Stone Lantern

Heroes and villains and monsters,
differ only in the eyes of their enemies.
Still, given a choice I would much rather
you were the monster instead of me.

Evil Slayer

On a cold December night at 2:46 am, a tired and bored train engineer sat in his seat, sipping coffee and watching the tracks. Suddenly, a herd of deer dashed across the lines directly in front of him. It was too late to do anything but swear.

The engine plowed through the herd of animals, but slowed significantly. The two cars directly behind it, swung wide under the pressure. They jumped the tracks and twisted in the air. The forty-six cars behind those began jumping the tracks and slamming into a large pile, one right after the other. The noise was tremendous.

He's bin kilt!

The noise jerked John awake. He sat up in his bed and for a moment couldn’t tell what was going on. His wife, Natasha jumped from the bed and ran to the window.

“Oh my God!” she said and put her hand to her mouth.

John got to the window and looked out as well. “Oh, shit.”

“John, we have to help them.”

“We can’t.” he said. “The Evil Slayer.”

“John, it’s a passenger train. All those people.”

“If those poor bastards aren’t dead yet, they soon will be. C’mon. Start packing!”

Four hundred miles away, in the abandoned city of Toronto, a lone figure crouched against a bus shelter. It was easy to see that in life he had been short and stocky, but his skin had long since withered and burned away. He wore a ragged, scottish kilt and a torn grey shirt that may have at one time been form fitting. His eyes were nought but blackened sockets and his form was clearly that of someone long dead. Yet, he had a long red, flowing beard that still looked healthy and well.

In life, he had been a super hero. He had been on a team with the Mystic Mistress and Titanic Force. The three of them had traveled the world, saving the innocent and fighting evil. Slaying evil. Back then he had been called the Evil Slayer. Now he was just a huddled figure in a bus shelter. Had someone been close enough to see him, they might have mistook him for a hobo, asleep in the street. But of course, no one could ever get close to him again.

A sickly green light began to emanate from the figures eyes. Bright red flames burst into life on his bald head, taking the place of the hair he lacked. In life, as a super hero, the flaming hair had been his signature style. How many Evil Slayer Hairbrush jokes had he been forced to listen to? Now, that a train full of people needed him, his flaming hair was alight once more.

The Evil Slayer reached up and grasped the railing of the shelter. He pulled himself to his feet. It was so hard for him to think. His brain refused to respond properly. His long dead, glowing eyes searched the streets for activity. He saw no one, but he could still sense the fear and panic and pain of the innocents. A train full of people were dying and yet, there was something important he needed to remember. But it would have to wait. A train full of innocents needed him!

The Evil Slayer leapt into the air and flew north, as a fast as any jet.

At the site of the wreckage, the survivors were desperately trying to pull themselves free. There were no fire engines full of firemen trying to be heroic. There were no paramedics shouting incomprehensibly to each other in an attempt to save lives. There were no reporters milling about with cameras trying to get the survivors to cry on film. There was no one willing to help. Even the survivors wouldn’t help each other. Those that got free did not stop to help the next guy out. Instead, they just ran as soon as they could. As fast as they could.

In the skies overhead appeared a glowing, green figure. Those survivors that hadn’t gotten free knew that it was now too late to matter. The Evil Slayer descended upon the scene.

“Fear not, innocents.” he boomed, “Team Freedom is here to save you!” Inside the train, the people screamed in terror. The noise upset him and made it hard to concentrate. For a moment, he had started to remember something, but the screaming chased the thought away.

The Evil Slayer used his mighty axe to rip open the siding of one of the train cars. He then gripped the steel and sheet metal firmly in his skeletal hands and peeled it back, revealing the passengers inside.

“You’re free!”

The surviving passengers inside the car began clawing at their faces. Some of them tore at their hair and some scratched their eyes out. All of them were succumbing to the poisonous radiation that constantly surrounded the Evil Slayer. The same radiation that had killed him. Their skin bubbled and burned. Their tongues dried up and hardened in their mouths. Their lungs were too burnt to let them scream.

As the Evil Slayer looked down upon them, he vaguely remembered something. A memory from long ago. It was fleeting and hard to hold onto, but it was there. Long ago, he had been a hero fighting a villain. But the villain’s secret weapon was hidden where no one could stop it. No one who wanted to survive. Evil Slayer had sacrificed himself and entered the radiation chamber to dismantle the device.

He should have died in there.

He DID die in there. He had stopped the device and then died the same way these people before him were dying. But, that hadn’t stopped him. When he was done dying he had gotten up and walked out of the chamber. Immediately, his team mates and all around him had died.

Since then everyone he has ever cared for, every person he has tried to help, every innocent he has wanted to protect has been irradiated and died in agony. Then they arose to stalk the world for months as undead, radiated zombies. It had been the villains plan all along.

“Damn.” said Evil Slayer as the newly created undead zombies crawled from the wreckage and began attacking the other survivors. “I should probably write that down.”