An Ex-Heroes Collection

by Peter Clines

  Max shook his head. “It’s got to fit the symbolism, remember? The less we think of it as a sword, the less the chances it will work.”

  “There are also the studio prop houses,” said Stealth. “It is possible there is a real weapon mixed in with the various fantasy and historical movie props.”

  “Good call,” said St. George. “I’ll put Ilya and Dave on it.”

  Stealth turned her attention back to Max. “What else would we require?”

  “I’ll need to prepare a few spells and protections,” he said. “That should take a couple of hours. If any of you have a hotline to God, we could use an archangel to wield the sword for us.”

  “An archangel?” asked Stealth.

  Max looked at her. “You know, a creature born from the radiance and divine will of God and shaped in his image. Think of all the stuff you think of when someone says ‘holy,’ and an archangel is ten times purer than that. I thought you were the smart one?”

  Stealth crossed her arms.

  “Sorry,” he said. “A bit tense. Barring an archangel, we need the holiest, purest person we can find.”

  The heroes glanced at each other, then all turned to St. George. “I don’t think any of us are that holy or pure,” he said. “Especially after the past few years.”

  “I’m not,” said Danielle. “You’re the one named after a saint.”

  “Not by choice,” he said. “I just kind of fell into it.”

  Barry shrugged. “I guess I’m an okay guy, but unless I’m going to fight the monster in my wheelchair I couldn’t hold a sword anyway.”

  “I would be unfit,” said Stealth after a moment. “I have been an atheist for thirty years.”

  They looked at Freedom. He shook his head. “I’m only human.”

  Danielle looked at Max. “What about you?”

  He snorted back a laugh. “With all the magic I’ve done? I may not count as evil but I’m a long way from pure. It’s the nature of the beast. No pun intended.”

  “Father Andy?” suggested Barry.

  Max shook his head. “Nothing against the good father, but he’s not the warrior priest we need, know what I mean?”

  “Okay,” said St. George. “We’ll work on that one. Let’s start with the sword and go from there.”

  “So,” St. George told them, “that’s where we are. We need a sword and we need it quick.”

  The scavengers and every free Wall guard were gathered at the Melrose Gate of the Mount, across from Gorgon’s cross. Freedom and First Sergeant Kennedy stood nearby. She still dressed in her full uniform with her hair pulled back tight under her headgear. The surviving soldiers of the Alpha 815th Unbreakables stood behind her in tight formation, even if a few of them were missing one or two elements from their ACUs.

  Danny reached up and tapped the hilt stretched over his shoulder. “You can have mine,” he said.

  “No offense, sir,” said Freedom, “but this needs to be a real weapon.”

  “It’s real.”

  “Real in the sense of actually made to fight with,” said St. George. “Something that’s not going to break apart on the second or third swing. I’ve got Ilya and Dave going through the prop house right now. Does anyone else have anything?”

  “What about a Marine officer’s sword?” asked Billie.

  St. George shook his head. “Same thing, I think. It can’t be ceremonial, it needs to be something that’s made to fight with.”

  “They’re made to fight with,” she said.

  He gestured at the folding table they’d set up in the street. “If you’ve got one we’ll give it a try.”

  Al held up his square-topped machete. “I’ve got this.” A man across from him held up a similar blade.

  “Same thing. I don’t think it’ll work, but we’ll try it.”

  Hector de la Vega cleared his throat as the crowd began to rustle with unsheathed steel. “I know where there’s a sword. Just what you need.”

  St. George looked at him. “What?”

  The tattooed man shrugged. “My grandpapa, he showed it to me a couple times. It was some old family thing. An heirloom or something.”

  Paul gave him a nudge. “Is it some Mexican army thing you brought up here?”

  “Fuck you, babosa,” he said. “My family had a ranch here before California was even a state.” He turned his attention back to St. George. “It’s an old saber from the eighteen hundreds or something. He told me once it killed over a dozen men.”

  “That sounds perfect,” St. George said. “Is it here?”

  Hector shook his head. “Never trusted my dad or me with it.” He smirked and shrugged again. “Mostly me. Think he was worried I’d hock it or something. Kept it all locked up in his house.”

  “Which is where?”

  “North Hollywood. Little place just past Universal City.”

  “Might as well be on the Moon,” muttered Kennedy.

  “We could put a small team together,” said Billie. “Go in fast with a truck or maybe even some motorcycles.”

  “We could set up a distraction at one of the other gates,” said another one of the scavengers, Keri, with a nod. “Get the thing over there so they can slip out.”

  St. George shook his head. “From what Max has said, it’s not possible to get past this thing. It’s got us surrounded, just the same way Legion does. We can’t go out past the wards.”

  “I could get it,” said someone in the back.

  The crowd shifted and parted. A few of them jumped away when they saw the speaker. Most of the guards and scavengers stepped back from her, and a murmur danced through the crowd.

  Madelyn walked forward. She was wearing a black shirt that made her skin look pure white. Her sunglasses were pushed up on her brow, holding her hair back and showing off her dead eyes. “I could get it,” she repeated.

  “You’re not supposed to be outside the hospital,” said St. George.

  “She’s not supposed to be inside the walls,” said someone else.

  The hero glanced at the crowd. “What was that?”

  Makana shrugged. It made his dreadlocks kink and shift. “I thought that was one of the basic rules,” he said. “We don’t let her kind inside the walls, no matter what.”

  “My kind?” said Madelyn. She gave the black man a look of disbelief that was clear even with her pale eyes.

  “Look, corpse girl,” he said, “nothing personal, but you’re one of them.”

  “She’s not one of them,” countered Keri. “She’s still got her soul.”

  “Don’t use that soul crap as an excuse,” said Lady Bee.

  “Let’s just toss her back outside,” said Al. “She’ll be fine and she doesn’t need to be in here scaring people and eating up resources.”

  “Hey,” snapped St. George. A burst of dark smoke rolled from his mouth. “Let’s cut all this talk right now.”

  The murmur continued for a few more seconds before falling. The dead girl’s mouth twitched into a faint smile aimed at St. George.

  “Madelyn’s not an ex,” said St. George. “She belongs inside. She’s one of us.”

  “One of you, maybe,” muttered Al. Billie gave him a light smack on the back of the head and he batted her arm away. The murmur returned and swelled into rumbling.

  “I can get the sword,” Madelyn insisted, raising her voice over the noise. “Max said the demon’s after living things. And Legion can’t see me through the exes, so maybe this other thing can’t, either. I’m the only person who can do it.”

  The phrase “not a person” flitted from a few places in the crowd. St. George ignored it. Freedom gave the crowd his well-practiced glare and the rumbling died down again.

  “You can’t go out there,” St. George said. “We can’t risk anyone going past the wards.”

  “But if it can’t see me—”

  “No one goes out,” he repeated. He turned his gaze back to the guards and scavengers. “We’ll take every blade we’ve got. Mach
etes, bowies, ninja swords, whatever. Start gathering stuff. Maybe between our stuff and whatever Dave and Ilya find, Max can find something usable.” He patted the folding table and pointed across the crowd. “You too, Danny. We need everything.”

  “You heard the man, people,” bellowed Kennedy. She clapped her hands together twice. “Let’s get moving.”

  The scavengers and guards scattered. Some of them emptied sheaths right there. A dozen knives and daggers appeared on the table with Al’s square-bladed machete.

  Madelyn walked the rest of the way to St. George. “Let me do it,” she said.

  Freedom shook his head. “Absolutely not.”

  “I can do this. I want to do it.”

  “We are not sending a seventeen-year-old girl alone into hostile territory.”

  She glared at him. “Hello? In case you forgot, I spent the past three years in hostile territory.”

  “And you don’t remember most of it,” said St. George. “We let you out there, it could be weeks before we see you again. Maybe years.”

  “I’ll be careful. It won’t happen.”

  He shook his head.

  She crossed her arms. “You have to let me try. I mean, it’s like my duty and stuff, right?”

  Freedom’s brows went up. “I’m sorry?”

  “I mean, I’ve got responsibilities, even to some of those jerks. I’m like you guys, right?”

  “How do you figure?” asked St. George.

  “I’ve got superpowers,” she said, waving a hand at herself. “The exes can’t see me or hear me. They don’t sense me at all.”

  Kennedy snorted. “I don’t think being dead counts as a superpower, ma’am.”

  “It does for me,” Madelyn said. “Come on, it’ll be easy for me. I can just bike over there, grab it, and be back here in a couple hours. It’s … it’s dead simple.”

  Freedom rolled his eyes.

  “Dead clever?”

  “Just stop,” Kennedy said.

  “I’m also dead sexy,” she added, batting her eyelids at St. George.

  “Okay,” St. George said. “Look at it this way. Suppose I let you go, you get out there, and it turns out the demon can see you. Then what?”

  “I … I’d just keep away from it. I’d run.”

  He shook his head. “What if it turns out it can jump into you the same way it jumps into the exes? What if you take two steps past the ward and you just explode like they’ve been doing?”

  “I’m not like them,” she snapped. “I’m like them but different. I’m …” She lifted her arms and crossed her wrists over her heart. “I’m the Corpse Girl,” she said with a tight smile.

  “You’re a seventeen-year-old we’re responsible for,” said St. George. “I appreciate that you want to help. I really do. But I think right now it’d be better for everyone and a lot less distracting if you went back to the hospital.”

  “FATHER ANDY?”

  He looked down the aisle to the huge shadow blocking the church door. “Hello, Captain,” he said. “I thought you’d be out on the walls.”

  Freedom walked down to meet the priest. He held his cap in his hands, and his boots thudded on the carpeted aisle. “Soon enough,” he said. “I apologize if you were finishing up for lunch, sir, but I have a request and I’m afraid it’s urgent.”

  Andy met him near the midpoint of the aisle, brow furrowed. “Something from me?” He glanced around the church. “I don’t have much, but if it helps it’s yours.”

  Captain Freedom stood at ease and explained what he needed.

  Father Andy listened without a word. His jaw shifted when the captain finished. “I see.”

  “Is there a problem, sir?”

  “Possibly.”

  “In Iraq and Afghanistan, the chaplains assigned to us would do similar things for some of the men.”

  “Some of the men,” the priest said, “but not you?”

  “Hopefully you’ll forgive me, father,” said Freedom, “but I’m actually a diehard Baptist. In this case, though, I’m hedging my bets.”

  Andy reached up to run a finger along his collar, giving it a slight tug. “I’m not actually a priest, you know,” he told the captain. “I was never ordained by anyone. The responsibility was thrust upon me.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first to say such things,” the huge officer said with a solemn nod.

  “What I’ve been preaching isn’t really Catholicism. It’s more of a general Christian mishmash to give solace to as many people as possible.”

  “I understand,” said Freedom. “We’ve all been a bit loose with our denominations over the past few years.”

  “It’s just that what you’re asking for is … well, it’s pretty hard-core Catholic. I’ve never done it before. Never even seen it done, so I’ll be winging it. And this needs a lot of weight behind it, especially considering the circumstances.” Andy’s hand dropped away from his collar. “I just want you to be clear there’s a good chance this won’t work. Not the way you want it to, anyway.”

  “All the same, sir,” said the captain, “I’d feel much better if you could.”

  Father Andy turned back to the altar. “We’ve got plenty of candles. I just filled the aspersorium this morning. Let me go get my vestments.” He looked over his shoulder. “If you want it done right—at least, what I think is right—it’s probably going to take forty minutes or so.”

  Freedom followed him to the altar.

  Max ran his fingers along the futuristic katana’s blade. The engraving looked like printed circuits. He tossed it back on the table. “It’s crap,” he said. “The tang’s not much more than a steel bolt and it’s just riveted onto the blade.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Billie. She’d supervised the pile of weapons being brought in from guards and scavengers. A few civilians had heard about the search and donated fencing sabers and ceremonial weapons.

  “It means it’s crap,” said Max. “You could wreck this thing by twisting the pommel two or three more times. Hitting something with it will just make the blade snap off in your face.” The sorcerer waved his hand at the table of weapons. “Most of this stuff is crap. The only blades that are any good are ones that wouldn’t work for this.” He reached up and grabbed the back of his head and took a few slow, deep breaths.

  “So,” said Stealth from the gates, “we have nothing.”

  Max let go of his head. “Yeah.”

  “There’s got to be something we can do,” said St. George. “You trapped this thing once before, can’t you do it again?”

  “It took three years of preparation and an eclipse,” said Max. “If you can scrounge up an eclipse in the next seven hours, I’ll see what I can do about the rest.”

  “Can’t you just make a stronger barrier?” Billie asked.

  Max reached up to loosen his tie. “With the right materials and a few months of research, sure. This just isn’t something I ever planned on, facing off with a physically manifested demon.”

  St. George drummed his fingers on the table. “Can it be hurt?”

  The sorcerer raised an eyebrow. “Without the sword, you mean?”

  “Yeah. Once it’s physical, can we hurt it?”

  “Technically, yeah,” said Max with a shrug. “You’ve got to understand, everything we’ve got in the Mount—even some of the big stuff you brought back from Krypton—it’s going to be like hunting dinosaurs with slingshots. And if it’s possessing Regenerator, it’s going to have his powers, too. We’ll have a minute, tops, before it heals from whatever we do to it.”

  Stealth looked at the table of blades. “Including wounds from the sword?”

  “No. Well, it’s hard to explain.”

  “Please attempt to.”

  “You don’t even have the right knowledge for a frame of reference. It’s like trying to explain quantum physics to one of those isolated tribes in the rain forest. I can give you some neat analogies, but that’s about it.”

  “Then, ag
ain, please do so.”

  Max sighed. “Okay, in simple terms, if the demon believes it can be hurt, and we believe we can hurt it, it’ll be hurt. It’s like Jung on steroids. That’s why all the big symbols are so important. It’s the same reason silver bullets have been able to kill werewolves ever since Siodmak wrote the Wolf Man screenplay.”

  Billie’s brow furrowed. “What?”

  “Never mind, bad example,” he said, shaking his head. “Okay, you know how you can be in the Matrix and even though you know it’s all just in your mind—”

  “You’re using The Matrix again?” asked St. George.

  “You don’t like it, get Barry some new DVDs,” snapped Max. “Even though you know it’s all just in your mind, the injuries will still translate through to the real world because the illusion is so perfect. The sights, the sounds, the feelings—no matter what you know, your mind can’t deny all the information coming in. Belief trumps knowledge, like a psychosomatic injury.”

  “I do not accept that,” said Stealth.

  “Look, just trust me, okay?”

  “Okay, then,” said St. George. He picked up one of the swords from the table. “So what’s our best choice here?”

  Max shook his head. “We don’t have a best choice here. If this is it, our best choice is getting some pointed sticks and painting them silver.”

  Billie stepped forward. “I’ll make sure they all get back to their owners,” she said.

  “Don’t bother,” said the sorcerer. “They’ll all be dead by tomorrow anyway.”

  “We have to do something, Max,” snapped St. George. Fire flashed in his mouth. “Anyone can sit around and bitch about how bad things are. We’re the ones who are supposed to fix it.”

  “We can’t fix this,” said the sorcerer.

  “Well, that’s the difference between you and me, then,” said St. George. “I’m going to try.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “We can’t just wait for it to get in here,” said the hero. “Ilya and Dave should be done with their search soon. If we’re lucky, they’ll have another dozen swords and one of them will work, or at least be useful. Supposedly I’m tough enough to stop it from possessing me, so I just need to hold it off as long as I can while I look for Josh.”