by Peter Clines
My coat flapped in the wind as I dropped back down to street level. No time to play cat and mouse with another hero. If the fucking kid was right and there was a power vacuum in the SS, this part of LA was going to be hell on Earth by the end of the week.
LOS FELIZ WAS northeast of Hollywood proper. With the trees, brick shops, and the two-screen movie marquee, it wasn’t hard to pretend this section of the city was part of a small town somewhere.
Big Red trundled to a stop under the trees. The scavengers hopped off the truck and spread out to a practiced perimeter. The lift gate hissed down and Cerberus lumbered off onto the pavement. Lady Bee slid off the cab, landing with a clack of hard soles. She opened the jockey box under the truck and pulled out a bundle of canvas grocery bags.
“Everyone listening?” asked St. George. He nodded at Lynne. “Okay, for those who haven’t done this often, and the rest of you who’ve heard them thirty or forty times—here are the rules. Groups of three. We check in every half hour. No one goes off alone. No one does anything alone, no matter what. You see something, you tell the rest of the group. You want to go look at something, go with the rest of your group. You need to piss, I hope you like company.”
Jarvis squeezed off a round and dropped the overweight ex wandering out of the alley by the bookstore. The pallid woman fell face-first onto the sidewalk. They heard her nose snap on the pavement.
“And as Jarvis just pointed out,” St. George added with a glare, “don’t shoot unless you have to. The noise attracts them.”
The salt-and-pepper man winced and lowered his rifle.
“If you hear a shot, or shots, don’t panic. Don’t run. That just gets people hurt. One of the easiest tricks to surviving out here is to walk. Use your brains, use your walkies, find out what’s going on first. Don’t run unless you know you need to run.”
He looked at them until they all nodded their understanding.
“Okay, then. Ty, David, Billie, check those apartments up there. Mark, Bee, you take Lynne and search all the ones on this side. Andy, Jarvis, Lee, you’ve got ground-level shops. Luke and Ilya, stay with the truck. I’m going to mind this intersection here. Cerberus, that intersection up there is yours. Questions?”
“What about Barry?”
“Barry sleeps unless we need him.”
Ty twisted a pair of canvas bags into a wide rope and yanked it through his gunbelt. “How long do you want to spend here?”
“I’m hoping we can do this block in two hours. Move east, then north. It’ll let us hit most of these small shops.”
“I think there’s a Ralphs or Vons or something three blocks that way,” Lynne said, nodding.
Cerberus shook her head with a faint whine of servos. “Grocery stores were the first things people hit,” the titan said. “Assume anything with its own parking lot was looted at least a year ago.”
“I’m hoping we can get all of this street and the block to the east done today,” said St. George. “Sundown’s at seven-twelve. Half-hour drive back. We should have the truck loaded and ready by six at the latest.”
Billie slapped the tactical holster strapped to her thigh. “Let’s do it.”
Mark banged on the stairwell door three times while Lady Bee pulled the fire extinguisher from its socket. Lynne watched behind them with her rifle ready. She nodded at the gray door. “Why do you pound on them again?”
He pushed the door open with his foot and waited. The stairwell was lit by random shafts of sunlight. “You haven’t been out much, have you?”
“Not really. Too young before.”
“Noise attracts exes, like St. George said,” explained Bee. “Before you open anything—doors, closets, whatever—you make some noise. If there are any on the other side, they’ll try to walk through the door to follow the sound and you can hear them.”
Mark nodded. “Either that or they’re far enough away you’ll have time to shoot them.” He stepped into the stairwell and gave a quick glance down and up. “Looks good. Down just leads to the emergency exit.”
“Smells like shit in here,” said Lynne.
“Lots of dead stuff in these places,” said Bee.
“Exes?”
“A lot of it’s just dead.”
“Hey,” said Mark, “more looking, less talking.”
“Oh, you love it,” said Bee. She leaned back and her eyes and rifle followed the stairwell up. “What man wouldn’t want a little time alone with two sexy singles?”
“One who knows there won’t be enough time to enjoy them,” he replied. He gave her a thumbs-up and she slid to the next landing.
“Body,” she called. “It’s down.”
“Sure?”
“Yeah. Well eaten. Not enough left to move.”
He gestured Lynne up the stairs and she joined Bee on the bloodstained landing. The corpse was a withered thing, a skeleton held together with strips of human jerky. Most of the fingers and toes were missing. A few scraps of stained cloth surrounded it. Lynne couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman.
Mark shuffled up behind them and swung around the small platform.
“Next flight looks good,” Bee told him.
He gave her a nod and worked his way up to the next level. “Second floor,” he called out. He banged three times on the door.
Lynne moved up the steps. “Exes are as stupid as everyone says, right?”
“Dumb as ants.”
“So where’d the one go that ate this guy? Or woman. Whatever it was. It couldn’t get out of here, right?”
The two scavengers glanced at each other. “Score one for the new kid,” said Mark. He craned his neck over the railing and looked up and down.
“Anything?”
“Still nothing.” He slid his bulky form up the next flight, his rifle aimed at the next landing. “Ahhhhh. Got a leak.”
Bee gestured Lynne up the stairs.
Mark pointed out the dark streams crusted on the third-floor platform. He took a few more steps and peered across the landing. “Another body,” he said. His free hand went up, back down, and traced a circle in the air. “Ex. It’s down.”
Lynne stood on her toes and leaned to see the body. “You sure?”
“Yep. Looks like it tried to go up to the fourth floor and fell straight over backward. Cracked its skull wide open.”
“How?”
“Seen it before,” said Bee. “A body can fall pretty hard when it doesn’t try to stop itself.”
“Back down to two,” said Mark with a wave of his hand. “We’ve got a building to search and we’re falling behind already.”
St. George jumped up as high as he could, crashing through the dried leaves of the trees. Staying focused on the small twist between his shoulders let him go up fifty feet, just a bit higher than most of the buildings. It still wasn’t real flight, even with three years of practice.
He hung in the air for a moment, looking across the rooftops. There were a dozen solar panels the next block over. Some sun-bleached shirts and shorts on a jury-rigged clothesline. Three or four blocks away, a pair of exes pushed against the railing of a rooftop patio.
He sank back down and launched himself up again. The solar cells closest to him were cracked. They might not work.
The hero turned, his arms slicing through the air, and cast his eyes down Vermont. From up here he could see for miles, to the 10 freeway. If he focused a bit, he could see slow, staggering movement everywhere. Over five million exes in Los Angeles county, if Stealth’s estimates were correct.
As he drifted toward the ground again, he saw the figure shuffling up the street. A dark-haired young woman in jeans and a T-shirt. She had one eye, and her left arm ended at the elbow. Something twisted and turned on the blacktop behind her.
He swung his legs and slipped forward, landing in the intersection past the trees. The ex swung its eye toward him and snapped its jaws while it stumbled forward. Its right arm hung back, its wrist connected to the small thing by a colorful cor
d. St. George saw the bright red Velcro and realized what the creature was dragging.
It was a child. Two years old at the most, leashed to the thing that had been its mother. Its clothes were tatters. Most of its face was raw and bloody from being dragged across countless miles of pavement, and he could see bone and teeth everywhere. The mother would come to a brief halt between steps, the dead child would roll and twist, and then be yanked off balance again as the larger ex shuffled on.
St. George’s boots tapped against the road and the female ex raised its stumped arm to him. It strained to pull the other forward, and the dead child flailed on the ground. This close he could see the damp trail the small ex left as it was dragged.
The hero reached out and the woman closed her mouth on his fingers. It reminded him of a small puppy as it tried to bite, one without the strength to break the skin. The mindless jaws worked up and down and tried to gnaw through his stony skin. Its tongue was a coarse piece of ragged leather against his fingertips. A tooth fell out and clicked on the blacktop.
Ilya called to him from the truck. “Problem, boss?”
“No,” he said with a glance over his shoulder. He braced his free hand on the ex’s forehead and slid his digits free. Another tooth dropped. The dead woman pawed at his arm for a moment, like a kid dealing with a schoolyard bully, while he flicked the gummy saliva from his fingers. Then the heel of his palm chopped through the thing’s spine, severing its head. The body collapsed and the head tumbled away.
The small ex—the child—was on its feet. It staggered at him on stumpy legs, gnashing milk teeth in its small mouth. He couldn’t tell if it had been a little boy or a little girl. It stumbled past the headless corpse of its former mother, and its stubby fingers reached up for a hungry hug.
St. George sighed, drew his leg back, and drove his toes into the ex’s chest. Thin bones cracked under his boot as the red leash snapped and the dead child was launched into the air. It soared up past the rooftops and crashed down a dozen blocks away in a splash of bone and meat.
He looked back at the truck and scraped the tip of his boot across the pavement. Ilya stood on the lift gate, looking back at him. “I hate the little ones,” the hero said.
One of the restaurant’s big picture windows had been shattered. A body was draped over the sill. Its legs had been chewed down to gristly bones. Lee gave it two hard kicks to make sure it was dead.
The inside was messy, but not destroyed. A few chairs had been tipped, some glassware broken. Lee stomped his foot a few times and crouched to make sure nothing was hidden beneath the tables. Jarvis kept his rifle trained on the archway to the kitchen.
“Looks clear.”
Andy slung his rifle over his shoulder and dragged the window-corpse into the restaurant. One leg fell apart as it bumped over the sill, dropping a few bones outside on the sidewalk. Jarvis blinked at him. “Whatcha doing?”
“Just showing a little respect for the dead,” said Andy. “Figure it can’t hurt.” He laid the body out flat, dusted off his gloves, and crossed himself with his thin fingers.
“When you’re done, grab all those salt-and-pepper shakers,” said Lee. “And check the wait station.”
“Yeah, whatever.” Andy straightened up and grabbed the spices from the closest table.
Lee and Jarvis swung around the main counter, both rifles aimed low. Another body was sprawled in the narrow space, its face and torso eaten away. The floor was dark with old blood and old footprints. Jarvis kicked it in the foot. “Dead.”
Something gleamed deep in the space beneath the cash register. Lee batted a few boxes aside under the counter to reveal a polished wooden stock. “Holy shit!”
“What’s up?”
“Somebody wasn’t getting robbed again, that’s what I’m getting.” Lee pulled the sawed-off shotgun out and set it across the counter. He dug around and produced two boxes of shells.
“Wow,” said Andy. “Never struck me as that kind of neighborhood.”
“Apparently no one told them,” chuckled Jarvis.
Lee glanced into the kitchen. The back room was an open space, split only by a rolling chrome table with a wire shelf on it. He saw a back door and a large freezer. “You want the kitchen, I’ll play lookout?”
“You giving me the option?”
“Nope. Just being polite.”
Lee pressed his back against the arch so he could see both rooms. Jarvis slipped past, keeping low. He reached out to tap the muzzle of his rifle on a shelf and the wire chimed and rattled. His finger tapped on the trigger guard five times before he moved to the back door. It was solid, with a heavy dead bolt locked into the frame.
“We’re good,” Jarvis said. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and checked the dusty shelves.
Lee turned his head back and saw that Andy had finished with the tables and was rooting through the small cubby of the wait station. A box of sugar packets dropped into his bag, along with more shakers.
In the kitchen, Jarvis tapped a large plastic bin with his foot. “This whole thing’s flour. Still good, sealed up tight. Got an industrial-sized can of baking powder and some big spice jars, too. Haven’t checked that first-aid kit or the fire extinguisher yet.” He pointed at the steel cases mounted on the wall. “We’ve even got a cart.”
“Nice. Call it in and let’s get it out to the truck.”
Half a block behind Cerberus, Big Red rumbled to life and began inching up the street toward her. She brought all her sensors up to full and scanned the area. Looking north, east, and west, there were seven exes in range of her optics. The nearest one was three blocks away to the north, at Vermont and Franklin.
Another dead person stumbled out of an alley behind the 7-Eleven and into the street. It was just over a hundred feet away from the intersection where she stood sentry. The armor’s targeters highlighted it and zoomed in.
It was a woman. Thirty, tops, when she changed. Long, brown-blond hair, pointed face, very thin. Her shirt sagged open to reveal a black bra and a trail of blood ran down her torso from her neck, accenting her tiny breasts. Her head hung at an odd angle, probably a broken neck, but her lips were still wet from a fresh kill.
Cerberus raised an arm, lining up a phantom weapon on the ex’s skull. Despite the warning lights flashing in her visor, the armor still moved as if the massive M2 Brownings were mounted on it. It had been over a year since Stealth confiscated them, insisting the ammunition had to be saved for a real emergency.
The ex saw her move. Wiry arms creaked up, hands groping, and the shift in balance made it totter for a moment. Then its left foot shuffled forward and it staggered across the pavement.
If she still had her cannons, she could’ve turned its head into vapor. And the ex two and a half blocks north. Even the three she saw way up on top of the hill at Los Feliz, almost three-quarters of a mile away. She’d built the suit for that kind of accuracy. Five shots, five headless exes.
If she had her cannons. Like an amputee missing her limbs, her arms itched for them.
The grasping ex had covered half the ground between them. It was working its jaws and the armor’s mics picked up the click-click-click of teeth.
Without the cannons, all Cerberus had was up close and personal. She had to let the exes walk up to her, crowd her, claw at her as they tried to find a way past the armor. Even powered down, the suit was a match for undead fingers and teeth. But they’d try for hours and days and weeks because they didn’t know they couldn’t get through.
They had swarmed around her for two days that first time the power cell died. Thirty-one and a half hours in the armor as fifty exes pawed at her and groped her and stared with blind eyes. Thirty-one and a half hours before the Dragon and Zzzap found her.
The ex was less than ten feet away. Cerberus realized the woman wasn’t wearing a black bra, but a whole lingerie ensemble under her clothes. A corset or merry widow or some such thing she’d never bothered to learn the name of. Its mouth was glossy with red lip
stick.
“Someone had hopes for their last night.” The towering battlesuit coughed out a grim laugh. “Guess you didn’t get eaten the way you wanted, eh?”
She reached out and set one armored gauntlet on the ex’s shoulder. The other one came down on its blond head, the huge fingers wrapping around it. Her wrists flexed, the ex’s skull came away from its crooked neck with a sound like dry wood, and the body slumped to the ground.
Cerberus held the blond head out at arm’s length, letting the black fluid leak out of it while it snapped its jaws at her. When it stopped draining, she tossed it down the road. Her targeting software tracked every bounce, turn, and spin.
“All clear,” she called out over her radio. “Bring it around the corner.”
David pushed the apartment door open with his foot and counted to five. He stomped his foot a few times, then counted to five again. Rifle up, he led them into the third apartment. Billie was right behind him with her shotgun, and Ty brought up the rear after double-checking the hallway was clear.
They looked around the corner to the kitchen. Billie banged on the bathroom door a few times, and Ty did the same with the bedroom.
Something thudded against the bedroom door.
“Got one,” he called.
“I’m at the door,” said David.
“Got your back,” said Billie. She raised the shotgun.
Ty kicked the door hard and felt it slap the dead weight when the latch popped. He hit it again and it banged open. The ex was an older man with a Hawaiian shirt. Black pants and striped boxers gathered at its ankles. It stumbled back for a moment and then wiggled toward them.
“Oh, jeez,” Billie said, biting back a laugh. She pointed to the nightstand where a pair of dentures sat in a glass of cloudy water. “It’s toothless.”
Ty put his rifle out at arm’s length and braced the barrel against its forehead. The stocking feet shuffled out from under it and the ex tilted back to crash against the floor. As it twisted he walked over and put a round through its temple. The corpse went limp.