Metahumans vs the Undead: A Superhero vs Zombie Anthology by Gina Ranalli, Rhiannon Paille, Eric S Brown, Anthony Giangregorio, Gouveia Keith, Dixon Lorne, Joe Martino, Rebecca Besser, Frank Dirscherl, A.P. Fuchs

the chest plate on his battle suit couldn’t stop.
    Then, what he prayed wouldn’t happen, did. The spotlight found him and he raised his hand to cover his eyes. His jaw was taut as he waited to feel the first impact of a bullet in his chest . . . but it didn’t come.
    At the exact instant the trooper in the chopper began to fire, the Cowl’s jet plane soared in from the west. On its nose was a pincer, one that caught the balloon and wire, then as the wire slid through the closing pincer, the balloon halted the movement and the wire snapped taut.
    Off the warehouse roof, the Cowl was yanked into the air. Wind whistled around his ears as just below him, where his feet were only a second ago, the gravel was chopped up by bullets.
    He was gone in less than a second, lost in the night sky. The plane banked to the north and his waiting lair.
    As he floated in the clear winter sky, the wind cold on his exposed flesh, his entire body aching from his battle with the walking dead, he still felt alive, more alive than he had in years.
    The wire began to be retracted and he rose up. He prepared to climb back into the plane, a difficult task when he was at his peak — let alone now — but he knew he would be able to do it.
    He idly wondered if the Puppet Master would have truly been able to rule the city with the walking dead.
    Pushing the thoughts from his mind, he decided it didn’t matter.
    The only thing that mattered was he was alive, and once recovered, would soon be back to prowl the night, to take down evil, wherever it might be.

    Coda to the Golden Age
    by
    Lorne Dixon

    T he President of the United States of America was still speaking when, in an impatient huff, Missouri Madison hung up the phone. The President, half his age, had called to wish him a happy one hundredth birthday and to take the opportunity to again express his appreciation for his service during, and after, the Second World War. Missouri was well past tired of being thanked; it was rare that he visited the upstairs room where he kept, in ramshackle piles, the plaques, awards, ribbons, citations, statuettes, and metals that had been bestowed upon him over the years. He’d considered, on more than one occasion, selling the entire lot to a memorabilia collector, or failing that, as scrap. In today’s economy, he figured he could earn a pretty penny.
    There was an exception, though: six months ago he rummaged through the stacks of awards to find a framed newspaper from 1945 with a headline which read germany surrenders . Under the headline, in the largest photograph he’d ever seen on a front page, was a shot of Missouri standing in front of Hitler’s overtaken bunker holding a battered German helmet over his head. The image was iconic. In the first few years after it was taken it appeared everywhere: on fine art prints, magazines, posters. When he’d handed it over to Kory Leeks, the kid’s face lit up and for a magical moment the ravages of cancer and the scars of surgery vanished. Kory lived across the street from Missouri, but most days he just barely lived at all. That birthday, with that old newspaper photo in his hands, he glowed.
    Kory was his best friend. At thirteen, the boy had endured more pain and sickness than anyone should in a lifetime, but he never let the agony inside stop him from greeting Missouri with a warm hug and a sing-song salutation, “Hey there Fearless Fantom .”
    Fantom , with an F, he never quite understood why. He guessed that the reporters covering the war in Europe just had a thing for alliteration, but in any case, it stuck, and after returning to America they continued to use it. Kory was the only one who called him by the name anymore, and while Missouri’d always sneered at all the articles over the years, he didn’t mind when the boy called him by that ridiculous name, not one bit.
    Something buzzed in the other room. There was a time when he would have been able to hear the footfall of a cricket a mile off,