by Peter Clines
The first of the exes closed in on him. It was a noseless man in a gore-splattered lab coat, a former doctor or scientist. Then Freedom saw the grocery store name tag and realized the dead man had been a butcher. The ex reached for him and he grabbed both its wrists in one hand. It bent its jaws to his knuckles and he cracked its forehead with one pun, but Freedom couldawAcenterch. He swung the withered body around and hurled it at Cairax Murrain.
The demon was still looking in his direction, even while fighting Zzzap. The knife-like talons lashed out and caught the corpse in midair, slicing it in half.
Freedom looked at the approaching wave of undead. The cracked ribs flared as he turned. His legs flexed and he hurled himself away from the crater.
As he landed a dozen exes reached the edge where he’d been. They tumbled in. The first few hit the glassy floor with the loud cracks of breaking jaws and noses. The dead made no attempt to break their fall. Some of them crawled away before the second wave fell on top of them, but not many. In a minute the pit had become a mass of undead limbs and chattering teeth.
Three other exes reached Freedom. He lashed out with his massive fists, breaking teeth and skulls and glad for his Kevlar gloves. The zombies dropped around him, but there was a small pack of six or seven headed his way. Two of them wore bloodstained police vests, even though only one was wearing a uniform.
There was another hiss of superheated air from off to his left. Cairax Murrain was saying something to Zzzap, but Freedom couldn’t understand it over the sounds of shuffling feet, clicking teeth, and sizzling pavement. He glanced right and saw St. George scoop up the sorcerer’s body.
Freedom pulled out Lady Liberty and fired off two bursts at the pack of exes, emptying the drum. He aimed low. The shells blew out knees and shattered shins. Four of the zombies collapsed, and two more fell on top of them. It gave him a few moments, but there were still more coming.
Stealth caught his eye as he reloaded. It was hard to be sure with her mask and cloak, especially in the dark, but the woman seemed to be staring at him. She made a series of quick gestures and Freedom realized she was using Army Field Manual hand signals. And at least two unique to the Unbreakables.
She repeated her instructions. He signaled his understanding.
St. George leaped into the air. He set Max down on the roof of Trader Joe’s. The sorcerer was safe from exes, but he’d die if they didn’t get him to a hospital soon.
“You can’t beat it,” wheezed Max. A few drops of blood came up with the words. He looked pale. “You don’t have the tools.”
“I guess we’ll see.”
Max shook his head. It was a loose gesture without much control behind it. “No chance,” he muttered. “Why bother?”
“Because if we didn’t try,” St. George said, “we’d be no better than you.”
He floated down to the ground. Madelyn and Stealth held their own against the swarm of exes. The dead girl tripped and shoved the exes as they got close. The cloaked woman had her batons out and battered skulls and jaws.
St. George ripped a parking meter out of the sidewalk. He spun it once in his hands and then swung it like a bat. The lump of concrete at the end crushed half a dozen exes into jelly. The impact sent another dozen flying back. He glanced over at Freedom battling more exes and Zzzap dodging the cars Cairax threw at him. “I hope the plan went past getting me free,” he said over the click-click-click of teeth.
“It does,” Madelyn piped up. “You just ne remember falling asleept,ofA ced to grab the demon.”
“Sorry, what?”
“You must distract Cairax Murrain,” said Stealth, “and then pin it so it cannot move.”
St. George swung his oversized club again. The weight of the concrete bent the pole in the middle. He sent it spinning into the exes. “I don’t understand.”
“And it needs to be facing me,” the cloaked woman added.
“Are you serious?”
“There is no time to explain,” she said. She whirled and drove her heel through the jaw of a dead construction worker. “You must trust me.”
He nodded. “Got it.” He glanced down at his bare arm and the cobweb of scars stretched across it. “Taking on the demon again.”
St. George rose into the air, took a deep breath, and hurled himself at Cairax.
Zzzap still felt cold. Most of the effect of the demon’s claws had worn off, but there was a chill at the center of the energy form. He wondered if it was all just in his head, then realized when he was Zzzap everything was just in his head.
Freedom leaped up to the roof of a car. The back half of the vehicle was melted to slag, a victim of Zzzap’s megablast. He leveled his huge pistol at the demon.
Then St. George shot forward and tackled Cairax. They tumbled across the street, over a low wall, and struck the corner of a Ralph’s grocery store. The brick facade crumbled around them and a few last shards of glass in the picture windows dropped and shattered on the ground.
The building exploded in flames as St. George poured fire onto the demon. Scraps of paper bags and cardboard signs ignited around them. When Cairax tried to push its way out of the rubble, St. George punched it twice in the face. He seized two of the demon’s large horns and slammed the creature’s head down into the floor again and again. He found a chunk of concrete ribbed with rebar, raised it up, and smashed it over the demon’s skull.
Cairax lay still just long enough for the hero to relax. Then St. George caught a backhand with enough force behind it to knock over a bus. He sailed into the intersection, bounced twice off the pavement, and crashed into the side of a street sweeper.
The demon stalked out after him. “This is most welcome,” Cairax hissed. “My defeat at your hands was a gnawing insult. How pleasant it will be to right those accounts.”
Zzzap blasted the demon in the chest. Freedom hit it with two bursts from Lady Liberty. Cairax glared at them, cringed away from Freedom’s shots, but didn’t slow its march toward St. George. Blue flames sparked behind its teeth as it roared.
The hero was waiting for it. St. George tore the door off the street sweeper and flung it at the demon. The amount of raw force behind his throw made up for his lack of finesse. It struck Cairax in the shoulder, sprayed dark blood across the pavement, and knocked the monster back a few feet.
Freedom leaped over a dozen exes to land on the roof of an SUV. It crumpled under his impact. He winced as his ribs shifted in his chest.
Zzzap circled around to the monster’s far side and let his feet drag through a crowd of the dead.
St. George yanked the plastic seat out of the cab and hurled it at Cairax. The demon put up a hand and shattered it in midair.
The plastic shrapnel sprayed back over Captain Freedom, and he threw up an arm to protect his eyes. When the rain of fragments stopped and his arm came down, the demon’s tail was a foot from his neck. He spun and the barb tore at his shoulder instead of his throat, but the move made him slip on the uneven roof of the SUV. He grabbed the closest thing he could. It was rough and scaly, even through his glove, and writhed in his grip. When the scorpion tip whipped up he let Lady Liberty tumble away and grabbed the tail with both hands.
Cairax glared over at the huge officer and St. George slammed a fist into the side of the demon’s head. It was like punching a statue. He threw two more punches, scratching his shed into the
CAPTAIN FREEDOM STRUGGLED to his feet. He remembered riding in the back of a cargo truck in Afghanistan where the crates slid and shifted under his feet. Standing in the crater was like that, except the crates kept reaching up to drag him back down.
He was in a lot of pain. If his ribs hadn’t been broken before, they were now. He’d heard people say pain felt like needles or blades, but anyone who’d felt real pain knew it was a screw. It kept twisting deeper talking to?”elsoem every time you thought it was done. His side was filled with white-hot screws.
Where the tail had skewered him, he felt his pulse and wetness on the inside of his jacket.
Half of his torso had a faint chill that reached into his arm and was working its way up his neck. Even with his basic first-aid training he knew it wasn’t a good combination of feelings.
The floor of the crater shifted again. A dead hand reached up to grab at his knee. He bit his lip, drove his heel down, and heard bones crunch beneath him. He kicked at a few exes grabbing at his legs. A dead woman with a patch of bare skull tried to gnaw on his boot and knocked out its own rotted teeth. A mangled, genderless thing caught its fingers in Lady Liberty’s empty holster and made Freedom stumble for a moment.
Half the exes in the crater had made it to their feet. He slammed his fist into one, then brought his arm around to batter away another. It flew back, taking two other exes down with it, and Freedom felt the burning screws in his ribs sink a little deeper. He gritted his teeth.
The pause gave a dead woman with matted hair the chance to grab his arm. He could feel the teeth through his combat uniform, but the material held. A quick shake knocked the ex off. A pair of arms wrapped around his leg, and he let his fist swing down like a hammer.
Even as that ex dropped, another one grabbed him by the waist. Its withered arms squeezed tight enough to set off the fire in his ribs. He turned to shake it off and the screws tightened down even more. The dead man made a wet noise as it slipped away and white spots danced in the captain’s eyes.
The wet noise hadn’t come from the ex. The side of his uniform was soaked in blood from his armpit to mid-thigh. The wetness hadn’t gone away. He’d just gone numb. Shock. He was going into shock.
He battered away another dead man and struggled through the growing crowd of exes. He just needed to finish the mission. He had to get to the demon.
Then he could rest.
Madelyn ran to her high point. The sword bounced and swung on her hip. An ex stumbled into her path and she elbowed it out of the way. She was supposed to climb the remains of the street sweeper. She needed to be high up and close enough so she couldn’t be blocked when she saw Stealth’s signal.
She pulled herself up into the cab and swung her legs around onto the hood. A quick twist and she crawled over the windshield onto the roof. It wobbled under her weight.
There were exes everywhere, more than she’d ever seen before. A thousand of them, at least. The sounds of the fight were drawing them in from all over the city. The clicking teeth and the rumbling clouds drowned out almost everything.
St. George dragged the monster up into the sky where Zzzap waited. Stealth was on the roof of an SUV, right where she said she’d be, with the big shotgun-pistol Captain Freedom called Lady Liberty. And Freedom was …
Then she saw him, covered in blood and vanishing beneath the swarm of exes in the crater.
There was a sound like a falling redwood as Cairax hit the pavement. She glanced at the fight and back to the huge captain who’d been friends with her dad.
Madelyn leaped off the street sweeper and ran to the crater, shoving exes as she went. Throwing herself into the pit was just like stage diving, remember falling asleep,? together at least from what she’d seen on TV and in movies. She dragged herself though the crowd, pushing and shoving and kicking at the exes. It was a struggle. They all wanted to get to Freedom as much as she did, maybe more.
She jumped into the air and kicked off a dead man’s hip. It got her close enough to grab Freedom around the neck. She threw her legs around his waist and pulled herself tight against him.
He winced and his eyes went wide. “What are you—”
“Trust me,” she told him. She pressed her body against his and squeezed with her legs. She could hear his heart thumping through his body armor. He was cold. She could feel his blood seeping through her jeans and into her coat and tried not to think about it.
The exes slowed their frantic pawing. Their grips loosened and their dead gazes drifted away. The chattering teeth moved away from Freedom. The ones on the edges of the mob wandered off. The closest ones bumped against him a few times before stumbling away.
Madelyn smiled. “Welcome to my world,” she said.
“Finish the mission,” he told her.
“We’re going to. Come on.” She loosened her grip on him and shifted her weight so she could slide over his shoulder. He put up a hand to help her. A moment later she was riding piggyback on his broad back.
He wheezed, but didn’t cry out. “Where to?”
“Get me to the far side of the street,” she said. She shook her hips and the sword swayed on her belt. “I need to be able to hand this thing off to Stealth.”
Cairax Murrain rolled its shoulder and broke St. George’s half nelson. The hero fell away and a shrug from the demon knocked him back. Cairax turned on him with a growl.
St. George went to throw a punch and an ex snagged his arm. The zombie bit down on his wrist and its teeth crumbled against his skin. He shook it off in an instant, brought his fist around, and Cairax’s tail wrapped around his throat.
The thick rope of muscle heaved him into the air. It wasn’t strong enough to choke him, but he couldn’t get enough leverage to pull it loose. He focused on his shoulders and tried to haul Cairax back into the air, but the tail shook him hard and dragged him back down.
Cairax pulled him close. The demon’s teeth whisked against each other as it spoke. Its breath smelled like rotted milk. “If dear Maxwell dies,” Cairax said, “it may save your soul, but your heart shall still be my feast.”
“I hope you choke on it,” he gasped over the tail.
Gunfire echoed behind the demon and it turned with a growl. As the horn-covered head turned, St. George saw rounds spark off the jutting points and one of the wider tusks. It sounded like someone with a machine gun.
Stealth stood on the roof of the SUV, her Glocks firing in each hand. They ran dry and she let the magazines tumble into the crowd of exes below. The guns spun in her hands, her fingers danced between grip and belt, and she was firing again. Bullets sprayed across the demon’s face like heavy rain.
Cairax took a few steps toward her, and her guns hit empty again. Its hooves thudded against the pavement and trampled a dead woman beneath them. It brushed a trio remember falling asleeptere together of exes out of the way with a sweep of its arm.
Then it glanced down.
The three exes had wrapped their arms tight around its long forearm. Each one held on without biting, or even gnashing their teeth at the air. They glared up at the demon.
“You ready for round two, pinche pendejo?” they asked in unison.
Cairax had time to snarl before the exes pounced on it. The tide of the undead shifted as all the exes in the area charged the demon. A dozen grabbed its other arm. A platoon’s worth of them tackled its legs while a score more threw themselves on the tail. They swarmed over the demon like ants on a lion.
Three dead people sank their fingers into the coil holding St. George and yanked at it. They loosened it enough for him to get his hands in. He pried the tail open and dropped away. St. George took in a deep breath.
An ex loomed over him. It had been a heavyset man with a goatee, dressed in a filthy tee and wool cap. “Your lucky day, dragon man,” growled the corpse, “ ’cause I actually hate this fucking thing more’n I hate you.”
St. George nodded. “We need to hold it,” he said. “Stealth needs a clear shot at its chest.”
The ex nodded and hurled itself onto the demon’s back. Over a hundred dead people clung to the monster, burying it beneath their bodies. They shifted to expose its bony chest.
St. George leaped into the air, soared over the demon, and landed next to Stealth. “I think Rodney just gave us our edge.”
“Agreed.”
“Ready to tell me the big secret plan?”
SOMEONE VERY FAR away pushed on his shoulder and called a name. They kept pushing and calling. It echoed down to him and he recognized it. “St. George?”
He regretted it. Admitting he knew his name meant consciousness. Consciousness brought a lot of
pain with it.
The face over his was pale, with chalky eyes framed by ragged hair. He pulled his hand back to strike before he recognized the Corpse Girl. Her dark hair hung down, shadowing her face and making unfamiliar lines.
“Don’t be a jerk,” Madelyn said.
She helped him sit up. His knuckles ached. His chest itched and burned where the demon’s claws had raked his flesh. He was willing to bet the wounds were infected.
He looked at her. Her coat had sizzled away, and her jeans and shirt were singed. Charred in places. So was her hair. One of her arms and part of her face were burned.
He nodded at the arm. “How are you?”
Madelyn nodded. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “I think Captain Freedom’s really bad, though. He’s got broken bones and a fever.”
St. George stood up. The last of his leather jacket crumbled away like burned parchment. The tattered shirt below wasn’t much better off, but it held together for now. He hobbled when he walked, and remembered the demon had bitten one of his boot heels off.
A wide spiderweb of white ash stretched across the street. It covered cars and the cracked pavement and the bony remains of hundreds of exes. The dust hung in the air like a white haze. He looked up at the moon, lighting the whole scene. The dark clouds were gone.
They were halfway to Freedom when St. George saw the black boots stretched out beneath an ash-whitened truck. He grabbed the chassis and flipped the truck up. What was left of the tires broke apart and the battered Chevy crashed onto its side.
Stealth’s cloak wrapped around her like a shroud. Parts of it had burned. He could see glimpses of dark skin where her bodysuit had been torn or charred away.
He set his fingers against her wrist to check for a pulse. She grabbed his arm and pulled herself up, the knife in her other hand aimed at his own throat. The blade scraped off his Adam’s apple before she stopped herself.
She took a few ragged breaths. A third of her mask was gone. He could see her cheekbone and the smooth line of her jaw and the edge of her lips at the corner of her mouth. “You survived,” she said.
