Ex-Heroes

by Peter Clines

  There were fourteen bodies surrounding the vehicle. I could see one dead officer on the pavement by the driver’s side door. A Mossberg police shotgun lay a few feet from his left hand. The others had been exes. Besides the fatal head shots, they each had a collection of bullet wounds in their arms and chests. One had the curling wires of a TASER trailing from his stomach.

  I heard a moan from the far side of the car.

  The other officer, a woman, was bleeding. She had dark hair, the bulk of a bulletproof vest under her shirt, and a set of pins and tags identifying her as ten-year veteran Officer Altman. Her left arm had been bitten several times. Two fingers were missing from that hand, along with part of a third, and she had made a rough bandage from a bandanna. Her right ankle was soaked with blood. Her left cheek hung open. She was crying. She was still alive.

  “How long since you were bitten?”

  She jumped and tried to raise her gun before she saw me. “Oh, thank God,” she said.

  “How long? If it has been less than two hours there is a slim chance you can be saved.” Even as I said this, though, I took note of the paleness of her skin by the wounds. She was sweating and her eyes were having trouble focusing.

  Altman shook her head. “They overwhelmed us. We tried the TASER, warning shots. They just kept coming.”

  “You have been told not to waste time with such measures,” I said. “The only way to stop them is to kill them.”

  Her eyes hardened for a moment and she glared at me. “They’re still people.”

  “They are not. That is why your partner is dead and you have a day at best. Have you radioed for assistance?”

  She shook her head. “One of them bit through my microphone cord. I can’t reach the car radio.”

  I walked around the car and closed doors until I reached her partner. He twitched twice and I put a round through the base of his neck. Altman cried out at the sound. At this range, the vertebrae exploded. The twitches stopped.

  “The car is still secure. I can leave you here until help arrives, or you can attempt to drive.”

  “You’re not staying?”

  “No.” I lifted her to her feet.

  “Fuck you.”

  “There are too many exes at large. The next twenty-four hours will decide if Los Angeles can be contained or if it lost. That outweighs the needs of one police officer who ignored the order to make kill shots.”

  Altman settled into the driver’s seat and dragged her legs into the car. I pulled her partner’s sidearm, his spare ammunition, and retrieved the Mossberg. “It may be several hours before help can reach you,” I told her. “You will need to defend yourself until then. Do you have food and water?”

  She snorted back a laugh. “What, like a box of donuts?”

  “A first aid kit?”

  She nodded.

  “Use whatever antibiotic agents you have in it. It may give you extra time.”

  “You really think I’ve got a chance?”

  “It is difficult to say. There have been some cases of recovery, if the victim receives immediate medical care.”

  “How soon is immediate?”

  I paused. “The attacks happened in a hospital.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

  I ordered her to lock the doors and left her. If she did die, she would be trapped in the vehicle. As I walked back to the motorcycle I shot two women, each wearing a House of Blues staff shirt. The bike roared back to life and I resumed my path across Sunset.

  In one of the earlier Sherlock Holmes mysteries, Arthur Conan Doyle (not yet a Sir) made an observation on logical deduction. When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

  There is, however, a specific flaw in that maxim. It assumes people can recognize the difference between what is impossible and what they believe is impossible.

  The ex-humans have been appearing for twelve weeks now. Three months since the first known sighting. They have been captured, studied, and killed. There are warning posters, public service announcements, and news reports. Yet people still cling to the impossibility of the living dead even as it looms over them, attacks their homes, and devours their neighbors. Soldiers, police, and private citizens force themselves to believe the exes are just infected with some curable disease, despite all the evidence, and will not take the necessary steps. They will not accept the truth. They will not act on it.

  The outbreak will not be contained. It is too late.

  The world as we know it is over.

  NOW

  Eleven

  The third floor conference room in Zukor hadn’t been touched when the building was refitted as a hospital. The table was a glossy black slab surrounded by overpriced, high-backed chairs. Stealth sat at the head of the table with a casually dressed St. George to her right, Gorgon to her left in his usual body armor and duster. A handful of civilians filled the other seats, residential leaders from across the Mount and their staffs. At the far end, Doctor Connolly stood by a large flatscreen TV, tapping her laptop while comparing last minute notes with Josh.

  Stealth leaned closer to St. George. “Who did you send out?”

  “Luke with three mechanics, plus twelve guards,” he said. “Cerberus is backing them up.”

  “They left at sunrise,” added Gorgon. “The gate’s staying in constant contact. They reached Big Red twenty minutes ago. No sign of the SS, no other traps. They’d just gotten the first tire done when I walked in.”

  Connolly nodded to Stealth and the room grew quiet. “I know you’ve gotten regular updates,” she said, “so some of this may seem like old news to you. I just want to go over everything, because we need to change a lot of preconceived notions we’ve had until now.

  “We know it’s viral. A virus that mimics leukocytes-—white blood cells--in appearance, so a visual check of the blood will miss it most of the time. We know it’s highly infectious. It’s not airborne, only passed by contact with bodily fluids, but it can survive a very long time outside a host while still in an active state. So a dead ex, stained clothes, even a dried blood smear on the wall-—all of them can transmit the virus.”

  Gorgon leaned back. “That would imply almost everyone’s been exposed to the virus at one time or another.”

  “Precisely,” said Connolly with a nod. “This was the big discovery that made us look at everything again. The ex-virus is more aggressive and replicates faster than anything on record. We still haven’t even figured out how it can multiply and spread so quickly. It blows Marburg and Ebola out of the water, to the point it should be a complete failure as a disease.” She paused.

  One of the civilians, a bitchy former LA city councilwoman named Christian Nguyen, clicked her fingernails on the table. The chattering sound made several people flinch. “Except...?”

  “Except it isn’t lethal,” said Josh without looking up.

  Beneath her mask, Stealth’s expression shifted. “I beg your pardon?”

  “It’s not lethal,” repeated Connolly. “We’ve run hundreds of tests, infected our lab rats as fast as we can breed them. The ex-virus is not a fatal contagion.”

  A frumpy man with a gray beard, Richard-something, coughed. “I think there’s about five million ex-people outside who’d disagree with you,” he said, looking proud of himself.

  The doctor nodded. “That’s what’s why it’s taken so long to isolate this. During the outbreaks, everyone was operating under the misconception the virus was lethal and somehow reanimated people. But it isn’t. It’s two separate things.”

  “Wait,” said Gorgon. “How isn’t it fatal? Everyone who gets bitten dies within two or three days.”

  “Yes they do,” she nodded. “Here’s where it gets interesting. You’ve all heard of the Komodo dragon, yes?”

  Most of the heads in the room nodded.

  “Okay, for years people thought Komodos were poisonous because their bite was so lethal. Turns out their saliva is like the ag
ar in a Petri dish. It’s a perfect growth medium, so it’s just brimming with every bacteria and virus present in the tropics. They bite you, break the skin, and all that stuff gets shot straight into your bloodstream. Suddenly your body’s dealing with thirty or forty major infections at once.”

  Stealth steepled her fingers. “And this is what exes do?”

  Connolly nodded. “When a person dies, lividity sets in, and all the fluids in their body start heading down. Since they’re still standing, exes have a lot of material build up in their jaws and cheeks. The brain gets heavy blood flow, so anything in the bloodstream ends up there. The salivary glands, sinuses, and tear ducts drain out, so anything in the lymph system is there, too. Plus you’ve got all the necrotic bacteria that manifest in a dead body. And, of course the ex-virus itself. And then the ex bites you, and dumps all of that into your bloodstream.”

  “But people are dying so fast,” said Christian. She spoke with the tone of a person determined to trip someone up. Her dislike of all superhumans was no secret.

  “How is it possible one person could have that many diseases in them?”

  “One person, no. But this is a cumulative effect. A bites B. Between blood loss, the shock of the bite, and whatever germs or viruses A just pumped in, B weakens and dies. Now B becomes an ex and bites C, but C gets both A’s and B’s diseases. When C becomes an ex, the next victim gets A, B, and C’s infections. It’s like a reverse-pyramid scheme, where every iteration gets everything the previous ones had.”

  Stealth gave a faint nod. “Which is why the outbreak spread faster as it grew.”

  “Right. After five or six generations of exes they each had dozens, maybe even hundreds of diseases in them. Think of Los Angeles two years ago. Imagine how many different bacteria and viruses there were in that ninety or so square mile area. The common cold. Chicken pox. Measles. Mumps. A couple strains of influenza. A few dozen different STDs. Even some folks with typhoid, Lyme disease, or malaria. You couldn’t come up with a disease that wasn’t represented in L.A. somewhere. Two months in getting bitten by an ex was like getting injected with the CDC’s wish list. Once you add an immunodeficiency disease like HIV into that mix, well...” She shrugged.

  Richard-something and one of the women murmured. Gorgon swore out loud.

  “If everyone in the Mount submitted to blood tests,” Connolly continued, “we’d find out the majority of us are infected with the ex-virus. It just doesn’t do anything until you die.”

  Stealth tapped her fingers together. “So the early cases of people being cured?”

  The doctor shook her head. “They were cured or stabilized as far as whatever other diseases they’d contracted from their bites, but... no. If and when they did die, I’d guess they still became exes. There’s no way to be sure until a bunch of people die under conventional circumstances. Our preliminary tests seem to confirm it, though.” She took a moment, weighing a thought in her mind. “I need to say... this is the final nail as far any hopes for a cure go.”

  Christian tilted her head. “How so?”

  “As I said, the ex-virus itself isn’t fatal. It didn’t kill anyone. Every ex out there died of influenza, measles, blood loss... something else. They were killed by the secondary effects of the bite. They’re just as dead as anyone else you ever heard of who died from a disease.”

  Richard-something raised his hand. “Do you know yet why it brings them back to life?”

  Josh cracked the knuckles of his good hand against his thumb. “While a person might be dead, many elements of their body remain alive for hours, even days. You’ve all heard of hair and fingernails growing on a corpse as the skin cells continue to function. Transplants involve taking the still-living organs from a dead individual. Even at the grocery store, the beef or chicken you bought from the meat case was fresh because, on a cellular level, it was still alive.”

  Doctor Connolly nodded. “The ex-virus toughens up cells, makes them hardier. So while the person dies, their individual cells don’t break down as fast, and the dead body continues on as a gigantic aggregate of living cells joined by the virus.”

  “But how?”

  “Still working on that one. There’s a good chance we’ll never know for sure. The ex-virus doesn’t behave like anything else on record and we don’t have the resources to study it more in depth than we are. It seems to involve the central nervous system as people have suspected from the start. That’s why destroying the brain is the only thing that stops them—-the virus is all through the body, but it primarily resides in the brain and sends impulses along the nerves. You’ll still have the enhanced cells, but nothing stimulating them into action.”

  Doctor Connolly bent down and tapped her screen to advance her notes. “On top of that,” she continued, “they’re cold. It seems an active process of the infection is to lower a body’s core temperature down into the fifties after death. This helps slow the decay rate even further.”

  “So,” Stealth said, “can you estimate how long they last?”

  “Off everything we’ve seen so far, I’m going to say the average ex can exist for twenty-eight months before decay progresses to a point where it can no longer remain active. Give or take two months, and not counting outside influences. Farther north, with seasonal changes, one could exist for four or five years. In the tropics, with the constant heat and humidity, a few months less. That cold snap we had back in February probably added a few weeks to all their lives here.” She shrugged.

  “It’s hard to make any exact estimates without knowing the particulars of patient zero,” said Josh. “Since we’ll never know exactly when she or he changed, making those initial calculations is impossible.”

  Gorgon scratched his ear by the band of his goggles. “So, you’re saying they should all be dead in another year or so.”

  “No,” said Connolly. “All the ones created during the initial outbreak should be. The ones that turned during the fighting should be done a few months after that. The ones that turned while we were settling in the Mount should be a few months after that. Then there are all those odd kills here and there—-the people who made it a few weeks or months past the end on their own before dying.”

  “And then there’s all of us,” said Stealth.

  The doctor nodded. “Yes. We have to assume a good number of the Mount’s population will change once they die. Especially any of you who have been in active contact with exes. So there’s another thirty months.”

  “What can we do?”

  Josh ran his fingers through his silver hair. “At the moment, nothing. There’s no way to immunize against the ex-virus. We can’t cure it once someone’s infected, assuming we even spot the infection. All we can hope for is years of controlled deaths like we practice now. Someone dies, you put a bullet in their head before anything can happen.”

  “Best case scenario,” said Connolly, “no one who’s alive today will ever see the end of this. We’re looking at maybe three generations of controlled deaths before we can even be somewhat sure we’ve eliminated the virus. Six, maybe seven decades.”

  Another mutter made its way through the conference room.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wish it was better news.”

  Christian rapped her nails on the table again. “Where does that leave all of us? Will we ever get to leave the Mount?”

  “As I see it, we’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t,” said the doctor. “Keeping everyone centralized lets us keep tabs on everyone, but it also means the virus could spread like wildfire if there’s an outbreak. Let everyone spread out and we lose track. Someone dies in their sleep, has a bad fall and breaks their neck, and suddenly we’re starting all over again.”

  “So we’re all just sup--”

  “Thank you for your time, doctor,” said Stealth, cutting off further comments. “You may all leave now.”

  Christian furrowed her brow, but closed her mouth. She let her fingertips chatter on the tabletop for a few moments
before getting up to leave.

  “That was abrupt,” said Gorgon. “Even for you.”

  “There is too much to do. I cannot waste our time on inconsequential questions.”

  St. George nodded. “So, now what, then?”

  “Go meet up with the repair team. Your presence there will reassure them and speed the work.”

  “They’ve got Cerberus.”

  “You should go.”

  He sighed. “Fine. I’ll radio ahead and tell them I’m half an hour out. Should get there just in time to drive back with them.”

  “Thank you.”

  He gave a nod to Josh as he walked out.

  “You know,” said Gorgon, “that felt a lot like you were getting rid of him for the afternoon.”

  “I was.” She turned to him. He couldn’t see her eyes, but somehow she could still project that cold stare. “We have prisoners. I want them interrogated.”

  His smile was grim beneath the goggles. “My pleasure.”

  NOW

  Twelve

  The pavement shimmered in the sun. Mean Green and Big Red were side by side. Ty, Billie, and the rest of the guards had spread out to deal with the occasional ex while Luke and the mechanics replaced the tires of the crippled truck. The front end was done and they had both wounded wheels off on the passenger side.

  The guards had split into four teams of three, watching the road in all directions. Whatever exes got too close were dispatched by one guard with a pike while the other two spotted with their own spears and rifles. They tried to avoid noise.

  Cerberus walked a slow perimeter around the two trucks, followed by Jarvis. She paused at each cardinal point to stare as far as she could down the road. Her radios scanned back and forth across the wavelengths, listening for any sort of traffic amidst the static.

  Jarvis sighed after their fourth circuit of the tandem trucks. “So Mark got Trebek?”