by Peter Clines
She bowed her head. “Your deductive powers have grown considerably since we first met.”
“It’s all been your fine instruction, Mr. Holmes,” he said toasting her with a plastic bottle. He took another sip and pointed at one of the nearby remains of a tree. “D’you notice the stumps?”
She nodded. “Firewood. As Zzzap reported, they are using fires for heat, light, and food preparation. I would guess most bookstores, newsstands, and office suppliers in this area have suffered a similar fate.”
“They’ve got the country club, too, don’t they? And Century City.”
“And telephone poles. And several hundred thousand tires, I would guess.” She nodded at a row of wheel-less cars. “They would be unusable for cooking, but could still provide light and heat. Are you in love with me?”
He spit out a mouthful of water. “What?”
“You have regular sexual relations with Beatrice Strutton, but you remain emotionally obsessed with me. I believe she is aware of this as well.”
“Okay, how do you know—”
“There is nothing that goes on in the Mount I am not aware of, St. George. You know this. And you have not answered the question.”
“You’re so smart, you tell me.”
She turned her head to the exes below. “I believe you have allowed what began as a physical attraction and fascination with my superior confidence to develop into emotions you hope I will recipro—”
“I was being rhetorical, y’know.”
Stealth knelt against the edge of the roof.
“What?”
She stared down at the street below. “They are not moving.”
“Because we’re not.”
The crowd of exes stood frozen on the street. Their mouths were still. Dozens of hands hung limp at their sides. They locked eyes with the two heroes.
Her head shook inside the hood. “Not at all. Not reaching for us. Not even moving their jaws.”
The silent crowd stared up at them. White eyes. Cloudy eyes. Single eyes. Empty sockets.
“Okay,” murmured St. George. “Just when you thought the walking dead couldn’t get any creepier.”
The dead things and the heroes stared at each other for another moment. Then the exes nearest the diner trembled, and the subtle shift rippled though the crowd. Dozens of feet shuffled on the ground. Their teeth snapped together. Their arms rose up as they clutched again and again for the people they could not reach.
“Well,” he said, “that didn’t seem at all suspicious.”
She stood up from the ledge. “It is apparent something is altering the behavior of exes across the city,” she said. “Are you ready to move on? We need to reach the Seventeens’ territory at least two hours before dawn.”
He tugged the backpack over his shoulders. “We’ll be fine.”
Stealth nodded and hurled herself across the rooftop, leaping up onto the next building. St. George threw himself into the air after her.
The exes watched them go.
* * * *
Gorgon walked up Avenue C into the North-by-Northwest area. The name had started as a joke and stuck. Now the residents used it with pride.
He cast a long, fuzzy shadow in the streetlights. As it always did, the mental image of an old western flashed through his mind, the sheriff’s shadow stretching up Main Street to some gunslinger’s boots.
Near the edges of New York Street a figure waved to him from a small group. The bearded man, Richard-something. North-byNorthwest was his area. He stepped away from his group and toward Gorgon.
“What’s up?”
“Do you have a moment?”
“Sure.” The bearded man gave a faint nod and took another half-step away from the other conversation. The men kept talking, but their eyes followed the district leader and the hero. “There were a lot of rumors flying over dinner,” Richard said. He twisted the big ring he wore on his middle finger. “I was hoping you could put them to rest.”
“I guess that depends on what they are,” said the hero.
The older man nodded. “Is it true you found some exes who can talk?”
Behind his wide goggles, Gorgon rolled his eyes and gave a silent sigh. The news hadn’t taken long to get out at all. “Where did you hear that?”
“It’s been floating round since Big Red got back yesterday. One of the men said it was a talking ex that killed Tyler O’Neill.”
“Yeah, see …that’s how rumors go crazy and why you shouldn’t talk about stuff you don’t know anything about.” He swung the duster back and set his fists against his hips. The sheriff pose. “Ty was killed by the Seventeens. Regular punks using regular weapons. Doctor Connolly could confirm that if anyone bothered to ask her.”
“We tried. She and Doctor Garcetti said Stealth asked them not to discuss it.”
Gorgon closed his eyes and thought of a few choice profanities. “Well, I can. He died of a gunshot wound to the throat. He bled out in under two minutes. You can look in the back of Big Red for the stains.”
The bearded man shivered and one of the ones lurking in the background stepped forward. “But there was an ex there. I’ve heard from a couple people there was.”
Another silent swear or three. “Yes. Yes, there was. You’re …Mr. Diamond?”
“Daimint. I run the leatherworks.”
“Right, of course. Sorry.”
“So the exes can talk now? Is that new?”
“We don’t think they can all talk. Just some of them.”
“Did you say exes can talk now?” echoed a woman. She dragged her husband over with her. Another couple followed them.
“They found a talking ex last night.”
“You mean they’re intelligent?”
“If they can talk, I’d guess so.”
“Holy shit,” said a newcomer, “what if we’ve been murdering them?”
“Hey, if it’s us or them, I say—”
“PEOPLE!” Gorgon punctuated the bellow with a quick snap of his lenses. He saw half a dozen people tremble and felt the faint kick of borrowed strength. The scattered conversation vanished.
“Here are the facts, to the best of my knowledge.” He threw a victory sign up for them all to see. “We have found two exes that appear to be intelligent. That’s it. Two, out of five million here in Los Angeles alone. We’re not even sure they’re real exes. It may be a trick. All of us standing here know this has never been seen before. It’s something new we’re all trying to figure out.”
A few of them looked at him but most of them examined their feet or the pavement.
“The medical team’s going to examine our prisoner tomorrow. Once they get any answers, you know we’ll get them to you. The safety of everyone here is always the priority. There’s no point getting worked up over this, okay?”
There were a few half-hearted nods and grunts. The woman who had spoken before cleared her throat. “So there really are smart exes?”
“Yes,” he said. “And here’s something else—-neither of them tried to bite anyone. I’ve talked to the one here in the cell. So has Stealth. It just stood there and talked with us. St. George, Cerberus, a bunch of the team that was out the other day, they all talked to the one out there. No attacks.”
“St. George got shot by the one out there. I’m trying to repair his coat.” This from Daimint.
“It shot him, yeah,” agreed Gorgon. “It didn’t bite him. The two we’ve seen don’t act like smart exes, they just act like people. Unfortunately the people they’re acting like are Seventeens. So get the word out, okay? All of you.”
He let the coat swing closed and crossed his arms across his chest, just below the silver star. The all-done gunslinger pose. They took the hint and began to scatter.
“Thank you,” said Richard-something.
“No problem. Let’s try to keep this sort of thing down, okay? That’s why we’ve got district leaders. Last thing we need is for people to think there’s some army of genius exes out there
trying to kill us all.”
Eighteen
NOW
They stopped on the roof of a large house at the corner of Gregory and El Camino. St. George hid between the twin plaster chimneys while Stealth crouched in plain sight, her cloak blending into the tile shingles and shadows.
A line of tire-less cars stretched down Gregory Way, stacked two high along the southern sidewalk. A Hummer filled both levels at one point, as did a small orange U-Haul truck. A few yards apart, concrete road barriers were wedged up against the vehicles, pinning them in place. Chain link fence stretched out along the cars. Jagged spears of metal stood like trench spikes, and it took St. George a moment to recognize them as street sign posts. Large patches of green were spray painted across the wall of vehicles in two or three different shades.
Every fifty feet or so, a tall torch lit the night and spewed oily smoke. Men and boys clomped back and forth across the car roofs, weapons resting on their shoulders or slung under their arms. The two heroes watched them patrol and make small talk. Several of them sported bare arms or shaved heads. Even in the flickering light they could see green bandannas and patches on every one of them.
The crude wall reached off four or five blocks in either direction before fading into patchy darkness.
“I count twenty-three sentries patrolling the wall,” Stealth said. “Thirteen have firearms, only four of which are automatic weapons. The rest are armed with spears and clubs.”
St. George let his eyes drift off the wall and up and down the street. Dozens of stumps dotted the sidewalk and lawns where trees and bushes once stood. This had been a cozy neighborhood back in the day. He swept the road again. “There’s barely any exes here.”
Stealth’s head panned back and forth inside the hood. “I count at least forty along this street.”
“Forty’s nothing,” he said. “We’ve got twice that, minimum, at each gate every day.” St. George gestured at the Seventeens walking the wall. “People in plain sight, in a clear eye line, there should be hundreds of them swarming this place. That wall should be mobbed.”
“And yet the exes hardly seem to notice the humans.”
“Strange things are afoot at the Circle K,” he murmured.
“What?”
“Never mind. Do you hear music?”
She nodded. “We can cross there.” Her arm was out and pointing west, another long shadow in the night. “Midpoint between two torches. In another three minutes, if the guards follow the same pattern, none of them should be along that section of wall.”
He nodded and counted off the time in his head. They raced across the tiered rooftop and threw themselves into the night. Stealth grabbed a streetlight, spun once around the arm, and flipped across the street. She grabbed St. George’s waiting hand above the wall, kicked her legs, and sailed across to another rooftop.
He landed next to her, freezing in the shadow of a large dish antenna. She had spread her cloak and half-vanished into the darkness again. They watched the wall behind them. More concrete barriers lined this side, along with tables and patio chairs the guards had pulled from nearby houses.
The guards continued to pace and yawn. One stopped to light a cigarette on a torch. Another swung his arms back and forth to fight off the faint chill.
Stealth gave St. George a quick nod and headed south across the rooftops. He took a single leap and sailed after her, looking down on the deforested neighborhood as he went. Here and there they saw chimney smoke, and a few of the quasi-mansions were lit with flickering candles. Twice they stopped as torch-wielding patrols passed on the street or between buildings.
A long block later they were crouched on top of a Pavilions grocery store. Stealth gave him a quick nod, gestured out at the broad intersection, and vanished into the rooftop shadows. An ex’s head sat in the corner of the roof, left over from some earlier purge. It was shriveled from the sun and its jaw trembled up and down, still animated by the virus. The skull’s cloudy eyes stared at St. George and he rolled it away across the roof.
Olympic Boulevard was six lanes across, although the number of turn lanes and medians made it hard to be sure. The southbound road split just north of the east-west boulevard and created a complex doubleintersection with a triangular island in the middle of it. Music he didn’t recognize jangled back and forth between the buildings.
All the office buildings and stores he could see had their windows smashed out. Bullet holes filled the huge orange globe of the 76 gas station across the street, and someone had set all the prices to $6.66. There was a pile of machinery in the station’s parking lot and in the dim light it took St. George a moment to realize they were dozens of smashed stoplights.
The one exception was the large brick building south of the intersection. The entrance sank below street level and thick ivy grew wild and untrimmed from the balconies. There were silver letters under the green plants, but something about the structure said law firm to him. The building was untouched and illumination poured out of the doors and windows. It was a beacon of clarity in the flickering firelight. He could hear the low purr of generators under the music that blared through a half-dozen speakers.
Most of the upper windows along Beverly had lamps or candles flickering in them. Dozens of tall torches lit the road, each one using a set of wheel rims as a weighted base. A huge fire pit had been built on the top level of a nearby parking garage, and he counted close to fifty people gathered around the pungent tire-fire. They laughed and joked and passed bottles back and forth. Down the road behind him he could see another bonfire with its own crowd. There were a few hundred people out wandering, partying, or making half-hearted attempts at guard duty.
A large, single-story structure stood just southeast of the intersection of Olympic and Beverly Drive, right in the middle of a turn lane. A handful of guards circled it and yawned. In the shifting light of the torches, St. George could see the chain link and the supports and the slow, swaying figures packed inside.
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 sunup 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.”
Pick a Card. Any Card.
THEN
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 Nostradamus. 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, Nostradamus, all those guys—-they were like the Internet idiots who manage to get one thing right for every ninety-nine things they get wrong.