An Ex-Heroes Collection

by Peter Clines

  The shape of his head twisted to point at her. I could, he nodded, but I’d rather not.

  “Why not?”

  It feels … creepy when things burn on me.

  She tilted her head. “How so?”

  Did you ever see Carrie?

  “No.”

  The glowing wraith made a buzzing noise, and Lynne realized it was a sigh. Okay, he said, imagine what it would be like to have someone dump a few gallons of cold, rotted pig blood filled with maggots all over you.

  Her face twisted up. “That’s disgusting.”

  Yep.

  Cerberus glanced up at him. “Wuss.”

  Lynne looked between the two heroes. “Is that what exes feel like?”

  That’s what everything solid feels like when I’m like this. Exes are worse because I have to think about what they are. The glowing outline shuddered in the air. I’ll do it to save lives, don’t get me wrong. But I’d rather wait until that moment if we can.

  “Switch lines,” called out Bee. “Let’s not get tired before we have to.”

  Lynne gave them a quick nod and ran to the gate. The pikemen stepped back and handed off their weapons. She stepped forward with a new line and another score of exes twitched and dropped.

  Cerberus glanced up at the brilliant figure. “That really what it feels like?”

  No, he said. It’s actually a lot worse. I’m just not very good with words.

  The Bronson gate had been barricaded for over a year. Each side was blocked with a huge truck pressed against the gates. Another set of trucks had been backed against them and their tires slashed, creating an alley for any exes that slipped through. Stair units and ladders against the fallen vehicles let patrols stand on top and watch the crowds of exes.

  St. George dropped down out of the night sky and landed on a truck with a loud thump. He’d pulled on some heavy boots, gloves, and a leather jacket covered with stitch work and patches. He looked at the tense faces and trembling weapons. “How’s everyone doing?”

  The click-clack of countless teeth rose from outside the gate to fill the air.

  Makana gave him a thumbs-up. “We’re peachy,” he said.

  “You guys have it easy,” he said. “No pike work.”

  “Rather be spearing ’em than sitting here,” said a heavy man with short blond dreadlocks.

  The hero looked out over the Bronson entrance. The short driveway was crammed with the dead. They beat at the trucks through the gate, and the impacts shook beneath their feet. At least four hundred exes packed the area between the gate and the street. Beyond them, they mobbed the street, a crowd that spread off into the darkness in either direction.

  “Don’t give in to fear,” St. George said. A muffled cough in the back of his throat sent a few curls of smoke out of his nostrils. “If you’re scared, that’s normal. It’s been a hell of a day. But if you let fear take over, you’re as good as dead. Just remember to do your job and they can’t get in.”

  A rail-thin woman shook her head. “What about the SS?”

  “We’ll take care of them, don’t worry.”

  “But how? We can’t shoot at people. We can’t—”

  “I said,” he interrupted, “we’ll take care of them. You don’t need to worry about it.”

  “No point worrying anyway, right?” A young kid glanced up at the hero. He was sixteen at the most, and the rifle looked huge in his hands. “This is where we go down fighting.”

  St. George shook his head. “No. We don’t lose. We’re the good guys.”

  “So what? We all survive just because they can’t hurt you?”

  He sighed. “No, it isn’t that.” He gave the kid a pat on the back. “Stealth told me if we all survived tonight she’d have sex with me.”

  The kid’s eyes bugged. “No way! Seriously?!”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “But it’s a fun thought to live for, isn’t it?”

  They laughed.

  His headset crackled. “St. George?”

  “Go.”

  “Something big and purple at Van Ness. Thought you’d want to know.”

  “Damn it,” he said, scanning the street. “How’d he get by us?” He looked at the guards. “You all good here?”

  They gave him a round of thumbs-up and salutes and he threw himself into the air.

  Stealth crouched on the arch above Melrose gate with Gorgon. The exes had always been thick there, but now they grew denser by the moment. They packed the space in front of the gate and pushed back into the streets. Hordes of them staggered down Melrose and up Windsor.

  Thirty people walked the walls and stared down at the hungry mob. Some of them manned scaffolding towers. The dead pounded and clawed at the stucco.

  Another fourteen gate guards rammed pikes between the bars with a crunch of bone. They stabbed again and again, and ex after ex slumped against the gate. Their bodies slid down and vanished under the shambling, shuffling feet of the horde.

  Derek’s voice came from below. He stood on the wall at the side of the arch, his rifle held in one hand. “When do you want us to start sweeping?”

  “This is not the attack,” shouted Stealth, “just the massing of forces. Conserve your ammunition for now. Pikes only.”

  Another wave of crushed skulls echoed up to her.

  “Demon’s at Van Ness,” said Gorgon. “Not the best way for us to start, with you being wrong right at the top.”

  “Thank you for pointing that out,” she said. Her cloak draped across her shoulders and down over the edge of the archway. “Can you see any farther than four blocks under these conditions?”

  He looked around. “Not really.” His hand went to his mic. “All gates, let’s get some flares up.”

  Across the Mount small comets shot into the sky and burst into stars. They could see for blocks now as red and yellow light bathed the surrounding neighborhood. Melrose was visible for a quarter mile past either end of the walls.

  The walking dead kept coming. More and more, until the pavement vanished under a carpet of death. Thirty thousand dead eyes stared at them, and thirty thousand brittle hands clawed at the air. The exes pounded the walls, pushed at the steel fences, and rammed their arms between the gate’s curling decorations.

  In the distance they could hear engines roaring and horns blaring. The Seventeens were near.

  Gorgon rolled his head in a circle until his neck popped. “Still feeling confident?”

  “We are prepared,” said Stealth. “We know their capabilities. It will be a challenge, but we are ready for whatever they have to fight us with.”

  And then all the lights went out.

  THE FLOODLIGHTS AT North Gower flickered once and went dead.

  A cry went out but Zzzap had already brightened. His light spread across the street. No reason to worry, he told them. We’re all grown-ups. Nobody’s scared of the dark, right? Well, except Bee.

  “Fuck you,” she said with a tight smile.

  You wouldn’t survive it, beautiful.

  They all chuckled, and Cerberus gave him a nod. It was a clear night. Even without Zzzap, the waxing moon and the brilliant flares in the sky still made it easy to see. The pikes stabbed in again and dropped another handful of exes.

  The pounding on the truck got louder.

  Lynne looked up at the battlesuit. “Can you feel that?”

  “What?”

  The teenager looked around and rolled down her sleeves. “It’s getting chilly.”

  Lady Bee nodded. “Temperature’s dropping,” she agreed. “What the hell’s that about?”

  The dead pounded on the truck, louder and louder. The living could feel the vibrations on their skin.

  “They’re getting stronger,” said Cerberus.

  “No.” One of the guards shook his head. He had an ear up, listening. “It just sounds that way because they’re syncing up. They’re starting to beat in time.”

  The drumbeat on the truck became louder. The sound echoed acr
oss the Mount.

  “They’re all beating in time,” muttered Bee.

  A shiver worked its way through the crowd. Outside the gate, the chattering of dead teeth grew louder.

  “Oh, God,” a man shouted. His pike clattered to the ground. “Look at the sky!”

  Far above, all three flares snuffed out like old matches. The stars vanished one by one. An inky shadow crept across the moon, across everything.

  Inside the armor, lights flashed and power levels wavered. Frost formed on the screens. Cerberus staggered. She rerouted systems and tried to stabilize the batteries as her interior lights dimmed. “What the hell is going on?”

  Every walkie-talkie let out a low, flat hiss of static. The guards screamed and the moon vanished behind a black shroud.

  Zzzap extended his energies again and trembled as the darkness resisted. The shadows fought and forced his light back to his body. It was something he hadn’t felt in over a year, and something he thought he’d never have to feel again.

  Fucking son of a bitch, he said. It’s Midknight.

  The drumbeat of the dead echoed across the Mount like a relentless overseer on an ancient slave ship. Gorgon’s confident smirk faded. Even Stealth seemed shaken.

  Below them, the exes parted to let the trucks drive up. Over a dozen of them, all spray-painted with different shades of green. Seventeens rode the roof and hung out the windows. At the head of the parade, Mighty Joe Young—Rodney Casares—rode in the back of a National Guard truck decorated with skulls and a large neon-green 17 on the hood. They whooped and hollered and fired their guns into the sky.

  “Thank God,” muttered Gorgon. “Something I can deal with.”

  Stealth sank down against the arch. In some way Gorgon couldn’t wrap his head around, her black and gray cloak blended into the ivory material. She was ten feet away and he had trouble seeing her.

  The gigantic ex waded through the dead, his eyes locked on Gorgon the whole time. They shifted and stumbled to clear a path for him. The drumming stopped. The chattering of teeth slowed and stopped.

  “Just the man I was looking for,” bellowed the Seventeens’ leader. He stood in the intersection before the gates and flashed his tombstone grin.

  “Rodney,” called Gorgon. He crossed his arms across his chest and squared off his shoulders. Gunslinger pose. “Long time no see. Still ugly as shit.”

  “And bigger than life,” he cackled. “Fucking awesome, isn’t it? Life and death throw down in my body and I just keep getting bigger and meaner.” He flexed a swollen arm the size of a beer keg.

  Dozens and dozens of Seventeens trained their weapons on the Melrose gate.

  “Tell you what,” shouted the huge ex. He slapped his hands together and the exes shifted as one. A space opened around him, ten, twenty, thirty feet across when the dead stopped shambling out of the way. “Last chance. You come down, give yourself up, and I send everyone else away. You got my word.”

  “Yeah, you’ve been known for your word for years,” called Gorgon. “Save the cheap effects, dipshit. You’re still nothing special and you don’t scare anyone.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Rodney spat out a mouthful of dark slime. “Want to see if your people scream when my army tears down these walls? Want to see who’s scared then?”

  The exes lumbered forward like a wave. Weathered hands closed on the bars. They all pulled. They all pushed. The hinges squealed.

  Derek shouted and his gate guards leveled their shotguns a mere yard from the barrier. Their first volley went off at eye level and a score of exes packed against the gate dropped. Fourteen slides racked and the second volley dropped another dozen as they surged forward. Rifles went off along the top of the walls and another score of exes vanished beneath the mob.

  Rodney waved his arm and the Seventeens shot back. A few people fell from the wall. Most of them dropped low and hugged the concrete.

  “We can keep this up all week,” shouted Gorgon over the gunfire.

  “All week? This place be rubble by sunrise,” yelled the dead giant. “We got the manpower, the firepower, the willpower! What you got? A couple freaks in costumes? You got nothing!!”

  The Seventeens hollered and roared and punched the sky. The dead threw their arms up as well.

  Gorgon stood up on top of the arch and looked down at them. Hundreds of Seventeens. Thousands of zombies. “We’ve got brains, Rodney,” he shouted with a grin. “And superpowers or not, you’re still the same idiot you’ve always been. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t’ve brought an army of people who’ve never met me before.”

  “I’m gonna chop your fucking head off and shove it so far up your ass it’s gonna come back out your neck!” bellowed the giant. He pointed a finger as thick as a baseball bat and a dozen Seventeens trained their weapons on the hero. “You got anything else smart to say?!”

  Gorgon laughed and clapped his hands over his head. “Ladies and gentlemen of the SS,” he shouted, “if you could give me your attention, please.”

  A good third of the gang members were already looking at him. Half the rest glanced up as Rodney yelled “DON’T!!”

  The goggles opened and Gorgon cast his vampiric gaze out at the frozen crowd.

  They shuddered and twitched as he tore their strength out. His body shook with the raw power of it, like the greatest sex of his life. Tier ten or eleven. Maybe higher. Weapons lowered and then clattered to the pavement.

  Almost three hundred Seventeens collapsed in the street among the exes as the irises snapped shut.

  Gorgon rolled his shoulders once and tried to settle the strength buzzing in his muscles. “Told you he was an idiot,” he said to Stealth.

  Shots echoed in the air as he leaped off the arch, dropped twenty feet, and drove a kick into Rodney’s head. He rode the malformed skull to the ground and it made a satisfying crack as it hit the pavement. The hero slammed his fist into the giant’s throat and followed it up with a strike to the solar plexus. He drove two-three-four more punches home, flashing the goggles on each one, before Rodney’s arm swept him away.

  It was like getting hit by a speeding car. Gorgon flew across the street, knocking down a dozen exes as he went.

  “Your eye-magic don’t work on me,” said the giant as he stood up. “Not so tough when you can’t make the other guy weak, are you?”

  A handful of exes grabbed at Gorgon’s arms and shoulders and he felt a tiny bit of his strength simmer away as he shrugged them off. “Man enough to test that?”

  Rodney roared and charged.

  St. George landed at the Van Ness gate and Jarvis limped to him. “Moved past,” shouted the salt-and-pepper man. He had one arm in a sling, and pointed north with the rifle clutched in his other hand. “Heading for Lemon Grove.”

  “Why didn’t you—”

  “Radios are out. We sent runners.”

  The hero nodded and hurled himself back up over the rooftops.

  Lemon Grove had been a tiny pedestrian entrance, over a block north from Van Ness. When they’d moved into the Mount, they’d welded the rolling gate shut, jammed its drive chain, and boarded up the tiny guard shack with layers of plywood.

  Two long, clawed hands gripped the top of the small gate and forced it back down its tracks.

  There were six guards. On top of an office trailer, Ilya, Billie, and two others were picking off exes one by one. The Marine was shouting into her walkie. The two guards on the roof of the shack were shooting at the demon on the far side.

  “Oh, thank God,” one of the shack guards said. “I didn’t think anyone—”

  “Radios are dead,” St. George interrupted. “Stop wasting ammunition!” He punctuated it with a burst of flame.

  They stopped firing and the gate squealed. One of the welds snapped with a sound like a cymbal.

  “The demon’s bulletproof. I’ve got him. Take care of the exes.”

  St. George leaped up into the sky and arced down to land just behind Cairax. He kicked two exes away and threw a
few fists and elbows that shattered skulls. Then he latched onto the demon’s tail and yanked.

  The monster flew away from the gate as the hero swung it up, over, and slammed it into the crowded street. He leaped across the distorted body, dragging the tail with him, and shoved another ex away as he landed. He set his boots to the pavement and whipped the demon in a circle, swatting zombies away like flies. After two spins he hurled it across the street into the parking structure, decapitating a handful of exes on the way. The dead thing struck the concrete pillar like a wrecking ball and left a crater. It dropped to the ground in a heap of overlong limbs.

  Behind the fence, the guards were cheering.

  St. George waded through the exes, cracking heads and necks with each swing of his arms. Gunfire dropped the dead near him. He was halfway to Cairax when the demon lunged back up. Its head panned back and forth before something behind the twisted face focused on him and growled.

  “Ahhh,” he said. “Got your attention in there, big guy?”

  Cairax lunged at him and he sidestepped. The nest of teeth cracked into the pavement next to his foot. He took the moment to grab a female ex by her coat and hurl her up at the demon. He grabbed two more and swung them like clubs, battering the monster in the head three times before the exes came apart.

  The dead thing swept its arms together, knocking over its brethren, but St. George was already in the air. He shot a cone of fire into Cairax’s face and the demon flinched.

  “Rookie mistake,” he called out. “Dead things aren’t scared of—”

  Cairax grabbed a dead man and hurled it up at the hero. The ex caught St. George in the side and he tumbled to the ground.

  The demon moved like a snake, its spine rolling up and down as its head lashed out at him.

  He swung a fist and caught it under the jaw. A tooth flew loose and Cairax staggered back from the impact.

  The hero lunged up, dove in, and jerked back. A pair of exes held his coat. One was chewing on the leather, trying to work its teeth through a pocket flap. The other reached out with its free arm and grabbed a handful of hair.

  He spun with his fist out and broke off the hair-puller’s jaw. The fist swung back and shattered its skull. He shook off the leather-eater and a bullet exploded its head as it stumbled back.