the head and didn’t try to hide his amusement when the blond stumbled and nearly fell over. Vision was as self-conscious about the implants as being part synthoid warranted and allowed so they tried to not talk about it.
They being everyone who had the ability to think before they opened their mouths and weren’t totally lacking in impulse control. More often than not his twin was on the outside of that little group.
“The clinic is the first building around the corner.” Vision said finally before the sharp, rapid click of keyboard keys took over as the only sound on the other end of the connection.
Thomas shrugged slightly, but did look fairly apologetic.
“I can’t take you anywhere.” Will muttered.
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“Does this strike you as really horror movie?” Thomas asked, his voice a soft whisper that reverberated in the still silence. They were walking down a halfway in the clinic Vision had directed them to, path illuminated by the soft blue light emanating from the ball of energy Will was holding above their heads. It bounced off the walls and created a blue halo around his brother’s face as it caught his hair.
“Yep.”
“So I should expect a group of really hungry Zombies to swarm us any moment?”
Will nodded. “That’s usually how it goes.” They’d been at this for a year and some odd months and thus far had gotten in and out of most of their missions mostly unscathed. They hadn’t lost any Squad members or encountered any Skrull/Kree operatives trying to stop them from gathering information.
A lot of other groups had been less lucky; Squad B who they worked relatively close to had lost two members in the past month alone. Husk, who’d been their version of Vision, and Wolfcub who’d been their answer to Thomas’ reckless ‘lets blow stuff up’ mentality.
His first thought had been ‘Better them than us’ but that was very un-hero like behavior and so had never been shared with anyone. He knew they were all thinking the same thing too though; at the end of the day it was you and your squad. Everyone else was just collateral damage.
“Does this mean you’re going to tap into something more lethal than the glowy orb-o-doom?”
“Hey, my glowly orb kicks your ass any day.”
“Not if I shoot you in the head.” Tom smiled, teeth seeming sharp and fierce in the light of the orb. It would have been almost scary, combined wit the unnatural glow of his skin and the cold glitter of his eyes, but Will didn’t think he could ever be afraid of Tom.
It just didn’t work that way.
“I think this is it.” Tom said, eyes darting away from Will. They had come to the end of the hall and a set of metal double doors. Through the glass windows Will could see overturned gurney’s, medical supplies thrown about, broken glass, and litter all on the floor, but no corpses. That didn’t mean they weren’t there, lurking in the shadows and practically salivating at the thought of finally having a hot, living meal and not having to eat each other for a change of pace.
It just meant they couldn’t see them yet.
Will pushed open the door and, with a stray though, extinguished the orb. Sensing the change in light his visor went from standard to infrared. A quick scan of the room showed no body shaped heat patterns in the room but it did show something under what looked to be a large storage unit. The unit was the only thing in the room not obviously destroyed, with even it’s contents still carefully in place. Around the part of the floor it sat on, about a 3-by-5 tiled area, were wisps of dark purple, indicating some kind of heat below.
Tom walked over and bent down and ran his hands along the floor, eyes closed as he ran his fingers over the seam and then behind the unit. He tilted his head to the side and then a soft click rang out. With nary another sound the storage unit and the floor underneath it moved, sliding down into the floor and then backwards to reveal a large hole that emanated purple light.
Tom leaned back slightly, cocking an eyebrow in Will’s direction. Once entering the room they had to go with total silence but he didn’t need words to know what his twin was thinking: “Where’s the catch?” Nothing had ever been this easy; even qualifying to be a member of the Solution had taken more work and they would accept just about anyone.
Will almost missed it, the sudden concentration of yellow-orange in the purple, but couldn’t say anything quickly enough to save Tom. It came in the form of a beam of light and struck his twin in the chest, sending him sailing into one of the gurneys with a sick metallic clang. The gurney scrapped over the floor before coming to a stop; Tom slumped over, blood already falling from the corner of his mouth.
Will almost called out, heart skipping a few beats and his breath catching in his throat but he swallowed his words down. He was trained for this and knew that, brother or not, even Tom came after the mission.
He turned away from his brother and forgot him, letting the crackling energy he was filling with work its way up from where he kept it carefully contained. It was like an ice bath on the inside, hollowing him and leaving nothing but a chill in its wake. Like the flip of a switch he stopped being William and became part of The Solution. His visor went clear again and he was able to see what he was up against.
At the edge of the hole stood, or perhaps ‘hovered’ would be more accurate, a figure with blond hair a touch on the long side, green skin, and large leathery looking wings protruding from his back. He was big
The latest in Kree/Skrull technology, an attempt to keep a lid on their information. The people who led the companies were the most wanted men in the world and were prepared to create an army to keep themselves alive. Emotionless and perfect, in that they were powerful and easily replaced, they were almost a greater threat than the Zombies because there was intelligence to them. Not enough to form independent thoughts or be considered truly ‘alive’ in Will’s view, but enough to dangerous.
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Speci-Vell, the first in a series of three different beings created with similar genetic materiel, knew quite a bit but at the same time knew very little. He’d spent time, in the lab, reading and taking in information about the ‘Others’ who he was to one day help overtake, but had never seen a Human face to face.
It was a strange feeling: the sudden uneven beat of his heart and the way his breathing had changed while he was waiting for the man to turn and look at him. His breathe stopped for one strange moment when dark blue eyes finally acknowledge him. Yes, a strange feeling indeed.
Speci-Vell had been called a number of things in his time in the lab, but for some odd reason he was hearing a soft, echoing voice call him ‘Teddy’, as warm and calloused hands stroked his hair. He’d thought of it before, but it seemed out of place in the current situation.
He didn’t know many things but he knew he’d been ordered to wait for the chamber to open and then eliminate the intruders. The first was down, no heartbeat or breathing pattern detected, so now this one must be eliminated as well.
His wings flapped once, giving him a little more elevation and then he went diving for the man, ready to crush his skull and then return to the lab. One of the Undead would smell the bodies and dispose of them soon enough. The blue eyes flashed, filling with white hot energy.
“Outside.”
There was a bright flash of blue.
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Simon watched, stomach rolling with dread. Thomas was down and William had shorted out his tracking device with his display of power. He could never quite calibrate Will’s equipment to keep up with his energy output, especially when he went teleporting places.
Not worth worrying about now. He hit a switch, turning Tom’s earpiece back on and swallowed. If there was a god out there, happening to be listening, he hoped to god he wasn’t dead. “Thomas! Tom!” Nothing, not even a twitch. Not from his brother anyway, something however was crawling out of the entrance of the tunnel they’d been sent to explore. A hand, so cold that Vision could barely distinguish between in and the heat coming from the tunnel, crept over the edge; it had to be a zombie heat signal. Vision quickly overrode Tom’s visor, shutting off the heat vision, before trying again.
“Tommy?” Mom was going to kill him, or worse, Uncle Pietro would. He and Tom had always been close and Pietro had also been against them joining Stark Enterprises. When he found out Tom was dead hell was going to rain down. Zombies would be nothing.
“Oh god.” He couldn’t watch this. He didn’t have the training Will and Tom did, he couldn’t just go cold as someone was eaten right in front of him and act as if it didn’t matter. Half-computer or not, he felt more than most of the field soldier’s combined. He wanted to turn away, heart clenching in his chest as the Zombie slunk out of the tunnel and used its hands to pull itself closer to Tom’s prone form. No lower half, it made a heavy, wet noise as its intestine dragged over the tiled floor and left a smear of red-brown blood in its wake.
He could almost imagine the rancid smell of years old death that always followed the undead and closed his eyes as it finally closed in on Tom, mouth opening and showing an almost completely toothless mouth, black gums and rotted stump of a tongue.
TBC…
End of the World
I don’t own Young Avengers, Runaways, and New X-Men…Marvel in general. Sheesh.
Author: Dimitri Aidan
Beta: None yet, but eventually the always lovely and encouraging Mechante_Fille. *Loves*
Rating: Let’s say ‘R’ and move on.
Series: Part of my AU_100 table.
Prompt: 24: Family
Pairings: …aheh.
Warnings: Zombies. Gratuitous use of the word ‘fuck’ while discussing Snakes on a Plane. Gore.
Notes: I was watching Resident Evil. Weird melding shit happened in my brain. I’m quite proud to say this story is all kinds of wrong and is mostly crack, in a dark and twisted kind of way. Also a little mocking of the families as Marvel has set them up.
I also decided that maybe, being in their mid twenties, they’d shed the ‘Ie’ names. Lord knows I’ve stopped allowing people to introduce me as ‘Dimi’ at this point in my life. I refuse to let it spread beyond close friends and family.
Summery: When Skrull Inc and Kree Corp lose control of an experiential virus it sweeps the west coast, with some unforeseen aftereffects. Four years later and the nation hangs somewhere between death and life.
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Prompt 24: Family
Half the Man I Used to Be
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Erik Lensher, who ruled over the island of Genosha after some slightly illegal government deals back when the world had ended, had exactly four grandchildren. When the world had ended he’d done everything he could to see his family and his country protected from harm but, when the call came for every available and willing person to join the fight against what ‘science’ had created he’d let three of them go very aware of the fact he may very well never see them again.
It had all started with Thomas, the oldest and some might say most reckless. He’d talked his youngest brother Simon into following and from there it was just a matter of time before William did as well.
William Lensher, the middle child of Princess Wanda Lensher, really did love his younger brothers even though he also gave them a lot of crap. Hell, he’d joined the goddamn military to be close to them and keep them from getting their insides chomped on, not that either of them appreciated what he’d done or what he’d given up to do so.
Will didn’t think he’d ever fully understand why Tom and Vizh had thought joining up was a good idea, but he’d gotten dragged along, signed up, and become the ‘perfected’ version of what Kree and Skrull had tried to create the first time around, only he had a ‘Property of Stark’ label branded on his ass.
Not literally or anything, because that was a level of weird he wasn’t quite ready to add to his life at any point in the near future, but the sentiment still stood.
After all, trying to break into a secret underground facility in order to hack Skrull/Kree networks and download information about the original experiments in hopes that a cure can be found for those who were infected by the bite of the Zombies was enough weirdness for his taste. A bite could take anywhere from minutes to weeks to kills a person but everyone who was bitten would die and come back.
A cure that would stop more from being infected would be half of their battle right there. Most of the real trouble with the Zombies came from their inability to stop their numbers from going. Yes, they had reached a point of stagnation, unable to get into secure human facilities or cross the boarders but it was only a matter or time. It was everyone’s hope that after a cure was found an anti-toxin that could be released into the air and wipe out the infected would be next and then, maybe, things could become normal. That’s what Will was fighting for, a chance for normalcy.
Sure, he’d never get it what with the figurative brand, but at last he’d be able to pretend to a certain degree.
Seriously, if Will could find a job that didn’t involve beheading and burning corpses he could pretty much die a happy man. He was easy to please like that.
More likely that not he’d die though. Once the world had ended you kind of came to terms with silly little facts like that.
When Skrull Inc and Kree Corp had royally fucked up the world with their joint ‘Super Solider’ project four years before they’d effectively killed most of West Coast, South-West, and Mountain States (as well as parts of Canada and Mexico but the higher ups were still denying that.) There were nations that wanted the newest development in warfare, genetically altered soldiers who’d be capable of overcoming even the latest technology with their various enhancements and Skrull/Kree had been willing to fill that demand. Unfortunately something had gone wrong, a meltdown caused by some crazed hippie types who thought the projects were wrong, and a cloud had swept all the way to the Rockies.
This, maybe, wouldn’t have been so bad if all of the dead people hadn’t gotten back up with super strength and a desire to eat human flesh. Mass murder is something that world governments are willing to look the other way about if they get something out of the idea, but Zombies too stupid and too vicious to be controlled were not ‘something’ anyone wanted.
The mountains had been treated as a natural wall of sorts, the toxin dense and unable to get high enough to escape the area it was contained it. People had grown complacent, willing to ignore the fact that mere miles away dead people were wandering about eating anyone who may have survive the initial contamination. It went on for some time until the inevitable happened: one of the infected slipped over the mountains and began to spread the virus.
Now, four years later, Canada and Mexico had built walls to section themselves off and everyone with the money to get away had and those that couldn’t set up special communities to live in. About two years ago various corporations had set up The Solution, with the goal of eliminating the infected and cleansing the states one city at a time while jointly helping the search for a cure.
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He didn’t know what it was, but it wasn’t half bad. Vision was a fan of playing music while they stalked through the streets of whatever ruined city they were ransacking and ‘cleansing’ that week. Vision preferred mellow, softer rock but wasn’t averse to letting them make requests. Thomas liked Metal, loud and almost mind numbing, Eli liked smoother, richer things like old school Jazz and Blues, Kate went for more off-beat folk and chick rock, and Will, personally, found a little techno was good for going out and blowing up re-animated corpses.
Today was Vizh’s choice and the acoustic guitar and drums set a nice beat that seemed to fit the aimless wandering they’d been doing for the past two days.
He was teamed with his twin, per usual. Fighting the urge to beat the blond’s head in with the nearest piece of scrap metal he could find aside, they worked well together. Twenty-six years spent almost constantly in each other’s company made them more or less the perfect team, able to read each other’s actions, anticipate the other’s moves, and just be in general aware in a way that none of the telepaths they’d encountered had come close to matching.
Vision said it was a mixture of the freaky twin connection, which Will thought was mostly bullshit anyway, and the fact it was impossible to get a lock on minds as random and erratic as theirs tended to be. Will didn’t have any trouble believing that last part.
“Simon.” He called out, adjusting his earpiece just slightly. There was a moment of silence then the music on the other end turned down.
“Simon? Huh. Will, is this the part where you tell me you have cancer or something?” Vision’s voice was teasing but there was also worry in there. “Because I think I can cure that, with enough time and a few samples of the cancerous-”
“No.” Will’s lips twitched in amusement. “I was just wondering where we’re setting up tonight. What the hell is wrong with you? Cancer?”
“It’s your own fault, using first names recklessly.” Vision sounded just slightly offended. “It sounded like the start of some incredibly angst ridden monologue.”
“You know, I really wanted to see this movie.” Thomas announced as he stopped abruptly, eying the side of a crumbling movie theater with a rare amount of wistfulness. He was usually too busy being pessimistic to be anything but sarcastic, but every now and then he could surprise you. The theater had busted in windows, the posters formerly glass cases torn to shreds or covered in bloody smudges but Thomas had managed to find the one left unharmed.
“Snakes on a Plane? You’re joking.”
“Oh, c’mon, snakes on a motherfucking Plane!” Thomas looked at him, green eyes wide and earnest. “You can’t tell me that wouldn’t be classic Will, I refuse to hear it. Vizh, tell ‘im.”
There was a soft chuckle through their headsets. “He has a point Will. It had Samuel Jackson. And snakes. On a motherfucking plane. What’s not to love? If the world hadn’t gone apeshit I would have gone.”
“There is no way we share DNA.”
Will was willing to swear on all that was potentially holy that his brother’s were the biggest embarrassments to be walking the face of the earth. Both were geeks of the highest order, which was a trait Will shared even if his taste wasn’t quite as questionable, but it was their other quirks that usually made him deny all knowledge of them.
Between Vision’s non-existent social skills, amazing genius brain, and -constantly argued about-- OCD and Thomas’ anti-social and violent tendencies, not to mention the fact he’d hit on anything that breathed and sometimes things that didn’t, Will was easily the ‘normal’ son. It was a weird thought since he’d always thought he was the ‘different’ one growing up, but they never ceased to assure him, in their own special was, that ‘The Gay Thing’ was no where near as big a deal as ‘The Crazy Thing’.
“I assure you that you and Thomas share the same genetic code, with slight differences in obvious areas, and that you do indeed share half with me. I’ve seen the files.” There were these moments, that were becoming more and more frequent, sounded less like the awkward genius Will knew and more like the all-knowing computer that he was connected to.
Their mother probably blamed him for letting Vizh do it but he distinctly recalled going ‘No, don’t let Stark Enterprise put weird implants in your brain’. Not that anyone ever listened to him. Not that he’d been the best person to say ‘no, don’t’ considering what he’d signed up for in the name of ‘science and combating the mistakes made by powerful corporations’. Not that Stark Enterprise wasn’t just another powerful corporation risking mistakes; they just had the justification that almost everyone in North America was rotting, flesh eating, and brain sucking zombies to back them up.
“You are the files robot boy.” Thomas said with a sneer. Will didn’t hesitate to each over and smack his twin sharply in the back of the head and didn’t try to hide his amusement when the blond stumbled and nearly fell over. Vision was as self-conscious about the implants as being part synthoid warranted and allowed so they tried to not talk about it.
They being everyone who had the ability to think before they opened their mouths and weren’t totally lacking in impulse control. More often than not his twin was on the outside of that little group.
“The clinic is the first building around the corner.” Vision said finally before the sharp, rapid click of keyboard keys took over as the only sound on the other end of the connection.
Thomas shrugged slightly, but did look fairly apologetic.
“I can’t take you anywhere.” Will muttered.
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“Does this strike you as really horror movie?” Thomas asked, his voice a soft whisper that reverberated in the still silence. They were walking down a halfway in the clinic Vision had directed them to, path illuminated by the soft blue light emanating from the ball of energy Will was holding above their heads. It bounced off the walls and created a blue halo around his brother’s face as it caught his hair.
“Yep.”
“So I should expect a group of really hungry Zombies to swarm us any moment?”
Will nodded. “That’s usually how it goes.” They’d been at this for a year and some odd months and thus far had gotten in and out of most of their missions mostly unscathed. They hadn’t lost any Squad members or encountered any Skrull/Kree operatives trying to stop them from gathering information.
A lot of other groups had been less lucky; Squad B who they worked relatively close to had lost two members in the past month alone. Husk, who’d been their version of Vision, and Wolfcub who’d been their answer to Thomas’ reckless ‘lets blow stuff up’ mentality.
His first thought had been ‘Better them than us’ but that was very un-hero like behavior and so had never been shared with anyone. He knew they were all thinking the same thing too though; at the end of the day it was you and your squad. Everyone else was just collateral damage.
“Does this mean you’re going to tap into something more lethal than the glowy orb-o-doom?”
“Hey, my glowly orb kicks your ass any day.”
“Not if I shoot you in the head.” Tom smiled, teeth seeming sharp and fierce in the light of the orb. It would have been almost scary, combined wit the unnatural glow of his skin and the cold glitter of his eyes, but Will didn’t think he could ever be afraid of Tom.
It just didn’t work that way.
“I think this is it.” Tom said, eyes darting away from Will. They had come to the end of the hall and a set of metal double doors. Through the glass windows Will could see overturned gurney’s, medical supplies thrown about, broken glass, and litter all on the floor, but no corpses. That didn’t mean they weren’t there, lurking in the shadows and practically salivating at the thought of finally having a hot, living meal and not having to eat each other for a change of pace.
It just meant they couldn’t see them yet.
Will pushed open the door and, with a stray though, extinguished the orb. Sensing the change in light his visor went from standard to infrared. A quick scan of the room showed no body shaped heat patterns in the room but it did show something under what looked to be a large storage unit. The unit was the only thing in the room not obviously destroyed, with even it’s contents still carefully in place. Around the part of the floor it sat on, about a 3-by-5 tiled area, were wisps of dark purple, indicating some kind of heat below.
Tom walked over and bent down and ran his hands along the floor, eyes closed as he ran his fingers over the seam and then behind the unit. He tilted his head to the side and then a soft click rang out. With nary another sound the storage unit and the floor underneath it moved, sliding down into the floor and then backwards to reveal a large hole that emanated purple light.
Tom leaned back slightly, cocking an eyebrow in Will’s direction. Once entering the room they had to go with total silence but he didn’t need words to know what his twin was thinking: “Where’s the catch?” Nothing had ever been this easy; even qualifying to be a member of the Solution had taken more work and they would accept just about anyone.
Will almost missed it, the sudden concentration of yellow-orange in the purple, but couldn’t say anything quickly enough to save Tom. It came in the form of a beam of light and struck his twin in the chest, sending him sailing into one of the gurneys with a sick metallic clang. The gurney scrapped over the floor before coming to a stop; Tom slumped over, blood already falling from the corner of his mouth.
Will almost called out, heart skipping a few beats and his breath catching in his throat but he swallowed his words down. He was trained for this and knew that, brother or not, even Tom came after the mission.
He turned away from his brother and forgot him, letting the crackling energy he was filling with work its way up from where he kept it carefully contained. It was like an ice bath on the inside, hollowing him and leaving nothing but a chill in its wake. Like the flip of a switch he stopped being William and became part of The Solution. His visor went clear again and he was able to see what he was up against.
At the edge of the hole stood, or perhaps ‘hovered’ would be more accurate, a figure with blond hair a touch on the long side, green skin, and large leathery looking wings protruding from his back. He was big
The latest in Kree/Skrull technology, an attempt to keep a lid on their information. The people who led the companies were the most wanted men in the world and were prepared to create an army to keep themselves alive. Emotionless and perfect, in that they were powerful and easily replaced, they were almost a greater threat than the Zombies because there was intelligence to them. Not enough to form independent thoughts or be considered truly ‘alive’ in Will’s view, but enough to dangerous.
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Speci-Vell, the first in a series of three different beings created with similar genetic materiel, knew quite a bit but at the same time knew very little. He’d spent time, in the lab, reading and taking in information about the ‘Others’ who he was to one day help overtake, but had never seen a Human face to face.
It was a strange feeling: the sudden uneven beat of his heart and the way his breathing had changed while he was waiting for the man to turn and look at him. His breathe stopped for one strange moment when dark blue eyes finally acknowledge him. Yes, a strange feeling indeed.
Speci-Vell had been called a number of things in his time in the lab, but for some odd reason he was hearing a soft, echoing voice call him ‘Teddy’, as warm and calloused hands stroked his hair. He’d thought of it before, but it seemed out of place in the current situation.
He didn’t know many things but he knew he’d been ordered to wait for the chamber to open and then eliminate the intruders. The first was down, no heartbeat or breathing pattern detected, so now this one must be eliminated as well.
His wings flapped once, giving him a little more elevation and then he went diving for the man, ready to crush his skull and then return to the lab. One of the Undead would smell the bodies and dispose of them soon enough. The blue eyes flashed, filling with white hot energy.
“Outside.”
There was a bright flash of blue.
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Simon watched, stomach rolling with dread. Thomas was down and William had shorted out his tracking device with his display of power. He could never quite calibrate Will’s equipment to keep up with his energy output, especially when he went teleporting places.
Not worth worrying about now. He hit a switch, turning Tom’s earpiece back on and swallowed. If there was a god out there, happening to be listening, he hoped to god he wasn’t dead. “Thomas! Tom!” Nothing, not even a twitch. Not from his brother anyway, something however was crawling out of the entrance of the tunnel they’d been sent to explore. A hand, so cold that Vision could barely distinguish between in and the heat coming from the tunnel, crept over the edge; it had to be a zombie heat signal. Vision quickly overrode Tom’s visor, shutting off the heat vision, before trying again.
“Tommy?” Mom was going to kill him, or worse, Uncle Pietro would. He and Tom had always been close and Pietro had also been against them joining Stark Enterprises. When he found out Tom was dead hell was going to rain down. Zombies would be nothing.
“Oh god.” He couldn’t watch this. He didn’t have the training Will and Tom did, he couldn’t just go cold as someone was eaten right in front of him and act as if it didn’t matter. Half-computer or not, he felt more than most of the field soldier’s combined. He wanted to turn away, heart clenching in his chest as the Zombie slunk out of the tunnel and used its hands to pull itself closer to Tom’s prone form. No lower half, it made a heavy, wet noise as its intestine dragged over the tiled floor and left a smear of red-brown blood in its wake.
He could almost imagine the rancid smell of years old death that always followed the undead and closed his eyes as it finally closed in on Tom, mouth opening and showing an almost completely toothless mouth, black gums and rotted stump of a tongue.
TBC…