Metahumans vs the Undead: A Superhero vs Zombie Anthology (17 page)

Instead they brought out a ladder. It was all folded up at first until they began raising it, higher and higher. There was a small platform at the top that looked like a diving board. One of the muscle men held it down, clamping his legs to it. I looked up, remembering that the theme was superheroes and realizing what they wanted me to do: prove I was impervious to fire, prove I could fly—or fall and not die, at least. I smiled to the roaring crowd and waved, taking the rungs in my hand. I swung up onto it and climbed and climbed. I climbed so high I saw all of Temperance stretched out before me. It was a vast empire that took up almost all of what we used to call Antarctica. Beyond it was the black decay of the Earth. Yellow clouds formed above the other foreign countries; I saw them in the distance the higher I climbed. I reached the top and stared down, hoping I could guide my body into the center of the arena and not on the civilians.

I spread my arms out as the wind took my hair, turning it up into a tornado.

I dropped.

I spun, twisting, twirling, letting the wind curl around me like a cyclone until I smacked into the sandy arena. And this wasn’t like Wylie Coyote. I had done this a million times to know the ground shook; it didn’t create a Fable-shaped hole, with me lost somewhere in its center. I lay there for a moment until I was attacked from behind by one brought back from the dead, a zombie. I turned swiftly, grabbed its snapping head and twisted it, and heard the crack in its neck. It fell on top of me as I scrambled to my feet and noticed more of them heading in from underneath the arena. I waited, and each one of them with their sagging skin approached me, and met their death quickly.

I stopped thinking about them as I parried and knocked one in the chest with my fist. It staggered backwards and then slid into the sand, skin at its ankles melting into the ground. I couldn’t stand these filthy creatures. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end as two them flanked me, the stench of death wafting into my nostrils. I ducked and swung my legs out, forcing them to topple over onto each other. Just as I got free there was something on my back. I felt squishy bare feet press into the spandex at my back and the disgusting thing grabbed my hair. I shuddered, thinking about the greasy strings of skin that I’d have to pick out later, and swiveled, knocking it off my back and onto its back. I stood and before any of other others could approach me I dug my heel into its neck. Thick crimson blood spilled from the wound as I dusted my hands off and turned to face the rest with my hands on my hips.

I glared at the group of them forming, at least ten of them sauntering toward me with that deft low moan. At least they weren’t reaching for me with lazy spaghetti arms; I probably would have laughed. Instead, I wondered who lucked out this year and won the testing lottery. It’s not like Temperance doesn’t have volunteers, but the ones signing up for the dangerous stuff, these were the ones who met their deaths by my hands.

I clenched my fists and bent into a warrior position. The crowd above me cheered. Instead of waiting for them to meet me I went at them. I let the rotting flesh surround me as I snapped necks, broke arms and wrote lines across their chests with my razor-sharp stilettos. Hattie was nothing if not creative.

They were dead in seconds. One thing I granted the zombies was a quick death; prolonging it only made the urge to vomit stronger.

Nobody could see me as a weakling.

I walked around them in a slow circle as the crowd pounded their feet against the wooden stands, causing my entire body to vibrate. I waited while the men in the biohazard suits filed in and cleared the arena.

There was the faintest sound of the click of a switch and the arena turned into an obstacle course. I was like a rat in a maze. I jumped up steps, swung on trapezes, stood on rolling balls, and sailed through flaming hoops.

I didn’t break a sweat.

The crowd was so entertained they were on their feet, watching me dodge the moving panels. I rolled onto my back and kicked a tiger in the ribs. Its tongue lolled out of its mouth, fur sagging to the side and eyes giving me that deranged craziness. Great, bring on the zombie animals. I wasn’t some animal activist in 2020AD, but I wasn’t fond of killing things that had no brains to begin with. And these weren’t your garden variety zombies either. The tiger had a fierce bite when it got the advantage and clamped onto my arm. Blood and saliva oozed down my arm as I scrambled for my stilettos and slid them off my feet. I used the heel like a spike and stuck it into the tiger’s skull. It wasn’t even expecting it, and the worst, the blank look as its teeth unhooked my arm and it fell into the pit beside me. I strapped my stiletto back on, loosely, and hobbled through the maze. There was a lemur around the corner, its tail curling around my unscathed arm as I forced it to the ground and heard the soft snap as it hit the sand, dead. Tigers, lions, rattlesnakes, you name it, they had retrieved it from the old world and brought it to Temperance. They did experiments on these creatures and eventually their brains turned to soup, their instincts pushed to the limit.

Nothing would ever cure the radiation.

I didn’t have the heart to tell them to stop trying.

There was a raptor around another wall, and we had some space to throw down. I stopped, circling it while it circled me, its blue scales shimmering in the fading sunlight. I growled at it and it came for me, its tiny feet pattering on the ground. I jumped out of the way and then swung around, kicking it hard in the back. It landed face first and I jumped on it, shoving its teeth into the sand. I grabbed its head and hauled it up long enough to see the bloodshot eyes and the bloodlust. The scales were mushy and slippery in my hands. I made quick work of snapping its neck and stood up. I doubled over, my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath. A second later I stood up only to get blinded momentarily by the sun.

That’s when the bear’s arms circled me and began crushing my chest. It lifted me off the ground and I lost the loose stiletto as it whirled me upside down and landed on its back with me still locked in its iron grip. I struggled against its impossible weight and tried kicking it in the gut with my other stiletto. It was no use. All I could see was the sun bearing down on me, the clear blue sky and the edges of the stands. The bear growled in my ear and teeth grazed along my lobe, but it didn’t bite down.

I didn’t panic. I let my body go slack and the moment I was as fluid as the bear’s drooping fur, I slipped through its arms and crab-crawled across the sand. It was down for the count. Something told me it hadn’t meant to lift me up like that, that it had tripped on something—a stray raptor scale.

I smirked and crossed my arms, watching the bear struggle to its feet the way a beetle does when it’s on its back.

After a few moments of indulging the bear, the arena began shifting again, shifting and changing and closing compartments, erasing them from memory so that it was just a blank patch of sand, me and the bear.

I didn’t kill it.

I turned and walked away from it and waited for the men in the biohazard suits to drag it away. There wasn’t honor in killing something so helpless.

The men in biohazards came for it, and hauled it up by the shoulders. They had it almost out of its precarious position when it got vicious and lunged at me, covering me with its thick body. It smelled like crusted honey and bloody raspberries. I choked back the urge to throw up and struggled under its weight. If zombie bears could laugh, this one was laughing at me.

It was taking too long. I was stuck and this thing was doing nothing but trying to suffocate me. Elementary mistake, I don’t die. I elbowed stray fur out of my way and tried to roll over. The zombie bear’s skin was aching to slide right off, and the way it moved around me as I tried to get free was revolting.

I finally managed to get my head out and as I rolled over I saw the stiletto that had fallen. I grappled for it, reaching as far as I could with my fingers and pushed it out of my way. I bucked against the bear’s giant body and slithered out another inch. I grabbed the stiletto and pierced its shoulder, hoping to cause enough pain to make it move.

It didn’t.

I gritted my teeth and let the anger wash through me. I pounded at its face with the razor-sharp stiletto, tearing skin and muscle, not caring anymore that it was covering me, slopping onto my arms and staining the costume with brain matter. There wasn’t a killing blow so much as a flop. I kept going even though it had died and was still covering me.

The sun was setting by the time the ordeal was done. I was lying on my back in the middle of the bare arena, taking deep breaths. My costume was torn in a lot of places, but not enough to show the type of skin the parents didn’t like. My stilettos had blood on them, and my hair had goop in it. I was a wreck, but I wasn’t near dead.

Jonathan Cray came into my peripheral vision, his face hovering over mine. This was usually the part where he told me the show was over. This was the part where he announced to the crowd that Fable the Immortal was
truly
immortal and that nothing would ever destroy their symbol, their icon, their hero. I waited for him to grab my hand and pull me to my feet . . . but he didn’t. Instead, he paced around me in a slow circle, sizing me up. This wasn’t anything Hattie had warned me about before. We got rid of Collin Cray because he was
really
trying to kill me. That bit about dying, it was a bit; nobody in Temperance really wanted me dead. They wanted to test my immortality, prove it was strong.

Prove it was forever.

I wouldn’t be immortal if I didn’t live forever.

I sat up and stared at Jonathan, wondering what he was doing, and then he stopped and crouched down to my level so our faces were inches apart. “I have one more thing if you’re up for it,” he said. His eyes were warm but his tone was mocking and harsh.

I nodded and one of the guys in a one-piece came over carrying a metal cylinder. Jonathan wrapped my hand around it, but didn’t unscrew the hard plastic top.

“What is it?” I asked.

Jonathan shrugged. “Technically it’s orange juice.”

I knew way too much about radiation to be fooled by orange juice. Especially since oranges were artificially grown and used in the labs as part of a process they were trying to perfect to treat the radiation poisoning. If he couldn’t kill me, poison me, or make me like everyone else, that was. Or worse, make me like one of those zombie animals. I stared at the cylinder, wondering if I would age normally, if I would live out the rest of my life and cease to amaze the public. I stood up, and realized the crowd was silent. Jonathan wasn’t even telling them what this was, and they were all thinking it was the final act. I might drink it and blow up from the inside, and then draw the pieces of myself back into the form I had always carried. My matter worked like that. They had tried something a couple hundred years back where they stuck my hand in a meat grinder, and everyone saw the mushy pieces fall out of the other side, but when they lifted my arm out of the machine, my hand was perfectly intact.

I looked up at the crowds, at the faces of the eager youngsters and the aging hopefuls. I turned and turned and finally I shook my head and put the cylinder down.

“Today is not the day Fable Ketterling dies,” I whispered, knowing that only Jonathan would hear me. I never used my last name anymore. Everyone but my family had forgotten it. There was something heinous about being able to remember which family line stemmed from my blood.

Jonathan Cray shrugged and picked up the cylinder.

“And she is humble, as well as brave, and invincible. Let’s hear it for our hero, Fable the Immortal!” Jonathan finished.

I didn’t care anymore. People were throwing things into the arena, gifts for me. I stalked toward the grates but Hattie met me halfway with Ursula and Eden, attaching the adamantium chains to my hands and my feet. They silently walked me out of the arena, through the atrium, and began weaving me down the corridors. Hattie snapped at Ursula and Eden as we reached the sandy tunnels. I couldn’t do it. Thirteen-hundred-and-thirteen years and I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t destroy their only symbol of hope. They didn’t know the real Fable Ketterling, they knew Fable the Immortal, the girl that could withstand anything, the girl without fear, the girl that lived forever. They believed in her because they aspired to be her. They bought her merchandise, watched her commercials, came to her events, showered her with gifts, and declared their undying love for her.

They didn’t know that the real Fable Ketterling lived in a lead box forty stories under their city.