Part 1: Fallout
Dirt piled upon Terry, dashing across his open mouth and eyes, clinging to his teeth and tongue as he tried to scream out in panic.
I’m being buried alive!
Air sirens blared across the fields. Screams rang out from the nearby farmers. A wave of heat slammed into him, even as more dirt was shoveled onto his face and body. He clawed at the open grave, his tiny hands churning the soil. Something slammed into his chest, pinning him back into the hole.
It was a hand pressing down on him. Slick, red flesh covered five spindly fingers.
Before he could process what was happening, another wave of heat splashed across his exposed skin. He cried out in breathless pain.
It burns! It hurts so bad! Is this it? Is this how I die? Buried and burned alive at the same time?
The weight of his unfulfilled superhero dreams crashed down upon him, heavier than the soil he was buried under.
Just minutes earlier, he had been holding hands with his mother as they strolled along the canal.
“I’m too old to hold hands with my mom,” he had whined.
To which she had replied, “Just this last time?”
She always said that, and he always gave in. The truth was, it made him feel better when she asked, like he was doing her a favor.
It certainly wasn’t because he enjoyed the smooth warmth of her skin. And he absolutely did not get a thrill from the subtle tingle of her power’s natural expression on his palm.
Holding hands was for babies and he was just doing her a favor.
Thoughts of soft skin and pleasant tingles had been wiped away when the first person noticed the supers flying in low on the horizon.
“Who’s that?” a nearby woman asked, pointing at the V-formation just cresting the distant trees.
His mom’s grip tightened on his hand and he tried to pull it away. She may not have been strength-based, but any A-ranked super had deadly strength in their body.
“Ow! Mom, you’re hurting me.”
She ignored him, her eyes snapping to Terry’s dad across the field. He had been talking with one of the farmers until that moment. But something about his wife’s gaze sent him flying into action. He began barking orders in ghoulish, then repeated them in English. His super-enhanced voice echoed across the fields.
“Alpha one and two, delay. Alpha three on me. Alpha four on the princess. Alpha five with my son.”
His dad’s voice had always carried a tone of command that Terry almost considered a superpower. He had heard it many times in his life, and even practiced it in the mirror when he was alone. Though he adored his mom’s powers, the one thing he wanted to inherit from his dad was the power of that voice.
But in that moment, that tone he had known for a lifetime had been tinged with something else, something he had never heard in the man’s voice.
Fear.
“What is it, mom?” Her eyes cast about the field, seeming to take in the entire situation in a single glance. When she looked down at Terry, there were no whites in her eyes. Instead, opaque orbs of silver stared back at him.
When she spoke, it wasn’t as his mom, but as a superhero.
“We’re being attacked.”
Attacked? The words were strange in his mind. But what she said next had him clutching her in a panic.
“Crunch will take you to safety while your dad and I hold them off.”
“No! I wanna stay with you!” He hated the fear in his voice. He wasn’t a kid anymore.
Then why was it that all he wanted to do was cling onto his mom’s waist while she stroked his hair and told him everything would be alright?
“I know, sweetie. I’m sorry, but there’s no time.” Powerful arms wrapped around him. And they weren’t his mom’s. “Take him out of here. Hurry!”
Crunch’s grating voice answered. “Yes, princess.”
He was ripped away from his mom, his hands clutching tightly to her clothes before she gently pulled them free.
“Mom! No, mom! I wanna stay with you!”
But her back was to him now. He was hoisted onto Crunch’s shoulder as the ghoul raced away at superhuman speed. The air was knocked from his chest as he bounced up and down. He tried to cry out, but his voice wouldn’t come.
Then his eyes caught on the sun glinting off the incoming supers and he gasped.
Five shapes approached in the distance. They were flying low, swooping over the trees and down toward the fields. If Terry didn’t know all of these supers by heart, he wouldn’t have believed it.
The Knights of Sol!
Though Crunch was carrying him away faster than any normie could ever run, the Knights were still gaining on them. As they neared, Terry was able to spot out the individual supers from their costumes—he knew them all down to the smallest stitch.
He spotted Lirian, the Siren, in the back, her sapphire-blue costume resembling the scales of a mermaid. Across from her, Tenebrous, the Shadow, broke from the formation and disappeared into the forest. In front of the Siren was Savage, the Primordial Man. He was a Duelist-class super, with burnt-orange fur covering him head-to-toe. Opposite him, the Scourge, who wore an emerald green costume embossed with insects and spiders crawling up his arms and chest.
And finally, the glittering jewel of the formation, Sol himself. Golden chainmail covered the leader of the Knights, seeming to draw in strands of visible sunlight with a magnetic pull.
The formation was suddenly sent into disarray as two ghouls were thrown into the air by Terry’s dad like human-sized cannonballs. In the moment before impact, they unfurled from a tucked position, spreading their limbs wide, dagger-like claws extended. One ghoul bounced off Savage as the super lashed out with a powerful strike. The other was hit in the chest by a beam of golden light, smoke rising from its body as it tumbled back to the earth.
A moment later, Sol, Siren, and Scourge turned to face Terry’s dad. Savage continued onward, falling to the ground as he left Sol’s aura and lost the super-given power of flight. That didn’t stop the Primordial Man, who simply crouched in the dirt, then leaped into the air. A car-sized crater was left behind by the super’s leap.
Terry watched as the fur-covered man arced impossibly high into the air, before his trajectory flipped and he began falling back to the ground.
What is he doing? Terry wondered. Why is he abandoning the fight—
His thoughts jumbled as an impossible idea began to form.
Is he coming for me?
He had only a half-second to dismiss the idea, reconsider it, then dismiss it once more, before all the confirmation he could possibly need landed with an explosive grunt just ten feet in front of him and Crunch.
The impact of Savage’s superhero jump shook the earth like a quake, and Crunch stumbled as the soil rocked beneath them.
When the super rose from the newly-formed crater, he was surrounded on all sides by a five foot wall of churned dirt. A smaller, but still superpowered, jump took him over the lip of the crater to land behind Crunch and Terry.
The ghoul slowly lowered Terry to the ground and the boy found his feet unsteady from being carried. He recovered his footing as quick as possible, afraid of looking foolish in front of one of his idols.
Savage was even more impressive in person. He was seven feet tall, his muscles rippling as he rolled his shoulders. Dirt was matted in his orange fur, giving the super a feral look. When he spoke, his voice was deep and Terry felt it vibrate in his chest.
“I’ve come for the boy. Step aside.”
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Even hearing the words come from Savage’s mouth, he couldn’t believe it.
“M-me?” he stammered.
Crunch’s hand reached over and pulled Terry behind him.
“Give me the boy!” Savage growled.
Terry flinched, his legs beginning to tremble.
Crunch worked his jaw, struggling to form the words through a mouth full of jagged teeth. His voice grate like a foot stepping on broken glass. “Come and take him…flesh bag.”
Savage let out a bestial roar, while Crunch remained eerily silent. The super’s legs flexed and he launched toward Crunch with superhuman speed. Terry was suddenly thrown away as Crunch sidestepped. He landed in the dirt, his head whipping against the ground.
Crunch was standing to the side, tufts of burnt-orange fur tangled in his claws. Savage was nowhere to be seen. Terry struggled to lift his head, but it felt so heavy. He tried to force it, but the movement made him dizzy and he nearly puked.
An ear-splitting roar came from the pile of dirt built up around the crater Savage’s entry had made. A moment later, the soil was violently lifted in the air as the super burst out of the mound. It took Terry a moment to realize that Savage’s attack had sent him headlong into the pile.
The image of a world-famous super leaping out of a pile of dirt was irrationally funny to him, like one of his Saturday morning cartoons. A distant part of him realized that his life was in danger, but he couldn’t help it—that was funny!
I hurt my head, he thought. This shouldn’t be funny.
Then Savage lunged toward Crunch again and the seriousness of the situation settled in.
He’s trying to kill your bodyguard, Terry. You should really, really, be concerned. Maybe if I tell him that I have his poster on my bedroom wall, he wont want to kill me? It was worth a shot, right?
But as he opened his mouth to say, I’m a big fan, Savage! I have your poster on my wall, the absurdity of it hit him like a fist and he kept his mouth shut.
Savage launched himself toward the ghoul—more measured this time. But Crunch managed to dodge at the last moment, his claws not doing much on the super’s powerful skin except to give him strips of bald patches exposing pale flesh beneath.
The haze obscuring his thoughts began to thin as he watched Savage launch himself at Crunch like an enraged bull. What had been funny moments earlier now had Terry’s limbs trembling.
What was I thinking? ‘I’m a big fan?’ More like, I’m a big idiot. He’s here to kill me, or at least hold me hostage.
Terry watched, frozen with terror, as Savage missed a lunge for the fifth time, skidding to a halt just past Crunch. Movement around the super’s waist drew his eye, but the fog in his brain made his thoughts sluggish. Too late, he realized what the super was doing.
The dense fur around Savage’s waist parted as his tail unwrapped itself. As his leap took him past the ghoul, he used his prehensile tail to wrap around the undead’s arm. Crunch reacted almost instantly, striking down with deadly claws. But Savage’s strength and fortitude were an order of magnitude greater than a ghoul’s—even an elite like Crunch.
Stupid. So stupid! he scolded himself. Why didn’t I warn Crunch about the tail?
The ghoul’s claws did nothing against the tail, and the super used the grip to launch himself once more toward the undead. With a bone-piercing roar, Savage embraced the ghoul, pinning Crunch’s arms to his torso.
Crunch struggled to free himself, but the strength disparity was too great. As the ghoul attempted to angle his claws to dig into Savage’s flesh, the super opened his jaw unnaturally wide. Great, ten-inch long fangs pushed through his gums and the super chomped down on Crunch’s shoulder with one powerful bite. With a twisting of his head, he separated the arm at the joint, casually throwing it away like a man finishing a chicken wing.
The shock of seeing Crunch dismembered broke Terry from his frozen state. He climbed to his feet, stumbling for a moment as a wave of dizziness took hold. The super opened his jaw wide once more, angling to consume the ghoul’s entire head.
Resolve filled his shaking limbs and steadied his bout of dizziness. And then, he charged the super.
“Get away from my friend!” he shouted, ramming his shoulder into Savage’s haunches.
He bounced off the super with a cry. Pins and needles stabbed into his arm as tears formed in his eyes. His vision went white from the pain.
It felt like an eternity passed before fur-covered feet came into view. Through the pain and disorientation, he willed his eyes to track up from the feet, to the legs, and finally, to the animal face of one of the supers he had always idolized.
Only to see a look of absolute disgust on Savage’s face.
“Weak. Stupid.” Savage snorted and shook his head. The wave of hot breath and damp-smelling fur cloyed inside Terry’s nostrils. “If you were smart, you would have honored your ghoul’s sacrifice by fleeing. Instead, you watch it die, then attack a god with the body of a mortal.” He reached down and grabbed Terry by his injured arm, sending a fresh wave of mind-numbing pain flashing through his entire body. “You Fairways are all the same. Must be the inbreeding. Makes you simple—”
A familiar voice sounded from behind the super. The tone was casual, but the words carried the weight of a death sentence.
“Sometimes, simple courage can be more powerful than the strongest super.”
Savage’s eyes went wide and his grip on Terry loosened as he whirled around. Without a word, the fur-covered man tried to leap away. But bone-white, grasping hands reached up from the ground and clutched his ankles.
Terry’s grandfather stood behind Savage, his bone mask covering everything but his eyes, which were two red flames like the embers of a dying fire. Armor of exposed rib shielded his torso, and likewise his legs. In his hands rested a scythe that echoed quietly with the cries of captured souls. Its shaft was entirely black wood, while its blade was made of shaped bone.
The Emperor of the Long Night, Traveler of the Underworld, and ruler of the Free-City of Wichita, casually strode toward Savage as the super struggled against the spirits pinning his feet.
With a contemptuous stroke, he reaped the world-famous superhero, the bone-blade passing through fur, flesh, and organs without catching on anything.
When the blade emerged from the other side of Savage, the super’s body was completely intact. Only his spirit had been consumed by the Emperor’s scythe.
In the distance, a cry of anger echoed impossibly over hundreds of meters. His grandfather whirled toward the sound, just as a flash of light appeared on the horizon.
His grandfather hissed something in ghoulish even as he smashed his blackwood scythe into the dirt. A dome of blue-white spirits appeared over Terry, his grandfather, and Savage’s corpse. Terry’s eyes burned as the light in the distance blossomed.
What was that? he wondered, as the sky brightened noticeably—even though it had already been a cloudless day with plenty of sun.
Something heavy landed on top of Terry and he cried out in pain.
He was forced to close his eyes as heat washed over him. The spreading warmth was bearable at first. But over the next few seconds, it continued to rise, until he was screaming from the scorching heat. He was hoisted into the air and tossed over a mound of dirt. He fell unnaturally far, his body not hitting the ground as expected, but rather, falling into a hole. In a distant part of his mind, he realized that it was the crater made by Savage’s landing.
The pain in his head and his shoulder were his entire world—until that first pile of dirt fell onto his face. His chest ached as he tried to scream, but no sound came.
He was being buried alive.
He struggled to claw his way out of the grave, his tiny hands shoveling uselessly at the soil. His lungs felt scorched and the dirt threatened to suffocate him. But through his panic, a distant thought surfaced.
The heat was finally bearable…
He latched onto that thought, processed it through his muddled brain, until he realized that Crunch had been the one that buried him—not to kill him, but to save him from the heat.
The heat!
Sol had gone supernova. That was the flash of light on the horizon and the unbearable heat scorching the air.
Was there anything left of his home above this temporary grave.
Was this grave even temporary?
Time passed—he didn’t know how much—and his thoughts continued to slow, like his brain was trudging through a muddy river bank.
The first thing he noticed was the light searing his eyes, forcing him to squeeze them tight. For a moment, he feared another strike from Sol had gone off, that his dirt covering had been vaporized from the intense heat, exposing him to their enemy’s final strike.
But a hand gripped his arm—not a ghoul hand, with its butcher knife claws, but a human hand. He opened his eyes, blinking away the dirt and the spots of light as he looked up.
Staring down at him were two red flames peering through an ivory mask.
“Grandfather?” he tried to say. But his throat was coated in dust and scorched dry.
“Don’t try to speak,” the familiar voice rasped. He was hauled effortlessly out of the hole and sat down by its edge.
The air was uncomfortably hot and his skin burned, but anything was better than staying in that dirt hole for another second.
To the side, Crunch lay still, one arm missing while wisps of smoke trailed off his body. Terry forced a trickle of saliva into his mouth, then swallowed painfully to wet his throat.
“Crunch?”
His grandfather peered over at the ghoul with a flick of his ember eyes.
“I told you not to speak.” His tone was full of command and Terry didn’t dare violate his orders again.
But he couldn’t stop thinking of Crunch, whose skin seemed to smolder under an invisible heat. Crunch, who had sacrificed himself for Terry.
His eyes were pulled away as his grandfather stood up and faced the origin of the light. The dome of spirits had been a perfect mesh of interlocking hands. But now, they churned in the heat haze, their grips visibly loosening before Terry’s eyes.
“This ends now,” his grandfather muttered to himself. He grasped his blackwood scythe in two hands, like a wizard wielding a staff, and smashed it into the soil.
Once. Twice. Three times.
A pealing echo of ethereal voices rose up from all around Terry. Grasping hands emerged, and even a lifetime spent surrounded by the unliving hadn’t prepared the boy for what happened next.
He cried out as a million screaming spirits burst up into the air. They weaved through the sky and each other, a dreadful howl echoing painfully. He slammed his hands over his ears, but it did little good. As they arced high into a sky dyed white with Sol’s heat, the sun began to fade.
Terry watched in utter disbelief as the dome of spirits formed above them, echoing the smaller dome that had first protected them from the worst of Sol’s supernova. But this ceiling of interwoven spirits stretched as far as he could see in every direction, dimming the sun’s rays until it seemed that night had fallen in the blink of an eye.
On the ground, a dense fog seeped from the earth, rising like the spirits that had preceded it.
Within moments, Terry could barely see his grandfather, let alone Sol or his remaining Knights.
The only thing he could see, was Crunch’s limp body as the lingering heat on his skin burned away the nearby fog.
“Crunch?” he asked softly, forcing sound through his scorched throat. The ghoul opened a single eye, his other eye covered by skin that had melted like the wax of a candle. When Terry saw that small movement, his heart leapt. “Crunch!”
Terry reached through the dirt, using his single good arm to pull himself forward, when two arms wrapped around him and hoisted him to his feet. Before he could reach the ghoul bodyguard that had been his shadow for as long as he could remember, he was dragged away.
“Let me go!” he cried feebly, but the hands gripping him weren’t human and no matter how hard he struggled, he’d never manage to pry a ghoul’s grip away.
“The Emperor sent us, my prince,” a harsh voice hissed in his ear. “Do not resist. We’ve been given a Supreme Order.”
“Help him!” Terry shouted. “He’s one of you. Why won’t you help him?”
But they ignored his pleas and Terry was forced onto the ghoul’s shoulder. As the undead bounced away with leaping strides, his dislocated arm and scorched skin spiked wave after wave of fresh pain through his body. The air was forced from his lungs even as he tried to cry out.
After what felt like an eternity, his vision went black and he passed out.
In the distance, at the edge of the horizon, a pinprick of light flashed once more, then guttered out, like a candle snuffed by the wind.