A tour bus came flying down the street towards us at top speed, careened over the sidewalk (running over at least three parked cars in the process), and crashed directly into a fire hydrant. Water started spraying everywhere as the bus’s occupants started freaking out.
At least that’s what it looked like from where I was standing.
Then one of the tourists charged the bus driver and sunk their teeth into his jugular, splattering the front windshield with blood like a scene straight out of a cheesy horror movie. There was nothing cheesy about what happened next though, as one by one the clearly undead passengers started breaking open the windows to the bus and toppling to the street below.
Every single one of these shambling corpses had completely white eyes, blood splattered all over themselves, and torn clothes. They also failed to register any sort of heat signature when I swapped my HUD over to thermal imaging.
“Pretty sure those are zombies,” I agreed with Lana. “C’mon. Let’s go do what we can to prevent an outbreak!” As I led the way to the revolving glass doors, I psychically linked up with Io and Tabitha and relayed what I was seeing.
The flock is en route to provide damage control and track targets. We’ll pick off any stragglers while you thin the herd, Io replied, then her presence receded as she focused on bringing her magical drones to bear against this new threat.
Mobilizing the Hunter units now, alerting any available Keepers as well, Tabitha reported automatically. Through our bond I could feel the pain she was in, both the physical pain of her pregnancy and the emotional distress she was under, knowing I was about to go fight the undead without her at my side. Stay calm and aim for the head, hotshot. Sorry I can’t be there to watch your back.
You’re all good, lady wolf, you just look after the little man and stay safe. I’ll take care of things topside, I promised.
Who said anything about it being a boy? Tabitha fired back.
A father knows these things, Tabby. Trust me. Before she could argue the point any further, I shoved my way through the revolving doors and out onto the street; unholstering my dual Roulettes as I went.
Set to carbine mode for higher precision and stopping power, I clicked the cylinders over to explosive rounds and took aim carefully. I pulled the trigger four times and earned three clean kills. All three rounds sunk through the skulls and detonated, splattering zombie brains all across the pavement and dropping the bodies to the floor.
That fourth trigger pull though (son of a bitch) dry-fired on the left gun.
Then both blades flickered and died out.
I glanced down at my now-inert left Roulette in shock. These guns had seen me through the worst parts of my first real crisis as a Keeper. Throughout everything, they had been completely reliable. I could empty their deep ammo reserves, holster them, and pull them out with a fresh charge. Now, the second I’m stuck in the opening sequence of a zombie apocalypse movie, now is when they decide to give out on me? The audacity.
Holstering my left weapon, I decided to just go with the one in my right hand and kept striding towards the zombie-filled tour bus. I fired off three more shots and dropped four more zombies (two-for-one special because their heads lined up perfectly) before it, too, dry-fired.
Great. Guess it wouldn’t really be a zombie adventure if there wasn’t an ammo shortage.
Now I was standing in the middle of the street facing a zombie horde with two dead weapons. Something in the back of my head told me I really should’ve let Olson take a look at these things a while ago. Come to think of it, maybe I shouldn’t have been exclusively relying on energy-based weaponry in the first place. That was kind of stupid.
Guess I can add 20/20 hindsight to my list of superpowers.
Oh yeah, I have powers. Idiot.
Holstering the other gun, I triggered my lamia mutation, acquired courtesy of my bond with Io. My skin became scaly and tougher, my spine elongated and my eyes narrowed to vertical slits. My fingers became claws and my teeth became sharpened fangs as I sped forward with heightened reflexes and an accelerated perception of time.
Euna, my guns are down. Going snake mode. How do you wanna play this?
Through our connection, Euna’s mental voice sounded bemused. I told you to get those checked weeks ago, Ryan.
I know, I know. Lecture me later. We have bigger fish to fry right now.
How about I pop blades and we do a leapfrog? She suggested.
Perfect. I agreed. I’ll lead, you follow.
Wouldn’t have it any other way, sir.
I lunged forward and tore the head clean off the first zombie that came my way. Dodging to the side, I let the next one stumble past me and prepared to claw it apart when suddenly the back end of its skull exploded away from me.
Selene stood there with her duty sidearm up and pointed at the zombie, her face had gone completely white as if she were a ghost (which I recognize is a bit ironic, given the circumstances, but still).
Before I could address whatever was bothering her so much, Euna darted past me. Her forearms had taken on the consistency of metal and formed into two triangular blades. She stabbed one of these into a zombie's head and slashed through the neck of another one deftly.
Selene fired off another round and clipped another zombie tourist in the shoulder, making it jerk back a little and start marching towards her with a mindless groan.
I leapt clean over Euna and knocked the zombie to the ground. It landed mouth-first against the sidewalk and I crushed its skull using my boot.
Achievement unlocked, curb-stomp a zombie, I mentally ticked off for my own entertainment.
Not funny, Ryan. I’m worried about you and you’re out there having fun? Tabitha asked psychically. Is your own life just a game to you? Are you going to keep acting this recklessly when our child is born, too? Am I going to be a single mother?
“Oh shit,” I muttered under my breath as I backhanded another zombie so hard its brains wound up decorating a taxi cab that had parked in the middle of the road.
Civilians were everywhere, running and screaming at the sight of the zombies coming out of the tour bus. I sort of stopped noticing them after the first few missions out in public. They panic and scream and get in the way a lot, but there’s a whole department at the Bureau dedicated to tracking down witnesses and either recruiting them as agents or wiping their memories so they don't have to pay for therapy for the rest of their lives. So long as none of them got between me and whatever monster I was hunting, or otherwise endangered themselves, they were never my immediate concern. The monsters were.
But when the cab driver stared at the bits of zombie brain clinging to his windshield, his face stuck with me.
I returned to the fight, joining Euna in taking them out one move at a time. I would lunge forward and take out a couple, then she would get between me and whichever zombies tried to come after me for killing their fellow brain-eating corpses. Then I’d take out whoever went after her, and so on.
In between attacks, I tried my best to comfort my very pregnant werewolf girlfriend. Tabby, you trained me very well, remember? I’m not taking any unnecessary risks. See? Euna and I are leapfrogging to reduce exposure. We are looking after each other just like you asked us to. It’s gonna be okay. I kicked a zombie across the front bumper of the bus and Euna slashed her blade through the things skull from ear to ear.
You promise? Tabitha asked. I could feel her shoulders shaking and her lip quivering despite the miles that separated us, such was the power of our psychic connection. She was weeping.
I promise. I was just trying to lighten my mood a little, I explained as I pinned a zombie up against the tour bus and Selene shot it through the eye. I’d never leave you and junior all alone. Never. So long as it is in my power to be here, I will always protect you. Part of that is looking after myself, and making sure I’m in one piece so I can actually be there for you. For all my ladies.
As I helped Euna deal with another handful of zombies, a blur of white vapor suddenly leapt from Selene and rose high over our heads to take the form of Hannah’s phantom. Suddenly, she dove towards a downed civilian as a zombie shuffled towards the man. Hannah’s form disappeared within the man’s chest and suddenly the frightened man rolled to his feet and reached a hand out towards a nearby stop sign. The metal pole broke free from the concrete and spun around like a giant axe, severing the zombie in half right above the waistline.
Zombified guts spilled everywhere as the concrete chunk still attached to the bottom end of the now bloody sign came up and over and slammed down on the zombie’s head, silencing its pitiful attempts to crawl towards the man.
Hannah emerged from the civilian’s the second the zombie was done, but it was too late. The man knelt down and puked on the cement, blood dripping from his nose from the sheer trauma of being possessed, even if only for a moment.
By the time I was climbing up the stairs and executing the bus driver mid-turn, Tabitha’s tears had started to abate. Okay. I believe you. But I’m not happy. There’s only three of us ladies right now, Ryan. None of the girls we tried to hook you up with managed to make a bond like we did. We tried really hard with each of them. I’m bored, I want more friends!
I sighed as I tossed a zombie out of the window head-first into the concrete side of the building the bus had crashed next to.
Okay babe. I’ll try to find you some more friends. Actually, about that, I began, preparing to tell her about the Hannah and Selene situation.
Is it Lana? She’s so cute! Tabitha asked, delighted.
My mind blanked as I realized I had not seen Lana since before we left the office building. I felt a little bad for forgetting about her, but also internally cringed at the idea of trying to sleep with someone who was smaller than my hand. That made no sense.
No, it’s not Lana. It’s-
Well, why not? You don’t think she’s cute?
I took a half-second’s reprieve to roll my eyes as Euna dashed forward and cleaved off a few more zombie heads. This was my life now. My girlfriend got mad at me if I didn’t like the hot girls she tried to hook me up with.
What’s wrong with me? This is every guy’s dream. Why can’t I just embrace it?
Well, I could think of one reason off the top of my head.
Tabitha’s connection dissolved as she fell into a fit of hysterical laughter and our psychic link fizzled.
What the hell’s so funny?
The next zombie that came at me? I grabbed its skull and squeezed until the thing shattered like it was a cheap clay pot and I was a young elven boy searching for valuable gems in his quest to save a princess. Sadly, it was not gems that fell out of the zombie’s skull but more undead gray matter. Go figure.
Euna let out a roar and charged the last remaining zombie. Her disguise and her arm-blades both melted into her regular body as she slammed right into the undead corpse and let her naturally acidic biomass go to work.
What followed was the utterly horrifying process of a zombified corpse slowly melting away to nothingness inside of my slime girlfriend’s voluptuous frame. The skin, bones, and organs all dissolved as her semi-liquid figure bubbled and boiled until there was nothing of her foe remaining.
She burped loudly and spun towards me, holding up two fingers in a little peace sign.
I made up my mind to tell her never to do that again.
With that, the bus was clear.
I glanced outside to see Selene backing away from one last zombie, fumbling with her sidearm as she struggled to reload. She looked more than a little frightened as it marched toward her. But I figured she had it, what with her training and everything. But then she dropped the ammo clip for her pistol.
She screamed, loudly, and backed into the hood of the same taxi cab I had painted red earlier (the driver had since made his escape). Selene kicked herself up onto the hood and started crawling backwards, tossing her gun towards the zombie’s head in her dazed panic.
My stomach dropped and before I knew it, my lamia reflexes and agility had me out the nearest bus window and on the ground, already moving to save Selene.
Hannah was faster.
She zipped into Selene’s body and calmly took over as the zombie got into close quarters.
With a kick to the zombie’s chest, she shoved it backwards several feet and got back onto the ground. From there she rolled past the zombie’s clumsy attempt to grab at her and dove for Selene’s sidearm.
Seeing the next problem before it occurred, I darted towards the clip and plucked it from the ground.
“Hannah!” I shouted, tossing the clip her way.
Even though it was Selene’s head that tilted in reaction to my voice, and her eyes that flared in recognition as she saw what I had thrown her way, it was Hannah’s trust in me and her instincts that reached up and caught the clip. She slid it home and slid the action back to load the first round in one swift motion, aiming up at the zombie from flat on her back and firing three rounds through the zombie’s skull.
The zombie collapsed to the ground, and the danger had passed.
Hannah rolled Selene to her feet and rose with that unmistakable confidence.
Euna emerged from the bus looking a little green.
Off in the distance I could hear sirens fast approaching as the Bureau swarmed in to contain the situation, and overhead I saw birds swooping in the mechanical patterns I had come to associate with Io’s drones.
But through all of that, my eyes darted back to the office building we had emerged from at the start of this whole thing. To a little fairy girl only now, once the fighting was over, emerging from the revolving doors.
My eyes narrowed dangerously as my anger rose.