by Peter Clines
She’d also moved into another room, hidden away behind a low-profile door, which she used as a spartan living quarters. He knew it was the only place she ever took her mask off. He’d never seen the room, which meant odds were no one else had, either.
“We’re heading out in a few minutes,” he said. The conference room door drifted shut behind him. “I know you’re here. Are you behind me?”
“No.” The shadows rippled between two of the windows. The glare seeping around the blinds had hidden her right in front of him. She stepped forward. “Are you positive you wish to include a member of the Seventeens in your scavenging party?”
“News travels fast.”
She rolled her shoulders and the cloak folded back away from her body. “It should not surprise you that I know such things,” she said. “Please answer the question.”
“Well, first off,” he said, “there aren’t any Seventeens in the Mount. Anyone here gave up their gang affiliation months ago. Which means they’re just people.”
“Very well.”
“And despite that, as was just pointed out to me, we’ve all been hesitant about giving these folks any trust or responsibility.”
“Trust must be earned.”
“True,” he agreed, “but if they’re going to earn it they need a chance. So I think we need to start giving them chances.” He shrugged his own shoulders. “Worst case, a bunch of people are proven right and we know some folks can’t be trusted with a rifle. Best case, we’ve got more guards and more scavengers.”
She gave a nod inside her hood. “Your logic is sound. Who will you take?”
“I tossed out a few names but I left it up to Billie Carter.”
“One of your suggestions was Fernando Gomez. I would advise against him.”
St. George glanced at the monitors. “Have you started hiding microphones or are you that good at lip reading?”
“Lip reading,” she said, “although I could have deduced he would seem like a logical choice to you.”
“And he isn’t because…?”
“He is the highest-ranked former Seventeen living here in the Mount. If your goal is to unify the two communities, you should not make your first pick the leader of one. Make it clear the person you choose is the most competent from the pool of potential candidates, regardless of their former command structure.”
“And if he is the most competent?”
“Gomez once attempted to fight Gorgon while wearing a welding mask and using the name Painkiller. If he is the most competent they have to offer, this entire discussion is moot.”
St. George smiled. For months the dead hero had been a sore spot everyone tried not to touch, even Stealth. They’d finally hit the point where they could remember him in a good light. “Two jokes in, what, six weeks,” he said. “Once you loosen up, you turn into a regular comedian, don’t you?”
“The term would be comedienne.”
“Never mind, then.”
“Are you still taking the Cahuenga Pass into the valley?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ve talked it over with Luke and Billie. It’s narrow, but it’s a lot clearer and safer than the freeway. Even if I had Cerberus with me, it’d take most of a week just to clear a path from Western to the Lankershim exit. Better to stick to the surface streets. It’ll let us check some of those little shops and restaurants up at the top of the pass, too.”
Stealth gave another nod and turned her attention to the maps and charts on the conference table. “Check in with me when you return.”
“That’s it?” He said. “No good luck wishes? No kiss?”
“I do not believe in luck, George. You know this.”
“And the kiss?”
She didn’t make a sound, but he recognized her body language.
“Okay, then,” he said. “See you when I get back.”
* * *
Roddenberry to the Melrose Gate was only a quick hop. A small crowd had formed, but St. George could pick out Cerberus looming by the gate and the leather-clad scavengers around Road Warrior as he drifted to the ground.
Road Warrior was a twenty-four foot truck that had been used for hauling equipment out to filming locations back when the Mount was in the movie business. The scavengers had chopped the roof and most of the walls off of the box and built a new frame inside it, making the vehicle into a gigantic pick-up. The truck had two large reserve gas tanks, a winch, and a wedge-like steel prow which had served as a battering ram more than a few times. There were bench seats for eight people in the back with plenty of standing room, and a steel platform on the cab’s roof could hold two or three more.
Billie and Jarvis had a small handcart covered with shimmering piles of metal they were handing out to each of the scavengers. Lady Bee was there, along with Lee and Paul. He could see Ilya, Lynne, and a few other regulars in the back of the truck. Luke Reid sat on the hood of the truck. St. George saw Hector de la Vega standing a few feet away from the main group. He made a point of locking eyes with the tattooed man and giving him a nod.
They threw rough salutes to the hero. Most of them were shaking out the chainmail armor and checking sizes against themselves. None of them looked pleased.
“Trade ‘em if you have to,” said Billie. “They’re sort of sized. Let’s get everyone as close as we can.”
“Did we get the sleeves?” St. George asked Jarvis.
The salt-and-pepper man shook his head. “No go, chief,” he said. “He says at best he’d need another day.”
St. George frowned and looked at Billie. She shrugged.
“I feel like I should be in Lord of the Rings or something,” said Lee.
A set of chainmail armor hit the pavement like a bag of pennies. “This stuff sucks, boss,” said Paul.
Lady Bee nodded in agreement. She’d gotten the nickname from her striped hair. “None of it fits right and it weighs a ton,” she said. “And I’m pretty sure I asked for a chainmail bikini.”
“I asked for Bee to get a chainmail bikini, too,” chimed Ilya. She blew him a kiss and everyone laughed.
St. George waved them all to silence. “Hey,” he said, “anyone else with bulletproof skin raise your hand.”
Lee cleared his throat and started to put up his palm. Billie cuffed him across the back of the head.
“You need to have something out there,” he continued. “It’s been five months since anyone’s been bitten, but we’ve had two close calls in the past month. If everyone kept their leathers on it wouldn’t be a problem. But it’s too damned hot and once one person pulls off their jacket we all do.”
They all glanced at each other. Everyone was in tank tops and t-shirts with their leathers piled next to them. Paul prodded the chainmail with his boot. “Is this our only choice?”
“Think of it like a shark suit,” said Jarvis. “They can still bite y’all, they just can’t break the skin. And it’s a lot cooler.”
“Except it weighs twenty pounds so we’ll just get hot that way,” muttered Lynne.
“Chain mail bikini would weigh a lot less,” said Bee. “I’m just saying.”
“Shit looks gay.” They all glanced back at Hector. He scratched his neck by the razor-stubble that was his hairline. “I ain’t wearin’ it.”
Billie’s nostrils flared and St. George set a hand on her shoulder as she went to step forward. “It’s armor, people,” he said. “It’s not the greatest solution, but it’s what we’ve got. If we find something better, or it starts getting cool again, it’s gone. But for now you wear it so you can all come home at the end of the day and brag about killing famous exes.”
There were a few mutters. Lee worked his arm into one of the sleeves and flexed a few times. It made a metallic, rustling noise. Lady Bee raised her hand.
The hero tipped his head to her. “What’s up, Bee?”
“Does this mean I’m not getting the chainmail bikini?”
“Give it up.”
“I like my jokes like I like my
men,” she said with a wink. “Ridden to death.”
Jarvis dropped the last empty box on the cart. “Who didn’t get any?”
Ilya raised a hand. So did a scruffy redheaded kid and a rail-thin older woman.
St. George sighed and made a decision. “You two are out for today,” he said. “We should have enough next time we go out.”
“They can have mine,” called Hector.
“Ilya, can I trust you to keep your leathers on?”
The dark-haired man gave a sage nod. “You got it, boss.”
“Hey, I’ll keep mine on, too,” said the thin woman.
St. George shook his head. “Sorry. Ilya’s probably the only person I trust to sweat it out.” He looked at the group. “Everybody else, let’s get ready to move out.”
Luke stood up on the hood of Road Warrior and swung himself through the cab’s window. Billie slapped her hands together. “You heard the man,” she bellowed. “Armor up, gear up, load up.” She pointed a stern finger at Hector. “You, too, de la Vega, or its back to the mushroom farm.”
St. George walked towards the tall archway and the sound of chattering teeth to stand next to Cerberus. The titan was staring out at Melrose Avenue. The gates were mobbed with exes, as always. Since last fall’s battle with the Seventeens, it felt like there were always a few more than there had been before.
Two years in and most people still said exes rather than zombies. Thinking of them as ex-humans made it easier somehow. They reached between the bars and flailed at the two heroes with slow, clumsy limbs. Their eyes were pale and cloudy. St. George knew from experience they were dry to the touch. All their flesh was chalky gray, colored with dark purple bruises where blood pooled up beneath the skin.
Most of the exes at the gate carried some injury that would’ve been fatal if they were still alive. Several of them had gunshot wounds. More than a few were missing fingers or hands. A dead woman close to the hinge had scraped two ruts in her forehead, right down to the bone, swaying back and forth against the gate. Another one was charred to the point it was featureless. An elderly woman in a bathrobe was missing both eyes. A few bodies back, away from the gate, the hero saw a male ex with a samurai sword through its chest.
Here and there, though, were a few of the worse ones. The ones who still looked human. A little boy with dark hair, a Pikachu shirt, and chalky eyes. An older man with a beard who could’ve just spilled a few drops of wine on his shirt. A well-curved blonde with alabaster skin and full lips. Being in the plastic surgery capital of the world made for some very well-preserved dead people.
All of them worked their jaws up and down, snapping teeth together again and again. The chattering never let up. A few of them had turned their mouths into a mess of gore and shattered enamel, but kept clicking the jagged stumps against each other.
Cerberus stared past all of them. It was easy enough for her to look right over the mob of exes to the bone-white cross on the other side of the intersection. It stood as tall as the battlesuit and was marked with three bold words, each carved into the wood and painted black.
NIKOLAI BARTAMIAN
GORGON
They’d salvaged what parts of his uniform they could. The body armor. The duster. The goggles. What was left of him, what hadn’t been chewed apart, they burned. They’d found his last requests sitting out in his grungy apartment.
“This was a lot easier when I used to go out with you,” she said.
St. George glanced up at the armored head. “You never liked doing it.”
“Never said I did. I just said it used to be easier.” Cerberus shrugged her massive shoulders and looked away from the cross. “Let’s get it over with.”
A few of the guards pulled the additional support legs from the bars. Two others, Derek and Makana, flexed their hands inside heavy gloves and stood ready to grab the steel pipe that rested across the two halves of the gate. The exes reached for them, and each man batted dead fingers away.
St. George glanced back at Road Warrior . The truck’s engine idled and Luke flashed the headlights at him. The hero gave the driver a thumbs up and shot into the air.
He sailed up and over the tall arch of the gateway. He kicked a few exes as he landed in the wide intersection and they pinwheeled away, knocking down others as they went. The hungry dead turned toward him and stumbled away from the gate.
St. George let them get close. They tried to drag him down and broke teeth on his stone-hard skin. He batted them away with a sweep of his arm and they flew back to crash through the horde. He threw punches and felt skulls shatter under his knuckles. He grabbed a body by the shoulder and swung it around, battering even more exes to the ground. His boots came down to smash their heads. Within two minutes of landing he’d cleared two dozen of them.
The gate squeaked open behind him, and he heard the deep thump of heavy footsteps. Cerberus strode out, her three-fingered hands letting off arcs of power. Exes couldn’t feel pain, but the nerves were still there. A 200,000 volt blast along those nerves would cripple their muscles long enough to drop them. The titan swept her hubcap-sized palms across the mob by the gate and they dropped at her touch. They were struggling back to their feet when she marched over them and waved Road Warrior out behind her. The truck rolled forward and crushed exes beneath its thick dually tires. She gestured it past her and it rolled up to the intersection.
St. George leaped back over the truck, landing next to Cerberus. From the back, Jarvis tossed a long pike down to him. “Get going,” the hero said. “I’ll catch up.”
Road Warrior revved its engines and turned onto Melrose. Some of the scavengers saluted St. George and Cerberus as they pulled out, and a few waves came from the guards walking the walls.
Behind them, the hero grabbed the pike by one end and knocked down a wide swath of exes. The armored titan slammed out a punch that went through an ex’s head and caved in a skull behind it. They cleared a path back to the gate, where the guards fended off exes with more pikes.
An opening appeared and Cerberus strode through it. The gate clanged shut behind her and Derek and Makana dropped the bar back into its brackets. St. George nodded to them through the bars, batting exes away as he did. “Everyone okay?”
“Piece of cake, boss,” said Derek.
“Cerberus?”
The titan turned and looked down at him. “Burned up about a fifth of my reserves with the stun fields, but no problems otherwise.” The armored skull shifted, and St. George knew she was looking at the cross again.
“Okay, then. See you all tonight. Watch for flares.”
A few more salutes were tossed his way and St. George flew up into the sky. The withered fingers of exes dropped away from him.
Chapter 3
NOW
St. George caught up with Road Warrior three blocks away as they were crossing Vine. Work crews had stacked cars right down the center line of the street. The Big Wall, as people called it, was still a few months from being done, but here the cars were already three high. The rare times Danielle wasn’t in the Cerberus armor she worked with a few others to figure out how to build some kind of gate here at Melrose and Vine. For now it was a large opening two lanes across.
He soared above the big truck for a while, watching the road ahead for blockages or crowds of exes. The path was clear most of the way to Highland. They’d dragged most of the cars away to use in the Big Wall. A pair of zombies stumbled into the street at Ivar and Road Warrior plowed over them. The hero flew a block ahead and landed at a gas station where the two big streets crossed.
Highland Avenue was one of the main thoroughfares of Hollywood. There’d been a lot of fighting here during the Zombocalypse as people trying to flee choked the street with cars. They’d been attacked by either exes or other panicked people trying to escape them. The people of the Mount had come out here more than a few times on scavenging runs. At different times he and Cerberus had pushed cars out of the way or even double-stacked them in places. The way w
as clear up Highland, but it was narrow. Very narrow in some places.
St. George waited for Road Warrior to catch up, and a minute later the big truck pulled up alongside him. Luke grinned at him from the cab. “Need a ride, sailor?”
“I was hoping you were heading my way,” said the hero. “See anything?”
The driver shook his head. “Nahh, clean sailing. You taking point?”
He nodded and banged the truck’s hood. “How’s it holding up?”
“She’s a beast,” said Luke, “but she’s dependable. She’ll get us over the hill and back.” He shook his head. “You know, there was a point when I’d make this run once or twice a day without thinking about it.”
St. George smiled. “There was a time when all I worried about were muggers and car thieves.”
Luke grinned and gunned the engine. Road Warrior swung around the corner and headed north. “Donuts,” someone moaned as they passed a shop. “I still don’t know if it’s worth living in a world with no more donuts.” It got a few chuckles.
The drive up Highland was uneventful. St. George needed to push a few cars out of the way that had tumbled from where they’d been stacked, so he balled up his leather jacket and tossed it up to Lady Bee. A handful of exes stumbled up to the truck when it slowed down and the scavengers piked them through their skulls. They came across a Prius and two electric cars and St. George marked their roofs with a large white X of spray paint he could see from the air. Gas was still a limited resource.
“This blows,” said Hector in the back of the truck. “We ever going to go over five miles an hour?”
Billie clenched her jaw and her right fist.
“It’s tricky going too fast in the city,” Jarvis said before she could respond. “A year or so back there was a buncha troublemakers who left booby traps all over the place. Spike chains, deadfalls, stuff like that. Wouldn’t want to hit one of those at speed and get stuck out here, would we?”