The Ultimate X-Men by Unknown Author Read Free Book Online Page B

made sure that wasn’t possible. Besides, there was too much baggage with that Elixir.”
    “Den how?”
    Hayward laughed, but this time his laugh sounded hollow and strained, as if directed at his own personal demon.
    5TILLD0RH in Tit HIST
    “I mixed science with black magic,” he said. “Simple, actually.”
    “Voodoo?” Remy asked, his stomach sinking at the thought of zombies.
    “Not really,” Hayward said. “I just studied the principles behind the voodoo and the zombie legends and applied science to them. By the time Cornelia died, I had the answer. I brought her back.”
    Remy nodded. So the young girl he’d picked up in the street had actually been dead. But somehow reanimated with life. Science or black magic, she was still a zombie. One of the walking dead.
    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