The Undead Pool

by Derek Ailes

  Mace looked down at the dead guard and laughed. “I guess you should have worn the brown pants.”

  He entered the room where a large big screen television sat with a note with the words PLAY ME written on it. He grabbed the remote off the DVD player and hit play. Zarathustra’s image appeared on the screen, and he was laughing.

  “Hello, Mace Murdock. I was wondering how long it would take you to find this place. Unfortunately, I’m not here right now. I guess you’ll have to wait until another time to kill me. Tootles.” He laughed sinisterly and waved. “By the way, the moment you hit play, you activated a trap that will cause your demise.”

  The DVD stopped, and the room went dark. A few seconds later the emergency lights kicked on revealing a horde of zombiefied clown soldiers surrounding him. The zombies rushed him, and he used a combination of the transporter and the swinging of his katana to get through them. As he rushed out of the room and into the corridor, he was met by a large, grayish, muscular creature who had been zombiefied by the serum. It held a large ax, and was staring at him. Drool fell from its lips like a waterfall. It swung the ax, barely missing slicing Mace in half.

  “Hold on tubby, let’s be reasonable. You are a zombiefied superhuman, and I’m a zombiefied superhuman. Doesn’t that make us brothers?”

  It swung the ax again. Mace spun in the air like Samus Aran from Metroid and landed on the ax.

  “Missed me,” he taunted and jumped behind it. He shot it several times with his two handguns causing minimal damage. “Ok, bullets are ineffective.”

  The creature turned around and then stomped its right foot causing the floor to shake violently. Mace transported, landing behind it. He swung his katana viciously, cutting through as much of its skin as he could. It flung Mace backward with its right arm sending him down the hallway into the arms of some of the clown zombies who were watching the battle waiting to devour whoever was left standing.

  “Thanks for catching me,” Mace said as he chopped off all of their heads in a rage filled frenzy.

  Before he could move out of the way, the creature collided with him sending them both through the wall and out into the yard behind the lair. The creature slammed both of its fists into the ground almost crushing him. Mace transported to a safer distance. It charged him. He spun upward avoiding the collision and landed on its back. He held on for dear life as the creature tried to grab him. He fired his handguns at its head hoping that the bullets would be effective at close range. The creature grabbed his legs and flung him upward. As he was coming down, and before the creature could grab him with its oversized hands, he threw a grenade into its mouth. It made a gurgling sound as it choked on the grenade. A few seconds later the creature’s head exploded sending its brain matter in every direction. It ran around the yard like a chicken with its head chopped off for several seconds before collapsing.

  Mace stood above its carcass and kicked it repeatedly. “Yep, you’re dead.” He walked a few feet forward and looked back at the carcass. “Where’s my gold and experience points?”

  He walked around to the front yard where Stable and Irene were standing adjacent to a pile of decapitated zombiefied clowns.

  “Do you want the honors?” Stable asked, handing a detonator to Mace.

  “Sure. One massive explosion coming right up.”

  He pressed the button and nothing. He inspected the detonator and then looked toward Stable. “This is embarrassing. No batteries.”

  “Now what?” Stable asked.

  “We use this,” Mace said, holding a large rocket launcher. He hit the trigger sending a missile toward the lair. The lair exploded sending a massive fireball into the sky.

  “Who wants to make s’mores?” Mace asked, handing a marshmallow on a stick to Stable. “I also have hot dogs.”

  “Now what do we do?” Irene asked.

  “You two go back to the school and have our scientists analyze the green serum. I’m going to travel to the future and see what the outcome will be if we don’t stop Zarathustra,” Stable instructed them.

  “You can travel to the future?” Mace asked.

  “Yes, I have the ability to travel through time.”

  “Please!!! Take me with you! I’ve always wanted to travel through time!” Mace pleaded.

  “That’s an adventure for another time.”

  Mace turned around and addressed the reader. “A possible spinoff series?”

  “Until then, I must leave you two,” Stable continued. He glowed bright orange and then vanished.

  “Now that was awesome!”

  “Mace, we better return to base.”

  “I’m flying the ship,” Mace informed her.

  “You do know how to fly it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Ok, just this once.”

  “Yay!”

  Our female heroine soon regretted her decision when Mace crashed the ship moments after takeoff.

  Chapter Three

  Mace yawned as he listened to Dr. Deforest Kelley, an oversized creature with thick, light purple fur and a dark purple face, give his report on the green serum. He paused and watched Mace throw darts at a picture of Hugh Jackman.

  “Mace, am I boring you? This serum is extremely dangerous and can have serious ramifications for all of us. You need to pay attention to this.”

  “Whatever you say, Doctor Barney.”

  “Mace, this serum can attack the mutation gene in all of us and turn us into mindless zombies.”

  “Zombies, smombies.” Mace yawned as he left the laboratory. “If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the other room watching Cheers.”

  “Irene, where did you find that reject?”

  “Don’t worry about him. When the time comes, he’ll get the job done.”

  “I don’t know how he wasn’t totally transformed into a mindless zombie. There must be something in his DNA. I could use a sample from him,” the doctor suggested.

  “Fine…” Irene stormed out of the room and a few seconds later Mace shouted “Yes!”

  Fifteen minutes later, she returned holding a vial of Undead Pool juice.

  “Is that?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said as she left the laboratory.

  Mace strutted into the lab with a large smile on his face. “Irene is really a team player. Bill Nye, let’s talk some science talk.”

  “I believe we are all in danger. If exposed to the serum, we could be instantly transformed into mindless zombie super soldiers,” the doctor explained.

  “I wonder how he’s planning to unleash it.”

  “You must stop him before he has a chance.”

  “The question is where can he be hiding?”

  “Somebody has to know his whereabouts.”

  “There is one scumbag that may possibly know.”

  Melchior Copperpot sat alone in the middle of his restaurant, the Nightly Bird, as the closing crew cleaned. He was a short, stocky man with bird-like features and a long, pointy nose sporting a giant reddish mole. His thick black hair was matted with sweat. His eyes glowed red in the dimly lit room.

  The door burst open as Mace walked in carrying a bag of gummy worms. He took a bite out of one and then sat down next to Melchior and gave him an uncomfortable hug, at least to Melchior.

  “Hello, Curassow, my old pal.”

  “You know I hate that name!”

  “You have a lot in common with the wattled curassow. You both are extremely ugly and are on the endangered species list.”

  “Is that a threat, Mace?” Melchior shouted.

  “More like a promise. I hate birds. They make noises when you’re trying to sleep. They poop all over your windshield.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Zarathustra, where is he?”

  “I don’t know, and if I did, why would I tell you.”

  “Because I’m holding a thermal detonator.”

  “No, you’re not!
That’s a rubber chicken!” Melchior pointed at the rubber chicken in Mace’s hand.

  “Sorry, wrong pocket. I was saving that for Son of Svengoolie.” He pulled out his gun and pointed it at Melchior’s nose. “Now talk or the mole gets it.”

  “Fine! I’ll talk if you just get the hell out of my restaurant!”

  “I’m waiting. Five…four…six…twelve…twenty-five.”

  Melchior stared at him confused.

  “Sorry, numbers were never my thing. Eventually I’ll countdown to zero and then no more Curassow. Eight hundred and thirty six, nine, five gazillion and something.”

  “He’s in Kenosha, Wisconsin!”

  “Where in Kenosha?”

  “The site of the superhuman massacre!”

  Mace put the gun away and then kissed Melchior’s mole. Mace quickly spun around and puked. “Sorry, that was dumb.” He glanced at the mole and puked all over Melchior’s head. “You should have that thing removed.”

  “Screw you too, Mace!” Melchior screamed as he wobbled his way toward the bathroom.

  Stable and Irene were waiting outside the restaurant.

  “Stable, you’ve returned from the future.”

  “Mace, do you have a location?”

  “Kenosha.”

  Stable shivered.

  “Cold?” Mace asked.

  “Kenosha brings back horrible memories.”

  “The reader doesn’t need to hear this. This isn’t a tragedy. This is a love story.” Mace gave Stable a big hug.

  Big, cartoonish, red hearts appeared around them, then burst covering them in blood.

  Stable pushed him away. “Can you be serious for five minutes? If we don’t stop Zarathustra, we are all done. We all become zombie creatures used as pawns for Zarathustra’s rise to power.”

  “Then, let’s head to Kenosha. But first, our ship needs a facelift.”

  Mace grabbed a couple cans of paint and painted a large portrait of himself on the front of the ship. “I proclaim you, the Archie Bunker!” He then shattered a bottle of champagne against its hull.

  “Immature,” Stable snarled as he entered the ship.

  Stable sat quietly, deep in thought, as Irene piloted the ship. It had been twelve years since he witnessed a lot of his friends massacred by the robotic iron giants in the battle of Kenosha. The US military, fearing that the superhumans would turn on humans, developed a deadly robotic army. Under the orders of President Donald Trump, the robots moved from state to state murdering anyone who possessed the superhuman gene. Ironically, Arnold Schwarzenegger had possessed the superhuman gene and was killed by one of the robots.

  The superheroes and supervillains had to unite and battle the iron giants. After several days, they defeated the robots, suffering multiple fatalities in the process. The supervillain leader, Mad Gringo, assassinated President Trump. In the aftermath, a treaty was formed between the superheroes and the US government; a treaty that the supervillains refused to acknowledge.

  “Hey reader, now that you have been bored by the Kenosha backstory, I think I should inform you that we’ve arrived in Kenosha. Look at all the superhuman skeletons out there. I’m so excited!”

  Mace rushed out of the ship and grabbed one of the skulls of a fallen comrade. “Alas poor Spider-Man! I knew you well!”

  “Are you done?” Stable snarled.

  Mace threw the skull backward as if it was meaningless garbage. “I think so.”

  The battlefield was littered with skeletons and large remnants of the iron giants. In the distance, they could see a large tower that at one point had been one of the superheroes outposts. The door to the outpost opened, and a large army of zombiefied clown soldiers exited preparing for battle.

  “There’s too many of them,” Irene pointed out.

  “I have an idea.” Mace ran over to one of the large arms from an iron giant and tried to lift it without success.

  Stable rushed over to him and lifted the arm onto his right broad metallic shoulder. “I’ll aim. You fire.”

  Mace climbed on top of the metallic arm and opened the panel on its hand and reconnected the wires. The arm came back to life. As the firing mechanism on its palm glowed brightly, Mace pulled one of the cords attached to the palm and it fired a large laser beam forward. Several of the zombiefied clown soldiers exploded causing the rest of them to scatter. He continued to fire until they were obliterated. Stable threw the arm to the side sending Mace upward.

  “Now that was awesome!” Mace shouted as he landed on his feet. “Now let’s go kill us some Zarathustra!”

  “This was too easy. I sense we are heading straight into a trap,” Stable cautioned.

  “We’ll deal with whatever trap he has for us. We must storm the tower!”

  They cautiously moved through the labyrinth of rusted iron giants, killing clown zombies as they approached the tower. Mace was the first to reach it and tried to pry open the steel door. He grabbed every rock near the door and flung them aside, hoping there was a key hidden directly underneath one of them.

  “It was worth a shot,” Mace laughed as he could feel Stable’s irritated stare from behind him.

  “You don’t think Zarathustra was going to let us just waltz right in.”

  “If he were setting a trap for us, he might,” Mace stared at the locked door and then pressed the button next to it.

  “Mace, what did you do?” Irene asked annoyed at him.

  “Just ringing the doorbell.”

  All of a sudden, the ground shook causing the dirt around the front of the building to rise revealing several metal platforms on top of the ground. The platforms around them rose followed by the one they were standing on sending them high into the sky. The platforms twirled around the building. They held on to the edge of their platform as it twirled faster and faster. One of the platforms, which was a foot higher than them, was in jumping distance.

  “I have a plan and you guys won’t like it. Each one of the platforms is higher than the next one. We can jump onto each one until we reach the top of the tower,” Mace explained.

  “What if we fall off?” Stable questioned.

  “Then game over,” Mace answered.

  The sky above them turned black as night and a funnel cloud descended from the sky, picking up all the remains of the iron giants and sending them into the sky. The remains spun around the platforms, and one of the arms almost knock the three superheroes off of their platform. Their ship flew up toward them and then joined the other debris in the spinning tornado of destruction.

  “Cow!” Mace shouted as a cow flew by them and spun around with the debris.

  “Another cow!” Irene pointed out as a cow flew by her.

  “Actually, that’s the same one!” Stable added as his attention was focused on it.

  “If I see a witch, then I give up!” Mace replied.

  One of the iron giant’s arms headed straight for them.

  “On my mark, jump!” Mace instructed. “One!”

  The arm got closer.

  “Two!”

  The arm was inches away from them.

  “Jump!”

  They jumped upward onto a platform just seconds before the arm could collide with them.

  “Remind me never to do that again!” Stable replied.

  “Just a few more platforms!” Mace promised.

  The tornado’s force increased making it hard to see through the debris. Mace squinted his eyes as best he could to see the next platform through the darkness of the debris. Lightning hit the platform adjacent to them, and the debris lit up as lightning struck each metallic piece.

  As the platform above them came into view, Mace shouted, “Jump!”

  They jumped upward onto the next platform as the previous one was hit by lightning. The spinning increased as the tornado increased in size. Once the platform above them was close enough, Mace ordered them to jump. They successfully landed on the last platform.<
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  “We’re going to have to jump right into the building,” Mace informed them.

  Mace pulled out a machine gun and fired at the glass windows, sending glass shards into the debris field of the tornado. Mace lowered his head avoiding being impaled. Several of the shards penetrated Mace’s body causing blood to shower outward. Stable put his body around Irene protecting her with his metallic body. Mace put his arms around the other two superheroes and pressed the button on his transporter as he pushed them all off of the platform. They disappeared and reappeared as they landed in one of the rooms on the top floor of the tower. Mace looked toward the window they had crashed through and then at Stable before fainting.

  Mace felt sharp pains in his chest as Irene pulled the glass shards out of his body. The wounds slowly closed up.

  “Remind me never to do that again,” Mace said as he was helped to his feet.

  Several soldiers rushed in the room aiming their weapons at them.

  Mace flung several Chinese stars at each one of them with direct hits to their heads.

  “Feels nice to be needed,” Stable replied.

  “I’ll let you kill the next few,” Mace promised.

  “The command center is down the hall. That’s the most logical place Zarathustra could be,” Stable informed him.

  They were met with machine gun fire as they entered the hallway. Stable charged the guards like a bull crashing straight through them sending them in all directions like bowling pins. Irene engulfed several of them in an electric field causing their skins to burn and their brains to pop right out of their heads.

  “Now that was an amazing trick,” Mace said and then transported past some of the guards, slicing their heads off in a single file as he reappeared.

  Mace ran into the command center and hung his head in disbelief as he realized the command center was empty.

  A holographic image of Zarathustra appeared. “Hello, Mace Murdock. Did you miss me again? I guess you did.”

  “Censored! Censored! Censored!” Mace screamed every obscenity he could think of.

  “I’m afraid you are too late. I already unleased the serum on an unsuspecting town. Since I want you to battle my new creations, I’ve sent them to attack Zagar’s School For Special Power Needs!”