by Peter Clines
“Just tell me you wiped your knuckles off. You’ve been smacking zombies with that hand.”
“It’s okay, I’m wearing gloves.”
Madelyn snickered.
“And I’d just gotten comfortable on the other side.”
“Sorry, sir.”
“I’ll let it slide since you’re doing all the—What the hell is that?” Barry tried to raise himself up in Freedom’s arms. “Was someone playing Jumanji or something?”
Ahead of them the sides of Beverly were wrapped in green. Branches and leaves reached out to surround some of the nearby houses.
Tendrils and vines had grown out along the long-dead power lines. The vast expanse of green looked like the entrance to an oversized hedge maze. Or a cave.
“The Wilshire Country Club,” said Stealth.
“Looks like management gave the groundskeepers the last four years off,” said Barry.
She ignored him and pointed down the road. “Beverly continues straight through for five blocks. There are no intersections or exits.”
“So it’s a killing floor,” Freedom said.
“That would depend on how many exes are along this stretch of road. The lack of intersections limits their access as well. However, you and George both retain enough strength to tear though the fences on either side if we require an emergency exit.”
“Assuming there’s nothing on the other side of the fence,” said Danielle.
St. George looked at the green tunnel. “Are we sure we want to go this way?”
“It is the most direct route. The exit is by the southwest corner of the Big Wall. Anything else would require that we detour around the country club, at least eleven blocks in either direction.”
Stealth paused to spin and shatter an ex’s jaw with her boot. The boot came back around to strike the dead woman in the chest and knock it back over the hood of a low-slung sports car. The ex tumbled out of sight and hit the ground with a loud crack.
“It is not a favorable choice,” she continued, “but at the moment it is the best choice. We have less than an hour of daylight left. We must move.”
She headed toward the tunnel of green.
They followed her.
On either side of the street plants grew thick and wild. Branches curled through the fence and over the sidewalk. A few had found street signs and wrapped around them like vines. Some had even reached around broken cars, wrapping them in green and making them part of the walls. It made the street feel enclosed. Constricted.
St. George could see movement ahead of them, but it was hard to break it down into individual figures. There was just enough distance to make the stretch of road blur at the end. He seemed to remember an odd jog in the road, one of the many places where the old neighborhoods of Los Angeles hadn’t lined up when they joined together. They wouldn’t be able to see the Big Wall until they were right on top of it.
The click-click-click of teeth rolled down the tunnel of greenery. The leaves muffled the sound, but not much. Just enough to make it hard to guess how far away it was.
St. George moved to the front to walk alongside Stealth. Danielle stayed behind them. Captain Freedom brought up the rear with Madelyn and Barry.
They’d gone a hundred feet in when the first pair of exes staggered out at them. Two dead men. One wore a blue shirt with a plumber’s logo on it. The other was bare chested and missing an arm. Its shoulder was a ragged, half-burned mess.
St. George grabbed the plumber’s outstretched arm and yanked the ex close. Its teeth snapped at his face. He grabbed the dead man by the seat of the pants, tried to ignore the soft mass beneath the denim, and hurled the zombie up and over the wall of green.
Stealth dodged the one-armed ex, tripped it, and pushed down hard on its head as it fell. The dead thing’s forehead took the full impact of the fall. She kicked it in the back of the skull, just to be sure it stayed down.
Danielle shook her head. “This has been right outside the Mount all this time?” he asked. “How?”
“Nature runs wild,” said Madelyn. “I saw a really cool special about it once on the History Channel.”
“Well, what I meant was why didn’t we do something about it?”
“We didn’t have any lawn mowers?” said Barry.
“I don’t even remember seeing all this,” said St. George.
“It is unlikely you would,” said Stealth. “For the most part, neither you nor Barry leaves the Mount on foot. You are more used to an aerial view.”
“That’s true,” said Barry.
Another ex, a woman, stumbled toward them from down the street. St. George could see two more past her heading their way, and another four past that. “They’re picking up,” he said. “At least half a dozen.”
“Half a dozen’s not many,” said Freedom.
“We haven’t even gone one block yet,” said Danielle.
“Let none of them past us,” Stealth warned St. George. “If a significant number get behind us, we will not be able to defend ourselves on two fronts.”
St. George took a few steps, swung his hand like an axe, and crushed the side of the dead woman’s skull. The ex slumped to the ground. The next two banged their teeth together as they closed in on him. He let them get close enough to grab at his outstretched hands. They gnawed at his fingers and he slammed their heads together.
An ex pulled itself free of the vines that had hidden it and staggered at Danielle. She stumbled back and Freedom stepped forward, his free hand curled into a fist the size of a football. Before he could strike, Stealth grabbed the ex by its collar and yanked it back. As it fell over she grabbed its skull and twisted. The body thumped to the ground. Its teeth scraped on the pavement as its jaw continued to work back and forth.
Four of the walking dead blocked the road. George grabbed one by its heavy coat and swung it into the air. He slammed it against the other three, battering them to the ground, and then hurled it as far as he could. Three blocks away the ex bounced off the wall of greenery and crashed onto a truck.
One of the others tried to crawl to its feet as they walked past. Freedom brought his boot down hard between the dead man’s shoulder blades. The zombie’s spine cracked and it slumped back down on the pavement.
They fought through another three blocks. St. George took the brunt of it while Stealth caught the rest. Freedom dealt with the two or three that stumbled up from behind.
St. George chopped through an ex’s neck and watched its skull bounce away. He glanced over in time to see Stealth flip a dead man over her shoulder and spin to kick the corpse in the head while it was still in midair. “Now you’re just showing off,” he said.
“I am testing my muscle memory,” she said. “Their numbers are not increasing as much as I expected.”
“They’re still going up, though,” said St. George. He nodded down the road. “It looks like there’s another thirty or forty to make our way through.”
She looked grim. “As Barry said, this corner of the Big Wall has an average of fourteen hundred exes, drawn here by either sounds or the sight of guards patrolling along the Wall. Even with their random movements, this section of road should contain at least one hundred of them.”
St. George walked forward with his arms spread and gathered up half a dozen exes. He looked back at Stealth. “Maybe things are going our way for once.” He shoved the exes forward and they stumbled and fell. Their bodies tripped four others staggering at the heroes. He stepped up to the pile and twisted their heads one after another.
When he glanced back, she was still grim.
He looked past her. Since entering the overgrown length of road, Danielle had pulled her arms tight against herself. She’d backed up so close to Freedom he had to push her along. Barry looked annoyed at being carried, but kept one hand on Danielle’s shoulder. Madelyn was trying to watch everything. Her perception filter, as she liked to call it.
Up ahead the road curved off to the left. Another dozen or so exes staggered
toward them. Three of them wore military helmets with their civilian clothes, while one dead man had on what looked like a batting helmet. Leftovers from one of Legion’s many attempts to storm their home.
“Not much farther,” St. George called back to the others. “The Big Wall should be right around that bend.”
“Want us to go ahead?” asked Madelyn. “We could scout around and make sure they’re ready to open the gates or pull us over the Wall.”
“The exes may not see you,” said Stealth, “but if we have all been gone for any amount of time, the guards may not react well to your appearance.”
“We’ll all go together,” said Freedom with a quick glance up at Madelyn. “All of us or none of us.”
“I’d prefer all of us,” Barry said.
“Me, too,” said Danielle.
St. George tore the hood off a car, held it in both hands, and sent it spinning into the approaching exes. It decapitated two, tore five in half through the torso, and shattered the legs of half a dozen more.
Stealth was a blur. Kicks, strikes, punches, flips. She broke bones, snapped necks, and cracked skulls. Exes reached for her and then slumped to the ground.
Then they came around a corner, and the Big Wall loomed in front of them. The tops of buildings peeked over the barrier of triple-stacked cars. St. George could see the wooden platforms and rails that ran along the top of the Wall, and as they got a few steps closer he could see up Rossmore to …
“Oh my God,” he said.
THE HOLE IN the Big Wall was twenty feet across. Two stacks of the cars that made up its bulk had collapsed and crashed to the ground inside. The wooden walkways along the top had splintered apart and gone with it. What was left of the Wall on either side sagged inward. One car hung in midair, still half wedged into the layered structure.
Exes were slumped on the pavement around the base of the Big Wall. St. George guessed there were a few hundred of them. Most of them had head wounds, in a variety of calibers. A few had suffered more violent trauma—crushed skulls or decapitation. The ground around them was covered with dark, dried puddles and a few dots of dull brass.
A few dozen exes still staggered in the street. Another dozen were visible through the hole, inside the Mount. Men, women, and children. A few of them noticed the heroes and staggered toward them.
Danielle shook her head and bit her lip.
St. George couldn’t see anyone along the Big Wall in either direction. Rossmore curved heading north, but he was pretty sure he saw another hole farther along. If he had it right in his head, it was across from the church.
“What happened?” asked Barry.
Madelyn’s head swung back and forth. “Is everyone … are they all dead?”
Freedom reached up and put his huge hand on top of hers. His face was a blank, but somehow still grim. St. George had come to know it as Freedom’s bad-news face.
“We should move inside,” said Stealth. “There is nothing to learn out here, and the number of exes appears lower inside the Wall.”
No one argued. St. George battered a few dead people out of the way and cleared a path to the gap in the Wall. Dried blood covered the hood of a car in the Big Wall’s bottom row. Lots of dried blood. Someone had lost an artery and sprayed out.
Stealth looked at the dark brown fan with a clinical eye.
St. George heaved against the side of the car and it slid out of the way with a scrape of tire rims on pavement. The sound attracted a few more exes, but let them get through faster. Once Freedom stepped through, St. George heaved against the other side of the car and pushed it back into place. It wasn’t much of a barrier, but it was better than nothing. A few exes bumped against the far side and stretched their arms across the hood. They clawed at the air separating them from the living people.
Stealth tapped something with her boot, then kicked it up and grabbed it with one hand. A police baton. St. George remembered several of the guards carrying them as emergency hand-to-hand weapons. Stealth settled it against her arm, then turned and dispatched three of the closest exes with swift swings and thrusts. They hit the ground with a rhythmic thump, thump, thump.
Freedom took a few steps along the Wall, then turned and walked the other way. “What was that?” Madelyn asked. “Was that another body?”
Barry closed his eyes and muttered something.
“Sir,” said Freedom. He gestured with his free hand.
St. George stepped over. He took a quick look around for exes, then kneeled to inspect the body. He was pretty sure it had been a man. One arm was gone. The other one was missing below the elbow. Both legs ended at the knee. The torso was opened below the ribs and had been hollowed out. There was enough skin left to see the man had been black, and a lone dreadlock of dark hair curled down from the side of the well-gnawed skull.
The flesh was dry and wrinkled. A thin layer of dust covered it all. The body had been there for a while.
“Makana,” said Stealth.
St. George glanced up. He hadn’t realized she was standing there. “Are you sure?”
“There is enough left for a basic forensic reconstruction,” she said. “Approximate height, weight, and age are correct. Skin tone, hair, and gender are as well. There is a scar on his left shoulder which matches one Makana had, although the one on his right forearm was more distinctive and would be more conclusive. He is also wearing a similar belt buckle and holster, although some of the scavengers have been known to trade gear on occas—”
“Okay,” said St. George. “I believe you. It’s him.”
“I do not mean to seem callous. I just wish to be clear there is very little chance this is not Makana. We should be on our way. Moving the car has doubtlessly attracted whatever exes are within the Big Wall.”
“Where are we going?” asked Barry.
“To the Mount itself,” said Stealth. She pointed northeast with the baton. “It is the logical place for survivors to fall back to if the walls were breached. If nothing else, we should find supplies and weapons there.” She glanced at Danielle. “And the Cerberus suit.”
“God, I hope so,” said Danielle.
They walked east along Beverly to get as much of the setting sun as possible. Along the way they put down a baker’s dozen of exes. St. George recognized two of them. One had been a scavenger named Danny Foe. He tried not to think about it as he twisted the dead man’s head around.
The sun vanished behind the corner of the Big Wall just as they reached Larchmont. Stealth announced the wide street was their best route north to the Mount. They saw more bodies on the sidewalk and lawns. No one complained too much when the light faded.
St. George crushed a few more exes. He tried not to look at their faces, but more of them looked familiar. People from the Mount. People from the Seventeens’ camp who’d joined them. Even a few from Project Krypton. He tried to hurl those away before Freedom could see them.
“No chance of lighting a torch?” Danielle asked. “We could tie up my socks in a tree branch or something.”
St. George shook his head. “Sorry. Still don’t have any fire.” He coughed for emphasis.
“Are you out of gas,” asked Barry, “or just forgot how to throw up?”
“I’m not sure. Both, maybe?”
“We are less than four blocks from the Melrose gate,” said Stealth. “We will be fine.” She swung her baton and cracked an ex’s skull for emphasis.
St. George heard Freedom say something, but the words were lost as he cracked an ex’s skull with his knuckles. He kicked the body away. “What was that?”
“I said there still aren’t many, sir,” the captain repeated. “If the Mount’s the fallback position, the exes should be denser here.” He shook his head. “This still isn’t much heavier than the standard numbers we’ve seen everywhere else. Fifteen or twenty per block.”
They reached the intersection. There was just enough light for St. George to make out the huge globe of the Earth perched on the walls of the
Mount, two blocks away. He could also see a few dozen exes between them and the gate. The sound of clicking teeth filled the air. “Cheer up,” he said. “There’s a lot more here.”
In the dim light he saw Danielle shudder. Freedom reached out, wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and pulled her in close. “I’ve got her, sir,” he said.
“And I’ve got all of us,” said Madelyn. “Keep an eye on Stealth. We’re good.”
St. George turned in time to see Stealth’s baton strike a dead woman’s skull three times in a blur of motion. It might’ve been four times. The last one made the whole head jiggle. The ex wobbled for a moment, its arms went limp, and it fell over.
He marched into the horde and they bit at his arms and face. His shirt was covered with rips and snags. He swept his arms together and slammed four of the dead things against each other. Before they could untangle their limbs, he shoved the mass off to the side. They knocked over two more exes before sprawling over a curb.
Stealth spun through the crowd. Her baton whirled and sliced through the air. At times it lunged out for a precision strike. Once it thrust back to shatter a forehead. Exes slumped and dropped around her. She stepped over their bodies and brought her heels down on the necks of ones that still moved.
They reached the corner of the Mount. The pale walls were bright in the moonlight. George slammed his fists out and felt undead skulls and jaws collapse under his knuckles.
Another hundred yards and they’d be back inside.
“There’s no one on the Wall,” Barry called out.
St. George glanced back. The exes still seemed to be ignoring Freedom and his passengers. They brushed past or bumped into him, but their chattering teeth never came close. Danielle was curled up almost in a ball. Madelyn looked like she was concentrating. Barry and Freedom were both looking up.
“He’s right, sir,” said the captain. “No sentries.”
St. George looked up. There was no one up near the oversized globe of the Earth that sat on the corner of the Wall. His eyes ran along toward the gate. He didn’t see a single guard.
