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 Page B

food, the other on Cannon Boulevard, where they served the same food topless. When she worked at all, Kory’s mom earned the mortgage payment in the parking lot of the latter bar.
    “Hold on a moment, partner. I’ll be right back,” Missouri said, lowered the radio, and groaned as he worked himself back up to stand. Balancing on the walker, knees cracking, he made his way across the room to the window. Plucking a pair of World War Two government-issue binoculars off the sill, he raised them to his eyes and squinted. He’d bought them at a swap meet a decade earlier when his vision began to deteriorate. In the old days he could have counted all eight legs on a deer tick from a hundred yards out. These days he needed reading glasses to make out the labels on his prescriptions.
    Across the street, Kory’s house sat behind an untrimmed hedge row that wrapped around the property. The angle wasn’t the best, but through a gap in the foliage he could see a small wedge of the backyard. Even with his limited view, he saw three men pounding the back door with fists. One left bloodstains behind with each blow. None of them had a healthy complexion.
    Shifting his view to the street, Missouri saw a dozen more of them, shuffling and creeping, some dragging lame feet, a few bloodied, all unmistakably dead. Turning to the other end of the street, he spied eight more. Among these, he recognized George Pawelczyk , his mailman. Even on a good day George walked with a stubborn limp, but now he stumbled along, nearly falling with every step, and left a trail of first class letters and blood drops behind him.
    Into the radio: “Hang tight, kidderoo . I’ll be right over.”
    Pivoting, Missouri made his way to the foyer, moving as fast as he could, prodding out with the tennis balls at the end of his walker’s front legs and then pulling himself close to the bars. He was out of breath by the time he plucked his coat off the hallway rack but he didn’t pause, not for a moment. He headed into his garage.
    He’d given up his license in ’95 but not his car. The Fury waited like an obedient dog. She was sleek and black and beautiful, with red rear fins and twin chrome exhaust pipes giving her the look of an exotic, mechanized marine mammal. On many nights, thieves and murderers had fled the scenes of their crimes when her four white-hot headlights focused in on them like converging spotlights. She’d been upgraded several times over the years, body shape changing with the times, but always a decade ahead, her V-8 swapped out for a hemi, then for an experimental nuclear-capacitor-driven engine. The Fury was royalty among cars.
    Sliding behind the wheel, Missouri breathed in. Her leather upholstery had aged into a sweet, rustic bouquet. Reaching up, he flipped over the sun visor and let the keys fall into the palm of his hand. Sliding the key into the ignition, he held his breath. The sound of her engine roaring to life always brought a wild, primal thrill. He turned the key.
    The Fury’s engine whined, a weak and sniveling sound, coughed twice, and died.
    She wasn’t going anywhere.
    But Missouri was .
    Huffing, he nudged the door open, swung himself out, and pulled himself up to his walker. Straining, he reached back into the Fury and snatched the remote control off the dash. Slamming the door, he worked his way up to the grill and stood in front of the double-wide garage door. He thumbed the remote’s button and stood up straight.
    The garage door climbed, revealing the street beyond. The dead, roaming in small clusters of three or four, turned toward the whine of the garage door’s motor. Their slack faces remained expressionless, but something in their empty stares did change — lazy eyes hardening, pupils focusing.
    Leveraging the walker, Missouri took a step out onto the short driveway. He flinched as the loud crack of a shotgun blast sounded from some corner of the housing development’s maze. He’d never carried a gun, not