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Volume 3, 2 March 1997 |
In a grim hospital morgue, EMTs wheel in another six bodies. "It's raining corpses out there." The pathologist is stymied. Autopsies show no sign of drugs nor physical damage. Most are minorities and young adults, some heroin addicts, but no heroin. "Perhaps nothing killed them. Perhaps they just opted to stop living." Then the corpses rise and advance on the doctor... Elsewhere in the city, the Challengers appear on a talk show with "famed UFO abductee Nina Justis". Nina spent a week aboard a UFO. Except Clay Brody shows a photo of Nina in Aruba the same week. So much for "abductions". The mayor's office is overwhelmed with reports of walking dead. The mayor, watching the tube, figures to get expert help. Why not? The Challengers of the Unknown are in town... Soon the Challs are interviewing the pathologist from the morgue. She moans, "Their eyes were dead. They moved like someone was jerking strings." She cut up two of them for autopsies. If they weren't truly dead, she killed them. Brenda listens. Clay scoffs. And the Deputy Mayor, Lewis Schiller, thinks the Challs are glory hounds who'll make the city look helpless. His companion, Inspector Santo, has no opinion. Schiller wants to know what the Challs charge? Because if they're thinking of fleecing us... Marlon intervenes. He calls Sarah, their secretary at HQ, to ask, "What's our going rate for saving cities?" Sarah is aghast. "What are you talking about? We're pro bono!" Marlon offers the Deputy Mayor a deal: one favor gratis, a loss leader. And they'll give the police all the credit. "Is that a deal or what?" |
In their hotel room, the Challs play cards. The city nightlife is dead in more ways than one. And Kenn, renegade game programmer, keeps winning.  "It's not statistically possible..." Kenn disagrees. "The cards talk. Not my fault if you don't know how to listen." |
Brenda's pager interrupts the game. "Soup's on." Cops direct them to a grimy alley. Two more plague victims have died and been left untouched. Brenda examines the corpses. "Skin cold. No breath. Zero retinal response" to a flashlight. Yup, they're dead. Then a corpse grabs her from behind.  Clay knocks them down, then hefts and pitches them away. The dead shamble away. Marlon orders the police not to shoot. The "undead" are herded into a paddy wagon. Marlon sees a pattern. "Two nights ago, they die and stay dead. Last night, they 'rest' for a few hours, then 'wake up'." Clay asks, "So what's that mean for tomorrow night?" In a police lab, a scientist studies slides while the Challs wait. "Nothing! Slight anemia." And both have needle tracks. Noise. The dead are getting rowdy. Clay makes a pitch. "They haven't broken any laws, right? I say we let 'em go." |
The undead depart and the Challs follow. To the Visigoth Club. Kenn offers two choices: another round of poker, or enter the club. Marlon retorts, "Certain death or sure poverty?" Brenda votes for death. And adds, "I hear Clay takes dates to places like this." The place is rife with punks and sweat. And on the floor, Inspector Santo, drugged and out cold. The Challs are outnumbered and overpowered. They're dragged before a large colorful black man with striped hair. "Santo was a nuisance."  He is Mustafa. "You see? The corrupt Western world will fall at the hands of its lost children... My kingdom!" He hasn't murdered the victims. "I've killed nothing - except their minds. And they weren't using them anyway. Prepare the Challengers!" Mustafa prepares a hypodermic needle! |
The Challs break free and fight their way out. Brenda carps, "But there was no drug!" Marlon pleads, "Some other time, Brenda!" More undead wait in the street. Who invited them? And how? Clay leads the charge. "Plow through them. They're strong but they're slow." They break free and run - but to where? Brenda's analyzing on the run about how the undead are being directed. "Telepathy's unfeasible... Now a radio signal... brain filters out the drug... synapses are achieving a state of signal receptivity..." |
Kenn's found an electronics store. Clay hoists a cable drum and pitches it through the window. "What are we shopping for? Satellite dish? VCR?" Clay and Marlon must hold back the undead - "That's a plan?" - while Kenn and Brenda throw together electronics. Mustafa must be broadcasting instructions to the undead. "Which means a frequency! We can jam it!" Clay busts heads while Marlon holds back, reluctant to kill the undead, who are victims of Mustafa. "I won't compound his sins if I can help it!" The two are mobbed. Kenn "read an article" about secret mind control experiments that used subsonics. If he can hook up enough amps to make a feedback loop, he'll generate enough subsonic rumble to trigger an earthquake - as happened in San Francisco - - Kenn is mobbed and trampled. But he gets one hand free to flick a switch - and subsonics drive the undead away screaming! "Turn it off!" yells Clay. Marlon adds, "You gambled our lives on rumors from a New Age magazine?" Kenn counters, "Gamble? Me? Like I said, the cards talk if you know how to listen..." |
The Challs catch Mustafa as he flees the Visigoth Club. Marlon says coldly, "You're all ego and desire. You don't have the patience to concoct a scheme like this. Who pulls your strings? Who told you about Santo and us?" B-RAM! The SWAT team kicks in Deputy Mayor Schiller's door.  The Challs are right behind. Mustafa told them everything. The Feds are raiding the drug lab. Why do it? Schiller rants, "It was a great idea! A drug that makes addicts useful to society! We could have made them do anything!" |
"Like Santo? And us? Face it, man. You never had a vision - just a bottom line."  "Amazing," says Marlon. "A mind control drug cult as a social experiment. Imagine life based on a world like that... "Where everyone's every thought, every response, is fed to them by a central authority? It's not feasible," says Brenda. "So... Anybody know what's on television tonight?" |
Comments Another snipe at societal controls with a nice zinger at the end. Very modern, very cynical, very Generation X and Y. Though the Challs are very valiant, risking their lives for others without reward. The art is dark, of course, with the color gray predominate. Even the cover is murky. And the artist himself gets confused amid the sketchiness. Mustafa's nose ring comes and goes. Schiller and Santo look exactly alike. And the reader must study some scenes to know what's going on. Clarity, guys. It's important in a comic book. Nina Justis, exposed as a fraud, decides to expose the new Challengers in COTU V3 4. |