Chapter 1
Amanda yanked up the thick combat boots she’d bought online with money earned while working part-time at a local diner, grunting as she fought to shove her foot ever deeper into the tight, semi-flexible dura-plastic material. Fighting for every inch that her toes scraped further and further into the infuriating footwear. It had guaranteed fast and easy change times! Attempting to corner the market of aspiring up-and-coming do-gooders or neerdowell’s who needed to rely on quick transitions from civilian clothes to durable super-powred costumes. Yet, as the teen felt the entirety of her leg and arm muscles bulge with the strain of it all! Rolling backwards on her bed and heaving down on the stupid material with all her not-inconsiderable strength, she felt her toes finally touch its blackened steel caps.
“What the hell!” She complained aloud, breathing heavily while keeping her foot held in the air as she glared at the damned bullshit she’d evidently fallen for with accusing eyes. “That, hah… was not quick or easy!”
Still, when she flipped back up, she had to admit that the things were comfortable. If not a touch too tight for socks… Hm… she could deal with going barefoot, she was sure; the almost silky lining was positively wonderful when she’d explored it with her hands! At the same time, there was an appreciable weight and flexibility to the sole that made walking around a breeze, and, she suspected, running to feel as though she were wearing sneakers rather than thick and heavy boots. She moved to the mirror, smiling at herself while twisting and turning from left to right, admiring the impressive figure she cut from legs to back muscles. She was ready. Oh god, was she ready! In fact, she’d been ready for a damned near whole month already but—hadn't been able to follow through with her plans because the freaking snake-oil salesman of a brainiac she’d bought her mask and boots from had screwed up the shipping! Somehow managing to send her damned package to a mail center literally on the other side of town! And he hadn't even offered a refund! What a jerk! Amanda had needed to catch a bus freaking hours out of her way after work just to collect what was supposed to come to her parent's house!
It was—beyond infuriating. And yet, the girl had to admit, the boots felt great! All that was left was the mask. Reaching over to pluck the object of her near giddy joy from its priorly tightly packed and vacuum-sealed box, Amanda pushed away all the excess plastic film and styrofoam to hold in her hands the final piece of her costume! The one that would mark the first moment in time that Miss Liminal, her kick-ass super-heroine alter-ego, would take the stage and appear! Soon, with any luck, becoming the complete bane of any and all local crime syndicates that dared operate around her home turf! Slowly, almost reverently, placing the featureless and white harlequin mask over her face and feeling it pull into a snug fit as she just—stood there, taking in long and steady breaths before grinning and opening her eyes!
Before her was a figure shrouded in mystery! Her form covered from feet to shoulders in high-tech, low budget, brainiac tech spandex, matte black and devoid of any color. On her chest, a thin bullet-proof vest good for calibres up to the standard nine-millimetre and resistant against heavier small arms. On her knees and elbows, thick and durable padding; on her hands, duro-weave rubber gloves! A tactical belt filled to the brim with zip-ties, pepper spray, a high-voltage taser and, of course, her junior vigilante I.D., which clung tightly to the circumference of her waist. And above, her recently cut hair hung down, and around her jaw, the artificial dye she’d applied to its fringes giving her otherwise basic and boring golden hair some much-needed dramatic flare of bright neon green, completing her persona in a way that just made her want to squeal with excitement!
“This is really happening!” She sang! Preening at how badass she looked while staring into the glowing Eldrich gaze of her hauntingly pitiless mask! Amanda was practically able to feel the piss running down the legs of the first shit-heads she stumbled upon!
She was so excited that she hardly even noticed when she seamlessly shifted from fan-girl to popping and locking dance diva! Her hips and hair swaying and flinging to the upbeat tune of a song only she could hear in the confines of her thoughts, grin wide was could be, bright sky-blue eyes sparkling behind her mask!
The cold chill of death crept in all around her as she bobbed and weaved and caused the young woman's skin to prickle. She slowly froze, expression becoming pensive as a portion of her mind—dropped into place like a roughly shifted gear.
Clunk!
Amanda spun, heart dropping into the pit of her stomach, muscles tensing with apprehension! Her gaze falling upon the lone wooden door to her bedroom as—something from the other side gently began scrabbling at the edges…
Scritch scratch, scritch scratch… the door knob beginning to wobble and shake...
Her breath held tightly, the young woman suddenly felt her world crumble around her… Mind coming into clearer and clearer focus as the horrid sounds of sharp nails on metal screeched in her ear! Scratch, scratch… Scritch, scratch, scratch… Bang! Bang, bang, scratch, scratch, bang! Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang—
Amanda’s eyes shot open! A fresh layer of sweat formed at her brow as the pounding flooded the room, like a dozen baseball bats pitted against a steel door, redoubled, drowning out all sound around her save for the nightmarish cacophony that was trying to get through the door. She—sighed… hands pressing against her face with a silent scream of frustration!
Not even in her dreams was she free from this waking hellhole of a—Bang!
Her eyes shot forward, head dipping to the side, gaze fixating on the very first of her erected defences as it clattered to the ground. No more than a mop that she’d found to help reinforce the makeshift barricade she’d set up, but… Amanda could already see how the rest of what she’d piled against the door was already beginning to shift and rattle with unnerving regularity. The sheer staccato of ceaseless and ravenous hands smashing at the only thing separating her from the outside horde let her know that there were potentially dozens of the creatures that had found her…
“Not good…”
She hadn't spoken the words aloud as the things trying to get inside were notorious for having excellent hearing, yet she practically growled it in her head as she rose from her thin blanket and began packing everything she could back into her bags. Shoving things in with calm and steady hands before pushing the oversized pack against the wall. Then, she began checking on her ammo.
Three bullets in the Glock, four in the Smith and Weston… six still in the tiny purse revolver she’d found, two more in a Sig she’d discovered around three months back, so far, her favourite gun to shoot, and, another five rounds in a second Glock chambered for forty-five’s. It was—light so far as things went… and she knew why. Amanda had been somewhat neglecting her stores of ammunition… putting off the inevitable for no greater reason than that it was busy work. In all honesty, she’d hopped to find a nice cache belonging to some old-world nutjob apocalypse prepper while haunting this particular apartment, as if all the tiny handguns would stop a cataclysmic event from turning them into people-soup... But at least metal and plastic survived deadly plagues, so it was a big win for her whenever she did find such collections.
Alas, Amanda had achieved no such luck… Instead, she began unstrapping everything of value from her person. Guns, guns—guns and more guns… a few knives, a machete she’d picked up at—some point, as well as all her personal belongings. Sat-phone tinkered with by a brainiac to work without the stupid subscription it wanted, this weird force-field emitter that sometimes blocked projectiles, but most of the time simply seemed to do fuck all… Par for the course with brainiac tech, in all honesty… A handful of grenades she’d scavenged while routing through an already picked-through police precinct. Hidden in a locked desk drawer that nobody had bothered to look at. And, of course, the overly gaudy pride flag and my little pony-themed desert eagle that she’d never yet found bullets for since acquiring the thing off one of her alternate selves during a swap out. Which, without getting political, was a masterpiece in sheer mall-ninja absurdirdity! Customized to the nines with laser aim assistance, holographic sights, a tactical flashlight, and a magazine that giggled with child-like yet somehow ominous delight when slapping it home or wracking the slide. Now, Amanda really wasn't sure who would have even dreamed up such an abominable combination of childhood whimsey and excessive firepower… let alone who would have desired to be seen wielding the terribly sickly sweet firearm. Yet, such concerns weren't exactly what she’d call bothersome within the realm of the world's new norm.
She even took off her clothes. Those combat boots she’d struggled with in her dream were now beaten and well-worn but not at all falling apart. Her torn leggings which had been one of the reasons she’d even started this ritual in the first place. The tattered and abused vest that was filled with as many bite marks as it was dimples from small calibre bullets… That particular bit of Brainiac tech, despite how she’d felt about it in the past, had been well worth the investment given how durable it had proven to be. And finally, her chipped, shot at, partially busted and dirty mask. The very same that she’d placed on her face whilst still asleep. It was weary, battered and cracked in various places… and had long since lost its initial reason for her donning it as anonymity was a secondary concern these days… Yet it was bullet-proof—to an extent. Which, so far as things went, was a reason enough to keep it protecting her face.
Still, this, too, she placed on the growing pile of her effects until even her underwear was tossed haphazardly to the side. Amanda standing naked in all her theatrical romantic glory! Filthy, gross, absent soap for—damn near two weeks since she’d last found a good place with running water to hide at. Her hair was cut even shorter than it had been in her memory, now falling to her ears as scalp care was a practical non-starter while roaming the wasteland of towns and cities that used to be the East Coast…
Currently, she was shifting through the remnant remains of Providence. Stuck in a highrise apartment some—two dozen floors up, having been certain that she’d find something of interest, but… As with many locations she chose to rummage in, others had already beaten her to it.
And yet, Amanda wasn't without her own advantages… Taking a deep breath, she froze time. The world around her coming to an abrupt and complete halt. She stood there, silent in the overwhelming stillness that overcame reality, enjoying the short semblance of peace that the moment offered before setting about to work. Though she could maintain this space for a near hour now, her power was not without its faults. Chief among them was that whatever Mandy was touching, joined her in this realm of stifled and frozen time, thus physics still forced her to somewhat conform to its laws. Likewise, if she did leave her power going for too long, she would feel utterly exhausted by the time she actually returned to the real world.
While here, her body did not age, did not require sustenance to fuel itself or water to hydrate, her muscles not tearing or stretching… The downside was that all the weariness and energy she spent would come knocking with a demand for the loan to be repaid… And she’d gotten herself into more than a single bad situation by relying on her abilities too much for too long. There were other issues, of course, those that she’d name to be of a more psychological spectrum… But, she figured that she’d managed a sort of handle on her questionable sanity which is why she chose not to linger on such boorish concerns.
Instead! Amanda eyed the myriad visions of herself that were all lazily milling about around her. Some whilst lounging on the couch eating a bag of old chips, others seeming to be in the midst of a fight, guns, knives or improvised weapons all held in their hands as they fought—something within their own individual and hypothetical realities. There were dozens within the small apartment to choose from, each a representative example of what she could have been had a tangent decision taken her on a separate path than her own.
Possibilities, branching unknowns, entirely different futures that each could, with but a flippant deviation of fate, have come to pass should she have, say, decided that yesterday she’d of looted the pharmacy down the block rather than the storage facility she’d stupidly decided to search, to no avail. There were infinite possibilities that could have transpired from a lone footstep in a different direction. And, no matter how small, no matter how insignificant, those alternate forms of herself appeared before her, shadowy apparitions of denizens within worlds that had never come to pass, all waiting for her perusal. Or, at least, that was how she thought her powers worked. That was the thing about deviant mutations; there really wasn't much of a repository of knowledge to help one figure things out as they muddled through life…
She didn't take long to find a shade that looked to have what she wanted. The shrouded reflection of herself seeming to stand near the door, Glock in hand, a knife in the other, her pack and belongings all strapped to her back and waist, which told Mandy that the girl wasn't preparing for a fight. Merely being cautious. Wherever she could, Amanda always removed her belongings and stashed them nearby if she was going to get herself into a scuffle, largely because when she did start fighting, she had no desire to cripple herself just because she was scared of losing her belongings.
With a breath of preparation, Mandy moved into the shadow's form, feeling the telltale sensation of tugging at her current existence as it slipped into the shade before her, replicating its form, joining with its reality, merging with her alternate existence in a momentary flood of gut-wrenching butterflies before—
Amanda sheathed the knife in her belt. Twisting the pistol in her hand and popping the magazine. Four bullets. Hm… Mandy had gotten lucky! Apparently, this version of herself hadn't seen fit to kneecap that asshole pyrokinetic who’d tried stealing her water whilst she’d been filling another bottle. Hmmm, she wondered what she’d done in her stead… Maybe a knife to the tendons on the back of his knee? He had tried frying her alive, after all, and there was a fine line between a lesson that her mercy wasn't without limits and actually trying to fucking kill her.
All the same, she quickly holstered the weapon and started checking out all her others, discovering that, on average, whoever this girl was, she seemed to still possess a semblance of her old determination to pretend to be a good person. Oh well, not her issue now! Fast as she could, Mandy tossed all her various things on the aforementioned pile and began again, shifting and changing through various iterations of herself before she had a veritable mountain of near-duplicate supplies with the sole exception of one object.
Not for the first time since she’d come into possession of it, Amanda glanced at the somewhat unsettling poney gun that was leaning up against the wall… the sole item that she never seemed to find among all her various theoretical selves, other than that single time. The only thing in her world that didn't fit into place… She shivered at the thought… not because there was anything objectively terrifying about the gun, comparatively speaking with what was still scrabbling at the door. However, in a world where things had lost a certain degree of meaning to her, it stood as the lone entity that she’d never seen replicated through her various exchanges… But, ultimately, she pulled her attention away from the unnerving creation and instead focused on the door.
At this point, there was enough firepower to bring down a police precinct, but she didn't much care to go about filling her ammo reserves quite yet. After all, what would even be the point? Instead, she yanked one of her sidearms from its holster, flipped the safety, then unloaded all its bullets through the metal barrier at a rough head height! Then she tossed the gun aside, pulling out the next and doing the same until it clicked dry and she began all over again. Pounding lead into mutated flesh with pure impunity before dropping back into her silent world and merging with yet another variation of herself! Riddling the door with tiny pocked crators in near non-stop gunfire until a discernable hole in its center appeared! That just made aiming that much easier! And, as though it were no different than an average Tuesday afternoon, Amanda shredded the mass of ghouls trying to break through to her in a hailstorm of unending firepower!
Bullets shredded flesh and bone alike! Flying through heads and shoulders and necks, Amanda focuses less on aiming for vitals and more on good old-fashioned fire superiority! Craniums popped in explosions of erupting gore! Jaws were torn from slobbering maws! Fingers and hands reaching through the widening hole were turned into jelly and paste, their bones fragmenting like anti-personal mines and splintering into the massed horde of bodies pushing down the hallway as gunpowder and smoke filled Amanda’s lungs like a warm fire at Christmas. At some point, she’d even started laughing! Moving faster and faster, unloading with less and less care for where she aimed! Each hand found a gun as she seemed to bounce around the room like a speedster, popping in and out of existence again and again with maddened cackles of joy! This was it! This right here! The fun in her life! Sure, it was a little messy and sure it was loud as hell, but Mandy felt alive as she butchered an entire hallway of mutants, mowing them down time and time again as they climbed over the pile of bodies! Her hands rising higher and higher as the lumbering creatures stumbled and rolled over their broken and shredded neighbours and siblings, the crazed grin on her face only subsiding as she abruptly realized nothing in the hallway yet moved…
She could have jumped through the damned hole in the door that was glowing red at the fringes with the punishment it had withstood… The bodies that filled the hallway so thick that she couldn't even see beyond the pile of corpses that almost touched the ceiling! The wall of them so girthy that one would have to squeeze through the sides just to get by… All the while, her heavy boots kicked and scattered the dozens and dozens of expended firearms she’d discarded around her, the soot from their cartridges already creating a fine layer of dark dust on the hardwood that she idly ground in with one of her soles. Then, she promptly tossed the two guns she was still holding and dug into one of her nearby packs to see what alternate Amanda’s had found for snacks. Managing to rustle up a package of expired jerky, a refilled bottle of water and some mixed nuts that had cranberries in them! What a treat!
She sighed while plummeting onto the nearby couch, just chewing her way through the smattering of rather repetitive convenience-store fare that had been her life for the last few years as she’d travelled. Thankfully, cities weren't the easiest place for the majority of people to actually efficiently strip of anything halfway passed decent. Ghouls, and occasionally worse, presenting a sort of natural barrier for those not smart enough, experianced enough, powerful enough or brave enough to confront them. And she could see why! As for most individuals who didn't possess the equivalency of a Superman mutation, which she wasn't even sure had come about to encompass all the man of steel’s powers, the hordes of transformed and ever-multiplying ghouls that roamed large population centers could and would be the death of you. Take her for example. If Mandy’s powers made even a reasonable lick of sense or were fair to fight against, then she’d be stuck in the apartment she’d hidden in while a veritable tide of mutants either starved her out or got in and ate her alive. Honestly, cities weren't for the faint of heart these days!
It didn't take long for her to get bored of the same old same artificial goodness of lab-made flavouring, so Amanda let what she’d been eating sit where she’d left it on the coffee table. Stomach reasonably filled, her mind moving to alternate matters. Not for the first time, she spent a near hour rooting through the various packs of her other selves. Setting aside what she didn't want or didn't care to lug around with her. Filling ammo clips in guns and the spares she kept as backup and altogether sifting through what was on offer until her pack, that was, the original, hardly had much in it that had arrived when she’d settled in for the night.
There were always small deviations in quality between her alternate selves and supplies. A lack of dent here; a little more gas there. This gun being oiled, that gun being rusty… It was all just part of it… And, while she knew that the very real treasure trove of wealth she was leaving behind did have value, she would let it be so for whomever else might come along and stumble upon a paradoxical conundrum of duplicated supplies she was leaving behind. It—just wasn't worth hauling around anything that wasn't the best of the best. After all, it wasn't like she scavaged the wasteland because she needed food and water. No. She did so because she was fucking bored! Finding new and interesting things, she would then be able to duplicate ad-infinitum was pretty much her whole schtick… All… regretfully, that really kept her going out here once she’d given up on trying to find her mom and dad…
Mom had been a true monster of that short golden age of heroes and villains. Back before Doctor Splice had fucked the planet with his eco-terrorist bullshit! One of the few super’s documented to be classified as a national weapon by the old United States government. Her mother had been as close to a comic-book superhero as one could get. Super strength, super speed, the ability to fly… She’d been indomitable in a fight, invulnerable when attacked. And yet, she hadn't been able to save the world from a cataclysmic disaster of a viral super-pathogen. Flamboyant villains who wanted to smash stuff while ransoming cities so they didn't go on a rampage? Easy. Billions upon billions of tiny micro-organisms that spread faster than the bubonic plague, self-replicated, and carried through the air, bodily contact, and the water supply? Nigh impossible. Her father, being a brainiac of a different specialty from the madman's own, had been among those who had tried to stem the tide of biological warfare that the crazed Doctor had started. Doing everything from breeding counter infections that would fight back against the constantly mutating creation to building bubble cities to leave humans living in a sanitized state. Yet, nothing had seemed to work…
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Doctor Splice’s pathogens just kept coming. And soon, the lunatic had begun altering the genome of animals to create hyper-aggressive mutants with an instinctual and ravenous urge to feast on human flesh. Furious that his machinations were being thwarted, he’d pushed his thumb on the scale of things even harder and designed behemoths of titanic proportions to smash the final refuges humanity hid behind what other's had thought would save them, overwhelming those who were powerful enough to eventually stop them by sheer numbers and finally succeeding in wiping out the majority of the human race. All so the planet could heal and recover from humanity's own virus-like infection of its vast lands.
The last Amanda had heard, a team of the world's most powerful super’s had transformed the English isles into a radio-active dead zone. Doctor-splices base, all his greatest creations, and the man himself having been purged from the world through hellfire and atomic warheads until nothing remained of his existence save the legacy of a ruined civilization… These days, only mutants existed. A new strain of humanity that had succeeded the old… Only they, for whatever reason, managed any semblance of survival rate against the virulent plagues Doctor Splice had unleashed. What few dregs of their species remained were weary of the madman's legacy… Fearful that the Titans, which had flattened entire cities so advanced, that they might as well have been alien for all the brainiac tech involved in their inception. People were returning to the lives of frontiersmen. Building small settlements far from oceans where they could, abandoning them when they were overrun by ghouls. And, largely, hanging on by a hairs thread…
As for Amanda’s parents… Well, she had no earthly idea where they’d be. She always checked the contact list of people in her various iterations of sat-phones. Always hyper-aware of any clues that might lead her to their whereabouts. Yet… Her mother could cross oceans without blinking an eye. Her father, faster than any pre-brainiac jet could whilst in his mechanized power-armor… They could be anywhere, she knew. All the while she herself had left their home and hidden away in a doomsday bunker with millions of others before the world had truly collapsed. They’d been separated… Mandy was not so much forgotten as her parents but rather had simply lost contact when the world's infrastructure collapsed upon itself when war had engulfed the planet. And, for a few years since, she’d simply been focused on surviving. Drifting from place to place… Her power might be mighty in its own right, but it wasn't her mothers… or her fathers, for that matter.
Mandy was what the old world had categorized as a class four variant, which was to say that her powers had been deemed unmeasurable. Not because they were galaxy-destroying levels of colossal might! But because they simply didn't fit into the standardized norm that was considered typical. On the one hand, you had you're classic powers. The super speed, strength, ability to fly and take a cruise missile to the jaw like it was a sloppy right hook—to, of course, wildly varying degrees of potency and combinations. And, of course, you had you're elemental kinetics. Pyros, water-mancers, lightning wielders and the movers and shakers of earth tectonics… supers that usually displayed aspects of the big three of powers to some degree and also exhibited the unexplainable ability to call upon the forces of nature itself as though it were magic. Usually, this showed up as some variant of; flight and fire powers or speed and earth manipulation. Which, at times, could branch out in rarity and competency as something like super-strength, the ability to fly and throw lightning around like you were a Greek god! And, like her mother, the very lucky few could even have a combination of all three primary powers that were, simply put, off the charts of comprehension.
However, where Mandy lay within the grand scheme of people who might be able to fly anywhere from the speed of a seagull to breaching the sound barrier or individuals who could do little but run a little faster than normal while sloshing around puddles was right smack dab where no old-world brainiac desired to touch. The dreaded fourth category of mutations. The one after the genius and brilliant brainiacs who never displayed more than their primary power. Those that were so wild in variety and capabilities that individuals who had them were always treated on a person-by-person basis. True telekinesis, mind-reading, rapid self-regeneration or cell-like multiplication. Those who could transform themselves into a tree or go invisible! Maybe sing exceedingly nicely or burp caustic clouds of acid… That was where she belonged. Among the misfits and misdiagnoses of old world society. The rejects and confused. Those who often had no idea how to use their powers because few others, if any, existed in the world who were exactly like them.
Even Mandy hadn't understood how her ability worked until the first moment she’d been killed. Sure, the time portion of her power was decently straightforward, yet that was merely a byproduct of her real abilities, which was outright absurd in its own light. Yet, Amanda still couldn't fly. She still couldn't create a suit of hyper-advanced armour from a scrapyard full of old Toyota’s, and so far as the big three were concerned? Mandy had none of that. She wasn't super strong or super fast or able to fly… heck, she wasn't even more durable than the average person, and she certainly didn't have any kinetic mutation to speak of. No, in following along with the spirit of chaos itself, her powers didn't adhere to any semblance of common sense, reason, or measurable potency.
That was why she liked guns. One didn't need to be able to shoot fire from their palms when a sound-barrier breaking wad of lead travelled between her barrel and some asshat’s head faster than the speed of thought! Knives were nice too. After all, you didn't need to reload a knife! Yeah, maybe there were some powers that gave her a hard time, but if there was one thing she had learned, nothing survived the pure dogged tenacity of endless lives being spent in search of how best to murder an arrogant super who thought themselves invincible. Heck, she’d killed a super not too indifferent than her own mother, if at a lesser scale of power, with nothing but cotton balls and a burning hatred fueled by spiteful determination!
But, those were ruminations for when next she put her head down for a rest. The past was behind her. And right now, Amanda had something of a problem. “Yeah… okay, I admit, I might not have really thought this one through…”
So saying, the young woman squelched her way through viscous green and red fluids as she stepped into the grim hallway with mild embarrassment. Looking to the left of the massive pile, then to the right and, immediately deciding that she probably wasn't going to fit…
“Hmmm… Maybe I could—burn them all… I mean, at least one of my other selves has to have the ingredients for a few molotov’s or—fuck, maybe even one of them found a brainiac flamethrower! Those were all the rage for a few years while people fought against the ghouls…”
Ghouls were a sort of bio-weapon engineered as sweepers to help Doctor Splice's plans to kill off his own species. A sort of horribly effective combination of zombie and plant that infected the host they bit, scratched or simply contaminated with their general gross brand of ick. They had spread like wildfire through major population centers the world over! Not only were they tough as damned weeds when trying to put them down, but they were legion! And didn't need a constant source of food to actually keep them moving. Oh no, the lunatic doctor had made sure that they could survive via chlorophyll! So long as there was sunlight, his plant-zombies could exist anywhere they chose. That meant that, for the most part, one didn't really have to worry too much about ghouls being indoors in massive numbers. Though they did certainly chase after prey that fled inside, or those that they could smell. For the most part, they usually returned to the outdoors, where they would plant roots wherever they could and start replicating themselves. That’s right! Her world's nightmare hordes could grow new versions of themselves through self-pollination!
Thankfully, they weren't very smart. And new variants were actually stupider than their parents. More, they weren't very fast on their feet… more shamblers than sprinters… which was good! As Mandy didn't rightly know if there would be any people left other than those who could fly or were too strong to be overtaken by plant zombies… Plus, they were extra-emely flammable. And, rather susceptible to the cold!
“Just one more reason why autumn is the defacto best time of the year!” Mandy announced confidant in her proclamation to the heavens and gods. “No snow, fewer ghouls. All the leaves turn pretty! The sun isn't freaking trying to boil you alive! Best time of year, hands down.”
As she said this, she tried a tentative yank on a zombie that looked somewhat movable, hauling back with a grunt of effort to try and dislodge a body or two so she might slip by and escape. Sadly, there was nothing for it… As, despite possessing the hard athleticism of a person who spent their days roughing it beyond civilization, Mandy was still a petite and slight woman. She had plump curves, not wide shoulders… And while her T and A was nothing to complain about, her shitty body weight and lack of stature left her constantly wanting…
“I mean, mom is freaking six-three without heels! And dad is at least five-eight! How the hell did I even end up so freaking tiny!” She practically hissed like a pissed-off cat as she heaved on the sheer deadweight, no pun intended, without managing so much as a reasonable budge. “Being petite is bullshit.” She announced, wishing she had the body of a damned linebacker!
Sure, when she was in high school, being tiny and cute and squishy in all the perfect places seemed like an awesome win in the genetics department, but nobody had told her she’d be so useless in a post-apocalyptic and zombie-filled hallway! If they had, then she’d of asked her dad to make her some damned growth hormones! If she couldn't have super-strength, then she’d of at least compromised for a frame good for little more than being a swimwear model! “I mean! Rah! Mmmmmm wouldn't it be—nice if some of my—nnnerg… muscles could get a few of the calories my—tit’s and thighs seem to hog? Like—hah… fuck… is it too much to ask? Seriously..." She breathed, panting while spitting on her hands, "I know being small can have its—nnnggg… ad-vantages! But how often does some tiny crevice nobody else can get into even—freaking show up?”
With a final heave, her righteous indignation fueling her temper, Amanda gave up trying to dislodge the body she was working on and simply backed away, both hands on her knees as she stood there, bent over double, gasping for breath and despairing at the unfairness of genetics. She rather felt that, even if her mother hadn't been superhumanly strong, she’d of managed to at least put a dent in the damned mass of bodies large enough to crawl through. Amanda? She couldn't even budge an arm. Naturally, it was a question of physics. And more specifically, of force and mass, of which neither were on her side. She just didn't have the weight, leverage or strength to really do anything—which left her in a sort of bothersome situation...
The day was bright. The sun just managing crest above the horizon by the time that Amanda had made her way out to the apartments balcony. Her belongings, already tied together and bundled up the best she could manage, were tossed from her hands to the loving embrace of the next-door patio. The large collection of backpacks, rucksacks, pouches and bundles landed with a weighty thud as Mandy easily climbed up the railing and, without a moment's hesitation, leapt across the span with the easy grace and conviction of someone who’d done gymnastics for the majority of her life. She’d only been seventeen when the first hints that the world was going to shit had reared its ugly head. And, since then, only six more years had actually passed. That put her at twenty-three. Yet, she’d stopped growing long before her sixteenth year, at least where her height was concerned.
Though she hadn't been with her high school's cheer squad for more than a handful of months before quitting to pursue a life in the superhero field, her parents had more or less forced her through a blisteringly cruel training regime since she’d been but a young girl. Not learning combat per se, at least so far as lethal tactics were concerned, but more martial arts and callisthenics. Her father’s think-tank creating a highly specialized program to ensure his daughter would be able to take care of herself to the very best of what human bodies could reasonably offer.
Back then, none of them had really known what her powers could do, beyond, of course, that she could stop time for very short increments. In fact, both her parents, despite Amanda feeling like her power had been lacklustre, had seemed to treat her as though she were some golden goose! Like a prodigy meant to be shaped and nurtured rather than the useless heap of disappointment, she’d initially believed herself to be when comparing herself to such icons.
It helped that her father passed on at least some of his natural brilliance to her, as Amanda was quite smart. It rarely took more than a few tires at something for her to gain the knack of it. And though she wasn't physically impressive like the tales of great Greek heroes of old, her coordination was spot on and nearly reaching the peak of human performance as it was. Her hands easily tightened around the opposite balcony railing, Mandy hauling herself up and vaulted over the side with graceful ease. Grunting as she picked up her pack for a second time before she tossed it again over the next railing and performed the same death-defying eight-foot leap, scrambling up the next balcony the same as the first.
Then eyeing the next one over, and the sliding glass door she was standing beside, she wondered if she’d gone far enough. “Well, it was a minimum of sixteen feet…” She mused, trying to gauge the approximate size of the patio she was on before deciding that she’d gone far enough so who cared what the measurement actually was?
Unsurprisingly, the door was, of course, locked. Yet, she merely pulled out a hammer she kept for these very occasions and smashed the everloving shit out of the sliding door before flipping the latch and letting herself inside. She’d already wandered through most of this floor’s apartments over the course of a few days while staying here. So, there wasn't really anything new to discover. Mandy simply slipped her hammer back into her bag and walked right out the front door!
Bang!
A body to her left crumpled to the ground as her hand shot out, Glock tightly wrapped in her fingers, a single bullet flying from the barrel to burrow a neat hole through the skull of a nearby ghoul who’d been likewise to herself, trying to find a way through the barricade of bodies.
Bang, bang-bang-bang!
Four more zombies collapsed to the ground, Mandy hardly looking in their direction as she executed them in rapid succession. A theoretically limitless supply of lives, ammunition and boredom having breed a talent for gunplay and a sixth-sense-like situational awareness that was, quite frankly, rather terrifying to behold whilst on the other side of her ire. That left her with eleven bullets still in her nine-millimetre, which she elegantly slipped back into its hip holster as she headed back towards the stairwell she’d hiked up to get here.
For most, wasting bullets on an endlessly replicating horde of undead plants was less than ideal, given their finite supply. Brainiac services did not come cheaply. If there even was one in any given settlement, a person lived in. And even then, the hyper-intelligent and reality-warping tinkerers of all things technologically magical, for all they made sense to normal folk, weren't gods. They still needed resources to work. And though she’d seen a particularly inspired woman manage to successfully make a firearm-adjacent weapon out of nothing but trees and rocks, not all those possessing their bizarre strain of mutation could work the same kind of miracles from person to person. That old adage that nobody was truly born equal had never proven so right as it did when pertaining to powers.
Brainiacs tended to have their specializations. Areas of the scientific world where they truly excelled. And while their genius could branch out beyond the domain of their expertise, their competency in doing so entirely relied on how strong their baseline gifts were. If you had a mutant just at the cusp of being smarter than an already smart human, then they could probably build you an energy-based weapon with enough time, appropriate resources and—test subjects… However, for a man like her father? One of the greatest minds that the world had ever seen? Well, she’d seen him create a portal gun out of little more than random shit they had lying around in the garage. The thing was, brainiac tech didn't have to make sense as, just like those with super strength, modern science simply didn't have an answer for how it worked… Thus, to the average person, the complexity of what went on in the interim between a catalytic converter and shrink ray may as well have been magic for all humanity had begun to understand what the mutations actually did to people…
Thus, bullets were actually something that were in despairing supply. The only way people got more of them was by scavenging. Thankfully, the old United States of America had something of a gun problem. A big issue for major population centers of the past and a godsend for those who remained to inherit the shit-heap after it had been infested with zombies. Once, she’d visited a rather large town that had a small collection of brainiacs at its heart who were doing their damndest to try and make something of the place. Putting the combined genius together and actually pumping out a sort of auto-fabricator that took random everyday goods in, and—through the power of friendship! Spat out beautiful guns and ammunition to arm its populace. They had actually been doing quite well for themselves and had grand dreams of finally taking back a semblance of the old world from the mutant abominations that Doctor Splice had left behind to haunt future generations.
Why normal guns and ammunition you might ask? Well, the answer to that was quite simple. Conventional chemical-based firearms were acutally rather easy to produce when compared to something like a disintegration ray. And, while all people possessed of themselves a trans-human mutation, few and far between were those that were strong enough on their own to make a difference. With literal billions of people on earth, there had been less than a single thousand that were classified as dangerous to modern armies and their war machines. All others were just as mortal as the rest of their people when confronted by a machine gun capable of spitting out hundreds of fifty-calibre rounds faster than one could run for cover! It wasn't that people didn't have powers to help them survive… But, just that, most people didn't have the potency they needed to fly through the air and incinerate a city full of ghouls all on their lonesome… And that, perhaps more than anything else, had been the true blow to humanity that Doctor Splice had achieved. Stifling the natural growth of human evolution.
Supers made supers. It was simply a fact of reality. If one super parent made a child with a normal human, the mutation would take root in the child with near assured certainty. Now, how the mutation developed was a whole other matter. However, the reality was that eventually, all people on Earth would have had powers of varying degrees with enough time. And since there was no official correlation between powerful parents and a powerful child since the old world hadn't had long enough to conduct such studies, very little was actually known about the mutations for anyone to speak with a semblance of confidence. All she could say on the matter was that the real-world situation she’d seen was that most people were simply far less super and much more—slightly better off… There were outliers, of course, but one of the many rumours she’d been privy to eluded to some special recruitment agency that still managed a global presence, being responsible for picking up all those who qualified as super-human and taking them away. A new world order of sorts forming somewhere across the sea where the truly powerful of humanity were leaving their lessers behind to live in a utopia all their own. Some claimed it was so they could build a force to finally stomp down the legacy of humanity's greatest war criminal. Others claimed it was a tyrannical dictatorship that was stealing people for slave labour. And a few more had even claimed that they were building star-ships to leave the ruined earth behind. Seeking to start anew on another world while the old was left to fester in Doctor Splice’s wake.
Mandy honestly didn't know if any of that was actually true or not. But, practicality wise, she had mused it was possible. It was earnestly something on her back burner. A lead, vague as it was, to help her find her parents, if they were still alive… But, for the time being, she had greater concerns to deal with. The groaning and shifting of bodies could be heard and smelt, even before she’d reached the fire access… Amanda let out a long and put-upon sigh as she, once more, placed her belongings on the floor beside her and walked into the horde of nightmares waiting for her, gunfire drowning out the noise of life itself…