by Peter Clines
“What?”
“You’re the super-strong guy who can fly, but I’ve been dragged by one arm for half an hour. My shoulder’s going numb.”
St. George looked around and spotted a flat area on the roof shared by an oversized pet shop and a huge lamp store. He flew over and set Max down. The sorcerer swung his arm in a circle a few times, then rolled his shoulder back and forth.
St. George turned and looked down at the street. The shadows were getting darker. “How long do you need?” he asked Max. “We probably shouldn’t stop for long, right?”
“Just a minute.” He said. He shook his hand out like a pitcher getting ready for a big game. “I’m not going to be much use if my arm doesn’t work.”
On the street below, the crowd of exes spread out. Some of them lost track of the two men on the roof and stumbled away. A dozen or so were trapped on the far side of cars, helpless until dumb luck moved them around. They kept their blank eyes on St. George and clawed at the air. Others pushed their way through the lamp store’s broken display windows. The sound of crunching glass made its way up to the roof.
“I don’t suppose there’s a chance the demon just left? Didn’t you say he might just decide you weren’t worth it?”
Max walked to the edge of the roof to stand by St. George. He rolled his shoulder again. “It never works out that way. D’you remember any fairy tales where the devil makes a deal with someone but then never bothers to follow through in the end?”
“Not off the top of my head.”
“There’s a reason for that.” He shook his head. “He’s too pissed to leave. We just need to find him before he finds …”
St. George followed Max’s gaze. Across the street was a small storefront that might have been an art gallery or some kind of showroom, something that looked more East Coast than Los Angeles. He remembered searching it years back and finding nothing useful. The huge picture window had been smashed ages ago, if the leaves on the inside floor were any sign.
Josh stood inside the gallery, watching them. He was just far enough in that they never would’ve seen him if they’d been floating down the center of the street. A deep sigh moved his chest as he locked eyes with St. George.
The man formerly known as Regenerator was tall and broad. His build was solid, despite months in a cell with no food. His white hair almost glowed in the gallery’s dim interior, while his gray eyes were just dark enough to be black in the fading light.
St. George risked looking away for a moment. There were at least sixty exes between the lamp store and the gallery. Too many to have a conversation at street level.
He glanced back. Josh hadn’t moved. He looked tired.
Max shrugged. He put his fists side by side to make a row of tattooed knuckles, then rolled them back-to-back. A few murmurs slipped from his lips as he pushed his fists forward and opened them. He whispered a few more words, closed his eyes, and swung his hands away from each other.
Twin clouds of dust and dry leaves rose up off the street. A few of the cars squealed and lurched in either direction. The exes slid across the pavement as if they were being swept aside. Some of them fell over and kept moving. One of them, a dead woman in shorts and a gory tank top, kept trying to stagger forward even as she was swept back.
Max opened his eyes and looked at the pristine path across the street. “Looks great when you do it with water,” said Max. “Very biblical.”
“You can keep them away?”
Max let his hands drop. “It’ll stay for a while. It only goes side to side, so watch your back.”
The hero stepped off the roof and sailed down to land in the center of the street. His boots tapped the pavement and he took a few steps forward. The white-haired man watched him come.
“Hey, Josh,” St. George said. He glanced over his shoulder and saw a few exes staggering inside the lamp shop. One of them, a dead woman, had already spotted him. It would take a few minutes to reach him.
Josh stepped out of the gallery. He’d found some new clothes that fit him pretty well—a pair of dark slacks with stained cuffs and a rumpled jacket with a pair of bullet holes in one shoulder. He still wore the plain white T-shirt from his imprisonment, soaked with blood from his escape. His feet were still bare, and broken glass crackled under them as he walked. “Coming to talk with me twice in one month,” he said. “I’m starting to feel special.”
“We don’t have a lot of time,” St. George said. “We need to get you back inside.”
“Back in my cell, you mean.” His hands hung at his sides, and the withered hand twitched at the mention of imprisonment. The sleeves were too short for his long arms, and the pale bite was just visible past his wrist.
“Honestly, right now it’s just important we get you back inside the Mount,” said St. George. “Even just inside the Big Wall. We can talk in there.”
Josh chuckled. “I don’t think Stealth or the others are going to be in a talking mood.”
A few feet away, an ex stumbled toward them and hit Max’s barrier. It swayed for a moment, its jaws gnashing at the air, and then tipped over backward. Its skull hit the pavement with a solid thunk and it went limp.
“I know you’re not too happy with us,” said St. George. “I know you’ve got no reason to go back, but you’ve got to believe me. We have to go and it’ll be quicker if you don’t fight.”
“And if I did fight?”
“Please,” he said, “we really don’t have time. There’s something out here looking for you, and if it finds you … it’s not going to be good for anyone.”
“So?”
St. George took another step toward the man. “Don’t give me ‘so,’ ” he said. “You still care about people, Josh. You’re still one of the good guys at heart.” He nodded at Josh’s pale and shriveled right hand. “You’ve been showing everyone how guilty you feel for years.”
Josh glanced down and shook his head. “You’re too late, George.”
“We can still work something out,” the hero insisted. “Please, just come back with us. We can make everything—”
“No,” said Josh. “You’re too late.” Blue fire sparked in his eyes. His mouth opened in a broad smile made of long, alien tusks. “It found me hours ago. We’ve been waiting for you to come to us.”
Later, as his life drew to a close, St. George would look back on the moment with perfect clarity, each and every detail seared into his mind. Josh’s clothes shredded apart and his entire body turned inside out, twisting along unnatural lines and angles. The hero could see gleaming bones and stringy muscle and glistening organs, all painted with blood. The man’s insides churned along those strange angles, and then they pulled together and were back where they belonged, hidden beneath the flesh.
Not the same flesh, though. This skin was the color of a fresh bruise and stretched drum-tight over a skeleton more than twice the size it had been a moment before.
It loomed over the hero, a dozen feet tall. Saucer-like eyes dominated its face, portholes into a world of cold fire. A crown of curling horns wrapped around its skull and became a crest down its back. Its tail whipped back and forth like an enraged snake.
“St. George,” it said. The smooth voice sounded like an English baritone imitating Josh. Despite its polish, it made his skin crawl and left a foul taste in the air. “George Bailey. The Mighty Dragon. Such a great man does not need so many names.”
Cairax Murrain reared up, stretched back its lips, and a mouth filled with a thousand tusks and needles grinned down at St. George.
“Such a delight to see you again.”
MADELYN PICKED HERSELF up off Highland Avenue and checked the sword. She’d landed on it, but it didn’t look damaged. Her right hand was torn up, though. There were a bunch of long gashes on her palm from sliding on the pavement, and she was pretty sure her middle finger and ring finger were broken. Dislocated, at least.
She walked back and kicked the bike. The rear wheel had locked up and sent her flying while she was swooping
around an ex. The master link had fallen off the chain, and now one end was wrapped around the gears and axle. She was pretty sure she could have fixed it if she had tools. And light. And the master link.
And the time. According to her two watches with glow-in-the-dark faces, she had about two hours until Max’s deadline. One hundred and ten minutes until hell on earth.
She waved at the ex, a desiccated man her dad’s age with a bald head. Bloodstains blended with the dark red flowers on its Hawaiian shirt, and ran down onto its shorts. “You can have the bike,” she said. “I didn’t like the color anyway.”
Madelyn checked the sword again and started walking south. She wanted to run, but her eyes didn’t work well in the dark and she didn’t want to risk another accident. While she walked she grabbed her two twisted fingers with her left hand. They throbbed, but they didn’t hurt as much as she knew they should. Dead nerves.
She took a deep breath out of habit more than anything else and pulled hard. There was a double pop and a flare of sharper pain. She wiggled the reset fingers. Not great, but she’d be able to use them.
It took her ten minutes of brisk walking to reach Sunset. She cut across the parking lot of a strip mall. If she remembered right, it was a mile to the northeast corner of the Big Wall. There was a pair of bodies on the far side of the lot. Two kids about her age, from their size and clothes. She glanced over her shoulder and across Highland to the gray shape of the high school. She wondered if your parents had to be in the film industry for you to go to Hollywood High School.
There were dozens of exes wandering in the street, but they were spaced out enough for her to dodge them. Madelyn set one hand on the sword and started jogging. Not a full run, but faster than walking. She was pretty sure she’d still see anything dangerous before she tripped over it.
After another ten minutes the abandoned cars started to thin out and the exes started to get a little denser. The noise of their jaws got louder. Another two blocks and she saw Amoeba Records and the Jack in the Box facing each other across the street. A few more yards and the Cinerama Dome loomed up in the night. She was a block from the Big Wall. She grabbed the sword and broke into a run.
The Corner came into view, and she could see the guards standing on top of the Wall. Three or four hundred exes clogged the intersection below them. The dead pawed at the stacked cars and reached for the men and women on the platform.
Madelyn didn’t want to risk being another face in the crowd. She stopped near the back of the horde and waved her arms. She jumped up and down a couple of times. “Hey,” she yelled to them. “Over here!”
One of the guards straightened up and peered out at her. A few flashlights lit up and searched her out. “Here,” she said. “I’ve got the sword!” She pulled it out and waved it over her head.
She heard them talk over the sound of the exes, but couldn’t make out any words. They gestured at her a few times, but it seemed like it was part of the discussion, not signals intended for her. One of them raised a walkie-talkie to his mouth. She started forward through the crowd and two of the guards leveled their rifles in her direction.
“Hey!” she snapped over the sound of chattering teeth. “It’s me, the Corpse Girl. I’m on your side.”
The discussion on the Corner platform had turned into an argument. One woman reached out and pushed the guard’s rifle away. He resisted and brought it back to settle on Madelyn. They were waving and pointing.
She looked at her watches. Just over an hour until the Hell-mouth opened or whatever was going to happen. “I have the sword,” she shouted. “Get St. George or Captain Freedom or someone on the radio.” She shoved an ex aside and took three more pronounced steps forward.
The two guards with rifles freaked out. One of them lifted his gun to his shoulder. The other fired from chest height. The shot echoed across Sunset Boulevard, drowning out the click-click-click of teeth for a moment.
The ex in front of Madelyn twitched and gore sprayed out of its shoulder. She felt a tug on her sleeve and smelled hot metal. The bullet had missed her. Barely.
She dove back and crouched low behind another ex, an obese man that stank of filth. A second shot rang out, and then shouts from the platform. She wasn’t sure if they were shouting at her or each other. The dead man stumbled toward the Wall, attracted by the noise, and she shuffled to stay hidden behind it. She glanced down and something dark dripped out of its pant leg.
It crossed her mind that maybe they wouldn’t let her back in. She’d snuck out without permission, and maybe they had firm rules about contact with exes. A good chunk of the population inside thought she was a prophet or omen or something, but there were also a lot of folks—probably including the two men shooting at her—who thought she wasn’t different from any other dead thing.
They had to let her back in! They needed the sword.
All her stuff was inside. She hadn’t brought her backpack or her heavy coat or anything. It had just been a given they’d let her back in. Honestly, she was hoping to impress St. George and convince him she could be useful to him and the other heroes. It would be cool to have someone like St. George impressed with her.
But maybe that wasn’t going to happen now. She glanced back down the dark road, back the way she’d come. There’d be a backpack somewhere in the high school. Now that she knew she didn’t have to hide, it’d be easier to scavenge for supplies.
Her diary was inside the Mount. If she didn’t find something to write on, she’d wake up tomorrow and maybe not even remember being there. Her memory had been getting better, but she didn’t think any of it would stick without the diary.
If they didn’t let her back in, she was going to die all over again.
Then the sounds from the Big Wall died down and a voice bellowed out across the intersection, thundering over the sounds of dead teeth.
“Madelyn!”
She waited a moment. She’d played enough video games and seen enough movies to know what happened to someone who poked their head out to look. The obese ex shuffled a few more feet and swayed back and forth.
“Madelyn, are you still there?!”
This time there was less echo. She recognized the voice and leaped up. “Yes!” she yelled back. “I’m here. I’ve got the sword!”
Captain Freedom stood on the platform, looming over the guards. One of the men who’d shot at her had vanished. Even from this far back she could tell the other one was sulking.
The huge officer waved her forward and she pushed her way through the swarm of exes. Closer to the Wall they were packed in tighter. She elbowed and shoved her way past the mindless dead.
When she was close enough, two of the guards tossed a rope down to her. She wrapped it around her wrist and they hauled her up to the platform. The exes clawed at her legs, and she had a moment of terror her invisibility had worn off somehow, but it was just random grasping as they tried to reach the people above them.
She stood on the platform before Freedom. He glared down at her. “You snuck out.”
“Yeah,” she said.
“You were ordered back to the hospital.”
“I went back to the hospital. And then I went out and got the sword. You can ground me later.” She flipped the sword over in her hand and held it out to him hilt first, just like in the movies.
“You did good, soldier,” he told her, “but it’s too late.”
She blinked. Her lids made a faint whisking noise across her eyes. “What do you mean?”
“St. George and Maxwell left thirty-nine minutes ago,” said a voice. Stealth stepped from behind the dead girl. “They hope to find Regenerator before the demon does.” The cloaked woman moved past Madelyn and down the staircase to street level.
“But what about the sword?” She held it up a little higher. “They need the sword to kill the demon, right?”
“Mr. Hale decided one of the swords that were already here on the lot would work well enough,” said Freedom. He gestured her down the
stairs to Vine Street. “Now it’s time for you to go back to the hospital.”
“That’s stupid,” said Madelyn. “Why’d I even go get this thing?”
“You were told not to,” Stealth said without looking back.
“No, I mean it was a total waste of time,” Madelyn said. She hiked her coat up and slid the blade through her belt again. “You’d think with all the time he had as a ghost he would’ve known there was a good enough sword here.”
Stealth stiffened up. Her fingers curled into fists, but loosened right away. The tremor flowed through her cloak like a miniature shock wave. “Captain Freedom,” she said, “we will be heading out to assist St. George in ten minutes. Make whatever preparations you see fit.”
The huge officer was a step behind her. “I’m sorry, ma’am, what was that?”
“You heard me, Captain. Zzzap?”
His voice echoed back over their radios. “What’s up?”
“We are switching to battery power. Meet me on the South Wall at Larchmont in nine minutes.”
“Got it.”
Her pace increased. Freedom found himself shifting to a slight jog to keep up with the woman. “Madelyn,” she said, “I believe we will have use of your abilities. Under no circumstances are you to hand the sword to anyone until I tell you otherwise. Guard it with your life.”
“Okay.”
“Ma’am,” said Freedom. “What’s going on?”
Stealth stopped and spun on her heel. “Maxwell’s illogical statements about magic and an afterlife distracted me from a clear line of reasoning. Once I accepted them as fact, his lie was obvious.”
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
“Maxwell claims he has been here for just under a year and a half as a spirit,” said the cloaked woman. “Long enough to say he has seen every tattoo on every resident of the Mount.”
Freedom glanced at Madelyn. “You think she’s right about the sword?
“Not the sword,” said Stealth. Her masked face turned to him inside the hood. “After eighteen months, how could he not have known Regenerator was our prisoner?”