Chapter Text
“Give me something that’ll make a dead man fear for his life.”
Sitch liked to humor Zombieman when he said dumb shit like that. “Oh?” The older man jests, wrinkled finger outlining the yellowing paper of a case file that caught his eye. “Are you getting bored, Zombieman? Have the bloodbaths run cold?”
“Hrm.” Zombieman leans back into the leather armrest, cigarette hanging off of his lips. “Quit speaking in riddles. This is just me telling you that I can catch your best shot.”
“Mmhmm.” Sitch says expectantly, eyes falling to his mahogany desk where the file lays. Intimidating. Looking at it was like staring at the street from a penthouse. His jaw goes tight subconsciously as he thinks, narrow eyes closing in on whatever solution he can think up. “Well then,” and he pushes the file forward. Just like that, the solution is found. Zombieman’s red eyes are cast to the paper almost instantaneously, a curious glint behind those crimson irises of his which he wears almost as often as cologne. “I think you’ll take a liking to this, then. Since it seems you’ve gotten tired of playing cops and robbers.”
“You’re not wrong.” Zombieman doesn’t take the file, looking back up at Sitch as he expects an explanation, some sort of half-baked briefing that lets him know just exactly which lake he’s jumping in to, which house he’s going to paint, which monster he’s going to kill. And almost as if Sitch read his mind, the older man’s mouth hangs open to let out said explanation.
“A couple of days ago—“ Sitch gets up to walk across the office by a small decorative table where a single pitcher of water is set, “—Our office here in City Z received an anonymous threat that some rogue monster syndicate was gonna raise hell in the abandoned shit pile just a few klicks from here.” He pours himself half a cup of water and reaches into his blazer pocket, pulling out a prescription pill bottle. He unscrews the cap without so much as looking at it. “Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but there have been reports that the area is rampant with squatters. Now, it would be one hell of a PR nightmare if we let a herd of rabid creatures tear up the place knowing there’s people living there. That’s where you come in.”
“Oh, you want me to clean it up. Like a janitor.”
“No,” Sitch pops a few tablets into his mouth and swallows hard. “You’re the one making the mess.” He then takes a gulp of water and follows it with a satisfied gasp, leaning against his own desk just in front of where Zombieman sits. The hero cocks a brow, head tilted upward to make eye contact.
“You just want me to raise an even bigger hell, huh?”
“Yeah.” Sitch says back into the cup, muffling a chuckle. “But hey, you’re getting paid for it.”
“Twice the fun.”
“Mmm.” Sitch chuckles again, reaching behind him and handing Zombieman the file officially. “It’s no longer on the table, this is your assignment.”
The hero takes the file without a second thought, immediately standing up from the chair to shake hands with Sitch like they had just finished doing a business transaction, which wasn’t far from the truth. “Thanks, I’ll treasure this.” He says sarcastically, tucking the file into the interior of his trench coat. Sitch rolls a tired set of eyes, turning back around to loiter behind the desk.
The hero walks towards the door. Just as his hand is inches away from the handle, Sitch decides to speak up: “Hold on.“ And Zombieman turns around to listen. “On top of the other heroes we’re gonna assign, you’ll need a partner to help you out at ground zero. Someone good. Smart, even.”
Zombieman’s lip curls into a tight smirk when he answers, “I’ve got someone in mind.”
“Good. Tell them to pack some firepower. Fucksake.” Sitch finishes the water and sets the glass on his desk rather loudly. Zombieman takes the gesture as a cue that the conversation is over, so he turns back around only to hear Sitch add one more thing: “Oh, and...”
Sitch must’ve read the annoyance on Zombieman’s face from how his expression significantly sours the moment he opens his mouth again, “Zombieman, don’t bite off more than you can chew.”
The hero is stoic and serious even when he’s holding back a pitiful laugh. He swallows the humor that Sitch can’t see and says, “Never.”
“Hm. And call me once you choose your partner. I’ve got to let payroll know beforehand.”
“Oh, I’ve already chosen.”
“And you’re certain they’ll say yes?”
“Positive.”
“Who is it?”
“Who the hell do you think it is?”
Sitch’s eyes narrow again, this time to study the walking dead man standing in front of him. “Very well,” he says, slumping back down in his desk chair, “heed my advice and pass it on to that poor little bastard, would you?”
“Hmph, right.”
“Zombieman?”
The hero cringes. He opens the door and stands under the frame without summoning the common sense to turn around and look Sitch in the eye as he spits, “Yes, sir.”
He steps out before the executive could add another remark, nonchalantly kicking the door closed with the back of his heel as he does so.
——
Too many klicks, hops, skips, and jumps later, Zombieman is tugging along a disgruntled Child Emperor. They wade through the decrepit trash that belongs to none other than the abandoned district of City Z. It’s the middle of the night. The chirp of the crickets just adds to the chorus of glass and metal debris popping under their shoes as they stride in tandem with one another.
“I thought you’d be up for this.” Zombieman says. His sides are heavy with the extra ammunition he’s carrying. “You’re always ready for a mission.”
“Yeah but,” Child Emperor almost whines, “I was so close to figuring out how to fix this bug and— ugh .”
“What?”
They stop. Child Emperor puts a finger to his earpiece, “You got eyes?”
One-Shotter is the one to reply, speech heavy and slurred with sleep deprivation: “ Mhmm .” He’s stationed above ground on a dilapidated skyscraper just a few hundred meters away from Zombieman and Child Emperor. He looks through the scope of his rifle from behind the lens of a homemade infrared modification practically duct taped to the front of his bionic eye. “ Everything’s peachy from here .”
“Is that so?” Child Emperor almost looks amused. “Because there’s a real big mass of red, presumably belonging to, you know, a group of warm-blooded life forms coming towards us from the east.”
Zombieman tenses a little at that, reflexively resting a hand on one of the Desert Eagles holstered at his side. He steps closer to Child Emperor and whispers, “Which direction?”
“I’ve got better eyes.” The kid replies, which isn’t an answer. He doesn’t bother to take his finger off of his earpiece so One-Shotter can hear every word. “Literally. New contact lenses I made give me infrared sights and they make my eyes look blue.”
“ Show-off .” The sniper remarks, “I tried my best, okay? ”
A pop of bubblegum is heard over the comms from an opposite end. Needlestar speaks up, “ Hey, are we done with the chit-chat? Because some of us are busy doing our jobs. ” He’s close by. He talks loud enough for Child Emperor and Zombieman to hear faint echoes of his voice just over a particularly high pile of rubble that was once a liquor store.
“ Hey, when did we start doing this special ops shit? Last I checked, the Association was too busy hemorrhaging money into the S-Class to buy us fancy equipment and earpieces. No offense .” One-Shotter says, “ I mean, sorry .”
“Don’t be.” Zombieman replies, “Sitch just told everyone that so the lower classes wouldn’t ask for favors.”
Suddenly that catches Needlestar’s attention, “ Wait, seriously ?”
“Yep,” Zombieman says, popping the p. There’s a sound like an oncoming thunderstorm from where the monster syndicate approaches, “Now, enough talk. Some of us are busy doing our jobs.”
“ Oooh shit .” One-Shotter chuckles. He adjusts his positioning, turning his rifle on its tripod. “I mean, ahem, I’ve got eyes.”
“Are you sure ?” Child Emperor asks.
“ Wait, fuck. ” Needlestar can be heard clearly as he approaches both the kid and the immortal from somewhere behind the towering debris. “ I don’t want to be caught in the open. ” He slides down the mound of rubble and lands on his feet just in front of the two heroes, black clothing becoming stained in the minuscule clouds of dust that flounce outward from where his steel-toed boots grace the ground. He takes his finger off his earpiece. “Hey, guys.”
Eight spidery, robotic legs sprout of Child Emperor’s backpack and hoist him in the air. He disregards Needlestar and turns his attention to a terminal on his wrist, opening a small holographic interface with just a few taps of his index and middle fingers. He presses a button and form the computer emanates a robotic female voice, “ Activating defense matrix mark four-point-nine: Fenrir .”
“Fenrir? You’re really taking this slow, aren’t you?” Zombieman humors, loading a few shells into his offhand sawed off.
“Well, I would know which specific configuration to choose if our lovely eye in the sky gave us a headcount.”
“ Jesus, passives aggressive much ?” One-Shotter sighs, “ Thirty-seven. ” There’s a sound like a thunderclap, a gunshot that reverberates throughout the sky like a piece of the earth had cracked open. “ Thirty-six. ”
“Funny how you tell us when they’re that close.” Needlestar teases. He brandishes his weapon like he were showing it off in front of potential buyers, holding the chain with both hands (of which the metal has rusted and reddened from continuous use). He wears a cocky smile, a glint of pirate flint behind those jesting eyes like the electric air before a fight gave him a high.
“Psst.” Zombieman looks at Child Emperor. “Turn on the lights.”
“Super duper on it.” The kid replies. As if on cue, he reaches into his utility belt and unholsters a flare gun. With one eye closed, he looks up, holds the weapon skyward, and pulls the trigger with little resistance.
A shot unlike the one that emanated from One-Shotter’s weapon crackles throughout the air like Child Emperor has launched a firework. It’s just as loud, maybe even more so. A pillar of smoke trails behind a single sphere of light like a star were falling upwards, casting a brightness over everything as if the sun had suddenly risen and turned red as blood.
From the cloak of night, thirty-six pairs of animalistic, monstrous eyes are stare back at the heroes, sharing red glints that parallel the flare floating above the horizon.
One-Shotter pulls the trigger once more. “ Thirty-five .”
——
“So, what happened that night? Really.”
“Does it matter?”
“A little bit, actually.”
“Am I—“
“No, you’re not being recorded.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
“What’s stopping me from walking out of this door?”
“Zombieman, listen to me. You’re in a safe place. Nobody is mad at you, nobody blames you. This is fine. You’re okay. Just tell us what happened, because other two that were at the scene have conflicting reports.”
“Needlestar and One-Shotter.”
“Right. Needlestar said you went berserk and ‘got a thirty-five killstreak in ten seconds flat’ while One-Shotter simply wrote ‘he shut down and played dead while we cleaned house making posthaste. It was tragic.’”
“None of those are true.”
“So why don’t you clear the air and tell us what actually happened?”
“He died, that’s what happened.”
“Who?”
“You know who.”
“I’m just making sure you know who.”
“Don’t fucking talk to me like I’ve lost my mind.”
“Have you?”
“No, but yours is about to get splattered on this wall.”
The interviewer looks up at that. “Are you threatening me?”
Zombieman doesn’t respond, jaw tight and eyes steady as he thinks of five-hundred different ways he could paint the room with blood. He stops, thoughts gone intrusive, and leans back in his chair in surrender. “Child Emperor died.”
She leans over the desk, face right in front of his. Her voice grows deep, almost in a growl when she begs the question, “How.”
He tries not shake. “I don’t know.”
“You do.”
“I don’t.”
They pause.
Zombieman shifts uncomfortably in his chair, “I—“ his voice breaks. “I don’t—“
“You do. You do know. You wrote it down last night on your mandatory mission report, ‘A cold-blooded, red Goliath of a monster snuck up behind the kid somehow and—‘“
“If it says on the report then why are you asking me?”
“This is part of the mission debriefing. I have to.”
“This is one fucked up debriefing.”
“Well, you had one fucked up mission.”
“And I’ve got one fucked up interrogator.”
“Is that so?”
“It is.”
“You and I aren’t so different, then.”
“Whatever. I’m gonna step out for a smoke break. Or, I’m sorry, do I need to cut my heart out and put it on the desk first? Do you need my parents’ consent? Fucksake.”
She looks to the opposite side of the room, “Sitch?”
Sitch has been silent the whole time, surveying the conversation from a shadowy corner of the office. “Yeah, let him go. You’re beating him up over this, Sasha.”
Sasha steps back. “Hm.”
Zombieman stands and subconsciously pulls his trench coat over his chest only to find he isn’t wearing it. He reaches into his pants pocket to pull out a pack of smokes, opens the door shoulder-first, and steps down the hall. There’s a balcony at the end of it, overlooking the rest of Hero Association headquarters. It’s barking hot out and it’s due in part to the noon sun and the metal alloy that makes up the majority of headquarters buildings. It soaks up the heat like a black sponge. One could crack an egg on the floor and hear it sizzle. When he lights his cigarette, someone else steps on the balcony a short distance away and leans against the railing.
Zombieman looks over. It’s One-Shotter. The sniper’s got streaks running down his face that belong to since dried tears. His hair is disheveled, and where his bionic eye usually is, there’s an eyepatch made of rolled-up gauze haphazardly taped to his forehead.
“You lied on your report.” The immortal says, taking a drag of his cigarette. “Why?”
“I don’t know, I thought it’d make things easier for you. I told Needlestar to fudge the truth too, but he took it in a different direction. It’s not my fault, I swear—“
“It’s fine.” Zombieman gazes outward at the view like he were in a daze. One-Shotter looks at him, eager to see those rusty gears turning in that overthinking head. But there’s nothing. Zombieman just stares at the sky, and his cigarette gets shorter, and he doesn’t falter to blink.
The sniper averts his working eye, stepping closer so they’re shoulder-to-shoulder. “Life seems so much shorter now.”
“To me, it seems like an eternity.”
“Right. I’m sorry.”
“For?”
“I don’t know. Everything. I’m sorry we have to bury Child Emperor, I’m sorry the mission went south, I’m sorry Sitch is being a shit, and I’m sorry you’re the way that you are.”
“I’m sorry too.”
“For?”
“For being the way that I am.”
“Oh.” One-Shotter almost begins to cry, “I didn’t mean it like that—I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
“Nothing is fine right now.”
Zombieman straights himself up, flicks away the remnants of his cigarette, and turns around. “Good talk.”
“No, wait.” One-Snotter says after him, “Listen, I didn’t mean—“
“It’s fine. Everything is fine.”
Nothing is fine right now.
Zombieman steps back into the building, slumps down in his chair once more, and continues the debriefing with the same amount of gusto that he had before: none whatsoever.
——
That night, Zombieman pushes a worn keycard through the slot of an ATM. The card used to have his picture on it but it has since been scratched off from continuous use.
A holographic interface projects outward from the ATM, showing directions to an entrance not too far off. He taps the interface once and looks to his left instinctually, where a rectangle is carved out of the brick wall with a bright white light outlining the edges. It slides to the side, revealing a staircase that goes downward. He steps inside, ducking his head underneath the short doorframe.
The stairs are such a shade of black that Zombieman’s blood would look pink against it. The walls around it are made up entirely of obnoxiously white panels, and when the stairs lead to their destination underground, it blooms into a cacophonous warehouse teeming with mechanical activity. Lights and backup generators whir to life as soon as motion sensors indicate Zombieman has entered the room. He walks forward. Lights flicker on as he coasts about the floor, seemingly following his every move until he steps on a small platform in front of a computer monitor no bigger than a car. The polarizing film wears no glints as the screen assumes a solid color. A prompt is displayed:
Name?
From underneath the monitor, a panel opens, and from it, a small keyboard stretches outward like a mechanical arm were handing it to Zombieman. He looks at it and then back to the screen, holding out one hand and typing in his name with familiarity. He presses enter. The keyboard retracts. Another prompt is displayed:
Voice recognition.
3
2
1
Speak now.
“Uh—“
Thank you. Analyzing.
It doesn’t matter how many times he does that, he never knows what to say.
After a moment, the computer is done.
Welcome back, August. Here’s what I’ve been up to since you’ve been gone:
And nothing is displayed after that. He sucks in a breath at the sudden realization that there’s only two people allowed in this laboratory and one of them is dead. This technology without Child Emperor to tend to it is like a flock of sheep left without a shepherd.
Regardless of the empty prompt after that, the monitor rises into the ceiling. The gears working inside the walls creak and groan as they work in tandem with one another like a masterfully crafted clock. They need oil , Zombieman thinks.
From behind the monitor, a rectangular segment of the wall slides to the side. On the other side is an even larger room, a rectangular behemoth with doors that speckle it’s walls on the ground floor, and a jungle of wires and tubes that hang thirty meters overhead. Mouse holes open in the walls just as Zombieman enters, and mechanical rats whir to life on the other side to race outward carrying hard drives and experimental motherboards across the premises, making clicking noises each time their tiny wheels hit a full rotation on the vinyl tile.
Overhead, the coos of pigeons and owls can be heard. Mechanical birds with silver feathers and crystalline eyes twitch as they turn on, looming over their places on the wires like gargoyles tasked with protecting a great city.
At the very end of the room, beyond the zoo of mechanical animals, beyond the many black steel beams bearing the ground above, beyond the stacks of books and crates holding precious data, beyond the distance, the black flooring, the mice, the birds, the vines of black cables and wires, there is a single desk with a single chair. Above it, an impressive array of some twenty-four computer monitors, with one larger one dead center in the middle of the display.
Zombieman steps forward, lays a pale hand on the chair. There’s blueprints and notes and a laptop on the desk like Child Emperor had never left. Zombieman looks to his right, half-hoping, half-expecting to see the kid to pop his head out from behind a stack of books or electric panel, but the only thing Zombieman perceives is the eerie silence of a steel jungle.
He pulls back the chair and takes a seat. It creaks under his weight, the sound reverberating all throughout the lab the same way thunder shakes the sky. He reaches into the interior of his trench coat and pulls out a bottle of whiskey and a pack of cigarettes in the same hand. Child Emperor never let him smoke in here. This time is different.
He lights it, holding it in between his index and middle fingers like it was second nature. With his exhale, a sting forms at the back of his throat that signals an oncoming weep. He swallows it along with some whiskey, tilting his head back as he drinks like it were the last beverage on earth. He stops, takes a breath, and speaks softly, although just loud enough to he heard in every corner of the room, “I’m sorry.” He sniffs, “I should’ve just let you fix that damn bug.”
“ Which bug ?”
He stands out of the chair fast enough to give anyone whiplash. His eyes scan the room feverishly, a hand on the weapon holstered at his side, “Who said that?” He calls out, seemingly into nothing.
“ I did .”
He turns. Behind him, a blue apparition of Child Emperor pokes his head out from behind a stack of books and steps forward. It materializes into almost a perfect clone of him, albeit a blue and somewhat transparent. There’s a glow emanating from the hologram that make even the darkest blacks of the tile seem blue. Zombieman has a white-knuckled grip on the bottle. His cigarette is caught between his teeth. A free hand at his side trembles, parted between grabbing the nearest weapon and reaching out to hold the kid. But alas, he doesn’t move. The two of them are seemingly suspended in time, staring at one another like they were in a standoff.
The hologram speaks first, “ Uhm. Hi. Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. ”
Zombieman still doesn’t react, eyes blown wide like a deer in headlights. He forces out a croaky, “Who are you?”
“ Well, I’m glad you asked! ” The hologram strides in place as it cheerfully explains, “ I’m Minami-gram mark— “ it’s voice falters from being a direct copy of Child Emperor’s to a monotone, robotic speech, “— nine-point-seven-point-two-dash-percentile-dash-seventy-six —“ and then it resumes Child Emperor’s voice once again, “ Otherwise known as: your new virtual assistant !”
Zombieman takes another drink and looks up from the bottle to see that yes: Minami-gram is still there. He doesn’t say anything, just stands in a state of inner turmoil as he wonders if it’s a good idea to call the Hero Association for a psych evaluation right now.
Minami-gram halts the silence, “ Well, I can see you’re a little tense, August. It’s natural. Dealing with loss can bring on an unpredictable set of emotions .”
August looks up at that, “Loss?”
“ Well, yes. I’m talking to you right now because Child Emperor is deceased, right ?” Minami-gram says, “ Or, he could just be on a very long vacation... which seems unlikely. Heh .”
“You—“ His brain does a summersault as he tries to wrap his mind around talking to a figment of light but alas, he starts to squeak out something pathetic before Minami-gram interrupts him.
“ Oh, and you’re not allowed to smoke in here. Fire hazard .” The hologram opens up an interface with a wave of his hand, “ I’ll summon Butler-bot to take care of that for you .”
In a matter of seconds, a little robot the size of a trashcan wheels out from behind the desk. It screeches to a halt next to Zombieman, and from a panel on the side of it, an ash tray extends itself on a mechanical arm. The immortal puts his cigarette out in it without breaking eye contact with Minami-gram. Butler-bot makes a little noise as it’s way of saying goodbye before retracting the plate and wheeling backwards into it’s place of origin somewhere in the shadows. August swallows. He clutches his heart because it starts to ache. He sounds so much like him.
“ Anyways, I’ll start with —“
“I haven’t introduced myself.”
“ Oh? Well, I already know who you are. Minami spoke greatly of you .”
“Yeah, but secondhand introductions aren’t reliable. Minami knew that, and so should you.”
“ Very well. ”
August clears his throat, “I’m August.”
“ Hi, August. I’m Minami-gram, your new virtual assistant —“
“Yeah, okay.” Zombieman blurts. His head hurts along with his heart, eyes gone slightly blurry as his tear ducts work overtime to produce something more than a droplet. They fail. He doesn’t cry but he feels the sting all the same. He has so many questions bouncing around in his head due in part to his intuitive nature and pure disbelief for what’s going on that he might as well have none because choosing what to say next feels like standing on the edge of a cliff. It feels impossible. It feels scary. It’s making a dead man fear for his life.
“I’m going to go.” He says, deciding to step away from the cliff altogether. Minami-gram has the pre-programmed nerve to look surprised but polite protocols override his urge to beg August to stay for one more minute. Something he must have inherited from the real Minami, the one that wasn’t blue nor transparent nor anyone’s assistant.
“ Very well ,” The hologram says, “ Have a good night, August. I hope you return soon .”
August steps out, urging himself not to turn around for a second time. As he leaves, the steel jungle shuts off all around him. It’s completely silent as he climbs the staircase leading outside.
It starts to rain.