#71: Legion of the Damned, Part 2 (of 4)

Previously, in GREEN LANTERN CORPS…

The hunt for BLACK HAND led GUY GARDNER, HANK HENSHAW and JOHN STEWART back to Coast City, but they quickly realised that their enemy was numerous steps ahead of them when they were ambushed by the unlikely, undead likes of THE CRUMBLER, JAVELIN, THE INVISIBLE DESTROYER, MAJOR DISASTER and TIGER SHARK!

The Green Lanterns were blindsided in an ambush and left reeling, making a run for it when they were overwhelmed by the sheer malice and viciousness of their attackers! But when they reached the open air they discovered an energy sphere had been erected around the city-- there was no escape!

With BLACK HAND in complete control of the situation, he initiated the next stage of his apocalyptic plan, as tens of thousands of the living dead emerged from the energy shield surrounding the city! All the while, a mysterious ally watches the destruction wrought, and she can’t help but be amused…

With Coast City teeming with the undead, her citizens fodder against an enemy that wants nothing more than to devour them, the Green Lanterns are on the back foot-- and it doesn’t help that they found themselves in free fall above the city that they need to save!

Welcome back to the ongoing adventures of the GREEN LANTERN CORPS!

Half his face a ruined mess, Hank Henshaw screamed as he plummeted toward the ground along with Guy Gardner and John Stewart. Blood loss from the spear in his side had caused Guy to pass out, John was in shock after his left arm had to be amputated, and Hank himself had been set on fire, and the flames refused to be extinguished via his ring.

Guy had been guiding them to safety when he’d lost consciousness, and Hank seemed to be the only one able to draw a coherent thought, so he imagined soft landings, pillows and blankets, and a safe place to touchdown-- the trio crashed into an emerald blanket fort on top of the nearest building, then rolled onto their backs, the impact drawing them all back to awareness.

“…Sound… off…” mumbled Hank.

“Mostly… mostly here,” said John, waving his right hand, before looking at the stump of his left and wincing.

His arm had been removed half way up the bicep, and the pain was excruciating, but it was better than the alternative. Whoever his attacker was-- the Crumbler, was it?-- could cause a rot to spread across anything he touched, and he’d gripped John’s arm tight. If the Green Lantern hadn’t taken it upon himself to severe the arm above the rot, who knew how far it would have spread.

“Gard-- ner-- you-- with-- us?” spat Hank.

He could taste blood and burning in the back of his mouth, and delicately touched his own face. When he drew his fingers back, there was a mixture of black and red covering his white gloves, and he rubbed the residue off on his arm. He concentrated on healing, on pain relief, while trying to locate Gardner with his good eye, his right eye sealed shut by the burns. The Invisible Destroyer had done a number on him, but then again, their attackers had done a number on them all.

“Mmmmhere,” said Guy, pulling himself up while clutching the gaping wound on his side.

“We-- need-- find-- cover,” said Hank, staggering forward.

Guy looked over at his comrade. “What?” he asked.

He hadn’t been able to make out what Henshaw was saying, it was like his comrade’s voice was distorted, but when he saw the state of him, he could understand why. Burns covered over half of Hank’s face, and Guy could see bone where the burns went deep. His lips were barely there, a nostril was gone in its entirety and one ear was an ashen mess.

John ushered the two men into the building they’d landed inside, and found themselves inside a stairwell. Guy slumped down when he saw how many floors high they were, and winced as he continued to grip his side. He had scoped out the sphere, seen how far it had spread-- a chunk of the ocean was lapping against the edges of the shield, and on the other side, in-land, he could see Ferris Air. How big was this bloody thing?

“Guy, Guy, focus on me, yeah? Remember when you were vivisected by that Kryptonian mad scientist*?” asked John.


“I know, I know,” said Guy.

John nodded. “Okay. I’m going to remove the spear. You just concentrate. You know what you need to do.”

“It’s a javelin. I got javelined,” corrected Guy, biting his lip and gently hitting his head on the wall behind him as he tried to rev himself up.

“Colour me--” John drew the shaft of the weapon out of Guy’s abdomen quickly and Gardner cried out in pain. “--Corrected.”

Immediately, tiny threads of emerald light began to knit his body back together as his ring went to work, but blood bubbled out and he wheezed as the work was done.

“I’ll be back in a second, just keep thinking green, think healing, it won’t be long,” said John.

“Ain’t my first rodeo, Johnny,” replied Guy.

John turned his attention to Hank, who had one hand covering his massacred face, while soft green light throbbed from his palm. He was working on reconstituting the damage, and while pink flesh was beginning to string back together across the burns, he still looked like he was in agony.

“Let me back you up, Hank,” said John.

“Th-thanks,” said Henshaw.

Stewart placed his hand over Hank’s own and thought about channelling additional energy into whatever act his comrade was attempting. The emerald glow beneath Hank’s hand intensified and he cried out, but a few seconds later he dropped his palm from his face and it had regrown sufficiently, a soft, reddish sheen to where new meat and muscle had been generated.

“Henshaw, you’ve got half a beard,” said John, trying to ease the tension.

Henshaw laughed once, then coughed. He was rattled, but that was par for the course. With a swift movement of his hand across his face, he used his ring to shave the rest of his beard off, leaving him shaken but symmetrical. “Better?”

“You look like a five-year-old,” said Guy, dragging himself up to standing.

“You look like an asshole,” replied Hank.

Gardner helped Henshaw up, and the two men looked at Stewart, who was still absent an arm.

“I can regrow it. I think. We can grow back faces and we can knit together wounds. I’ll need to concentrate, and it’s probably gonna hurt like all hell, but I think I’ll be fine,” said John.

“That shield… my ring can’t penetrate it. I can’t even get a comms signal through. We’re stuck in here.”

“Ain’t that always the way?” asked Guy.`

“There’s something else my ring is picking up… it’s… huh, I need more time--” started Hank.

“You may not have the time for that right now,” said John, as the entire building began to shake. The trio rushed back outside and looked down at the street below, where the skeletal Major Disaster was stood, hands raised, his powers taking effect on the building they were currently occupying.

“Oh, dammit,” whispered Hank.



“Hank, you know the drill!”

John generated a sniper rifle and Henshaw took a knee in front of the trained marksman. Even with one arm, Stewart was formidable, but he cushioned the barrel of the gun with a construct, giving him all the support he needed. He took aim at Disaster and let off a single round, an energy bullet that went straight through the villain’s head and out the other side.

Disaster staggered back, nearly slipping on the wet pieces of brain and skull under his feet, but quickly regained his composure and continued the task at hand-- demolishing the building they’d taken refuge in.

Guy slapped his forehead in irritation. “Headshots don’t work?! These zombie-bastards aren’t playing by the rules. Means we need to focus on finding Black Hand. We end him, we end this.”

“Evacuate civilians, that’s our priority right now,” said Hank.

As the building began to crumble, the trio darted off the roof and zipped in and out of the rooms below, their rings scanning for life. They scooped out the residents and collected them in protective spheres, but they knew they couldn’t dally. Disaster could drop the building and he could cause their rings to malfunction. That much was obvious after their face off earlier. They made a beeline for Coast City’s police station, where they saw cops in riot gear keeping hordes of the living dead at bay on the steps to the building.

“I’ve got this, you take them inside,” said Guy.

Hank and John headed inside the building, while Gardner took this opportunity to test a few theories. He sent beams of light through the heads of the shambling hordes, and thanked whatever higher power was listening that it worked-- they collapsed and didn’t get back up again.

So, while the super villains that managed to trounce them could get up from having their brains blasted out the back of their heads, the rest of the masses were susceptible to a good old fashioned headshot. This could work to their advantage.

After making short work of the zombies nearing the police station, Guy dug a massive trench around the building, giving them a level of separation from the oncoming dead that they didn’t have before. Content that he had given them something to work with, he landed and hurried amongst the officers he’d given a respite to. “Who’s in command here? Where’s your boss?”

Gardner was given a name and quickly found one Captain Nemo Jones, formerly of Metropolis’ Major Crimes Unit and currently trying to settle into his new role in Coast City’s Police Department.

“Green Lantern? Well, that’s some luck on our side,” said Jones, reloading his assault rifle after emptying the latest clip. “Captain Jones, recent transfer but I got some experience dealing with these kinds of unusual problems back in Metropolis. Fat lot of good it’ll do us here, but maybe, just maybe…”

“Yeah, don’t thank me yet. The guy behind this is Black Hand and for some god damn reason he can raise the dead. We need to round up as many survivors as possible, and keep them away from the undead, or his army’s only gonna get bigger.”

“The more people we put in one place, the more undead we’re going to be having trouble with,” replied Jones.

Guy nodded in agreement. “We don’t have a choice. There are three of us active in the city right now. We can split the difference between finding survivors and keeping the undead off your back. We need to make this location defensible, or we’ll be overrun in minutes.”

While Gardner and Jones talked defences, Henshaw and Stewart dropped off the dozens of survivors they’d rescued from the building they’d taken refuge in and headed back outside. When they hit open air, they saw Gardner digging another trench with his ring, and the police officers building barricades, moving cars around, trying to give themselves an even playing field to face off against the undead.

Guy landed and rushed over to his comrades. “This might work for the regular zombies, but those super villains Hand bought with him are another thing entirely. We need to keep them out of the PD’s hair, and we need to get survivors to safety. On top of that, we need to locate Black Hand.”

“Okay, so to sum up, the ring’s CPU can’t penetrate the shield, I can’t get any communications outside of the city limits; we’re alone in here and there are zombies-- this is rancid, guys,” said Hank.

“What, you pick up a thesaurus? Jeez, Henshaw. Yeah, rancid, but from that I’m hearing there are three objectives, and three of us,” said Guy.

Hank looked out across the city. “Fair. I’ll locate survivors, bring them back here, or other police stations around the city. If we can make defensible positions, get weapons and ammo here, that’d help.”

“I’ll assist. The sooner we get the field cleared of friendlies, the better. After that, we can both focus on keeping the zombie-villains busy,” said John.

“No objection from me,” said Hank.

“Sounds good. I’ll locate Black Hand. I mean, I guess I started this bastard thing, so I guess I’ll finish it too,” said Guy.

“Okay, remember, they bite you, you turn. That’s how zombies work, right?” said Hank.

“Head shots; remove the head or destroy the brain,” said John.

“And if you run into one of the super bastards?” asked Guy.

“We’ll all have figure that out as we go,” replied John.

Guy bit his lip in grim resignation to the situation, then began to nod, building himself right back up. “Right then. Right. Ring check. Power levels?”

<Power levels at 70%,> said Guy’s ring.

<Power levels at 80%,> said John’s.

<Power levels at 75%,” said Hank’s.

He grimaced. “Have to be enough. I can’t open the dimensional lock. I can’t pull my battery out from inside.”

Guy shrugged. “Maybe not. But I’m no idiot. Apart from sometimes. I might have done something naughty a while back… there was a concentration of bad shit happening in Coast City a while back, when Hal wore the ring. Mongul’s invasion*, the… Predator incident**. Big, city-shaking bullcrap that took a hell of a lot of fight to come back from.”

**Green Lantern #40

“Yeah, I’m well aware,” said Hank. Of course he was. He’d died during the Mongul invasion, and he was the puppet being worn to inflict maximum damage during the Predator incident. But he knew that was one phase of his life, and his actions now defined him, not those when he wasn’t in control of himself.

Guy looked sheepish. He was well aware of the circumstances. “I buried a power battery over at Ferris Air. Stel and Tomar helped me put it together. Contact with a power ring will activate it, and let us charge ourselves up.”

“That’s… pretty damn clever, Gardner,” said John.

“It’s pessimistic is what it is, but hey, cynicism paid off; I’ll go retrieve it if you throw the coordinates into my ring,” replied Hank.


“You know, this is lovely and all, but I can’t help but feel there’s some finesse missing from the whole thing,” said the stranger stood beside Black Hand. She was growing bored now, and her constant questioning was endemic of that.

Hand looked over at her and smiled. His scabbed lips split down the middle and bile ran out and down his chin. He cast a glance back at his sister, who had managed to fall asleep during the chaos-- or perhaps she’d passed out from exhaustion-- it took a lot out of you when you were dying from cancer.

“Doesn’t help you’re not so talkative anymore. But you know, I think I can see my place in this whole thing. You keep causing your particular brand of chaos, William, and I’ll add my own to the mix. Does that sound agreeable?”

Hand nodded once, and she brushed her fingers across his chin. Upon noticing the black ichor now staining the tips, she shrugged and wiped them on his hoody, then leaped off the edge of the building, leaving him to observe the horrors he’d unleashed.


Hank landed near about where Guy had told him to then began to scan the area. While his ring went about its business, he considered the airfield, and could see that the black sphere terminated not far off from the control tower about a third of a mile away from this spot. Any closer, and it might have bisected one of the hangers, but that didn’t mean anything right now.

Apparently, the battery he was searching for was impervious to scans so if you were looking for otherworldly energy signatures, it wouldn’t come up; but he knew the shape of the thing, and he knew he could find it from that alone. He excised a massive chunk of earth upwards, and with a spare tendril of light lifted the defunct battery up from where it had been left.

Letting the mound of dirt fall back into the hole, Henshaw held the battery up; he examined the battered equipment and was about to activate it when something caught his eye near the aircraft hangar. He’d not been back to Ferris Air since his death and resurrection, but Carol had made her position clear when he’d tried to reconnect with her some time back*.


That said, he remembered the layout none the less, and the memories of being one of her test pilots was a fond one, even if it came with the weight of what came after straining on top.

Out of curiosity, before he proceeded he repeated an earlier question to his ring. “Power level check?”

<Power levels at 64%,> replied his ring.

“That amount of power differential isn’t right…” said Hank.

He considered the black sphere surrounding Coast City and the outlying areas, and wondered if that was the cause. There was something his ring couldn’t decipher about the make-up of the thing, but his ring needed more time to run analysis. Perhaps that was it? Or maybe it was Black Hand himself, wielding unimaginable power. He activated ring-to-ring communication.

“Guy, John; I have the battery, and I can tell we’re going to need it-- rings are draining faster than usual. I’m just checking something out, then I’ll be right with you.”

“Just be careful,” came John’s voice.

Guy piped up, “Yeah, don’t get distracted. We need that battery.”

Hank headed toward the source of the movement on foot, careful to keep his steps quiet, and then watched as the shadows shifted. He was about to call out when a swarm of the undead groaned and stumbled toward him. He threw up his ring and sent shots through their heads, causing them to fall to the ground immediately. He took steps back when more of the undead swarmed forward over the bodies of their fallen brethren, and then cursed his lack of forward thinking.

“Are there any life signs inside?” Hank barked at his ring.

<Seven human life signs present.>

“Okay, I don’t want this to touch them,” he said, and with that he gave a curt nod at the decision he’d made and sent a barrage of blasts at his attackers, destroying the brains of the zombies but keeping the survivors safe.

He reinforced his aura and stepped over the piles of the dead, his aura sending shards of energy outward so that any ‘surviving’ undead would be pulverised from the neck up. After he was confident there were none left, his ring zeroed in on the survivors, and he saw that there was lift coming from the control room at the back of the hangar, elevated and accessible either by an elevator or a metal ladder at the back.

Carol Ferris opened the hatch and looked down at her attacker. “Hal! Thank--” Her realisation that it wasn’t Hal Jordan, but in fact Hank Henshaw, caused her to swallow her words, and he’d have lied if that hadn’t hurt. He was only human after all. “Hank… my God. This is…”

“Is-- is anybody hurt up there?” asked Hank.

“No, but--” started Carol.

“But… there… will be… down… here…” drawled a voice behind Henshaw.

Carol covered her mouth. “Oh, God! Look out!”

He’d already spun round, reinforced his aura, and readied a thought-- send back whatever hits me directly at the source of the attack-- but he was surprised to see a gaunt looking man, faded tattoos covering every inch of his body. He staggered forward, and for a second Hank couldn’t tell if he was dead or not.

“Got… shanked… in prison… thanks to the likes… of you…” spat the man.

The tattoos began to rise from his body, horrible, alien art that tentacled up and outward, directly at the Green Lantern. Something clicked with Henshaw. The attitude. The look.

The corpse of the Tattooed Man was stumbling toward him, and with inky black tentacles rolling off his skin and across the floor toward Hank, it was clear he had violent intentions.


“Just be careful,” said John, before he considered his own options.

“Yeah, don’t get distracted. We need that battery,” came the voice of Guy, elsewhere in the city.

He could shine a light, draw attention to himself, and wait for the villains to come to him. The cadre at the gardens had managed to get the drop on three Green Lanterns, and he wasn’t wanting to take the rest of them on by his lonesome. He leaned back on his training, and began thinking ambushes of his own, ways of dealing with the unrelenting monsters that wanted his blood-- and his brains.

Besides, his ring was draining of power, and he wanted to conserve the reserves until he needed them, or until Hank got the battery to them. In the meantime, he had a plan. He slipped into a gun shop, and was immediately confronted by the owner, who was alerted by the bright light that came with John’s appearance. In his grubby hands, he gripped a pump action shotgun nervously, and he was surrounded by ammo.

“Wh-who are you? Wh-what are y-you doing here?” asked the man.

“I’m a Green Lantern. I’m here to help. Put the gun down,” said John, his one hand raised in an act of peace making. He glanced at his stump, an odd phantom pain shooting down the length of where his other arm should have been.

“How d-do I know you’re not with them?”

“Because I’m not trying to--”

At the front of the building there was a banging, and John and the man both levelled their respective weapons at the source.

“Please! Please, they’re out here! Please let us in!”

“Duane, I know you’re in there! It’s Officer Prado! You have to let these people in!”

“Ignore it! Ignore it!” barked the shop owner, clearly named Duane.

John cast a glance over the owner’s shoulder, where the security system was still operational, and showed the view from the front door. A small group of people were banging on the door, looking terrified, trying to get inside. With them was a police officer in full inform, his weapon shaking in his hands.

“They’re uninfected,” said John.

“Don’t care. This is my place. If I open the door, others might be able to get in-- bad ones,” he replied.

John shook his head and approached the door. “Not if I--”

The sound of the shotgun being pumped behind him caused him to sigh. Typical.

Duane was spitting, vitriol rolling out of his mouth. “Look here, boy, This is my shop. I decide who comes in and who stays out. I’m safe in here. I intend to--”

John didn’t bother with the ring. He spun round, took two quick steps to cover the distance between them, and snatched the shotgun from the man’s hands. He chucked it across the room and then grabbed him by the collar, an energy construct springing from his ring to make up for his current limbic disadvantage.

“This is typical. This is a cliché. One of the worse. People need help so we help them. Survival doesn’t mean a god damn thing if we lose what matters in the process. So, listen to me, you sonofabitch--”

John swung his ring in the direction of the door and phased the survivors inside, without needing to open the door or expose the interior to the dangers outside. There were suddenly ten people indoors, and Duane shook his head in aggravation at his situation. The survivors almost collapsed in relief at being safely indoors.

“--And listen good. If people need help you help them. You, officer,” he looked back at the survivors. “Take this, I’ve been passing them to people in barricaded locations like this as I find them,” John manifested a small sphere of emerald energy and threw it at the police officer’s direction. “You don’t open the door. You hold this, you think about people getting inside, and they’ll be inside, just like how I got you in. See? That’s an option. Better to help than to give up on people from the off.”

“My shop,” replied Duane, defeated.

“Don’t give a damn. And because of this terrible attitude, I’m taking some weapons with me. I’ll try and bring it back intact,” said John.

He eyed up the top shelves. There was some good stuff on offer here, but that wasn’t what he needed.

With a brief scan of his ring, something caught his eye in the back rooms, locked and kept separate from the public section of the shop. He smashed the door down-- he was done with subtlety-- and found a musty backroom, filled with what was clearly illegal weaponry. Explosive rounds, bullets clearly designed to go through Kevlar-- all illegal under state statutes.

“Holy balls,” whispered Officer Prado.

Duane slumped over, dejected. Even if he survived, he wasn’t going to see daylight any time soon. A hefty prison sentence would be coming his way.

“I’ll leave the citations with you, sir,” said John.

It was like Christmas shopping. Excitement bubbled up his sternum. He knew exactly what he was looking for and found something that would do the job perfectly. He removed the heavy calibre sniper rifle from the top shelf, feeling the weight of the barrel in his hands.

With ring charges draining faster than usual, he needed an edge, and as he began to check the components, dismantling it with well-worn muscle memory before putting it back together, he knew this would do.


“Yeah, don’t get distracted. We need that battery,” said Guy.

Below him, the hordes groaned and groped at the sky, but if he kept his distance he would be fine. He hung still for a moment, concentrated on one thought alone, and unleashed a fleet of spiked constructs that smashed into the heads of the undead and caused them to collapse instantly. He had performed this act wherever he went, hoping to thin the masses that were stalking the streets of Coast City.

A metal pole shot past Guy, grazing his aura, and causing him to turn toward the source. He saw Doctor Polaris, a gaping hole in his chest, but still fresher than the rest of the deceased villains currently stalking the streets. Floating next to him was every street light from 1st Avenue and East 2nd Street all the way to their current location of East 46h.

“Yeah, that’s right you--” started Guy, his ring crackling.

Then he had a thought. Neal Emerson was a man who suffered with mental illness. His Dissociative Identity Disorder had been manageable for the longest time, but after an industrial accident his ‘dark half’ had gained dominance-- and the added ability to manipulate the magnetic field that surrounded the globe. But he had got better. Black Hand had torn him out of his life of sanity and back into this world of hurt viciously, and the Green Lanterns had no clue about the mechanics of that.

Guy dropped his hands but kept his aura tight and powerful. He didn’t want to be thrown for a loop like the last face-off with these guys, but he also didn’t want to throw the first punch.

“Neal! I know this isn’t you! I know you’ve worked hard to get better!”

Polaris’ head cocked to the side and he floated in place, the street lights faltering ever so slightly nearby. He cleared his throat, guttural, violent, and then with a deep, rasping voice, began to speak. “Neal… Emerson… is dead. Now there’s just me. Me and them.”

A shadow fell over Guy and he looked up just as Tiger Shark roared at him. Instead of letting the creature tackle him to the ground, he sent a flare up that caught the creature in his rotting chest, dislodging whatever innards were left inside the beast after his presumed murder at the rotting hands of Black Hand himself.

The flare of energy sent the creature of course somewhat, the bodysuit attached to his hip flapping like a shopping bag caught in a stiff breeze, but then Polaris pressed his own assault, and a half dozen pylons drove into Guy’s chest, sending him straight back into Tiger Shark’s direction.

The monstrous beast opened its immense maw and clamped razor sharp teeth around Guy’s arm-- it didn’t penetrate the aura surrounding the Green Lantern, but when Gardner tried to dislodge the beast it wouldn’t give.

“Ah, c’mon, I don’t-- gah-- I don’t-- need-- this--” said Guy, as he sent electricity coursing from his arm and into the beast known as Karshon’s body.

He thought about rotting meat. That horrible smell. Insidious, pervasive, the kind of stink that gets into your nose and doesn’t leave, and then he thought about rotting meat being cooked, and he nearly gagged inside his aura. Today was not his day.

Guy tried to stay elevated but found himself slowly descending toward the ground. He hadn’t wanted to, but his ring was playing up again-- he cursed-- fearing that Major Disaster was nearby, but powered on.

<Power levels at 23%-- and dropping-- warning!>

“What? Why?” spat Guy, making the aura around him frictionless and allowing him to slip out of Tiger Shark’s grasp and back ten steps before he resumed normal service.

<Unknown energy drain present near,> replied his ring.

Guy wondered if this was the same thing affected him earlier, but then he spotted the bodysuit around Tiger Shark’s waist. It was beginning to fill out. Karshon unclipped it and threw it to the ground, and whatever was manifesting inside the suit reached up, like it was emerging from a pile of rags. Something was manifesting, growing-- becoming-- and Guy’s ring was the cause.

<Power levels at 10%,> said his ring, as globules of energy visibly leeched out from Guy’s ring and floating directly toward the flapping, plastic-looking uniform.

It began to fill out completely now, going from an emaciated humanoid shape to something bloated. The containment suit-- as that was what it clearly meant to be-- stretched to its limits until it resembled a man-- a man who started screaming as soon as his body took shape.

Guy could tell things weren’t going his way, he put his rings to his lips and began to shout. “Boys, I’ve nearly lost my charge! Hank! I need that power battery! Hank! John? Anybody!”

“WHY DID YOU WAKE ME UP?” came the horrified shrieks of the thing inside the bodysuit.

“Well, I clearly didn’t mean to,” said Guy, aware his ring was nearing 0%.

“Tokamak has been through a lot to get here,” said Polaris, touching down on the street near Guy. Street lights hovered over the Green Lantern, ready to drive down on top of his head.

“ALL I FEEL IS PAIN! WHY IS EVERYTHING ON FIRE?!” continued Tokamak.

Guy looked at his current situation. Three villains he could see; one capable of draining his ring, one capable of eating his head, the other able to weaponise the fillings in his teeth. His ring was about to hit 0%, so--

“Screw this,” spat Guy, and he threw his hand into the air and the street burned green.


Hank took a step back. Tattooed Man was a joke in some circles, but that’s because he lacked the imagination to truly utilise the powers he’d received. Once he was a follower of some demon-god-- Trigon, wasn’t it, and he’d nearly summoned that beast from the pit. Hal was there to stop him, but still, an audacious debut for one who’d been relegated to the heap not long after*.


After that, imprisoned and stripped of the majority of power he’d received from Trigon, he became a follower of the Kobra cult. Out on parole, he managed to lead the Justice League into an ambush, but of course they escaped, and he was sent back to prison for the immense parole violation.*


Did he mention he’d been shanked? Kobra never struck Hank as the most forgiving anarchic doomsday cult. Mistakes were paid for in lives.

“I like your ink, Tarrant. Has anybody ever told you that?” asked Hank, taking a step back.

“Don’t… try… and play… games…” said Tarrant.

Ink black constructs slipped from his skin and began to spread across the floor like pooling blood. They’d reach the Green Lantern in a matter of moments, shooting up from the stone floor and coming at him like knives. Hank knew this, and he had a plan, but it was disgusting and he hadn’t convinced himself to follow through yet.

“I’m not, just being honest,” said Henshaw, holding up his hands.

“That… battery… shouldn’t… be here…” He pointed a withered finger at the portable power battery that Henshaw held behind his back. It was still inactive, but it still posed a threat. “…Your… rings… will… drain. The sphere… wants… it all…”

Henshaw shook his head. “Nuh-uh. But your magic… or whatever it is… it’s based around the tattoos you have, right? Monsters and creatures and whips and chains, a regular old S&M nightmare. I’m right, yeah?”

Tarrant laughed, a dry chuckle through creaking bones. “What… does it… matter?”

Hank shrugged. “You’re dead. I understand that. But I’m sorry anyway.”

Scalpels flew from Hank’s aura and flensed the skin from the Tattooed Man’s body. Every inch of meat excised from skeleton. Tarrant didn’t even have to scream,

When the dry slabs of flesh fell off his body, Henshaw sent two constructs to scoop up the two portions of the villain-- one collected the skin, the other the skeletal structure-- and then rocketed out of the hangar and in two separate directions.

“Come back from that, you zombie bastard,” said Hank.

“Is he gone?” asked Carol.

“Yeah, it’s safe. Let me just check something first--” he said.

<Power levels at 32%,> answered his ring.

“That’s not good. Time I--”

He was about to activate the portable battery when an immense blast of catastrophic energy struck him in the back, shattering his aura and doing untold damage to his body. He cried out and hit the ground hard, managing to roll onto his screaming back to scope out his attacker.

Carol Ferris descended from the control booth surrounded in a strobing purple aura, her body barely covered by the crystalline costume she now wore. Her bosom heaved as she laughed, excitement coursing through her veins at the same time as the violet energies flashed under her pale skin.

“Oh, you have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for this,” she said, rubbing the power ring on her finger-- deep pink, a familiar emblem emblazoned on it’s front.

“N-no,” whispered Hank.

He raised his ring, but she was on top of him now, pinning his arms down with her legs as she straddled him. The ring on his finger was surrounded by a purple construct and his thoughts didn’t reach it to make a difference.

She rocked back and forth, then put her hand over his face. As the world swirled purple and black, Hank could hear Guy’s voice emerge from his ring, begging for help, “Boys, I’ve nearly lost my charge! Hank! I need that power battery! Hank! Hank! Anybody!” but there was nothing he could do as inhaled sharply and sent a massive energy pulse directly into his head.

After that, everything went black.


John reduced all the functions in his ring to as close to power saving mode as he could will it. Ring-to-ring communication and the continued operation of the phasing orbs he’d been generating for survivors was maintained, as was the energy prosthesis he’d grown himself. If he kept his wits about him he’d be fine ‘running silent’-- he’d survived the Apokolips Invasion before the ring*, he’d been a marine longer than he’d worn the badge of the Green Lantern Corps, so he had to trust that experience, and lean into it when the going got tough.


He’d located as many survivors as he could, and was on his way to tracking more, when he’d spotted something that unnerved. The undead had thinned, only a few stragglers on the streets. The real hordes were the living, who lined up down the block in perfect unison. They stepped in time. They walked side-by-side. Why weren’t they running? What did they know?

Stewart scouted ahead and spotted a large sinkhole in the ground, filled with thirty or so of the undead. There was a bottleneck toward it that the living masses were headed down. At the mouth of the bottleneck were three of the undead villains that had caused the Green Lanterns trouble so far.

Stewart recognised Javelin, sharpening one of his weapons as he watched the living approach. He looked hungry, and the attention he was paying to his weapon bordered on the obscene. There were two others.

Another gaunt shape was crouched nearby, arms resting on his thighs, a skeletal outline visible under his baggy clothes. His face was perfect, featureless void; reminiscent of the Question, John thought, but there was no hair, no ears, nothing other than the blankness. Who was that?

Next to him, wearing burnished, yellow armour, was a man whose face was visible-- what little left of it, that was. His lips had curled and rotted off so his mouth was set in a perpetual, teeth-locked grin. His armour was dented and there was a hole above the heart. Where Black Hand had done him in, like so many others?

John watched through his scope, careful not to make himself known. The armoured man’s fingers twitched and tightened, moving in time with the living who approached the pit. Something clicked, some old story Jordan once told him about a villain he’d faced off with… the Puppeteer.

That was it-- a villain capable of controlling people using psychic power. He’d robbed a few banks in his day, the camera footage showed the tellers filling sacks of money and walking out, and it had taken Batman and Green Lantern putting two-and-two together to take him down and prove the bank tellers innocence. He lacked imagination, but if Black Hand’s actions had released his inner sadism…

“Oh, no,” whispered John.

The Puppeteer motioned for the men and women he controlled to go toward the blank-faced man, who gripped their faces and leached them of any features. He made his victims appear just like him-- and that action was enough to fill in a blank that resided in Stewart’s head. This guy must have been No-Face, a Gotham scientist turned monster who was caught in an accident that removed his features.

Driven mad, he found that he could pass on his affliction in degrees, and removed any identifiable marks from a crew he put together and went on a crime spree, another that Jordan put an end to back in the day.

Stewart checked the pit. Faceless bodies torn to shreds by the undead penned up in there. They were leading the living to the slaughter, blind, deaf and dumb thanks to the transformative powers of No-Face.

Slowly making his way down to street level, John measured the distance between him and his targets using his range finder, a slow click-click-click as he zeroed in. Threat assessment: The Puppeteer was controlling the people, but there were dozens, if not a near hundred or so of them, and three of the villains. No-Face could do damage, but only if he touched you, apparently. Javelin was their ranged weapon-user, but no, the main threat was obvious.

John fired off a round at the Puppeteer’s head and it transformed into a dank mist on impact. The villain took two steps backward and suddenly the hordes of the living began to scream, suddenly freed from the thrall of the monster that controlled them.

Instead of falling to the floor, the Puppeteer stumbled around, clawed at where his face once was, the distraction rendering him unable to focus on his innate powers.

Javelin had John in his sights, but the sentiment was met. One shot halved the villain’s head, but that wasn’t what Stewart had wanted. With one eye dangling out of its gory socket, the undead villain was still capable of locating him. He wanted to completely remove the brain and not expend any energy doing so.

The assassin carefully took his eye between thumb and forefinger and aimed it in John’s direction. He had been spotted! In time, of course, to see John squeeze the trigger of his rifle and vaporise the rest of Javelin’s head. He tripped over his own legs and into the pit full of the undead, immediately becoming lost in a tangle of groping limbs and stamping feet.

No-Face had vanished, and John didn’t like that one bit. The survivors had scattered, so he allowed an ounce of energy into his ring and sent his voice into the air. “Take shelter! Barricade yourselves somewhere safe! And help each--”

A fist into the back of the head sent John flying. He turned, his skull a throbbing ache, and saw the segmented armour of the Invisible Destroyer become visible as he continued to trudge toward the downed Green Lantern. The cause of his lack of arm was licking his lips behind his attacker, the Crumbler still an obese mess of a corpse that had more than likely been an obese mess of a human being back in the day.

John was about to power up his ring and send the duo flying when two hands clasped themselves around his head and he felt his skin begin to shift and run. He arched his head back and spotted the blank visage of No-Face, just as his own face sealed up tight.


Polaris yanked himself up, his armour scorched, and tried to locate Guy Gardner. There was a massive crater where the Green Lantern had been standing, and the eviscerated body of Tiger Shark was nearby, legless, dragging itself by its clawed hands toward where Tokamak was stumbling around, still screaming. Polaris could see no trace of their enemy, so after collecting the mangled bodies of his allies, lifted off into the air and resumed his duties-- murder and mayhem across Coast City.

Nearby, his ring now empty of charge, Guy scrambled through the backstreets, dodging the roaming hordes of the undead that had been unleashed by Black Hand. Lightning seemed to crack overhead, riddling the obsidian sphere that surrounded the city, and the air was stale and stank of rot.

He turned a corner and stumbled to a stop, groping at a wall to stop himself going any further.

A group of zombies, ten at least, were crouching over the bodies of what Guy assumed was once a family. Their corpses had been desecrated and were in the process of being consumed, their stomachs hollowed out by tooth and claw; raw flesh and blood currently lining the mouths of their attackers.

When the dead family-- reanimated-- realised that Guy-- a living, breathing piece of meat-- had arrived, they made a horrifying groaning sound and pointed at him, unable to move under their own steam thanks to the feeding frenzy of their fellow undead.

“Ah, shit, shit, shit,” whispered Guy.

The zombies began to stand, began to head toward Gardner, who doubled back and saw that his way back was blocked by the hordes he’d hoped to evade earlier. He looked up-- there was a fire escape-- and remembered a youth spent causing trouble, and he wondered if he could make the jump upwards--?

No time like the present to find out-- he leaped onto a large garbage container, then with all the strength he could muster from his exhausted legs, he reached up-- up-- and missed-- the ladder was too high up and he couldn’t--

“Gotcha!” said a young man, gripping Gardner’s wrist from above, just before his momentum would have sent him plummeting to his certain death, and an ignominious end to a stellar Green Lantern career--!

Guy reached up with his other hand, the undead groping at his feet, and was yanked upwards, onto the fire escape, where he could finally catch his breath next to his rescuer.

“Kid, you wouldn’t--” started Guy, clutching his chest as he tried to catch his breath.

He looked at the man who’d saved him. Early twenties. A scruffy head of hair. A relieved expression on his face. Gardner almost dry-heaved, his body going from one adrenaline-pumping experience to one that sent flashes of relief and panic through him.

“Hey, are you okay, man?” asked Kyle Rayner, reaching his hand out to Gardner.


NEXT ISSUE: Kyle Rayner is back-- but how? Who is the benefactor of the Black Hand, and how did he become so powerful? What’s the secret behind the ring that Carol Ferris now wields, and what connection does it have to Hank Henshaw? And finally, what terrible act will tear the Green Lanterns of Earth apart, leaving them broken as the greatest threats they’ve ever faced finally unite as we approach our seventy-fifth issue? FIND OUT NEXT MONTH!