Ex-Heroes

by Peter Clines

  Stealth reappeared next to him. “There are no rooftop guards anywhere,” she whispered, “and no evidence the sentries include them as part of regular patrols.” She sounded annoyed. She pointed across the street at a tall building bearing the letters FI ST PROPER. “I believe that will give us the best vantage point, and the added height decreases the chance of random searches.”

  Hidden by the night, they circled around, crossed the street and scaled the building. The two heroes settled down and St. George shrugged off the backpack. They peered over the short rooftop ledge.

  Beneath their last position, a single torch in the lower parking lot threw random shadows across the front of the building. In the flickering light, something large was crouched before the grocery store. Its arms were unnaturally long and spread wide. The figure shifted and steel chimed and clanked.

  Stealth pulled a small, squat monocular from her belt and held it to her eye. She cursed a moment later and slid it back into its pouch. “Too bright for the starlight scope,” she said, “and it does not register on infrared.”

  “So it’s big, inhuman, and dead. Narrows the choices a bit.”

  She nodded. “Its lack of movement implies it is bound. I believe we can rest until sunrise.”

  They settled down behind the rooftop ledge.

  He shrugged out of the leather jacket. “How long do we have?”

  The hooded head turned to the east. “Two and a half hours. I will take the first watch. Get an hour of sleep.”

  St. George balled his jacket and tested his head against it. “You’re not going to burst into flame come sun-up or anything, are you?”

  She stared at him. “This is neither the time nor the place for humor.”

  “Sorry.” He threw a last glance across the intersection. “Windows are all good and it’s got working generators. That says town hall to me.”

  “Something of importance,” she agreed, “but I would prefer not to guess until we have more evidence.”

  “Care to guess on their lack of exes?” He settled back down on the makeshift pillow. “They must be a hell of a lot more aggressive about cleaning them out than we are.”

  “Except we rarely hear gunfire,” she said, “and there are no bodies.”

  THEN

  Pick a Card. Any Card.

  Son of a bitch this hurts. No chance of getting a... what is it, a morphine drip? A couple Vicodin? Novocain? Something?

  Where was I...?

  Magic, right. Magic gets a bum rap these days.

  When you say magic, people immediately assume one of two things. One is you’re an entertainer. You’re someone like Houdini or Copperfield who does a lot of work with handcuffs, scarves, and playing cards. Not a magician so much as a conjurer, a sleight of hand artist. Someone who excels at distraction and misdirection to get a laugh, some applause, and maybe a contract in Las Vegas.

  That’s the positive assumption.

  The negative assumption, the one I’d been living with since college, is you’re a nut. You’re someone who wears too much eyeliner, memorizes episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and grew up in a strict Catholic home where dad was a deacon and made you be an altar boy and now you’re trying to rebel. You went out and bought all the books by Aleister Crowley, Edgar Cayce, and Nostrodamus. Probably have bookshelves full of crystals and star charts and sage hanging over the windows and all that other new age bullshit.

  Here’s the thing, though. Amidst all that bullshit there are grains of truth. Really, there are. If you put any serious effort into it and dig through all the shit, you’ll find the seeds of real magic. It’s like... It’s like if you want to be a successful writer, but you need to wade through a thousand books written by hacks and wannabes to glean a few useful hints and tips. And then you use those to improve your actual craft, which makes it easier to find the real stuff the next time you go digging. Crowley, Nostrodamus, all those guys—-they were like the internet idiots who manage to get one thing right for every ninety-nine things they get wrong.

  No, not Edgar Cayce. He was a complete charlatan. Hell, Houdini proved him to be a fake twice while he was alive and once after he died--Houdini, not Cayce. Yeah, Cayce was such a predictable fraud Houdini exposed him from beyond the grave.

  But I digress.

  So, yeah, there’s real magic in the world. Just like you read about when you were little. Fireball-casting, demon-summoning, mystic-warding magic. Most of it isn’t that flashy computer game stuff, but it’s real. And it’s like any other art. You have to practice a lot, even if you’ve got some innate talent for it. You keep researching the craft and you keep digging for those seeds of wisdom. Eventually you feel good and give yourself a title, and then if you’re lucky someone who really knows how things are done beats you down and reminds you you’re still just a novice. If you’re unlucky, you end up dead. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

  The other thing is, like any art, all the artists are being challenged to do something new. Yeah, you can learn all the basics and do the same things everyone before you did. Nothing wrong with that. But if you want to stand out, if you want to be remembered, you’ve got to do something new.

  Jesus, doc, can’t I get something? At least an Advil or two? Some kind of anti-itch cream? No, antibiotics wouldn’t do a damn thing and we both know it. I’ve been fighting these things for five months, where the hell have you been? For that matter, why am I off in a trailer and not the field hospital? Where the hell is Regenerator? Isn’t he supposed to be dealing with all of us, to get us back in the field as quickly as possible?

  Bitten? When? Jesus. Is he... I mean, hell, what did it do to him? I’d think if anyone was safe from all this past the Dragon it would be--Seriously? A full-on coma, not just knocked out? Jesus.

  Not that well. He’s sort of like any co-worker, y’know? But you say it’s not spreading much past the actual bite? That must look creepy as hell.

  Okay, fine. Where was I?

  Still on magic, right. Doing something new. No, this is all going somewhere. If you’re not going to give me any good drugs you can at least humor me in my final days.

  So, just like there’s real magic, there’s real evil. Not Enron-Exxon-Halliburton incidents that disgust you with their greed or callousness. I mean real evil. The stuff that burns your eyes to look at. The stuff that makes you taste metal and dog shit when you hear it speak. The kind of evil so many people have conditioned themselves to ignore at all costs. It can be standing right in front of you and you can’t acknowledge it, because it’d be like sticking a red-hot weed whacker in your brain.

  Yeah, you can call it the Devil if you like. Satan. Chaos. Entropy. The Beast. There’s an infinite number of names and titles and personalities. No, seriously. Infinite.

  Anyway, that’s the downside to magic, see? Once you start learning it, you have to go one way or another. With the evil or against it. And if you’re against it, well... real evil doesn’t know mercy or pity or gloating. It’ll just erase you. So learning magic is a real sink-or-swim situation.

  And that brings me back to doing something new, see? Ever hear the phrase, fight fire with fire? Well that’s what I decided to do.

  Y’see, there’s a ton of low-level control spells and enchantments and glamours. No, not low-level like Dungeons and Dragons, you dipshit. As in basic, introductory stuff. Mental nudges, persuasion, that sort of thing. The glamour lasts for maybe a day or two if you focus. If you’re good, you can make the edges blur and people won’t even notice they’re doing something they don’t want to. It’s good for making cash, getting girls in bed, that sort of stuff. Your targets do all the rationalizing for you.

  Anyway, higher level stuff is farseeing, telepathy, possession. Yes, possession is very real. So is exorcism, for that matter. I’d done three before I was twenty-five. Second one almost killed me. No, trust me, you don’t want to know. No, it was so much worse than that. Look, seriously, I’d rather not talk about it, okay?

  Is it
getting hot in here or is it me? It is me? Shit, fever’s setting in already? Is it always this fast? I thought it took a day or two. No? Seven hours is the average? Holy shit, since when? That long?

  Y’know, if you’d just let me put on my... okay, okay, I’m laying down again. Everyone stay calm.

  So, yeah, possession is real, which got me thinking about demons. There are hundreds of types, dozens of magnitudes, but one thing they all have in common is trying to influence people.

  So they can ruin your life, that’s why. Didn’t you ever go to Sunday School? Shit. If they can corrupt you, ruin someone else, fuck over somebody-- that emotional chaos is like food to them. It’s the whole point of their existence.

  Anyway, it struck me demons are so eager to jump in and influence us, but it’s kind of a two-way street. They can’t open that path without opening it both ways. And I decided to take advantage of that.

  It took a bit of work. Combining summoning spells and possession spells. And they had to be damned specific. I’m talking ten times past space shuttle re-entry math specific. And then I had to forge a set of control glyphs around the enchantments.

  Look at it this way. You know computers? RAM and ROM? That’s what I was doing. Taking flexible, mutable spells—-the random memory—-and, what would you call it, hard-wiring them into a solid, single-purpose device—-the read-only-memory. Make sense?

  That’s how I ended up just outside Novosibirsk, Russia on the afternoon of August first, 2008. I had a darkness lens I’d carved from volcanic obsidian with a piece of bone, and I used it to focus a total solar eclipse into the platinum medallion I’d spent three years preparing.

  Yes, that one right there in the lockbox. No, not onto it. Into it. It contains the light of a black sun. When I put it on a very specific kind of portal called a Sativus opens to a realm those of us in the know call the Abyss, and that’s when I exchange bodies with a reaver—-a demon--that calls itself Cairax Murrain. It’s sort of a reverse-possession that links us through the medallion. Rather than the demon’s mind coming into our world and stealing control of my body, I’m transposing its body to our world through mine and possessing that.

  Well then you explain it, dipstick. Did they call you a jarhead before you signed up or was that just a fortunate career choice for you? Well, if that’s so why don’t you give me the medallion and we’ll see just how fucked in the head I am?

  Ahhh. You’ve seen him, then, doctor? Me, that is. Yeah, I know, it’s confusing. It’s such an odd perspective shift. I’d guess it’s kind of like role-playing. Well, I was thinking about all those online games my friends played in college, but I guess it would hold for that kind of role-playing, too. When you’re pretending you’re someone else and getting absorbed in that world, but you’re still aware you’re you. That’s what being Cairax is like. It’s still me, I’m still making all the choices, but there’s this very thick filter over everything.

  You know what it’s like? It’s like Jekyll and Hyde. I’ve got the same mind and the same personality, just a slightly different set of morals. Different ethics. But it’s still me. He won’t do anything I don’t want him to do.

  Me. Not he. I don’t do anything I don’t want to.

  Look, just let me put it on. You’re barely doing anything, and what you are doing isn’t even slowing this down. I’m burning up, my head is killing me, and the only reason I’m not throwing up is because I haven’t kept anything down for twelve hours now.

  Well, that’s not really my fault. I mean, yes, I knew what I was doing. Just... remember the filter I told you about? It didn’t seem any more out of line than jerking off or something.

  Hey! I think rape is a little strong. She’d been dead for at least two days. No, I was very aware of that. It just... it didn’t matter as much when I was Cairax. Yeah, you could call it that, I guess. No, hard as it may be to believe, when I changed back my first thought was intense pain. Yeah, go figure.

  No, it’s not the first time I’ve heard that, either. Split personality’s a nice, easy label for people who don’t want to dwell on the reality of what I can do. One of my fellow “heroes” has tried to explain away my abilities with a lot of scientific terminology, too. Suggestion. Psychokinesis. Mass hypnosis. All from a man who converts his body into pure energy at will.

  Look, why can’t I just get an aspirin? Is that really so much to ask? I mean, they think I’m important enough for a private room, why can’t I actually get any treatment?

  Conservation of resources? What the hell is that supposed to...oh. Oh, I see. Things have gotten that bad, eh? And here I thought these fine gentlemen were here just in case I died and turned a little faster than expected.

  Well, then. That makes all this a bit easier.

  Here’s the thing, doc. You can choose to believe in magic or not. You can trust everything I’ve been telling you or you can say I’m some latent psychic if it makes you feel better. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care what you believe in. The Loch Ness monster, Bigfoot, faked moon landings, the 2000 election results-- you can believe in whatever fairy tale you want.

  Let’s be honest about what you know, though. You’ve seen me fighting out there. You know if I put on that medallion I’ll change. I’ll change into something bigger, stronger, and tougher. You can call it whatever you like. Demon. Polymorph. Lycanthrope. Again, I don’t care. But it’s my only chance.

  Yeah, I see them, guys. They’re not much of a threat at this point, are they? We all know I’m a dead man.

  What do you mean, you don’t know? This is kind of a no-brainer. If I don’t put the medallion on, there’s no question I’m going to die. If I put it on, there’s a chance I’ll live. Even I can see that. Hell, Cairax heals faster than me. There’s a good chance he’s recovered by now, which means I’ll be recovered as soon as I change back.

  Thank you, doctor.

  This might be alarming for all of you. It only takes a few seconds, but it’s big and scary and loud all at once. No, it’s not anything like that. You’d just be amazed at how much pain a demon can fit into just a few secaaaa--

  --aaahhhhh, yes.

  Much better. Back in my favorite skin.

  Now, now, my dear little doctor. Don’t be scared. I may be a bit hard on the eyes and the sanity now, but it is still me. Just remember that filter I told you about.

  The fear makes you smell delicious, by the way. Yes, just like food. Absolutely delicious. I just thought you should know.

  Please be careful with the rifles, gentlemen. My reflexes are so much faster now, and the tail does have a mind of its own sometimes. No, it really does. I would hate for you to make a threatening gesture with a bayonet and be eviscerated before I knew what I was doing. What it was doing, that is.

  What? Oh. Very observant of you, my little doctor. It doesn’t seem to have healed at all, does it? I feel better, but the sensations in this body are always so muddled. No... no, there they are. The tiny things are still there, chewing away, weaving themselves into my blood and muscle.

  Oh, perhaps. However, in retrospect, I think I shall remain in this skin. If there is any chance for me to survive, it will be in this form, yes? As Maxwell I had an hour or so left, less if you decided to conserve any more resources. No, I believe Cairax has a far better chance of fighting off the infection... or any of the dangers that apparently come with it.

  Gentlemen, I asked you to please keep—-ahhh, there. See what has happened? I did warn you about the tail. Doctor, please, please, do not waste your time. You and I both know there is no chance he survived that. My dear friend, perhaps you should place your rifle down on the floor and lie face down. That will be a safer place for you to avoid your companion’s fate. Thank you. Doctor dearest, if you could get next to him. I would hate for you to be hit by any loose metal when I go through the wall.

  Where? Back to the shore, back to the sand. While we fritter away time here the contagion continues to spread. We need every hand fighting it for as long as they ca
n and I have, if you will pardon the phrase, an appetite for destruction. If we are all lucky, being in this skin may give me several days, perhaps weeks, to rip and shred.

  No, no, my dear little doctor. You are perfectly safe. I may look like a monster, but I am still Maxwell Hale inside this skin. I would never harm another human being.

  Very well. I would never deliberately harm another human being. Is that better?

  The ingratitude of some people...

  NOW

  Twenty

  Mike and John stood in the small parking lot across from the cells and debated what to do with the prisoner. “Does he need to eat?”

  John shrugged his lanky shoulders. “Of course he needs to eat.”

  “Yeah but he’s...” Mike shrugged back and scratched his beard. “He’s an ex. Does that mean he only eats people or meat or what? What do we give him?”

  “Good point.”

  “I mean, I haven’t had any meat in two months. Remember when they found that case of tuna?”

  “Yeah.”

  He mulled it over. “They’ve gotta have some canned meat stored away in the food bank. You think they’d free up some Spam or something for a prisoner?”

  “I don’t know if Spam counts as meat either.”

  “Well, fuck him. If we get him something and he doesn’t want it we can eat it.”

  “Good point,” nodded John with a grin.

  They banged on the door. “Hey,” called Mike. “You hungry? What do you want for breakfast?”

  A thump and some scuffling came from inside.

  “What’s his name?”

  John’s narrow shoulders bounced again. “I don’t know. Everyone just said the dead guy.”

  They unlocked the door. The ex-Seventeen had fallen off his cot and was struggling to his feet. The cell stank and the blood had dried in a wide scab across the floor.