An Ex-Heroes Collection

by Peter Clines

  Freedom blinked. He opened his mouth to respond, then shut it again. After another few moments he spat the words out. “And you never noticed this how, sir?”

  “We never noticed,” said Stealth, “because he would grow new ones.”

  The huge captain dwelled on her words for a moment. “Before the fall,” he said, “there was a hero with healing powers. The one named Regenerator.”

  “Also sometimes called the Immortal,” said Stealth. “His real name is Joshua Garcetti.”

  “He was attacked and bitten in a field hospital, wasn’t he?” Freedom glanced at St. George. “I thought he died near the end.”

  “Not exactly,” muttered Danielle.

  “Josh survived the bite,” said St. George, “but it canceled out his powers. He was just a normal guy with a messed-up hand where the infection had gotten trapped.”

  Freedom recalled the prisoner’s withered hand. “So he was in the Cellar? Why?”

  St. George drummed his knuckles on the table. Danielle shifted in her chair. Even Barry squirmed a bit. Stealth stared at the huge captain.

  “What did he do?” asked Freedom.

  “You have to understand,” said St. George, “Josh had gone insane. Seriously, honestly insane. He managed to hide it from us for a year while we were establishing the Mount. None of us knew.”

  “Knew what, sir?”

  “Sixteen months ago,” said Stealth, “we discovered Regenerator’s affliction was an elaborate somatoform disorder, one where his abilities allowed his guilt to physically manifest as an injury.”

  “Guilt?”

  Danielle reached up to wrap her hand over her mouth. She turned to study one of Stealth’s video screens.

  St. George looked at Stealth. “What you are about to hear, Captain,” she said, “is known only by the four of us and now yourself. It does not leave this room under any circumstances. Ever.”

  They told him everything.

  St. George had seen Captain Freedom mad before. Back at Krypton, when the officer had been brainwashed into thinking Stealth had killed his commander, he’d been furious. The icy calm that settled over the giant officer now, though, was even more disturbing.

  “He did all of this,” Freedom said. “Your partner is the source of the ex-virus.”

  “He is not our partner,” said Stealth.

  “I never even met the guy until we set up the Mount,” said Danielle.

  “This man is responsible for everything,” hissed the captain. “For the deaths of millions of people.”

  “Billions,” said Stealth. “By the last known population numbers and projected estimates, five-point-four-two billion people died in 2009 as a direct result of the ex-virus.”

  “My men died!” shouted Freedom. “That man caused the death of dozens of soldiers under my command. You knew this and you said nothing to me about it.”

  “Lots of people died, Captain,” said St. George. A cloud of smoke rolled from his mouth as he said it. “Everybody here lost friends and family and loved ones. You think we haven’t all thought about going down there and chopping him up until he stops healing?”

  “And why hasn’t anyone?”

  “Because we’re the good guys,” St. George told him. “We remind everyone that sometimes you’ve got to do the right thing even when the wrong thing would be a lot easier and make you a lot happier. We’re the ones setting an example so all of this doesn’t turn into a Road Warrior movie. That’s our duty. And yours.”

  It was enough. The huge officer calmed himself.

  “He was being punished,” said the hero. “We told everyone he went insane and killed himself. He was always so depressed about his wife, no one questioned it. He’d spent the last year and a half in a twelve-foot-square cell. He hadn’t seen daylight that whole time. I was the only person he ever got to talk to. We even stopped feeding him once we realized he doesn’t need to eat. Once there’s some real stability here, we were going to turn him over to the people for a trial.”

  “As someone who understands morale issues,” said Stealth, “I am certain you also understand the need to keep all these facts secret until then.”

  Freedom’s jaw shifted. “Unfortunately, ma’am, I do.”

  “As such,” she said, “our primary concern is not justice but containment. Which means recapturing him must be our highest priority.”

  “Problem,” said Danielle. She tapped a finger on the map. “We can’t go after him without crossing Max’s magic symbols.”

  “If they are real,” Stealth said.

  “That thing outside looked pretty real,” said Barry. “With all the teeth and the fire and the twisting body parts. It was like a John Carpenter movie come to life.”

  “It exists,” said Stealth, “but that does not mean it is a demon. Or that it is being held back by magical symbols.” She gestured at the maps. “The exes will follow Regenerator as long as he remains within their range of sight or hearing. If St. George or Zzzap reaches sufficient altitude, they may be able to see a pattern of movement, much like a tide or current. This will give us a general sense of his current location.”

  “I’ve got a question for the floor,” said Barry. “Is this really a bad thing?”

  Stealth turned to him. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Okay, so Josh got out. And he got out of the Mount. Out of our whole complex of New Los Angeles or whatever we’re going to call it.” He shrugged in his wheelchair. “So now it’s him alone against Cairax McBitey and, what, five million exes here in Los Angeles. Six hundred million or something in North America. Not to sound harsh but … well, it sounds like the problem’s dealt with.”

  “Or is it?” Danielle pulled her arms tight. “Can they actually kill him?”

  “Forgive me for saying so,” said Freedom, “but from what you’ve told me, can anything kill him?”

  There was a quiet pause.

  “To the best of my knowledge,” said Stealth, “he has never been decapitated.”

  “Oh, come on,” said St. George. “Are we going to hunt him down and chop his head off?”

  She bowed her head inside her hood. “I was merely offering a possible scenario where his powers would not allow him to regenerate.”

  There was a brief lull, and then someone cleared their throat.

  Max sat in a chair at the far end of the meeting table. His suit was navy blue with a paisley tie of red and silver. St. George realized he could barely see Jarvis in Max’s face anymore. There was a little something around the eyes, a bit in the cheeks, but for the most part the salt-and-pepper man had vanished.

  Another person consumed by the dead.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Max said. “I was up all night working out a couple ideas before I lost them. With Cairax being so determined and aggressive I figured I needed to put some serious thought into banishing him.” He swung his feet up onto the table.

  Freedom glanced at the door. “How did you …?”

  Max twiddled his fingers in the air and smiled.

  “He is wearing rubber-soled shoes,” said Stealth, “and the doors have pneumatic hinges.”

  “Do you have no sense of wonder in your soul?” Max shook his head. “Good news is, I’ve got it figured out. I’ll need four days of prep and I can get rid of Cairax for good.”

  “Really?” said Barry.

  “Yep. So, what did I miss here? Anything that’s still relevant?”

  “Josh’s escape,” said St. George, “and if we can go after him or not.”

  “Anyone crossing the wards before I banish Cairax would be bad,” said Max. “Refresh my memory—who’s Josh?”

  Danielle sighed. Stealth stiffened and crossed her arms. “Joshua Garcetti,” she said, “better known as Regenerator.”

  “Wait,” said Max, sitting up. “Regenerator’s still alive?”

  “Yeah,” said Barry. “You missed the big catch-up.”

  “No way? It’s like we’re getting the band back together again. Wh
ere’s he been?”

  “He was our prisoner,” said Stealth, “until he escaped two and a half hours ago. He is somewhere in Los Angeles beyond the Big Wall.”

  “WHAT?”

  Max leaped out of his chair so hard it skittered across the floor and hit the far wall. He looked at each of them in turn. His eyes were wide and his chest heaved. He pressed his hands against the tabletop. “Regenerator is out in the city? He’s past the wards?”

  St. George nodded and shrugged. “Yeah.”

  “Does he still have his powers? Just before everything collapsed I heard he’d lost his powers.”

  “Still got ’em,” said Danielle.

  “He took over a dozen twelve-gauge slugs during his escape,” said Freedom. “They barely slowed him.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” muttered Max. He reached back and grabbed the back of his head. “Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  Stealth crossed her arms. “Is there a problem?”

  Max’s eyes were still huge. “Problem?” he echoed. “Well, everyone in Los Angeles has maybe nine or ten hours left to live. But other than that, yeah, things are just fantastic.”

  “EXPLAIN,” SAID STEALTH.

  Max shook his head. “Okay, look, the whole reason Cairax Murrain can’t manifest is because any host needs to meet two major conditions. They have to be alive and they need to be durable enough to survive the process of possession. That’s why it was so important that George didn’t go past the barriers. It could kill anyone, but it could actually possess him.”

  “Okay,” said St. George with a nod.

  “Well, now there’s a body out there that won’t die. Regenerator can take all that damage and keep going. He’s viable. So the instant he says yes, Cairax is going to start moving in, just like I did. And once he’s got flesh he’s going to march in here and kill every single man, woman, child, and fluffy kitten in the Mount.”

  “But we’re safe inside, right?” Barry waved his arm at the window. “That’s the point of the symbols.”

  Max shook his head. “We’re not safe. This isn’t remotely safe anymore. This is like being out in the middle of the ocean, a thousand miles from anything, on a six-dollar pool raft with a great white shark circling you. Except the raft has a hole in it and the shark’s armor-plated, on meth, and has a laser cannon mounted on its skull. That’s about how ‘safe’ we are.” He started to pace. “The wards only block his essence. They meant he couldn’t make someone pop inside the Mount. Once he’s got a body he can walk over those hexagrams just like you or me. And then everyone in here dies.”

  Danielle played with the edge of the map on the table. “You sure do talk a lot about how awful this thing is.”

  “Because I know you’re not getting it,” snapped Max. His pacing carried him from one side of the room to the other. “You all keep thinking back to George beating up a zombie, half-breed version of Cairax and telling yourself it’s no big deal.”

  “And this is worse?” asked St. George.

  “It’s the worst thing ever. Period. Every book you’ve read, every movie you’ve seen, this is a thousand times worse. This is one of the things every single villain you’ve ever heard of is based off because he’s so evil, knowledge of his existence leaks between dimensions. He’s so terrifying that when a bunch of idiot Satanists set him loose in the fourteenth century his name entered the language and became the word for plague.”

  Freedom crossed his arms. On opposite sides of the room, it made him and Stealth look like a set of mismatched bookends.

  “Remember when he bit you?” Max asked St. George. “Yeah, you do, don’t you? First time anything had hurt the Mighty Dragon in, what, two years at that point?”

  The hero reached down and rubbed his arm.

  Max nodded. “You want to know what you tasted like, George? You tasted scared. Fucking terrified. I was dead and in a possessed body and I could taste your fear on my tongue. That’s how strong it was.”

  He stopped pacing and pointed at the window. “That thing out there, his whole existence boils down to two things. Fear and death. Someone being scared of dying is like sex for him if sex gave you a full stomach and did your laundry. Someone dying is him getting that rush on New Year’s Eve at midnight. And once he’s got a host, believe me, it’s going to be midnight here in the Mount for a very, very long time.”

  The room got quiet. They all stared at the window. Max put his hands on the table and let his head hang.

  “Okay,” said St. George. “What do we have to do?”

  The sorcerer shook his head. “I’m not sure,” he said. “This is way bigger than anything I ever planned on. I mean, even in my worst-case scenarios I never figured he’d get a usable host. Once he’s flesh …” Max shrugged.

  “You claim the demon was once set loose during the Middle Ages,” said Stealth. “How was it defeated then?”

  “I don’t know,” said Max. “The details are fuzzy. The popular theory is Pope Clement the Sixth tricked him into touching the fisherman’s ring. Instant discorporation, but it killed Clement, too.”

  “So we need to find the ring,” said Barry. “Okay.”

  “It is reasonable to assume the ring is on the far side of the planet,” said Stealth. “At last report, Pope Benedict was sequestered in the Vatican during the outbreaks. It is likely the ring is still in that region.”

  “Knowing where it is doesn’t help us if we can’t get there,” said Freedom. He looked at Stealth. “Unless there’s more you’ve been holding out on me, I don’t think we have a transcontinental jet anywhere in the Mount.”

  “I could fly it,” said St. George.

  “No offense, sir, but flying four hundred miles out to Krypton was tiring for you. We’re talking more than twenty times that, half of which is over open ocean.”

  “Bigger issue,” added Danielle. “It all involves going outside and crossing those spell-circles.”

  “The ring’s a nonissue,” said Max. He waved a hand at Barry. “The only one who could get there, find the ring, and get back in time would be Zzzap, and he wouldn’t be able to pick it up.”

  “Why are you certain of this timeline?” asked Stealth.

  “I told you, there’s a bunch of rules to this. For any sort of conscious possession to work, astral cords have to be intertwined, souls married, contracts have to be agreed on, all sorts of stuff. It takes time.”

  “Contracts?” asked Freedom.

  “Yeah, contracts. Agreements. A demon can’t just jump into your body like it’s a car with the engine running. You have to agree to it. It can lie and cheat and bend words, but there needs to be an agreement. A contract.” He shook his head. “I think our best bet is going to be killing him.”

  “Killing him?” Freedom echoed. “Can we do that?”

  “I didn’t say it was a good bet. I just said it was our best.” He pressed his fingers against his temples for a moment. “We’re trying to kill a concept, an idea made flesh. So we have to fight it with an idea that’s just as powerful. We’ll need a sword.”

  “A sword?” repeated Freedom.

  “Is there an echo in here?” Max furrowed his brow at the oversized captain. “Yes, a sword. A long piece of metal with a handle and a pointy end, symbolic since the Garden of Eden.”

  “Does it have to be a certain type of sword,” asked Barry, “like a broadsword or a claymore, or would anything do?”

  “We’re not going to beat it with a collectible lightsaber, if that’s what you’re asking,” Max said. “It needs to be a real weapon, not a display replica or something. Preferably silver or silver-plated. Even just silver inlays on the blade would be great. If it’s spilled some blood, too, great. Past that, anything goes.”

  “There are three museums with historical edged weapons within a mile of the Big Wall,” said Stealth, “and very likely several dozen personal collections with functional swords. However, all of them are beyond your wards.”

  “You said I was strong enough for the p
ossession,” said St. George. “Does that mean I could make it out to find a sword?”

  Max shook his head. “Strong enough to survive it. It’d still feel like getting kicked repeatedly in the balls by a horse, even to you. Plus he’s got a few million exes out there. Each body gives him a couple seconds to beat the crap out of you.”

  “I could take it.”

  “Be realistic, George. You know how hard he can hit.”

  “I could fly—”

  “Even if you flew out of here, he could go for the possession and then beat you unconscious when you fell out of the sky.”

  “If we cannot go beyond the seals,” said Stealth, “how do you expect to fight Cairax?”

  Max shrugged and stared at the table for a moment. “We wait for him to come here.”

  “Whoa.” Barry raised his hand. “Weren’t you just saying him getting in here was extremely bad? Like crossing-the-streams, end-of-life-as-we-know-it bad?”

  “We don’t have a lot of options,” said Max. “First things first. We need a sword.”

  “The scavengers,” said Freedom.

  “What about them?” asked Danielle.

  “They carry a lot of nonstandardized weaponry,” he said. “Lady Bee tells me some of them use knives, machetes, other things they find out on runs. Maybe someone’s found a sword and brought it back here.”

  “Only one of the scavengers carries a sword,” said Stealth. “Daniel Foe wears a replica katana in a back sheath. He wears it as an attempt to look imposing, hoping to impress Lynne Vines. He has never drawn it.”

  “There could be others, though,” said St. George. “Maybe they don’t use it, but somebody may have found one and just kept it as a trophy or something. We should ask all the scavengers and guards.”

  Freedom nodded in agreement.

  “What about making one?” asked Danielle. “Maybe we could silver-plate a machete or something.”