Amanda.
A ghoul fell away as Amanda shoved a knife through its spinal column, letting the blade go as she pushed her way outside, squinting at the daylight that was already rising in the sky.
The zombie groaned and gurgled, spurring the young woman to brutally stomp on its head a few times just for good measure. Listening to that oh-so-wonderful crack of a splitting skull, which led to blessed silence!
If she never had to listen to their drawling, drooling, mindless drivel again, well, she'd presumably be quite happy!
It would, of course, mean she'd never get to blow another of their brains out with a well-placed bullet—but maybe something between asking a brainiac to create an invasive variant of the ghouls that would cause a sort of growth to seal their mouths shut?
Perhaps a little dangerous so far as wishes could be concerned, especially given nobody would hear them coming, but… in her opinion, likely worth it…
"Oh god, does that feel good!" She laughed, stretching with languid bliss as her limbs popped and cracked, the girl leaning this way and that way, just appreciating the crisp air and warm sunlight that bathed her pale complexion in the few places it was actually exposed...
Yes, sometimes, it really was the simple things in life that made it all worth bothering with. If not for them, then who knew? Maybe Amanda might just have kept punching her own ticket until she finally reached the end of her theoretical existence and, went wherever the afterlife took her!
Suicide hadn't ever been a real threat beyond the occasional musing while fidgeting with a gun or grenade, usually whilst lacking anything interesting to do… yet she did oftentimes wonder if she could even get it done.
Not the killing herself, no, that was actually somewhat easy once you realized all you needed to do was wiggle a single finger and then—
Bam! That was that!
Rather, the difficulty when it came to such things, at least for herself, was what she'd learned of multi-dimensionalism. And more specifically, how wildly it didn't make an iota of sense!
She'd once stood in the parking garage of a forty-story building that she'd collapsed on herself with a truly abhorrent quantity of C-four. The wonderfully amusing explosives belonged to an unexpected cache that she'd found, then replicated while searching in some random warehouse… the box had been marked as toilet paper, which, at the time, she'd been looking for.
Anyways, she'd levelled the whole structure! Collapsed it right on top of herself whilst in a fugue of frustration, trying to figure out if death really was possible for her.
Of course, she hadn't been exactly in the best state of mind, filled with as much crack, coke, booze and heroine as she could find while stumbling her way through a drug-fueled wonderland of madness!
And, whilst in this state of states, she'd convinced herself that if she only trapped the lot of the shadowy fuckers with her, then her causality would come to a blissful end! And she'd finally achieve lasting rest.
What had followed was a truly appalling sequence of miserable deaths that had indeed burned through all her possibilities—until she reached far enough down the multi-dimensional highway to find a version of herself who'd decided she wasn't going to try and do something so recklessly stupid.
Mandy had just popped up out of nowhere after dozens of hours of agony, standing across the street, staring at the pile of rubble and possible hundreds of now vanished iterations of herself who had been, quite literally, squished to death—or suffocated…
Yeah, that one hadn't really been pleasant… On the plus side? Infinite Mandys meant infinite versions of herself who'd never gotten addicted to drugs! This meant she could experience that fucking other-worldly high for the first time, every time, shooting up, over and over and over again whenever she felt the itch to truly let it all scramble her brains!
"Oh!" She chirped, voice almost singsong as she rolled her shoulders and started walking in a truly meaningless direction, "Memories…"
Part of the problem with being immortal was that few things truly got her heart racing like they used to. When danger was no longer dangerous, adrenaline was something you began to associate with a needle and injector rather than a near-death experience.
Thus, Mandy strolled along in broad daylight, uncaring for who or what saw her, simply enjoying the weather as she took a pleasant walk through the city, looking for the first thing that even remotely caught her interest.
By the time she was halfway down the block, she already had a near two dozen ghouls all shambling after her, the young woman walking backwards with both hands behind her head, lazily moving at her leisurely pace to let the monsters keep up with her so she could taunt them with her lovely fleshy flesh.
Occasionally, she reached down and plucked a stone from the road, tossing it at a slumbering pod of ghouls yet to wake, just so she could add more to her growing congo-line of undead plants, earnestly pondering a cool way to kill them all…
Something she did find immense satisfaction in was creating situations that others might find themselves truly speechless about.
Mandy got something of a bizarre flutter in her belly whilst imagining a group of people stumbling upon some of the absurd situations she'd left in her wake, hoping to one day meet a group of travellers who spoke of one of her silly goofs like it were some cryptid story like Nessie or Bigfoot!
So far, she hadn't heard about her little side-project, however, she also hadn't been at it very long. She knew eventually, it would turn up in conversation. But, until then, she'd just keep at it for the shits and giggles.
"Maybe I can do a crop circle of bodies... Like they did in Game of Thrones!" She mused, thinking back to the show she'd watched in youth and knowing she could one-up them. She wouldn't be constrained by budget and time! But—it would be hard to see… "Unless someone were standing on a roof!"
She perked up, now feeling like she was onto something. "I could—make a kind of treat trail leading to a highrise! Leave guns and bullets and the like every few feet or so, and at the end, leave a massive pile of loot in the corner all the way up as high as you can go! Then, clear out an area and just start laying out all kinds of body parts and dead ghouls. Make like a—Celtic design or something… only, like an entire kilometre long!"
Yeah… that would confuse anyone who saw it...
"Oh, and I could leave another cache of weapons at the center of the bodies! Something big… something real big…"
Hmm… she should probably get the bag of goodies first… and for that, she'd probably need to hit up something military-level or maybe a police headquarters in a shittier part of town.
She was reasonably sure they'd have something cool locked away somewhere… Perhaps even an RPG! Yeah, gangbangers would defiantly have something like that, which meant, at some point, cops would presumably confiscate it… o-or… should she go and commission something from a brainiac for it?
Frowning, Amanda watched as the nearest ghoul stumbled whilst reaching too far for her, causing a cascading tumble of the bumbling creatures, which did make her snicker a little. Though terrible to say, it was kind of like watching fat people fall over and keep falling over as their mass got the complete better of their too-small legs.
Mandy managed a transitioning giggle of amusement as she reached out and punched another of the zombies, causing yet another pileup.
Eh… it wasn't as cool as it had been the first time… and now, she was bored again…
Idly, she fingered one of the grenades she kept on her belt… seriously considering tossing it at a pileup of cars she was coming up on once all the ghouls were trying to walk through the mess, wondering if she'd get a GTA-style series of explosions!
It was probably worth the attempt… after all, what was the point of carrying the things around if she wasn't going to use them? That thought eventually led Mandy to wonder if she could create a plucky force of suicide bomber ghouls as a weaponized tool for war!
Rig up a few dead-man switches… find some more C-four… pick a fight with a town of assholes who were doing the whole indentured servitude thing, and just—see how things all played out…
"Holy christ! What the hell are you doing, lady?" A voice suddenly called out, and Mandy turned around just as she was working to tie a piece of string around a ghoul's hand and an already armed grenade, her arms pulling away right before the zombie got a good bite into it. But not yet sliding the pin back into the boom ball…
Standing on top of an RV that was conspicuously out of place amidst the gridlock of vehicles around it, was a tall and well-hatted fellow who was staring at the nearly fifty zombies she was parading around with wide and terrified eyes. He was already speaking rapidly into a walkie-talkie, voice shaky as much as it was disbelieving!
"Ay! Kim, Richie, Burt, all of y'all need to get the fuck back here asap! We got a woman leading a fucking army of undead right to our damned trailer!"
"We've got a—what?" Amanda heard a voice crackle over the speaker, her body swaying to the side to narrowly avoid a lunging ghoul who pitifully tripped and was now being trampled by its brethren.
No, there was zero honour among the dead, nor mercy for those who fell behind…
"We've got some fucking lunatic trying to kill us!" The cowboy proclaimed, a gun finding its way into his palm, which levelled on Amanda's person. "H-hey now, not another step further, or I'll shoot, dammit!"
Amanda saw how the man's hand was as shaky as a gunslinger high on peyote. And, the woman earnestly wondered if he'd have a higher chance of hitting her if she tried to dodge.
Yet, now, her interest was piqued...
She glanced at the cowboy standing before his fold-out chair, glanced at the ghouls still following her, and then figured there wouldn't be any actual harm if the guy stayed up there. It wasn't like the stupid things knew how to use ladders…
So, she kept walking, a slight smile forming on her face as she jerked as if about to dart to the side, causing the man to flinch, yank back on the trigger and miss by an entire quarter mile…
She just stared off to the distance, following along with the trajectory of his muzzle when he'd fired and squinting as if imagining she could see the tiny hole in a window fifteen stories or so up and further down the street…
"You shouldn't fire that thing anymore…" She called out, trying to offer him a semblance of advice. "Honestly, that revolver has what? Five shots left at best? I think the British had better accuracy when they were still filling boats with soldiers in lockstep! Best to wait until I'm three or so feet away..."
The man visibly flushed, swallowing as he once more did his best to level the gun at her as he wiped a fresh sleeve of sweat across his brow, voice filled with false bravado. "T-that there was just a warning shot! The next one won't miss, believe me!"
"And what if bullets don't even work on me?" She called back, lyrical voice filled with joviality, Mandy whipping out then popping the head of a nearby ghoul like a thick and pulpy pimple, all without even bothering to look.
The effect, she knew, would be devastating to his confidence. And the young woman practically caught the very moment the guy realized exactly how much danger he was in.
Life in the wasteland was an utter crapshoot, especially for those that others considered weak.
If you weren't with people who were strong, you were prey. And if you were strong, well, the rule of thumb, if you wanted to survive, was that there was always someone better than you were...
That naturally didn't help those of humanity who were, unfortunately for them, near enough to a baseline human. Those who had to find out the hard way that the best way to survive when encountering someone truly terrifying was to grovel and beg if they were mean, while kissing ass where appropriate... Or simply hoping they were beatific and genuinely nice, which was about as rare to come across as a unicorns foreskin.
That was to say, they didn't really exist.
Power corrupted one's morals like few things truly could. And the shitheads of the world pretty much managed to murder whatever good intentions might be remaining.
Universally, Mandy had found that most warlords were, in point of fact, self-titled 'good people'. And, possibly, they even had been once. However, reality was often subjective to the individual who most immediately observed it. And while a super who killed a supposed bandit might be heralded as a champion of his people, that bandit's family would undoubtedly think him a monster.
No, it was best to try and just do your own thing. Good and evil didn't really exist as a white-and-black graph you could easily understand. Truly, it was much more a spectrum of choosing the lesser evil life presented.
All there was—was people trying to do their best to stay alive. And, for the nameless cowboy, well, his face took a decided plummet toward horror…
"Don't worry! I don't take getting shot at personally!" She assured him, and she wasn't even lying about it. To her, catching a bullet was kind of like having someone you really didn't want to have a conversation with shout out you're name. More awkward than anything else, really… If he'd managed to kill her and she'd lost some of her shit then—maybe she'd of given him a new orifice or two, but as things stood, there wasn't much of a point. "Seriously! I'm just passing through; don't mind my ghouls; most of them will probably follow me!"
"The hell they will, you fucking lunatic! They're all gonna completely forget about you and try and tip me over!"
Mandy eyed the camper the guy was standing on, eyed the ghouls still trailing her, and mentally calculated the odds of that actually happening. Probably only a forty or so percent chance… and that was assuming none of them actually followed her.
Still, the guy did seem to be a bit of a squirrely sort, so maybe he'd manage to attract them all… ghouls did like it when their prey squirmed… sort of like fish did worms.
"You aren't a pyrokinetic, are you? Or a flyer?"
"No, I ain't no bleeding pyro or a sky-chicken! I'm a god's honest brawler!"
"How strong?" Mandy asked, rather conversationally, as she continued to lead her plucky hoard towards the RV without a care in the world.
"Can lift a dang car all my own! So, you get near enough; I ain't gonna need this here colt to put you in the dirt!"
Well, that meant—fuck all to Mandy!
Lifting a car really wasn't that great of an initial opener, so far as boasting went, because that usually meant it was supposed to scare her. Which also meant that it was the best he really had.
The thing was, while durability and strength usually did walk hand in hand, she'd seen brawlers who could throw a car across the street! Just lifting one, at least in her experience, meant that a forty-five to the skull in and around a thirty or so foot proximity would end him the same as it would anyone weaker than he was.
Plus, admitting that he was a brawler meant that he didn't have anything special up his sleeve... Obviously, this guy hadn't been around the block as much as he liked to think...
Against ghouls? Well, he'd probably actually do quite well for himself in close-quarters combat—until he was eventually overwhelmed, slipping on intestines and blood as the zombies began biting through the softer parts of his skin. His hands? Probably not much of a chance. Under the arm or the neck? Well—he'd probably want to avoid finding out if their teeth would actually get through…
Brawlers were tough; there was no question about it. But like everyone, save for the very cream of the crop, conventional firearms could and would still be deadly. After all, humans had been making projectiles that could penetrate tanks for decades before mutants started showing up!
And maybe she was even wrong with her estimate! Perhaps she'd need to use one of her grenades and shove it down his throat while in frozen time to truly put him down. Either way, she really wasn't scared…
"Would it be mean to ask if the car you were referring to was one of those tiny smart cars or, something actually cool? Because if it wasn't like, you know, a van or something…"
"It was a damned pickup truck!"
"Oh, for real?"
"Yeah, for real!" The cowboy huffed, smug self-satisfaction and confidence beginning to radiate from his voice.
Amanda just grinned at that, shrugging off her pack before freezing time right as the guy was about to say something else.
Cracking her neck, she pulled out her poney gun, placing it softly on the bag before drawing her less important firearms. Breathing in through her nose, Mandy took a short moment to center herself before she began unloading on the frozen monsters!
Her guns clicked dry within heartbeats, new ones finding their way to her hands as fast as she could sheath the old and draw again, bullet casing flying sideways then pausing in the air as they left her influence!
Smoke filled the world around her as Zombies died in droves! Then, she popped into a different iteration of herself, drawing again and repeating the process, unleashing a hailstorm of devastation upon the brains of the mindless ghouls before her, double tapping, triple tapping, aiming for eyeballs and foreheads, circling the monster's three times over while ensuring no rounds would make their way towards the brawler still on his RV.
Then, she went back to where she'd started, planted her feet just so, remembered the bag, ditched the new one, then went back to prepare a pose as she released her hold on time, and an eruption of gunfire deadened the world to silence!
Amanda couldn't hear so much as a thing as, all around her, smoke and blood and casings flew in virtually all directions! The modest hoard of ghouls she'd been tagging along with suddenly erupted in a spray of violence and overwhelming prejudice as the young woman's ears rang with undeniable inner ear damage!
One hand cocked on her hip with almost suggestive intensity, the other holding up her sig as though she'd managed the whole feat with nothing but it alone; she stood there, smiling sweetly.
The best part about actually taking the time to load her guns? All, if not most, of her theoretical selves were just as locked and loaded as she was!
Mandy could go months on the same clip of ammo and really only ran out if she was being lazy about it. Which she admittedly was prone be. Still, watching the smirking certainty of the brawler's growing confidence freeze as though she'd stopped time again whilst all the ghouls detonated in a vortex of lead and rupturing heads within the same instant, no less, was immensely satisfying!
Yet she was far from done! Once she was positive the guy had taken it all in, his body moving an involuntary step back from the terrifying and presumed speedster before himself, Mandy really got to work...
She froze time again, clearing out all the bodies, some of which hadn't yet hit the floor, dragging them, much as it was difficult to do so, and hiding them in a nearby alleyway.
It was hard work, especially for herself, but it would be worth it in the end! There wasn't much she could do about the blood, but that didn't really matter so much. These things didn't need to be perfect…
After, Amanda dug through the pack she'd stashed, pulling out a bottle of beer she'd been hanging onto and climbing up the side of the RV. She smiled, cracking it and placing the thing on the roof, swapping a near dozen times to add more and more, empty of course, and all to really sell the whole thing!
Then, she unfroze time, ending right beside the cowboy's face as, from one moment to the next, the street suddenly vanished of everything but casings, smoke, red mist and asphalt…
"They'll never believe you!" She sang in her softest, most child-like voice, immediately causing the brawler to leap from his feet! Sending all the empty bottles of beer toppling around him!
The man spun in terror but froze again in glacial time as Mandy stopped it and hopped back down off the roof.
Then, she promptly sat herself on a far enough away car that she was pretty sure the cowboy couldn't hit, even if he tried.
Again, time resumed. And what she got was something that would keep her cackling like a witch for years to come!
The man almost tripped and fell off the camper's roof as the clinking clack of bottles filled the air, the brawler's voice shrill and calling out with pubescent crackles of fear!
"Holy Christ, how did you—" He paused, eyes filled with horror and surprise, head swivelling whilst doubtlessly trying to keep track of the stranger before swearing, looking back to the zombies but—hesitating as though he'd forgotten they were all dead, only now they were also all gone.
For a time, he just—gaped, poise utterly crumbling to the point his hat dipped on his head… thin, trout-like shoulders folding in on themselves before he finally spotted her...
His gun rose, eyes the size of saucers, arm trembling like a meth addict two days without a fix! He tried to say something—babbled unintelligibly for a few moments, then jerked as a semi-familiar voice crackled over the speaker!
"Jon! Just hold on, buddy! We're gonna be there in only a minute! Stay calm and stay down, Livi's already flying up to a rooftop for overwatch. Don't start a fight!"
The poor man tried to reach back for his radio, he really did, yet his fingers just kept fumbling over the transmitter as his eyes unblinkingly watched Amanda like she were some nightmare that would approach each and every time he blinked.
"Hey guys! We ugh… I think we might have a bit of a—hmhmhm… situation with Jon…"
There was a silence as Amanda merrily kicked her feet, too short to touch the ground while seated on the hood, but that just made her so much more unassuming. Sometimes, being a short stack did have its advantages.
"He's not—dead, is he?"
"Pfft! No! More like shitfaced!" a feminine and chuckling woman replied. "He's just standing on the RV, tweaking out while pointing his gun at some random person sitting on a car! There's, ugh, a lot of empty beer bottles all scattered about and such…"
"You fucking kidding me?"
"Hah… nope!"
"Jon, you fucking dickhead! Did you seriously find a whole case of beer and not wait to share any with you're fucking teammates?"
"I—I-I…"
"Shit… sounds like the big guy got himself into some seven-percenters… He can't even speak right anymore!"
"Carlos!" A snapping and authoritative voice called out, "Are you close enough to see what's going on?"
"What? Don't trust my eyes, oh fearless leader?"
"No, Im giving Jon the benefit of the damned doubt! Else, I'm liable to break his fucking eye socket when I get back there!"
"Ugh—yeah, so—Livi's telling the truth, yeah? Ain't no army of ghouls out here! But Jon is definitely losing his shit, man…"
"Well, don't go near him! You're a speedster, not a brawler like he is! Fucking hell… Alright, I'm almost down!"
Amanda watched as a man of Hispanic roots blurred into sight not a few meters away. His speed—fast but not so quick as to be invisible to the naked eye.
She waved at the guy, still effecting an air of innocence as she watched the speedster hesitantly wave back… then, he turned to his comrade still standing on the RV and shouted, "Jon, the fuck man! Put that thing down! You're pointing it at a little girl!"
"Adult girl, actually!" Amanda corrected—albeit without annoyance.
H-honestly, it was an easy miss… Given her five-foot-two height and svelte size, and that the curves that she most certainly did possess were all, of course, relative and hidden… well… yeah...
She was also wearing a rather ambiguous outfit, with only her thighs really exposed so far as shape went, and she'd met plenty of dudes with luscious legs, so, moot point…
If anything, the giveaway vis-à-vis her gender was her voice. And, sure, while her hair had grown out a bit in this iteration of herself, she still liked to keep it shorter than her jaw. Really, the only thing people could immediately tell about her was that she was small, of caucasian descent, and had wheat-gold hair. Other than that, she was fairly anonymous!
For his part, Carlos just spared her a passing glance over his shoulder, eyeing her for a moment, then shrugging. "Well, sorry, but that still doesn't make it any better, you know? Jon man, c'mon! Fucking put the gun down!"
"S-she's a monster!" The cowboy accused, jerking his revolver toward her with an outstanding lack of hand-eye coordination. "She killed them all, Carlos! A-all hundred of them! Then, got rid of the bodies in the blink of an eye!"
"Okay, buddy, I get it!" Carlos agreed, holding out both hands as though trying to calm down a growling dog, "But, just level with me here, put the gun down, and I'll come up there, and we can talk this through!"
"N-no! She's… I can't look away! That's when she does it! It's when you look away!"
"Fuuuuck… Ay, Jon's pretty worked up over here… I don't know if he got into some old molly or what, but… he's really out of sorts…"
"I thought Jon hated drugs…"
"Me too, but right now, writings on the walls… something's got him spooked, and I ain't see nothing down here but a girl really unconcerned about getting shot…"
"He already tried! Missed by a mile!" Amanda sang, still indulging in the theatre of it all! Nothing quite hit like a good murder mystery! Granted, there hadn't been a murder—yet... However, the effect, as it was, felt largely the same!
There was a snort that crackled through the airwaves as Amanda's quip was obviously heard by someone near enough to earshot. The speedster, who was still standing a respectable distance away, glanced in her direction for a moment before shaking his head…
She, of course, knew what he was thinking. That ever so humble ember of uncertainty flaring as he pondered if she really were somehow responsible for his friend's state of being—which she absolutely and unrepentantly was!
However, that was why the beer bottles!
They were what really sold the whole ruse.
On its own, who could be certain? Maybe she really was a terrifying monster of eldritch origins toying with those far weaker than herself. Who was to really say?
Yet, with all the empties scattered about? Well, it was complex for the human mind to outright ignore evidence like that. Not unless you were a zealot. But those people hadn't really been around as of late…
"Ah… maybe you should try and get the random to safety? I mean, I know she looks totally calm right now, but…"
"No! Don't go near her!" Jon screamed, taking a step and tripping backwards over a sideways bottle as his arms windmilled for purchase! His revolver barked with an angry retort, his fingers instinctually clamping down on whatever they could, but moments before, she saw Carlos blur into motion!
He was up the ladder and knocking his comrade off the trailer as fast as her eye could track him, his form leaving a continual afterimage as he flew back down to the ground, right as she heard a discernable 'oof' of wind being knocked from the cowboy's lungs.
They were only gone for half a moment, but as quick as, well, a speedster, the young man darted back around the RV, stopping to unload the remaining bullets in his newly acquired python before shoving it in a belt.
"Nice…" Livi crackled, voice more amused than anything else. "Hey, I'm coming down. There's nothing around as far as I can see, so, no point to me hiding up here!"
"Yeah yeah… Jon? No hard feelings, brother! But I'd of wanted you to do the same to me if the shoe fit, you know?"
Nothing came as a reply, at least not from the downed brawler; however, Amanda was reasonably sure the fall hadn't really hurt him.
Super strength didn't necessarily mean one got super muscles. At least, not in the conventional comic book style where people were walking walls of damned meat. For his build and weight, the guy's durability would probably ensure he walked away from the tumble with little more than a sore ass.
Thus, Amanda was only slightly disappointed that her fun seemed to be coming to an end…
If the cowboy wasn't willing to play along, then—things would just peter out and fall off. Still, it had been pretty fun while it lasted!