Chapter 31. Andy Parker gasped as the automatic gunfire threw handfuls of masonry into the air just before his eyes.

The battle had been raging for several minutes now, and Parker could not begin to estimate how many foes had fallen or how many remained.

The Red Panda had made short work of the zombie soldiers of the crime cabal.

It had been cut down savagely in a blinding flurry of swings and slashes of the katana.

Limbs were removed with surgical precision in seconds,

and though the walking horrors that this criminal mob had created to do their dirty work still writhed and moaned,

they lay scattered on the cement floor, helpless and harmless. Parker had seen only

glimpses of the Red Panda through the clouds of blinding smoke. He had seen the effortless

ease with which he was capable of exercising deadly force when he chose to, and to his amazement

in the instant the last of the zombie horde had fallen, he had seen the masked man sheathed the samurai

sword in a smooth and silent motion. There were dozens of enemies charging through the smoke,

all heavily armed and bent on his destruction, but he stood prepared to meet them with his bare hands.

He was coiled like a serpent ready to strike, but it was clear to Parker in that moment that the man

so feared by the underworld and the law alike was more willing to face death than to deal it.

All at once their enemies were upon them like a shockwave. Obscured by the thick smoke the gangsters

had not seen the fate of the zombies that had rushed in first. Far from charging to bear witness

to a slaughter, they were running headlong to their own destruction.

Too late they realized that their grim foeman awaited them, ready to meet their knives and

guns with his red-gonauted fists at the ready.

The first charge had met their fate like a wave crashing against a sea wall.

A great, seemingly unstoppable force was utterly

dissipated by the resistance it encountered. Those that followed hard upon the first charge had

...