Ex-Communication - Ex-Heroes 03

by Peter Clines

  “Madelyn, are you still there?!”

  This time there was less echo. She recognized the voice and leaped up. “Yes!” she yelled back. “I’m here. I’ve got the sword!”

  Captain Freedom stood on the platform, looming over the guards. One of the men who’d shot at her had vanished. Even from this far back she could tell the other one was sulking.

  The huge officer waved her forward and she pushed her way through the swarm of exes. Closer to the Wall they were packed in tighter. She elbowed and shoved her way past the mindless dead.

  When she was close enough, two of the guards tossed a rope down to her. She wrapped it around her wrist and they hauled her up to the platform. The exes clawed at her legs, and she had a moment of terror her invisibility had worn off somehow, but it was just random grasping as they tried to reach the people above them.

  She stood on the platform before Freedom. He glared down at her. “You snuck out.”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “You were ordered back to the hospital.”

  “I went back to the hospital. And then I went out and got the sword. You can ground me later.” She flipped the sword over in her hand and held it out to him hilt first, just like in the movies.

  “You did good, soldier,” he told her, “but it remember falling asleephe? together’s too late.”

  She blinked. Her lids made a faint whisking noise across her eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “St. George and Maxwell left thirty-nine minutes ago,” said a voice. Stealth stepped from behind the dead girl. “They hope to find Regenerator before the demon does.” The cloaked woman moved past Madelyn and down the staircase to street level.

  “But what about the sword?” She held it up a little higher. “They need the sword to kill the demon, right?”

  “Mr. Hale decided one of the swords that were already here on the lot would work well enough,” said Freedom. He gestured her down the stairs to Vine Street. “Now it’s time for you to go back to the hospital.”

  “That’s stupid,” said Madelyn. “Why’d I even go get this thing?”

  “You were told not to,” Stealth said without looking back.

  “No, I mean it was a total waste of time,” Madelyn said. She hiked her coat up and slid the blade through her belt again. “You’d think with all the time he had as a ghost he would’ve known there was a good enough sword here.”

  Stealth stiffened up. Her fingers curled into fists, but loosened right away. The tremor flowed through her cloak like a miniature shock wave. “Captain Freedom,” she said, “we will be heading out to assist St. George in ten minutes. Make whatever preparations you see fit.”

  The huge officer was a step behind her. “I’m sorry, ma’am, what was that?”

  “You heard me, Captain. Zzzap?”

  His voice echoed back over their radios. “What’s up?”

  “We are switching to battery power. Meet me on the South Wall at Larchmont in nine minutes.”

  “Got it.”

  Her pace increased. Freedom found himself shifting to a slight jog to keep up with the woman. “Madelyn,” she said, “I believe we will have use of your abilities. Under no circumstances are you to hand the sword to anyone until I tell you otherwise. Guard it with your life.”

  “Okay.”

  “Ma’am,” said Freedom. “What’s going on?”

  Stealth stopped and spun on her heel. “Maxwell’s illogical statements about magic and an afterlife distracted me from a clear line of reasoning. Once I accepted them as fact, his lie was obvious.”

  “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

  “Maxwell claims h escape. His f

  MY FIRST THOUGHT is “No.”

  Just “No” over and over again. I end up shouting it. Not that anyone can hear me. When you’re dead, people tend to ignore you.

  Of course, I’m not really thinking or shouting. I have no language in this state. Barely have consciousness. Just enough to know how screwed I am. The image of Burgess Meredith with broken glasses appears and vanishes before I can understand why it’s relevant.

  This can’t be happening. It’s stupid. It’s ridiculously stupid. I planned for everything. Broken wards. Magical interference. Demonic vassals. I even took precautions against my death. Only an amateur wouldn’t.

  I didn’t think about undeath, though. I mean, why would I have planned for a zombie apocalypse? The whole idea of it’s ridiculous.

  This can’t be happening!

  I died. I know I died. The death shudder, the last breath, the silver cord parted. I even pissed myself. I’m dead. I should be free, but

  I’m trapped in here.

  No. No. No. No. No.

  The Marley’s gone wrong. I can feel it. It’s like a door that opened enough to let you see out, but not enough to fit through it. I’m bound here. Right here.

  I’m trapped in a zombie. Stuck inside the reanimated corpse of a demon. A scrap of consciousness in the back of a dead brain. At least until one of these trigger-happy soldiers decides to …

  Oh. Oh, no. Oh, Jesus. I’m bulletproof. They can’t shoot me in the head. I’ll be trapped in here forever. No, no, no, no!

  No, be calm. No, I won’t. Stealth had the Dragon putting down all the superhuman types who changed. He’ll find me—find Cairax—break his neck or crush his skull, and that’ll be that.

  Of course … we fought once before and it’s not like he hurt me. Hurt Cairax. He won the fight but only because I backed off.

  I realize I’m much more conscious than I should be. Enough so that I can understand that I shouldn’t be able to think about why I can think. Something has changed in the dark corners of the mind. Something has been added to the mix, something not-me I can differentiate myself against.

  And then I realize what it is. I realize what’s just woken up in here with me. Oh, no, no, no, no, this can’t be happening. This cannot have gone so wrong. It just remember falling asleephim font-size: 1.2rem; text-align: can’t.

  The Marley’s trapped him in here, too.

  Trapped him in here with me.

  I scream for a month. Or maybe two.

  If I was using vocal cords to scream, they would’ve gone hoarse ages back. They might have snapped. But this is a silent scream. It goes on and on.

  Again, I have no language, because I’ve been blinded to everything except the pain. Now that we’re alone at last, Cairax Murrain is making me pay for binding him in the Sativus. Lacking his usual tools, he’s forced to use what he has at hand to torture me.

  My memories. Memories of every scrap of physical, emotional, or spiritual pain I’ve ever suffered. Thirty-three years of agony.

  I’m hurled across the room during an exorcism and my elbow breaks as I hit the far wall. I find the letter from Marie-Anne saying she’s left me for Anselm. A tooth cracks as I bite down and the cold air hits the nerve. The flu wrenches my stomach and my throat convulses from food and bile going the wrong way. An excruciating hangover at nineteen. The bitter cold outside the womb. A sharp kick to the testicles six months before I die, followed by a rifle butt to the jaw.

  And of course, again and again, the feeling of my flesh turning inside out when I use the Sativus medallion to take possession of Cairax’s body. Every muscle in my body spasms. Horns tear through my forehead. New teeth shred my gums and lips. Talons rip open my fingertips. He appreciates the irony in this. What was torture for him is now torture for me. After my death I make the transformation tens of thousands of times more than I ever did in life.

  After two months of screaming, or maybe three, he stops. I don’t know why. When he talks to me, it’s with the voices you hear in the back of your head. He speaks with the sound of imagined conversations and half-remembered dreams.

  It shall give me great pleasure to destroy you for this disgrace, little soul.

  I shout back, “No.” My voice only sounds different because I want to be heard. In this place, in the state we’re in, neither
of us has a real voice.

  To make one such as me a mortal plaything is a dishonor beyond measure. To sully the unholy titles of Cairax Murrain with acts of selflessness and charity. To make mortals cheer my name when they should shriek and cower and beg. Such a painful insult must be returned in kind.

  I manage another “No” before he begins again.

  My screams are the chorus for a symphony of pain that goes on for another four or five months without interruption. Almost half a year with every agony of my life on a loop. The tattoo needles stab down again and again. A kneecap shatters on my twenty-eighth birthday. Three fingers burn on the stove when I’m four. An absolutely gorgeous dead woman bites down on my tongue and tears it away. My skin crawls with infection while the straps bite into my wrists and ankles. My dog, Muggsy, hit by a car and dies in my arms when I’m nine. A broken nose in a bar fight. Marie-Anne tears away a clump of my hair for the doll and leaves my scalp bleeding.

  Cairax stops again. The pauses let him enjoy the torture even more. He’s a gourmand of agony, making himself wait so he can savor each sweet morsel of my pain. He breathes in my suffering.

  Trader Joe’sgh peopleYou shall long for the feeble torment of this imprisonment. You shall look back at our time here together with such pleasure and happiness. These shall be the happy memories that sustain you.

  My head is spinning from the lack of torture. It doesn’t know how to work with the constant agony, but it’s hit the point I’m having trouble without it. Part of me wants to give up and just accept it. On some level, I always knew this is how I would end up. Despite all my attitude and style, I knew nobody beats the house in the long run.

  I don’t beg. Begging will just make it worse. I don’t know how it could get worse, but I know it will. “We both know this wasn’t supposed to happen,” I say. “This isn’t my fault!”

  Only the worst of craftsmen blame their tools for their failures.

  But I sense there’s a puzzle piece in front of me, one of the edge pieces that tells you how everything fits together. And Cairax hasn’t seen it. There still might be a chance to get out of this.

  Your cries shall ring out through the Abyss for ten times ten generations. My hands shall deliver unto you every pain and affliction and violation that has ever been known to man or beast. It will take you ten thousand years just to reach the brink of oblivion, and another ten thousand to fall in. And every moment of that time, my sole purpose shall be to make it worse for you.

  I realize what he’s missed. Or maybe what he didn’t want me to notice. We’re still here. Still trapped in a mass of rotting tissue by a short-circuited spell inked into my skin.

  I manage a chuckle and Cairax glares at me.

  What aspect of your future is so pleasing to you, dearest Maxwell?

  “It’s your future, too,” I remind him. “And we’re not there yet, are we? It’s been, what … six months? Maybe seven?”

  I feel the smile on his face. It’s a terrifying expression, even when it’s just a mental construct. Did I miss something else? Some detail that slipped past me? I decide to press on.

  “Over half a year since we died,” I say. “And no one’s shot us in the head or disposed of us somehow. We’re still both trapped in here. How long will you be able to keep this up? A year, maybe?”

  He laughs. I want to drink bleach to clean out my head from the sound. His laughter just gnaws away at my essence, at my fabric of being.

  Dearest little Maxwell, he tells me, we have only been here together for a day now.

  And then he makes me start screaming again.

  I don’t know how long it’s been. The rest of the day? Weeks? Months?

  The only things left in my mind are memories of pain, and memories of memories of pain. There’s no space for anything else. I can’t remember a time when there wasn’t constant agony racking every inch of my body and mind. I’ve lost all concept of what order my life happened in, because it’s all dependent on the pain.

  At some point, Cairax gets bored and decides to let me breathe for a few minutes. It’s like pulling a burn victim from a fire and leav Trader Joe’sgh peopleing them sitting on the ground. I’ve hit the point the lack of torture isn’t any better than the torture itself. Even with the pain gone, I writhe and flail from a thousand aftershocks. I have an excess of agony to process before I can think.

  Ahhh, the exquisite torture you have to look forward to in the Abyss. The eons we shall have together before your soul is rent and fed to the lesser reavers. And then …

  “And then what?”

  Cairax Murrain turns to me.

  I’ve said the words without thinking. Now I need to think fast. “Then what?” I say again, trying to buy myself an extra moment or two.

  And then I see it. It’s like magic. Magic isn’t on the surface, it’s the ninety percent below water. I know how I’m going to get out of this.

  “There isn’t going to be anyone enot have known

  ST. GEORGE COULD lift almost seven tons under perfect conditions. Fourteen thousand pounds. He was strong enough to pick up a car if he could balance it, and move a semitrailer when he had the right leverage. He could snap steel aircraft cables without breathing hard. His fingers could crush brick and concrete and pavement.

  He took a deep breath, gritted his teeth, and pulled.

  The glistening red cords that held him weren’t much thicker than shoelaces. They had no knots or fasteners. The lines looped around his wrists and ankles, barely tight enough to touch his skin. Max and the demon had him strung up between a streetlight and the signpost for a Trader Joe’s on the north side of 3rd Street.

  Smoke whistled out between his teeth. His eyes watered remember falling asleepf of picture from the effort. His shoulders burned and his wrists screamed with pain but the thin lines didn’t budge. He took a few deep breaths and tensed his shoulders again.

  “Flex and strain all you like, my dear little hero,” said the demon. Cairax’s legs raised a little too high and reached a little too far, like a huge spider. It stalked across the road to stand face-to-face with him. “These are blood ties. They cannot be broken.”

  This close St. George could see the scaly texture of the demon’s skin. The burning blue eyes locked on his, each one the size of his palm, and dared him to look away. It felt like a staring contest with a rattlesnake. The slitted nostrils trembled as Cairax sucked in air and exhaled on the hero. The monster’s breath was hot. It reeked of disease and meat.

  Max bent over the road with a dagger he’d pulled from his coat and put the final touches on the circle he’d scratched into the pavement. He straightened up to stretch his back. “Anyway,” he said, picking up as if there’d been no interruption, “breaking Josh out was the easiest part. It’s not like he needed much convincing, either. A bit of alchemy turned the cell wall to water vapor for a minute, he walked out, and the bars and mesh reformed behind him. No sign of anything being tampered with. I’m sure it drove Stealth crazy.”

  St. George risked looking away from the demon’s eyes. “She knew he had outside help.”

  “Because nothing else made sense in her little worldview,” said Max. “Your girlfriend has one big blind spot, George. She’s inflexible. She can’t think outside the box. The box she does think in is gigantic, I admit, but she can’t put her brain outside it even just for a moment.”

  The sorcerer twisted at the hips, then leaned to either side and stretched his arms out. He bent over to scratch a few more Latin words along the edge of the circle. “After that it was just a matter of getting you alone out here, so Josh’s escape killed two birds with one stone. Thanks for letting me paint all those sigils and agreements on you, by the way. It saves us about an hour and a half.”

  St. George tried to ignore him and looked at the demon. It gazed back at him with its saucer-like eyes. He was pretty sure it was smirking, but the forest of teeth made it hard to be sure.

  “Josh,” he said, “you’ve got to fight this
. I know you hate all of us because of what happened, you hate the world because of what happened to Meredith, but you can’t let—”

  “You waste your final hour calling to your friend,” said Cairax. The demon reached up and tapped its fingers against the crown of horns. They made a noise like the crack of billiard balls. “His lonely mind was broken long before what was left of it accepted our offer. He submitted to dear Maxwell’s preparations, turned over his mortal form, and retreated to nonexistence with no resistance or second thoughts. Through me he found the end he has searched so long for.”

  The demon twitched a finger and the red cords holding St. George pulled tighter. Not much. Just another half inch. He felt it in his joints.

  He managed to glare back at the creature. “Next you’ll tell me your only weakness is wood,” he said. “Before you know it you’ll give your whole plan away.”

  “Such bravado,” said Cairax. Its tongue dart talking to?”L2 togethered out and snapped like a whip in front of St. George’s face. “You are a credit to your namesake after all, my little hero, but soon your soul shall be my plaything. We shall see how brave you are then.”

  “Just try me.”

  Its tooth-filled mouth twisted into anoth

  ON A GUESS, said Zzzap, maybe over there?

  He pointed to the southwest. Even in the unlit night, the clouds piled up black over that part of the city. They flickered with sparks of light. Distant thunder echoed across the city.

  Zzzap hung in the air above the corner of the Big Wall, just south of the After Death church. Stealth, Freedom, and Madelyn were on the platform below with half a dozen guards and First Sergeant Kennedy. Cerberus stood in the street behind them.

  “I estimate it is centered over La Brea Avenue,” said Stealth. “Somewhere between Third and Wilshire.”

  Looks like your boyfriend lives in the corner penthouse of spook central, if you ask me.

  Captain Freedom cinched the strap of his glove around his wrist. He’d shrugged off the leather duster in favor of his full combat gear. “Are you sure about this, ma’am? The rest of the Unbreakables are on alert and ready to go. We can have them assembled here in five minutes.”