An Ex-Heroes Collection

by Peter Clines

  The armor swapped lenses and zoomed in on the crowd of exes. Danielle found the dead woman with a tangle of brown hair and the green tee. Her right arm looked like it had been twisted off at the elbow. “Yeah.”

  “Go past her to the left. There’s a tall guy in a striped coat and a wild tie.”

  The man in the pinstriped coat was on the shorter side, but so was Tori. He’d been good-looking in an average sort of way. One of his ears was missing, and Danielle could see bloodstains on his shirt when his lurching gait swung the coat open. His tie was a garish floral print. “That’s quite a combination.”

  “He had to wear a tie to work, y’know, before everything, so making them clash was his little act of rebellion.”

  “Ahhh.”

  “Rich’s boss was a real bitch. When the outbreaks were happening, most places were closing down or letting people work from home. She insisted they all had to go into the office or they’d get fired.” Tori pointed at one of the taller buildings over on Sunset. “They got trapped in there. Three dozen people. I talked to him on the phone for a couple of days. They were living off the vending machines and stuff in the break rooms. The National Guard found them and gave them some food. They said they’d be back with a truck so they could get everyone out.”

  “They never came back?”

  Tori shook her head. “I don’t think so. After a week he called me to say they were going to try making a break for it. He figured if he could make it down to the freeway he could go along on top of cars and avoid the zombies.”

  It wasn’t the dumbest survival plan Cerberus had ever heard. It wasn’t the brightest, either. She didn’t say anything. She’d long since grown used to people needing to unload on someone. And a lot of people found it easier to spill their guts to a giant robot than to a person they had to look in the eyes.

  “Anyway, he told me to stay put and he’d get to me. So I stayed put. And I never heard from him again.”

  The battlesuit shifted, and its toes scraped on the pavement. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” said the almost-pixie woman. She took a long, slow breath. “It was a long time ago.”

  Down on the street, the ex in the pinstriped coat had caught itself on the side mirror of a car. The dead man kept turning in small circles and bumping into the side of the car or other exes. After a few revolutions its coat slipped free and it staggered on. It headed in the general direction of the overpass they were on. Tori straightened up.

  “After the Big Wall was done I kept coming out here to look for him. I even got an apartment over there.” She waved her arm across the freeway at the Corner, but her attention drifted back down to her dead friend. “About five weeks ago I found him down there on the freeway. He’s been staying put, just like he told me to.”

  “He’s still pretty clean,” said the armored titan, unsure what else to say. “That must make him a little easier to … to see like this.”

  “He hates being messy,” Tori said. “He’s one of those people who’re always washing their hands and brushing themselves off. He’s almost OCD about it.”

  The tenses hinted the conversation was going off into a direction Cerberus didn’t want to be involved in. She’d had a version of it with someone every other week for the past four or five months since the A.D. movement had gained momentum. “If you’re okay, then,” said the battlesuit, “I’m going to move on.”

  “Oh, sure,” said Tori. “I’m great now that Rich is here. Thanks for talking.”

  Cerberus nodded, feeling like she’d dodged a bullet. She didn’t have anything against the almost-pixie woman’s religion—any religion—but she found dogma boring as all hell. Most people wouldn’t want to sit through one of her discussions about exoskeletal motion-reactive processors, either, but she didn’t feel the need to force the subject on anybody except Gibbs and Cesar.

  Tori reached out an arm to wave to her former-almost-boyfriend as the titan thudded past. Cerberus looked up ahead and saw the two guards at the Sunset on-ramp wave to her. She was trying to remember their names when she heard the noise.

  It was the hollow sound of bending metal. Part of her recognized it as someone moving on a car roof. Then she heard the rustling, saw a glimpse of movement through her rearview camera, and the two guards stood up and raised their voices. The battlesuit spun around just as the click of leather on pavement reached her.

  Tori’s blanket hung across the chain-link fence. It covered and flattened the barbed wire. The fence still trembled from her vault over it.

  The almost-pixie woman walked down the ramp, into the late-day shadows and toward the exes. Her hair was fluffed up from the jump. She was half turned away from Cerberus, but the battlesuit’s lenses could still see the happy smile on her face.

  “Tori,” yelled the titan, “get back here now!”

  She turned around and shook her head. “Don’t worry,” she called back. “He recognizes me. It’ll be fine.”

  Dead Rich swung its head around to look at Tori. Its teeth banged together as it staggered toward her. The one-armed dead woman moved in her direction, too. So did an ex with a broken lower jaw, one with fingers worn down to bone claws, and a half-dozen others.

  Cerberus took a few huge steps back to the minivan the woman had sat on. The battlesuit was too heavy to climb onto the car, and the chain-link would never support the armor’s weight. She didn’t have her ranged weapons because ammunition was so scarce for them. There wasn’t any way for Cerberus to get to the other woman except for tearing open a hole in the barrier. Danielle clenched her fists in frustration. “Tori,” she shouted again.

  The almost-pixie woman ignored her. She was halfway down the ramp, seventeen and a half feet from the one-armed ex, according to the armor’s targeting software. The dead woman raised its stump and its one good arm.

  A shot rang out and the ex’s head cricked hard to the side before it collapsed. The guards on the platform were lining up shots with their rifles. Tori looked up at them and screamed as another ex shambled toward her.

  Cerberus patched herself through to their radios. “Keep her covered,” she ordered. “I’m going to try to get down there.”

  “Make it quick, ma’am,” said one of the guards. “There’s at least a dozen more on the move, heading her way.” He was one of the unenhanced soldiers from Krypton. His name flitted across her mind for a moment and she pushed it away.

  Tori broke into a run, heading down the ramp. One of the guards pegged the claw-fingered ex and the woman screamed again. Cerberus thought the woman had gone hysterical and was just running to get away from the gunfire.

  Then Tori got to the bottom of the ramp. She threw herself between the rifles and her dead friend. The woman spread her arms wide and looked up at them. “Don’t hurt him!”

  The guards looked over at Cerberus. So did Tori. Danielle glared at the screens inside her helmet and slammed her steel fist down on the hood of the minivan. “Get out of the way,” she bellowed in full public-address mode. Her words echoed down into the concrete canyon.

  Ex-Rich wrapped one arm around Tori’s waist from behind. The other one hooked over her shoulder and grabbed her left boob. Her face lit up for a second with a look of vindication and relief. Maybe even a bit of naughty excitement.

  Tori turned to look at the ex. Her eyes went wide just as it sank its teeth into the base of her neck. She shrieked. Blood gushed out across her shoulder and soaked her overcoat. The dead man clawed at her chest with its fingers and she twisted away. Ex-Rich staggered back with a mouthful of flesh between its chomping teeth.

  Danielle blinked and the lenses zoomed in. Tori was bleeding a lot, but it wasn’t pulsing. The ex had missed any major arteries. If she got back to the fence there was still a chance. A good chance.

  But the almost-pixie woman was in shock. Once she was free of her dead friend she stood there for a moment. Her hand went up to touch her neck and came back soaked in red. She looked over her shoulder at the ex who
had been her friend.

  “Get back here,” yelled Cerberus. “Come on!” She tried stepping up onto the trunk of a car. It squealed and crumpled under her armored foot. She looked at the fence and tried to figure out if there was a way to open it that could be repaired quickly. The only way through was to shred it.

  Another shot echoed across the freeway and an ex jerked but didn’t fall. It had been a dark-haired man in an L.A. Kings jersey. It took another few steps and a second round put it down.

  Now Tori was hysterical. She turned to run and slammed right into a car. She sprawled on the hood and left a splash of blood on the silver paint. She pushed herself up and made it a few yards back up the ramp before she stumbled. She tried to twist herself back up and grabbed at her ruined shoulder. It threw her balance and she tumbled to the ground.

  Ex-Rich fell on her, pinning her face down against the pavement. She twisted around onto her side and tried to push him away, and his teeth closed on her fingers. Its jaws opened again and her hand slipped in to the next knuckle. She howled.

  The broken-jawed ex flapped its mouth at her and tried to chew her arm through the heavy sleeve of her overcoat. She thrashed her legs, but her almost-boyfriend slipped between them. Her other arm was pinned under her, and Cerberus could see it grasping at the air.

  The guards took out two more exes heading for the woman, but a third slipped past them, and a fourth. Tori’s screams were already growing weaker when the two new exes fell on her. Her cries gurgled as if she had a mouthful of water and one of the exes stumbled back with pink meat between its teeth.

  The steel fingers wrapped around the chain-link, and Danielle hollered at the exes as they ripped the woman apart. Then she stood up straight and bit back her tears. There was no way to wipe her eyes while she was in the suit, and she’d be useless if she couldn’t see or run the optical mouse.

  Not that she’d been very useful to Tori as it was.

  THE COUPLE ON the other side of the street glanced at Madelyn. She tried to walk casually and watched them without turning her head. When their gaze didn’t leave her, she gave them a nod, a tight smile, and a little wave. The woman returned the wave and whispered something to the man, but they stopped looking at her and kept walking.

  It was the third time this morning her disguise had worked, and she was feeling pretty good about it. The collar of her jacket was turned up and Captain Freedom’s cap sat low against her latest pair of sunglasses. She was lucky the hospital had a small stockpile of them. With her hands in her pockets, she was pretty sure she’d pass as a living person if nobody got too close.

  She walked down El Centro, a residential street running parallel to Vine. At each intersection she could see the Big Wall a block to the east. If her notes were right, she was two blocks away from the gate she’d walked past with Freedom.

  They were going to be annoyed with her for sneaking out of the hospital. The guards on her floor had been pretty lazy because they all thought her memory issues meant she was stupid. She’d heard them talk about how she’d probably forget the way out of the building or how to open doors. Adults were always underestimating her. It pissed her off sometimes.

  And she’d been a lot better about writing in her diary since arriving at the Mount. She had a lot more downtime, after all. Dr. Connolly even found two more notebooks for her. It meant she was clearer than she’d felt in ages.

  Which was why Madelyn decided she needed to run some tests. Her dad had been very big on teaching her to use rational thought and the scientific method in all things. Schoolwork, cooking, sports, even dating.

  In the months she’d spent—years, she corrected herself—wandering the Southwest, she’d come to suspect the exes didn’t react to her the same way they did to living people. It’d never occurred to her they couldn’t actually see or hear her. Even if it had, who’d want to test that theory out in the middle of nowhere?

  Madelyn turned down a side street and the sound of clicking teeth grew louder. She stepped out onto Vine. The West Gate and its guard shack sat just a little bit to the south at the next big intersection.

  She stayed on the sidewalk and slowed down a bit. There were more people along the street here and she didn’t want to scare anyone. Or get shot. A few of the guards on the Wall were dressed in uniforms, but all of them were carrying big military rifles.

  She turned away from the Wall and fished her eyedrops out of her pocket. A quick glance confirmed there was nobody within a block of her, and none of them were paying attention to her. Her head tilted back and she pushed her glasses onto her forehead. The soothing drops washed across her eyes and the sunglasses slid back into place.

  Through the gate she could see the exes. Dozens of them. Hundreds, she realized, as she got closer. A lot of them were looking up at the people on top of the Big Wall. Some of them stretched arms through the bars to flail at passing people who were far out of their reach.

  She was about ten yards from the gate when one of the guards noticed her. He was a tall man dressed in military camos. She didn’t recognize him. He saw her cap and gave her an approving nod. “Don’t get too close,” he called down to her. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the sound of teeth.

  “How close is too close?” she called back. She tried to sound a little flirty. Guys let you get away with a lot more when they thought you were flirting.

  She saw his chest move with a chuckle she couldn’t hear. He pointed with his free hand. “See the line?”

  Madelyn looked at the bright line painted in front of the gate. “Yep.”

  “Stay a yard back from the line and you’ll be fine. They won’t be able to touch you.”

  He was reassuring her, she realized. A lot of people probably came to the gates, looking for familiar faces. A lot of those After Death folks. She gave him a nod and he turned his attention back to the creatures on the other side of the Wall.

  There were two guards in the shack, but they were eating lunch. One looked at her, and his eyes lingered long enough to worry her. Then he went back to his sandwich.

  It was just her and the exes. There were dead men, women, and children. Young and old. Black, white, Latino, Asian. The ex-virus didn’t discriminate.

  Except for me, thought Madelyn. It doesn’t want me for some reason.

  On the plus side, the exes were falling apart and she wasn’t. They were missing fingers and hair and skin. Some of them had dark sockets where there should’ve been eyes or noses or ears.

  Most of the ones at the gate were watching the guards on top of the Big Wall. Their attention kept shifting to the nearest target as the men and women walked back and forth. It made them sway.

  A dozen or so at the far end of the gate stretched their hands at the shack. The windows were large enough for them to see the two men inside. Their crooked fingers clawed at the air, trying to pull the structure closer.

  She moved a little closer to the shack. The exes there had their eyes at ground level, but she didn’t want to get near enough for the guards to get a good look at her. She took a few steps forward and stood a foot back from the painted line.

  None of them looked at her.

  She took a breath and held it for a minute. “Hi, there,” she said. Her words were washed away under the torrent of clicking ivory. She tried again and it came out louder than she’d intended. One of the guards walking above her, a rail-thin woman, glanced down for a moment before continuing south along the Wall.

  The exes didn’t react to the sound at all. Their heads never moved in her direction. Their grasping hands didn’t reach for her.

  A dead man with sun-bleached hair stood right in front of her. It wore a tuxedo jacket over jeans and a brown T-shirt, and it took her a moment to realize the brown was all stains. It stretched its arms toward the guard shack. Two of its fingernails were missing on one hand.

  Madelyn took another step and set her toes on the line. She pulled her hand from her pocket and moved it back and forth in front of the d
ead man’s face. The ex’s eyes stayed focused on the shack a few yards away. “Can you hear me?”

  She glanced around. The guards were ignoring her for the moment, wrapped up in their breaks or their duties. She reached across the line and tapped the ex on the back of its grasping hand.

  It paused for a moment, then went back to reaching for the guard shack. Both her feet were past the line. They could grab her. There were three of them who could reach her without even trying. But they didn’t try.

  Madelyn slid forward, lined up between the bars, and punched the ex in the shoulder. The tuxedo corpse rocked on its feet, but its focus never shifted. All the exes around it ignored her, too.

  “Hey,” yelled someone up on the Wall. “Get back behind the line!”

  Madelyn looked up and saw the guard in the camos staring at her. His face was trying to decide if it was angry or scared. Two other guards were turning to see what he was yelling about.

  Then everything happened at once.

  An ex a few feet away, two down from the one she’d punched, shifted on its feet. It was a thin man in a long coat. It wore a helmet wrapped in digital-camo cloth. The ex looked around and she realized it was reacting. It was doing something different. Like the ones had the other day when she was out with Freedom.

  It had a pistol. It slid the weapon out from under its coat and brought it up. The barrel pointed between the bars at the gatehouse. The dead man’s face pulled into a grin.

  Something landed behind her. The camo guard had leaped twenty feet through the air to land on the pavement. The name on his coat said JEFFERSON. His hand reached for her shoulder. He was looking at her, not at the exes. Not at the ex with the gun.

  She acted without thinking. It was like soccer. The ball came at you and you leaped to block it. You didn’t think. She knew the ex was going to shoot the guards in the shack, so she just acted.

  She twisted away from Jefferson and pushed down on the gun just as the ex squeezed the trigger. The pistol jerked under her hand, and the blast sparked against the pavement in front of the shack. The arm fought back and she struggled to keep the weapon pointed at the ground. The barrel was hot now.