The Undead Pool

by Derek Ailes

  The Undead Pool

  By

  Derek Ailes

  The bridge shook from the explosion of the large tanker truck sending fire and debris in every direction. All the windows in the adjacent cars exploded, and the cars were violently lifted upward from the blast. The bridge was a destructive scene of smashed cars, dead mercenaries, decapitated zombies, dead innocent bystanders and one ecstatic superhero admiring his handiwork. He blew out the smoke emanating from his two pistols and walked over to the lone survivor of the bridge massacre. The man, covered in his own blood and body parts from his fallen comrades, shook in fear as the muscular man disguised in a gray and black superhero costume with a gray and black mask that made him look like a demonic version of Spider-Man approached him.

  “Please don’t kill me,” the man pleaded.

  “Just because I’m responsible for all these people’s deaths.” The superhero counted the bodies on the bridge. “Crap! That’s a lot of bodies! I killed him, him, and him. I didn’t kill him. I killed him, but not him. Those two were killed in the crossfire. You killed him. Oh yes, I killed you.”

  Click. Click. Click.

  “Damn! Out of Ammo!” the superhero shouted as he jumped up and down repeatedly like a ballerina pitching a fit.

  The superhero turned his attention upward and spoke directly to the person reading this book. “Howdy, Mace Murdock, A.K.A. The Undead Pool, here. You’re probably wondering what the hell happened on this bridge? Am I a good guy or a bad guy? I’d say I’m one of the good guys, but quite honestly, I’d be lying. Why am I considered a good guy? For one thing, I don’t work for a supervillain. For another, I don’t work for a supervillain. Wait, I’m repeating myself.”

  As he was talking to the reader, the man on the ground slowly stood up and cautiously snuck away from our hero.

  “Pardon me, reader,” Mace said as he spun around and flung a dagger at the man’s head. A direct hit. “As I was saying, I’m one of the good guys. I guess I should start from the beginning.”

  “Push,” the doctor instructed Helena Murdock who was in labor.

  “Sorry, too far back,” Mace said. “Let’s fast forward a bit.”

  The earth exploded sending debris throughout the solar system.

  “Damn, that was way too fast forwarded,” Mace shouted as he slammed a DVD remote on the ground shattering it. “I was never good with remotes. Guns and swords, now that’s a different story. Let’s fast forward past my childhood, my stint in the marines, my becoming a mercenary, my many hookups, and my becoming a superhero. Am I a mutant, a metahuman, or an inhuman? I can’t say. That would be copyright infringement. My origin story is a thing of legends. Well, at least a great tale to tell at parties. Let us begin.”

  Chapter One: Metamorphosis

  Mace Murdock sat at the bar in the Devil’s Due, drinking vodka straight from the bottle. His target, Damien Wilderson, the owner of the bar, sat at the back table behind a black curtain counting a stack of money while his bodyguard watched all the patrons. The bodyguard was tall with long, black hair and a medium muscular build reminding him of the WWE wrestler Kevin Nash. He could see the bodyguard’s pistol sticking out of his black leather jacket. The bodyguard stared at him suspiciously.

  Back in Mace’s mercenary days, he wore a black denim jacket and his Betty White t-shirt. His black hair shined in the light thanks to all the TRESemmé he used daily.

  As Damien spoke, and the bodyguard focused his attention on him, Mace rushed over to them. Before the bodyguard could react, he implanted a dagger in his skull sending him to his knees. He knocked him backward sending his corpse into Damien’s table. He quickly grabbed Damien and dragged him into his private bathroom. He slammed Damien’s skull into the urinal breaking his nose. Blood flowed downward like a fountain.

  “It seems a low life such as yourself wants you out of the picture,” Mace explained. “He placed a huge bounty on your head.”

  “There’s thousands of dollars on the table. You can have it. Just let me live.”

  “A few thousand or lots of thousands for your head? I think I’ll go with the lots of thousands.” Mace shot him in the head with his pistol. He pulled a digital camera out of his pocket and, while singing Manic by Michael Sembello, snapped several pictures: one of him giving Damien’s corpse a lap dance.

  As he walked out of the bathroom, he walked over to Damien’s table, pocketed all the money, and snuck out the door leading to the back alleyway.

  A few hours later, after receiving his money from his employer, Mace walked into his second home away from home, Maximum Pain Bar. The bar was filled with mercenaries and the lowest scum to ever haunt the streets of Chicago. In the back corner a tall Latina woman with long, cranberry hair was hustling a couple of guys over a game of pool. He was focused on her tight, black leather outfit. Normally, a woman with the most perfectly curved body wouldn’t frequent a hellhole like this. You were lucky to find a woman with a full set of teeth in this joint.

  He turned his attention away from her and headed for the bar where his best friend, Max, was serving drinks to a horde of drunken mercenaries. Max was shorter than most of the mercenaries in the bar and possessed thick, reddish hair and a beard to match. The lenses in his glasses were as thick as diamonds.

  “How many fingers am I holding up?” Mace asked as he gave Max the finger.

  “Same to you,” he said as he placed a bottle of whisky in front of him. “I can’t believe how much you sound like Ryan Reynolds.”

  “I’d rather sound like him than Ben Affleck suffering from laryngitis.”

  “Touché.”

  “Who’s the dame over there?”

  “I’m not sure. She’s been here every night for the past week and has gone home with a different guy each time.”

  “I think it’s time for her to meet Mace Murdock.”

  Mace grabbed the bottle of whisky and strutted over to her giving a high five to every mercenary he passed. He stood next to her admiring her body up close.

  “Excuse me, miss. Did you sit in a pile of sugar? Cause you have a pretty sweet ass.”

  The woman spun around and cold cocked him in the face sending him staggering backward into a table. The mercenary standing next to the table was pushed into another mercenary and a massive bar fight broke out.

  Mace shook his head trying to clear out the cobwebs as he slowly stood up. A mercenary landed next to him with a large dagger embedded in his skull. As he watched the bar fight take place while eating a bag of popcorn, the woman left the bar.

  “Wait a minute! This wasn’t in the original draft. I was supposed to go home with the girl.” Mace pulled a manuscript out of his jacket and turned it to page five. “Just as I thought. I went home with the girl.”

  Mace threw the manuscript to the other side of the bar. “Listen, Derek Ailes. I’m not going to do another damn thing until you change the manuscript. I’m officially on strike.” Mace looked upward and addressed the reader. “How’s it going? Crazy weather we’ve been having lately. I think that’s because the Cubs are on a winning streak. Hell’s freezing over.”

  “Do you want to come home with me?” He heard the girl ask from behind him.

  “Yes!” Mace exclaimed. “My strike is over.”

  I don’t want to say it was a night of passionate love making, where a man and a woman did things that can’t be described in a non-Fifty Shades of Undead book, but it was.

  The woman handed a glass filled with whisky to Mace. “Drink. You need to stay hydrated.”

  Mace emptied it in one gulp. She stared at him with a huge smile on her face. Mace began to feel lightheaded and his vision became blurry.

  “Did you just Bill Cosby me?”
he asked as he passed out.

  Mace slowly opened his eyes adjusting to the bright light in the room. He was secured to a gray brick wall by restraints, and an IV was attached to his arm pumping a glowing green liquid into him. His head felt like it was spinning and green drool emanated from his mouth.

  “I see that you have finally awoken,” a sinister demented voice said.

  Mace turned his head and quickly turned away in horror. He slowly turned his head again making sure he had seen the horrific sight he thought he had just seen. Standing there staring at him was a tall, muscular man in a gray business suit whose face was painted as the most demonic clown he had ever seen. On the top of his head was a red triangle that glowed in the light. He possessed puffy, orange hair and a large, red nose that reminded him of one of the creatures from Killer Klowns From Outer Space.

  “Who are you?” Mace asked.

  “I’m glad you asked my fine, young lad. The name’s Zarathustra. This isn’t makeup. This is my real skin. I was a simple scientist on the verge of the greatest discovery of my career when the accident at the sewage treatment plant turned me into this deranged mutant clown in front of you.”

  “Hey, Crusty! What’s with the IV?”

  “The IV is pumping a special serum into you. A serum that will turn you into a zombiefied supervillain to do my bidding.”

  “I will never do your evil bidding! I’m not a mindless drone!”

  “Oh, soon you will be. Your freewill will soon be gone, and you’ll become the stuff of nightmares and even Daryl Dixon will be afraid to fall asleep," Zarathustra said, laughing sinisterly.

  “Screw you!”

  “Wanting to cheat on me already. Typical male,” the woman from the night before laughed as she walked into the room.

  “Now now Super-Hot Flaming Bitch. Even he knows it was only a one-night stand. If he had known ahead of time that you would be the last woman he ever slept with…” Zarathustra said.

  Mace struggled with the restraints trying to free himself. As the green serum continued to be pumped into his body, his consciousness slowly slipped away. His skin turned a dark gray and his eyes glowed bright green. He growled loudly. As his strength increased, he was able to rip the restraints from the wall. He violently pulled the IV out of his arm covering his body with the remaining serum. He roared like a lion and stared at Zarathustra as if he were his prey.

  “Release the zombiefied clown soldiers!” Zarathustra ordered.

  Several zombies in clown outfits rushed into the room holding katanas. As they swarmed Mace, Zarathustra and Super-Hot Flaming Bitch left the room to watch the fight from the safety of the adjacent room.

  The zombies sliced away at Mace with their swords causing green blood to seep out of one of his wounds. One of the zombies bit into Mace and ripped away a big chunk of his flesh. Mace grabbed the zombie’s neck and squeezed it so hard that his head exploded covering Mace’s body with its brain matter. Mace threw its body violently backward causing it to rip a large gas heater away from the wall. Gas filled the room from the exposed gas line.

  As Mace quickly defeated the zombiefied clowns, he stared at the two villains in the other room.

  “Let me deal with him,” Super-Hot Flaming Bitch said as she ran into the other room. Her arms began to glow bright red and flames emanated from her. As her power came into full fruition, the flames inadvertently ignited the gas engulfing the room in a powerful explosion.

  Mace was blown violently backward, and he lost consciousness.

  “Mace Murdock, my love,” a beautiful voice echoed in his head.

  He opened his eyes in amazement. Standing before him was a tall, beautiful woman with a black painted face with white symbols tattooed all over it as well as her body. She was adorned in a black cloak and held a large black scepter. She smiled as she hovered above him.

  “Arise, my love.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I am Lady Deadra, the guardian of the underworld. I have been waiting for you for close to an eternity.”

  “Am I dead?”

  “Undead would be the correct term.”

  “I’m a zombie?”

  “Not a mindless zombie as Zarathustra had hoped. I’ve given you a gift: your free will.” She helped him to his feet and seductively kissed his cheek temporarily causing redness in his now grayish skin.

  “If this is the underworld, then I must be dead,” he argued.

  “You are only here temporarily. I’m sending you back. You have much to accomplish, my love. I will be waiting here for your return. When you do, you will experience the best sexual feelings you can ever imagine.”

  “I’m not in that much of a rush. I could go for some sexual feelings right about now.”

  She giggled playfully. “Soon, my love.” She vanished leaving him alone in the dark underworld.

  He looked around the underworld and impatiently stomped his foot. “Hello, I’m still here.” He stood there staring up at the sky while whistling the Andy Griffith theme.

  A few minutes later, he closed his eyes and tapped his feet together and chanted, “There’s no place like home.”

  He opened his eyes and was surrounded by flames, and he heard the sounds of zombies hissing as they were engulfed in flames. Super-Hot Flaming Bitch was lying on the ground unconscious, the flames causing her no harm. He tried to move, but he was held in place. He looked down and a large pipe was sticking out of his crotch, the other end of the pipe embedded in the brick wall behind him.

  “This is going to hurt!” Mace screamed as he slowly moved forward pulling the pipe out of his body. As the last inch of the pipe slid out of his crotch, he fell forward crashing to the ground. He screamed. He slowly staggered to his feet and stared in bewilderment as the wound quickly closed up as if he had never been impaled by the pipe.

  “Hooray, my sex life is saved!” Mace shouted. He looked around the room engulfed in flames. “Maybe I should wait until I’m out of danger before celebrating.”

  He searched the ground for the katanas from the zombiefied clowns he fought earlier. He grabbed two of them and exited the room. As he continued forward, he decapitated every zombiefied clown he encountered. He searched the whole building for Zarathustra, but there was no sign of him anywhere. As he exited the building, it exploded behind him in a large ball of flames. The building collapsed sending debris everywhere.

  “I hope that wasn’t the book’s whole budget,” Mace said as he watched the building’s destruction in excitement. Skipping away from the scene like a giddy school girl, he headed for Maximum Pain Bar.

  The parking lot of the bar was empty, and he could see Max sweeping the floor through the window. He walked into the bar hoping not to scare the living daylights out of him.

  “We’re closed!” Max shouted as he heard the door open.

  “It’s just me,” Mace said, standing in the darkness so Max couldn’t see his face.

  “Why are you hiding in the shadows?”

  “There was an…incident. I don’t want to startle you.”

  “Why would I be… What the hell happened to you? It looks like Jabba The Hutt had sex with Admiral Ackbar and your face is their lovechild!”

  “Thanks.”

  “You have a nasty Freddy Krueger thing going on there.”

  “I was engulfed in flames. My wounds healed, but my skin seems to be permanently scarred.”

  “Does it hurt?” Max asked as he pressed his finger into Mace’s right arm.

  “Surprisingly, no.”

  “What happened?”

  “The woman from last night drugged me, and I woke up in some strange warehouse being pumped full of this green serum that turned me into this zombiefied creature.”

  “Far out.”

  “I can’t walk about the public like this. I need a disguise. My old mercenary outfit.” Mace pointed to a gray and black outfit with a matching mask displayed in a glass case behind the bar.
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  “You gave that to me as a house warming gift when I opened the bar,” he reminded him.

  “I didn’t think I would ever need it again.”

  “You’ll need a cool super hero name. How about…The Amazing Zombie Man?”

  “That’s corny.”

  “The Zomberine?”

  “Really?”

  “I got it…The Undead Pool.”

  “Undead Pool. I like the sound of that. The Undead Pool it is,” Mace said and smashed the glass case with his right fist.

  Max stared at him in disbelief. “You do know I have a key?”

  “Sorry.”

  Mace grabbed the outfit and walked toward the bathroom. A few minutes later, he came out dressed as The Undead Pool. “Now it’s time to find Zarathustra.”

  Mace stood on the bridge arranging all the dead villains’ bodies on the side of the roadway.

  “Hey, that explains my origin story. Now to get you up to speed on what just happened. I just survived a major battle with a lot of Zarathustra’s henchmen. Man were they incompetent. I think he should have spent a little more time teaching them how to kill someone undead like me. I left a special message for him. You can see it from an aerial view.”

  Using the dead men from the massacre, Mace had spelled out: ZARATHUSTRA IS NEXT.

  The sound of an approaching ship caught his attention. He could see a large, silver spaceship heading toward the bridge.

  “That would be the WHY-Men,” Mace explained.

  The ship landed on the bridge away from the massacre. A tall, muscular man with a shiny, silver metallic horse head walked out of the ship and marched toward him. His brown, metallic body resembled a human, and he had several metallic weapons attached to it magnetically.

  “Stable, long time no see.”

  “Again, we Why-Men will have to clean up after your mess. We delayed the police from reaching the bridge so they don’t see your handiwork first hand,” Stable said in a thick Russian accent.