Ex-Purgatory

by Peter Clines

  He caught an ex by the arm as it tried to grab him. “We’re almost there,” he said. “Just a few more minutes.”

  They pushed ahead. St. George and Stealth cleared the path. Freedom followed before the exes could fill it back up.

  They pushed past the last corner and saw the Melrose gate at the end of its short driveway, half-hidden in shadows. On the other side of an overgrown shrub, the guards held the wide gateway open. One gestured them in with slow waves while others held off the exes.

  St. George made the last push through the exes. More of them were going after him and Stealth than the guards at the gate. He smashed the dead things aside. She battered them down. He made a last lunge with his arms wide, pushed half a dozen of them into the small garden with a squat palm tree, and left a clear path. Stealth rammed her baton into the side of an ex’s head and ran for the opening with Freedom and the others right behind her. The guard waved them in. The wave was an unsteady, somehow mechanical gesture, as if the man wasn’t quite aware he was doing it.

  Stealth brought her baton up, shattering the guard’s jaw, then smashed it down on the top of his skull. The man swayed. She slipped through the gate, smacked aside another guard’s hands, and continued the swing into the back of the waving guard’s head. His face slammed into the bars and the impact rang through the gate.

  Four long strides carried St. George to the gate. Up close he could see the waving man had been Derek, one of the Melrose guards almost from the day the Mount had been founded. He was dead. His skull was cracked and sagging.

  From the color of his skin, he’d been dead for a while. One of his ears was gone, and most of the flesh around it. The arm that had been stuck in the bars, waving, was missing two fingers.

  Another ex fell on St. George from behind. He let it gnaw on his neck for a moment. A few of its teeth broke loose and slipped down the back of his shirt. They were cool and dry against his skin.

  He turned and shoved the ex back. He pulled the gate shut and stood there for another moment while the dead things outside clawed at his fingers. Then he looked around, found the steel pipe they used for a bar, and dropped it in the brackets across the gate.

  Behind him, he heard Stealth put down the other exes by the guardhouse.

  No one said anything.

  Except for the click of teeth echoing between the buildings, there was no sound. All the windows in the buildings were dark.

  A pickup truck was parked near the gate. The driver’s seat was smeared with blood. The passenger seat held the withered remains of a woman with an empty pistol in her lap. The back of Billie Carter’s skull was gone, and the rear window behind her was cracked and covered with dried gore. It was all through her spiky blond hair as well.

  Stealth took the pistol, released the slide, and checked the magazine. She glanced up at St. George and shook her head. She slid the pistol in her waistband.

  He checked beneath the truck for any crawlers, then pulled the tailgate down. The truck had two boxes of food in the back, and a third box of random supplies. St. George gave them a quick search and handed out some crumpled granola bars with long-since-expired dates.

  There was a large water bottle, maybe five gallons, sealed with some plastic wrap and a doubled-up rubber band. The band crumbled when he tugged on it. The plastic wrap was sticky. He found a clean spot on his shirt and used it to wipe the mouth of the bottle as clean as he could.

  Danielle sat down on the end of the tailgate. Her legs dangled above the ground. Freedom set Barry down next to her, then Madelyn.

  They ate and sipped water in silence. The Corpse Girl glanced over her shoulder at the cracked rear window. Even in the dark, the splatter of gore on the inside was visible.

  There was enough light from the moon and stars to see the garden had turned into a thick mess of yellowed plants. More bodies were sprawled in the rows. Most of them had been stripped of enough meat to make them little more than skeletons.

  Some of them were very small skeletons.

  “How long?” Freedom asked. “How long have we been gone?”

  No one said anything.

  “Ma’am?”

  Stealth looked across the lot, picking out shapes. “It is difficult to be accurate in such poor light,” she said. “I could make a rough estimate from the amount of dust on the truck and the level of plant growth in the garden. I saw similar levels at the Big Wall. The state of decay in the bodies we have seen also allows a general guideline.”

  St. George looked at her. “And?”

  Stealth continued to study the lot around them. “I would say it has been at least four months since this area was used. That estimate may be off by several weeks.”

  “Four months?!” gasped Danielle.

  Barry shook his head. “No way,” he said. “That’s not possible.”

  “We should get inside,” said Stealth, as if none of the others had spoken. “We will attract attention here, and we cannot defend an open area such as this.”

  “We need to look for survivors,” said St. George.

  “Agreed,” said Freedom. “We can—”

  “At the moment, the odds of there being survivors would seem to be very low,” snapped Stealth. “St. George and I have both been awake for over thirty-six hours at this point. Barry and Madelyn cannot walk. Danielle is useless from fear.”

  Danielle looked up and glared at Stealth, but said nothing.

  “Our first concern is to secure a base of operations and rest. If there are survivors, we are of no use to them like this. Is that clear?”

  They all stared at her. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “The Roddenberry Building is the logical choice. It is central, it has three ground-level entrances, and the stairwells have isolated any exes inside. I have weapons and supplies secured there.”

  “Okay, then,” said St. George. He stacked the three boxes of supplies, then balanced them in one hand. “Let’s go.”

  They started across the parking lot. An ex with a military helmet staggered out from behind the old studio store and headed for them. Stealth knocked its helmet off with one swing of her baton, broke its jaw with a second, and with the third she rammed the baton through its empty eye socket. It dropped to the ground.

  Danielle looked up and her eyes widened. She pushed her way out of Freedom’s arms and ran ahead. He tried to grab for her, but the move swung Madelyn across his back.

  “I’ve got her,” said St. George. He set the boxes down and took off after her. He knew where she was going. They should’ve planned on it.

  Right behind Roddenberry, one street over, was the scenery shop they’d cleaned out years ago and turned into Danielle’s workshop. She’d reconfigured the whole place for the Cerberus armor. She even made a small apartment for herself in the back so she never had to be far from the battlesuit.

  The wide doors were open, and she ran in without hesitating. St. George was a few yards behind her. Her scream echoed inside the dark workshop.

  He raced in. The moon didn’t put much illumination through the skylights, but it was enough. His eyes were already used to the dark.

  Danielle stood still. Her arms were tight across her chest, pulling so hard he thought she might hurt herself. She looked unharmed. St. George followed her eye line over to Lieutenant Gibbs.

  Gibbs was one of the Project Krypton survivors. He’d been an Air Force officer—not one of Freedom’s super-soldiers—who found himself at Krypton when the Zombocalypse set in and the chain of command fell apart. He’d been the intended pilot for the Cerberus suit, and had spent hundreds of hours in a simulator for it. Danielle had even let him wear it half a dozen times.

  What was left of him was spread across the workshop floor. He’d been pulled in half, by the look of it. His legs and hips were missing, along with his hands, left forearm, and face. If it wasn’t for the nametag on his Air Force coat, he would’ve been a piece of meat.

  The Cerberus Battle Armor System was in pieces. The first thought i
n St. George’s mind was old Universal horror movies, when the villagers inevitably stormed the lab and destroyed whatever they found there. At least a third of the battlesuit was missing. The sections scattered across the floor had been battered and gouged. Wiring had been pulled out in clumps. The gauntlets looked like they’d been attacked with a pair of crowbars.

  The helmet sat on the table like a decapitated head. The lenses of both eyes had been smashed. The speakers had been ripped out. There was a dent in the forehead that might’ve come from a sledgehammer. Broken glass from the interior screens surrounded the metal skull. Half a dozen connectors hung limp, their ends cracked or smashed or missing altogether.

  Danielle gritted her teeth. She raised her fist away from her body and then slammed it into her arm again and again.

  They put down seven more exes on the way to Roddenberry. St. George knew almost all of their faces. One was too mauled to be sure. The two in the lobby weren’t familiar, although Stealth took down a third behind the reception desk before he could get a good look at it. The main stairwell was clear, but there was one more outside Stealth’s fourth-floor office. It had been Rocky, the man who made chain-mail armor for the scavengers. St. George turned the dead man’s head all the way around. The teeth kept chattering, so he carried the body to a window and let it drop four stories to the ground.

  When he got back to the office, Stealth had pulled open the blinds to let in what light she could. Her office had been the floor’s main conference room once, back when the Mount was in the movie business. She’d turned it into a war room of video screens and covered the marble table with maps.

  Most of the screens had been smashed. Her many maps of the city, state, and the rest of the country had been torn apart. From the ashes on the table and the soot on the ceiling, it looked like some of them had been burned.

  St. George saw a piece of black fabric on the edge of the ashes and realized they’d burned more than her maps.

  Danielle’s shoulders dropped at least an inch in the enclosed office. Freedom found an office chair with arms and set Barry down in it. Madelyn slipped off his broad shoulders and sat on the edge of the table.

  Barry looked at the broken screens and ashes. He traded a look with St. George. “Man,” he said. “They must’ve really hated us.”

  “They were scared,” said St. George. “They needed a target to take it out on. One they could beat. We weren’t here, so we were the easy ones.”

  “Keep telling yourself that,” said Danielle. “Nick always had these people pegged. They were glad for us when we were here, but they never liked us.”

  “We should secure the perimeter,” said Freedom. “Make sure this floor’s clear and sealed off.”

  “The elevators are inoperative without power, but there is one other stairwell to secure.” Stealth looked at St. George. “Check the other offices and supply closets on this floor. Dispose of any other exes which may have ended up here.”

  “Don’t suppose you’ve got a flashlight?”

  Stealth paused for a moment and glanced at the others. “In my quarters,” she said. “In the second closet.”

  St. George nodded and headed for the door at the far end of the conference room. It was camouflaged to blend in with the wall. He pulled it open and walked through to her spartan apartment. He did a quick check in the small bathroom and both closets. He was pretty sure they’d been cleaned out. Stealth had so few personal things, it was hard to be sure.

  He found a trio of big Maglites, and also two smaller ones and an electric lantern. He clicked the button on each Mag to make sure the batteries still worked. The lantern lit up the room.

  He went back to the office and handed out the lights. Stealth hung the lantern from a piece of heavy wire she pulled from above the ceiling tiles. Freedom was out blocking the stairwell door with a desk.

  St. George headed down the hall. Most of the doors were unlocked, and the rooms bare. Stealth had cleaned the offices out herself back when she’d claimed the floor as her personal lair.

  Four rooms away he heard a muffled click-click-click through the door. He opened the small office and saw an ex stumbling against the window. The door swung open and tapped the far wall. The corpse turned at the noise. It had been a little girl. He recognized the face, but couldn’t think of a name to go with it. The dead thing’s left shoulder was a mess of gore and blood.

  The ex staggered across the empty room. Its arms reached up for him and pale fingers clawed at the air. Its little teeth tapped against each other again and again.

  He let it grab his hand and it gnawed on his fingers. Some of the little teeth broke on his skin, and their shards sprinkled on the carpet like snow. He sighed, then reached down to grab it by the back of the neck. He squeezed and felt the bones splinter and crumble under the skin.

  The jaws kept working on his fingers like an eager kitten. Then the weight of the limp body pulled the teeth off him and it slumped to the floor. The head bounced on the carpet and kept gnashing its teeth. He scooped up the dead girl and carried it to the window. It hit Avenue E right in front of Danielle’s workshop.

  He still couldn’t remember her name. He tried to blame Smith’s brainwashing and push it from his mind. He closed the door behind him.

  St. George checked two more empty offices, then found one filled with desks, chairs, and other pieces of office furniture. It had never crossed his mind that Stealth had to put everything somewhere. He wasn’t sure why she’d cleaned out all the offices to start with. It had never come up.

  In the hallway on the far side of the building, the knob on the first door stuck. He tried to jiggle it twice, but it was solid. The door was locked.

  He thought about leaving it. An ex wouldn’t’ve locked doors. Even if it somehow had, it couldn’t unlock them.

  He sighed. A twist of his wrist snapped the tumblers inside the lock. The knob turned with a metallic rustle and a scrape.

  The room was dark, but it smelled different. His flashlight beam hit the pile of blankets and the bag of empty cans and he realized what it was. The room smelled like the stages in the Mount when they’d first been converted into apartments. It was the smell of living in a small area.

  Something moved across the room. He saw the figure, a shadow against the slightly brighter window. It was holding its arms out.

  He brought up the flashlight and a gunshot thundered in the room. The round struck his front teeth, right on the left incisor, and made his gums throb. The flashlight and the bullet dropped to the carpet. He brought his hand up to press it against his lips. “Son of a bitch,” he said, “that stings.”

  “Goddammit,” muttered the figure. It was a female voice. “I save my last bullet all this time, and then I waste it on you. Makes sense.”

  St. George heard footsteps running in the hall. He reached down and grabbed the flashlight just as Stealth appeared in the doorway. The woman in the room winced away from the bright light and threw her arm across her face, but his mind had pieced enough elements together to identify her. “Are you okay?” he asked. “We’ve got food and water, and I think some basic medical supplies.”

  He lowered the beam, and Christian Nguyen glared at them.

  WHEN THEY GOT back to Stealth’s office with Christian, Madelyn was fast asleep in Freedom’s arms. Her eyes were half-open, and her jaw hung slack. Her body sprawled like a limp rag doll.

  Christian shuddered at the sight and muttered something so low St. George couldn’t hear it.

  Freedom looked at Christian. “Miss Nguyen,” he said. “Good to see you, ma’am.”

  She said nothing. St. George gestured her to a chair. He nodded at Madelyn. “Is she okay?”

  “Just sleeping,” said the big officer. “Or whatever it is she does. Recharging?”

  “As good a term as any,” said Stealth.

  “She yawned and almost fell over just before we heard the gunshot,” said the captain.

  St. George heard a rattling noise. Danielle
pushed Barry out of Stealth’s office, using the office chair for a wheelchair. Barry looked slightly more comfortable with it than he did being carried. He had a pillow and a blanket on his lap.

  Freedom set Madelyn down on the table and arranged her body so it looked natural, careful that her feet avoided the pile of ashes and burned material. Barry handed him the pillow and the huge officer tucked it under her head. He draped the blanket over her and slid her eyelids closed.

  “So,” Danielle asked Christian, “how did you end up here?”

  The Asian woman glowered at them. “It was what I could reach when the exes came,” she said. “I thought that psychotic bitch might’ve set some traps or defenses or something that would make it safer.”

  “Watch your mouth,” said St. George.

  “Make me,” snapped Christian. “I’m sorry you don’t want to be reminded that she finally ran out on all of us, but—”

  “More likely,” said Stealth, “I would guess he is hoping to make you restrain yourself before I come up with a more direct way of silencing you.”

  Christian gave the unmasked woman a nasty look, took in a breath to respond, and then she recognized the voice. Her face softened and she shrank back.

  “What happened here?” demanded Stealth. “Was it Legion? Did Agent Smith cause this somehow?”

  Christian’s eyebrows went up at Smith’s name. Then her usual surliness surged over her brief surprise. She settled back in a corner of the room and glared at the heroes. St. George wasn’t sure if it was mild shock or plain old stubbornness.

  Stealth took a step toward the former councilwoman, but he held her back.

  “You should get some sleep,” said Barry. “You look fried.”

  “It’s been a rough two days,” St. George said. “I think I am kind of fried.”

  “Both of you sleep,” said Freedom. He nodded to St. George and Stealth. “You need it more than any of us. We can do shifts until we all get caught up.”