An Ex-Heroes Collection

by Peter Clines

  “I have no doubt you can convince them they will be completely safe within the Mount,” she said. “The populace of Los Angeles all but worships you as a saint.”

  ST. GEORGE STOOD on the water tower and looked out across the darkened city. The sky was getting brighter but the night still held its ground in places. Some of the exes had wandered away, but thousands still mobbed the walls of the Mount. He could hear their teeth echoing in the air.

  “I imagine this view was impressive in the years before.”

  Stealth stood behind him, one leg raised on the steep cone of the tower’s top.

  “It was,” he said. “I came here once or twice.”

  He stepped off to the side, taking the antenna in his hand for balance. She took a few lunging steps up to stand next to him and nodded at his sling. “I was under the impression you were confined to bed.”

  “One of the joys of superpowers. You can almost always go somewhere the doctor can’t chase you.”

  “Are you going to recover?”

  “Yeah.” He lifted his bandaged arm. “The wounds weren’t that bad. Well, all things considered.”

  “And the virus?”

  St. George shook his head. “Doc Connolly’s amazed. She’s wanted a blood sample from me for a year now. Apparently my immune system’s so powerful it’s killing everything Cairax dumped into me. My white blood cells are a cure for hepatitis, malaria, HIV, pretty much anything you can think of.”

  “I am not surprised.”

  The hero nodded. “It just sucks there’s no way to get at them once I’m healed.”

  “Always the giver,” she said. “Always the saint.”

  “Was that a joke?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “I guess today’s a miracle on several levels, then.”

  The mountains to the east burned red. They watched the shadows shrink. Automatic lights flickered and went out across the Mount, and over on Stage Four Zzzap relaxed a little in the electric chair.

  “So,” the tall hero said, “what are you going to do with Josh?”

  Stealth bowed her head to examine the dark gardens below the water tower. “I do not know,” she admitted. “Word of what he did will leak to the populace, yet I am no longer confident I can decide the punishment for a crime of such scale.”

  “And he can’t be killed,” added St. George.

  “Yes. Which limits our options. Cerberus has locked him in a cell for now. I believe she wants to starve him.”

  He lifted his chin. “We shouldn’t do that.”

  “I agree.”

  “Thank you.”

  “There are larger issues to consider,” said the hooded woman. “The Seventeens are broken. We are now the only significant force left in Los Angeles.”

  “How many people are still back at their little kingdom?”

  “Almost nineteen thousand. Now with minimal protection and resources.”

  “No way we can fit them all in the Mount.”

  “None at all.”

  The tallest buildings in the city were already glowing. St. George looked at the distant cluster of Century City and imagined the work crews he’d seen. “Zzzap and Cerberus could head down there,” he said. “Give them power for a while, and she’s a definite morale boost. We could get by with the generators and solar cells.”

  “An adequate temporary solution. We will need a long-term one, however.”

  He smiled. “If you’re saying that, it means you already have one.”

  “Gower Street Studios is six blocks north of us. Ren-Mar is four blocks to the west. They are substantially smaller, but it would be possible to adapt the stages there into housing much as we did here. We could do the same with Raleigh Studios.”

  “You always said Raleigh was too hard to defend. And it’s still not enough room.”

  “It is a start.”

  He looked at the roads outside the Mount’s walls. “You know,” he said, “we could do what they did. Use cars to block off streets. We could expand our perimeter, get all four stages inside one wall. One safe zone. It’d take some work, but we could do Sunset to Beverly, Vine to Western.”

  “That would be almost a square mile. Difficult to patrol.”

  “Not with another nineteen thousand people.”

  “It would take close to a year.”

  “Probably.”

  Stealth looked out over the lot. “Do you think the general populace would be willing to begin such a project?”

  “To have some hope,” he said. “A real purpose? Yeah, I think they’d all be up for that. I think they’d do almost anything so they can think the future’s going to be better.”

  To the west, the night was concentrating its darkness for one last hurrah. In the east, the black had faded to dark blue and now light blue. Across the Mount a few birds chirped and sang.

  “Will it be?”

  “What?”

  “I am not an optimist by nature, George. Will the future be better?”

  He looked down at their home. “Yeah,” he said. “I mean, that’s what it all comes down to, isn’t it? We can sit in here and worry about what might happen or we can go out and do what we can to make a difference.” He shrugged. “We’re superheroes. We’ll make it better. That’s what we do.”

  She followed his gaze and nodded. “Karen.”

  “Sorry?”

  The cloaked woman continued to look across the Mount as the shadows faded away. “My name is Karen.”

  St. George started to open his mouth and thought better. He gave her a nod as the sun broke over the distant mountains.

  “All right, then,” he said, stepping into the air. “We’ve got work to do.”

  It still amazes me that a few random conversations could somehow combine with a handful of superheroes I made up in grade school to create a novel in just a few months. Let alone a novel someone else would want to read. Of course, it could not have happened so fast without some help from a few people. With that in mind, allow me to give some very heartfelt thanks …

  To Ilya, who figured out how to defend a movie studio from the undead and gave me more information on how to do it than I could ever use in one book.

  To Doug, who loaned me his own childhood creation, the Awesome Ape.

  To the owners, staff, and players of a small world known as M’Dhoria. You wouldn’t be reading this if that world still existed, so I tried to make it live a little here.

  To Jen, Larry, Gillian, and Marcus, who read early drafts of this novel, offered some thoughts, and convinced me I wasn’t entirely wasting my time. Double that thanks for David, who deserves to be paid far more than the few drinks I get to buy him when we’re in the same city.

  To my mom, Sally, who read countless pages of bad sci-fi, fantasy, and Star Wars fanfic (long before such a term existed) and yet still always gave me the encouragement to keep at it. Even when it horrified her on many levels.

  And finally to Colleen, the wonderful love of my life, who is always there to be a sounding board, a critic, a line editor, or to deliver either reassurances or a swift kick (depending on what the given day calls for).

  —P.C.

  Los Angeles, January 16, 2009

  Contents

  Master - Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Prologue: Now

  The Doctor Is In: Then

  Chapter Two: Now

  Chapter Three: Now

  Signing Up: Then

  Chapter Five: Now

  Chapter Six: Now

  Daughter of Liberty: Then

  Chapter Eight: Now

  Chapter Nine: Now

  Brute Force: Then

  Chapter Eleven: Now

  Chapter Twelve: Now

  The Spirit of Freedom: Then

  Chapter Fourteen: Now

  Chapter Fifteen: Now

  Common Sense: Then

  Chapter Seventeen: Now

  Chapter Eighteen: Now

  S
ad Songs: Then

  Chapter Twenty: Now

  Chapter Twenty-one: Now

  Ghost in the Machine: Then

  Chapter Twenty-three: Now

  Chapter Twenty-four: Now

  Chapter Twenty-five: Now

  Influence Peddler: Then

  Chapter Twenty-seven: Now

  Chapter Twenty-eight: Now

  Chapter Twenty-nine: Now

  Chapter Thirty: Now

  Chapter Thirty-one: Now

  Meeting Your Heroes: Then

  Epilogue: Now

  Acknowledgments

  THE NIGHT BREEZE swept the black cloak away from Stealth’s body. As the folds of fabric opened up, they revealed the array of straps and sheaths crisscrossing her skintight uniform. Her boots shifted on the water tower’s sloped peak until the warm wind died down and her cloak and hood settled around her again.

  Her featureless mask looked down at the figures gathered around the base of the tower. They filled the streets of the modern-day fortress that had come to be known as the Mount. Some of them staggered and made awkward lunges at each other. Many of them were eating. Shouts and cries echoed up to her.

  She shook her head and turned to the man hanging in the air near her. “This is a waste of time.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  St. George, once known to the world as the Mighty Dragon, floated next to the tower and ordered gravity to ignore him. A solid six feet tall, his body was well muscled but leaned toward wiry. His leather jacket, the same golden brown as his shoulder-length hair, was decorated with sutures and grafts. At this point it was two jackets stitched into one. A five-inch tooth was tied to the coat’s ragged lapel with thin straps.

  Stealth glanced over her shoulder at the building that served as her office and the de facto town hall. “We should be drawing up schedules for this week’s construction. The north wall is close to done.”

  “It can wait,” he said. “They all need this. They probably don’t even know how bad they need it.”

  “So you keep insisting.”

  Below them, the celebrating people packed the streets and alleys. Families gathered on the rooftops. They cheered and laughed and called out to one another. Even the guards along the wall seemed more relaxed.

  “You’re grumpy,” said Claudia. She picked her nose while she stared at Stealth.

  Inside her hood, Stealth turned her head to the little girl perched on St. George’s left shoulder. “I am practical.”

  “She is very grumpy,” St. George told the child, “but we’re working on it.” He pulled his arm across her legs like a seat-belt and spun around in the air.

  “Go higher!” yelled Timmy from the other shoulder.

  “Actually,” said the hero, “I think time’s up for you guys. Down we go.”

  “No!” the boy shrieked.

  “Good-bye, grumpy lady,” said Claudia with a wave.

  St. George drifted down to the crowd and handed the kids off to their parents. Dozens of little arms reached up but he waved them off. “No more rides for now,” he told them. “Show’s going to start soon.”

  A few yards away, the blue and silver form of Cerberus waded through the crowd. The battle armor towered over the tallest citizens of the Mount. Most of their heads didn’t reach the American flags stenciled across its gleaming biceps. The metal limbs were extended out, and gleeful children swung from each massive forearm.

  The titan’s armored skull, with lenses the size of tennis balls, looked up at the sky, then back to St. George. The armored suit was androgynous, but after working with its creator for so long George tended to think of it as female. He gave her a thumbs-up and got back a nod from the helmet.

  He looked up to the star-filled sky and keyed the microphone on his collar. “Hey, up there. You ready to do this?”

  Far above the Mount, one of the stars swung back and forth through the sky, tracing zigzags and figure-eights across the night. Barry’s voice echoed in St. George’s earpiece. “Yep.”

  “No problems?”

  “No, of course not. What could go wrong?”

  “Didn’t you say something yesterday about setting fire to the atmosphere?”

  “Well … yeah,” Barry said after a brief pause. “But the chances of that happening are really minuscule.”

  From inside the Cerberus armor, the voice of Danielle Morris echoed across the channel. “You could set part of the atmosphere on fire?”

  “Not part of it,” said Barry. “Look, the odds are slim to none, seriously. There’s a better chance of one of us getting—wow.”

  “What?”

  “I just got struck by lightning up here. What’re the odds of that?”

  “Quit it,” growled Cerberus. She set down the children who were climbing on the armor.

  “Trust me,” said Barry, “everything’s going to be fine. Make your little speech.”

  St. George gave the armor a smile as he drifted upward. Another round of cheers broke out as he spiraled into the air, and several upraised bottles saluted him. Matt Russell’s home brew reserves would be gone after tonight. The hero gave the crowd a wave and soared back to the top of the water tower.

  Stealth was watching the walls when he landed next to her on the sloped peak. “Are you certain all guards are on duty tonight?”

  “Yes,” he said. “And so are you, or you would’ve already dealt with it. Try to relax for one night, okay?”

  She said nothing.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” boomed Cerberus from below. With the suit’s speakers at full volume she was louder than a bullhorn. The voices quieted.

  “A year ago,” she continued, “we’d barely been in the Mount for eight months. We were all still working around the clock just to make this place livable. There was no time for fun. No time for celebration. It was all about survival.” She paused and let the echo of her voice fade. “And not all of us survived.”

  The crowd murmured its agreement, and a few more bottles were raised.

  “So this year, we wanted to make sure everyone remembered the day and everyone had time to celebrate. We’re alive. We’re together. Happy Fourth of July!”

  There was a rumble of thunder, and a bright red flower of light filled the sky. A moment later a white blossom appeared next to it, followed by a blue one. Cheers rose and spread out across the Mount. Hundreds of children screamed with joy. The lights faded and four more bursts went off in a row. The sharp thunderclap of a distant cannon echoed in the sky.

  Barry’s voice came over the radio again. “I thought you said you were going to do the president’s speech from Independence Day?”

  “No,” said Cerberus, “you kept saying I should do it. I ignored you.”

  “That’s such a great speech.”

  “Weren’t you about to blow up again or something?”

  Above the Mount, the night sky lit up with another burst of light. The applause echoed for blocks. St. George keyed his mic again. “How long do you think you can keep this up?”

  “I can probably do another ten or twelve like this,” said Barry, “maybe a dozen quick ones as a grand finale. You can’t have fireworks without a finale.”

  “Not going to be too much for you?”

  “I had a big dinner.” Two more bursts lit up the sky, followed by another thunderclap. “Besides, this is totally worth it for the view. I can see most of North America. The top of South America, too, I think.”

  “Wow,” said Cerberus. “How high up are you?”

  “Pretty high. I just dodged a satellite.”

  “Wait,” said St. George. He looked up at the sky and tried to spot Barry’s gleaming form between the stars. “You’re out in space?”

  “Technically, yeah,” Barry said over the speaker, “but I was joking about the satellite. I’m right about at the Kármán Line.”

  “Are you … okay with that?”

  “Well, it’s not like I need to breathe or anything. And this way we’ve got the ozone lay
er between me and Earth, just in case.”

  “Just in case what?”

  “Hey, I’m letting off a lot of energy here. Some of it’s going to slip into the more dangerous wavelengths. Can’t be helped.”

  “It is a wise precaution,” said Stealth. She’d listened on her own earpiece without looking away from the Mount’s defenses. “As you were, Zzzap.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Barry. They could all hear his grin. A pair of gold flowers exploded across the sky and another cheer came from below.

  St. George looked up at the display and pretended not to watch the woman next to him.

  “If it matters so much to you that I take part,” she said, not lifting her gaze, “please just say so.”

  He shrugged. “I just think it would be good for you, too. You need a morale boost as much as anyone else. Maybe more.”

  “I do not find it as easy as some to set aside my responsibilities for a few hours of frivolous entertainment,” said Stealth. “Especially to celebrate the anniversary of a country that, in most senses, no longer exists. There are always more pressing concerns.” She looked out across the dark metropolis.

  He followed her gaze. Each burst of light illuminated the city. Beyond the high walls of the Mount, past the barricaded gates and the rows of abandoned cars in the streets, he could see the other inhabitants of Los Angeles.

  The ex-humans.

  The more distant ones staggered aimlessly. Closer to the Mount, where they could see the guards, they clawed at barriers and reached through gates. They made slow swipes with emaciated fingers. Not one of them reacted to the thunderclaps. Not one of them looked up at the brilliant display in the nighttime sky.

  Not one of them was alive.

  From the top of the water tower he could see tens of thousands of the walking dead—maybe hundreds of thousands—stumbling through the streets in every direction. During the flashes of light, he could pick out some with twisted limbs and many more stained with blood.

  The sounds of celebration and the echo of Zzzap’s fireworks almost hid the chattering. The constant noise that reached everywhere in Los Angeles; that echoed off every building and down every street. The mindless click-clack of dead teeth coming together again and again and again.