Ex-Heroes

by Peter Clines

  The outline nodded. Catch me, it buzzed.

  There was a twist of lightning and the figure was outside the sphere. It sank to the floor and the concrete began to smoke. The shape grew dim, the air flattened, and a gaunt, naked man tumbled to the ground with the sudden “whuff” of a flame being snuffed out.

  “Oh, Jesus!” he shouted. “It’s freezing in here. Where’s my clothes?”

  “On the chair.” St. George scooped him up, taking the dark-skinned man in one arm like a child.

  “Get me over there, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Wuss.”

  “Big man, picking on the naked cripple,” Barry said. “Get me some damned pants.”

  They crossed the room and St. George lowered his friend into the wheelchair. Barry dug through the bundle of clothes and wrestled his way into the sweatpants. He’d been dressing in the chair for most of his life, so it didn’t take long. He tugged a tee shirt over his stubbly head and wrapped himself in a fleece jacket. “No shoes?”

  “What do you need shoes for?”

  “My feet are cold.”

  “So put on the other pair of socks.”

  “Are they still serving breakfast?”

  “Yeah. And I got you something to eat on the way.” He dropped a shrunken muffin in the other man’s lap.

  “Thanks. Which truck are we taking out?”

  “Big Red, I think.”

  “Good,” said Barry through a mouthful of pastry. “The shocks on Mean Green suck so bad I can feel it in my ass. You know what?”

  “What?”

  “I think this is the best blueberry muffin I have had in my entire life.”

  “I’m sure Mary’ll be glad to hear someone liked them.”

  “And I’m not just saying that because it’s been four days. This is one spectacular muffin.”

  St. George spun his walkie in his hand. “You know what you want? I can call ahead, have something ready.”

  “I will have,” he said with great thought, “a stack of at least five pancakes. Lots of syrup and whatever’s passing for butter these days. Some potatoes. And any of those powdered eggs they’ve got left.”

  “That it?”

  “We’ll talk later about what I’m taking with me for lunch. So, what’s going on?”

  “How so?”

  “You’re transparent, boy scout.”

  St. George shrugged. “Just talked to Josh.”

  “Oh, joy. How’d that go?”

  “Same as always. Self-pity, a little self-loathing, determined to end his life a lonely martyr.”

  Barry pushed another lump of muffin into this mouth. “One thing you have to say about our brave new world. It’s very consistent.”

  * * * *

  Big Red was parked next to the guard shack. It was a twenty-four foot truck that had been used for hauling set dressing back when the Mount was in the movie business. The new residents had cannibalized and customized it for scavenging runs. They’d chopped off most of the box and built a new frame for it, making it into a gigantic pick-up. It had a backup gas tank, a winch, and a cow catcher that had served as a battering ram once or twice. The double-cab sat four, another six rode in the bed, and a steel grill let two more ride on top of the cab. A petite woman with yellow and black stripes in her short hair was already there, seated on an old couch cushion. Lady Bee had an M-16 slung over her shoulder and a tactical holster strapped to one thigh. Someone once told St. George she’d been a movie costumer in the old days. She blew him a kiss as he walked past the truck.

  Luke Reid was at the wheel, as always. He was a blond, broad-shouldered Teamster who used to drive trucks for a living before everything went south. St. George saw Jarvis in Big Red’s back, along with Ty O’Neill, Billie Carter, Ilya, and a few others he sort of recognized. They all gave him salutes and determined nods. Barry was already asleep in the giant truck bed, stretched out on a thick pile of furniture blankets with his wheelchair strapped to the wall next to him.

  St. George walked up to the Melrose Gate and stopped a few feet away from the dozens of grasping hands reaching and clawing between the bars. The exes had the gate mobbed, as they always did. It was the only place they could still see into the Mount, see all the succulent, tasty people standing inside.

  Although, no one was sure if exes could see anymore.

  Almost no one used the word zombie. They’d been “exes” since the first presidential press conference. It made them easier to accept, somehow. The ex-living. Ex-people. Most of them still looked human. Usually the uninjured ones and the newer ones that hadn’t fed.

  The former citizens of Los Angeles reached for St. George with discolored, rotting fingers. He could hear their joints pop as they moved. Dozens of jaws hinged open and closed, clicking their dark teeth together.

  A curly-haired blonde whose mouth was caked with gore. A bald man with a gashed scalp and one ear. On opposite ends of the gate were a man and a woman in running clothes. By the left hinge, next to the female runner, was one with a face scoured down to the bare bone. A teenaged boy with a Transformers shirt and a clotted stump where his left hand should’ve been. A grandmotherly woman in a business suit stiff with blood. A black man near the break in the gate who stood still and stared back at St. George with blank eyes.

  Their skin was anywhere from sidewalk gray to white, sometimes colored with dark purple bruises. Their eyes were all dull and faded, like cloudy glass. Many of them were just worn out. Flesh dry and cracking from months in the sun. Covered with injuries that would never heal but could never kill them.

  St. George didn’t recognize any of them. That always made it easier.

  A huge blue and platinum statue thudded over to stand next to him. His head didn’t even reach the stars and stripes stenciled across its armored biceps. The titan’s androgynous lines made it hard to think of as anything but an 'it', even knowing there was a woman inside. She looked down at the hero with bright lenses the size of tennis balls. “You know I hate doing this, right?”

  He nodded. “You’ve mentioned it.”

  Cerberus turned her gaze to the crowd of exes. “Just so you remember on the day I finally snap. Where’s Barry?”

  “Asleep in the truck. You charged up?”

  The armored figure gave a clumsy dip of her head. The Cerberus Battle Armor System wasn’t built for subtlety. Of course, she hadn’t built it with subtlety in mind. Even without the M-2’s mounted on her arms, Cerberus could take on almost anything left in the world. St. George had seen the nine-foot battlesuit rip a vault door off its hinges, lift a cement truck, and wade through a swarm of exes without scuffing the paint.

  The guards had already unlocked the gate’s four reinforcing legs, and Derek and Carl stood waiting on either end of the long pipe resting across the Melrose Gate.

  “Everyone ready?” shouted St. George. “Gate? Luke? Guards?”

  They all nodded.

  He leaped into the air and soared over the archway. As he sank back to street level outside the gate, his foot lashed out and an ex flew back. He grabbed two more by their necks and hurled them across the six-lane street.

  The exes sensed life and the mob closed on him. Hands grabbed at him. Bony arms wrapped around his neck. A faceless thing that may have been a woman once bit down on his arm and lost two teeth.

  St. George seized a wrist, swung the dead thing in a wide circle, and knocked down half a dozen more before launching it into the air. It clanged into the stoplight over the intersection. He slammed his palm into a breastbone and the ex flew back through some bushes into a wall. Another tried to grab his calf as it crawled to its feet and his boot broke its spine just above the shoulder blades.

  “Still creeps me out, watching that,” said Derek.

  Carl stared out at the battle. “Seeing them pile on him?”

  “Seeing them not do anything to him.”

  “Open it up,” barked the battlesuit. Cerberus clenched her three-fingered hands into fists as big as f
ootballs.

  The guards hefted the pipe from its brackets and trotted out of the way. The gates swung open and Cerberus stomped out. Some of the clawing exes were dragged along, their arms tangled in the gates. She brought her armored fist around like a wrecking ball and shattered their skulls. Another punch crushed an ex’s chest even as it sailed backward.

  St. George flung off a dead man gnawing at his shoulders. The ex slammed into an old grandmother and they both tumbled away from the gate. Another one reached for him and the hero grabbed its elbow and swung it into the air. Its flailing legs knocked down three more exes before the arm snapped off and it tumbled away across the cobblestones. “Make a path!” he shouted.

  Cerberus spread her fingers and brought her stun fields up. Her gauntlets sparked and snapped with white lines. The titan stomped toward the street and exes dropped at her touch. She left a path of figures wiggling on the ground behind her. “Bring it out!” she bellowed with a wave.

  Big Red’s engine growled and Luke guided the truck forward through the gate. The heavy tires crushed legs, arms, and skulls beneath them. A few exes flailed at the cab and the truck bed. None of them could reach that high, but the men and women in the back shoved them off with pikes and spears anyway. The salt and pepper man stabbed his weapon down through a chubby woman’s skull and she dropped.

  The guards pushed the gate shut behind them, the two sides meeting just as the truck cleared. There was a clang as the pipe dropped back into place, followed by the click of the legs dropping back into their brackets. Derek gave a thumbs up through the bars.

  “We’re out,” yelled St. George. “Cerberus, mount up.” He swung his arms and sent two exes hurling through the crowd like a pair of bowling balls into a forest of pins. There were already four or five dozen more shambling down the street toward the gate from either direction, drawn in by the movement and the noise.

  The lift gate carried the battlesuit up to the bed, and then folded up behind her. Cerberus turned to watch their rear, and the truck swayed with each step. She turned her head and signaled the driver.

  “Rolling out,” called Luke. Big Red growled, swung to the left, and picked up speed as it headed down Melrose Avenue. Exes were battered aside by bumpers or fell beneath the wheels. St. George flew up and landed on the reinforced rack on top of the cab next to Lady Bee.

  Guards waved to them from the Mount’s walls and watchtowers as they headed off into the wasteland that had once been Los Angeles, destination for tens of thousands of dreamers every year.

  NOW

  Three

  St. George dropped down to the cab’s runner boards. “You still want to head over to Vermont and straight up?”

  The driver nodded. “Nice and clear all the way to Hollywood Boulevard. That’s where you wanted to start, right?”

  The hero nodded.

  Big Red rolled down Melrose. St. George and Cerberus had spent weeks clearing off the roads surrounding the Mount. Here and there exes stumbled out of open doors or from behind wrecked cars. They staggered and loped toward the truck with grasping arms, then forgot it when it was a block away.

  “I’ve been thinking,” said Lady Bee as St. George swung back up to the roof rack. “I bet Spider-Man would kick your ass.”He peered over his sunglasses at her. “What?”

  “Spider-Man,” she said. “If the two of you fought, he would totally kick your ass.”

  “Spider-Man's not real, y’know. He's a comic book character.”

  “Look who’s talking.”

  “I never had a comic book.” Lady Bee swung her head and her rifle back and forth, watching the sides of the road. She was wearing a shirt a size too small under her motorcycle jacket, and whenever she turned to the left he caught a glimpse of the fire-red bra she was wearing between the buttons. “In that movie he held up a whole warehouse wall,” she pointed out. “To save his girlfriend.”“That's a movie. It's special effects. They did it with computers and stuff.”

  She grinned. “Can you?”“Can I what? Lift a wall?”“Yeah.”“Guess it depends on the woman.” He shook his head. “Probably not. The most I can lift is about three and a half tons. Maybe four if I'm worked up.”“So Spider-Man would kick your ass.”“Okay, fine. If Spider-Man was real, and we decided to fight for some reason, yes, he would probably kick my ass.”Bee nodded. “See? You're not that great.”“Whatever.” He looked back down Melrose. “Is this your idea of flirting?”“Maybe.”

  “I don’t think you’re doing it right.”

  “Maybe.” Her head swung back and forth again. “You know, Superman would mop the floor with you. It wouldn’t even be a fight.”

  * * * *

  Next to Cerberus, a skinny brunette clutched at the pike she’d been assigned. The end was a gleaming spear tip, either from the prop house or the top of a flagpole. Her shoulders hunched every time a new ex appeared, and her knuckles whitened on the wooden shaft.

  “Haven’t come out often?” asked the metal titan.

  She shook her head. “My second time since I came to the Mount.”

  “When was that?”

  “Almost a year ago.”

  Cerberus dipped her armored chin. “Just remember, you’re faster and smarter than them. Stay calm, don’t do anything stupid, and it’s almost impossible for anything to go wrong.”

  The girl nodded. “I’m Lynne.”

  “Cerberus.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  They crossed Western without incident. The heroes had cleared the street by hand months ago, moving cars onto the sidewalk as searches expanded further and further from the Mount. As Big Red came up over a hill, looking down at the overpass for the Hollywood Freeway, Luke let up on the gas. “You see what I see?” he asked the men in the cab.

  St. George stood up, getting a view of the road ahead.

  Both sides of the overpass were clogged with automobiles. Cars and trucks stacked on top of each other and wedged beneath the concrete bridge. St. George could see a bright green cab, an LAPD squad car, and two motorcycles in the pile.

  Lady Bee pulled a set of binoculars from the large mailman’s bag she wore. “I count at least a dozen exes,” she said. “All staying down.”

  Luke let Big Red come to a stop a few blocks away, across from a gas station. He glanced up at the hero on the roof. “You’re the boss,” he said with a shrug. “What’s your call?”

  St. George dropped to the pavement. “Safeties off, everyone,” he called out. “Stay sharp until we know what’s up.”

  The back doors of the cab opened up and the men slid out with weapons ready. Lady Bee stood up on top of the cab and swept the area with her bright eyes. Behind her the pikes clattered to the truck bed as more rifles swung up. Cerberus turned and lumbered to the front of the truck, her head even with Bee’s. She glanced down at Barry, still asleep in his nest of blankets.

  St. George took a few steps and then one leap carried him the three blocks to the roadblock. An ex lay there in a heap, a heavy Latino woman. A bullet hole pierced her forehead above her left eye and another one through her right cheek made half of her face sag.

  He reached up, grabbed the axle of a Civic, and tugged. He braced himself and gave another hard pull. The Civic shifted back a foot with a shriek of metal. “They’re in tight,” he shouted over his shoulder.

  He walked back to Big Red and checked the exes on the ground. Two were decapitated. One large male had his skull shattered. Gunshot wounds decorated the rest.

  “They all down?” asked Lady Bee as she scanned the bodies.

  He nodded. “We got an alternate route from here, Luke?”

  The driver glanced up the cross street. “We can try going up Normandie,” he said. “Haven’t used it anytime recently, though. It’s a narrow street. If someone blocked this, they could block that, easy.”

  “Also seems like that’s just what we’d be expected to do at this point,” said Cerberus. She’d turned up the volume of her speakers and her voice echoed.
>
  “Then we go through.” St. George looked up at her. “Can you clear it?”

  The steel skull turned to the overpass. “You want it done fast or quiet?”

  “A little of both, maybe?”

  She nodded. “Give me ten minutes.” Big Red trembled as she moved back to the lift gate.

  “A couple exes coming up the road behind us,” said Luke with a glance at his mirrors. “One’s pretty close.”

  “You guys got ‘em?”

  The two men riding the lift gate down with the battlesuit gave St. George a quick thumbs up. “Not a problem,” said Jarvis.

  Cerberus stomped across the open road to the overpass. One armored arm swung up, seized the Civic axle, and yanked. The compact car flew out of the stack and skittered across the street. Her metal fingers clamped on the squad car’s rear end and dragged it free of the tangle of vehicles.

  “You think it’s the Seventeens?” asked Luke.

  “Can’t think of anyone else it could be,” said the hero. “Although this is the biggest thing I’ve seen them try so far.”

  “Fire in the hole,” called someone. A rifle cracked from the back of the truck. Half a block back an ex slumped to the pavement.

  Cerberus dragged another car out with a squeal of metal on metal. She swung her arms and tossed it to the side of the road with a crunch. She’d dismantled half the roadblock already.

  “Movement,” said Lady Bee. “I’ve got three more exes coming from the south, two from the north.”

  “We’ve got two more behind us, too,” said Jarvis.

  Lady Bee did another sweep with her binoculars. “I count nine, all within two blocks. More past them. We’ve got five minutes, tops.”

  “We’re moving in less than five,” said St. George. “Let’s not start wasting ammo yet.”

  Big Red’s engine rumbled.

  Cerberus shoved a blue Prius up onto the curb and kicked the last motorcycle away with a spray of sparks. A few blinks inside her helmet switched on the armor’s night vision scopes, and she examined the shadowy underside of the freeway overpass. Some jagged, green graffiti spelled out PEASY RULES. Nothing else.