Shit," Ollie muttered as he fired another explosive arrow outside the window. "Did you manage to get through?"
"No," she muttered. "They've taken down the local cell towers and they're jamming the League signal."
She leaned out a window and screamed, and Ollie was glad that he'd had his people design special earplugs. The last thing he needed was to lose even more of his hearing. Being married to a woman with sonic screams wasn't good for his ears. Neither was being exposed to explosions.
He'd never realized that Dinah could scream loud enough to actually disintegrate flesh; she'd been holding back for years apparently.
At least he'd come with the right kind of arrows. They'd been investigating random reports in various small towns all over the country for the past several weeks, and before this they hadn't found anything. He'd made sure to load up for war just in case, a decision that was proving to be wise.
Finding a ghost town at noon had clued them in that this time was different.
They'd managed to gather survivors hiding all over town and gotten them loaded into the local bank's vault with the door cracked open. Once they closed the vault door air wouldn't last that long, not with thirty people afraid and having panicked breathing, and with nobody on the outside able to get them out they'd die.
That was better than the alternative.
They'd been investigating for the League, but it'd still take time for their expected call-in time; longer than they had.
"Everything all right out there?" he called back.
Roy was guarding the back along with Waylon. They'd been close for a long time, ever since Roy had gone after Killer Croc looking to commit suicide by crocodile and Waylon had refused. He'd been his sponsor until he'd deteriorated too much.
It was amazing that Waylon was even able to volunteer for this, even if it had just been a last minute tag along that was supposed to have amounted to nothing.
Elixir made Oliver nervous.
Superman could destroy cities if he was determined enough, but there were people almost as powerful as he was who would stop him, even if it was just the villains. But other than Zatanna none of the heroes could do anything about viruses or bacteria, and even Zatanna couldn't do that much.
Taylor Hebert could destroy the world in a matter of days, and they still didn't know much about who she'd once been, although they were learning more about who she was.
Learning from the fey meant becoming more like them, though, and it made him more nervous and not less.
But what she'd done for Waylon had been a good thing.
It had been shocking to learn that Waylon could switch back and forth between forms now. It was even more shocking to find that Ollie actually liked him on a personal level. He'd done a lot with what he'd been given, and since becoming human again he'd been doing his best to catch up.
Apparently he wanted to educate himself to be better for Mary Dahl when she was physically old enough for him to be comfortable having a physical relationship. Hebert had made him younger recently so they'd be a better fit. He was studying to get his GED and Roy was helping him with that.
"They're gathering just out of range," Dinah said.
"They'll probably try coming in through the roof," Ollie said grimly.
This town was old enough that their bank was part of a long row of brick buildings in the center of town. The good part of that was that there weren't any windows on the sides and they only had to worry about the front entrance and about the smaller windows on the second floor and the back entrance that had no windows.
Most of the population of a town of four thousand had surrounded them, black and mutated into things that were stronger than human. The thirty survivors in the vault was all that was left.
"Why haven't they attacked yet?" he asked. "Roy and I have limited ammunition, and they haven't shown any sign of caring about their individual members."
Waylon was stronger than these things and the back door was small enough that he could probably wipe a lot of them out since only one or two of them at a time could fight him. They might worry about not being able to get through his scales. They'd keep up a token force back there to keep them from all escaping, but their main thrust had to be either the wide front entrance or the windows above.
If he were them he'd have their monsters go in through the buildings on both ends of the blocks, get to the roofs and then make their ways in that way. They'd probably crawl in through the office windows on the second floor and then attack from behind while he and Dinah were trying to defend the front door.
He'd have already been up there except for the presence of the civilians in the safe. Archers worked better firing down and with the advantage of height.
They didn't have anything that could block the front door. He could try to jury rig one of his arrows to try to weld the door frame to the door, but the things outside would be able to get through the plexiglass pretty quickly and they seemed to be able to sense life.
They'd go directly for the people in the safe.
He could buy them some time by welding the back door shut; that one was made of metal and there weren't windows back there. It wouldn't hold forever; the things out there were weaker than Waylon but still stronger than humans.
"I'm going to seal up the back," he said after a moment. "That way we can get Waylon and Roy up here to defend the front and you and I can go upstairs. I'm pretty sure they're going to attack from up top."
She nodded grimly.
Even with that, it didn't look good for them. There were four thousand of the enemy outside, thirty remaining civilians to protect, and help wasn't coming.
He rushed to the back.
"Go up front," he said grimly to Roy. "I'm going to seal up this exit and then we're going to have you and Waylon here protect the first floor while Dinah and I head to the second floor. They're likely to attack from the roof."
Roy didn't say anything, but the look he gave him showed that he knew the odds. It made him regret bringing him; it hadn't been that long since Roy had gotten his daughter back and now she was going to lose him.
Oliver pulled a flame arrow out and began dissembling it, along with one of his paste arrows.
"Sorry you came?" he asked without looking at Waylon.
"Eh, we'll be fine," Waylon said, sniffing the air.
"You maybe, but the rest of us aren't armored," Oliver said. He hesitated. "If you get out, tell… eh, never mind."
"I already called Taylor," Waylon said. "We'll be fine."
"What?" Oliver demanded. "How did you get through to her?"
"She's like Bloody Mary," he said. "Say her name three times and maybe she'll show up. It's a fey thing."
"Really?" Oliver stared at the towering lizard beside him. "Why haven't I heard about this?"
"She doesn't just give her number out to anybody," Waylon said. His face was mobile enough that he could smirk. "That's how you get spammers."
"How long ago did you call her?"
"Thirty minutes ago," Waylon said. "She should be here any time."
"Did you tell her to call the League?" Oliver asked.
Waylon put a hand on the door, which suddenly shook from the things outside trying to get in.
"She's got Batman's number, maybe," Waylon said. "She probably won't need it."
Oliver kept working on the door, his mind racing.
"That's a lot of confidence in one girl. You've seen the things outside," he said. "They're infectious."
It was a worry.
What happened if Superman wasn't immune to whatever this was? They could destroy these things only to lose everything.
He finished with the door.
It was an older door and heavily reinforced and the paste he was filling the crack with was stronger than steel. A little heat made it set.
Once he made sure it was going to hold, he gestured to Waylon. He could hear the Dinah screaming again at the front.
"Let's go!"
A moment later he found himself racing up the stairs even as Dinah turned more of the things into a horrid kind of meat paste. She was probably going to have trouble with that later, especially if it turned out that Elixir could cure them. But at the moment her responsibility was to save the thirty people in the vault.
Waylon grabbed an entire marble counter and ripped it out of the floor with a massive crack. He swung it. It had to weigh hundreds or even thousands of pounds, and it was cracking under its own weight even as he shoved it in the entrance, reducing the number of monsters that could enter. They'd have to crawl over it to get through, and that'd make it easier to deal with them, especially if they left the bodies.
He and Dinah dashed up the stairs.
Windows were already being smashed in. There were four offices on the second floor facing out to Main street. They stood on the landing waiting. It was a standard sized hallway, which limited how many of them could attack at once and funneled them in to the attack.
This was Dinah's time to shine, though the cost to her soul was going to be high.
At least there weren't any dogs up here. Those had been horrifying, maybe even more than the people, but they wouldn't have been able to get up on the roof.
He'd have expected the bodies to stink, but research on the past incidents suggested that bacteria wouldn't grow in the bodies. From the moment of infection the bodies began to mutate from the inside out, like they were being cored out.
STAR labs did good work. They were still trying to research a cure although that was going a lot slower than some of the things they'd done in the past.
You could tell how long victims had been infected by how much visible mutation there was. It looked like most of the most mutated corpses had been elderly, probably being who hadn't been out in the community much. Older people sometimes tended to get cold easily, which gave them a reason to in long sleeves, and they tended to be a lot less social.
People were a lot less likely to notice them changing since they usually were retired and didn't have to show up to work every day.
Dinah screamed again, and he could feel the building around them vibrate.
Ollie grimaced.
She had some control over how much of a cone her power covered, but there was a little splash back, and Sheetrock was already falling from the ceiling. If she made the ceiling collapse it'd leave a big hole, and their ability to funnel the attackers would be reduced.
They'd be swarmed and then that was it.
Dinah wouldn't be able to scream forever, either. She'd eventually get tired and her voice would go hoarse.
He kept his bow ready just in case any of them were fast enough to get by while she was taking a breath.
"You know I love you babe, right?" he said.
She glanced at him and smirked.
Screaming again, the entire building felt like it was shaking.
The roof in front of them collapsed, crushing the things that had been in the hallway, but opening the path for hundreds more.
The roof above had been covered with them, and they now looked over the edge to stare at them, lips curled back in an eternal rictus as the skin had dried and started to shrink. Their skin had turned a putrid gray, with the older ones turning black.
"It's been great," he said to Dinah, and he pulled out an explosive arrow. "Let's give em hell."
Never let it be said that he didn't go down fighting. It might seem useless, but every one of these things they took down before they died was another one their friends wouldn't have to fight. One bite could be the difference between defeat or victory.
He launched arrow after arrow, explosions taking out ten of the things at once. But quivers didn't hold that much ammunition, and it was only a matter of time before he was out.
Above them the sky darkened, and there was a sound of a billion wings.
The things stopped and looked up in unison.
The swarm hit with the force of a tsunami. It felt like it covered the entire city, but it didn't come within five feet of him or Dinah.
"Skitter," he muttered.
One of the monsters lunged out of the swarm, only to be dragged back by a massive arm covered in a chitinous exoskeleton. From the size of the arm whatever it was had to be at least the size of Waylon.
He was tense, looking this way and that, but he couldn't see anything.
Five tense minutes passed, until eventually the clouds around them began to disperse.
There was no sign of the things, but as he cautiously stepped up onto a piece of rubble , he pushed himself up to the roof.
It looked like there were hundreds of men in trench coats standing on all the roofs in town. They all turned to stare at him at the same time. As an archer he had excellent eyesight, and a closer look showed that the resemblance to anything human was purely superficial. A moment later they all faded from view with a shimmering of the air.
"It's taken care of," a voice said by his ear.
He whirled, but his bow arm was held by a grip like a vice. It was like trying to move an iron bar welded into a wall. Given her weight he should have been able to flip her over, but he couldn't.
"Calm down," she said. "It'll be fine."
He felt his heart suddenly start to slow.
"Elixir?"
"Yeah," she said.
Dinah was staring at both of them.
The girl hadn't bothered to even put on any kind of a super suit. She was just wearing a black hoodie and a t-shirt with Death of the Endless on it.
That had to have been custom made; even most heroes didn't know what she looked like, much less the general public. Ollie had met her once; it had surprised him that she was so kind. It was comforting in a way to know that the journey to the other side wouldn't be so bad at least.
"What the hell was that?" he asked.
"Me saving your ass," she said. "I'll need a look at the survivors. Some of them could be infectious."
She still had her hand on his arm, and suddenly his hearing sharpened, even in his left ear that had been bothering him for a while. Aches and pains he hadn't even realized he had vanished, and the fatigue that had been slowing his reactions washed away.
"Could we have saved any of them?" Dinah asked.
Elixir shook her said.
"Maybe in the first three days but the infection cores the brain out and replaces it with something else. I didn't see anybody that looked human enough to be saved. These people were dead long before they decided to kill everybody else in town."
Dinah relaxed a little.
"Can you cure it?"
"Yeah, in the first three days like I said," she said. "But I'm going to have to come up with a vaccine. Right now I can cure you but you'll still get reinfected if you get bitten or exposed to their saliva. I wouldn't drink the water here. This thing is really infectious, but not so bad that a single zombie spitting in the water will infect a city, not yet at least."
She released him.
"You'd gotten some blood in your eye. It'll be fine now."
Dinah reached out a hand. The girl took it.
"You shouldn't let them get that close when you disintegrate them. You had particles in your lungs," the girl said after a couple of minutes.
She turned and headed down the stairs behind them.
"Ta...Elixir!" Waylon said.
He looked like hell. He looked like he'd been bathing in human intestines.
"You're going to need a bath," Elixir said. She grimaced. "And be careful; that stuff's infectious. Shower before you change back or you could get infected."
She touched Roy and then approached Waylon who knelt down. He had a patch on his face that wasn't covered in blood and she touched that. There was a look of affection on her face.
"You're gonna need to get some goggles if you're going to keep doing this," she told him. "At least until I come up with a vaccine and maybe even then. They might be able to change their methods of infection so it'll be a race until we finally burn them all the way out."
Until they captured Anton Arcane she meant.
According to Constantine the Avatars of the Parliaments had a lot more power over the direction of their parliaments than they'd realized.
"Let's get a look at the survivors," she said. She glanced over at him. "I'm moving all the bodies to a collection point at the nearest garbage dump. You'll need to get Captain Atom or Firestorm to deal with the bodies; they'll need more thorough destruction than most heroes can deal out. Also, this entire city will probably need to be destroyed; I'd hate for the cleaners to get infected and start this crap all over again."
He nodded.
They'd come to the same conclusion during the last event.
"Are you going to come in to be debriefed?" he asked.
She had an army of insect horrors that could become invisible. The trench coats he'd thought he'd seen at the beginning looked to be wings.
Worse, those were human size, and whatever had pulled one zombie back into the swarm had been a lot bigger.
What the hell did she have waiting in the wings?