Ex-Heroes e-1

by Peter Clines

  She gave me the lowdown on what I was looking for. People with pale skin, a lack of coordination and language skills, high resistance to damage, and a degree of aggression. Some of them might smell like rotted meat.

  I have no sense of smell when I am Zzzap.

  Sounds like you’ve got a zombie problem, I said, wondering what her curves would look like when she laughed.

  She didn’t laugh. I know sometimes people have trouble understanding me when I speak in the energy state. Jerry told me it sounds like I’m gargling a beehive. I didn’t think that was the problem here, though.

  So, how many have you seen so far?

  Stealth unfolded a map. She pointed to three small crosses, scattered across the city.

  Three? That’s it?

  “In a city with the population density of Los Angeles, an aggressive disease can spread to thousands of people within hours. I have seen three people who are infected. There is no telling how many are carriers that have not manifested symptoms yet.”

  Jesus .

  “Do you know Los Angeles at all?”

  Not really, but I’m good with landmarks .

  She held the map out for me. “Study this. I need you to spend the next six hours scouring the city as many times as you can. Every street, every alley, every cul de sac.” She pointed at one section. “Watch the Hollywood Hills. There are several canyons and hidden streets.”

  In the eight months since I became Zzzap I’d gotten very good at memorizing things. Not being able to hold a notepad or post-it made it a necessity. I gave her a nod after studying the map for five minutes. Why isn’t the CDC involved in this?

  “At the moment, they believe this is a hoax. All three victims were inanimate by the time they were examined.”

  Dead?

  Again, no answer. She was one stony bitch. She folded the map and it vanished into her cloak. “Can you do it?”

  The first time might take me a few hours. I’ll pick up speed as I learn the city .

  “Proceed. I will meet you back here in six hours.” She shook her cloak back around herself, doing a piss-poor job of hiding her curves, and walked away. God, if I didn’t know better I’d swear all those urban-camo lines actually enhanced her ass somehow.

  Moving low to the ground through a strange city, the best speed I could manage was around 400 miles per hour. Much more than that causes serious weather problems, not to mention sonic booms (which can shatter windows, windshields, neon signs, and lots of other expensive things). I started circling the buildings, checking every person I passed for the signs of infection.

  Alleys. Roads. Parking structures. Subways. Anywhere people could be. I peered in windows where I could, through walls where I couldn’t. On my first pass, I’d say I saw three-fifths of the city’s population. No sign of the mystery disease, although I did stop two muggings and halted a high speed street race by melting the tires of both cars. I figured I could make at least one more pass before it was time to meet up with Stealth again, and hopefully I could catch a good chunk of the rest.

  Street. Boulevard. Avenue. Drive. I was an hour into my second run when I saw him.

  He was an old guy. His clothes were dark and a bit ragged. Probably homeless, staggering down an alley. His skin was the color of ash and his face was blank. Not emotionless, it just looked like he’d forgotten how to make any sort of expression. A quick check at either end of the street told me we were just north of Beverly between La Brea and Detroit.

  I zipped back to hover over him, and a full minute passed before he twisted his head up to look at me. It usually doesn’t take people long to notice the white-hot man-shape sizzling like a sparkler.

  His eyes were cloudy. I thought he might be blind. He was staring right at me and not blinking. Something looked very wrong about him, and I couldn’t figure out what.

  Good evening, citizen , I said, careful to enunciate each word. Are you okay?

  Still wide-eyed. Still no blink. Had I seen him blink once yet?

  Sir? Are you feeling okay? Do you need any help?

  His mouth opened, showing off an impressive collection of half-rotted teeth, and then he clacked them together again and again and again. It sounded like those little wooden things Mexican dancers wear on their hands.

  A fun little trick the magazines and television shows never figured out. I can see all the electromagnetic energy in the air, including radio waves, television broadcasts, and satellite transmissions. I knew there were seventeen GPS devices within three blocks of me, and I could tell you the codes for each one. And if I had to, with a little concentration, I could duplicate them or override them.

  Which is why it had been second nature to see the cell phone built into Stealth’s cowl and memorize the number. Focus on that and I could feel the signal a phone would translate into an audible ring.

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s me, Zzzap.”

  “You do not sound like him.”

  “I’m transmitting to your phone. You’re hearing my voice as I hear it, not how you do.”

  “Where did we first meet?”

  “On top of the Capitol Records building a few hours ago. Listen, I think I’ve got one of your infected people here.”

  “Where are you?”

  I described the alley and she said she’d be there in six minutes before hanging up. The old man was reaching up for me, his hands clawing at the air. It reminded me of a mission I’d visited in Brazil, and all the people who thought I was some kind of angel or something.

  I settled down a few yards from him, inches above the ground. Sir, there’s a chance you may have a contagious disease, I said. Someone’s coming to help you, but I need you to stay here.

  As soon as I landed he began to shuffle toward me, his arms still out. I flitted back and let off a gentle burst of light and heat, just enough to be felt. His teeth were still chattering.

  It’s dangerous to touch me, sir. You should keep your distance. Then I remembered what Stealth had said about language and damage. He probably hadn’t felt the heat or understood me.

  More clicking came from behind me. It was an older woman in tattered layers, showing all the infection signs. She was five yards away, also reaching for me. As I glanced at her I realized why she and the old man looked so wrong to my eyes.

  Like I mentioned, I can see the whole spectrum. I try to limit myself so I don’t get overwhelmed, but there’s a bunch of stuff I just always notice, like infrared. Neither of them was warm. They looked weird because they were at room temperature—or alley temperature—-blending into the surrounding brick and pavement. Also, normal people have an electromagnetic halo, and on both of them it was just a dim glow.

  That’s why I hadn’t noticed the woman until she made a noise. I didn’t see her because, in my eyes, she didn’t look like a person. Hell, how many others had I missed while I was flying around the city? And how were these people still walking when they were corpse-cold?

  Of course, it only took a few moments for all this to go through my mind, but it distracted me. Long enough that the man tried to grab my arm and sink his teeth into my biceps. Or what passed as a biceps.

  A lot of my friends are physicists, which is how I got a handle on the Zzzap thing when it happened to me. When I’m in the energy state I have no physical form. I’m just a big ball of raging electromagnetic energy given shape and motion by my force of will and consciousness. In simpler terms, although it’s not as accurate, I’m a very tiny G-class star that can think. Jerry thinks if it was possible for me to fall asleep in this state, I’d just lose cohesion and explode like a bomb.

  End result, as I mentioned, I am dangerous to touch.

  His hand charred to the bone in less than a second. There was a horrible crack as his teeth overheated, boiled inside, and shattered. A whole mouthful of teeth bursting apart at once—-there’s a sound you don’t forget too soon. I leaped away from him, sent out a 911 signal, and tried to survey the damage.

 
The old man was burned. His mouth was ruined, just a burntbacon hole in his face filled with bone shards and dark blood. And he didn’t seem to notice. What was left of his jaw was still moving up and down. He and the woman had their arms up, reaching for me, as if neither of them had just seen the damage touching me could do.

  What the fuck had Stealth pulled me into?

  At the end of the alley a young guy in black yanked his Goth girlfriend in from the sidewalk and up against the wall. She swore at him and wrapped her legs over his hips. They didn’t even notice me. Or the two infected people. Nothing like a quick dry hump between clubs.

  The old woman was facing them. She lowered her arms away from me and started stumbling in their direction. As she passed the old man, he turned and shuffled after her. They were slow, great-grandmother slow, but I was between them and the couple in the blink of an eye.

  I let the light and heat flare up around me, and heard the two kids gasp. The homeless people kept shuffling forward. The woman’s teeth chattered like she was freezing to death.

  Stay back , I said. Medical help is on the way.

  Behind me I heard the Goth couple scamper away.

  They kept lumbering toward me. I flew up and behind them. They followed, twisting their heads and arms so far they almost fell over. I’d seen this behavior before. Creature Double Feature out of Boston. Late night movies on the Sci-Fi Channel.

  Okay, enough’s enough , I shouted. I want you both down on the ground now! I raised my hand and let the energy build. Sparks shot off my fingertips, and I knew looking at my palm was like looking at the sun. The shadows in the alley vanished. They didn’t blink. I don’t think I’d seen them blink yet.

  Get down! This is your last warning.

  The man banged his ruined teeth together with a noise like crunching glass.

  In front of my hand the air superheated and did a trick everyone else on Earth needs a supercollider and a magnetic bottle to pull off. An arc of raw plasma scorched its way through the alley, a millimeter wide but igniting everything within four or five times that range. It could burn through concrete like the proverbial hot knife through butter, so searing the old man’s thigh to the bone was no challenge at all. I lost it, and if this had been a normal man, I would’ve killed him, or crippled him for life at best.

  As it was, he didn’t notice. His stagger swung a little to the left, but he kept moving toward me. I don’t know why I thought a leg burn would slow him down when having his teeth and tongue burnt out of his mouth hadn’t.

  They still hadn’t blinked. Their eyes were dull and gray. I think they might’ve been blind. I still don’t know to this day.

  But right then, I knew what they were. I’d said it to Stealth as a joke, but here they were right in front of me. No joke, no gag, no doubt what these people had turned into. I didn’t know how, but it was useless to deny it.

  My fingers flexed again. The air boiled, night turned to day, and the man’s head vanished in a cloud of fine ash. It was so fast his body stood there for a moment with nothing above the shoulders but a cauterized stump. And then it collapsed with steam drifting from the neck and leg.

  The woman opened her jaws wide and brought her teeth together with a solid clack.

  I heard the repeating bang, saw the heat spike, traced both bullets as they streaked down the alley and smashed their way into the old woman’s head. Her face collapsed in on itself like a balloon. She dropped like a sack.

  Stealth swung herself off her motorcycle and holstered the pistol. “Are these the only ones you have seen?”

  What the hell is this?

  She ignored me and checked both bodies. “We do not have time to waste. Are these the only ones you have seen?”

  They were zombies! I shouted. Real live zombies!

  “By definition,” she said, “they are not alive.”

  But where did they-—

  “Are there any more?!”

  I took a mental breath and tried to calm down. I don’t know.

  “You were looking, correct?”

  I was looking for sick people, I snapped back. I don’t see things the way you do. To my eyes, they don’t look alive, they look like furniture. So, yeah, there’s a good chance I overlooked them if they weren’t moving or making noise like these were.

  She mulled on this for a moment. “Can you spot them now?”

  It’s going to be a lot harder. It’ll take more time.

  “Proceed. Now that you know, kill any you find as quickly as possible. Destroying the brain appears to be the only sure way.” She walked back to the bike. Her hips swaying under that cloak didn’t seem quite as alluring.

  There’s nothing we can do for them?

  She shook her head. “They are dead. It is a virus making muscles twitch in a corpse. Nothing more.”

  You’re sure? What about Regenerator?

  “He tried.” She straddled the motorcycle and the engine growled. “You can reach me the same way if there are further problems.”

  She roared out of the alley. I shot into the sky and burned a path through the air back to square one.

  Eight

  NOW

  Zzzap charged Cerberus back up to full power while St. George crushed the jammer. Fifteen seconds after that Zzzap was back at the Mount telling the gate sentries to get a rescue mission together.

  In the back of the truck, the scavengers lined the walls on either side, rifles ready. Lee and Ty stood on plastic milk crates, looking over the raised lift gate. St. George stood below them, a few feet out from Big Red’s trailer hitch, his leather coat buckled tight. “We just need to last maybe half an hour until the other truck gets out here,” said the hero. “Take your time and call your shots. It’s not a contest and you don’t want to waste ammo you’ll need later. If anything gets within ten feet of Big Red , Cerberus and I’ll take care of it, so no pistols.”

  The armored titan stood in front of the truck and flexed her fingers again and again while she stared at the setting sun. Lady Bee stayed on top of the cab as a spotter and to watch Mark.

  Jarvis perched on the truck’s hood. He looked down Melrose and called out “Military guy.” He squeezed off a shot and a few yards out a buzz-cut ex in filthy digital camos spun, fell to its knees, and slapped its face against the sidewalk.

  “Baldy,” said Andy with a squeeze of his trigger. An ex threw its head back and dropped between the long shadows. “Yellow shirt,” called Ilya. “Biker,” added Ty. They called off quick descriptions for a few minutes, and the exes dropped. “More from all directions,” said Bee. “They’re hearing the shots.”

  Lee turned to look at the sunset. He held up a hand and squinted at his fingers with one eye. “We’ve got maybe five minutes of sunlight left,” he said. “Probably twenty until dark.”

  “They’ll be here in twenty,” said Cerberus. Billie aimed her rifle. “Female cop.” Luke lifted his head from his scope. “Boss,” he called to the back of the truck, “we got three, maybe four dead guys coming down from the north. Look like SWAT, maybe. Armored heads.” St. George glanced up at Lee and Ty. “You guys got the rear?”

  They nodded, and the hero launched himself to the north.

  A quartet of former cops. Ex-cops, he thought with a smile. Their eyes were pale behind dusty visors, and their dark uniforms almost hid the gore staining them. One was missing an arm, another had a twisted leg. They all had nametags, he realized as he dropped out of the sky and their black-gloved hands reached for him.

  He wrenched the arm of the first one, Davis, and shoved it into a sergeant named Hale or Hall. The tag was too bloodstained to be sure. The impact sent both exes sprawling and St. George turned to a dead man who had been named Webster. He grabbed the officer’s helmet and twisted it halfway around. There was a crack, and he twisted it the rest of the way just to be sure. Webster fell to the pavement.

  The last one grabbed him from behind and sank its teeth into his shoulder. He heard some of them crack. It gnawed on the
leather while he reached up, grabbed the back of its neck, and flipped it over him onto the sprawled Davis and Hale-or-Hall.

  He twisted their heads one by one. The last man had been named Carabas. St. George piled the bodies up in the center of the street and tried to ignore the chattering teeth. Did they know each other, he wondered, or work together? Or was it just coincidence to find them all here?

  Luke shouted from the truck. “Nice work, boss.”

  The hero added two or three more bodies to the pile and then leaped back to the truck without another look. “How are we doing?”

  “Peachy-keen,” said Ty. “Schoolgirl.” His rifle kicked and another ex fell.

  A large mob stumbled toward the front of the truck, teeth chattering, and Bee and Jarvis took turns dropping them. “Hey,” said the bearded man. He pointed at an ex shuffling out of the shadows toward them. “Is that Sandra Oh?”

  Servos whined as Cerberus glanced at him. “Who?”

  “That one there.” He flicked his thumb against his rifle and a red dot appeared on one of the exes, an Asian woman with tangled hair. “Is that Sandra Oh?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Bee, lining up another shot. “Denim shirt.” Her rifle made a chopping noise as the ex stiffened and fell.

  “Who the hell is Sandra Oh?”

  “From Grey’s Anatomy ,” said Jarvis. “The bitchy Asian woman.”

  The titan shook her head. “I never watched much television.”

  “Did you see Sideways ?”

  “I just said I don’t watch television.”

  “It was a movie.”

  “Shoot the damned thing!”

  “If it’s a celebrity I want the points.”

  Cerberus thumped forward and drove her steel fist into the ex’s face. The skull crumpled with a noise like a bag of chips and the creature cartwheeled back into the shadows. “Points are for the wall,” she growled. The other fist backhanded a dead woman in an LAPD uniform, sending her flying into the side of a building across the street. “This is survival. Get back to shooting.”

  “Bitch in blue,” he muttered.