The holidays are hard for those who don’t have a family. Furious Squirrel has a good life, but it is difficult at this time of the year. His family all passed away a century ago. Because he was thrown forward in time and now lives in this period, he cannot visit any immediate family for the holidays. The other heroes of his league, they have family to visit. So, Furious always takes the volunteer position to watch things while everyone else is away.
The wheelhouse of his new battle dirigible was quiet. Well, it wasn’t so quiet. The engine is noisy and there is always the sound of cranking gears and hissing steam. But there were no other voices chatting.
Out the window, he could see the world around him. His assignment was near Purgatory Penn, in Australia. With many heroes taking vacation time, this would be the perfect time for someone to break out. BADGE had a unit of their best soldiers and a few training bots watching over the prison directly. Furious was the hero in the sky.
“Furious Squirrel, come in.” The Warden’s voice piped through the horn.
Furious pulled down the tube with the horn on it. “Furious here.”
“We have a minor situation. Someone sent in radioactive food and our sensors didn’t pick it up in time.”
“Radioactive food? Why would they do that?”
The Warden said, “Not sure. There are villains in here that some on the outside would really like dead. Unfortunately, a few people got into the food before our special thanksgiving dinner, and they are now very sick. Alert BADGE HQ about this. I want to know who sent this...buzz...sss.”
“Warden? Come in... Warden?” Furious pulled a lever and punched a button on his controls. “Purgatory, come in!” No sound. “This can’t be good.”
He flicked two levers and pulled out his BADGE comm unit, “BADGE station, this Furious. We have a situation at Purg Penn. Not sure what it is, but their comm just went dead and they were reporting radioactive food on site.”
Arx came through, “Did you say radioactive food?”
“That’s what the warden told me.”
“I’ll alert Nova. But, he’s with Santa and Chase.”
“Great. Well, I’ll go down and check this out. You send out the alert. This may be nothing.”
“I hope so. Arx out.”
Furious piloted his dirigible down and landed near the entrance to the prison. He held up his BADGE key card to get through the intense security system. The first gate opened, then a wall slid down. Then he walked through a tunnel that scanned him with fifty-seven different sensors to determine that he wasn’t an impostor. Finally, he was at the last door. He had to present his BADGE id card again. A security robot checked it out through a video screen.
“Furious Squirrel confirmed. Enter.”
The last metal doors opened. There was a rocking explosion and screaming. The doors stopped moving when the power flickered.
“Aw crap.” Furious pulled out his ray gun and blasted one side of the doors, which forced it open. He ran through while the entire structure rocked. The power flickered on and off, and people were screaming. People’s pounding feet echoed through the structure. He got to the walkway that led around the interior of the prison. The window looked down to the central dining hall. A table flew up and slammed into the reinforced glass, cracking it. A wet roar followed.
“What the hell?” Furious ran hard, pulling out his other ray gun.
He slid to a stop at the top of a set of metal stairs that led down into the dining hall. Prisoners and BADGE agents ran up the stairs in a mad frenzy. The villains had collars and cuffs on that negated any powers they might have, but they weren’t the threat right now. Another long table flew toward them. Furious shot with both rayguns and destroy the table before it crashed into the people.
“HEY, YOU!” He grabbed a BADGE agent by the arm. “What’s going on?”
“The Glutton! He’s alive!” She pointed back.
Furious looked out to see a giant blob of a man who looked half made of food, and half dead. He shoved something into his mouth and swallowed it whole. The monster reached down and grabbed at a lizardman who was running. He got the tail; the man screeched and his tail fell off. The Glutton ate the tail while the rest of the lizardman ran for his life.
Furious shot with both his rayguns and hit the giant man, which only staggered him back. The Glutton crashed into the side of the dining hall and fell on his sizable rear. This gave time for people to get away. Furious, the only hero available, had to do the right thing. He ran into the room.
Five BADGE agents held large energy weapons, directing the others away.
“Hey! Furious! Good. We need help. He’s going to eat everything.”
“Then fire!” Furious took aim and fired.
They did not.
The Glutton stumbled again, but showed little reaction.
“Why aren’t you firing?” Furious stepped back as The Glutton got back to his feet, grabbed a chair, and ate it.
The BADGE agents said, “Last time we tried, it did little good, and I think he ate the beam of Susan’s weapon.”
“Ate the beam?”
“Well, it hit inside his mouth and he seemed to enjoy it.”
Furious slowly lowered his guns, “Oh, this isn’t good.”
The Warden, battered and bruised, arrived. She said, “Get the prisoners to the underground bunker! We have to hold this thing at bay until more hero support arrives!”
The BADGE agents split up and ran to help move the prisoners to safety.
Furious kept shooting the body of this beast, stumbling it, but hardly doing any actual damage. “Where did this come from?”
“That was The Glutton, a villain that we arrested years ago. He could eat just about anything. His thugs here in the prison got into the food and brought him a meal.”
“It was radioactive.” Furious realized where she was going with this.
“Yes. He died... at least we thought he died. But, he broke out of the morgue, ate two metric tons of radioactive food and turned into that thing. I don’t think he’s alive. I think that is some kind of mutant zombie.”
Furious watched as The Glutton ate a door like it was a graham cracker. “How do we stop that?”
“I don’t know.”
Furious looked around, his back almost to the wall as The Glutton continued to consume and throw things randomly. “It looks like that thing isn’t trying to be evil, just consuming. What if we feed it something it can’t handle?”
They watched it eat half a table and a chair. The Warden said, “I doubt we have something that can hurt it.”
Furious suddenly asked, “What did you say about the Thanksgiving Dinner here?”
“That we have one? What about it?”
“Was it that food that was poisoned?”
The Warden threw a chair at the beast. “No. It was the regular food. The Thanksgiving food is fine. What about it?”
Furious pointed his rayguns at the ceiling high above. “We need to stall it.” He fired and brought down some steel beams and glass to cover the Glutton.
“That won’t stop him. Listen, I can hear him crunching on the glass.” It sounded like someone eating really large potato chips.
Furious said, “I have a plan. Where’s your Thanksgiving food?”
“Back here. He’s heading this way because the kitchen storage is back here.” She led him back into the kitchens.
“Tell me you have turkeys.”
She nodded. “Sure, several hundred, in fact. We have a lot of mouths to feed.”
“Good. Let’s feed just one mouth.”
“Why?”
Furious smiled. “Tryptophan coma.”
“You can’t be serious.” She stopped in her tracks. Furious said, “It’s all I got.”
She said, “It might work, actually. But only with a little help.”
They both heard debris moving and loud moaning. Furious opened the freezer and started pulling out turkeys. “We have to move before he brings this place down to get to this food.”
“Here.” she grabbed a cord attached to the wall and yanked on it. It opened a hidden panel that had dart guns and dozens of darts inside. “This is a last resort for prison breaks. “These darts are filled with Styericol,” she said, “one of the most powerful sedatives in the world.”
“Why didn’t you shoot him with these already?”
She pulled out the darts and started jamming them into the turkeys. “What makes you think we didn’t? His skin is half made of food and half dead. I’m not even sure this will work inside him, but it is our best bet.”
Furious filled the turkeys with the dart fluid as the sound of chomping and guttural roaring grew closer.
“That’s all of them.” Furious said.
The warden grabbed a cart and piled the turkeys onto it. “Come on, we have to get these birds air born before he brings this place down on our heads.”
Furious got another cart and piled turkeys on it. Together they raced out and started pitching the birds at The Glutton. Its dead eyes seemed to brighten up at the sight of the food, and he ate with gusto as they pelted him with frozen poultry.
They were five hundred birds in when The Glutton fell on his butt as he ate. Then, he slowly sank backward and crashed on the ground, sprawled out like a bloated whale on the beach, half masticated turkeys dribbling out of his mouth.
Furious, a frozen turkey in his hands, paused. “Did we do it?”
She cautiously walked over and poked the beast with a stick. “He’s out cold.”
Three hours later, BADGE arrived with several of the volunteer heroes, as well as Dr. Henderson and her special crew. The prisoners cleared out the mess, and someone moved the behemoth.
“Well, it looks like a case of Post-Morten Morphonic Radioactive Symbiosis,” Dr. Henderson said.
Furious replied, “I speak English.”
“Sorry, that means that the radiation had a strange effect on the morphon powers within the corpse of a dead person. It activated their cells, but only at a superficial level. The Glutton is dead, was dead the entire time. But, the radiation reactivated his system and caused his latent morphon powers to go into hyper mode. I’ve seen nothing quite like this. I’m eager to study it.”
The Warden said, “Glad we can help you advance science. Wish it didn’t cost half this building.”
“Thankfully, there were no other deaths, only injuries that we are tending to right now. BADGE will send out a repair crew ASAP.”
“Good. Thank you,” The Warden nodded to the doctor. Then turned to Furious, “Thank you as well. Without your help, this might have been much worse.”
“Just doing my job.”
“We still have some turkeys and plenty of sides. Why don’t you join us for Thanksgiving dinner? I’m sure you can spare a little time during your patrol.”
Furious frowned, “Dinner with prisoners?”
“Today, they are your biggest fan. You saved us all.”
Furious thought about that and then said, “Sure, why not?”
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