by Peter Clines
Within thirty seconds she’d dropped as many exes. Maybe more. She spun on her heel and kicked another as its head cleared the platform. The hard hat it wore cracked under her boot.
The pistols spun in her hands, came in close to her waist, and her fingers whirled. The Glocks came back up with fresh magazines and continued to fire. Freedom knew decorated marksmen and snipers who would’ve been in awe of the woman’s accuracy.
He fired off another burst from his own weapon and saw an ex in a military helmet drop, its face an unrecognizable mess. A zombie slipped over the wall closer to the corner and flew back out a moment later. A second form followed it. The ex hit the ground hard. The second figure hovered in the air on the far side of the intersection.
St. George, the hero once known as the Mighty Dragon, was a solid six feet tall, and the muscles of his wiry body were visible even under his stitch-covered jacket. His golden brown hair gleamed in the spotlights from the Big Wall. It brushed his shoulders and matched the leather of the jacket.
Freedom felt his own shoulders relax a bit.
St. George settled in the air above the crowd of exes. Even with a quick sweep across the horde, he could pick out unique features on each of them. They’d been people once, after all. Before they’d died.
A gore-faced girl with a bright green tank top and charred-black hands. A Hasidic man whose beard was caked with blood. A dark-skinned woman with a quartet of bloody bullet holes in her chest. A little boy missing his lower jaw. A knife-thin man in a leather trench coat. About half of them wore some kind of protective helmet. One large, bald ex glared at him through a hockey mask before it gave him the finger with both hands.
He took in a deep breath, felt the tickle of mixing chemicals in the back of his throat, and sent a wave of fire washing down over the swarm. It lit up the intersection with golden light. He swung his head and washed the flames across the back line of the horde.
Half of the exes stared at the flying hero even as their hair and clothes caught fire, their teeth still clicking away. The others, the ones wearing helmets and hard hats, flinched. They moved in perfect synchronization, all turning their heads away to the right as they raised their left arms to shield their faces. A handful of them glared up at him.
St. George drifted down into the crowd, grabbed a few exes by their necks, and hurled them back away from the wall. He moved through the horde like a man weeding a garden, plucking one dead plant after another. Over a dozen of them crashed against the buildings and pavement before all of them shifted their attention to him. The horde took in a rasping breath and spoke with one voice.
“Next time, pinche,” they growled.
A shift rippled through the crowd of exes as Legion’s guidance vanished. Their expressions sagged and their teeth started clicking again. The ones closest to St. George stumbled toward him on unsteady legs.
He drifted into the air, away from the grasping hands, and back to the platform. A few more gunshots rang out, but he could see the horde was settling down. There were still a few dozen exes pawing at the wall, but without Legion controlling them it was a mindless action that would never get their feet off the ground. Climbing was too complicated for them.
“I think he’s gone,” St. George called out. Wisps of smoke drifted out of his mouth and nose, like an idling engine. His boots thudded against the platform across from Stealth. “Everyone okay here?”
Makana shook his head. “We lost Daniel.”
Another guard raised a trembling hand. There was blood on his fingers. “I … I think I got bit,” he said.
The thin woman eyed the man and raised her rifle a few inches. “You think?”
“It was all so fast,” he said, his eyes locked on the rifle’s muzzle. “I mighta just cut myself on something. That’s probably all it is.”
“Get over to the hospital,” said St. George. “Get checked out. Cerberus, can you go with him?”
The battlesuit tipped its head and focused on the man. He walked down a wooden staircase and headed down the street. Cerberus followed a few steps behind him.
“Thanks for the assist, boss,” Makana said to St. George, and then added a nod to Freedom that made his dreadlocks swing. “Bosses. Didn’t think he’d have so many bodies ready to move that fast.”
Captain Freedom gazed down at the exes. “Helmets,” he said. “This is new.”
Stealth looked at the guards, then turned her head to Freedom. “How much ammunition was expended in this assault?”
“Most of it,” said Makana. He glanced at the other guards. They added shrugs and nods. “I’ve only got one mag left after this.”
“I’m almost out,” said the thin woman.
“I think I’ve got a couple rounds,” said another man, “and two clips after that.”
Twin streamers of smoke curled up and out of St. George’s nostrils. “I guess we got here just in time. Let’s get a resupply,” he said, “and some relief guards. Captain, can you stay with them until everything gets here?”
“Of course, sir,” said the giant officer.
“And somebody find out if Daniel has … had a family.”
“I think he had a boyfriend,” said Makana.
St. George nodded. “Let’s get word to him then.”
“It is unlikely Legion will make another attempt tonight,” said Stealth. She holstered her weapons and focused on the crowd of exes below. “His demonstrated impatience and the mix of headgear imply this was the majority of his scavenged armor, possibly all of it.”
St. George raised a skeptical brow. “Are you sure?”
“He has never returned in less than five hours once he has been driven back. It is more likely he may strike at another part of the Wall, but I would say the odds are against that as well.”
“So, is this what things are going to be like now?” asked the thin woman. “Because this sucked.”
Stealth’s expression was hidden beneath the blank fabric of her mask. Her body language was another story. St. George had known her long enough to see the subtle signs.
“Okay,” he said, “if you’ve got this in hand, Captain, we’ll leave you guys to it and get back to our patrol.”
Freedom gave them a quick salute. St. George held out his hand and Stealth grabbed his wrist without a word. He focused on a spot between his shoulder blades and rose into the air. He lifted the woman and they shot into the sky, her cloak billowing behind them.
St. George sailed up to the top of the half-finished building at this corner of the Big Wall. If the world hadn’t ended it would’ve been an office building or apartments by now. Instead, it was a framework of rusted girders and sheetrock. It gave them a good view of the north and west sides of the Wall.
Stealth lowered herself onto one of the beams. She held onto his hand even though her balance was perfect. She had a firm grip. St. George hung in the air near her, his fingers threaded between hers. “You’ve been expecting something like this, haven’t you?”
“I have,” she said. “It was only a matter of time before Legion realized he could use the resources of the city to outfit the exes. This will complicate matters for a time. Our ammunition stores are strained as it is.”
“But you’ve already planned for it?”
“I have.”
“So what’s bothering you?”
“Before the assault, Captain Freedom detained three teenagers attempting to steal a car.”
“So?”
“Petty crime has risen almost ten percent in the past few months since the Big Wall was completed. It is a distraction we do not need now that Legion has discovered these new assets.”
“Yeah, but it’s a good sign, in a way,” said St. George. “If we’re getting big enough to start having a crime problem, it means we’ve got a pretty sizable population. Things are getting better overall.”
All around the Big Wall, and as far as they could see, figures shuffled and stumbled in the streets. The sound of their teeth popped and cracked
in the night like a hundred distant bonfires. Even at night, St. George could see thousands of them, and he knew there were thousands more out there in the darkness. Stealth said there were just over five million exes in Los Angeles. In three years he hadn’t seen anything to make him think otherwise.
At the best, every one of them was a mindless machine with no purpose past killing and feeding. A pack of ten could strip a person to bones in less than half an hour. At the worst, the undead were harboring Legion.
Stealth shook her head inside her hood. “As always,” she said, “you are an optimist.”
“Well, what is it they say?” St. George shrugged. “ ‘Better the devil you know …’ ”
THE ARROW ON my GPS was starting to turn, but the road looked like it was turning with it. We’d been driving for about an hour at that point. Neither of us said much. We didn’t speak the same language, so it wasn’t that surprising.
My driver, Nikita (named after Khrushchev, his manager had told me), was an inch taller than me, maybe twice as wide, and with a permanent scowl cutting across his stubble. Picture every stereotypical Russian you’ve ever seen. The reason it’s the stereotype is because so many of them look like that. Nikita’s one of them. The scent of cloves hung on him like cologne, but he had the good manners not to light one up while we were in the car together.
To be honest, we tried to talk a couple times. I think that’s just human nature. We’ve got another person next to us, so we feel obligated to say something. Every now and then I’d ask about our progress or part of the landscape or offer to show him the GPS so he could get his bearings. Once I tried asking about the weather. “It’s a lot warmer than I expected,” I said. “Is it always this warm here in the summer or is this a global warming thing?”
Half the time he’d ignore me. The other half he’d turn and reply with a few sentences. Or maybe one sentence with some really long words. I can’t even speak a few words of Russian on my own, so it was hard to tell. Once, he delivered a long, impassioned speech about … something. Maybe a tree we passed that he grew up with or something. I have no idea.
It wouldn’t’ve taken much to speak Russian, granted. There’s a tattoo on my Adam’s apple for just that sort of thing, and one behind each earlobe. But a lot of the stuff we were carrying was very sensitive and I couldn’t risk it getting tainted by other energies.
So, anyway, when I’d tried to hire a guide, I hadn’t thought to ask for someone who spoke English. It’d been hard enough explaining the location I wanted to the guy at the agency.
“Here,” I told him, pointing at the map. “That’s where I want to go.”
The tour guide manager was a skinny man who reeked of cigarettes. His fingers were yellow. I got the sense they’d been a regular part of his diet for years. He looked at the map spread across the counter. “Cherepanovo?”
I shook my head and tapped the map again.
“Iskitim?” He shook his head. “Bad place for tourists.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head again. I double-checked my notes—as if I didn’t have the exact location memorized—grabbed a pencil, and made a small X on the map. “There,” I told him. “I want to go right there.”
He frowned at the mark on his map, then peered at it. “Sixty kilometers away,” he said. “Nothing out there but a few poselok—little villages.”
“I just need to be there in two and a half hours,” I told him. “Me and my equipment.” I gestured at the bags and pulled a few bills from my wallet. This trip was costing me three months’ pay, but if I pulled this off, it’d be worth it.
Granted, if I messed it up, there was a solid chance I was going to be very dead. Along with everyone in a forty-mile radius or so. Give or take a mile.
He shrugged, took the money, and picked up the phone. After a quick conversation in Russian he told me my driver would be here in twenty minutes. He explained Nikita’s name as we killed time.
I expected to get two or three people and a truck. Instead I got Nikita. The man was an ox. He threw one bag onto his back and picked up one under each arm. He and the manager tossed a few quick words back and forth and then he marched over to a battered BMW sedan. He fit all three bags in the big trunk—you can’t help but think of the Russian Mafia when you see a trunk that big—and waved me to the passenger side of the car.
For almost an hour now we’d been driving along a paved road that could’ve been in Kansas or Oklahoma or some flyover, grain-belt state. You hear Siberia and you picture some nightmare arctic wasteland, but it’s kind of beautiful. If you’re into that sort of thing.
The arrow on the GPS began to swing again, but this time the road didn’t swing with it. I looked ahead but didn’t see any turnoffs. Nikita drove along at a steady fifty miles an hour or so. The arrow was pointing at the steering wheel, then him, and then it was aimed at the backseat.
“Stop,” I told him. “We missed it.”
He grunted, shook his head, and gestured at the road ahead of us.
“No,” I said, shaking my own head. “Back there.” I held up the GPS.
Nikita slowed the car to look at the little digital arrow, then glanced back over his shoulder. He sighed and turned the car around in a wide three-point turn.
We backtracked three-quarters of a mile until the arrow was perpendicular to the road. He watched it with me and brought the car to a smooth stop. I hopped out.
It looked like we were on the edge of someone’s field, one that’d grown wild for a season or two. Just flat land for miles, broken by a couple small clumps of trees. For some reason I’d imagined this spot would be in some remote forest or something. Maybe a mountain plateau.
We were still half a mile away. I looked back at Nikita. He’d opened his door and looked over the car at me. “Come on,” I told him. I pointed at the trunk. “Bring the bags.”
He threw his hands up and looked around with a bewildered expression. He threw a few words at me and gestured at the road again.
I pointed out at the field with the GPS and tapped my watch. “The bags,” I said again.
He sighed, slammed his door shut, and stomped over to the trunk.
I stumbled out into the field. The grass was just high and thick enough that I couldn’t see the ground, so it was awkward. I made myself go slow. It would suck to get this close, after all this time, and break my ankle a few hundred yards from the site.
Nikita cleared his throat behind me. “We drive out here to see field?”
I stopped and looked back at him. “You can speak English?”
He snorted. “Of course I speak English. You think this is United States where people speak only one language? Russians much smarter.”
“We were in the car for an hour.”
“You very boring,” he told me. “Talk of trees and weather. Is women-talk.” He shook his head.
The GPS led us past the first cluster of trees, across a muddy line that might be a stream at a different part of the year, and over a small stretch of rock. Eleven minutes after we left the car, it beeped three times. A small target flashed on its screen. I walked in a circle, checking every direction. The GPS beeped again. The target kept flashing.
This was it.
I gestured for Nikita to set the bags down and kept circling, stomping the grass down. I needed room to work. Forty-six minutes till showtime. A little tighter than I’d hoped, but still more than I needed.
I pulled open the first bag. It had the three bracket sections, each one wrapped in a padded blanket to keep them safe. I double-checked the GPS one last time and started setting them up.
The first bracket popped open and I spread the legs. They were made out of iron. Weaker and heavier than steel, but they weren’t conductive. At least, not conductive for what I was dealing with. I set the GPS down on the ground, shuffled it a few inches to the left, and then centered the bracket’s arms over it. Once I felt comfortable with it I unwrapped the second blanket and started to unfold its legs.
Nikolai stood by the bags and cleared his throat again. “This is … how you say …” He dug around in his head for words. “This is science equipments?”
I locked the last leg into place. “Well,” I told him, “it’s a kind of science.”
“You could not do this in Novosibirsk?”
“Not really,” I said. “It’s not just about the path of the Moon. It’s also about what that path crosses. Have you ever heard of ley lines?”
“Lay lines?” Nikita echoed. “Is like … sex lines, yes? Pickup lines.” He nodded.
I laughed and shook my head. “Different type of ley,” I said. “The popular interpretations are all bullshit, of course. They’re just an excuse for ‘witches’ and ‘druids’ to dance around in a field with their junk hanging out. But the general idea has some truth behind it.”
I adjusted the legs and set the bracket in place across from the first one. “The Earth’s just a big magnet, and there are lines of electromagnetic force circling the whole planet like a spiderweb. It’s easier to work with the lines than against them. Spots where two lines intersect are very potent if you want to harness some of that energy.”
Nikita nodded and tapped a clove cigarette out of his pack. I could tell I’d lost him and he was just feigning interest. He fumbled in his pocket for his lighter. I kept talking. It’s not like he’d believe me, even if he understood everything I was saying.
“Now, if you can find one of those intersections,” I told him, “and if it happens to be the site of another big cosmological event, you can work some serious mojo. Especially if you’re knowledgeable about such things. Which I happen to be.”
He nodded again and blew out a cloud of smoke. “Right,” he said. “Cosmic event.” He glanced at his watch.
I reached for the third bracket. “To be honest, I half expected to find another dozen or so folks out here, all fighting for the spot. This really is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Although some of those guys are on their second or third lifetime at this point.”