by Peter Clines
He raised his arm and the ex rose up with it, still gnawing on his wrist. He brought his other hand around like an axe and smashed through the spine and the cords of muscle around it. The body dropped. The head managed one more bite before it slipped off his wrist and fell. It looked up at him from the ground, its jaws still gnashing away.
St. George looked around and spotted a trio of exes closing in on a pair of firefighters as they fell back toward the Big Wall. He grabbed the headless body at his feet, pulled back, and hurled it at the three dead people. It spun twice in the air and knocked them to the ground. One fell headfirst into a patch of fire, and the stench of burning hair washed across the street before being overwhelmed by the smoke.
He marched over to the fallen trio and twisted their skulls around until their necks snapped. The teeth kept clicking, but the bodies went limp. He wiped his hands on his jeans, heard a scream, and moved toward it.
Before St. George got there another figure leaped forward. Specialist Kurt Taylor, one of Freedom’s men. The one with the shaved head and the mouth. He was another super-soldier from Project Krypton, but an earlier version, not even half as powerful as the captain.
A retreating firefighter had tripped over his equipment, and his two companions tried to untangle him before a pair of exes closed in on them. Taylor shoved both of the exes hard, and as he did something across the back of his hands gleamed in the flickering orange light. A vicious roundhouse punch exploded one zombie’s skull. Taylor’s other arm swung around, spraying teeth and bone from the other ex across the road.
He glanced back at St. George and grinned. Like most things Taylor did, it didn’t seem very nice. He held up his hand and revealed the thick bands of metal across his fingers. “Fucking awesome or what?” he said. “Grade-A zombie dusters, that’s what these are.”
St. George bit back a frown at the man’s glee. “Can’t you hit them hard enough already?”
Taylor’s face shifted, flitting between three or four emotions before St. George could identify them and then settling back into a sneer. “You can never hit those fuckers too hard.”
To emphasize the point, he turned, batted aside the grasping hands of a dead Latina, and drove a punch into its exposed shoulder. The bones sagged and the arm flopped to its side. He crippled the other arm and threw an uppercut that sent a swarm of teeth into the air. His last punch slammed into the ex’s forehead and caved in the skull.
Taylor lifted his brass-knuckled fists to the sky and howled. St. George sighed and watched the firefighters stumble away. “Make sure everyone’s falling back,” he told Taylor, then pushed himself back into the air.
He spotted a small pack of exes shambling toward a last group of firefighters and landed in front of them. He spread his arms wide and walked. A teenaged girl with a trio of arrows in her torso bumped into his shoulder, snapped her teeth at his face, and then staggered back as he kept walking forward. A man in a scorched Yummy Donuts uniform was next, then a brown and black figure that had been burned beyond any kind of identification. St. George kept walking and gathered an elderly woman with an empty eye socket, a half-charred little boy in a baseball shirt, and another blackened corpse. They all stumbled and tripped as he pushed them back, then collapsed in a heap on top of each other. He bent down and twisted their skulls around one by one, listening to the click of teeth and the crack of spinal bones.
Another call for a drop. He flew back to the Big Wall and grabbed a tall blue recycling bin swollen with over fifty gallons of water. He caught a glimpse of Madelyn switching her hose to a new barrel before he soared back into the smoke.
He remembered Sally T’s instructions and poured his water over a burning grapefruit tree away from the burning homes. The branches spat and hissed and sputtered, but the flames vanished. So did some on the ground around the tree.
His next drop went onto the roof of one of the salvageable houses, and the third went down its chimney to soak the first floor. The next barrel traced a thick line across the fire’s west flank and knocked down two exes, extinguishing one of them. He carried each of the last two barrels back over to the south side of the fire, soaking trees and rooftops and lawns.
A yell echoed behind him, the all-clear. Everyone was back inside the Wall with what sounded like zero casualties. St. George landed and stamped out a few small embers before they could grow on a dry patch of grass. He backhanded an ex as it reached for him. Its jaw crumbled against his knuckles, the skull collapsed, and the dead thing crumbled to the ground.
The flames didn’t light up as much of the night as they had half an hour ago. The air didn’t smell quite as smoky. He didn’t know much about fighting fires, but it seemed like they might have this one under control. “Contained”—that’s how Sally T would put it.
He hoped contained was going to be enough, but he was pretty sure it was too late.
St. George launched himself back into the air.
“IT WAS A disaster,” George told me. “A complete disaster.”
The fourth-floor room we stood in had once been an executive boardroom. I planned to use it as a base of operations. It was centrally located within the film studio, had an existing fiber-optic net within the walls, and had access to several of the physical resources I would need.
Ambient light from outside lit the room, although at seventeen minutes before sundown this created several shadows as well. A map of the film studio and a larger one of the surrounding area were spread out across the boardroom’s oversized table, an ostentatious slab of marble. I also had blueprints and power schematics for several of the major buildings on the lot. I had been assigning new functions to them when George arrived to give a report on the day’s rescue activities and began to pace along the opposite side of the table.
George had abandoned several elements of his uniform and taken to wearing a pair of cargo pants over the remaining bodysuit. I believe without the cape and mask, he felt a degree of self-consciousness wearing only such a tight article of clothing. He had ceased use of his chosen code name, the Mighty Dragon, and no longer made any effort to hide his civilian identity. The survivors of Los Angeles seemed to respect him even more for this gesture.
I have no plans to reveal my identity. Stealth is the only name I am known by within the Mount. I see no need for this to change.
The front of his bodysuit had been destroyed. Judging from the heat and tearing damage at the edges of the area, I believed he had been hit with a 12-gauge at a distance of less than ten feet. He rubbed his exposed chest for the second time since entering my office. The skin was unmarked. Not even a bruise. The light amount of chest hair he had was unsinged.
George’s tone and posture told me this was a personal crisis rather than one that required any action on my part. He needed to unburden himself of this supposed “disaster.”
I had hoped to finish drawing up plans for a field hospital in one of the other office buildings and also a rudimentary power grid using the distribution systems left behind by various film productions. In the long term, however, it would be counterproductive to interrupt him.
He paced back and forth across from me. “We were going through Hancock Park, picking up survivors,” he said. “We’d found three groups. Sixteen people altogether. And then Carter, one of the Marines, she spotted somebody watching us from a third-floor apartment.
“I jumped up to the balcony,” said George. “Grabbed hold of the railing. This woman in a sundress was right there, inside the apartment. She looked like she hadn’t eaten well in a while. Or showered much. She had a shotgun aimed right at me. I was still getting my balance on the edge, and she started ranting about thieves and rapists and murderers.” He stopped to organize his thoughts.
I nodded once in understanding, accenting the movement enough that it would stand out in the low light beneath my hood. “We have encountered such attitudes from other survivors.”
“She was the worst I’ve seen,” he said. “She was almost screaming at me.
I think she did it a lot, because her cat was barely reacting.” He sighed. “I put my hands up, tried to calm her down, and she shot me. Knocked me away from the railing and I fell to the ground.”
George paused and rubbed his chest again. “When I jumped back up,” he said, “she was just lying there. Half the shotgun pellets had bounced back off my ribs. She’d been hit in the face and throat. I didn’t even have time to pick her up and get her to the truck. She bled out on the floor of her apartment.” He grabbed a handful of hair in each hand. “She never had a chance.”
I allowed him thirty seconds of silence.
“From what you have said,” I told him, “your mission was a near-perfect success. Sixteen survivors rescued and brought to the Mount without injuries.”
“Someone died. Right in front of me. Because of me.”
“Millions have died, George. We were not able to save them. In the days to come, there will be many more we will not be able to save.”
His lips pressed into a thin line. “But that’s the whole point of this. To save everyone we can.”
“That is our stated goal, yes,” I said, “but the reality is the ex-virus outbreak will continue to claim victims, either directly or indirectly.”
“Then why are we even doing this? What’s the point?”
“As you said, to save everyone we can. Did you rescue the cat?”
“What?”
For many years it bothered me when others could not follow or keep up with my thought processes. Now I accepted it. One of the rare lessons my father had taught me that did not involve violence. The majority of people do not think like us. “The woman had a cat,” I explained to George. “Did you rescue it?”
He nodded. “Yeah, of course. I wasn’t going to leave it there to starve.”
“Good.”
He stared at me. “Are you a cat person?”
George continues to probe for information about my true identity. At first I mistook this for an indicator of romantic interest. However, while his physical attraction to me is clear, I have since realized these attempts represent an attempt to find common ground. George worries he cannot trust someone about whom he knows nothing or with whom he has little in common.
His tactics are, by traditional standards, somewhat clever. George is much smarter than even he believes. He does not ask where I lived in the city. He talks about nighttime noise levels and invites me to share my own recollections of such issues. He laments the lack of heavy clothing in his wardrobe and asks if I am prepared for a winter without heat—potentially a hint into my origins. He sometimes recalls favorite meals from establishments he frequented and asks if there are any regular dishes I miss, hoping I will name a restaurant near my former home. Rather than ask for facts he knows I will not provide, he seeks the pattern around the facts.
I have considered telling him he is wasting his time. His attempts are quite transparent, and I will not reveal information regarding my identity. It is also clear while he may not trust me to levels that satisfy him, he trusts me enough to carry out my instructions with a minimum of explanation or enticement.
“I see an unprecedented rodent problem in the near future,” I told him, “with potential associated health and morale issues. Having cats within the walls of the Mount will decrease those factors and benefit the surviving population long-term.”
He stopped most of his sigh.
I turned my attention back to the blueprints of the Zukor Building, located on the opposite side of the parking lot from our current location. It was central enough that it could work as a hospital. “Is there anything else?”
“I guess not.”
“You should replace your uniform. Damaged like this, it creates an image of vulnerability you do not want to project at this time.”
In my peripheral vision, he looked down at his exposed chest. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I should.”
“If you have renounced your identity as the Dragon, it may be time to consider functionality over form. I suggest a more durable material. Perhaps leather or Kevlar.”
“It’ll probably deal with the draft, too.”
I raised my head to look at his bare chest. “I was not aware you felt such minor differences in temperature.”
“I don’t,” he said. “It was just a, an attempt at a joke. To lighten the mood.”
His eyes stayed on the damaged uniform, but it was clear I was the focus of his attention. Six seconds passed. He waited for some final form of consolation or advice.
A number of ways I could bring the encounter to a close passed through my mind. I discounted several that would have an adverse effect on our dealings in the future. I also discarded several that would take too long.
I stood straight and turned to him. “Twenty-two days ago, on the roof of Hollywood and Highland, you told me you wished to be a symbol of hope. This is the challenge of hope versus fear, George. Fear is a simple, base emotion felt by every mammal, one that requires no rational thought, no logic. It is an easy thing to rule by fear.”
He looked up. “I don’t want us to be ruling by—”
“It is also,” I continued, “an easy thing to be ruled by it. Making decisions based on fear requires no effort. In challenging times, many people prefer such a path. It is easier to be scared of a situation than to make the effort to understand it. Fear provides an excuse to avoid responsibility. Even before the ex-virus, there were many people throughout history who took advantage of this tendency.”
His eyes probed my mask as he tried to guess my expression. “There’s a lot to be scared of out there.”
“There is much to be aware of and cautious of, yes,” I said, “but this woman had given in to fear. She had no interest in being rescued. She had found what she thought was a safe, comfortable place to exist with her fear. You challenged that. You put her in a position of having a choice. Of being able to make decisions.”
“But she died for nothing,” he said. “Even if she thought I was there to rob her, she had a couple cans of cat food and some ramen. She would’ve made it another two weeks, tops, without us.”
I lowered my head. The cloak shifted around me. “She died because she could not face the possibility of change,” I told him. “In her mind, it made more sense to shoot her potential rescuer than to risk facing the world as it is without that fear. Had her attempted rescuer been anyone except you, she would have killed him or her, so it could be said you saved a life when this happened.”
He sighed. “I guess that’s something.”
“It is. And every person who hears this story today will know it.”
He straightened up and headed for the door. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to get some sleep so we can head out in the morn—”
“George.”
He turned to look at me.
“You have given us a better path,” I told him. “You can do what I cannot. What Gorgon cannot. You can inspire these people. You can show them hope is a real option. They do not need to live in fear in order to live.”
ST. GEORGE HUNG in the air and looked down at the Mount.
That name meant a couple of things now. If you were outside the Big Wall, the Mount was everything inside it. If you were inside the Wall, the Mount was their original film studio-turned-fortress, located at the center of the more-or-less square area the citizens of Los Angeles now occupied.
Neither of these definitions took into account being three hundred feet over the ground. Granted, only he and Zzzap ever saw the Mount from this angle. And sometimes Stealth.
Outside the Big Wall, Los Angeles was a ghost town. An empty shell of a city. Buildings stood deserted, many with gaping windows. Cars sat in the road where they’d been abandoned. Tall grass covered La Brea, Sunset, Highland, Western, and Hollywood Boulevard—formerly some of the busiest streets in the area. A baker’s dozen of small trees had sprouted along the Hollywood Walk of Fame. One had pushed its way up next to Godzilla’s star, right by the Hard Rock Cafe, and stoo
d over twelve feet tall. A long stretch of the Hollywood Freeway had turned into a small oasis, complete with grass, shrubs, and a rainwater pond. Nature had forced its way up through every crack and crevice.
And, of course, there were exes everywhere. Even with the hundreds—maybe even thousands—St. George had destroyed over the past five years, he knew the raw number of zombies hadn’t changed much. They lurked in buildings, stumbled down streets, staggered along freeways. Sometimes alone, sometimes in packs, always hungry for the living.
But not inside the Big Wall. Inside, things were safe. Inside, hundreds of solar cells gleamed on rooftops, scavenged from all over the city. People lived more or less normal lives. They had jobs and families and even movies on the weekend.
Inside, you could almost forget the Mount was surrounded by thousands of mindless, merciless eating machines.
Although it seemed like everything was about hunger and eating these days.
He drifted down and south. A huge black scar marked three and a half blocks beyond the Wall. Two gutted houses had collapsed in on themselves. Two others still stood with charred walls and hollow windows. One had burned to the ground and left a brick chimney standing in the ashes, flanked by a few blackened boards.
In one sense, they’d been lucky. Dozens of overgrown lawns and under-watered hedges had survived the flames. If there’d been any wind last night, half the city could’ve gone up.
In another sense, the fire had really screwed them.
A little lower and he could see Billie Carter waiting for him on the Big Wall. She stood between the South Gate and the southwest tower, right in front of the burned area. Her head tilted up from her binoculars as he descended. “I’m double-checking just to be sure,” she told him, “but it looks like we lost the whole grove and another twenty-three trees past that.”