The Mutant King In Apocalypse

Chapter 6

The mutant was stunned, and its dark green face turned purplish from the roiling astonishment. 

Even Rufus had a glint of surprise in his eyes.

A few moments ago, he had been powerless, bleeding out on the hotel floor while zombies tore into his flesh. Now he could control zombies just through his words and his thoughts.

The silence in the room was thick and heavy. The zombies stood exactly where they had been when he said "stand by," frozen like someone had pressed pause on their entire existence.

Rufus could feel something like invisible threads connecting his mind to theirs. It was strange and terrifying and completely real, like he was an extension of them.

The mutant snarled at Rufus, breaking the silence, its ego and hatred for humans gradually slipping back.

"What sort of sorcery or trick are you using?" it hissed, its rotting mouth twisting with rage. "What did you do to my children?"

The creature circled him slowly, its one living eye scanning every inch of Rufus like it was looking for hidden wires or devices.

"Answer me, human! What kind of trick is this?"

Rufus said nothing, which only made the mutant angrier.

The creature's voice rose to a roar that echoed off the broken walls.

"You cannot control zombies like us! No human possesses such an ability and that is what gave us an edge over your pathetic kind in the first place!"

It stepped closer, its shadow falling over Rufus and a cold and murderous aura flared off from him in deadly waves.

"In all the years of this Apocalypse, not one single human has been able to do what you are doing right now. That power belongs to us. It is what separates the superior from the weak."

The mutant refused to believe what it was seeing. There was no way that it was possible and this had to be a sham or another stupid game played by a pathetic human. 

"You are using some trick," it continued, its voice getting colder. "Some device your people developed, maybe even a frequency jammer you stole from the military, now you will tell me where it's hidden."

Its claws flexed as it stared at Rufus with pure hatred.

"I will get the truth out of you, I will tear it from your bones piece by piece until you tell me how you are doing this."

Rufus kept his eyes on the mutant and kept his grip on the frozen zombies firm.

The mutant stopped circling and slowed.

Then an ugly smirk spread across the living side of its face.

"Even if what I am seeing is real," it said, its voice dropping back into that arrogant tone, "even if you can somehow manipulate my zombies, you cannot control me."

It tilted its head, looking at Rufus like he was something small and pathetic.

"I am not one of them. I am something far beyond what your little trick can reach. And humans are slow and pathetic. You cannot fight any mutant, not even on your best day."

The creature glanced at Rufus's torn, blood-stained wedding suit.

"You are still just as good as dead."

The mutant launched itself at Rufus.

To any normal human, that movement would have been impossible to follow. Mutants were ten times faster than average people, with their bodies moving with unnatural speed and strength.

But something had changed in Rufus.

When the mutant attacked, Rufus could see everything. He could see its weak points all displayed on its body like someone had drawn targets across its flesh. He could see every muscle that contracted, every movement before it happened.

The mutant's steps seemed slow to Rufus. Not because they actually were slow, but because his reaction time had become something else entirely.

What should have been a killing blow looked like slow motion in Rufus's eyes.

With just one hit, Rufus crushed the mutant, catching him just in place.

He stepped to the side at exactly the right moment and drove his fist into the creature's exposed weak point. The impact landed with a force that surprised even Rufus himself.

The mutant's blood gushed from its mouth as it staggered backward and slammed into the wall. The creature slid down slowly, leaving a dark smear of blood on the white surface.

Over the pain, which was clearly massive, the mutant was more stunned than anything else.

It groaned in pain against the wall and stared at Rufus with both eyes, unable to understand how a single punch from a human had done that much damage.

Rufus looked at his own fist, then back at the broken creature on the floor.

He turned to the frozen zombies still standing around the room.

"Drop dead," he said.

They obeyed instantly. Every single zombie collapsed to the floor at the exact same moment like their strings had been cut. The sound of their bodies hitting the tiles filled the room and then everything went silent.

They were lifeless now, scattered across the hotel floor like broken furniture. 

The mutant was shaking against the wall.

Not even from the pain that tore through his body. Right now, that didn't even matter. Its eyes were glued on Rufus as he quivered in his rotten boots.

No human was supposed to awaken that kind of ability. The laws of this new world had been built on the certainty that humans were prey and mutants were predators. That order had never been challenged.

For the first time since the Apocalypse had begun, the mutant was both astonished and frightened by a human.

Its living eye tracked Rufus shakingly, slowly as he stood in the silence, surrounded by the bodies of zombies that had obeyed his voice over the mutant's command.

The creature tried to crawl backward, its fingers slipping on its own blood.

"This cannot be," it whispered, its voice hoarse and broken. "You are not supposed to exist."

The pride that had been on its rotting face from the beginning had vanished completely, replaced by raw fear.

The mutant's lips trembled as it forced the words out.

With a shaky voice that had lost all its previous authority, it asked the only question that made sense.

"What exactly are you?"

Rufus looked down at his hands, at his mother's ring still on his finger, at the scattered bodies of the zombies around him.