I called Kayla, telling her what I’d learned in as few words as I could. I suggested that she might want to contact the offices of Major Justice and superheroes he led. He wasn’t going to listen to me.

Then she should make a more general announcement to regional and national groups about the situation and give them footage along with what Hunter said in our conversation.

“I’ll try,” Kayla let out a sigh, “it’s not as if he likes me either, but maybe someone else will show up and make him see reason.”

“I’m not optimistic, but if more people show up, we’ve got a better chance to control it,” I said, firing off a boombot at a new cluster of mixed humanoid and T.Rex zombies.

Though the cluster was no longer moving, Vaughn hit it with a lightning bolt. In this situation, I couldn’t argue with overkill.

“I hope so,” Kayla dropped the connection.

Jaclyn looked over at me, “How much confidence do you have in our suits’ filters? I don’t want to find out what happens if the spores get in my lungs.”

“Pretty confident,” I said, “I used ideas from alien tech meant for interstellar exploration for reference.”

“Good,” Jaclyn watched as Theo dropped a blast of flame on another cluster of expanding fungus creatures, blackening the cluster and everything around it.

A quick look showed that members of the Coffeeshop Illuminati were cooperating in destroying the zombies. Hunter appeared to be using a third variety of zombie to combat them—ape-like human forms with clawed hands. The claws appeared to be of a denser material than the previous zombies, but maybe they were just denser mushrooms. The best way to find out was taking a sample to analyze.

Short of that I had to go with my best guess—not that I had time for that.

I scanned the playground and the surrounding field for more signs of mushroom growth, noticing that the blackened bits of ground included partially melted swing sets and a slide.

Our grandparents had literally taken members of the current league to play on that equipment during more than one of their group barbecues after retiring.

I told my implant to remind me of this after the battle was over. We could donate money to help rebuild it. The city had to have a superhero rider on their insurance, but it would help make up for destroying things.

“Team Obvious,” Haley said over the comm, “there’s a big group of them leaving the park. We’re not revealing everyone, but Blue is handling this. She might need help.”

“Got it,” I said. “We’ll help.”

I checked Izzy’s camera view. She was in the air, looking down on the west side of the park, an area where there was no reason for Hunter’s fungus zombies to be in the first place—unless he’d placed them there to cut off an escape. HQ’s garage exit came out on that side of the park and there were enough supers that gone through that entrance for people to know it existed.

The west side of the park was mostly forest along with hiking trails and the rangers’ access roads. Grand Lake bounded it to the north, but residential neighborhoods bounded it to the south.

Haley and I had spent a bit of time making out in the Wolfmobile on one of the access roads early on in our relationship.

The camera showed a crowd of grey, human-shaped creatures gathering near the wire fence that separated the park from the street. I couldn’t tell how many, but based on the picture, my implant counted more than one thousand. The houses and people on the other side of street had no defenses.

Cassie turned to Jaclyn, “Can you get me there?”

Jaclyn didn’t reply directly, saying on the League’s open channel, “Blue, I’m bringing Captain Commando. We can’t just punch them without spreading the spores.”

“That’s going to need all of us,” Vaughn said.

“Plus everyone,” Amy said.

“I’ll pass it on,” I told them as Jaclyn grabbed Cassie and ran away in a blur. Amy and Vaughn flew after them, leaving me alone.

Sort of alone, anyway. Bullet and the Coffeeshop Illuminati were doing what they could to contain the remaining zombies—plus the new clusters that erupted out of the ground.

I shared a snapshot of the zombies beginning to tear down the fence and the location on the open comm channel assigned to West Michigan. They might not be using it to coordinate, but they’d get notifications from it.

I added, “We’re leaving to prevent your creatures from invading a residential neighborhood. If you can spare anyone, it would help.”

Then I flew into the air, seeing the massed fungus creatures below. There were more than I’d seen through Izzy’s camera.

“This had better not be some kind of trick,” Major Justice said over the comm.

“Don’t believe me. Check it out for yourself,” I said, turned on my rockets and flew away.