Variant Strain

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The car ride happened to the accompaniment of an old Queen song about Bicycles.

Peter kept fighting down the absurd image of having to pedal their their way through infected areas on a novelty five-person tandem-style bike for all of them. Nervous giggles kept wanting to break out. He'd been near the barricade. He'd been inside Forest Hills after it had gotten infected. He'd fought his way through teeming-Hive controlled crowds of them.

He kept telling himself he shouldn't be nervous. He'd gone through it with no problems before... well, if you leave aside the attacks of crazed Hydra infectees, getting shot at by the army and the sheer mental disconnect of seeing the neighborhood you grew up in getting turned into a war zone.

He had made it out of that intact. Except he hadn't gone in with company.

That changed everything.

Anna Watson was driving. She had a scoop-necked blouse and slacks on. Easy clothes to move or run in, but she still decided to wear something pretty regardless. Peter actually recognized the blouse as the same one she'd changed into to meet George Stacy. The one he hadn't been able to see since he'd left before she got back from changing into it. She knew they were going to see George again, so perhaps that was why she'd picked it out.

She was also singing along to the radio. Badly. Peter still couldn't quite shake his youthful crush on the vivacious older woman... but if anything was going to snap him out of it, it would be her atrocious singing voice. It wasn't simply that she was wildly off-key, she managed to do it with a sort of manically cheerful enthusiasm that mangled the words along the way. He realized why she was doing it. Or at least Donna had. She was being a distraction. As long as they were focusing on her and her terrible singing, they weren't paying attention to what was outside the car... or what they were driving towards.

The neighborhood seemed practically abandoned. No one was out on the street except for them. Here and there, Peter could see curtains twitched back then just as quickly closed again. The neat little lawns and cookie cutter houses were tense and silent and empty. This street was close enough to the barricades to make its owners nervous. The closer they got to Forest Hills the emptier the streets became. No cars parked on the curb either. Those who could make a break for it, probably had already tried. Peter suspected most of these people were already caught up by the traffic jams surrounding the freeway and the bridge.

The infection hadn't spread this far, but it was clear that it still had managed to touch this neighborhood regardless.

Aunt May sat primly on the passenger side seat. She was in an old button-up man's shirt and jeans. Peter wasn't sure if the shirt had been one of Uncle Ben's or it had been Detective Stacy's. The salvageable contents of the Stacey pantry were in plastic bags at her feet. She would occasionally give Anna long-suffering side-long glances, but Peter could tell she was more amused than exasperated. She was clearly used to Anna's antics.

Gwen was in the seat behind her. She kept shooting irritated glances at Anna in between more nervous glances out the window. The distraction sort of worked? Perhaps, Peter mused. She was in a T-shirt and Jeans. The T-shirt was a size too tight and had some distracting text across the front that proclaimed "Cheerleaders do it loudly". Not that Peter was paying attention. Of course not.

In the middle was MJ. She still had her hoodie on. Peter knew she had a tank top on underneath, but the hoodie was zipped almost all the way up. She had originally intended to get a window seat, but when she'd noticed what Gwen was wearing, she'd roughly shouldered Peter aside and taken the middle seat.

Peter wasn't even entirely certain she had done it consciously.

Just like he wasn't certain if she realized that she had her hand squeezing his thigh possessively.

Peter was in the seat behind the driver's side. He'd kept the window down a crack to let his senses get a an idea of what was around them.

It was both easier and more difficult all at once. On the one hand, the waffles scent from MJ, mingling with Anna Watson's lilacs and even Gwen's roses and gun-oil were extremely distracting. Even Aunt May's scent was trapped in there with him, making it difficult to filter through for anything useful.

When he'd escorted them out of the zone in the form of a dead police officer, he'd had the window entirely down and that had kept him from realizing just how overwhelming the smell of human could be in the enclosed space of a car.

Cletus wasn't saying anything, but he had a stomach-grumbling hunger rising up in him despite the hearty breakfast he'd enjoyed. He clamped down hard on that.

One thing that did seem to have made a difference since consuming Hank was how much clearer his senses felt. On the one hand, the former Hive had lost the majority of his senses, but by the same token, he was also used to taking in input from dozens or even hundreds of sources simultaneously. He didn't want to think of how many eyes Hank Pym had actually had in Gentek Tower. Every eye had been watching CCTV monitors. Or data screens... if nothing else, his restructured mind was processing the input from his senses better. Pulling more information out of them despite not getting any sharper or keener.

He was surprised at how much he actually could take in when he was really paying attention now.

The car's interior was rich with its own fainter scents of dust, of ancient air-fresheners, of old vinyl and plastic and metal. The crack in the window brought him more. He could scent the car's engine itself. The exhaust. Even to some degree the paint...

But even more... he could pick up the faint traces of live Hydra growing stronger. There were weaker undertones of gun powder and the slick plastic and rubber of the Thunderbolts hazmat gear. If he really took a moment, he could even calculate roughly how far they were. A few blocks. Not too far at all. He could practically see them on a map moving closer to the barricade. Closer to the military men stationed there. Closer to their appointment to escape.

He licked his lips as he realized just how much input he had to work with now. As they closed, he could even pick up on individual scents on the breeze and get a rough idea of distance... he wasn't sure how he could do such a thing when he'd have to take account of shifting air currents, but perhaps his earlier theories about his ability to sense Hydra actually being some other, more esoteric sense masquerading as his sense of smell made sense.

He guessed he must have looked like he was napping to everyone else in the car.

The closer they got, The more prominent the scents became. That was when he began to notice something else. There seemed to be a restlessness in the back of his mind.

There was a sussuruss of voices that he'd been doing his best to ignore. That something like this didn't even strike Peter as unusual could be admitted to be a sign that people could get used to anything. What was unusual was that there were more voices than he could normally have accounted for. The greater coherence in the usual voices had been interesting, but now, there were barely any wordless cries or incoherent gibberish.

There were words in that babble and Peter could almost catch hints of what was actually being said.

Except that would entail actually concentrating on them. Which he had really been trying to avoid since that had begun.

It was bad enough that he was speaking to the few of them that he did... the ones who spoke back. He wasn't sure if those voices back there would even be self aware enough to respond--

You better listen. Cain's voice graveled. It's not what you think it is.

Peter frowned and his eyes flew open. MJ glanced up at him with concern on her features, but he quietly shook his head and closed his eyes once more. The voices drifted in and out, crackling with static.

"-- all clear on this end. This is Dancer Three rep---ing all clear on peri--ter zone five. Proce--ng to zone fou--"

"-- not engage, Dancer Sev--! Repeat, p-- --ck to the 4th Avenue line an--"

"--s authorized for landing. Extraction team inc----s non-military personnel, be advi--"

"Redeployment sc---ule pending. Repeat Thunderhead will be providing detailed red-----ment at Oh-Nine -----, do you copy Beachhead One?"

"--blem with the El-Zee. We've got the meat ---s on the building. It's sprea--"

He blinked as he realized what exactly it was he was hearing.

Military radio chatter. The Hunter confirmed. When Pym upgraded your phone, it looks like he put a couple of other extras in. Now we actually know how to use it.

How was he listening to his phone... if that was what that was? He thought about it and got an image of his phone... somewhere dark. Tendrils swiped across the touch-screen and the display showed some sort of slider and numbers. Frequencies. Code numbers. Hank could control keyboards embedded in his body... now Peter could sort of do the same. Well... a phone touchscreen. Which actually was probably more impressive in terms of dexterity, but still very odd.

He briefly wondered what continuously listening in to military radio broadcasts was going to do to his phone's battery life, but it was fully charged. Which he then realized was odd, since he just remembered that he hadn't charged it in days.

Another thing to think-- worry-- about later.

Just like we going to not worry about how he could actually see his phone when both of his eyes were currently on his face.

Can we get Cinemax? Cletus asked with a laugh.

Peter tuned the voices all out once more. Cain paid attention to things that could potentially endanger them. He would leave the radio to him. Peter barely understood what they were saying, but the more paranoid part of his mind clearly did.

It wasn't surprising that he noticed the noise first. Engines. Closing fast. There was the faint double whup-whup noise of a helicopter in the distance.

Aunt May lifted her head up and peered around them. "Does anyone else hear something?"

Anna turned down the music and looked around with her. "They're pulling us out by helicopter, right? Maybe that's our ride." She said cheerfully.

Peter was less sure. He smelled smoke in the air. Not exhaust exactly, but an actual open fire. There was the barbecued pork scent threading through the more complex stink of long-chained polymers oxidizing. Burnt plastic and paint. The engine noises shifted, becoming more ragged and strained. Close by the scent were several live Hydra scents... this far past the barricade, that was a worrisome sign.

He could hear in his head clearly, "M--day! This is Cha-iot On-! We are going dow--AGH!"

There was a sound like a pained scream and a wet gurgling noise that Peter, to his own disgust, easily identified as the sound of air bubbling out of a sliced throat. Cletus's memories once more.

He forced his attention away from that and scanned the skies, trying to catch sight of what that was. In a moment, there appeared a green painted military transport helicopter. It rounded a low building a few blocks away from them and hurtled down the street they were on direction. Fire was pouring out of one side of it.

It was clear that it was in trouble. Not just the failing engine. One set of propellers were slowed to the point where it was obvious they were no longer being driven and were simply spinning in the moving air. The helicopter was losing altitude fast and heading straight for them.

Anna began cussing and Peter could see her leg begin to shift to slam on the brakes. His mind whirled in that fraction of an instant and the numbers did their dance.

"Floor it!" He shouted into Anna's ear. His voice in Cain's most commanding drill sergeant tone.

She was too startled to consciously process what she did, but instead of pulling back to hit the brakes as she had planned, Anna's foot slammed back down on the gas and sent the car rocketing down the street.

The neighborhood blurred past them as the car sped forward. The transport helicopter screamed past overhead, its undercarriage a scant five feet above the top of the car. The burning scents now mingled with blood and Hydra, live and dead, flooded into Peter through the crack in the window.

They were a dozen yards away when the helicopter slammed into the ground, grinding and crunching as its weight and momentum dragged it down the street. It was brutally loud to Peter's hearing. Debris flew in every direction and there was a small, but jarring explosion of noise from their rear passenger-side tire as some scrap of metal shredded it.

The whirling blades of it's helicopter snapped against a lamp post, then again on the street as it rolled in mid-slide, sending the metal flying terrifyingly close to them.

When the whole burning mess finally came grinding to a stop two blocks past them, it came as a relief.

Anna slammed the brakes on then, causing the car to spin slightly, but she caught it and their vehicle screamed to a stop lengthwise across the street.

Peter could hear almost everyone's hearts beating far too fast.

Except MJ's.

Gwen stared, her fingers gripping the armrest hard enough to dig into the vinyl. "... are we okay?" She asked in a small voice.

May put a hand to her chest, taking several deep breaths to steady herself. "I... I think so? Are you alright back there?" She glanced towards the back seat. All three teens nodded. MJ was chewing furiously on her lower lip and Gwen was badly rattled.

Anna glanced out at the downed helicopter then at Peter. "Why did you have me speed up?" She asked shakily.

He took a deep breath. "If you'd stopped we would've ended up in the path of the skid." He pointed to the gouged and scraped asphalt that was littered with helicopter parts. "Something with that size and weight coming in at the angle it was... it was going to skid."

May smiled at Peter, "Good call."

Peter nodded, but then stared as Aunt May began unbuckling her seatbelt. "What are you doing?" His voice going high with alarm and disbelief.

"There could be people hurt in there." She began as she reached for the door. "Look... someone's trying to get out. They'll need help." She pointed as something began to emerge from the side... now top... of the mass. The smoke and heat haze obscured whoever it was, but it was humanoid.

All Peter could scent from the burning mess was Hydra, live and dead. Except Aunt May didn't know that. He realized that her desire to help probably would have been the right one under normal circumstances, but these circumstances were far from normal.

Anna frowned as the details of what staggered out of the burning wreck came into focus. "What is tha--" Her eyes widened. "Oh."

May stopped just as she was about to step out of the car and they all finally got a good look at what had come out.

It spread immense fleshy wings and gave a raucous caw. A red misty haze surrounded its body. The taloned feet and overly long neck were familiar. There were still tufts of hair sticking out of the thing's scalp, but most of the hair was on a fringe around its neck. Unlike the first he'd seen, this one didn't have the large beak of a nose, but the teeth were nevertheless too flat and too white and too large for its mouth.

"Vulture." MJ breathed, her eyes wide, her fingers on Peter's thigh tightening.

Peter reached forward and roughly jerked Aunt May, who'd already had a foot out the door, back into the car. His voice commanding and urgent as he roughly barked, "Go! Go! DRIVE!"

Anna didn't need much more encouragement. She floored the gas even as May tried desperately to close the door and get buckled back in at the same time.

Peter glanced back. They were pulling away, but the Vulture took several strides, the red haze flared and it gave a flap of it's wings.

It shot forward, catching up to them with terrifying speed.

Gwen, who had also been watching screamed. She ducked down, fumbling a grip onto her shotgun, which she'd kept at her feet. It was loaded and ready, but she couldn't turn around fast enough to aim it before the Vulture was upon them.

Then it passed over them.

That might have been a relief if it hadn't raked its talons through the car's ceiling on it's way past.

Peter saw the foot long blades begin to punch through the metal and upholstery of the car's ceiling as though in slow motion. He pushed MJ to one side just in time to keep her from having the side of her face torn open.

That saved her, but he was less fortunate as they drew lines of bright, hot pain across his inner wrist. He hissed, biting down on a pained exclamation even as tendrils went to work, sealing the gap in his flesh even before the claws had finished ripping him open.

MJ being shoved into Gwen just made it even harder for the blonde girl to bring her shotgun to bear. By the time she could aim it upwards, the claws had withdrawn and they could see the Vulture flying ahead of them, still blazing red. A hundred yards ahead of them, it twisted in midair, exhibiting far more grace than Peter could've expected.

It charged towards them once more.

Anna screamed, pressing the accelerator even harder.

The passenger side door was closed, but May was still not buckled in and screaming at Anna, "Do not play chicken with the flying zombie thing! We do not want to play chicken!"

The Vulture kept flying towards them at breakneck speed and faster than any of them could register, it flipped its legs forward, holding them spread and clearly intending to slam talons first through the windshield and into Anna and May.

Anna never had time to turn the car aside.

May had just started to duck down.

Peter had just a split second hesitation before he moved, but he pushed his concerns aside. He'd stopped thinking about the possibility of being discovered. All he had in mind now was protecting everyone.

He tore through his seatbelt and began to bring his arm up, the flesh was twisting and writhing into tendrils as it reconfigured into the Scorpion style whip-blade form. It might have done the trick... but that moment's hesitation had slowed him down and he simply wasn't fast enough.

Before his arm could finish its transformation, Gwen, whose entire focus had been on the rapidly approaching Vulture, stuck her shotgun between both front seats and yelled out, "Sorry!"

The blast from the weapon was deafening inside the car. The buckshot would have gone through the windshield's safety glass easily enough, but the Vulture's talons had just pierced through, creating a spiderweb of cracks that weakened the material and made it all the easier for the shotgun blast to punch through and slam into the vulture.

Anna flinched hard from the noise, jerking at the wheel from the sudden pain of the small burns the gunpowder had scattered on the side of her face and shoulder. Her hearing wasn't in much better shape, but it definitely beat whatever the Vulture's talons would have done to her. the windshield was a total loss, reduced to little more than a blurry mess of cracks where it hadn't been blasted open.

No one really got a good look at what happened next as the car bounced, the wheels on the driver's side bouncing onto the curb as Anna tried to recover from the shock and get control of the car at the same time.

Peter forced himself to pay better attention and realized that he could scent and feel the Vulture looping back. There was the copper scent of blood in the air from the newly created hole in the windshield. The blood scent mingled with Hydra's carrion reek and told him that the Vulture was injured. But not badly enough. He could hear its wing beats even if he couldn't spot it visually.

The car bounced once more as it got off the curb and back onto the road. Anna was wincing and holding a hand to her right ear. The car wasn't driving straight anymore, but it was still moving. The barricade they had been angling for was coming within sight and Peter could already hear the chatter of machine gun fire as they shot at the Vulture.

Aunt May resurfaced from where she'd ducked holding some large barreled revolver that Peter vaguely recognized as having been in Uncle Ben's collection. She hurriedly waved the barrel through the cracked and pebbled safety glass of the broken windshield, trying to clear as much of it from the front and give Anna the chance to see where she was going.

Gwen was clutching her gun tightly and scanning around them in small jerky motions.

Peter felt the Vulture closing in once more. This time from above.

"Incoming!" He barked out, his real voice echoing the same word Cain had spoken in his head. "Keep driving!"

Anna shook her head again and Peter noted a trickle of blood from her ear, "What?"

MJ gasped as a talon suddenly burst through the back windshield and Peter felt the blades pierce him. Fresh pain blazed through the left side of his back. He was reasonably certain it had punched through one lung, shattered bits of safety glass rained down on them where it had broken through.

Gwen turned, not yet having seen that he'd been run through, but struggling once more in the limited confines of the car to swing her shotgun around.

MJ was screaming and trying to pull Peter off the talons.

The moment froze and Peter locked gazes with MJ. Her eyes were wide with surprise, but he could see the calm settle in them and she stopped her frantic pulling. Peter realized that her panicked reflex had been to help him... until she realized that he would be fine.

Peter hadn't realized just how fast and agile a Vulture actually was, seeing as how the only one he'd fought had been half-crippled and pinned down by Thunderbolts gunfire. This thing was healthy and at the peak of its considerable powers. It seemed as though it were even faster than Connors had been.

So... two thoughts.

He couldn't afford to let it get to anyone.

He had no room to maneuver in the car.

So... two birds. One stone. His voice drawled to himself.

He didn't really have time to give MJ more than the beginnings of a smile in that fraction of a second as he pulled his legs up beneath him, digging his heels into the edge of his seat, even as tendrils unfolded from around his wound and melded into the vulture's flesh, trapping it against him.

He straightened his legs suddenly, flaring heat to adjust his mass as he did so. He rocketed out of what was left of the back windshield dragging the annoyed Vulture in his wake.

The red haze surrounding the Vulture seemed to be interacting with his own as it realized that its leg was stuck to him. They both hung in mid-air for a moment even as the car made its escape.

There was another shotgun blast and Peter winced as he felt buckshot rip into his side. The shot had taken the Vulture in its center mass, but had caught him on the periphery.

It gave another shrieking caw and flapped its wings sharply, sending them both rocketing upwards. They were stuck with one another, and despite his efforts to disorient it by shifting his mass around, the Vulture seemed to adjust instinctively. Various aerial acrobatics sent him tumbling every which way, disorienting him badly even as the Vulture used its other leg to claw at him.

Hurry up and finish this. Donna urged, concern thick in her voice. He couldn't imagine what was happening in the car, but he had to get back to them before anyone did anything rash.

Peter had already shifted his own fingers and toes to their claws and talon configurations and fended off the attack even as he tried to score his own hits. Unfortunately, having the end of the Vulture's leg stuck to his upper back did not put him in a good position to strike at the Vulture.

The disorientation of their swooping, tumbling flight was obviously getting to him. He could feel something shifting in his head, possibly restructuring his inner ear worked to allow him to accommodate all the sudden changes in direction and orientation. That would be the excuse he'd claim for why he hadn't done the obvious sooner.

Eat him, you fool! Cletus thundered in his mind.

Peter felt his feeding tendrils begin to surge up the Vulture's leg and would have smiled.

Except the Vulture was apparently more clever than he'd given it credit for and it slammed him hard against the corner of a building with its full weight driving him into the cement.

Peter tasted blood briefly and he felt several ribs snap.

You're actually kind of getting used to that by now, huh? Cletus jibed.

He probably would have been concussed as well if he'd been less resilient.

Or you are concussed and just too messed up to notice, his voice drawled back.

His ribs knit themselves without his consciously thinking about them, but then he also felt the tendrils in his back flail around and retract just as they finished consuming the vulture's knee. The scent of live Hydra pulled away from him at speed and he realized that it had cut its own leg off to get away from him.

He barely caught himself on the wall with his talons and claws, then sensed that the vulture was already looping back.

Oh, yeah. I don't think he likes you much, Cletus drawled.

Peter watched it's approach even as he scrambled along the wall, mass shifting and claws digging into old cement. In the open sky the vulture really did have the advantage. It could build up its speed, it could play to its agility.

It's coming in on your seven. Cain barked.

He had few illusions about how well he'd stack up in an aerial battle against a vulture. He could sort of fall slowly and with a vague sort of grace. That made him a wallowing aerial hippo compared to the vulture.

So he wasn't going to engage it in one. He allowed it to close in, giving every indication that he was trying to make for cover. There might not have been much of a conscious mind left within those infected heads, but the more predatory infected still had a sort of vicious, feral cunning even when not directed by a Hive.

At the last moment, as it committed to a screaming dive, he whipped his arm around displaying the whip-blade configuration and aimed directly at the Vulture's center mass.

It caught on to what he was doing at the last moment and tried to veer off, shifting and flaring red haze to allow it to perform an impossible mid-air turn that would've sent it rocketing straight up.

But Peter had his own ways of breaking physics as well. Red veins in the spine-like bone of his arm flared and the blade end of his arm shot forward at just barely sub-sonic speeds. The immense blade slid cleanly into the Vulture's chest, sinking all the way to the bulbous knot at the base of the blade where his fingers were. Fingers that immediately unfolded and elongated into more feeding tendrils. It struggled against him, snapping it's wings sharply enough to jerk him off the wall, but the blade and his own feeding tendrils were bit deep into its body.

He shifted mass and landed softly on the sidewalk, before he allowed his mass to shift again, anchoring himself with several tons worth of strength and his talons. He gave a rolling shrug of one shoulder which gave a whip-crack to the cable of flesh connecting him to the Vulture. It slammed hard into the middle of the street, disoriented and mewling. Peter felt the wings under his control at the end of his arm for a brief moment before the entire mass of the Vulture collapsed into feeding tendrils that folded back up his elongated arm.

He took a deep breath, trying to orient himself. The Vulture's crazed attempts to throw him off had taken them several blocks away from Forest Hills. That wasn't a problem. He could cover the distance easily enough--

His attention was caught as another helicopter roared past over head, losing altitude sharply. There were more Hydra sources aboard. What crew had been there were either dead or infected now. He could see walkers clinging to the open doorway and he found himself wondering what the hell was going on.

Cain grumbled, Once is unfortunate. Twice is a coincidence, Three times--

"--line did not hold! Repeat. The 4th Avenue Li--"

"-- just lost Chariot Three! Beachhead One has no close air support! We are getting overrun! Pull every--"

If Peter concentrated he could hear more explosions and gunfire in the near distance. Another helicopter flew erratically in the distance, wallowing unsteadily in the air as a hunter clawed at the closed door and tore it open.


-- that's enemy action. Cain concluded. Clamor in the East, Attack in the West.

A distraction to pull attention away from Manhattan once more after Gentek Tower's collapse. If Peter had any doubts that Jessica maintained control over the infected in Queens, this dispelled them. It had been over twelve hours since Gentek Tower had fallen. Connors' voice whispered statistical analysis to him. Exponential growth patterns. That might have been enough time to get the numbers they needed. It all came down to biomass. Normally the Hydra virus killed a majority of its victims... but a Hive changed those numbers. Dead bodies were just more grist for the mill. Every corpse could still feed the production of a viable Walker or Hunter or worse things. If any corpses had been left where they'd fallen in Forest Hills, Peter would be very surprised.

Forest Hills had been a thriving, well-populated neighborhood. Now it was boiling over with infected and they were overwhelming the Marine barricade at Beachhead One. That was their primary rallying point across the street from where the Forest Hills police precinct had been.

Anna, Aunt May, Gwen and MJ was driving right into that.

No more time to think. He took a deep breath and caught their scents almost instantly.

He ran.

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