An Ex-Heroes Collection

by Peter Clines

  They fought through another three blocks. St. George took the brunt of it while Stealth caught the rest. Freedom dealt with the two or three that stumbled up from behind.

  St. George chopped through an ex’s neck and watched its skull bounce away. He glanced over in time to see Stealth flip a dead man over her shoulder and spin to kick the corpse in the head while it was still in midair. “Now you’re just showing off,” he said.

  “I am testing my muscle memory,” she said. “Their numbers are not increasing as much as I expected.”

  “They’re still going up, though,” said St. George. He nodded down the road. “It looks like there’s another thirty or forty to make our way through.”

  She looked grim. “As Barry said, this corner of the Big Wall has an average of fourteen hundred exes, drawn here by either sounds or the sight of guards patrolling along the Wall. Even with their random movements, this section of road should contain at least one hundred of them.”

  St. George walked forward with his arms spread and gathered up half a dozen exes. He looked back at Stealth. “Maybe things are going our way for once.” He shoved the exes forward and they stumbled and fell. Their bodies tripped four others staggering at the heroes. He stepped up to the pile and twisted their heads one after another.

  When he glanced back, she was still grim.

  He looked past her. Since entering the overgrown length of road, Danielle had pulled her arms tight against herself. She’d backed up so close to Freedom he had to push her along. Barry looked annoyed at being carried, but kept one hand on Danielle’s shoulder. Madelyn was trying to watch everything. Her perception filter, as she liked to call it.

  Up ahead the road curved off to the left. Another dozen or so exes staggered toward them. Three of them wore military helmets with their civilian clothes, while one dead man had on what looked like a batting helmet. Leftovers from one of Legion’s many attempts to storm their home.

  “Not much farther,” St. George called back to the others. “The Big Wall should be right around that bend.”

  “Want us to go ahead?” asked Madelyn. “We could scout around and make sure they’re ready to open the gates or pull us over the Wall.”

  “The exes may not see you,” said Stealth, “but if we have all been gone for any amount of time, the guards may not react well to your appearance.”

  “We’ll all go together,” said Freedom with a quick glance up at Madelyn. “All of us or none of us.”

  “I’d prefer all of us,” Barry said.

  “Me, too,” said Danielle.

  St. George tore the hood off a car, held it in both hands, and sent it spinning into the approaching exes. It decapitated two, tore five in half through the torso, and shattered the legs of half a dozen more.

  Stealth was a blur. Kicks, strikes, punches, flips. She broke bones, snapped necks, and cracked skulls. Exes reached for her and then slumped to the ground.

  Then they came around a corner, and the Big Wall loomed in front of them. The tops of buildings peeked over the barrier of triple-stacked cars. St. George could see the wooden platforms and rails that ran along the top of the Wall, and as they got a few steps closer he could see up Rossmore to …

  “Oh my God,” he said.

  THE HOLE IN the Big Wall was twenty feet across. Two stacks of the cars that made up its bulk had collapsed and crashed to the ground inside. The wooden walkways along the top had splintered apart and gone with it. What was left of the Wall on either side sagged inward. One car hung in midair, still half wedged into the layered structure.

  Exes were slumped on the pavement around the base of the Big Wall. St. George guessed there were a few hundred of them. Most of them had head wounds, in a variety of calibers. A few had suffered more violent trauma—crushed skulls or decapitation. The ground around them was covered with dark, dried puddles and a few dots of dull brass.

  A few dozen exes still staggered in the street. Another dozen were visible through the hole, inside the Mount. Men, women, and children. A few of them noticed the heroes and staggered toward them.

  Danielle shook her head and bit her lip.

  St. George couldn’t see anyone along the Big Wall in either direction. Rossmore curved heading north, but he was pretty sure he saw another hole farther along. If he had it right in his head, it was across from the church.

  “What happened?” asked Barry.

  Madelyn’s head swung back and forth. “Is everyone … are they all dead?”

  Freedom reached up and put his huge hand on top of hers. His face was a blank, but somehow still grim. St. George had come to know it as Freedom’s bad-news face.

  “We should move inside,” said Stealth. “There is nothing to learn out here, and the number of exes appears lower inside the Wall.”

  No one argued. St. George battered a few dead people out of the way and cleared a path to the gap in the Wall. Dried blood covered the hood of a car in the Big Wall’s bottom row. Lots of dried blood. Someone had lost an artery and sprayed out.

  Stealth looked at the dark brown fan with a clinical eye.

  St. George heaved against the side of the car and it slid out of the way with a scrape of tire rims on pavement. The sound attracted a few more exes, but let them get through faster. Once Freedom stepped through, St. George heaved against the other side of the car and pushed it back into place. It wasn’t much of a barrier, but it was better than nothing. A few exes bumped against the far side and stretched their arms across the hood. They clawed at the air separating them from the living people.

  Stealth tapped something with her boot, then kicked it up and grabbed it with one hand. A police baton. St. George remembered several of the guards carrying them as emergency hand-to-hand weapons. Stealth settled it against her arm, then turned and dispatched three of the closest exes with swift swings and thrusts. They hit the ground with a rhythmic thump, thump, thump.

  Freedom took a few steps along the Wall, then turned and walked the other way. “What was that?” Madelyn asked. “Was that another body?”

  Barry closed his eyes and muttered something.

  “Sir,” said Freedom. He gestured with his free hand.

  St. George stepped over. He took a quick look around for exes, then kneeled to inspect the body. He was pretty sure it had been a man. One arm was gone. The other one was missing below the elbow. Both legs ended at the knee. The torso was opened below the ribs and had been hollowed out. There was enough skin left to see the man had been black, and a lone dreadlock of dark hair curled down from the side of the well-gnawed skull.

  The flesh was dry and wrinkled. A thin layer of dust covered it all. The body had been there for a while.

  “Makana,” said Stealth.

  St. George glanced up. He hadn’t realized she was standing there. “Are you sure?”

  “There is enough left for a basic forensic reconstruction,” she said. “Approximate height, weight, and age are correct. Skin tone, hair, and gender are as well. There is a scar on his left shoulder which matches one Makana had, although the one on his right forearm was more distinctive and would be more conclusive. He is also wearing a similar belt buckle and holster, although some of the scavengers have been known to trade gear on occas—”

  “Okay,” said St. George. “I believe you. It’s him.”

  “I do not mean to seem callous. I just wish to be clear there is very little chance this is not Makana. We should be on our way. Moving the car has doubtlessly attracted whatever exes are within the Big Wall.”

  “Where are we going?” asked Barry.

  “To the Mount itself,” said Stealth. She pointed northeast with the baton. “It is the logical place for survivors to fall back to if the walls were breached. If nothing else, we should find supplies and weapons there.” She glanced at Danielle. “And the Cerberus suit.”

  “God, I hope so,” said Danielle.

  They walked east along Beverly to get as much of the setting sun as possible. Along the way they put
down a baker’s dozen of exes. St. George recognized two of them. One had been a scavenger named Danny Foe. He tried not to think about it as he twisted the dead man’s head around.

  The sun vanished behind the corner of the Big Wall just as they reached Larchmont. Stealth announced the wide street was their best route north to the Mount. They saw more bodies on the sidewalk and lawns. No one complained too much when the light faded.

  St. George crushed a few more exes. He tried not to look at their faces, but more of them looked familiar. People from the Mount. People from the Seventeens’ camp who’d joined them. Even a few from Project Krypton. He tried to hurl those away before Freedom could see them.

  “No chance of lighting a torch?” Danielle asked. “We could tie up my socks in a tree branch or something.”

  St. George shook his head. “Sorry. Still don’t have any fire.” He coughed for emphasis.

  “Are you out of gas,” asked Barry, “or just forgot how to throw up?”

  “I’m not sure. Both, maybe?”

  “We are less than four blocks from the Melrose gate,” said Stealth. “We will be fine.” She swung her baton and cracked an ex’s skull for emphasis.

  St. George heard Freedom say something, but the words were lost as he cracked an ex’s skull with his knuckles. He kicked the body away. “What was that?”

  “I said there still aren’t many, sir,” the captain repeated. “If the Mount’s the fallback position, the exes should be denser here.” He shook his head. “This still isn’t much heavier than the standard numbers we’ve seen everywhere else. Fifteen or twenty per block.”

  They reached the intersection. There was just enough light for St. George to make out the huge globe of the Earth perched on the walls of the Mount, two blocks away. He could also see a few dozen exes between them and the gate. The sound of clicking teeth filled the air. “Cheer up,” he said. “There’s a lot more here.”

  In the dim light he saw Danielle shudder. Freedom reached out, wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and pulled her in close. “I’ve got her, sir,” he said.

  “And I’ve got all of us,” said Madelyn. “Keep an eye on Stealth. We’re good.”

  St. George turned in time to see Stealth’s baton strike a dead woman’s skull three times in a blur of motion. It might’ve been four times. The last one made the whole head jiggle. The ex wobbled for a moment, its arms went limp, and it fell over.

  He marched into the horde and they bit at his arms and face. His shirt was covered with rips and snags. He swept his arms together and slammed four of the dead things against each other. Before they could untangle their limbs, he shoved the mass off to the side. They knocked over two more exes before sprawling over a curb.

  Stealth spun through the crowd. Her baton whirled and sliced through the air. At times it lunged out for a precision strike. Once it thrust back to shatter a forehead. Exes slumped and dropped around her. She stepped over their bodies and brought her heels down on the necks of ones that still moved.

  They reached the corner of the Mount. The pale walls were bright in the moonlight. George slammed his fists out and felt undead skulls and jaws collapse under his knuckles.

  Another hundred yards and they’d be back inside.

  “There’s no one on the Wall,” Barry called out.

  St. George glanced back. The exes still seemed to be ignoring Freedom and his passengers. They brushed past or bumped into him, but their chattering teeth never came close. Danielle was curled up almost in a ball. Madelyn looked like she was concentrating. Barry and Freedom were both looking up.

  “He’s right, sir,” said the captain. “No sentries.”

  St. George looked up. There was no one up near the oversized globe of the Earth that sat on the corner of the Wall. His eyes ran along toward the gate. He didn’t see a single guard.

  He caught an ex by the arm as it tried to grab him. “We’re almost there,” he said. “Just a few more minutes.”

  They pushed ahead. St. George and Stealth cleared the path. Freedom followed before the exes could fill it back up.

  They pushed past the last corner and saw the Melrose gate at the end of its short driveway, half-hidden in shadows. On the other side of an overgrown shrub, the guards held the wide gateway open. One gestured them in with slow waves while others held off the exes.

  St. George made the last push through the exes. More of them were going after him and Stealth than the guards at the gate. He smashed the dead things aside. She battered them down. He made a last lunge with his arms wide, pushed half a dozen of them into the small garden with a squat palm tree, and left a clear path. Stealth rammed her baton into the side of an ex’s head and ran for the opening with Freedom and the others right behind her. The guard waved them in. The wave was an unsteady, somehow mechanical gesture, as if the man wasn’t quite aware he was doing it.

  Stealth brought her baton up, shattering the guard’s jaw, then smashed it down on the top of his skull. The man swayed. She slipped through the gate, smacked aside another guard’s hands, and continued the swing into the back of the waving guard’s head. His face slammed into the bars and the impact rang through the gate.

  Four long strides carried St. George to the gate. Up close he could see the waving man had been Derek, one of the Melrose guards almost from the day the Mount had been founded. He was dead. His skull was cracked and sagging.

  From the color of his skin, he’d been dead for a while. One of his ears was gone, and most of the flesh around it. The arm that had been stuck in the bars, waving, was missing two fingers.

  Another ex fell on St. George from behind. He let it gnaw on his neck for a moment. A few of its teeth broke loose and slipped down the back of his shirt. They were cool and dry against his skin.

  He turned and shoved the ex back. He pulled the gate shut and stood there for another moment while the dead things outside clawed at his fingers. Then he looked around, found the steel pipe they used for a bar, and dropped it in the brackets across the gate.

  Behind him, he heard Stealth put down the other exes by the guardhouse.

  No one said anything.

  Except for the click of teeth echoing between the buildings, there was no sound. All the windows in the buildings were dark.

  A pickup truck was parked near the gate. The driver’s seat was smeared with blood. The passenger seat held the withered remains of a woman with an empty pistol in her lap. The back of Billie Carter’s skull was gone, and the rear window behind her was cracked and covered with dried gore. It was all through her spiky blond hair as well.

  Stealth took the pistol, released the slide, and checked the magazine. She glanced up at St. George and shook her head. She slid the pistol in her waistband.

  He checked beneath the truck for any crawlers, then pulled the tailgate down. The truck had two boxes of food in the back, and a third box of random supplies. St. George gave them a quick search and handed out some crumpled granola bars with long-since-expired dates.

  There was a large water bottle, maybe five gallons, sealed with some plastic wrap and a doubled-up rubber band. The band crumbled when he tugged on it. The plastic wrap was sticky. He found a clean spot on his shirt and used it to wipe the mouth of the bottle as clean as he could.

  Danielle sat down on the end of the tailgate. Her legs dangled above the ground. Freedom set Barry down next to her, then Madelyn.

  They ate and sipped water in silence. The Corpse Girl glanced over her shoulder at the cracked rear window. Even in the dark, the splatter of gore on the inside was visible.

  There was enough light from the moon and stars to see the garden had turned into a thick mess of yellowed plants. More bodies were sprawled in the rows. Most of them had been stripped of enough meat to make them little more than skeletons.

  Some of them were very small skeletons.

  “How long?” Freedom asked. “How long have we been gone?”

  No one said anything.

  “Ma’am?”

/>   Stealth looked across the lot, picking out shapes. “It is difficult to be accurate in such poor light,” she said. “I could make a rough estimate from the amount of dust on the truck and the level of plant growth in the garden. I saw similar levels at the Big Wall. The state of decay in the bodies we have seen also allows a general guideline.”

  St. George looked at her. “And?”

  Stealth continued to study the lot around them. “I would say it has been at least four months since this area was used. That estimate may be off by several weeks.”

  “Four months?!” gasped Danielle.

  Barry shook his head. “No way,” he said. “That’s not possible.”

  “We should get inside,” said Stealth, as if none of the others had spoken. “We will attract attention here, and we cannot defend an open area such as this.”

  “We need to look for survivors,” said St. George.

  “Agreed,” said Freedom. “We can—”

  “At the moment, the odds of there being survivors would seem to be very low,” snapped Stealth. “St. George and I have both been awake for over thirty-six hours at this point. Barry and Madelyn cannot walk. Danielle is useless from fear.”

  Danielle looked up and glared at Stealth, but said nothing.

  “Our first concern is to secure a base of operations and rest. If there are survivors, we are of no use to them like this. Is that clear?”

  They all stared at her. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “The Roddenberry Building is the logical choice. It is central, it has three ground-level entrances, and the stairwells have isolated any exes inside. I have weapons and supplies secured there.”

  “Okay, then,” said St. George. He stacked the three boxes of supplies, then balanced them in one hand. “Let’s go.”

  They started across the parking lot. An ex with a military helmet staggered out from behind the old studio store and headed for them. Stealth knocked its helmet off with one swing of her baton, broke its jaw with a second, and with the third she rammed the baton through its empty eye socket. It dropped to the ground.