WELCOME TO THE CLAMBAKE!

Part II

By D. Golightly

Los Angeles

A blur of purple and silver flashed in front of a monstrous mechanical behemoth, eliciting a cry of mixed frustration and anguish. With swift movement, a cloaked figure extracted a gleaming sword from the chest of a lumbering suit of armor, who then somersaulted a few feet away from his quarry to situate himself for another strike.

“I’m sorry, who did you say this guy is?” the Scarlet Spider asked.

A maelstrom of horror had been unleashed in the middle of Los Angeles, at the center of which was a burning blue pyre of energy that was belching out hordes of the undead. The zombies, wearing heavy black uniforms and blood red armbands, were quickly tearing into the locals as well as the gathered heroes, and seemingly commanding them was the Red Skull himself, clad in bulky mechanized armor.

Armor that had been slashed by the newcomer to the fray, a man in a star-spangled uniform and cape, who had swooped in on a stylized glider. He had retrieved his sword, made his declaration to stop the Red Skull, and was now traded blows with the villain.

“I believe,” Machine Man replied as he used his sonic blaster to scatter several nearby zombies, “that is none other than Citizen V of the V-Battalion.”

“Never heard of him,” Scarlet replied. He latched a webline onto a zombie’s calf and yanked him into two other approaching zombies, knocking the line down. “But the guy can make an entrance!”

“Citizen V’s presence has been limited in the last few decades,” Machine Man continued. “According to my records, he—”

“Less talk; more Nazi-bashing!” Scarlet shouted. He backflipped over Machine Man and triggered his webshooters to fire twin balls of his patented impact webbing at the heads of two undead Nazi soldiers, which promptly decapitated them. “Ew. Uh…I mean, I meant to do that?”

The two husks stumbled for a moment, continuing their slow progression toward the heroes, determined to follow their master’s instructions regardless of whether or not they had their heads. But each only managed a single step before they were bowled over by several hundred pounds of demigod muscle.

Hercules smiled, thrilled from the prospect of continued battle, as he bulldozed his way through another dozen undead soldiers. Like Scarlet Spider and Machine Man, the Prince of Power had come upon the crisis by happenstance. His fists smashed through the putrid flesh of long-dead soldiers, all the while issuing battle cries that hadn’t been heard for over a thousand years.

“You!” the Red Skull roared as one of his armor’s Gatling guns peppered the street with bullets, trailing behind the dashing Citizen V. “It’s always one of you incessant American heroes! Always!”

“We are where we belong, Skull,” Citizen V retorted. He rolled under a stream of bullets, sprinted forward, and slashed his adamantium sword like lightning. The Gatling fell to pieces like its twin, now leaving the Red Skull without weapons. “Standing against you!”

The Red Skull, who only moments before had sprung forth from the whirling power of the vortex behind him, roared in anger. He slammed both mechanized fists down where Citizen V had been moments before, leaving a small crater in the asphalt. While cumbersome, the suit had power, and even without his firepower, the Skull was still a dangerous opponent.

“While the Red Skull is distracted,” Machine Man said as he shoved away several zombies by using his extending arms like battering rams, “we should focus our attention on sealing off this portal. There seems to be no end to this onslaught. There is no telling how many of these creatures will come through to our time.”

“Time?” Scarlet replied as he flipped onto Machine Man’s shoulders. He looked down. “Oh, right. You’re picking up tachyons from that thing. You’re positing that it’s some kind of tear in space-time, which means these Romero-knockoffs aren’t being teleported in, they’re being time-warped. Am I up to speed?”

“Precisely,” Machine Man, designated X-51, confirmed. He looked up to see another chunk of a building being pulled into the pinnacle of the vortex, as if gravity had suddenly become too intense fifty feet above the street. “If we do not disrupt the tachyon displacement, then Los Angeles will become a wasteland.”

“Are we sure about this Citizen V guy? I mean, he’s a little corny. Like, he had that line all ready to go about ‘standing against you!’ or whatever. Seems a little forced.”

Without further preamble, X-51 ignited his boot jets and rocketed straight up into the air. Scarlet floundered on his shoulders for a moment before he slipped onto the automaton’s back and wrapped his arms around X-51’s neck. “Yeesh!” Scarlet shouted. “Give a guy a little warning, will ya?”

As the pair rose above the fracas in the streets, Hercules spotted them and cupped a hand around his mouth, saying, “Fear not, friends! Hercules will control the groundswell that is this ungodly horde! For only Hercules can stand against the tide of evil that has washed these streets clean of decent humanity, leaving it bare like an open wound that needs a salve applied before it is too late. Yes; Hercules has been brought here by the Fates themselves to turn back that same tide. There is not an ocean in this beautiful world, evil or otherwise, that could serve to extinguish the burning fire within me. So, let them come! Let them come! LET THEM—OOF!”

A mound of zombies all fell on Hercules at once, burying him in their bodies, their teeth chomping relentlessly against his dense and durable skin, unable to break through, but trying mindlessly. From across the street, two other heroes watched the demigod struggle with glee to get out from underneath the mountain of zombies that had surrounded him while he relished in the sound of his own voice.

“Never have I ever thought to do it that way,” Mr. Immortal said as he scratched his chin.

Dinah Soar, the lithe and pink hybrid woman, dropped down beside her paramour, saying, “Jealously does not become you, Craig.”

“Well, I mean he was just monologuing to catch the zombies’ attention, right? That’s kind of my thing. Only he got, like, bazillion bad guys on him. And if he’s doing my thing, plus he’s got all of those big muscles, then what do you need me for?”

Dinah said, “Your human target motif has saved countless lives. You have attracted the attention of enemies at your own expense more times than I can recall in recent memory. I would even say that you are the very best at being a distraction.”

Mr. Immortal shuffled his feet. “You’re just saying that,” he replied.

Dinah used her razor-sharp wing’s edge to slice through a shambling zombie, cutting it clean in two. “No, Craig,” she said. “I really mean it. No one gets buried under the bad guys better than you.”

“Thanks, babe! But, you know, maybe we ought to think about skedaddling pretty soon. We were kind of on a date when this whole apocalypse-thing popped up into downtown L.A. and I was kind of planning to ask you a question. If you know what I mean.” He kicked a zombie in the shin and knocked it down with a right haymaker. “This is kind of killing the romantic atmosphere.”

But Dinah hadn’t heard him. She raised her arms up over her head and slapped them down fast enough to propel her upward, the thin membrane between her arms and torso catching a wind current for her to glide on. In a second she was off, soaring overhead and looking for the best opportunity to dive down and cut down as many zombies as she could.

Craig Hollis, the incorrigible Mr. Immortal, watched in wonder as his girlfriend zipped off into danger. He hated to see her go, but he loved to watch her leave, as he reminded her almost every day. To her credit, she had not once ever slapped him, unlike other members of the Great Lakes Avengers, who shall remain nameless, and are otherwise too busy to even answer his phone calls anymore.

Yes, Dinah was the one for him. So lost was Mr. Immortal in the sight of his beloved that he only barely registered the pile of zombies building on top of him. When they had dissipated and he had regenerated he smugly made a mental note of how much bigger his soul-crushing pile of zombies had been than Hercules’. Demigod, schmemigod.

Citizen V came in low and sliced off another segment of the Red Skull’s armor, leaving the villain dangerously exposed. The armor, bulky and made of welded material, looked like it was several generations old. Entire sections of the torso had been stripped away by the precision cuts of Citizen V’s sword. The gatling guns had been demolished, but there was still enough reserve power in the mechanized suit for the Red Skull to stomp and smash.

The street had been pulverized several times over as they quarreled; Citizen V racing in for a strike and then barely dodging away as the Red Skull obliterated the asphalt where he had stood. While his armor was slowly being pulled apart, neither the Red Skull nor Citizen V was really gaining the upper hand in the brawl.

“The time is ripe for my rule!” the Red Skull shouted as he smashed at nothing yet again. “But I should have known that you would be here. You’re always here! Regardless of the passage of time, your cursed V-Battalion is still a thorn in my side.”

“We were monitoring your lackey,” Citizen V retorted. “We track all war criminals and fugitives from international justice.”

“Ah! And you’ve been chasing your own tail since I’ve been gone, eh? I expect that in your time that your resources have dwindled. Speaking fourth dimensionally, I have just miraculously reappeared after several decades. Am I right, Citizen?”

Citizen V spun his spirited sword between his fingers, looking for his next opportunity to strike. A set of Nazi zombies was trying to flank him, seemingly coming to the aid of their master. In fact, as he looked around, all of the zombies were centering on them. They had stopped pushing away from the heroes and out into the city, instead focusing solely on the Red Skull.

The gleaming vortex behind the villain continued to belch out soldiers, one after another, each one more vicious than the last. It was never-ending.

“You’re Johann Schmidt,” Citizen V stated. “The original Red Skull.”

“Original?” The Red Skull laughed. “There have been imitations since my departure from my time? Yes. Yes, that makes perfect sense. Perfection is often imitated. The world must have been gasping for my return. It stands to reason that others would try and take my place. But you must not accept imitations, Citizen! The genuine article has returned to you.”

Citizen V sliced through a pair of zombies, chopping them in half with a single stroke. He said, “And when did you come from?”

“When did I come from? Yes, quite right, Citizen. My present is your past. The folds of time bend to my will, thanks to the ‘war criminal’ you must have been tracking. In 1945, I knew that the limits of the era’s technology would prohibit my forces from gaining a true foothold in Europe. The rest of the world was a pipedream, especially because that limited fool Hitler would not spend the resources on developing the necessary technology. Conquering a world with tanks and aero planes? Insanity! The world is a very big place. He was biting off more than he could ever hope to chew.

“I knew that the technology of the future would be the key! But how to get it? My occult scientists stumbled across an Egyptian artifact, a very strange object indeed. It possessed very unique properties that could bend space and time.” He motioned to the vortex behind him. “You see them in action here. I stashed the artifact with a loyalist and sent him on his way. This ‘war criminal’ successfully eluded your precious Battalion until today.

“He waited, silently, always watching, always learning, until the time was right. Today’s world must have the technology needed to actually maintain control of an entire civilization. I will gain that technology and with it the world.”

“You’ll fail,” Citizen V countered.

“Will I? Why should I? I presume that today’s leaders are no different than they were in my time. Greedy. Hungry. Passionate about gaining power. Well, I will give it to them. My will is like iron, tempered into steel. I will give them the leadership they so desperately need, and all I ask for in exchange are the resources needed to lead a global empire.

“You see, Citizen, humanity is nothing more than sheep, wandering in the field, awaiting the time for the shepherd to bring them under his crook. I have returned, patriot. Returned to rule a world that is ready to accept me!”

Citizen V slashed more zombies, but their numbers were increasing faster than he could dispatch them. “If the world is so ready to bow to you,” he said, “then why the army of the undead?”

The Red Skull scoffed. “Ah, them. There is always resistance. The canopic jar was but a doorway.” He swept an armored hand at the horde. “They are my hammer. Hitler did get one thing right in his occult missions, it seems. This army was his at first, but I planned to usurp control, knowing that regardless of what time I returned that the world would need a little persuasion to accept its new position at my feet.”

“Like you said, Skull,” Citizen V said. He braced himself and launched at his enemy once more, finally seeing an opening between the swarming zombies. “There will always be a resistance!”

“Fool,” the Red Skull muttered, and the fight was back on.

Above them, Machine Man poured his reserve power into his repulsors to resist the increasing pull of the tip of the vortex. The Scarlet Spider had webbed himself to X-51’s back and was desperately trying to keep from being yanked free by the increased gravity field.

“It is unstable!” X-51 called out.

“Are you sure?” Scarlet replied as a chunk of his webbing was ripped free. “It’s so peaceful up here!” He squinted and saw for the first time a string of blue light, like a ribbon, whipping wildly out of the cone that formed the vortex. “You see that?”

“Some kind of temporal tether, perhaps!”

“Once upon a time I was really into physics,” Scarlet shouted. “You ever hear of string theory?”

“Yes, it is the—”

“Okay, so, I think that’s the literal string!”

X-51 paused. After a moment of subtly shifting the position in the air to avoid incoming debris that was being pulled into the vortex, he said, “I do not think you know what string theory is! It is not an actual string that connects any form of matter together. It is the—”

“Theoretical fabric of the universe,” Scarlet shot back. “Yeah, I get it! But from a radioactive spider-guy to a self-aware robot currently hovering over a horde of undead Nazi soldiers, maybe suspend your disbelief for a second!”

“Point taken! Do you have a solution that involves this inaccurate concept of string theory?”

“Yeah! What happens when you pull a loose string on a sweater?”

“You ruin a perfectly good sweater!”

“Right; it unravels!”

“You are suggesting that we pull the theoretical string that is incorrectly being represented in the temporal gateway in order to disassemble the quasi—”

“Ohmygodshutup! When you try to explain it, it stops making sense! Just go pull the damn thing!”

“Doing so could create a black hole in the middle of Los Angeles!”

“And if we don’t,” Scarlet said, “we’re all going to be eaten anyway!”

Beneath them, the zombies had mostly congregated around the Red Skull and Citizen V, but upon noticing Machine Man and the Scarlet Spider, the Red Skull had motioned to them. He was exerting some kind of control over the zombies to the point where he could issue the crazed flesh-eaters to do his bidding.

He pointed at the skyborne heroes and the zombies began building a pyre out of their own bodies, piling one on top of the other to create a mound of rotting flesh clad in black leather. Within seconds it was a dozen feet off of the ground, with several clawed and torn hands reaching for the hovering heroes.

Scarlet broke off from his argument with Machine Man long enough to begin trying to web up the encroaching horde, but the gravity field was making his weblines go wild. They would reach Machine Man soon and the heroes dared not go higher, for fear of losing control and being pulled into the vortex.

“Have at thee!” Hercules shouted as he rushed the pyre.

“Yeah!” Mr. Immortal said as he raced up alongside the mighty Hercules, pumping his fist. “Let’s go! Heroes unite and stuff! Let’s—URK!”

Hercules, without breaking stride, grasped Mr. Immortal by his ankles and swung him like a baseball bat, knocking out the base of the zombie pyre. Bits of putrid flesh broke away, showering the sidewalk with body parts as Hercules continued to smack down the pyre like it was a piñata, using Mr. Immortal’s own flailing body as his method of devastation.

“What sport!” Hercules cried out.

Mr. Immortal spat out blood as his last rib was shattered.

The pyre fell apart, literally, as the zombies were bashed away from the mound. Dinah dropped down directly behind Hercules, using her massive wingspan to push the oncoming zombies away, effectively shielding the others.

“Excellent teamwork, Craig!” Dinah Soar called out.

“Thanks!” Mr. Immortal replied, just as Hercules smashed his face into another zombie.

“Yes, you are quite useful!” Hercules responded. “A bit on the fragile side, though. With a name like Immortal, I just assumed…”

Above, Machine Man cracked open his chest cavity, extracting two flailing cables. Scarlet said, “What are you doing?”

“Exposing my core matrix!” X-51 replied. “It can absorb solar energy, among other things. I believe that I can convert it to absorb tachyons instead, meaning—”

“That if you absorb enough,” Scarlet said, “that you can yank the string and unravel this vortex!”

“Precisely! But only if I can tether my own tachyon stream to the string, which again, cannot possibly be scientifically accurate!”

“Do it!” Scarlet shouted.

Machine Man quickly hotwired his own wires, splicing them together. He coughed out a puff of smoke and dipped in the air a fraction, eliciting fear from the Scarlet Spider, but remained aloft. X-51 arched his back and a beam of purple light latched onto the flailing string at the top of the vortex but was unable to completely grasp onto it.

“The integrity of the beam is too weak!” Machine Man yelled over the roar of the vortex. “We need to anchor it somehow!”

Scarlet twisted the web shooter on his wrist, exchanging cartridges. He muttered a silent prayer, tried to steady his aim as best as he could, and pressed the trigger under his glove against his palm. A stream of grey webbing went wild, reaching out in a huge arc, but almost as if by magic it curved back down to snap onto the top of the flailing string of energy.

“Yes!” he screamed. “Take that, Coach Bud! I do have good hand-eye coordination!”

The purple stream jutting from Machine Man’s chest suddenly erupted with power, thickening and condensing around the top of the string. “Impact webbing?” he asked.

“You know it, baby! My pride and joy!”

Below, the Red Skull screamed, “No!”

Citizen V took advantage of the distraction to rush the Skull, leaping up and dropping him with a kick to the fragments of his chest plate. He stood over the Skull, his sword tip an inch beneath the villain’s chin, holding him at bay.

“It’s over, Schmidt!” Citizen V said.

But Citizen V was forced to watch as atom by atom, the Red Skull began to slip away back into the vortex. The leader of the V-Battalion looked up to see that similarly the horde of zombies that had ravaged the streets of Los Angeles were being pulled back into the vortex. Citizen V looked up to Machine Man and the Scarlet Spider, who both seemed to be wrapped in purple energy and were connected to the vortex by a purple string of flowing power.

The Red Skull began to laugh. “It is never over, Citizen,” he said through clenched teeth. “I return to my time, sure to succeed, only now I will make it my mission to kill your predecessors with my bare hands.”

The laughter continued, growing in volume to match the vortex itself, even as the final vestiges of the Red Skull’s body were sucked back into another timeline. The scattered zombies, as well as their fallen comrades, were equally pulled back, some floundering and others seemingly unaware of their fate. Within moments the streets were cleared and the vortex grew smaller and smaller.

When it finally vanished, all that was left of the prior chaos were decimated storefronts, wrecked cars, and torn up asphalt. Hercules smacked Mr. Immortal on his newly regenerated back, saying, “A fine battle, what ho?”

“No need to name call, dude,” Mr. Immortal muttered as he dusted himself off.

Dinah said, “Smile, Craig. We made a difference today. We were real heroes for a change! Us being here made a difference.”

“It certainly did,” Citizen V said as he approached. His sword swayed in its sheath at his waist and when he came close enough to stopped and allowed his star-spangled cape to enshroud him. “There was no way that any single one of us could have averted this catastrophe today. My own V-Battalion is a shadow of its former self and I’m sorry to say we couldn’t have done better. In fact, we would have surely failed where you succeeded today.”

“So, what I’m hearing,” Scarlet said as he descended with Machine Man to join the clustered heroes, “is that drinks are on the guy in the cape.”

“Yes!” Hercules exclaimed. “A fine idea! I know of a wonderful establishment that serves decent ale. We should retire to the inn as they say, and drink to our victory.”

“No one says that,” Scarlet said.

X-51 added. “A celebration would be appropriate, but I do not believe that we shall be excused any time soon.”

“Excused?” Hercules scoffed. “Hercules needs no one’s excuse to do as he pleases!”

Dinah followed Machine Man’s gaze and her eyes went wide. “I think you might reconsider,” she said, and she pointed.

A Quinjet swept over the city, settling above the buildings and the heroes. Its gleaming silver hull reflected the burning sun that hung behind it in the afternoon sky. It was the preferred method of intercoastal transportation by none other than the Avengers themselves

An iris hatch beneath the Quinjet opened and a gold and crimson figure dropped out. Even if his image hadn’t graced several magazines that year or if he wasn’t a living legend, he still would have been instantly recognizable as the armored Avenger, Iron Man.

Iron Man dropped straight to the street, posing for a second. He glanced left and right, looking at the devastation that had been wrought. Then he stepped forward and the faceplate slid up to reveal Tony Stark’s smug face.

“Am I late to this clambake?” he asked.

Somewhere in Northern Michigan

Every news channel was covering the press conference. The owner of the TV flicked through the stations, only to find that it was the same thing on all of them. Each caption said something only moderately different from the last, effectively calling attention to a major announcement by the Avengers.

A stage had been erected in the middle of the street where only days earlier heroes had battled a time-displaced Red Skull to a standstill and eventual defeat. Captain America, another man out of time, approached the microphone at the podium and the crowd quieted. No one could command attention like Captain America.

He said, “What happened here in the great city of Los Angeles could have been much worse. We mourn the lives that were lost, but if it weren’t for the heroes behind me being in the right place at the right time, the casualties would have been significantly higher. We owe them a debt.”

The crowd began applauding, which made several of the heroes behind Captain America wave in gratitude. After a few seconds, Captain America held up a hand to quiet the crowd again. He said, “But this horrible event also made those of us in the Avengers realize that even with today’s miracle technology, that we can’t be everywhere at once. We certainly can’t be on both sides of the country at once. Some remember that we used to have a charter operation on the West Coast, which has fallen by the wayside in recent years. Well, this week proved that the Avengers are still needed here. Because of the valiant efforts of those behind me, we’re officially re-opening the Avengers’ West Coast branch!”

The crowd roared as Captain America introduced the members of the West Coasts Avengers team, who would be moving into their new headquarters shortly and begin their watch. Hercules beamed, drinking in the camera flashes; the Scarlet Spider waved meekly, unsure of the attention; Machine Man raised a hand stoically; Dinah Soar spread her wings wide to the cheers of the crowd, and Citizen V approached the podium to stand beside Captain America.

The Citizen said, “As the leader of our new group, I can speak for us all when I say that it will be our honor to serve you. Thanks to the Avengers, and thanks to the fine city of Los Angeles for welcoming us with open arms.”

As the news anchor took over the audio, offering commentary on the five gathered heroes and their trivia about their new charter, the owner of the TV set threw a beer bottle at the screen, smashing it.

Craig Hollis, sans his Mr. Immortal costume, grabbed a fresh beer from the cooler beside his lounge chair. He sat alone in his dank apartment, now in total darkness without the light from the television to brighten up the room. He had been offered a spot on the team like the rest, of course, but he had declined.

It had been his intention to get out of the superhero game. That was why he had taken Dinah on the trip to L.A. in the first place; a nice vacation for them, alone, where he could pop the question.

He looked down at the ring box he had tossed into the corner of the room, never opened, never even needed. With all of the excitement, he had never even gotten to ask her. He felt that she would have said yes, but with her new superhero life starting up, would she still if he asked now?

He chugged his beer, hoping to drink to the point where he forgot what he was even drinking about in the first place.

NEXT ISSUE: The new West Coast Avengers move into their new digs, but apparently a prior tenant was never properly evicted! Plus, the Lethal Legion strikes!