An Ex-Heroes Collection

by Peter Clines

  St. George’s fists shook. He breathed out hard and licks of flame slipped out between his lips. He took in a breath to yell after the ex, or maybe send a ball of fire, and froze.

  On the far side of the street, just across the symbol burned into the pavement, two of the exes had turned to face Legion. Their faces twisted into twin expressions of pure rage. Their eyes swelled and burst, spilling blue fire across their faces.

  Uncertain muttering broke out across the Big Wall.

  “Rodney,” St. George called out. “Stop moving!”

  The dead man sneered at him over its shoulder as it stepped onto the symbol. “It’s Legion!” said the ex. “Not your fucking servant boy to call up when you want something. Remember that next time you want to play fucking games.”

  “Seriously,” yelled St. George. “Look out!”

  The exes at the seal bent and swelled. A third one opened its mouth to reveal a forest of long teeth. A fourth held up hands with dagger-like fingernails.

  “You’re pathetic, dragon man, and any day now I’m gonna—”

  The distorted exes pounced on Legion as he stepped off the symbol. It was like watching cats fight, a ball of teeth and muscle and claws that spun and twisted too fast to see more than glimpses. More exes piled into the fight, some of them with burning eyes and some shouting in Spanish.

  And then they started to explode. And Legion started to scream. It was a long howl of pure agony.

  Instinct pushed St. George into the air. “Cerberus,” he shouted, “get ready to go out there. We need to—”

  He dropped out of the sky and hit the pavement hard next to the silver titan.

  “Don’t do it, George,” someone said.

  Max stood in the street behind them. Somewhere he’d found a charcoal suit. The sleeves were pushed up to reveal the tattoos on his forearms. He had his hands pressed palm to palm against each other so his fingertips touched his wrists.

  St. George leaped to his feet, focused on the spot between his shoulder blades, and stayed on the ground. Something pushed down against him. He focused harder and the something pushed harder.

  Max shook his head and raised his hands without separating them. “I can’t let you go out there.”

  The hero glanced out the gate. The screaming was more ragged. Between the exes he could see the bursts of blue flame and dark gore. “It’s killing him. We can’t just—”

  “No great loss,” said Max. “But either way, you’re the last person who should step past the seals.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “Not against that.”

  Cerberus took three huge strides and set an armored gauntlet on Max’s shoulder. Her fingers flexed. “Let him go.”

  St. George tried to throw himself into the air again. He couldn’t even jump while Max held him down. “Even Rodney doesn’t deserve that.”

  “Not the point. You’re not a normal human, George. You’re tough. You’re strong. Your body could take possession as is. He could use you.”

  “Boss,” shouted Derek from the top of the Wall. “It’s stopped.”

  St. George glared at Max. The sorcerer looked at the silent street through the gate and nodded. “Don’t go out there,” he said. “Seriously.”

  He glanced up at Cerberus and pulled his hands apart. St. George lifted into the air. The hero floated up and settled on the platform by Derek. Madelyn dashed up the staircase to stand next to him.

  At least a dozen unmoving exes littered the street past the symbol, and enough parts and gray meat to make up another dozen. The remaining undead stumbled around like shell-shocked survivors of a bomb blast.

  While they watched, another ex stopped and turned to look at them. A heavyset man in a bloodstained football jersey. It roared and flames poured out of its mouth and ragged nostrils. Its eyes boiled away. A hand came up and pointed a long spidery finger at the figures on the Wall.

  “What the fuck is that?” muttered Derek. “A couple exes did that the other day.”

  “And why’s it pointing at me?” asked one of the guards.

  “It’s pointing at me,” St. George told him.

  Derek shook his head. “Are you sure? It looks like it’s aimed right at me.”

  “I’m sure. Calm down.”

  “So what is it?”

  “It’s death,” said Max. He was up on the Wall next to them. “It’s the most nightmarish death you can imagine.”

  The ex stretched and twisted. Tusks and fangs burst from its mouth even as its spine arched like a snake. A forest of spikes sprouted across its back and arms, shredding the football jersey. The prehistoric roar echoed from its mouth again and shook the Big Wall.

  The blue flames swallowed its head, burning it down to a bare skull. Its flesh tore at the joints and the dead thing burst like a water balloon. Dark blood and gore splattered across the street.

  Max raised his voice. “Cairax Murrain is going to kill every living thing it can, anyone it can reach. Make sure everyone knows. Man, woman, child … superhuman.” He looked at St. George and let his gaze drift over to Cerberus down at the gate. “Right now, the only safe place in this city is inside these walls.”

  The muttering that had echoed along the Big Wall turned into nervous discussion. Some of the guards crossed themselves. Others gripped their weapons even harder. They all stared out at the symbol burned into the pavement, just a few yards out from the gate.

  And a few of them were on their radios, spreading the word.

  St. George grabbed Max and leaped down to Cerberus. “Great,” he snapped. “You just scared a bunch of people.”

  “Good,” Max said. “Right now none of you are anywhere near as scared as you should be.”

  Madelyn pushed past the guards on the Wall to race down the staircase. She leaped past the last few steps to land in a crouch on the pavement. A few quick steps put her right next to St. George again.

  He barely noticed, his attention focused on Max. “Look, it’s your demon, right? If I can beat it alone, Cerberus and I can go out there and—”

  “You didn’t beat Cairax, George. You beat me.”

  “No, I think it was—”

  “No.” Max shook his head. “What you beat was a shadow. That was Cairax Murrain starved, handcuffed, gagged, and shoved in a sack. It’s like punching Mike Tyson when he’s asleep. And even then, the only way you beat him was taking the Sativus off and turning him back into me.”

  The sorcerer turned to gesture through the gate. “What’s out there now is the real thing. No psychic chains, no magical restraints, no limits whatsoever. None. It’s at full strength and it’s seriously pissed off that I had it bound for over two years. Way, way more pissed than I thought it was going to be, and that’s really saying something. So trust me when I say you do not want to go out there. Out there, you’ve got a life expectancy of two minutes if you’re lucky.”

  Cerberus’s feet scraped on the pavement. “You don’t think he’d last that long?”

  “No,” said Max with a shake of his head and a meaningful stare at St. George, “I meant he’d be lucky if he died that quick.”

  FREEDOM LIKED WALKING the streets. It reminded him of being on patrol, which was much more in line with what he was trained to do. Plus, after close to three years in the desert at Project Krypton, there was something luxurious about the trees, shrubs, and small lawns of Los Angeles.

  He hadn’t been thrilled with the idea of using Madelyn as a test subject, let alone with one involving exes. He understood how important it could seem on one level, but he also knew in the long run it wouldn’t mean much. Freedom was a longtime believer in Bradley’s old adage, “Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.” Having one person at the Mount who couldn’t be detected by the exes or Legion would be more of a minor convenience than a major advantage.

  Especially when the one person was a teenage girl.

  “Six, this is Seven,” echoed a voice over his earbud.

&nbs
p; “Seven, this is Six,” he responded.

  Even though she’d grudgingly accepted her new position at the Mount, First Sergeant Kennedy still insisted on using military protocol and call signs over the radio. It had caused chaos at first as every Wall guard, deputy, and scavenger with a radio took on a self-assigned number. She’d finally sat all of them down for a series of lessons and explained why they couldn’t refer to themselves as Sixty-Nine, Eight-Fifteen, Red Five, SG-1, or any of the others they’d picked.

  And they all still just called for St. George by name.

  “Six, this is Seven,” Kennedy said. “Update on that domestic dispute at Raleigh. Got a little out of hand. We’ve got three in the brig, two injured. One civilian, one of ours.”

  “Seven, this is Six. Anything serious?”

  “Six, this is Seven. All injuries are minor. I’ll let you talk to the deputy when you get back.”

  Kennedy using the word deputy meant it was one of the civilian peacekeepers. If it had been one of her own soldiers, she would’ve called them out and used verbal shorthand to let Freedom know the exact infraction. It was a habit he noticed her using more and more, keeping civilians and soldiers separate.

  When Freedom had taken command of the Mount’s police force, it had been a disorganized mess. Looking back over the past months, he could admit they hadn’t helped matters by expecting everyone to conform to military standards. The call signs had been the tip of the iceberg. After a few years of postapocalyptic life, his people were as unprepared to deal with civilians as the civilians were to deal with structured law enforcement.

  It didn’t help that there was a fair amount of animosity toward the soldiers. The people of the Mount had lost family and friends, lives and homes, and the U.S. Army hadn’t been there to protect them. Freedom had overheard more than a few grumbles about the men and women of the Alpha 456th Unbreakables becoming part of the command structure in Los Angeles.

  Which was the problem. Freedom and his soldiers were military trying to command civilians. It was a gray area they were still exploring. He was used to conditions of absolute authority, and the huge officer was very aware the only reason the civilian police listened to him or Kennedy was because Stealth had told them to.

  He was close to the southwest corner of the Big Wall, on a street called Larchmont, when he heard a faint noise over the echo of teeth. He’d heard it before, in Afghanistan. A series of sharp pops echoing back and forth between the buildings. The sound of gunfire in a quiet city. There was nothing else quite like it.

  He tapped his earbud. “This is Six,” he said. “Report. I hear shots fired?”

  Another squelch of voices stepped over one another before a voice stood out. A man shouted into his microphone loud enough to make Freedom wince and grab for his ear. “It’s out,” the man yelled. “It got out!”

  “This is Six,” Freedom said. “Calm down.”

  “It got out,” repeated the man. “I think Katie’s dead. It was so fast, and the bullets didn’t stop it. They didn’t even slow it down!”

  “Twenty-Four, this is Seven,” said Kennedy. “Stand by, units are coming to your position.” She’d identified the man’s voice and given Freedom the location. Twenty-Four was shorthand for second platoon, fourth squad. And squad four was inside the studio walls, broken into a few small teams to guard different positions.

  Freedom started running. He was three blocks from the Mount. The long, north–south blocks of Hollywood. “Twenty-Four, this is Six,” he said. “Coming to you.”

  “This is Danny—uhhhh, Twenty-One—on the Wall. It just went over the Wall right by the Melrose Gate.”

  Too much chatter and not enough information. He still didn’t know who or what they were fighting. It didn’t sound like exes. It sounded fast.

  As Freedom passed an intersection he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. A figure dashed across the road parallel to him, two blocks over and heading south. He saw the pale skin and thought an ex was inside the walls, but no ex moved that fast, even the ones Legion controlled. The captain turned his head and got a quick glimpse of the figure—a blood-splattered old man wearing khakis and a white T-shirt.

  Freedom made a snap call. He pivoted and went after the man. “Six to Seven,” he called out. “Target engaged.”

  Whoever he was chasing was fast, even barefoot. Not as fast as Freedom or the other super-soldiers, but enough that for a moment he worried he was chasing one of his own. He closed the gap. The old man was a few yards ahead. And he was running out of road. Beverly was just a block ahead.

  A new voice cut over the chatter. “Freedom, this is Stealth,” she said. “St. George is moving to join you. Stop the prisoner at all costs. Use lethal force, nothing less.”

  The word prisoner stood out. So did lethal force. And so did the tone in Stealth’s voice. He’d never heard it in all the months he’d known the woman, but it almost sounded like she was worried. Maybe even scared.

  Freedom had enough sense to know anything that scared Stealth was something he shouldn’t be second-guessing.

  He stopped in a shooting stance, pulled out Lady Liberty, and fired off three quick bursts with the massive handgun.

  A handful of red carnations blossomed across the old man’s back and thighs. One grew out of his shoulder. He stumbled and flew through the air, carried by his own momentum and the impact of several twelve-gauge slugs at short range. His body crashed onto the pavement, rolled a few yards, and came to rest. It twitched twice.

  Freedom walked over to the crumpled figure. The man wasn’t as old as he’d thought. The hair was deceiving, and it was shockingly white against all the blood soaking the man’s clothes. His gray eyes stared up at the sky. One of his hands looked withered and bony, like a corpse. His shoulder was a tangle of red sinews.

  He took a slow breath and tapped his earbud. “Seven, this is Six,” he said. “Be advised, target has been neutrali—”

  The man rolled to his feet.

  He locked eyes with Freedom and hurled something at the huge captain. It struck him in the shoulder, just past his body armor. It cut fabric and broke the skin, but even at the joints Freedom’s muscle was too dense for it to penetrate far. He brushed it away and it clattered on the ground with a sound like wood.

  The chalk-haired man was on the move and half a block away, sprinting like he’d caught his second wind. Freedom raised his pistol and fired again. The prisoner staggered but kept moving.

  He raced out onto Beverly, headed straight for the Big Wall. The guards had heard Lady Liberty and were waiting for him. None of them were Freedom’s soldiers. All five of them opened fire. Many of the shots sparked on the pavement—the guards weren’t used to a fast target—but a good number hit. Freedom saw the man’s limbs jerk and tremble, but he never broke stride.

  Something uncoiled from the prisoner’s shoulder like a snake and he swung his arm up at the guards along the top of the Wall. A long cord lashed out and wrapped around the neck of one of the guards. The man let out a wet cough. His companions stopped firing and leaped to help him, grabbing at the line.

  The prisoner jumped. He went hand over hand up the thick cord to the top of the Wall. A dozen feet in seconds. The guards didn’t even realize they were helping by pulling on the line until the white-haired man was on the platform with them.

  Freedom was a dozen yards from the Wall. He flexed his legs and hurled himself into the air. The guards were too close to the prisoner for him to use Lady Liberty again.

  The prisoner lashed out and a guard staggered. Another one opened fire. The white-haired man and a guard stumbled back, but only the guard dropped.

  Freedom landed on the Big Wall. He heard two-by-fours crack under his heels, the wooden platform trembled, and the stack of cars groaned beneath them. For a brief moment the whole structure tilted.

  “On your knees,” he bellowed. “Get on your knees with your hands on your head.” Even as the words left his lips, he remembered Stealth’s in
sistence on lethal force and realized nothing had stopped the man yet.

  The prisoner glanced at the captain, then at the crowd of exes gathered below.

  Freedom lunged forward.

  The white-haired man threw himself over the railing and plunged into the horde outside the Big Wall.

  Freedom looked over the edge. The prisoner had vanished beneath at least twenty undead. They swarmed over him and the sound of clicking teeth seemed to grow louder.

  He turned to the men on the Wall. The two who were still on their feet, the shooter and a cornrowed woman, just stood there. Freedom knew the look. They were up and locked. The shooter kept glancing between the railing and the man he’d shot. The woman was frozen with her mouth half open.

  “You,” he snapped at the shooter. He pointed at one of the bodies. “Check him. Now.”

  The man blinked awake and ran to the fallen guard. The woman was still frozen. Freedom ignored her.

  The man who’d been shot coughed and spat up some blood. Freedom could see the dark stain spreading across his chest. Bleeding but not spurting in pulses and not whistling. Serious, but probably not fatal if he got care soon enough.

  The other man had a blade buried in his chest. It looked like it had been carved from pale wood—more of a stake than a blade. He was still breathing, but it was erratic. The shooter was gripping his hand and speaking to him, urging him not to quit.

  The last guard, the one who’d been throttled by the prisoner’s line, unwrapped the last coil of it and tossed it aside. He was covered in blood. His hands were soaked with it, but there wasn’t enough to be arterial bleeding. The rope had just slashed through the skin of his neck.

  “Seven,” Freedom said, “this is Six.”

  “Six, this is Seven,” she replied.

  “Seven, this is Six. Emergency medical to Big Wall south at Windsor. We have three wounded. One serious, one critical.”