Contents
Copyright SKZ
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Superheroes Kill Zombies
By Jeremiah Kleckner
Copyright 2018
Cover Design by Jeremiah Kleckner
Cover art by Toyin Ajetunmobi
jaymorby.carbonmade.com
This is a fictional work and any resemblance to actual people living or dead, businesses, locales, or events is either coincidental or parodied with extreme absurdity. Reproduction of this publication in part or whole without written consent is strictly prohibited. Thank you for reading. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book so that others may find it as well. Your support is everything.
Chapter 1
Cops chased the 908 Gang into a warehouse in the Marion District, a low-rent neighborhood built out of an old army fort. The government shut it down six years ago and transferred everybody two states south, along with thousands of jobs and a constant source of people looking to spend money. The area never recovered.
The informant said the place was full of military gear brought into the city as part of the gang’s plan to expand their territory.
As Force, Jeff Beal was there to make sure nobody got hurt. This gang notoriously used kids as fodder when they got into tight spots and a police raid would be just the thing for them to bring out their ugliest tactics.
“Breach when I give the say so,” Jeff called back as he smashed through the skylight above where the gang was barricaded behind. “Not one moment before.”
A dozen of men and teenagers turned in surprise, all of them armed to the teeth with assault rifles, grenades, and military-grade armor. The heavy-duty firepower would have prolonged the fight against the cops, but not with him, especially with the prototype EM Gauntlets he’d been given by Erica’s former defense contact at Arktech.
In a whirl of combat, Jeff dealt with them quickly. He knocked two men across the warehouse, then spun a kick that flattened two more. Three rushed him. He leaped towards them, swinging fists that sent them cartwheeling away. The rest started running.
Jeff recognized one of them as Sammy Hayes, a high school dropout who lived with his grandparents two floors below Jeff’s own apartment. He was quick with a joke and to offer opening the front door when his hands were full of groceries. Jeff pulled his punch, opting to drop his downstairs neighbor with a quick headbutt instead.
During the mop up, Jeff thought about why he went easy on Sammy. The guy dropped a fully automatic weapon when he started running. If Jeff wasn’t there, Sammy might have killed a cop with that rifle. All of those weapons had armor-piercing ammo.
Watching Sammy get loaded into the back of a squad car, Jeff wondered whether he was being foolish or soft-hearted.
What would Erica have done, facing someone she knew on the wrong side of the law? He didn’t have to think long.
“God, Mike Slater,” she had said with an embarrassed look on her face. She was reminding him that heroes weren’t perfect. They were still human, fallible, and just as likely to fall for the wrong people at the wrong time. Slater was a fellow Unique and had the power to control magnetism. She let him go once, and his following act was to kill a pair of cops outside of a big box store on Christmas Eve. She swore to never let her feelings get in the way of her duty again. “I knew he had to be a bad guy, given how attractive he was,” she’d confided. “But you know, people who disappoint you can be an impetus to do your job even better in future. Always look forwards, Jeff, never back.”
Jeff shook his head. He should have been thinking about the lessons Erica taught him, instead of seeing Sammy as a friend. He wasn’t putting any more cops in danger, not after the werewolf assault on the precinct.
“I wish you were still here,” Jeff whispered to his lost mentor. “There’s just so much you overcame. So much I’ll never get to learn from you.”
He sighed, watching the cop cars pull away.
Across the street from the warehouse, there was a collection of hipster style stores and cafés. His eyes locked on one shop with an Egyptian Sekhet painted on the curtained storefront window. ‘Ancient Tomes’ was written above the symbol. Probably an occult bookshop, he decided. Half of a weathered face looked out at him from behind the curtain then turned away.
“Vampires and werewolves and military firepower, oh my,” he muttered to himself.
It had only been a couple weeks since the assault on the precinct and he hadn’t followed up on his promise to research supernatural creatures beyond casual searches on the internet, which had been a waste. Maybe he’d find some useful info here. He brushed some of the dust off his suit and headed over to start making good on that promise.
A little bell rang as he opened the door into the cramped bookstore, filled with shelves of paperbacks and unrecognizable statues. The haze of incense wafted over him, seeping through his helmet’s filter. Honeysuckle? Hibiscus, maybe? He knew less about this than he did about vampires.
Jeff turned to a middle-aged woman standing behind the counter.
She didn’t seem at all intimidated by his suit and obvious identity.
“Well, look who comes into my little shop,” she offered in an amused tone. “What can I do for a real-life hero?”
Jeff clenched a bit at that, but hoped she couldn’t see his reaction under the suit.
“I’m looking for information,” he replied. After a half-breath of hesitation, he continued, “On vampires and werewolves and other … things.”
“Oh, I see,” she replied in a less confident tone. “You’re talking about what’s been going on in the city of late.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “These … creatures … keep showing up and I need to be better prepared. What do you have on this kind of thing?”
“Well,” she said, pointing to a shelf of books marked Mythology. “There’s a lot of lore, but I’m not sure how helpful it will be. Vampires and shape-changers mean different things to different cultures.”
Jeff nodded, figuring Erica would have offered a chuckle in response. Why was he still so awkward?
He thanked the woman and began picking through the bookshelves because he had plenty of time and a whole world to discover.
Chapter 2
Teresa Costner worked hard to avoid the mean girls.
They had been eyeing her in class for the past three days, passing notes and giggling to each other. There wasn’t much they could do to her in class, not without getting in trouble, but recess was a different matter.
Her tactic was to hide until they got bored and found someone else to terrorize. It worked every now and again, but not always.
“Hey piglet!” one of the girls called, the brunette with the ponytail, Nadia.
Teresa made the mistake of being friendly with everyone when she transferred to this school in September.
But when Nadia and her friends connected Teresa to her dad on TV talking to reporters and working alongside Force, they made her their number one target.
And mom said fourth grade was going to be better. What did she know?
“Leave me alone,” Teresa said, starting to walk away from the girls.
They followed into a corner of chainlink fence. Then all three of them, Nadia, Anne, and the nastiest one of them all, Dory, blocked her only way out.
“Where are you going, Teresa?” Anne sneered. “We just want to be your friend, you know, since you’re in witness
protection.”
“If you let us be your friend, your dad and his superhero sidepiece will be around to protect us, right?” the Nadia jeered.
“We’ve heard lots about how Detective Daddy Costner and the old lady Force used to be like,” Dory said mockingly, showing her crossed fingers. “Like how he and Erica were such BFFs.”
Teresa didn’t want to hear it. She had heard enough of it at home, the yelling and the arguments between her mom and dad. She knew what was coming next, something that made her clench her teeth.
“Costner and Force sitting in a tree,” one of the girls sang. “K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”
“Stop it! Just stop it!” Teresa yelled and tried to shove herself past the girls blocking her way back to the school, but they pushed her back and laughed.
“I guess a Unique is better than your mom, huh piglet?” Dory jeered.
“That’s not true!” Teresa yelled. Even though there had been so many arguments about Force, that could never have been the truth. Her dad told her it wasn’t.
Teresa could feel the familiar sting of tears welling in her eyes as the girls closed in on her, jeering and chanting.
Then something lit up inside of her, like flicking on a switch in a dark room, a small action that brings great change. It was more than just light. It was heat and desire, but different and familiar at the same time.
Teresa wanted the girls to go away.
And they did.
Two of the girls blocking her way flew back as though they had been hit by a car. They rolled to a slow stop across the yard against the school wall.
Teresa’s face flushed. The power that possessed her pounded through her body like she had turned into one big beating heart. The rush felt amazing and it told her that the only thing that would feel better would be to push herself further.
She turned to face Dory. The bully’s eyes were wide with fear.
“No!” Dory shrieked and held up her hands.
Teresa pushed with her anger and Dory flew out beyond the schoolyard gate, bouncing off of a parked car.
The buzz faded in her ears, replaced by screams of shock and disbelief.
Teresa spun around.
Teachers stared at her.
Classmates ran.
It was then that Teresa began to understand what had just happened.
Chapter 3
“Bobbie?”
Bobbie Cooper brushed back a strand of her curly red hair and turned from her workstation to glare through her glasses at Dr. Gregory.
The grey-bearded researcher held a thumb drive in her face.
“Compile this with Batch 32,” he ordered, ignoring the fact she was busy compiling a different batch and had two more in the docket. “This is a priority. I need the data back by two.”
Bobbie sighed.
Everything was a priority here. Everything needed to get done before everything else. Every researcher on the floor thought he was her boss. She was really going to have to put her foot down.
The only thing that stopped her was the sad fact that she needed this job. It paid twice what she was being paid at Peterson Labs. Even if the waivers she had signed told her this place was involved in far riskier work, it was worth it.
“I’ll get it done as soon as I can,” she replied taking the drive. “I’m already working on Dr. Osman and Dr. Philipe’s work is up next.”
“This is urgent,” Dr. Gregory insisted, looking down his nose at her.
“So are theirs,” she pointed out. “You want to expedite, you’ll have to talk to Ruth.”
Ruth was the lab manager, a hardass bureaucratic lifer who enjoyed making researchers shake in their lab coats.
“Fine,” Dr. Gregory huffed, seeming edgier than normal. “Let me know as soon as you are done. We are this close to a breakthrough.”
Whatever, Bobbie thought. This place felt so nineties to her. Strict keycard access. No wifi or cell service. At least they weren’t still passing floppy disks around.
She put the drive down by her coffee and continued her other work. If they wanted things to run faster, they should have hired more than just her and Arlow as technicians for nine researchers.
Bobbie was beginning to wonder about the work they were doing. She knew enough from her post-grad studies all those years ago to know that whatever blood work they were going through wasn’t entirely human, even though it had mostly human markers.
She started wondering if they were researching Uniques. Maybe this was part of a government project to figure out some way to get rid of them or make their own.
Bobbie decided that she would dig through some files later. It wasn’t like the researchers paid much attention to lowly technicians like her, beyond demanding that she collate their work and lock up when the shift was over.
A door slammed to her left, making her jump in her chair.
One of the researchers stood by the door, shaking. He held one bloody gloved hand like it was on fire.
“My god!” Dr. San Hyun swore. “Oh damn, oh no, oh god.”
“Hey, San,” one of the new female researchers said in a startled tone. “What’s going on?”
Then the woman’s eyes went wide.
“What did you do?” she asked.
“I tripped, that’s all,” he told her. “Smashed both batches. I think I might have been exposed.”
The blonde woman approached him warily.
“Let me take a look at that,” she said.
He waved her off, backing into Bobbie’s chair.
“Stay back,” he warned both of them.
Suddenly, two of the lab’s security guards appeared behind the blonde researcher, guns pointed at Dr. Hyun.
“Out of the way,” one ordered. “This could be a breach. Protocol C.”
“No, you can’t,” San pleaded. “There’s a quarantine process!”
Both guards aimed their pistols and fired without another word.
As she tried to look away, something hit Bobbie in her eye. She blinked and rubbed it, then turned to stare at the dead body at her feet and the growing pool of blood.
“You think we got him in time?” one of the guards asked.
“Dunno,” the other said. “We’ll let the cleaners decide.”
“Everybody clear out,” the first security guard said. “Work’s done for the day. You are all advised to remember the non-disclosure agreements you signed. Come back tomorrow. That’s an order.”
But as Bobbie stepped onto the elevator alongside a half-dozen coworkers, a sick hunger overwhelmed her thoughts.
She watched as the slow countdown of the elevator’s display ticked in time with her labored gasps.
Her hunger grew into a stabbing pain, like a knife in the gut.
And when Dr. Gregory asked her what was wrong, all she could think about was the throbbing pulse in his neck.
Chapter 4
Teresa nervously climbed into the passenger side of her mother’s Honda, put on her seatbelt, and looked straight ahead. She glanced over at her mom, but pretended not to look. She knew by the set of her mom’s jaw that she was in deep trouble.
Everyone at school walked on eggshells around her since what happened at recess. It was like they were all afraid of her now. Teresa wasn’t sure if she liked that or not. It would mean Dory and her pals would leave her alone, whenever they got out of the hospital. She knew she should feel worse about it, but she couldn’t make herself regret what she did.
It felt too good.
“Is it true?” her mom asked. “Tell me, Teresa, I really need to know.”
She shrugged. What was she going to say the principal hadn’t? The bearded man hadn’t exactly lied.
Her mom sighed as she pulled her car into traffic.
“You’re really lucky your father and I have the jobs we have,” her mother said, almost sounding as panicked as she was mad, which surprised Teresa a little. Her mom was either mad or cool. She didn’t get panicky, but she rambled on and on about how her governmen
t ID had somehow saved them both. “Everyone saw what you did. You don’t know what could have happened, what could still happen.”
She’d probably have to go to a different school, Teresa thought. She would be happy with that.
“The girls were picking on me,” Teresa said staring out at the traffic.
That was the truth. The other stuff? What could she say? It had just come out of her. And it wasn’t like anyone got seriously hurt. According to her teacher and Principal Ramirez, Anne and Nadia were a little shaken up with only a few scrapes and bruises. Dory had a broken arm, but she was fine otherwise.
“We’re going to have to talk to your father about this,” mom decided. “I’ll call him later, have him come over as soon as he’s free.”
“You wouldn’t have to do that if he still lived at home,” Teresa snapped.
“You know why he doesn’t live at home anymore,” her mother said in a coldly rehearsed tone.
“Yeah, you didn’t want him at home anymore,” Teresa complained, turning to glare at her.
“That’s not true. We all agreed it was best for the family.”
“I didn’t agree. I don’t get a choice in anything.”
The car pulled to a stop with a lurch. They were in a parking lot beside a big grey concrete building.
This was her mom’s job, Teresa realized. At least she wouldn’t have to go back to school that day, even if that meant the conversation with her mom wouldn’t be over anytime soon.
She followed her mother into the building’s lobby.
“Hi Joanne,” the security guard said. He glanced at Teresa, then back up at her mom. “You have permission?”
“Nothing could be done about it,” her mom said, making her feel all the more embarrassed to be seen as an inconvenience. Then Teresa remembered that the building had a daycare, so she would likely be spending the day with toddlers and Mrs. Narwin. That old lady creeped her out. Teresa stayed silent, though. Things could be worse.
They didn’t talk on the elevator.
When the doors opened, the place was eerily quiet and struck Teresa like how an abandoned hospital would look. White walls. Tiled floor. And no people.
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