An Ex-Heroes Collection

by Peter Clines

  “It would seem once we each consciously realized Smith was affecting our perceptions, we began to find ways around the blocks he has created. As our minds create these new pathways and associations, our memories and abilities have begun to return.”

  “But I’ve had my memories all along,” she said. “So why do I need the chair?”

  Stealth looked at the other side of the room. “I am not sure,” she admitted. “It is reasonable to assume the unique nature of your mind has allowed you to remember certain elements of the actual world. It is unclear, then, why certain aspects of the illusionary world appear to be locked in your conscious mind.”

  Madelyn twisted her lips. “So this might be permanent?” She shifted her legs over the edge of the bed and slid back down into the wheelchair. She landed hard and winced.

  “Again,” said Stealth, “I am not sure. There are too many inconsistent facts.” She looked at the far side of the room again.

  “What do you mean?”

  Stealth said nothing. She just stared at Kathy. The other girl traded looks with Madelyn and shrunk down a little more behind her laptop.

  Freedom pushed Madelyn’s wheelchair down the hall. Danielle hovered behind him. St. George and Stealth brought up the rear.

  “Returning to the hotel should be our new priority,” she said.

  He glanced at her. “Why?”

  “Barry will be arriving there within the hour and will be unprotected. Also, my father always insists on traveling with certain items. There are weapons there which we can use.”

  “Are there?” asked St. George. “I mean, it’s just going to be an empty hotel room, right? Most of the hotels and motels in the city were pretty well looted in that first year. Hell, we looted half of them.”

  She took in a small breath through her nose.

  He looked at her. “What?”

  “There may be more to these perceptual illusions than we first believed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My initial hypothesis of our situation, based on our knowledge of Agent Smith’s abilities, may be flawed.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “You did not tell me Banzai was Madelyn’s roommate.”

  “Well, I didn’t know it was her until fifteen minutes ago,” he said. “And, I mean, it’s not really her, right? The real Kathy’s still wandering somewhere around in … what, West Hollywood last time we saw her?”

  “It is,” said Stealth. “Madelyn never met Banzai while she was alive, and has never encountered her as an ex-human. Neither has Captain Freedom. Banzai died nineteen days before Cerberus was deployed to Los Angeles, so Danielle has only known her as an ex.”

  “So?”

  The corner of Stealth’s eye tightened. She was frustrated with him. He was missing something.

  “George,” she said, “how could they be seeing and hearing an actual person they have never met? The illusion cannot be based on memories they do not have.”

  He glanced back up the stairwell, toward the dorm room. “Maybe Smith planted the memories the same way he plants suggestions.”

  “Smith has also never met Banzai. How would he know so many precise details of her appearance, voice, and personality?”

  “Maybe it’s a perception thing,” he said. “Maybe what we’re seeing isn’t what the others are seeing.”

  Stealth shook her head. “There are too many common references for us to not all be seeing the same things.”

  They stepped out into the sunlight. The sounds of the campus washed over them. There was a faint breeze from the west. St. George’s street sign lay in the freshly mown grass by the door with Stealth’s broomstick crossed over it.

  “So, you mean … this really is another world?”

  Stealth’s eyes tightened again, harder this time. “I do not know,” she said. “Either conclusion is inconsistent with the evidence.”

  “Which means what?”

  “Which means there is a third conclusion which is consistent with all the evidence. Unfortunately, at the moment I do not know what it is. Even our clothing is inconsistent. Ours and Danielle’s remain the same in both worlds, yet Freedom’s uniform changes.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that.” He picked up the improvised weapons and handed the wooden stick to Stealth. “Are you okay?”

  “Of course.”

  “I just ask because I know illogical things drive you nuts.”

  She took in a short breath. “It is … frustrating,” she admitted. “I appreciate your understanding.”

  “Hey,” shouted Madelyn. Freedom had already pushed her a dozen yards down the sidewalk. “Come on! We’ve got to go be superheroes.”

  “THIS WOULD BE a lot easier if we had a car,” said Danielle. “Or got a cab. Or just took the bus.”

  “Until we switched over,” said Freedom, “and realize we’ve been standing in a derelict bus with twenty or thirty exes.”

  They’d made their way back to the recruitment office and were headed up the steep climb into Beverly Hills. St. George had the lead, while Stealth had fallen back to bring up the rear. Freedom had Madelyn’s wheelchair.

  They’d been walking for twenty minutes when squealing brakes echoed across Wilshire. Half a block ahead of them, a car whipped across from the eastbound lane, cutting off half a dozen vehicles in the process. It pulled up alongside them, double-parked, and revved its engine. Then it honked its horn twice. St. George glanced over. It was a Hyundai, just like his. The driver was …

  There was no driver.

  The horn went off again. The passenger’s-side door popped open.

  “That is your car,” Stealth said to St. George.

  Two cars slowed down to veer around the Hyundai. The third didn’t slow at all, but its horn blared as it went past them. The next lane wasn’t slowing, and more cars started to honk. A few brakes screeched. The Hyundai’s hazard lights popped on.

  “No,” said Danielle. Her eyes widened. “It’s Cesar.”

  The horn let out three long angry blasts.

  She smirked. “I am not calling you ‘the Driver.’ ”

  St. George looked at Stealth. “What do you think?”

  “I do not know,” she said. “I am unsure why Cesar retains his powers while the rest of us are still limited.”

  “I meant, do we risk getting in?”

  “I am aware of your question, George. I do not know.”

  “I do,” said Danielle. “I’m tired and my feet hurt.” She glanced over at Freedom. “I’m guessing you’re going to want shotgun?”

  He smiled. “I’d prefer to drive, but it’s not my car.”

  Danielle flipped the seat forward and crawled into the back. Freedom and Madelyn looked at St. George, then at Stealth. “Are we doing this?” Madelyn asked.

  “There is no room for our weapons,” Stealth said.

  St. George tossed the signpost on the sidewalk. “At the worst,” he said, “twenty minutes from now we’re sitting right here in an abandoned car. At the best, we’re at the hotel.”

  “At the worst,” corrected Stealth, “we abandon our weapons, switch, and find four exes in the car with us.”

  Another car honked at them as it drove by.

  “There’s no exes,” shouted the voice on the radio. “I’m clean, ma’am.”

  “As far as you know,” said Stealth. She tossed her broomstick away.

  The captain helped Madelyn out of her wheelchair, then crouched to set her into the back of the Hyundai. Danielle helped her in. Stealth slipped in next to them while St. George folded the wheelchair and stashed it in the trunk. The suspension squealed as Freedom squeezed himself into the passenger seat and pushed the seat back. It still left his knees against the dashboard.

  St. George stepped around the Hyundai and watched the cars whip past him. He could smell exhaust and feel the wind as they passed. He picked little details off each one—chipped paint, flyers trapped under windshield wipers, one driver talking on his ce
ll, another plucking at her hair.

  If it was an illusion, it was an amazing one.

  There was a lull in the traffic. He stepped over and pulled the door open. The moment he closed it, the Hyundai leaped back into traffic. The steering wheel moved on its own.

  “Missed you guys!” said the radio. “The past few weeks have been really weird, y’know?”

  “Kind of, yeah,” said St. George.

  “Where we headed? Want me to take us back to the Mount?”

  “First to the Four Seasons on Doheny,” said Stealth. “Has it been weeks? We are unsure how long it has been since we fell under Smith’s influence.”

  “Think so,” said Cesar. “I mean, it’s tough to tell in here, y’know?”

  The wheel spun, the tires squealed, and cars around them dropped away. The Hyundai rushed through a yellow light. Horns went off and their honks faded away before they’d finished.

  “You’ve been in the car the whole time?” Madelyn leaned forward between the seats to talk to the radio. She had to squeeze around Freedom’s shoulders.

  “Yeah,” Cesar said. “I been following St. George the whole time. I kept trying to talk to you but you kept zoning out on me, man.”

  Stealth looked at St. George. “Do you recall any of this?”

  “I think I remember zoning out the radio, yeah. Sorry, Cesar.”

  “No problem, man.”

  The Hyundai swerved into another lane as they headed down a hill and went around an airport shuttle. It straddled lines to slip past a BMW and then the engine growled again. The light just past the bottom of the hill turned red and the car came to a reluctant stop.

  “I find it to be unlikely,” said Stealth, “that you found a working model of your old car at the same time Smith altered your memories.”

  “Hyundais weren’t rare,” said Danielle. “There’s probably at least a thousand of them in Los Angeles.”

  “It’s not a Hyundai,” said Cesar. “We’re in an old Taurus.”

  “No,” said St. George. “It’s my old car. It’s a blue Hyundai Accent.”

  “Dude,” said the voice on the radio, “it’s a piece o’ shit Taurus. Mostly red, but the passenger door and side panel are all primer. Feels like it got sideswiped and they never hammered it out all the way.”

  Freedom looked at the door by his arm.

  “Driver,” said Stealth, “what are you seeing right now?”

  St. George swore the car lifted itself a little higher on the road. “What do you mean, ma’am?” asked the voice on the radio.

  “What do you see on the road ahead of us? How many cars are there on this stretch of road with us?”

  “Well … uhhh,” Cesar said, “there aren’t any.”

  Freedom glanced at a glossy black Hummer as they swooped past it.

  “Please explain,” said Stealth.

  “I mean, there’s some wrecks and stuff. Abandoned cars. That what you meant?”

  A yellow Volkswagen pulled away as the Hyundai dipped into its lane. A woman on a motorcycle shot them an angry finger as Cesar slipped past and forced her close to the curb. The engine revved and they shot through a red light into a corridor of greenery.

  “Donner Pass,” muttered Freedom.

  Madelyn touched his arm. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  St. George tapped the steering wheel. “So you’re telling me there’s nothing else on the road?”

  “Nothing moving,” said the voice on the radio.

  They roared out of the green corridor, past a gas station and the Beverly Hilton. The Hyundai cut across two lanes, ran a red light, and made a wide turn past a fountain. More cars honked and a siren wailed to life behind them.

  “Cops,” said Danielle.

  “Where?” Cesar asked.

  “Right behind us,” said Madelyn. “You are busssssssted.”

  “There’s no cops,” said Cesar. “We’re the only ones on the road.”

  St. George glanced in the rearview mirror. “You don’t see or hear anything out there?”

  “I’ve told you, man, it’s not like that. When I’m in here, I’m kind of seeing things by … like, by comfort. The same way, like, when you’ve had a car for years you know if the rear end’s near the curb or another car.”

  “It would seem,” said Stealth, “that the Driver’s unique senses in this state allow him a different perception of the world around us, much as Madelyn’s mind allowed her to resist the false memories.”

  The Hyundai drove past a crowd of people waiting for a crosswalk. All of them had chalk-colored skin. St. George got only a quick look, but it looked like two of them were missing limbs. Their heads swiveled to watch the car go by.

  Cesar said something else, but St. George didn’t hear it. His head whipped around to look at the people on the sidewalk. He glimpsed a dead woman dragging a small, shriveled shape on a child leash, and Stealth bracing herself against the back of the passenger seat.

  The steering wheel hit him hard in the chest and snapped off as he folded around it. He heard a crash of glass and saw Freedom catching Madelyn and Danielle. Momentum threw them between the front seats and into his arms. All of them were ringed with sparkles, and St. George realized the small lights were little cubes of glass reflecting in the sun just as he bounced off the hood of the car and was thrown into the street.

  He hit the pavement head-first, rolled onto his shoulder, and then his knees cracked down against the road. The car appeared for an instant before momentum flipped him over again. The ground slapped him in the temple, the back, the ankle, the forehead, and then he was stopped by a concrete barrier. He sprawled with his face against it for a few seconds before he slid down. It was very gritty on his cheeks and nose. Some of the barrier crumbled away and fell with him.

  St. George stayed on the ground for a moment. The sky was very blue above him. The city was silent. He wondered if he’d broken anything, and then he remembered he was bulletproof and nigh invulnerable.

  He sat up. His jeans and the fleece jacket were ripped. His shirt had survived unscathed. He flexed his fingers and brushed some gravel and glass out of his hair, then looked down the road.

  Thirty feet away, a dust-covered red Taurus sat on four flat tires. Most of the windshield was scattered over the hood and in front of the car. The passenger side was primer gray and looked lumpy.

  He saw Freedom shift in the passenger seat. The officer had a gash where his forehead had hit the dashboard. Madelyn shook her head next to him. St. George didn’t see any injuries on her.

  “Everyone okay?” he called out. He rolled up onto his feet and brushed some more glass off his clothes as he walked back to the car. There were some fragments of windshield in the back of his jeans, but a few hops sent them tumbling down the inside of his pant leg.

  “We appear to be uninjured for the most part,” said Stealth. She stretched past Danielle and folded down the driver’s seat. Danielle pushed the door open and the two of them slid out of the car. Freedom’s door opened with a squeal of forced metal. The huge officer climbed out. He kept Madelyn cradled in one arm.

  There were a few other abandoned cars on the road. One was nothing but a blackened frame. Two of the others had bodies in them. In one of the cars, the body behind the steering wheel pawed at the windshield. The sound of teeth echoed in the air all around them.

  St. George tapped the hood of the Taurus. “Cesar,” he said. “You okay?”

  The car was silent.

  He walked around and leaned in the door. “Cesar?”

  The radio was long gone. A rectangular hole gaped in the middle of the dashboard.

  “He is not here,” said Stealth.

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Cesar’s abilities allow him to possess mechanical devices with a certain amount of functioning electronic circuitry. Based on the dust layer and the degree of fading in the various materials, I would estimate this vehicle has not functioned in at least four years.” />
  St. George looked at the car. “What’s that mean?”

  “Is he dead?” asked Madelyn. “If he switched over into a car that didn’t work, would that … I mean, could it kill him?”

  “I do not know,” said Stealth.

  “But it’s the car he said he was in,” said Danielle. “The red Taurus.”

  A few yards behind the car, a crowd of undead staggered out into the street. One of them fell off the curb and hit the pavement face-first. The others wobbled but kept their balance.

  “We can’t stay here,” said Freedom. “We’ve got to get moving again.”

  “Are we just going to leave him here?” said Danielle. She stood with her arms wrapped tight around herself and watched the mob of exes. There were at least fifty of them now, and more in the distance. The closest were a dozen yards away.

  “There is no evidence he is here,” said Stealth. She glared at the car as if it offended her. “If we are shifting between realities, perhaps he has been left behind in the other one.”

  “Except he could see this one,” said Madelyn. “He saw the car and the dead people.”

  “There is too much conflicting data to make a solid hypothesis.”

  There were scrape marks around the trunk lock, and a dent that could’ve been from a crowbar. St. George yanked and it swung open with a squeak. “Damn it,” he muttered.

  Danielle looked at him. “What?”

  “Maddy’s wheelchair is gone,” he said.

  Maddy tried to sit up in Freedom’s arms. “What?”

  St. George looked down at the empty trunk. It had been stripped down to the frame. “Gone,” he said.

  An ex fell on him from behind and bit his shoulder. Its teeth sank into the fleece and grated on his skin. St. George shrugged the dead man off, grabbed it by the shoulders, and shoved it back at the approaching crowd. It knocked a few of them down. A few more stumbled over the fallen ones.

  “We should be on our way,” said Stealth.

  “I agree,” said Freedom. “We might move quicker without the wheelchair.”

  “Yeah,” said Madelyn. “Piggyback?” The huge officer lifted her up and she swung around to hang on his broad shoulders.