by Lucas Flint
I gulped. That would explain why Rubberman wasn’t here yet. I hoped that Iron Angel would get down here soon, but if the Necromantress was telling the truth, then both of them were probably busy defending themselves from her zombie minions. If so, that meant I would have to save myself or at least delay whatever fate the Necromantress had in store for me long enough for Rubberman or Iron Angel to come to my rescue. I wish I could have turned on my radicom, but the chains and cuffs the zombies had put on me made it impossible for me to reach up and touch the side of my helmet.
“What are you going to do to me?” I asked. “Kill me and make me one of your zombie slaves?”
The Necromantress chuckled. She disappeared from view for a moment, only to appear on the other side of the cauldron walking down a set of wooden steps I hadn’t noticed before. She walked down the steps toward me, which was when I realized that she was really tall. She was probably the tallest woman I’d ever seen. It wasn’t just that her miniskirt made her legs look longer than usual. She was actually just a very tall woman in general, maybe even taller than Rubberman.
“The Necromantress will kill you eventually, sidekick,” said the Necromantress as she approached me. “But right now, the Necromantress wishes to keep you alive as … insurance, should Rubberman somehow make it down here. The Necromantress knows how much Rubberman values your safety. She intends to use you to disarm Rubberman so she can have her way with him.”
The Necromantress licked her lips when she said that. Instead of making me feel aroused, however, I just shuddered. Even though she had a great body, there was something distinctly off about the Necromantress, now that she was closer. It was similar to how I felt around the zombies, but with the zombies, at least I understood it was because they were unnatural abominations who shouldn’t exist. I couldn’t place what was so off about the Necromantress, aside from the fact that she liked to steal corpses and reanimate them while wearing the shortest miniskirt I’d ever seen, of course.
“Well, if you’re going to leave me alone for now, why don’t you tell me what you’ve got in that cauldron over there?” I asked. “Soup?”
The Necromantress stopped in front of me. Up close, she was taller than ever and I found it even harder to avoid looking at her barely concealed cleavage. She bent over to put her eyes more level with mine, though she was so tall that she was still a few inches taller than me even while bending over. That sense of wrongness pervaded her. It was even worse up close, almost as bad as the aura of unnaturalness which her zombies gave off.
“It’s how the Necromantress creates her reanimation potions,” said the Necromantress. “You see, the Necromantress uses her arcane knowledge of black magic to gather the dozens of obscure ingredients necessary to make the potions that can reanimate the dead. Yet they require a large cauldron to mix together efficiently, at least if she desires a large supply of potions.”
“Enough to create an army of the dead to take over Golden City?”
The Necromantress shook her head. “Silly sidekick, the Necromantress has no desire whatsoever to take over this city. Her sole desire is to murder that bastard Rubberman, in the most painful way possible. Then she will make his corpse into a zombie and kill it again and again for as long as the potion keeps working on it. The Necromantress does not know whether the reanimation potions work on the same corpse twice, but she is interested in finding out.”
“Right,” I said. “You want to kill Rubberman just like how you killed those other superheroes, right? Because you’re the Superhero Killer.”
The Necromantress suddenly frowned. “The Superhero Killer? What are you talking—”
Abruptly, the ceiling caved in. Sheetrock and wood collapsed onto the floor, causing the Necromantress to whirl around in shock. As a result, her butt was in my face, which, due to its size, was hard not to notice. Still, I managed to crane my neck enough to look around her and see that a large hole now existed in the ceiling between us and the cauldron.
“What is this?” said the Necromantress in shock. “Rubberman, is that you?”
“Not quite,” said an old, slightly muffled voice from above.
Suddenly, the sound of jets could be heard and Iron Angel swooped down through the hole, firing lasers from the palms of his gauntlets. His lasers struck the tables, blowing up jars full of ingredients or knocking yet-to-be reanimated corpses onto the floor.
“No!” the Necromantress screamed. “Impossible! You’re not Rubberman!”
Iron Angel came to a stop in midair, the jets in his wings allowing him to hover. “You’re quite the perceptive young woman, I see. Of course, if you were actually perceptive, you’d put some damn clothes on, instead of running around like your parents never taught you how to dress right.”
The Necromantress’ hands shook. “Zombies, kill him! He may not be Rubberman, but he still deserves to die!”
Half of the zombies around us rushed toward Iron Angel. They jumped surprisingly high in an attempt to get him, but Iron Angel just blasted them apart with a few well-placed laser blasts from his claws. Chunks of decayed flesh, some wrapped around fragile bones, fell to the floor with a thud, while Iron Angel lowered his hands, clearly unimpressed.
“Is that all you’ve got?” said Iron Angel. “Or are you going to throw more puppets at me?”
Completely out of nowhere, a giant bat rushed toward Iron Angel and body-slammed him. Iron Angel went flying off to the side, crashing onto the floor on the left side of the basement, while the giant bat flew after him to finish the job.
“Yes, get him, Zaran!” the Necromantress cried. “Tear him apart piece by piece!”
The Necromantress whirled around to face me again. “Zombies, we must flee this place! Grab the boy and take him out of the basement!”
The three zombies which hadn’t been killed by Iron Angel grabbed me by the shoulders and started hauling me away. But Iron Angel’s appearance had created a new sense of courage in me, so I unleashed a continuous beam of laser energy at the zombies, bringing it around in a wide circle, taking off their heads with ease. The three zombies collapsed around me as I shot the lasers at my chains, shattering them instantly, and jumped to my feet to face the Necromantress, who stepped backwards in shock.
“Did you forget that my eye beams can cut through literally anything?” I asked. “Or did you think a few decaying corpses and some cheap metal would be enough to hold me hostage? Can’t the great Necromantress afford higher quality metal than cheap iron?”
The Necromantress growled, but instead of fighting, she turned and ran back toward the cauldron. She didn’t get very far, however, before Rubberman jumped through the hole in the ceiling and landed on the ground directly in her path. The Necromantress skidded to a halt and stepped back toward me in surprise.
“You!” the Necromantress said, pointing a finger at Rubberman. “How did you get here? I thought my minions had stopped you!”
“Nice to see you, too, Shawna,” said Rubberman. “You look as crazy as ever.”
“The name is not ‘Shawna,’” said the Necromantress. “’Shawna’ is dead, killed in divorce courts. In her place is the Necromantress, who shall avenge her death!”
“Call yourself whatever you like, but you’ll always be Shawna to me,” said Rubberman. “And it doesn’t really matter either way. The gig’s up. You can’t run and you can’t hide. You’re stuck between me and Beams. There’s no way out this time.”
The Necromantress looked back and forth, from Rubberman to me and back again. She looked like a trapped rat, as if she was starting to realize that she really couldn’t escape.
“No one can stop the Necromantress,” said the Necromantress in a manic voice. “No one!”
“Looks like we just did,” said Rubberman. “Game’s over, Shawna. You won’t kill anymore superheroes today.”
The Necromantress scowled. “First, your sidekick accuses the Necromantress of murdering superheroes, and now you? The Necromantress does not know if this is
some kind of strange lie meant to confuse her or what, but she does not care, because she will escape.”
All of a sudden, one of the corpses lying on the floor—which I had thought hadn’t been reanimated yet—leaped up and threw its arms around Rubberman. Rubberman fell to the floor, wrestling with the zombie that was trying to choke the life out of him, while the Necromantress rushed past them toward the cauldron.
Without thinking, I fired a laser blast at the zombie, blowing its head off and allowing Rubberman to throw the headless corpse off his body. The two of us ran after the Necromantress who, instead of running toward the stairs that led to the upper floors of the Mansion, ran up the wooden stairs to the top of the cauldron. Her long legs allowed her to make big strides, allowing her to keep well ahead of the two of us, although when she got onto the wooden stairs she had to slow down slightly, albeit not enough to make much of a difference.
Rubberman and I followed her up the stairs as fast as we could. When we reached the top of the stairs, we found ourselves standing on a wooden platform suspended over the cauldron, but there was no sign of the Necromantress herself. The bubbling of the cauldron was much louder up here than it had been down below, while the purple steam made it almost impossible to see the rest of the basement.
“Where’d she go?” I said, looking this way and that for her. “She can’t teleport, can she?”
“Not that I know of,” said Rubberman, shaking his head. “We saw her run up here. She can’t be hiding very far.”
I glanced at the purple fumes of the cauldron. “You don’t think she jumped into that thing and killed herself, do you?”
“Doubt it,” said Rubberman. “Shawna isn’t going to kill herself until she kills me first; besides, we would have heard her jump in there if she did. But if you want to check, go ahead. I can’t breathe those fumes, because I don’t have a helmet with filters like yours.”
I nodded and walked over to the edge of the platform. I peered over the edge and at first saw nothing except for the disgusting bubbling goop which the Necromantress had called her reanimation potion. To me, it looked like boiling purple mud and it probably tasted about as good as that stuff, yet I didn’t see her anywhere. She seemed to have totally vanished into thin air.
Frowning, I turned around to tell Rubberman that I couldn’t find her, but then I noticed a small section of the platform protruding off to the side. It was almost completely hidden by the purple steam, which was why I hadn’t noticed it before. I looked over at it, but before I could do anything, the Necromantress burst out of the steam with a yell and shoved me in the chest.
My arms whirling like a wind turbine, I staggered backwards and fell off the wooden platform toward the large cauldron of purple goop below.
CHAPTER TEN
I reached out and tried to grab the edge of the platform, but it was too late. I fell toward the purple mud below like a rock. In the brief instant after I fell, I wondered what kind of effects the goop would have on me when I fell into it. If it killed me, would I be reanimated like one of the Necromantress’ zombies? Or would I just be a normal corpse? And if I was reanimated, would I still retain my eye beams? Would I be the first ever zombie capable of shooting lasers from its eyes?
Not that I would live long enough to find out, of course, because I was getting closer and closer to the surface of the purple mud every second and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. It was times like these that I wished I had Cyberkid’s jet boots; at least those would have let me slow the fall somewhat.
Just before I hit the surface of the purple mud, two strong hands caught me and whisked me up and away. At first, I couldn’t see who it was, but when we burst out of the purple steam, I saw that it was Iron Angel. His armor was slightly scratched and even dented in a few places from where he had fought the giant bat, but otherwise he looked okay.
“Iron Angel?” I said in surprise. “I thought you were fighting the Necromantress’ pet bat.”
“I killed it just a few seconds ago,” Iron Angel replied. “And when I saw you falling into her reanimation cauldron, I flew as fast as I could to save you.” He grunted. “But killing it wasn’t easy. I’m not as young as I used to be, you know.”
“Thanks anyway,” I said. But then I started and tried looking around Iron Angel back toward the cauldron. “But what about Rubberman? He was alone on the platform against the Necromantress. We should go back and make sure he’s—”
A loud cry of pain came from the platform, causing Iron Angel to stop in midair and turn around to look at the cauldron. The purple steam made it hard to see the platform, but then a person walked out of the steam into our view, dragging another person behind them like a tied up prisoner.
It was Rubberman. He looked tired, but otherwise unharmed, and he dragged the Necromantress behind him. Rubberman had wrapped his arm around her body so tightly that she couldn’t move any of her limbs, but that didn’t stop her from trying to wriggle around in an effort to free herself. She was also cursing and calling Rubberman all sorts of bad names, but Rubberman paid her about as much attention as he did to a yapping dog, although I noticed he would occasionally jerk her along behind him deliberately, which would make her yelp in pain and he’d always flash a small, satisfied smiled whenever he did that.
Iron Angel and I landed on the floor of the basement, near the foot of the stairs leading up to the top of the cauldron. Rubberman met us at the bottom with the struggling Necromantress and said, “Beams, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said as Iron Angel let me down. I spread my arms to show Rubberman my body. “I didn’t get any of the Necromantress’ mud goop on me, so I’m good.”
“It is NOT ‘mud goop,’ you insolent little boy,” the Necromantress hissed. “It’s reanimation potion and it—”
Rubberman tightened his arm around her and the Necromantress gasped before Rubberman loosened his grip on her again. The Necromantress just glared at him, but again, Rubberman paid her no heed.
“That’s good to hear,” said Rubberman. He looked around. “Any more zombies we’re not aware of?”
“The Necromantress will never tell you,” said the Necromantress again. “The Necromantress has many secrets up her sleeves. Search the Mansion yourself, if you dare, for any of my surviving minions!”
“So we’re good,” said Rubberman. He looked up at the cauldron with a grimace. “Getting rid of that stuff is going to be a pain. Something tells me that the federal government is probably going to want it.”
“The federal government?” I said. “Why would they take it?”
“Because the federal government usually deals with this kind of stuff,” said Rubberman, rubbing the back of his head. “They have an entire department for dealing with the aftermath of superhero and supervillain battles. It’s called the Department of Superheroes.”
“Huh,” I said. “How come I’ve never heard of them?”
“They’re not usually in the news all the time like the NSA, FBI, or CIA are,” said Rubberman with a shrug. “They usually prefer to operate under the radar, because they don’t want America’s enemies to know what kind of supervillain weaponry or gadgets we’ve got.”
“They’re a pain in the backside, if you ask me,” said Iron Angel, shaking his head. “In my experience, they usually end up causing more damage with said supervillain weaponry than the supervillains themselves due to their ignorance of how it works. One time, for example, a Bureau agent ended up demolishing half a small town with a mechanical suit he confiscated from a supervillain I defeated. Killed many innocent lives and, as far as I know, that agent was never fired for his incompetence, although the news had a field day making me look like an idiot, even though it wasn’t my fault.”
“Well, regardless of how we feel about them, the government is going to get their hands on this cauldron anyway,” said Rubberman with a shrug, “That’s just the law.”
Iron Angel nodded, but I could tell he wasn’t very happy about su
ch a powerful potion being in the hands of the government. Not that I blamed him. The idea of the federal government having the ability to bring the dead back to life made me wonder if it would be better if we just destroyed the cauldron and its contents ourselves, although I didn’t think we had the power to destroy it ourselves right now.
“Anyway, we’ve got more important things to worry about,” said Rubberman. He suddenly pulled the Necromantress between us and him. “Like interrogating Shawna here, for starters.”
“Stop calling the Necromantress ‘Shawna,’” the Necromantress growled. “That woman is dead and not even the Necromantress’ reanimation potion can bring her back.”
“Right, Shawna,” said Rubberman, rolling his eyes. “Anyway, while we are going to have to hand you over to the police, I want to ask you a few questions before we do so.”
“The Necromantress will never reveal the secret ingredient necessary to make the reanimation potion,” the Necromantress said, pouting and looking away from Rubberman. “Such dark secrets are only for the Initiated to know and you, Dennis, are not one of the Initiated.”
Rubberman shot a look at me that said, Can you believe this woman? before he looked down at her again and said, “I don’t want to know how you make your potions. I want to know why you killed those three superheroes. I want to know why you are the Superhero Killer.”
The Necromantress looked at Rubberman again, this time with a mixture of annoyance and confusion on her face. “How many times must I say it? The Necromantress knows not of which you speak. The Necromantress hasn’t killed any superheroes, because the only superhero she wants to kill is you.”
“Quit playing dumb,” said Rubberman. “We all know you’re the Superhero Killer. No one else in Golden City could have done it.”
“The Necromantress never ‘plays’ anything,” said the Necromantress with a huff. “If the Necromantress was indeed this ‘Superhero Killer’ of which you speak, she would have taken their corpses and added them to her army of the dead. Yet if the Necromantress recalls correctly, the Superhero Killer always leaves his victims’ corpses behind. He even takes off their heads, which the Necromantress would never do, as that would make it impossible for her potions to work.”