An Ex-Heroes Collection

by Peter Clines

  The Black Hawk rested on the pad about five hundred feet away. Its engines were thrumming, even though the rotors were still. A soldier in a flight helmet pumped fuel into the chopper’s tanks and looked over his shoulder.

  To one side of the helipad was a mob of ex-soldiers. Sixty, maybe seventy of them. They had the pilot’s attention. Smith saw the flash of green on their heads and a few with rifles swinging on straps. Their teeth clacked together, but over the engines it was more a tremble in the air than an actual sound. There were maybe a hundred yards between the first few zombies and the helicopter.

  Sergeant Monroe, flanked by Truman and Jefferson, came from the other direction. They were about as far from the helipad as Smith and his group. They were sprinting, even with their oversized rifles.

  A shadow flitted across the ground. Smith looked up and saw St. George plunging out of the sky. His boots hit the tarmac twenty feet in front of them. One of them had a ragged heel.

  “Well,” said Smith, “this should be interesting.”

  “Stealth,” the hero yelled over the helicopter, “you okay?”

  “I am uninjured,” she said. “I trust you received my message?”

  St. George looked Smith in the eye. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Everybody got it.”

  Smith smiled at him. “You don’t think you can beat me, do you?”

  The hero stopped in his tracks. Indecision flickered on his face. He glanced at Stealth, then at the soldiers flanking her. His brow knotted up in concentration.

  Smith marched his group past the hero. He paused to give St. George a friendly punch in the arm. “I’m sure we’ll see each other again,” he said. “You’ve got way too much potential to be running around without guidance.”

  St. George raised a fist and glared at him.

  Monroe and his men were at the Black Hawk, weapons ready. Smith shouted to them while he jabbed a finger toward the exes. “You don’t want to let them reach the helicopter, do you? Get in there and protect American property.”

  A thread of blood trickled out of Monroe’s nose, then Truman’s. The three super-soldiers fell back and took up position across the helipad. Gunfire drowned out the helicopter. Their Bravos ripped the exes apart one after another. Some of the exes stopped clacking their teeth together and raised their own weapons.

  Smith turned to Taylor and Hayes. “Get her on board.” He glanced at his prisoner. “You said you wouldn’t cause any problems, remember?”

  “I do.”

  “Good.” He led them to the Black Hawk. “God, this is almost too easy.”

  “He will beat you,” Stealth said as they marched her forward.

  Taylor smacked her in the ribs with his rifle and she stumbled. He yanked her upright. “Not going to happen, you fuck—”

  St. George’s punch caught him in the back of the head. The hero grabbed Taylor by the jacket, spun, and hurled him back through the doors of the records building. The soldier flew through three of the huge panes of glass and hit the far wall of the lobby.

  He turned back to Smith’s group and Polk emptied his Bravo at the hero. St. George could hear brass and links from the ammo chain falling like metal raindrops. He tried to brace his foot behind him, slipped, and stumbled back. Polk sprayed another hundred rounds at St. George, then threw the heavy rifle at the hero for good measure.

  Smith swung through to the pilot. “Take off.”

  “Sir, I’m not sure if we have enough fuel,” he said. “We’re going to have to leapfrog if you want to make it all the way to Groom Lake.”

  “Are you able to get this damned thing in the air or not?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Then do it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hayes forced Stealth down onto the bench. It was awkward with her arms twisted behind her, but he pushed her back and strapped the seat belt across her hips. He reached over her for the flight harness. She glared up at him.

  St. George dragged himself out of his panic and doubt. He could hear the pitch of the engines changing. And below it he could hear shouting.

  The exes had expended their meager weapons, but Jefferson had been hit twice in the firefight. He was down, trying to hold up his rifle. The trio of soldiers was pinned down as the exes marched closer. And they were marching in perfect sync.

  The Black Hawk lifted off.

  He threw himself at the exes. He grabbed one in each hand and used them as flails to knock down a dozen others. Legion glared at him through their eyes and turned to fight.

  They grabbed St. George at his wrists and tried to pin his arms. Some wrapped themselves around his legs. None of them wasted time trying to bite. Five bodies had hold of him. By the time he’d crushed three skulls there were ten. He threw off four with a shrug of his shoulders and there were fifteen. They piled on, using sheer numbers to hold him down.

  “Gotcha this time, Dragon,” whispered one of them.

  “Gotcha good,” said another.

  St. George snorted. “You think you can hold me?”

  A musty arm wrapped across his throat. A hand slapped over his eyes. Fingers grabbed at his hair and ears and clothes.

  “There’s a concrete truck just a little ways from here,” said one of the exes. “What if we dumped the whole thing on us? Bury you under all these corpses. What do you think?”

  “I think you’re still an idiot,” said St. George.

  He focused between his shoulder blades and shot fifty feet into the air. Over two dozen exes came with him, clutching his body too tight for their own good. Legion had enough time to grunt with surprise and St. George dove back down, flying headfirst for the tarmac. At the last second he shifted direction and hurled himself back into the sky.

  The exes rushed past him in a flurry of limbs and bodies. They smashed into the helipad. Some plowed through other undead that hadn’t been carried into the air. Skulls shattered, bones snapped, and gore splattered across the blacktop. Close to thirty exes ceased to exist.

  St. George hung in the air for a moment over the pile of corpses. A few of them still writhed in the heap. He landed and wrenched their necks the way a regular man would open a twist-off bottle. The last one glowered at him and was taking in a breath to speak when he broke the top of its spine into three pieces.

  Monroe and Truman snapped off bursts at the last few exes. “Sir,” shouted Monroe. He pointed down the road where another mob staggered toward them.

  “Get your man back to the main gate,” said St. George. “We don’t need to stay here any longer.”

  “What about Smith? He’s still got your partner, right?”

  He looked up. The Black Hawk was already a quarter mile away and six or seven hundred feet up, climbing fast even as it tilted away to the north. A body flew out of the side and plunged toward the ground.

  “Wait a minute,” shouted Smith. He’d swung himself into one of the chairs and started to struggle with the harness until something caught his attention. He looked across at Stealth. “I thought you handcuffed her arms in front of her.”

  Hayes was still leaning over her, adjusting a last strap. He glanced down at his captive and her empty lap.

  “We are now on the helicopter,” Stealth said in a loud, clear voice.

  Her hands slashed through the air, the left arm still trailing both handcuffs. The open palms slammed against his ears and the super-soldier felt a wave of pain and dizziness as his eardrums ruptured. Her legs whipped up and back as she drove her heels into his kneecaps. As he staggered back she grabbed his jacket and pulled herself up to crack her head into the bridge of his nose. The floor tilted and Hayes was pitched out the Black Hawk’s open door.

  Polk tried to shrug off his harness and stand up. She slammed both heels into his chest. Before he recovered she spun on her hands and circled his head with her feet. The chain of her shackles pulled tight on his throat. She jack-knifed her body up and drove four punches into his forehead one after the other. He tried to block them but sh
e was too fast and her calves were in the way. By the fourth one Polk was hanging loose in the harness. She swung back down, untwisted the shackle chain, and flipped back to her feet.

  She turned to Smith. The combat knife she’d grabbed from Polk’s belt spun in her hand.

  Smith yelled something at her. With the engines roaring and the wind coming in through the cabin doors, she couldn’t hear what it was.

  He realized she couldn’t hear him and his eyes went wide.

  She saw the pilot glance back at her. He reached for his sidearm.

  She threw the knife. It sank into Smith’s throat just below his Adam’s apple. The blade missed his carotid artery. It severed one of his vocal cords.

  Smith grabbed at his throat and glared at her. She saw blood bubbling on his lips as he tried to shout commands to the pilot. The deck of the chopper tilted again.

  Beneath her featureless mask, Stealth closed her eyes and leaped from the helicopter’s open cabin door. The roar of its rotors faded as she dropped away and the Black Hawk continued north.

  She grabbed the edges of her cloak, letting it billow out to catch the wind. She was too high up for it to save her, she knew. Almost nine hundred feet. The cloak would slow her descent, and while she would never reach terminal velocity she would still reach a sufficient speed in the next few seconds for the impact to kill her instantly.

  Then a strong arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her close. Her descent slowed and stopped, and she wrapped her own arms around his neck.

  “I’ve got you,” said St. George.

  “There was never any doubt.”

  “YOU ARE BLEEDING,” said Stealth.

  “I’ll be fine,” said St. George. “I’ve had much worse.”

  They sank down through the air. St. George could go faster on his own, but he was trying to make it a smooth ride. They were heading back into a war, but for a minute or so Stealth was pressed up against him. She was very warm, even in the cool air of higher altitudes.

  “How were you able to resist the suggestion Smith gave to you?”

  “I thought of The Twilight Zone,” he told her.

  “Again, I do not understand.”

  “If you watch a lot of Twilight Zones, there’re a bunch of them that come down to misconceptions and loopholes,” he explained. “People can’t do something because they don’t understand what’s actually going on. I figured Smith’s powers might work something like that.”

  “You sought out a loophole in the suggestion he gave you?”

  St. George nodded. “At first I was terrified, because I knew he was right. I couldn’t beat him. I was sure of it. I knew if I tried anything a lot of people would get killed and I still wouldn’t stop him.”

  “Yet you resisted,” she said. “You tried to stop him.”

  “Nope. I told you, I knew I couldn’t stop him. It’s like he hardwired it into my brain. I know it was some kind of mind control and I still can’t make myself believe I could’ve stopped him.”

  She hooked one of her legs around his. It took some of the weight off his arm, although it was nothing to him. It also pulled her even tighter against him. “Then how were you able to fight back?”

  “That soldier hit you with his rifle. The second he did that, I realized I didn’t want to beat the bad guy. I just wanted to save the girl.”

  “You defeated Smith’s powers through a semantic argument.”

  “I don’t know. Did I?”

  “So it would appear. It also appears you have heroic fantasies where I am ‘the girl.’ ”

  “Well …” He tried to figure out what the right response was.

  She looked up at him. “Do not worry, George,” she said. “At the moment I find your heroic fantasies somewhat endearing.”

  “Ahhh,” he said. “Good.”

  “I am sure Specialist Hayes appreciates them as well.”

  St. George glanced down at the soldier hanging from his other hand. “Well,” said the hero, “he probably will once he wakes up.”

  So, how’d things go up there?

  Stealth slipped free from St. George’s arm and dropped the last dozen feet to the ground, her cloak billowing around her. He kept his other arm up so Hayes didn’t crack his head on the ground and two other soldiers grabbed the man. “Could’ve gone better,” he said. “Smith got away. I’m sorry.”

  “Not good,” Kennedy said. “If he reaches another base he can start all over again.”

  Freedom shook his head. “It’s not important for now,” he said. “Smith’s a traitorous piece of crap, but right now our mission’s to keep this base safe.”

  Three lines of soldiers formed a rough triangle. It reached almost a hundred feet on a side, with close to two dozen men on each line in pairs and trios. Jefferson doled ammunition out of a Humvee packed with crates and loose weapons. For the moment, they’d pushed back the exes.

  “Where did you say he was headed for?” St. George asked the huge officer. “A lake?”

  Freedom gave a single nod. “Groom Lake.”

  Seriously? Zzzap dropped closer to the ground. Groom Lake? He’s heading for the Groom Lake?

  “I am sure the actual base does not live up to the popular urban legends,” said Stealth.

  “Well,” said Freedom, “we can discuss that at another time. For now, we need to figure out how to save Krypton.”

  The cloaked woman tilted her head. “The base is lost,” she said. “The best course now is to prepare an evacuation with as many supplies as possible.”

  Captain Freedom pulled himself up to his full height. He loomed a good foot over Stealth. Kennedy stood next to him, her arms crossed. “As I told St. George, we are not going to abandon the base,” he said. “Even if we wanted to, for a facility this size it’s a process of days, not hours. There’re too many people for an orderly evacuation in so short a time. It’d cost us too many lives.”

  “I doubt that.” Stealth turned her head to the lines of soldiers. “You claim to have a full brigade here, yet every squad I have seen is four or five soldiers at best.”

  “Teams are four or five soldiers,” said Kennedy. “Squads are eight to ten. If you don’t understand the organizational structure it can—”

  “I am aware of military command structure,” said Stealth, “which is how I know your numbers are incorrect.” She looked at the soldiers defending the gate. “Every squad here is undermanned. So are both platoons of super-soldiers.”

  Freedom shook his head. “You’re mistaken, ma’am.”

  “Counting yourself, captain, I have seen fifteen soldiers on this base wearing the super-forces patch. Shall I name them for you?”

  “You haven’t seen everyone.”

  “I believe I have.”

  There was a burst of gunfire from the fence. A few exes had tried to force their way around the capsized flatbed. They were gunned down.

  I kept asking where everyone was, said Zzzap, and you kept saying they were just out of sight.

  Before Freedom could respond, Cerberus came around the side of a building. It moved with a quick, long stride, and Danielle rode piggyback on its shoulders, her arms around the metal skull. The battlesuit moved past the soldiers and up to St. George.

  “Told you I’d keep her safe,” said the titan. It set Danielle down on the ground. “You can count on me, man.”

  “There’s a good-sized mob of exes about two or three minutes behind us,” she said. “Legion seems to be focused on them. They’re coming after me.”

  “Lucky you,” muttered Kennedy.

  “Stow that, first sergeant.”

  “Sir, yes, sir.”

  “Man, am I glad to see you,” the battlesuit said to Zzzap. “The armor’s at, like, eighteen percent power. I’m starving in here, bro.”

  Yeah, join the club.

  “Danielle,” said St. George. “You guys were at the northwest corner. How many people did you have with you?”

  “Counting the guys in the towers?”


  “Include everyone you can,” said Stealth.

  Danielle skimmed through her memories. “Nine, I think.”

  The battlesuit nodded. “Nine. Seven on the ground, one in each tower.”

  “There’re always three soldiers in every tower,” Freedom said.

  St. George looked at the towers flanking the gate. “There’s only one up there,” he said, “and nobody in that one.”

  “Specialist MacLeod came down to help secure the gate,” said Kennedy. She pointed to the soldier. “That’s why it’s unmanned.”

  “If one guy left, shouldn’t there still be two people manning it?”

  Kennedy looked back at the tower. “He must’ve been on solitary shift. Sometimes, the way rosters line up, someone gets stuck pulling duty alone.”

  “Sounds like none of your rosters are lining up, then,” Danielle said. She pointed down the fence line at other towers. “One. One. One.”

  “Smith has been biding his time here,” said Stealth. “I would surmise since the outbreak occurred, his priority has been his own survival and little else. The easiest way for him to maintain control was to let you believe you were performing your expected duties, within the scope that served his purposes.”

  “Then why recruit people?” asked Kennedy with a gesture. “If you’re right, if we were all just drones running the base, why rescue all these people and bring in a bunch of extra mouths to feed? Why put a few hundred civilians through basic? Why …”

  Her hand drifted down. They all looked at the small squads fighting to defend the gate. Kennedy and Freedom looked over at the empty barracks.

  “Oh, God,” said Freedom.

  Colonel Shelly told me you guys had enough supplies for years, said Zzzap.

  “I would surmise,” said Stealth, “there were far less recruits and refugees than you remember. It is likely no one was rescued from Yuma. Smith merely convinced you of such to make you more docile.” She turned her head to look out over Krypton. “I would not be surprised to discover there are fewer than a hundred soldiers and support staff on this base.”