Metahumans vs the Undead: A Superhero vs Zombie Anthology Read Free Page A

didn’t matter much to their future mental health. Either way, those kids were going to be screwed up for life.
    Spectrolite watched the undead feasting for a moment longer, disgustedly fascinated, but that wasn’t the only thing making her hesitate with her finger on the trigger.
    What if whatever had happened to the brains of these people could be reversed? She was about to make those kids orphans and she wasn’t used to having to face down a moral dilemma. Things were usually so cut and dry.
    One of the men looked up from his meal and finally noticed her, his face a mask of blood and gore, his eyes milky and dead. He bared his teeth and snarled, lunging up and charging toward her.
    There was no hesitation left.
    The boom from the shotgun echoed loudly throughout the house and the man dropped like a stone, half his head blown apart and raining down onto the gray carpet, the bits of his brain almost the exact same shade.
    After she’d killed the others, Spectrolite hurried back outside. The children were as she’d left them, seemingly asleep standing up, vacant eyes open but seeing nothing.
    A crash caused her to abruptly look up.
    Ametrine was up the street, destroying electrical poles, crumbling them to dust, the wires falling like lifeless snakes to the ground in wild tangles.
    Her sister must have figured out the same thing she had: with no electricity, the murderous signal would be useless.
    Spectrolite quickly holstered her shotgun on her back, picked up each child and placed them in the foyer of the house, closed the door behind them and ran to join her sister.
    As she did, the young man she’d encountered in the previous house exploded out of his front door, shouting for his girlfriend and wielding a handgun, wildly waving it around.
    Another pole fell with the power of Ametrine’s mind and Spectrolite was reminded again of the nickname she and her sister had been given back when they were children: post-modern Medusas, because their abilities combined were very much like that of the ancient gorgon.
    Spectrolite reached Ametrine, gestured at a fallen pole and asked, “Do we really have time for this?”
    “I want to make sure the power is dead when the cavalry arrives.”
    “I thought we were the cavalry? Plus, I think one pole probably knocked out the power already.”
    All at once, the dead began to emerge from the homes in which they’d been inside. It was a gruesome sight. Every single one of them was streaked with gore and much to her dismay, Spectrolite saw a few gnawing on their own arms.
    Self-cannibalism.
    So that was how bloodthirsty these things were. If there was no other living thing around to feast on, they would just as happily feed on themselves.
    “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” she asked.
    Ametrine cursed softly as the undead horde suddenly focused on the twin costumed heroes, probably because they, along with one lone man, were the only living humans on the street.
    There were dozens of them, all snarling and drooling blood and saliva, their teeth smeared red with bits of meat trapped between them.
    “This is not good,” Ametrine muttered as Spectrolite unholstered both her weapons.
    They heard a pop pop pop and Spectrolite knew the man searching for his girlfriend was now firing his handgun at the creatures.
    Standing back-to-back with her sister, Spectrolite took aim, knowing instinctively to shoot at the heads. It had been the brains that had been rebooted and just like any other computer suffering a lockup, a hard shut down was required.
    Blood, bone and brains flew, the zombies dropping where they stood or flying back into the others behind them before slipping to the ground, dead for good this time.
    Behind her, Spectrolite heard what sounded like concrete pillars collapsing and, in a sense, that’s exactly what they were. From the corner of her eye, she could just make out Ametrine pointing her index fingers at each target, something she did when she focused her energy