(New Orleans)
A young blonde girl is ripped apart by zombies right outside the N.O.P.D building. Detective’s Tanaka and Fredrickson witness the incident, but Tanaka coldly says that her death is acceptable collateral damage. They’ve got bigger fish to fry. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees a zombie making a play for her. She blows its head off with a shotgun, and figures it’s time to put a stop to this mess. She’s not worried about going up against an army of corpses. She plans on having Remy do all the dirty work for them.
Gambit and Brother Voodoo are being pursued by a large crowd of zombies, the most dangerous of whom is Emery Arcenaux, whose abilities including having an impenetrable force field. Jericho isn’t used to fleeing from a threat, but Remy warns him that this isn’t cowardice, it’s common sense. He tries again to get through the force field but fails, as expected. He tells Jericho that they need to stop this guy. Jericho notices Emery seems to be particularly focused on killing Remy, and Remy tells him he has that effect on a lot of the living too.
Jericho thinks Emery’s body was revived for the sole purpose of killing him. The other zombies are probably a side effect of the spell. As they run, Gambit saves an old lady from flying debris, taking a hit himself. He doesn’t know it, but it’s Emery’s aunt, and she’s surprised that he put himself on the line for her. He then realizes his old friend Dan Downs is back there, but Jericho tells him his friend is beyond saving, as are all these wretched souls. He smashes one in the face as he speaks. He warns Remy that if he wants to help him, he should break the spell responsible for these unholy resurrections. It’s the person who cast the spell they need to stop. Remy knows that won’t be easy as long as Emery is on their tail, but he has an idea.
As they climb some stairs, he turns and hurls several charged cards at the buildings lining the street. They collapse immediately and fall on the zombies, including Emery. Remy figures this will at least slow him down. As they wonder how to find out who cast the spell, Detective’s Tanaka and Fredrickson arrive, and when Remy asks Jericho how they’ll find this person, Tanaka says, “Three words, LeBeau. Next of kin!”
Gambit isn’t impressed with her appearance. He reminds her that she’s responsible for all this, but Tanaka acts all innocent, replying that she’s not sure where these baseless accusations are coming from. She tells Remy he needs a little something called the ‘burden of proof.’ She flashes a photograph and informs them that it is of Antoinelle Arcenaux, Emery’s aunt. Witnesses say she freaked when she was his body in the morgue and made all sorts of threats. She has a file with a history of cutting up goats and chickens, and having weird moonlight ceremonies - voodoo-type stuff.
Remy recognizes her as the granny he saved earlier. Jericho tells him she’s gone now. She doesn’t need to be on hand once she’s set the spell in motion. Emery will follow him to the ends of the Earth. The only way to stop him is to stop her. Detective Tanaka tells them she lives in a shack in the Bayou, in an inlet beyond the Ramsey Plantation heading toward Saint Tammany parish. She slaps Gambit’s butt and says, “Go git ‘em tiger!” She then whispers to Fredrickson for him to call for the helicopter. It’s crucial they beat these bozos to the scene.
(not far away)
Genevieve D’Aubigne is watching events on her monitors and sees Tanaka slap Remy’s butt. She’s infuriated, and wants her revenge. Madame Camille asks her what’s wrong, but she says nothing. She holds the CD of Remy and Lili’s dalliance and says Remy LeBeau is so finished.
(shortly)
Remy and Jericho are heading down river in a speedboat. Jericho doesn’t approve of stealing and asks how he learned to hot-wire a speedboat. Remy replies that it goes with the territory. On his super-hero off hours, he’s not exactly a stranger to larceny. Jericho figures that was why he was so unfriendly to Detective Tanaka, but Remy turns and tells him it’s all her fault this is happening. She shot the poor kid in the back and didn’t think twice about it.
They soon arrive at the shack, but find an army of zombies standing between them and it. They leap from the boat while it’s still moving, and Remy groans that the only thing worse than fighting zombies is fighting zombies knee-deep in a smelly, Mosquito-filled swamp. Brother Voodoo tells him he’s wrong. This is perfect. He explains that there are no accidents in vodoun. We are all one with the universe, and we all serve and walk on the path of the one. Man and nature, life and death, souls and spirits; they’re all part of a sacred cycle; a sacred circle.
Jericho clasps his palms together and goes into action. As Remy tackles one zombie, Jericho summons several gators, which get to work devouring the others. Remy asks if he’s ‘one with the gators’ now, but Jericho replies that he has simply pled their case to the god-spirits of life and light, and nature has agreed to assist them in this battle against the unnatural.
Not only Alligators pitch in to help, but also snakes and even plants, with a vine wrapping one zombie up to render it helpless. Remy think that’s great, but Emery is back, and all the critters and vines in the world ain’t gonna stop him. He leaps to avoid an energy burst from Emery, and shouts out that he knows Antoinelle is out there somewhere. He asks if this is what she wants for her nephew. Is this how she wants to remember him? Hiding inside the shack, she whispers, “Kill him,” reinforcing her spell.
Emery attacks swiftly, and he grabs Gambit around the neck, lifting him clean off the ground. Remy sees Antoinelle, and reaches inside his coat pocket for some cards. She warns her that he’s been told that the only way to stop Emery is to kill her. Her eyes widen, as he adds that, looking at her, he thinks maybe that’s what she wants. Maybe all this pain she’s causing is so somebody can take her pain away. He releases the cards and apologizes. Surprisingly, the cards whiz straight past Antoinelle’s head, and instead they explode on Detective Tanaka’s pistol, shattering it. He’s not letting her get away with it this time.
Antoinelle turns to him, and says he saved her. It’s the second time he’s done it, even though she was about to kill him. Remy assures her that he didn’t kill her nephew, and he ain’t gonna kill her. He doesn’t want to see anybody dead, which ain’t to say he wants to see the dead living. Antoinelle grabs her nephew and hugs him. She asks what she’s done. She was so horrible. “I’m so sorry,” she cries.
Jericho tells Remy that her power’s fading. She’s released control over the zombies. Now, he can use his own power to return these tortured souls their places of rest. Remy wonders what they’ll do with her. Jericho says she’s finished. She knows exactly what she’s done, and she’s going to have to live with the guilt of it. There’s no worse punishment than that.
Detective Tanaka has other ideas. She produces a pair of handcuffs, and says she’s bringing her in. She asks Remy to think about all the death she’s caused. Remy retorts by asking her to think about all the death she has caused. How foolish will she look in court, testifying about an old lady performing a spell to raise the dead? It reminds him of a little something he was told about the ‘burden of proof.’ “Good luck proving that, hotshot,” he grins. Tanaka warns him she’ll kill him for this, but Remy tells her not today she won’t. He and B.V. have one last thing to attend to.
(and so)
They return the zombies to their rightful places, and Remy sees his old friend Dan home. Before they say their farewells, Jericho asks Remy if he’ll take his card; just in case. “In case New Orleans is overrun by some new, unnatural or super-powered menace and we need to team up to save the day?” he replies. Jericho says this is more personal. Remy laughs, and says no offense. He’s flattered, but there’s this girls he’s seeing… That’s not what Jericho meant. He explains that he was a psychologist a long time ago, before he became Brother Voodoo. He’s getting his own practice going again in town, and he might benefit from a session or two. Remy takes the card. “Psychologist?”
Jericho tells him that in their brief time together, he’s seen evidence of a personality that’s narcissistic, kleptomaniacal, pathological, adrenaline-addicted, anti-authority and given to reckless suicide tendencies. He pats Remy on the back and says, no offense, but a super hero who moonlights as a thief? “Dude, you got issues.”
(epilogue)
Genevieve D’Aubigne wanders through the empty streets of New Orleans, strewn only with the rotting corpses of lifeless zombies. She whistles to herself as she approaches a post box. She posts an envelope containing the CD to Rogue at the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning, and smiles to herself as she wanders home again.
