by Peter Clines
“You were heading for the gate,” Stealth said. “You will continue to do so. Slowly.”
* * * *
St. George slammed the Chrysler down on the demon and flattened it to the ground. The hero leaped into the air and dropped hard onto the roof. All four tires blew out and the last two windows shattered.
Beneath the car Cairax looked dazed. Most of its head and one arm stuck out beneath the passenger door, salted with broken glass. Its diagonal eyelids clicked shut a few times. The thing looking through the eyes went away and the demon’s jaws started to gnash together.
“About damn time,” said St. George.
Up and down the street he saw the shift. Thousands of exes slumped a little more, moved a little less, like a mass loss of confidence. The monster shifted under the car and reached up for him with a clumsy arm. The Chrysler groaned as the dead thing tried to push it out of the way.
The hero balanced on the swaying car and threw a glance back to the gate. “I think we’re good,” he shouted. The claw latched onto his leg and yanked him off the car. Cairax smashed St. George against the pavement, then swung him around. His head cracked against dozens of withered ankles and he was airborne again, just for a minute, before being slammed into the street again. His ears were ringing.
The demon tossed the car aside and glared down at him. A broad, thick-toed foot stomped down on the hero’s injured arm. More meat pulled away from the bones and blood spurted across the monster’s almosthoof.
Something was thumping. St. George shook his head, shook it again, and the sound became clear. The dozen or so people behind the wall were chanting.
Chanting his name.
Even Cairax seemed to notice. It looked at the half-bent gate and then back at him.
St. George, the Mighty Dragon, pushed against gravity, shot up, and threw all his strength into a single punch. Dozens of oversized teeth sprayed out across the street as the monster’s jaw shattered. A second punch crushed its ribcage and he felt the shredded muscles of his arm howl.
He threw a third, fourth, and fifth, knocking the demon back with each one. Both fists came together and he felt its sternum crack. Another thrust against gravity let him grab the leathery brow ridge in one hand and a tusk in the other. His boots braced against the monster’s chest and he twisted its head with all his strength. The skull yanked to the left— And stopped.
He could feel the muscles knotting up under the leather collar. Resisting. The saucer eyes glared at him.
It grabbed his wounded arm, squeezed the raw flesh, and flung him off. An enormous claw smashed him to his knees hard enough to crack the pavement. Exes pawed and grabbed and held him down while they gnawed at his skin.
Cairax wrapped its spidery hand around the fallen hero’s hair, bent down, and roared with glee. The severed stump of its tongue waved before his eyes and something bumped against his chin. St. George’s eyes glanced down and saw a glimpse of silver swinging back and forth from the monster’s collar.
The Sativus medallion.
The thought crossed his mind in an instant. The hero threw off the exes holding his arm. He tore the medallion away and sparks popped against the monster’s purple hide as the silver links snapped.
Cairax Murrain twitched and pointed a talon at him. Then it trembled, opened its monstrous, sagging jaw, and collapsed in on itself in a swirl of dark flames and smoke.
In the demon’s footprints stood an ex with a mop of black hair and a library of tattoos across its yellowed flesh. Pentagrams, long lines of Latin, and scores of Egyptian hieroglyphics. The heavy collar hung like a huge ring on the dead man’s neck. The naked ex staggered and closed its mouth with a solid clack, then looked down at its tiny limbs. The thing behind its eyes looked confused.
“I’d explain what just happened,” said St. George, “but I’d hate to ruin the trick for you.”
The medallion let off a few black sparks as he crushed it between his fingers. Then he stepped forward and drove his fist through the ex’s skull. It exploded like an old flowerpot and Maxwell Hale’s headless corpse dropped to the ground.
* * * *
Gorgon grabbed Rodney’s arm as the punch flew by and yanked the dead giant off his feet. A backhand slap sent the huge ex sprawling.
“Doesn’t have to be like this,” the hero yelled. He lunged forward, grabbed the oversized skull, and slammed it against the pavement. “You can still quit. Run away. Take your people and get out of here.”
The monstrous ex snarled as another one of its matchbooksized teeth dropped out. “Like that, pinche , wouldn’t you? Making me lose face again?” He rolled away, grabbed a faded Boxster, and threw it at the hero.
Gorgon leaped over the car and hammered his fists down on the other man’s shoulders, driving him to the ground. “Keep fighting and you’ll lose it all, big guy.”
Rodney pushed himself up onto his knees and chuckled. “Fight’s over,” he rumbled. “You’re dead.”
He hurled an oversized fist with enough force to crush a man. Gorgon leaped up, flipped around in midair, and found himself face-to-face with Banzai.
Her face was clean and pale. A few loose hairs wafted from her ebony braid. The dead woman looked at him with cloudy eyes and blinked twice. Her lips turned down ever so slightly as she glanced from his face to the ragged hole in her shoulder.
He stumbled. Just for a moment. “Oh, baby,” he whispered.
And then she vanished in a gray haze. Enormous fingers wrapped around Gorgon’s head and squeezed. Rodney lifted the thrashing hero into the air and the other massive hand pinned the flailing legs together.
“Sucker!” he howled with glee. “I’ve had your bitch, man. She’s dry and tight and loved every minute of it.”
Rodney twisted the hero, wrenching the hips around with a bubble-wrap sound, and let Gorgon’s body drop to the pavement.
There were screams from the wall. Cheers from the SS. The gunfire picked up on both sides.
And then thunder hammered their ears.
A dozen windows shattered in nearby buildings. One of the trucks rushing the gate shook three times before exploding. A Seventeen lifted his machete to the sky and became a red cloud from the waist up even as the ex behind him spurted fountains of dark blood and meat.
Twin paths of fire tore up exes, pavement, and everything else they crossed. Rodney caught a line across his torso and shoulder that chewed his chest apart even as it pounded him back. “Hey, death breath!”
The ground shook as Cerberus thudded out of the gates, the cannons on her arms smoking. “Want to try with someone your own size?!”
* * * *
The thunder echoed across the lot, and the unibrow man looked up from the bandage he was tying on St. George’s shredded arm. The hero made a fist around the long, broken fang they’d pried from his biceps.
“Oh yeah,” said Ilya before picking off another ex. “Definitely sounds like Judgment Day.”
Outside the gate, a ripple of movement swept across the zombies. They stumbled in mid step. Their teeth began to clack.
St. George shrugged back into his patchwork jacket. “Ahhh, hell.”
“What’s going on?”
He looked out at the dead. They were flailing at the gate, pawing with no purpose. “I think we got what we wanted. Rodney’s distracted and he’s starting to lose control.”
Billie looked out at the chattering horde. “Is that good?”
“Sort of. A few minutes ago we were surrounded by sixty thousand or so exes all obeying him.”
“And now?”
“Now we’re just surrounded by sixty thousand exes.”
Her walkie squawked and Billie’s face fell. “They need you at the main gate,” she said. “It’s bad. Derek says Stealth is missing. And Gorgon is down.”
The hero’s face hardened. “You have things here?”
“We can deal with exes,” she said with a nod. “Go kick some ass.”
St. George shot into the sky, traci
ng a high arc toward the Melrose gate.
It wasn’t until a few hours later, looking back on the moment, that Billie, Ilya, and the rest realized he hadn’t jumped.
* * * *
Cerberus stomped forward, the ground trembling with every step. She threw aside the exes mobbing the driveway. Her arms came up and the armor selected seven hundred and thirteen viable targets for her. The first pass with the M-2s tore a hundred exes into hamburger. She watched the ammo counters spin down to triple digits as the second pass destroyed two more trucks and cleared her path across the intersection.
Rodney lumbered toward the gate and the zombies came with him. They marched in perfect lockstep, heels slapping on the pavement. The Seventeens moved forward in trucks and on foot.
As one, the dead raised their arms to point at her. Bullets pinged and sparked against the armor.
“Come on, big girl,” the dead giant shouted. He pounded on his ruined chest, and countless exes mimicked him. “You wanna give me my last chance to run away or you wanna fight?”
“You had your last chance,” growled Cerberus. “You didn’t take it.”
The cannons roared again. Between the walls of the Mount and the nearby office buildings the sound itself was a weapon. The gate guards winced. Another two trucks vanished in clouds of shrapnel, and Seventeens screamed. More exes vanished in splashes of dark blood and rotted meat. Rodney staggered back as a hundred rounds punched through him like a swarm of high-caliber hornets.
The counters dropped into double digits, single, and the cannons clanged open. The silence was deafening.
Rodney stood up and coils of meat unspooled from his stomach. The intestines spilled over the ground and he reached down to tear them loose. “Someone hasn’t been paying attention,” he laughed. “Body shots don’t do nothing and we don’t get tired. Twenty minutes with your boy toy and I’m still fresh and ready to go.”
He lunged at the armor and they met eye to eye. His massive fists clanged against the armored helmet. He drove his knee up into the battlesuit’s crotch and jerked it a foot off the ground.
Cerberus brought her own knee up and heard his pelvis crack. She shoved him away and slammed her gauntlet into his ragged face.
He grabbed a gun barrel in his hands and twisted. Metal shrieked as he tore the cannon away from the battlesuit’s arm.
Inside the helmet a handful of warnings flashed. Two subsystems shut down on their own to prevent shorts.
The giant lifted the cannon over his shoulder like a club and grinned. His swing caught the battlesuit in the shoulder. The blow echoed inside the armor, rattling her teeth. Her viewscreens flared and sizzled with static.
“I’m death incarnate,” he bellowed. “I killed the Gorgon. I killed the world. And it just makes me stronger!”
“Yeah, you’re big and tough,” Cerberus said. “And you know what else?”
She slammed her fist forward with a crackle of electricity. The arcs lashed at Rodney before the impact hurled him across the street. The battlesuit left cracks in the pavement as it raced forward, knocking exes aside, and sank its fingers into the giant’s ribcage. She hefted him to his feet and a piledriver slammed into his face. Teeth sprayed across the intersection.
“You’re meat,” she roared. “I’m steel and you’re nothing but a bag of meat.”
The second punch shattered his cheekbone and one side of his face sagged like putty. She brought both fists down and his shoulder blades crumbled beneath them.
The broken giant looked up at her. “He meant something to you, eh?”
“Yes,” growled the battlesuit.
“Ahhh.” What was left of Rodney’s face split in an evil, cracked grin. “Sucks to be you.”
Cerberus grabbed his skull in her steel fingers and twisted. There was the sound of a tree trunk splitting, an ice shelf cracking, and the battlesuit tore the giant’s head loose. She gouged out the one good eye, pulled back her arm, and sent the hunk of bone and flesh hurling into the sky.
The huge, headless body toppled to the ground a dozen or so feet from Gorgon.
And then …
* * * *
Things went mad. Screams echoed across the broad intersection as the dead turned on their former allies. Exes swarmed over the Seventeens and the gangbangers vanished under scores of teeth and grasping hands. Some were caught off guard. Others went down fighting. The entrance to the Mount had shifted from assault to feeding frenzy. The exes weren’t focused or guided. They were just killing. Their teeth chattered like a tap school for the insane. A truck lurched to a halt on the cobblestone driveway and Stealth smashed the butt of her pistol across the driver’s head. She dragged him from the cab and threw him at the gate. The guards grabbed the dazed Seventeen and dragged him through the opening. A dead man with a mohawk grabbed at his legs, but the cloaked woman shattered the ex’s skull with a baton slash. One of the Seventeens’ other trucks roared to life and plowed through the mob. Gangers clawed their way into the bed. More than one was pulled back by dead fingers. An old man with white hair and bloody teeth attacked a woman with dozens of braids. A gray-skinned Latina sank her teeth into a tattooed man. The guards drove back the dead and fought the gate shut.
Bodies clogged the opening. Some were struggling to get in, others were dragging them back. Cerberus looked back at Gorgon’s body, twisted and sprawled on the pavement, and saw a Seventeen swinging his rifle like a club at everything that moved. The boy was sixteen at the most, alone, and he was close to breaking. He was surrounded by hungry dead things. Another truck turned and fled. It was all but empty. People shouted and waved and were ignored. Cerberus reached out and grabbed the boy, hefting him up onto her shoulders. He shrieked and flailed until he realized he was safe. The battlesuit took four steps toward the gate, batting exes aside like flies, and pulled another Seventeen from the mob. And then …
* * * *
St. George dropped out of the sky, leaving a trail of flames in the air behind him. He arced across the road until he was before the Melrose gate. The hero pushed down, forcing gravity to its knees and demanding it obey him.
And gravity, after a brief struggle, acknowledged his superiority.
St. George, the Mighty Dragon, hovered in midair over the intersection, floating above the mob. The tattered remains of his coat fluttered behind him. Smoke curled from his mouth and nose and wreathed his skull like a dark halo. Held out at arm’s length was the prize he’d plucked in midair.
Rodney’s head. “THIS WAR IS OVER!” His voice echoed across the street, over the chattering, and flames sparked in his mouth. He held up the severed head for everyone to see, then threw it down into the hordes. Exes staggered after the ball of flesh and bone.
“Anyone not wearing a green bandanna or scarf is welcome to take shelter inside the Mount,” he shouted. “I wish the rest of you the best of luck making it back to your compound.”
Below him, the horde of living dead continued to rip and tear and claw at the Seventeens. The clacking of teeth drowned out most of their screams. Some of them fought their way into the remaining trucks. Many more were dragged back out and torn to shreds.
Close to the wall, a bald man with a mustache smacked an ex away with a baseball bat. Then he reached up, tore the green cloth from his arm, and ran for the gate. The woman next to him did the same with the bandanna holding her dark hair.
Guards on the wall set down covering fire where they could. Dozens of Seventeens battered their way to the gate, tearing off do-rags and patches. Cerberus knocked exes left and right as she marched across the cobblestone driveway.
St. George drifted above the crowd until he reached the gate. He settled to the ground and hurled the walking dead away like dolls. A baker’s dozen of Seventeens stumbled past him and through the narrow gap of the gate.
The hero slammed his fist against one last ex, a skinny man in a filthy Santa Claus suit, and sent it hurling back. He took three steps back and the gate shut with a clang.
&nb
sp; Cerberus braced a broad foot and three-fingered hand against the struts and gave Derek a quick nod. “I’ve got it,” she said. “Go find another lock-bar.”
Stealth had over a hundred Seventeens on their knees by the guard shack, fingers laced behind their heads. Ten or twenty of them were sobbing. So were a few of the gate guards.
Katie took a few deep breaths and looked up at St. George. “Am I wrong,” she gasped, “or did we just live through that?”
St. George Kills the Mighty Dragon
THEN
The cape was tattered, but I’d gotten used to it. Having it gradually fall apart ended up working like training wheels. It was shredded but I could fly better than ever. The next time I went out I was just going to trash it. To be honest, most of my Dragon costume was ruined. Runs, pockmarks, things smeared into it that were never going to come out.
Stealth had asked to meet me at sundown on top of the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood and Highland. It was a landmark. They held the Academy Awards here. Beneath me was a huge scrolling screen that had been blank for two and a half months. Kitty-cornered across the street, a fiberglass tyrannosaurus smashed through a building facade with a clock in its mouth. I had a certain sympathy for the thing that should’ve given up and gone extinct but kept fighting.
This used to be one of the busiest intersections in the city. LA’s version of Times Square. Now it was the site of a seven-car pileup and the scorched wrecks of two National Guard Humvees. Highland was a vehicle graveyard as far as you could see in either direction. In at least a third of the cars things were clawing at the windshields. I could see another three hundred or so exes wandering between the metal corpses.
You have to kill them faster than they’re killing you. That was the lesson we’d learned too late. Every person they kill comes back on their side. If they kill one and you kill one, your numbers have gone down and theirs have stayed the same. Zombies are like credit card payments. If you keep getting rid of the minimum amount, you’ll never win.