Veyric crouched by a third-floor window, staring down at the fight below hard enough to make his temples ache.
What the hell was wrong with these zombies? Since when could they ignore hunger?
His palms were slick.
Every time Peter and the others fell back more than a few meters, the zombies let them. They just stayed put at the mouth of the block, twitching, drooling, hungry as hell, but not crossing that line. Like guard dogs tied to an invisible chain.
"Veyric, this wasn't the deal." Venom seeped from his collar. "Why aren't they acting like they're supposed to?"
"Shut up. I'm thinking."
His brain spun fast.
In Marvel Zombies lore, zombie superheroes could think straight again for a while if they'd eaten enough to feel full. Which meant the entire Defenders squad had somehow been feeding well.
That should've been impossible.
Earth was dead. The streets didn't even have rats anymore, let alone living people. So what were they eating that kept them this sharp?
His jaw tightened.
"They're guarding food," he said at last, and the idea crawling up his spine made his skin prickle. "There's something alive inside Hell's Kitchen. Something they're keeping for themselves."
"So what now?"
"The first plan's dead."
He kept studying their formation, and another detail hit him a second later. Colleen Wing still hadn't shown herself.
That immediately made him think of Natasha and Blade, already deep behind the lines. His stomach turned. He hit the earpiece at once.
"Natasha, Blade. Colleen isn't on the front line. Watch yourselves."
"Copy. Still clear. No contact."
Natasha's voice came through the static, calm and steady. It loosened the knot in his chest a little. Not much.
But this standoff couldn't last.
The longer they stayed pinned here, the harder it would be for the infiltration team to get back out.
Veyric rose to his feet. Knife in his left hand, reverse grip. Modified Glock from Stark Tower in his right.
"Oh, we're doing it the fun way?" Venom sounded way too pleased.
Something cold settled into Veyric's eyes. He slapped the comm button and rattled the orders out fast.
"All units, plan change. We hit them head-on."
"J.A.R.V.I.S., deploy the combat drones. Clint, keep fire on all of them. Peter, web them down. Pin as many as you can."
Before he even finished the last word, he hurled himself out the third-floor window.
Halfway down, a thick black tendril shot from his wrist and latched onto the corner of the building. One brutal yank, and his whole body tore sideways through the air like a fired round, straight into the Defenders' back line.
Wind screamed in his ears.
Zombie Iron Fist moved even faster.
He didn't bother turning around. His right fist was already glowing yellow as he whipped it backward in a savage haymaker.
Veyric's scalp went numb. Spider-Sense shrieked so loud it might as well have stabbed straight into his skull. No time to think. He dropped backward on instinct, bending so far it felt like his spine was about to snap.
The punch tore past the bridge of his nose.
Heat washed over his face. It stank like burnt rot. A few strands of hair at his forehead curled up and burned away on the spot.
Black slime slammed against his back and kicked him upright again, springing him into stance before his boots even settled.
"That isn't a fist. That's a damn mortar shell."
Teeth clenched, Veyric raised the Glock and fired twice at Iron Fist's face.
A dark red blur flashed across his vision.
Crack. Crack.
Sparks burst inches from his head.
Zombie Daredevil was suddenly there, planted in front of Iron Fist, both billy clubs moving with surgical precision. He'd knocked both bullets clean out of the air.
Those eyes turned toward Veyric, unfocused and somehow still dead-on. The rotten flesh around his lower jaw twitched with that slow, steady chewing motion.
"You're kidding me. He's a zombie and the radar sense still works?"
Veyric slashed his left palm open in one quick reverse cut. Fresh blood welled up at once.
Then he lunged.
Venom's power hit like a rocket boost, driving him straight into the storm of club strikes and toward Daredevil's inner guard. He didn't need much. Just one opening. One chance to jam that bleeding hand into Daredevil's mouth.
One drop of blood, and maybe the whole fight changed.
But Iron Fist kept cutting him off with sweeping kicks from every ugly angle, and Daredevil's clubs shut down every path in. The two of them fought like one body with four limbs.
There wasn't a gap anywhere.
Across the street, the rest of the team was having just as bad a time. Maybe worse.
Metallic impacts boomed through the block.
Colossus drove a huge silver fist into zombie Luke Cage's jaw. Luke's blackened head snapped sideways, and that was it. He barely reacted before answering with a brutal rising knee that shoved even Colossus back half a step.
Neither of them was fighting with finesse. It was just raw force, two monsters trying to pound each other into the pavement. Every hit shook dust and broken concrete loose from the nearby walls.
Colossus drew back, clearly about to hurl Luke down the street.
That was when a shadow burst out of the rubble at his side.
Zombie Misty Knight came in low and fast, her bionic arm whipping into his ribs with a metallic screech that made the impact sound even worse than it looked.
The hit staggered him.
Luke didn't waste the opening. He clasped both fists together over his head and smashed them down across Colossus's back.
Even their biggest tank was getting folded from two directions. Everyone else had it rougher.
Up above, zombie Jessica Jones planted both feet on a wall and kicked off. The leap was absurd, hanging her in the air for one ugly heartbeat before she came down at Spider-Man like a feral bird of prey.
Peter shot web after web while flipping between buildings like his life depended on it, which it did.
"Lady, your temper's worse than Jameson's when I'm late with photos!"
A long burst of gunfire ripped across the skyline and cut him off.
Zombie Punisher had a heavy machine gun braced against his hip. Black symbiote tissue wrapped his legs, and the extra speed let him rip through the rubble fast enough to leave afterimages.
His crossfire kept Peter dodging nonstop while also harassing Hawkeye and Falcon every time they tried to help.
"Peter, above you!" Clint shouted from cover as he loosed an explosive arrow toward Spider-Man's position.
The arrow never got there.
A pinpoint burst from Frank hit it in midair and blew it apart in a bloom of fire.
Suppressive fire swallowed the whole battlefield after that. Peter and Clint got pinned down. Falcon couldn't even try for altitude without being forced right back behind cover.
"Damn it, since when does Frank move that fast?" Sam snapped over comms.
On the ground, Veyric ducked another sweep from Daredevil and rolled behind a wrecked sedan.
His chest pumped hard. He dragged a dusty forearm across the sweat dripping off his jaw.
One glance over the battlefield made the dread sink even deeper.
This wasn't right. None of it was.
If the living Defenders fought with this kind of teamwork, fine. That tracked. But these were zombies. No shouted calls. No hand signals. No real communication at all.
And yet they moved in perfect layers, clean and coordinated, like they were all plugged into the same brain.
He barely slipped under Iron Fist's next punch, and static crackled in his ear.
"Veyric..."
Natasha.
Her voice was barely above a whisper, and there was something in it he almost never heard.
"Status?" he shot back at once.
"I found their food source..."
She took a breath.
"But something about it is very, very wrong."