In fact, precisely as Peter and the Earth-616 contingent arrived in Latveria , another dimensional wanderer was already navigating the apocalyptic nightmare of Earth-2149.
His name was Ash Williams. He was missing his right hand, currently replaced by a fully functional, blood-stained chainsaw.
Ash's recent history had been complicated. In his own universe, he had died and arrived at the pearly gates of a place that looked suspiciously like Heaven. While locked in a heated negotiation with an angel over whether he was allowed to bring his chainsaw and a twelve-gauge shotgun past the velvet rope , a lunatic in a yellow bodysuit had suddenly materialized at the gates and started eating the choir.
Then, accompanied by a localized lightning strike from rolling dark clouds, Ash had been violently resurrected and dropped directly into this doomed universe.
Given his long, traumatic history with the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis—the Book of the Dead—Ash immediately assumed the ancient, evil text was responsible for the sudden zombie outbreak. Believing he was the only man qualified to stop it, he embarked on a wildly ill-advised "adventure" to find the book and reverse the curse.
Along the way, he managed to rescue two surviving superhumans: Dazzler and the Scarlet Witch. After breaking into the Sanctum Sanctorum and learning the Necronomicon was currently locked inside the Latverian royal vaults, Ash convinced the two heroines to accompany him to Doctor Doom's sovereign nation.
Upon arrival, Doom completely ignored Ash's grand speeches. Offended, Ash mouthed off. Doom promptly locked him in a dungeon cell.
However, Wanda Maximoff, feeling indebted to the man who saved her life, secretly released him. Ash, possessing a distinct lack of self-preservation instincts, immediately decided to impersonate Doctor Doom, sneaked into the monarch's private study, and found the Necronomicon resting on a pedestal.
What he learned next broke his spirit completely.
The zombie crisis had absolutely nothing to do with the Necronomicon.
The sentient, evil book had simply felt the dimensional ripple of Ash's arrival and decided to mess with its oldest rival. The Necronomicon had telepathically fed Ash the lie that an army of the dead was rising by its command, knowing Ash would risk his life to trek across a zombie-infested hellscape just to stop it. The book had literally just been waiting for Ash to walk into the room so it could laugh in his face, tell him to stop dreaming about saving the world and getting the girl, and inform him that this reality was already completely, irreversibly doomed.
Crushed by the revelation that his heroic quest was a punchline, Ash gave up. In a fit of petty, misguided rebellion against Doom, he wandered into the lower holding cells and released Amora the Enchantress, whom Doom had imprisoned.
"I'm really sorry, ladies," Ash sighed, leaning against the dungeon wall and addressing Dazzler and Wanda, who had followed him down. "But I really, truly cannot resist a pretty girl in distress."
Ash was entirely too busy striking a heroic pose to notice that the Enchantress standing directly behind him had already turned. Her jaw unhinged, revealing rows of rotting, blood-stained teeth, and she lunged for the back of his neck.
Before her teeth could sink into his flesh, a thick, writhing mass of pure black substance shot out from the shadows.
The symbiote surged directly into Amora's open mouth, expanding violently down her throat and into her chest cavity. With a sickening, wet pop, the undead Asgardian burst apart from the inside out, showering the stone walls and Ash Williams in a torrent of rotting blood and gray flesh.
A few feet away, the black substance was cleanly "cut off" by its host.
Peter Parker stepped out of the shadows, looking down at the severed pieces of the Venom symbiote now dissolving on the dungeon floor. He visibly shuddered under his mask.
"Sorry," Peter muttered, his voice echoing off the damp stone. "I might have to ask Johnny to completely incinerate this room later. It would be incredibly problematic if a zombified piece of my suit somehow gained sentience and crawled out of here."
[Don't ever fling a piece of me to that thing ever again Peter] Venom grumble as he retreats to Peter. After knowing the current situation of this universe both Peter and Venom decided that it best for Venom to stay inside.
"Oh, uh... Spider-Man?"
Dazzler and the Scarlet Witch stared at him, bewildered.
Wanda stepped forward, her hands glowing with faint, red chaos magic. As the sole survivor of the Avengers' disastrous final stand against the infected Sentry, she looked at Peter with raw disbelief. "But you... I was there. I clearly saw you get bitten. I saw you turn."
"Zombies? Sorry, ma'am, but I'm not the Spider-Man from your world," Peter said, holding his hands up in a placating gesture. "Our Fantastic Four were tricked into coming here by your undead Fantastic Four. So, my team crossed over to rescue our friends. And, you know, incidentally help you guys out."
Wanda slowly nodded, the tension leaving her shoulders.
Ash, however, was currently wiping a chunk of undead Asgardian spleen off his cheek. He glared at Peter, a mixture of profound helplessness and mounting anger flushing his face. "Why," Ash ground out, word by word, "did you just kill her?!"
Is this guy an idiot? Peter thought, genuinely baffled.
"That was a zombie, buddy," Peter said slowly, as if explaining gravity to a toddler. "You can ask the two actual, living women standing right next to you if you don't believe me."
Peter pointed at Wanda and Dazzler. Ash looked over. Both women nodded solemnly. Ash immediately shut his mouth.
Peter crossed his arms, the black suit rippling slightly across his shoulders. "When I went up to the refugee holding area to check the perimeter, the survivors told me some one-armed guy with a chainsaw strapped to his stump ran off rambling about a magic book and saving the world. I wanted to see what the actual plan was, so I followed your trail. Looks like you're the guy, buddy?"
Ash stared at the floor for a long, heavy moment before letting out a defeated, rattling sigh. "No. I'm not."
"The witch isn't the cause of this," Ash muttered, kicking a piece of rubble. "The book isn't a calamity engine. It just wanted to toy with me. There's no magical reset button. There's no way to save this place!"
Wanda and Dazzler fell completely silent, the reality of their doomed universe crashing down on them again.
Peter looked at the exhausted, terrified group. He let out a breath. "Alright. Then we have to pivot to Doom's original contingency. We use the dimensional portal upstairs and evacuate the survivors to other universes. I actually know a specific reality that is currently in desperate need of some heroes... But the problem is, calibrating and opening a stable multiverse portal takes time. And time is the one thing we absolutely do not have. If that evil book of yours can't cure the virus, can we at least weaponize it to fight the zombies?"
Ash blinked. A sudden, manic spark lit up his eyes. Without a word, he turned and sprinted back down the hall toward Doom's private study.
Peter just shrugged. He turned around to find Doctor Doom standing silently in the doorway. Doom raised a gauntlet, his magic sweeping over the dungeon floor, instantly incinerating the remaining biological debris into sterile ash.
"I was merely curious as to why my 'guests' had abandoned their designated quarters," Doom said, his metallic voice echoing in the corridor. "But I did not anticipate such a uniquely beneficial outcome. You have done well, Spider-Man. You provided Doom with an asset of seemingly worthless value. Mr. Williams will serve a purpose."
Peter shrugged and followed the Latverian king back up the spiraling stone stairs. Just as they reached the upper landing, a frantic Doombot approached, its optical sensors flashing red. It reported that a massive, unified army of superpowered undead had breached the outer Latverian airspace.
It had been less than twenty-four hours. In less than a single day since the Hunger Gospel virus first appeared on Earth-2149, the entire planet had fallen. While scattered pockets of survivors might still be hiding in deep bunkers or remote wilderness, they wouldn't last the week.
Right now, the immediate, terrifying reality was that Castle Doom, despite its legendary mystical and technological defenses, was about to face the combined, undead might of every superhero and supervillain on Earth. Holding them off for even a few minutes was going to be a logistical nightmare.
The 2149 Doctor Doom strode into the castle's massive main hall, followed closely by Wanda and Dazzler. The grand throne room had been entirely repurposed. It was now a chaotic blend of a temporary biochemical laboratory and the staging ground for a massive, circular teleportation archway.
Earth-616's Reed Richards was frantically working at a heavy stone table, carefully slotting several glass vials filled with a turbid, orange-yellow liquid into a pressurized bandolier.
"Good news," Reed announced, not looking up from his work. "The vaccine—a temporary neutralizing agent, to be precise—has been successfully synthesized. It lasts for approximately one hour. If you are bitten while it is active in your bloodstream, the necrotic conversion cannot take hold. Alternatively, if you are bitten and manage to inject this before the transformation process completes, you can halt the infection entirely."
Reed grabbed a pneumatic syringe, locking the first vial into the chamber. "The bad news is that this is a purely theoretical formulation. There have been zero clinical trials, and there is absolutely no time to conduct them. If the perimeter falls and we are caught before the portal opens, we will simply be eaten."
"I have an operational strategy, Dr. Richards," Peter said, stepping up to the console. "We calibrate the portal for the Wasteland universe. We send the Latverian refugees and the surviving heroes there. It's a harsh reality, but it needs protectors, and more importantly, it's safe from this infection."
On the far side of the room, the Earth-616 Doctor Doom stood silently before the towering multiverse portal. He was running complex magical diagnostics over the 2149 Doom's machinery, his masked face betraying nothing, though the subtle tilt of his head suggested he had discovered a fundamental flaw in the design.
Reed paused, staring at the vials in his hand. He slowly nodded his agreement to Peter's plan.
Currently, there was only one person in the room who fundamentally disagreed with the evacuation protocol.
PS: Marvel Fun Fact The "Hunger Gospel" virus is easily one of the most terrifying localized threats in the entire Marvel Multiverse. Its exact origin remains a mystery, but its methodology is brutal: it boasts a 100% fatality rate and is almost entirely irreversible. Unlike traditional cinematic zombies, infected hosts retain their full consciousness, their tactical intelligence, and all of their superhuman abilities after death. In fact, as their ravenous hunger intensifies, their lateral problem-solving skills often increase. The virus actively prioritizes infecting superhumans because they possess the technological or mystical means to breach dimensional barriers. It prevents the undead from cannibalizing each other—zombie flesh is toxic and repulsive to them—forcing them to constantly seek out uninfected realities to "spread the gospel," making it a genuine, existential threat to the entire multiverse!