The Ultimate X-Men Read online

  Hayward downed the last of his Scotch and stood, moving over to the bar to make himself another. With his back to Remy he continued talking. “I can tell you don’t understand. I loved my daughter more than anything. The thought of her dying was impossible for me even to consider.”

  “She still dead, homnie,” Remy said.

  “Only technically,” Hayward said, spinning around to face the X-Man.

  Remy held the intense, blazing gaze of Hayward for a moment. The man was obsessed with this topic, that much was very clear. There seemed no point in arguing it. Inside Hayward knew his daughter was dead and that knowledge was eating at him like maggots in a coffin. And Remy knew that the children, once zombies, were monsters. They might look like the children they used to be, but they were just dead flesh walking. Nothing more.

  Remy stood and stepped toward the door through which

  THE UlTinm X-flff!

  they had entered. “So why slit her t’roat an’ put her out, bait for de other child’n? What went wrong?”

  “My formula was stolen,” Hayward said. His shoulders sagged and he moved over and sat down heavily in his chair. “It was meant only for Cornelia. No one else.”

  “Who stole it?

  ‘ ‘A lab tech,” Hayward said, almost laughing. ‘ ‘A nobody who is now dead and will remain that way. ”

  “But dose childr’n out dere de walkin’ dead.”

  Hayward sipped at his drink, as if deciding to go on or not. Then he asked, “You ever hear of the Arrington?” Remy felt himself shudder at the mention of the name. Arrington was a combination gang and family. Their leader, a gentleman named Lang, claimed that the Arrington, under old deeds dating from before the War between the States, had title to most of the area where the newer sections of the city had been built. Years ago the courts had rejected the family claim. So the family and their friends, back before Remy was even born, had gone underground, working to retake what they claimed was theirs without much caring how, or who got killed. But for the last five years they had been fairly silent members of the New Orleans crime world.

  “Yeah,” Remy said, “I hear o’ dem. I don’ much like w'hat I hear.”

  Hayward nodded, staring down into the golden liquid in his glass. “I agree. The stupid lab tech thought he could sell my formula to them. They killed him and took it before I could retrieve my property.”

  “So why children?”

  “My formula only works on children or young adults.” Remy stood and began to pace, trying to give himself a

  STILLBORN II THE HIST

  moment to think. He’d just had two run-ins with the Arrington, and both times people had been killed. There was no telling what they’d do with the ability to raise dead children. But one thing for sure, they’d use the children to take parts of the city back by force, parts they felt belonged to them.

  Remy stopped his pacing in front of Hayward. “What exactly dey plannin’?”

  Hayward looked suddenly tired, his eyes glazed over, his mind a long distance away as he slowly shook his head. “I don’t know, but two weeks after they stole the serum, children started turning up missing. Lots of children, mostly from the projects. I never meant for my work to kill children.” He took a deep, shuddering breath and then, in a very soft voice, as if he were only talking to himself, said, “I just wanted to save my own daughter.”

  Now Remy understood even more. Not only were the demons of his daughter eating at Hayward, but the deaths of other children now rode his mind, smothering him slowly but surely.

  “So what’s Cornelia doin’?”

  Hayward seemed to shake himself and glance up at the X-Man standing over him. “She’s locating their operational headquarters for us. I have a force ready to move in when she’s in place.”

  Remy knew where the Arrington were mainly headquartered. It was a huge old building just outside the French Quarter. At one time it had been a warehouse, and from the outside it still looked that way. He’d been inside and had no desire to return. But he said nothing.

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  Hazard stood. “I think it’s time we go back to work, don’t you?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he moved through the door and into the white lab beyond. Remy followed. There was nothing else for him to do.

  Twenty minutes later the signal came in.

  “On the big screen,” Hayward said, and on a nearby wall a map of the city suddenly appeared. After a moment a blinking light showed.

  “That’s not possible,” one tech said. “That’s outside our door.”

  “What?” Hayward said. He stared at the huge map for a moment and then made for the black arch leading into the street. But Remy was faster and he broke through and into the humid night air first, his hands on his cards, ready.

  The mist still filled the dark street; again his eyes took a moment to adjust to the extreme difference in light. He moved against the building and crouched, letting all his senses cover the area while his eyes adjusted.

  There was no one moving. Nothing.

  Hayward blundered into the street, followed by two of his guards. It was then that Remy saw the head.

  Cornelia’s head.

  It sat on the shallow curb, blank eyes staring at the doorway and her father.

  Clamped in her teeth was a small golden button, most likely the bug Hayward had been using to track her.

  Now she was truly dead. There would be no bringing her back this time. Not even the walking dead could con-

  STUUORH in Tlf HIST

  tinue when their heads were cut off. No magic was that powerful.

  Hayward slumped to the sidewalk and picked up his daughter’s head, cradling it against his chest as he sobbed.

  There was nothing more Remy could do here. Hayward and his men were out of the picture, at least for the moment.

  Remy had discovered why he’d been pulled back to New Orleans. Silently, he stepped back into the shadows and moved away. As with any good thief, no one saw him go.

  The mist covered the old cotton warehouse district like a thick film. The biggest warehouse in the center loomed like a block In the fog, massive and very dangerous. The wood of the loading docks had decayed and rotted away. Someone long ago had boarded over the high windows on all the buildings. For the untrained eye, the warehouse district looked as if had been deserted for years, just another example of the decay of the city, standing amid many other deserted buildings.

  But Remy’s eye was not untrained. Through the cracks in the old wood he could see the reinforced steel and concrete walls of the main Arrington building. Hidden cameras covered every inch of area around the building. Invisible laser beam sensors crisscrossed the streets a block in both directions. Even a rat couldn’t move in this area of abandoned buildings without being tracked.

  But Remy had been trained in the thieves’ guild, his skills honed as Gambit with the X-Men. He was much, much better at getting in somewhere unseen than any common rat.

  THE ULTIMATE X HCH

  Carefully, slowly, an inch at a time, he made his way along a wall, passing over and under laser beams while never moving fast enough to trigger a motion detector. He stayed in the shadows of the wall knowing that, to anyone watching a camera, he would be nothing more than shadow.

  After leaving Hayward, he had considered just barging into the main building, fighting. That was more his style, more his recent training. But he didn’t know exactly what was going on with the children and he couldn’t take a chance of any of the live ones getting hurt until he knew.

  It took him over an hour, but he finally made the rear door of the building immediately next to the Arrington headquarters. He knew of a tunnel leading from each of the neighboring buildings into the main one. It would be his best way in.

  With an easy twist, he picked the complex lock of the door and slipped inside. The place smelled of mold and decay. It was the building closest to the river and farthest from the normal traffic patterns of the French
Quarter and the main areas of New Orleans. It would be the least-used building for entering the main compound. He counted on that.

  He crouched against the wall, waiting for his eyes to adjust. His senses told him instantly he was not alone. “So much for goin’ in unannounced,” he said softly to himself.

  “Remy LeBeau,” a voice said, echoing through the darkness. “Nice of you to come back to see me.”

  Remy stood, his hands in his pockets on his cards. The voice belonged to Lang, the fat, chipmunked-faced leader of the Arrington. But it had been broadcast. Lang would never risk himself in the open like this. Remy could see ten

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  outlines in the dim light, all holding machine guns. Lang had sent his goons. But he had underestimated Remy by sending only ten.

  “I’m so sorry, however,” Lang’s voice continued, “that we won’t have a chance to chat.”

  Remy jumped, hard and fast, while at the same time sending glowing cards at where he’d spotted the shadows.

  First the explosions of gunfire, then of Remy’s cards filled the huge, empty warehouse.

  In a tight ball, Remy flipped over twice in midair before landing and rolling behind an old column.

  The bright orange flashes quickly showed Remy that he’d taken out most of the men with his first throws.

  But he needed a diversion for just a moment longer.

  Flipping energized cards at the remaining Arrington men as well as at distant walls and camera locations, Remy moved quickly into a cloud of smoke from the explosions.

  Then between explosions he slipped down the stairs.

  At the bottom of the stairs two men with guns ready stood guarding an open tunnel. He was on them so fast, they didn’t even get a shot off before he rendered them unconscious.

  Taking both the guns from the men, he quickly kineti-cized the energy in them and then, With all his strength, threw the guns down the dark tunnel toward the main Arrington building.

  He stood to one side as the explosion sent an impact blast back his direction so hard, it destroyed the old wooden stairs he’d just come down.

  At a full run, flipping energized cards ahead of him into

  the smoke as he went, he crossed through the tunnel and under the main building compound.

  A main staircase led upward, but it was blocked by a huge steel door at the top. Five of Lang’s guards already lay unconscious around the bottom of the stairs and still no sign at all of the children. Or the zombies.

  He needed to think of them as zombies, but somehow he just couldn’t get the image of children out of his mind.

  He glanced around* then picked up a metal folding chair from a guard station. There was no point in being subtle now, not after this explosive entrance.

  He quickly changed the potential energy of the chair into kinetic and, with a quick spin like a hammer throw, flung it at the steel door at the top of the stairs.

  The explosion sent the door smashing inward.

  Immediately on the other side machine guns opened up a deadly rain of fire.

  Remy dove for a nearby tunnel and waited, tucked against a wall, as the area under the building was riddled with hundreds of bullets.

  Finally the firing slowed and stopped. Six men, obviously more of Lang’s stooges, appeared at the top of the stairs and looked down.

  Spinning out six energized cards with a quick flick of the wrist, Remy took all six out. Then, flicking cards through the opening above, he went up the stairs and to the right, rolling to stay out of the line of fire, all the time flipping card after card.

  The firing stopped in a dozen explosions as he came up hard against a concrete wall. He remained crouched, letting his senses scan the smoke-fogged room. This assault felt like

  ST1LLB0RR III TI1E HIST

  an evening in the Danger Room back at the Xavier Institute. Here, just like there, you never knew what was going to come at you at any moment.

  Then, through the smoke, there was movement. Someone was slowly coming toward him. Remy crouched, ready for anything.

  It took a moment for his mind to register what was coming at him, then a moment longer to get past the shock of

  What appeared to be a young woman in a white prom dress stumbled through the smoke directly at his position.

  It was Cornelia. Or, more accurately, Cornelia’s body.

  Her head was missing.

  Her body stumbled forward, as if under mechanical control of a bad director in the worst B-movie.

  Remy stared for a moment at where her head should have been, remembering her smile at the airport and how he had kissed her hand.

  Then he realized that in her hands she now carried two very large and very live explosive charges.

  With a quick flip of two energized cards, he hit both charges, while rolling as fast and hard as he could away to the left.

  The concussion from the huge explosion smashed him against the wall. He banged his head hard on the concrete, but managed to come up running. Ahead was a wide double door made of ornate wood.

  At a run he hit the door with both feet, sending it smashing inward. If he remembered right, behind this door was Lang’s personal office.

  He had remembered right.

  Six guards flanked Lang, but before any of them could even get off a shot at the intruder, Remy flicked energized cards against their chests, sending each smashing backward in a muffled explosion.

  The explosions also knocked Lang backward and Remy was over him in a flash, pulling him back to his feet and holding him up above the desk. In the two years since Remy had seen Lang, the man had gained another hundred pounds. Now he seemed to be more a ball of flesh than anything else.

  “Dat. anyway to greet a guest?” Remy asked with a smile.

  Lang shook his head no, his fat chipmunk cheeks folding and unfolding with the motion.

  Remy dropped him into his overstuffed chair and with one foot shoved him hard back against the wall. Lang’s head banged the wood and then lolled forward. His eyes were glazed and blood dripped from his mouth where he’d bitten a fat cheek.

  “My motto,” Remy said, bending down right into the fat man’s face, “is live and let live. Comprendez-vous?”

  Lang took a moment, then finally nodded, his beady eyes focusing on the X-Man.

  “I’d never be here, but now I hear tell you take children.”

  “None of your business, thief,” Lang managed to say, spitting blood as he did.

  “Ah, dere you wrong. Children is all our business. Harmin’ children harms me. Harms my family. Harms my city. Now where are dey?”

  Lang just spat out blood. “All dead and waiting to kill you, LeBeau.”

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  Remy grabbed the fat man by the collar and picked him up with one hand, holding him pressed up against the wall. With the other hand he took out a charged card and waved it in front of Lang’s face before tucking it carefully into the rolls of blubber around the fat man’s belt.

  At the sight of the card the man’s small eyes grew large and he swallowed. “We can talk, LeBeau.”

  Remy nodded. “ ’Til my arm gets tired, fat man. But if you give me a wrong answer, my arm gets real tired. Now, de children?”

  Remy saw the fat man’s eyes flicker in the direction of the main door. With a quick flick of the wrist, Remy sent five charged cards spinning in that direction. The explosions and a short, cut off scream made him smile at Lang. “You a fat one. I t’ink I drop you now. Yes?”

  “No!” Lang said. “The children are in the next building over, toward town. But they’i'e all dead. All zombies.” Remy pretended to almost drop Lang and the fat man squeezed his eyes closed, then opened them again.

  “Sorry,” Remy said. “You sure need to lose de weight. Now what else?” As he asked he took another charged card out of his pocket, waved it in front of Lang’s face, and slipped it into the fat man’s belt beside the first.

  Lang’s eyes got even wider than
before. “Without another dose of the formula real soon, they won’t even be zombies. They’ll just be dead.”

  “So where de medicine?”

  Lang swallowed and glanced to the left at a wooden door leading into a back room. “Back there, in the lab.” “You lyin’ to me, homme?” Remy said, pretending to drop the fat man.

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  Sweat poured from Lang’s face as he shook his head. “LeBeau, I’m telling you the truth. They’re already dead and will be for certain in thirty minutes unless I take them their next dose.”

  Remy nodded and, with a flick of his arm, tossed the fat man in a swan dive over his head into the center of the office. The guy let out a short scream before he hit.

  The resulting muffled explosion made Remy smile.

  Without looking back, he went through the door into the lab. The fat man had been telling the truth. The place looked like a chemistry lab, with one large table running down the middle. Beakers full of fluids filled the table. Remy stood in the door studying it all, then stepped inside and picked up a metal stool. Holding the stool up, he energized it until it glowed brightly.

  And for a moment, he hesitated, thinking of the children. But now they were already dead. All he was doing was stopping monsters like Lang from using their walking bodies for what ever purpose they wanted. Remy hated with his deepest passion anyone who could hurt children.

  With as hard a throw as he could manage he spun the metal stool at the center of the chemicals.

  Then he tumbled backward and out of the way of the explosion.

  Glass and smoke filled the room and he turned and ran. There was no telling what sort of poisons were in there burning now.

  He paused in the outer area only long enough to make a quick call to the police, telling them there was a fire and where they could find the children.

  At least this way their parents could give the kids a de-

  STILLSORn III Tit niST

  cent burial. That was more than Hayward would be able to do for Cornelia.

  Remy waited outside in the shadows of a nearby empty warehouse until the police had fought their way inside.