Post by redsycorax on Mar 13, 2024 3:04:48 GMT
Earth-887 has two core divergences. One is the fact that in the eighteenth century, a vampire turned serving maid Blanche Lewis, intent on using his childer to destroy the revolutionary war effort. It didn't work, given that Blanche was a staunch American patriot and instead dusted her sire and used her abilities to aid the American cause behind the scenes. She adopted the name Bianca Liberty after the War of Independence was over and continued to assist her country throughout the centuries. But then, in 1944, Adolf Hitler unleashed a devastating thanatovirus when the Allies landed on the D-Day Normandy beaches. While he couldn't control it once he had done so and died in Berlin amidst a horde of undead predators, his last defiant gesture proved all too effective. No-one won World War II as humanity entered a greater struggle against the zombie apocalypse.
Because this Earth lacked conventional superheroes, Bianca Liberty assembled her own contingent as the zombie hordes attacked the United States through the north, east, west and south. They included the airborne Flash Dexter as the Winged Warrior, Birdman; Brian O'Brien as the two-fisted Clock; Bob Blake, as the Aquatic Avenger, Hydroman; Mirror Man (Dean Alder), to whom no reflecting surface is inaccessible; and finally, Doris Parker, the crimefighting cyborg known to others as Iron Woman. Together, they fight anarchy and the zombie onslaught as ... Six for Survival.
++
WASHINGTON DC:
As Mirror Man stepped through his portal mirror into the 'real' world, he caught sight of a young woman, holding an infant in arms, being pursued by a herd of zombies. His SFS colleagues emerged from the portal after him. Mirror Man nodded to them: "Bianca, Doris, Bob, Flash- can you engage them in combat so that Brian and I can get those two to safety?"
Bianca extended her fangs and her hands extended claws. The twilight reflected from her burnished mental head dress as she took to the air alongside Birdman and the two of them arced above and then down, disrupting the melee amidst howls, cries and screeches of surprise. Iron Woman moved in to intercept others as her cyborg hands extruded inbuilt laser and projectile units and made short work, tearing into their necks and ripping some heads from their dessicated, staggering bodies. Hydroman marshalled hard water into his hands and blasted the zombie assailants with high pressure hose bursts. They worked as effectively as sledgehammers. As the woman tripped and fell, the Clock caught her in his arms and assisted her to the waiting Mirror Man:
"Through here, ma'am..."
"But that's a mir-oh. You're that Mirror Man I've heard about, aren't you?"
"Don't worry about breathing or being able to leave it once you've sought refuge inside there. Mirrors are permeable to air molecules and I control the molecular density inside there."
"Thank you. Oh, thank you! You people have saved my life! You're every bit the heroes they talk about in the settlements!"
"Later, we'll talk about what happened to your community, but please, get to safety first. The zombies won't be able to follow you. Entry and exit from mirrorverses rely on sapience, the ability to think coherently and reason- and that's something zombies lack."
"You're a good person, Mirror Man," the young woman said, before disappearing into the mirror portal and watching safely from that vantage point as the SFS made short work of the zombie herd that had beset the young woman and her child.
Later that night, around a camp fire, the young woman told her story. Her name was Hannah Derrick. She'd lost her husband last year when an unexpected surge in the number of deadheads overwhelmed the defences of her remote settlement and she'd come here with her infant to what was left of the nation's former capital to join another encampment of survivors. Her parents hadn't survived the initial descent of zombies onto the American mainland. She was alone in the world and had only begun to rebuild her life in this austere shattered world.
As the infant played with a blunter edged facsimile of her headpiece and gurgled happily, Bianca thought back to an earlier, but by no means more innocent world, and another, frightened, fleeing young woman. Herself. Like Hannah here, she had no family left, but unlike her, a compassionate vampire gave her the ambiguous blessing of eternal life. From then on, she had rebelled against the more conservative sires from Europe and South America and still served her country. But there were so few of her kind left on this world now. As the human population had dwindled, so had the companion species that either preyed on them or lived in symbiosis. If this zombie apocalypse consumed humanity, revenantkind would perish soon after, like winter following autumn.
A DAY LATER:
Brian O'Brien looked out over the deserted street, with its weed-strewn sidewalks and the sound of the cavernous empty wind loud at rooftop level. The Clock thought of better times, elegant socialites, dinner dances and silver limousines. Although his gilded life was long over, it seemed a (deceptively) more innocent time. And then had come the European War and clouds over the Pacific as Japan and the United States steadily and inexorably moved toward conflict. Pearl Harbour dawned and suddenly America itself was at war. Back in '43, it looked like the Ratzis had overreached and stumbled in Stalingrad, as the Japs had at the Battle of the Coral Sea and Midway, and that after a major push on both fronts, the war would soon be over, perhaps as soon as two or three years. And then, in '44...
No-one had thought Hitler would go that far. He was a madman, true, but this vast gotterdammerung of humanity itself was beyond anyone's immediate assessment of his psychosis. But then the grisly animated cadavers had struck, lurching out of trenches on fortified Normandy beaches and falling on startled and terror-stricken British, American and Allied marines. They made short work of the attackers, then stumbled onboard the abandoned invasion barges, as uninformed and mystified Allied retrieval began, with a cruel denouement as Nazi zombies stepped out of them on Dover beaches. For undetermined reasons, they managed to turn some of the British Army personnel, and delayed effects occurred in some cases. Soon, the United Kingdom disintegrated. It was said Winston Churchill stayed at his post and cigar in mouth, managed to take as many of the stenches with him when 10 Downing Street was overrun. Before then, the jerky chiaroscuro of a screaming Adolf Hitler disappearing beneath a pile of slavering, bloodstained zombies as his Berlin Fuhrerbunker fell was cold comfort. US armed forces were evacuated, but some were already infected and when they returned home across the Atlantic, the thanatovirus epidemic within their veins hit the United States. The country fell apart in months. From a dream of prospective victory and the prospect of a brighter postwar world, the American dream ended abruptly as a new dark age began in its stead.
Brian turned and waved to Doris: "Hello, Dolly. Hey, is Flash back from patrol yet?"
Doris Parker nodded: "Yes, Brian. He got back twenty minutes ago and he's debriefing with Bob and Bianca."
"Doris..." The Clock hesitated. He was torn between their commitment to duty and his feelings for Iron Woman as a woman. Respect and admiration for her professionalism and prowess in combat had deepened into something else as he became aware of her other qualities too- her keen mind, her determination to protect those weaker than herself from harm and... sadly... the risks she ran doing that.
Truth to tell, Doris felt the same way, but doubts assailed her. Even though it was probably a draw between Bianca and her insofar as the strongest woman alive went, how could any man love a freak with metal hands? She wasn't whole and despite the respect and admiration her metallic hands had won for her, acclaim was empty without someone tangible to love her back. There'd been no-one for her since her father had been murdered as criminals tried to retrieve the mechanised gloves invented all those centuries ago in Switzerland. In the inferno that had destroyed her home, Doris' hands had been severely burnt, so it was decided to replace her own hands with prosthetic replacements. It brought her reknown and respect, but then the maelstrom shattered normality and the life she had known.
Little did she know that her comrade in arms ignored her enhancement and yearned to fill the void inside his own life, where there were no-one to share it since the zombies had torn apart his beloved Betty Buchanan, whom he'd loved like a daughter since they first crossed paths. To think that redhaired stunner had once been a quarrelsome street urchin called "Butch"! From being jittery when she'd fired her first firearm, she'd held the stenches off long enough to enable the Clock and refugees fleeing the fall of New York to safety. She'd blossomed into a truly remarkable woman.
DEAN'S LAIR:
In a shabby apartment building, with tattered curtains and a makeshift camp bed, Dean Alder tossed and turned, dreaming about the person he couldn't save. Deann. Mirror Girl. She'd had the same abilities as the Lamaist Tibetan mystics had given him, but he had several years advantage on her when it came to expertise and the use of his endowments. Still, she was a quick study and her heroic reputation was on the rise when the zombie apocalypse descended on the United States. After all these years, it still tormented him, that cruel twist of fate that one of the zombies that she'd tried to lure away from Queens, over a pier and into a sea filled with ravening sharks, had had an astygmatism in life and was inadvertantly immune to her visual manipulation. To her surprise, it was able to circumvent the ruse and chased her into a mirror, and then...somehow...followed her into the mirrorverse. Dean had always wondered how that was possible, but it was a forelorn querry. Even after all these years, he had no answers about his cousin's tragic death.
He awoke and reached for a whiskey bottle: "Will that really do any good, Dean?"
Dean lay back in the bed as Bianca emerged from the shadows:
"It's how I deal with what happened, Bianca. I know vampires aren't able to metabolise alcohol and it has no effect on you, but this is a human solace."
She sat on the chair opposite his bed:
"But is it a fit one? You're been knocking it back when you're off duty like there's no tomorrow."
"What if there isn't, Bianca? Like the rest of us, I thought things were going to get better after the war. Well, here it is, and Doomsday's arrived instead."
"I've had moments like that myself, during the centuries I've been enfleshed. But I'm still here. No matter how dark it gets."
"Because you were born with this country and you believe in it. But the rest of us are gonna have to die sometime."
"If I have anything to do with it, none of you will be on the Grim Reaper's welcome list for another few decades yet."
"Yeah, we all know you've got our backs. But face it, though. You'll outlive us, come what may. Hell, you've lived a long, virtuous life and you deserve it, more than anyone else I know. If humanity ever reaches the stars like those old pulp scientifiction books I loved as a teenager, you'll be secreted in a coffin somewhere on one of the first star ships."
Bianca smiled sadly: "That doesn't mean I won't miss any of you when the time does come, Dean."
"You know, Bee, for a blood-sucking revenant, you're far more human than most humans."
Bianca Liberty didn't reply, but she was thinking back through the centuries to the first man she loved, Martin Devlin, a handsome Revolutionary War soldier, crippled in the fight for her country's freedom. She turned up during the evenings, visiting the cottage where his family had lived in New Hampshire since the British came to the New World in the last century. Because he was one of those rare humans who would not respond to her vampirism as either a blood apple or turnable into her childer, she had had to endure her young, vivacious paramour gradually age and grow grey-haired, increasingly infirm, with wrinkles etched in his face and then, one evening into the new nineteenth century, she sat alongside his bed and gently brushed what remained of his hair past his wrinkled forehead as his breathing grew steadily fainter until he drew one last, almost silent gasp and then closed his eyes forever. Sobbing, she sewed him into his blankets and dug a grave and cairn for him and then left the remote New Hampshire mountainside forever. That was one of the cruelties of her immortality, almost a curse. She would live on, perhaps forever, while anyone she loved or befriended would age inexorably onward and ultimately flicker out. That made their lives all the more precious to her and increased her determination to protect them.
Dean was grieving for his cousin, he knew it. Deann hadn't deserved to go that way. But he would have to realise that Deann wouldn't have wanted her loss to poison and corrode her cousin's life and sense of purpose, and she worried about the world-weary fatalism that had gripped her friend.
ATLANTIC OCEAN:
"Why do you persist in doing this, Robert? They wouldn't lift a finger to protect Aquaticans and you know it!"
Hydroman sighed. He wasn't interested in having a conversation with his separatist sister Rydra and turned toward her:
"How do we know that the zombie thanatovirus won't mutate, Ry? How do we know that they will continue to be unable to survive in aquatic environments?"
"You're my brother, you big lug! Because I'm frightened you'll end up throwing your life away up there on the surface, that one day you won't come back and that..."
"In that case, you'll have to step up and become President of New Atlantis, Ry. And don't tell me you don't have it in you. You ruled quite capably and wisely while I was away during the War."
"Don't change the subject, Robert. The surface world is finished. It's only a matter of time before their own avarice and hubris destroys them. I'm not a monster. I will mourn that day when it comes. But have you stopped to consider it may be inevitable?"
"I'm not as pessimistic as you are, Ry."
"Oh? I'd call it realistic, but... all right, Robert. Go, if you must. I know I can't stop you. But please...come back safe and sound..."
"Thanks for understanding, sis..." And with that, Hydroman took his leave of Hydrowoman, leaving his sister floating in the cerulean stillness, biting her lip as she pensively stared after her brother as he swam off toward the distant shoreline.
NEW YORK:
As he emerged, Hydroman caught side of the sixth member of their group, Flash Dexter, Birdman. The interludes between Flash's visits earthside were becoming more and more prolonged as the winged man seemed all too eager to escape into the skies above them. Unlike Robert, he was a solitary mutant and there were no other examples of 'homo avia' in existence. Whether Flash was succumbing to some mental illness related to his solitary mutation was a moot point. What if the only cure for that narcosis of the skies led to his permanent grounding? Flash lived for his ability to take to the skies. It would kill him, Robert knew.
And then he saw something that made him wonder if he wasn't going mad. It was a woman. A woman, hammering on a mirror, screaming. And not just any woman, either, but one with no grounding material self on the material side. And given the way she was dressed, and what Dean had told them all about her, it could only be one person.
Deann Alder. Dean's long-lost cousin, long thought dead.
Mirror Girl.
MIRRORVERSE:
"No, you don't, you little fool! Not when I'm so close to winning!"
"Damn you, Bocor! You're not even from this Earth! Why do you want to destroy my cousin and the other five SFS members so badly?!"
"Because I can, Alder. Because given my ability to command the undead, I am fated to rule it! As the Voudoun Queen of this planet!!"
Deann icily retorted: "You can only do that if I let you take control of me and gain access to the Outerverse. And I'd rather die than become your passive instrument."
"Oh, Alder, you idiot. It won't be you."
"Dean. You can only mean him. You won't get my cousin. Mirror Man's too strong for you, you demented night hag!"
"How you underestimate your own strength, dear Deann. You're not the one who turned to alcohol for solace all these years assuming you were dead. Just a little more manipulation of your cousin's achilles heel and he shall be the snare that fells you arrogant meta-human obstacles to my dominion over this world forever!"
Erzulie Bocor laughed insanely as Mirror Girl held her gaze and continued to use her abilities to obstruct the sorceresses egress. Then she caught sight of a female outline on the outerverse side. It could only be one person, given that she didn't cast a reflection or shadow. But how could Deann communicate with her? How?
NEW YORK:
As she looked into the mirror, which didn't reflect her own image, given she was a vampire, Bianca's eyes widened:
"Oh, no. Not her. It can't be. Not after all this time!"
Mirror Man raised an eyebrow: "See? I told you this was futile. I don't know why Rob saw that hallucination of my cousin, but she's gone. Deann has been gone for the last five years. That creature followed her in and when it left the mirror, it had blood on its claws."
Bianca turned to Mirror Man, the Clock, Hydroman, Birdman and Iron Woman:
"Have any of you ever heard of Erzulie Bocor?"
Iron Woman nodded: "In the funny books, before the war. She was a drum playing sorceress from Haiti where she animated old school Voudoun-enabled zombies who fell afoul of an artist called Bill after he bewitched his girlfriend, Sheila. But she's a fictional character. Isn't she?"
"All right. How much do any of you know about the theory of many worlds?"
"Wait a minute. Are you saying that there's a parallel Earth where Erzulie Bocor really exists, Bianca?"
Bianca nodded: "Not only that, but I've fought her on that world. Somehow, she must have enterered the mirrorverse, because those are her sigils on that wall!"
"So... Deann? My cousin is alive? And Bocor... has her prisoner?"
"Yes, Dean. I suspect so. It makes sense. Only it's possible things are the other way around. Deann's abilities are as powerful as your own and that includes entry and egress to and from the mirrorverse."
"Dee! I'm coming, honey!" But then he was felled from behind:
"Sorry, Deano. Can't let you do that, buddy."
"Flash?! What do you think you're doing?!" Bianca gasped as Flash Dexter deadhered one of Dean's mirrorbelts and attached it to his own body.
"Don't you see? It has to be this way. Look at the rest of you. You have relationships, family, friends. I don't. I'm a singleton. I'm not even a member of a new evolutionary offshoot of humanity like you and the other Aquaticans, Bob. I'm a freak."
"Don't say that. I have no abilities like yours at all, Flash."
"Apart from your intellect and fighting prowess, Brian." Bianca replied.
"And your innate decency, your courage, your compassion, your humanity..." Iron Woman added.
"Takes one to know one, Dorrie." The Clock said softly.
"Which proves my point, really. And don't say you're not relieved I'm doing Brian this favour, Bianca."
"Don't, Flash. You pull your weight. You're as much of an asset to this team as anyone else. You matter. Please, don't. I've lived centuries and I keep losing friends."
"We're talking Deann, Mirror Girl, here. She's suffered long enough, with the responsibility of keeping our whole world safe from something that could end it altogether and turn it into a planetary dictatorship. That's real heroism. What's my life alongside that? And Deano there... he means well, but hey, since he thought he lost Deann, he's been hitting the bottle and it's destroying him. You know that, Bianca. Well, I can do something about that. Goodbye, folks. It's been good while it lasted." And with a blur of motion, Birdman entered the mirrorverse.
The Six for Survival could only watch on as Birdman pushed Mirror Girl back into the outerverse and as he grappled with Erzulie Bocor, infuriated at the act of defiance. But to her shock, Birdman tied them together and then destroyed the band. As he did so, his body flared magnesium white and there was suddenly an audible, rising scream from Bocor as the destruction of the mirrorverse access garment engulfed her too. Whether or not Bocor could have survived the destruction of that mirrorverse interface would be forever unknown, as the mirror suddenly turned obsidian black and opaque.
But then, groggy, Dean regained consciousness as his cousin knelt alongside him:
"Deann? Is... is it really you, after all this time?"
"Yes, sweetheart, it is. I'm sorry I couldn't get back, but I had to stop that insane demon hag from escaping into our world."
"Oh, God. Dee. I thought you were dead... I..."
"It's okay, Dean. I would have probably reacted the same if I'd lost you instead. But hey... no more hooch for you, right?"
"I wish it were that easy. I'm hooked. It'll take a while for me to ditch the old juice. But. But, now that you're here, back and I know you're alive and well..."
"I'll do everything I can to help. And Bianca? You're short staffed and this world needs all the help it can get. I know it may be presumptuous of me, given what just happened to poor Flash in there, but..."
"Are you kidding, Deann?! You have no need to prove your heroism, lady! Your sacrifice saved our world from falling apart altogether! We loved Flash and we'll miss him because he put the welfare of the many above his individual life, but Mirror Girl? You don't have to ask. We'd be proud to have you onboard!" Hydroman exclaimed.
Bianca nodded: "All right, then. It was always going to be unanimous. And Rob's absolutely right. Mirror Girl, welcome to the Six For Survival. And thank you, for all you've done over the last few years."
As the others left, conversing among themselves, Dean clinging to Deann for life itself, the Clock chuckled:
"It seems Rob really has a thing for Dee. I suspect there was more than just professional respect and admiration in that impassioned speech of his."
"I'm just grateful she's back, Brian."
"For Dean as much as anyone else?"
"All right, yes. That said, I wish Flash hadn't done that. It hurts. It hurts every time I lose a human friend to the darkness no-one can ever come back from. And I will never forget that sacrifice, even if it brought Dean and Deann both back to full life, albeit in different ways."
"Bianca, you're the heart and soul of the Six. I hope we never have to find out what we would be forced to do without that. Come on. Dean's going to need help adjusting to the new world around him. And I suspect you intend to be involved in that."
"Definitely." As the two left, a forbidding crimson sigil shone briefly from the blackened mirror once they were out of sight, before fading rapidly. And a derisive woman's voice laughed until it was heard to choke.
Had the Six for Survival heard the last of Erzulie Bocor?
THE END [3.20 PM, 06 APRIL 2024]
Because this Earth lacked conventional superheroes, Bianca Liberty assembled her own contingent as the zombie hordes attacked the United States through the north, east, west and south. They included the airborne Flash Dexter as the Winged Warrior, Birdman; Brian O'Brien as the two-fisted Clock; Bob Blake, as the Aquatic Avenger, Hydroman; Mirror Man (Dean Alder), to whom no reflecting surface is inaccessible; and finally, Doris Parker, the crimefighting cyborg known to others as Iron Woman. Together, they fight anarchy and the zombie onslaught as ... Six for Survival.
++
WASHINGTON DC:
As Mirror Man stepped through his portal mirror into the 'real' world, he caught sight of a young woman, holding an infant in arms, being pursued by a herd of zombies. His SFS colleagues emerged from the portal after him. Mirror Man nodded to them: "Bianca, Doris, Bob, Flash- can you engage them in combat so that Brian and I can get those two to safety?"
Bianca extended her fangs and her hands extended claws. The twilight reflected from her burnished mental head dress as she took to the air alongside Birdman and the two of them arced above and then down, disrupting the melee amidst howls, cries and screeches of surprise. Iron Woman moved in to intercept others as her cyborg hands extruded inbuilt laser and projectile units and made short work, tearing into their necks and ripping some heads from their dessicated, staggering bodies. Hydroman marshalled hard water into his hands and blasted the zombie assailants with high pressure hose bursts. They worked as effectively as sledgehammers. As the woman tripped and fell, the Clock caught her in his arms and assisted her to the waiting Mirror Man:
"Through here, ma'am..."
"But that's a mir-oh. You're that Mirror Man I've heard about, aren't you?"
"Don't worry about breathing or being able to leave it once you've sought refuge inside there. Mirrors are permeable to air molecules and I control the molecular density inside there."
"Thank you. Oh, thank you! You people have saved my life! You're every bit the heroes they talk about in the settlements!"
"Later, we'll talk about what happened to your community, but please, get to safety first. The zombies won't be able to follow you. Entry and exit from mirrorverses rely on sapience, the ability to think coherently and reason- and that's something zombies lack."
"You're a good person, Mirror Man," the young woman said, before disappearing into the mirror portal and watching safely from that vantage point as the SFS made short work of the zombie herd that had beset the young woman and her child.
Later that night, around a camp fire, the young woman told her story. Her name was Hannah Derrick. She'd lost her husband last year when an unexpected surge in the number of deadheads overwhelmed the defences of her remote settlement and she'd come here with her infant to what was left of the nation's former capital to join another encampment of survivors. Her parents hadn't survived the initial descent of zombies onto the American mainland. She was alone in the world and had only begun to rebuild her life in this austere shattered world.
As the infant played with a blunter edged facsimile of her headpiece and gurgled happily, Bianca thought back to an earlier, but by no means more innocent world, and another, frightened, fleeing young woman. Herself. Like Hannah here, she had no family left, but unlike her, a compassionate vampire gave her the ambiguous blessing of eternal life. From then on, she had rebelled against the more conservative sires from Europe and South America and still served her country. But there were so few of her kind left on this world now. As the human population had dwindled, so had the companion species that either preyed on them or lived in symbiosis. If this zombie apocalypse consumed humanity, revenantkind would perish soon after, like winter following autumn.
A DAY LATER:
Brian O'Brien looked out over the deserted street, with its weed-strewn sidewalks and the sound of the cavernous empty wind loud at rooftop level. The Clock thought of better times, elegant socialites, dinner dances and silver limousines. Although his gilded life was long over, it seemed a (deceptively) more innocent time. And then had come the European War and clouds over the Pacific as Japan and the United States steadily and inexorably moved toward conflict. Pearl Harbour dawned and suddenly America itself was at war. Back in '43, it looked like the Ratzis had overreached and stumbled in Stalingrad, as the Japs had at the Battle of the Coral Sea and Midway, and that after a major push on both fronts, the war would soon be over, perhaps as soon as two or three years. And then, in '44...
No-one had thought Hitler would go that far. He was a madman, true, but this vast gotterdammerung of humanity itself was beyond anyone's immediate assessment of his psychosis. But then the grisly animated cadavers had struck, lurching out of trenches on fortified Normandy beaches and falling on startled and terror-stricken British, American and Allied marines. They made short work of the attackers, then stumbled onboard the abandoned invasion barges, as uninformed and mystified Allied retrieval began, with a cruel denouement as Nazi zombies stepped out of them on Dover beaches. For undetermined reasons, they managed to turn some of the British Army personnel, and delayed effects occurred in some cases. Soon, the United Kingdom disintegrated. It was said Winston Churchill stayed at his post and cigar in mouth, managed to take as many of the stenches with him when 10 Downing Street was overrun. Before then, the jerky chiaroscuro of a screaming Adolf Hitler disappearing beneath a pile of slavering, bloodstained zombies as his Berlin Fuhrerbunker fell was cold comfort. US armed forces were evacuated, but some were already infected and when they returned home across the Atlantic, the thanatovirus epidemic within their veins hit the United States. The country fell apart in months. From a dream of prospective victory and the prospect of a brighter postwar world, the American dream ended abruptly as a new dark age began in its stead.
Brian turned and waved to Doris: "Hello, Dolly. Hey, is Flash back from patrol yet?"
Doris Parker nodded: "Yes, Brian. He got back twenty minutes ago and he's debriefing with Bob and Bianca."
"Doris..." The Clock hesitated. He was torn between their commitment to duty and his feelings for Iron Woman as a woman. Respect and admiration for her professionalism and prowess in combat had deepened into something else as he became aware of her other qualities too- her keen mind, her determination to protect those weaker than herself from harm and... sadly... the risks she ran doing that.
Truth to tell, Doris felt the same way, but doubts assailed her. Even though it was probably a draw between Bianca and her insofar as the strongest woman alive went, how could any man love a freak with metal hands? She wasn't whole and despite the respect and admiration her metallic hands had won for her, acclaim was empty without someone tangible to love her back. There'd been no-one for her since her father had been murdered as criminals tried to retrieve the mechanised gloves invented all those centuries ago in Switzerland. In the inferno that had destroyed her home, Doris' hands had been severely burnt, so it was decided to replace her own hands with prosthetic replacements. It brought her reknown and respect, but then the maelstrom shattered normality and the life she had known.
Little did she know that her comrade in arms ignored her enhancement and yearned to fill the void inside his own life, where there were no-one to share it since the zombies had torn apart his beloved Betty Buchanan, whom he'd loved like a daughter since they first crossed paths. To think that redhaired stunner had once been a quarrelsome street urchin called "Butch"! From being jittery when she'd fired her first firearm, she'd held the stenches off long enough to enable the Clock and refugees fleeing the fall of New York to safety. She'd blossomed into a truly remarkable woman.
DEAN'S LAIR:
In a shabby apartment building, with tattered curtains and a makeshift camp bed, Dean Alder tossed and turned, dreaming about the person he couldn't save. Deann. Mirror Girl. She'd had the same abilities as the Lamaist Tibetan mystics had given him, but he had several years advantage on her when it came to expertise and the use of his endowments. Still, she was a quick study and her heroic reputation was on the rise when the zombie apocalypse descended on the United States. After all these years, it still tormented him, that cruel twist of fate that one of the zombies that she'd tried to lure away from Queens, over a pier and into a sea filled with ravening sharks, had had an astygmatism in life and was inadvertantly immune to her visual manipulation. To her surprise, it was able to circumvent the ruse and chased her into a mirror, and then...somehow...followed her into the mirrorverse. Dean had always wondered how that was possible, but it was a forelorn querry. Even after all these years, he had no answers about his cousin's tragic death.
He awoke and reached for a whiskey bottle: "Will that really do any good, Dean?"
Dean lay back in the bed as Bianca emerged from the shadows:
"It's how I deal with what happened, Bianca. I know vampires aren't able to metabolise alcohol and it has no effect on you, but this is a human solace."
She sat on the chair opposite his bed:
"But is it a fit one? You're been knocking it back when you're off duty like there's no tomorrow."
"What if there isn't, Bianca? Like the rest of us, I thought things were going to get better after the war. Well, here it is, and Doomsday's arrived instead."
"I've had moments like that myself, during the centuries I've been enfleshed. But I'm still here. No matter how dark it gets."
"Because you were born with this country and you believe in it. But the rest of us are gonna have to die sometime."
"If I have anything to do with it, none of you will be on the Grim Reaper's welcome list for another few decades yet."
"Yeah, we all know you've got our backs. But face it, though. You'll outlive us, come what may. Hell, you've lived a long, virtuous life and you deserve it, more than anyone else I know. If humanity ever reaches the stars like those old pulp scientifiction books I loved as a teenager, you'll be secreted in a coffin somewhere on one of the first star ships."
Bianca smiled sadly: "That doesn't mean I won't miss any of you when the time does come, Dean."
"You know, Bee, for a blood-sucking revenant, you're far more human than most humans."
Bianca Liberty didn't reply, but she was thinking back through the centuries to the first man she loved, Martin Devlin, a handsome Revolutionary War soldier, crippled in the fight for her country's freedom. She turned up during the evenings, visiting the cottage where his family had lived in New Hampshire since the British came to the New World in the last century. Because he was one of those rare humans who would not respond to her vampirism as either a blood apple or turnable into her childer, she had had to endure her young, vivacious paramour gradually age and grow grey-haired, increasingly infirm, with wrinkles etched in his face and then, one evening into the new nineteenth century, she sat alongside his bed and gently brushed what remained of his hair past his wrinkled forehead as his breathing grew steadily fainter until he drew one last, almost silent gasp and then closed his eyes forever. Sobbing, she sewed him into his blankets and dug a grave and cairn for him and then left the remote New Hampshire mountainside forever. That was one of the cruelties of her immortality, almost a curse. She would live on, perhaps forever, while anyone she loved or befriended would age inexorably onward and ultimately flicker out. That made their lives all the more precious to her and increased her determination to protect them.
Dean was grieving for his cousin, he knew it. Deann hadn't deserved to go that way. But he would have to realise that Deann wouldn't have wanted her loss to poison and corrode her cousin's life and sense of purpose, and she worried about the world-weary fatalism that had gripped her friend.
ATLANTIC OCEAN:
"Why do you persist in doing this, Robert? They wouldn't lift a finger to protect Aquaticans and you know it!"
Hydroman sighed. He wasn't interested in having a conversation with his separatist sister Rydra and turned toward her:
"How do we know that the zombie thanatovirus won't mutate, Ry? How do we know that they will continue to be unable to survive in aquatic environments?"
"You're my brother, you big lug! Because I'm frightened you'll end up throwing your life away up there on the surface, that one day you won't come back and that..."
"In that case, you'll have to step up and become President of New Atlantis, Ry. And don't tell me you don't have it in you. You ruled quite capably and wisely while I was away during the War."
"Don't change the subject, Robert. The surface world is finished. It's only a matter of time before their own avarice and hubris destroys them. I'm not a monster. I will mourn that day when it comes. But have you stopped to consider it may be inevitable?"
"I'm not as pessimistic as you are, Ry."
"Oh? I'd call it realistic, but... all right, Robert. Go, if you must. I know I can't stop you. But please...come back safe and sound..."
"Thanks for understanding, sis..." And with that, Hydroman took his leave of Hydrowoman, leaving his sister floating in the cerulean stillness, biting her lip as she pensively stared after her brother as he swam off toward the distant shoreline.
NEW YORK:
As he emerged, Hydroman caught side of the sixth member of their group, Flash Dexter, Birdman. The interludes between Flash's visits earthside were becoming more and more prolonged as the winged man seemed all too eager to escape into the skies above them. Unlike Robert, he was a solitary mutant and there were no other examples of 'homo avia' in existence. Whether Flash was succumbing to some mental illness related to his solitary mutation was a moot point. What if the only cure for that narcosis of the skies led to his permanent grounding? Flash lived for his ability to take to the skies. It would kill him, Robert knew.
And then he saw something that made him wonder if he wasn't going mad. It was a woman. A woman, hammering on a mirror, screaming. And not just any woman, either, but one with no grounding material self on the material side. And given the way she was dressed, and what Dean had told them all about her, it could only be one person.
Deann Alder. Dean's long-lost cousin, long thought dead.
Mirror Girl.
MIRRORVERSE:
"No, you don't, you little fool! Not when I'm so close to winning!"
"Damn you, Bocor! You're not even from this Earth! Why do you want to destroy my cousin and the other five SFS members so badly?!"
"Because I can, Alder. Because given my ability to command the undead, I am fated to rule it! As the Voudoun Queen of this planet!!"
Deann icily retorted: "You can only do that if I let you take control of me and gain access to the Outerverse. And I'd rather die than become your passive instrument."
"Oh, Alder, you idiot. It won't be you."
"Dean. You can only mean him. You won't get my cousin. Mirror Man's too strong for you, you demented night hag!"
"How you underestimate your own strength, dear Deann. You're not the one who turned to alcohol for solace all these years assuming you were dead. Just a little more manipulation of your cousin's achilles heel and he shall be the snare that fells you arrogant meta-human obstacles to my dominion over this world forever!"
Erzulie Bocor laughed insanely as Mirror Girl held her gaze and continued to use her abilities to obstruct the sorceresses egress. Then she caught sight of a female outline on the outerverse side. It could only be one person, given that she didn't cast a reflection or shadow. But how could Deann communicate with her? How?
NEW YORK:
As she looked into the mirror, which didn't reflect her own image, given she was a vampire, Bianca's eyes widened:
"Oh, no. Not her. It can't be. Not after all this time!"
Mirror Man raised an eyebrow: "See? I told you this was futile. I don't know why Rob saw that hallucination of my cousin, but she's gone. Deann has been gone for the last five years. That creature followed her in and when it left the mirror, it had blood on its claws."
Bianca turned to Mirror Man, the Clock, Hydroman, Birdman and Iron Woman:
"Have any of you ever heard of Erzulie Bocor?"
Iron Woman nodded: "In the funny books, before the war. She was a drum playing sorceress from Haiti where she animated old school Voudoun-enabled zombies who fell afoul of an artist called Bill after he bewitched his girlfriend, Sheila. But she's a fictional character. Isn't she?"
"All right. How much do any of you know about the theory of many worlds?"
"Wait a minute. Are you saying that there's a parallel Earth where Erzulie Bocor really exists, Bianca?"
Bianca nodded: "Not only that, but I've fought her on that world. Somehow, she must have enterered the mirrorverse, because those are her sigils on that wall!"
"So... Deann? My cousin is alive? And Bocor... has her prisoner?"
"Yes, Dean. I suspect so. It makes sense. Only it's possible things are the other way around. Deann's abilities are as powerful as your own and that includes entry and egress to and from the mirrorverse."
"Dee! I'm coming, honey!" But then he was felled from behind:
"Sorry, Deano. Can't let you do that, buddy."
"Flash?! What do you think you're doing?!" Bianca gasped as Flash Dexter deadhered one of Dean's mirrorbelts and attached it to his own body.
"Don't you see? It has to be this way. Look at the rest of you. You have relationships, family, friends. I don't. I'm a singleton. I'm not even a member of a new evolutionary offshoot of humanity like you and the other Aquaticans, Bob. I'm a freak."
"Don't say that. I have no abilities like yours at all, Flash."
"Apart from your intellect and fighting prowess, Brian." Bianca replied.
"And your innate decency, your courage, your compassion, your humanity..." Iron Woman added.
"Takes one to know one, Dorrie." The Clock said softly.
"Which proves my point, really. And don't say you're not relieved I'm doing Brian this favour, Bianca."
"Don't, Flash. You pull your weight. You're as much of an asset to this team as anyone else. You matter. Please, don't. I've lived centuries and I keep losing friends."
"We're talking Deann, Mirror Girl, here. She's suffered long enough, with the responsibility of keeping our whole world safe from something that could end it altogether and turn it into a planetary dictatorship. That's real heroism. What's my life alongside that? And Deano there... he means well, but hey, since he thought he lost Deann, he's been hitting the bottle and it's destroying him. You know that, Bianca. Well, I can do something about that. Goodbye, folks. It's been good while it lasted." And with a blur of motion, Birdman entered the mirrorverse.
The Six for Survival could only watch on as Birdman pushed Mirror Girl back into the outerverse and as he grappled with Erzulie Bocor, infuriated at the act of defiance. But to her shock, Birdman tied them together and then destroyed the band. As he did so, his body flared magnesium white and there was suddenly an audible, rising scream from Bocor as the destruction of the mirrorverse access garment engulfed her too. Whether or not Bocor could have survived the destruction of that mirrorverse interface would be forever unknown, as the mirror suddenly turned obsidian black and opaque.
But then, groggy, Dean regained consciousness as his cousin knelt alongside him:
"Deann? Is... is it really you, after all this time?"
"Yes, sweetheart, it is. I'm sorry I couldn't get back, but I had to stop that insane demon hag from escaping into our world."
"Oh, God. Dee. I thought you were dead... I..."
"It's okay, Dean. I would have probably reacted the same if I'd lost you instead. But hey... no more hooch for you, right?"
"I wish it were that easy. I'm hooked. It'll take a while for me to ditch the old juice. But. But, now that you're here, back and I know you're alive and well..."
"I'll do everything I can to help. And Bianca? You're short staffed and this world needs all the help it can get. I know it may be presumptuous of me, given what just happened to poor Flash in there, but..."
"Are you kidding, Deann?! You have no need to prove your heroism, lady! Your sacrifice saved our world from falling apart altogether! We loved Flash and we'll miss him because he put the welfare of the many above his individual life, but Mirror Girl? You don't have to ask. We'd be proud to have you onboard!" Hydroman exclaimed.
Bianca nodded: "All right, then. It was always going to be unanimous. And Rob's absolutely right. Mirror Girl, welcome to the Six For Survival. And thank you, for all you've done over the last few years."
As the others left, conversing among themselves, Dean clinging to Deann for life itself, the Clock chuckled:
"It seems Rob really has a thing for Dee. I suspect there was more than just professional respect and admiration in that impassioned speech of his."
"I'm just grateful she's back, Brian."
"For Dean as much as anyone else?"
"All right, yes. That said, I wish Flash hadn't done that. It hurts. It hurts every time I lose a human friend to the darkness no-one can ever come back from. And I will never forget that sacrifice, even if it brought Dean and Deann both back to full life, albeit in different ways."
"Bianca, you're the heart and soul of the Six. I hope we never have to find out what we would be forced to do without that. Come on. Dean's going to need help adjusting to the new world around him. And I suspect you intend to be involved in that."
"Definitely." As the two left, a forbidding crimson sigil shone briefly from the blackened mirror once they were out of sight, before fading rapidly. And a derisive woman's voice laughed until it was heard to choke.
Had the Six for Survival heard the last of Erzulie Bocor?
THE END [3.20 PM, 06 APRIL 2024]