An Ex-Heroes Collection

by Peter Clines

  They were twenty feet away now.

  Behind him, the scraping sound was very close. George wasn’t going to indulge the waking dream by looking, but he guessed the vest guy was ten feet away at the most.

  Jersey guy lurched toward him. A dozen yards left between them, tops. The walking corpse didn’t have a crew cut. Its hair and scalp had been torn away from its skull. The ragged tufts of gristle and blood had dried into little points across the bone.

  George closed his eyes. When he opened them, there would just be normal students around him. Maybe a faculty member behind him. Nothing else.

  With his eyes closed, he was more aware of the smells of dust and mildew. They were so thick he could feel the scents in his nose. And the wafting odor of meat was getting stronger. Closer.

  He could hear their teeth clicking together. Click-clack-click-clack-click. It was the sound of a speed typist with a wooden typewriter.

  Something leathery wrapped around his wrist. A wave of nausea boiled up in his throat. His eyes flicked open.

  The women were just a few feet away. Jersey guy was a yard behind them. Another dead man, this one in a long coat, stumbled out from behind a car on the far side of the lot. George looked over his shoulder and found himself face-to-face with the sweater-vest man. His skin was the color of cobwebs. One of his eyes was gone. The other looked like frozen milk.

  His teeth snapped at George’s nose and missed by an inch.

  George yanked his arm away from the grasping hand and stumbled back into the women’s embrace. They wrapped their arms around him from behind. Their hands pawed at his chest. One nibbled on his ear, then sank its teeth in and tried to rip the ear off. The other chewed on his shoulder. He could feel it gnawing through the fabric of his shirt.

  The sweater-vest monster staggered forward with its arms wide. George brought up his foot and lashed out. His work boot slammed into the center diamond of the vest and the dead man flew back. It hit a car ten feet back, spun over the hood, and smashed into the windshield of the next car over with an explosion of glass and dust.

  He turned and the two dead women spun with him like they weighed nothing. Something pitter-pattered on the ground. The dead woman chewing on his ear was losing her teeth.

  Jersey guy loomed in front of him. George drove his fist into the dead man’s gut. The force of it folded the corpse over. It landed a few yards away in a heap that showed off its gory scalp, but its limbs had barely settled when it struggled back to its feet.

  He reached across his chest and grabbed a handful of golden-brown hair. It was dry and brittle in his fingers. He yanked and the dead woman flipped over his shoulder like a bag of leaves. The body hit the ground near jersey guy.

  George took a deep breath. Acid burned in the back of his throat. He felt a deep need to throw up but bit it back and swallowed hard. He couldn’t risk being helpless while he got sick.

  He rolled his shoulders and knocked the ear-biter away. The dark-haired monster staggered for a moment before it fell against a car and found its balance. Its jaws hinged up and down. The slash in its cheek flapped open and shut. The dead woman staggered forward and he threw a punch. The jaw crumbled like old plaster. The bottom half of its face sagged. Teeth scattered on the pavement.

  It didn’t seem to notice. The left side of its face twitched as dead muscles tugged at the shards that had been its jawbone. The motion shook another tooth free from the ragged hole of its mouth.

  George pulled his arm back and punched again. He didn’t hold back. The dead woman’s head shattered like a piñata. A double handful of wet tissue splattered across the hood of a parked car. The body tumbled to the pavement.

  Jersey guy’s arms wrapped around George. They were thick and meaty, the arms of an athlete. Even in death, they were pretty strong.

  George threw himself against the dead man. They hurled back, and jersey guy’s teeth scratched between George’s shoulder blades. He had a moment of intense déjà vu and realized he was living his dream—tumbling through the air and fighting monsters.

  They crashed into something solid. An SUV. Jersey guy took most of the impact. George heard glass crackle and metal squeal. The arms holding him twitched and sagged.

  He stepped away from the big truck and looked at the monster. The impact had caved in its rib cage. It slid down the side of the SUV and tried to raise its arms. Without anything to push off of, its shoulder blades flopped under the football jersey.

  George reached down and grabbed it by the jaw and the back of the skull. It tried to bite his fingers, but it didn’t seem to have any strength. Like a puppy trying to be savage, it couldn’t even break the skin.

  He twisted the thing’s skull, just like assassins and other bad-asses did in the movies. There was a double-snap, like popping bubble wrap, and the body went limp. Its jaw kept gnawing at his fingers. He let go and the monster slumped next to the SUV.

  He turned around. They’d staggered back much farther than he thought. His kick had propelled him and the monster over fifteen feet.

  The corpse in the long coat had crossed the parking lot. It reached for him and he grabbed its wrists. He twisted around and sent it sailing into the trunk of a primer-colored muscle car. It hit the trunk skull-first and collapsed.

  The dead woman with the golden-brown hair flailed on the pavement. On a guess, he’d broken its back when he flipped it over his shoulder. He reached down and twisted the woman’s head around. It felt right, somehow. Merciful. They were already dead, but this way they were more at rest. They weren’t walking.

  George looked at the parking lot and the bodies and the dust-covered cars with smashed windows and the distant figures shambling across campus.

  He waited for the hallucination to end.

  His nose was bleeding again.

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER George blinked and the world changed. The bodies vanished. The cars were clean and whole. The people in the distance picked up their pace and moved with smooth, even gaits.

  He stood in the parking lot a few yards from his car. According to his phone, ten minutes had passed since he walked out of Madelyn’s dorm room, not the thirty-odd ones he remembered. There was no sign of the grad student with the argyle sweater vest.

  There was blood on his knuckles. It was thick and grimy, more of a sludge than a liquid. His fingertips had oily grime on them. Residue from the dead woman’s crushed skull. It was under his nails. It smelled a bit like rust without the sharp tang.

  He walked to the closest dorm and found a bathroom. There was no soap because it wasn’t intended to be public. He considered finding one of the supply closets and grabbing some soap and paper towels, but he didn’t want to wait to clean himself.

  He cranked the hot water and washed his hands twice. The water felt hot, but not hot enough to scald him. He scrubbed his face, too, and snorted some water into his nose. It rinsed out red, then pink, and then clear.

  His fingers were free of all residue. The nails were clean. The knuckles didn’t have any cuts or scrapes.

  None at all.

  He turned his head and pulled at his ear. The dark-haired dead woman had chewed on it for almost a minute. He twisted the lobe back and forth, but couldn’t see a scratch. He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled his collar down. His shoulder wasn’t even bruised where the other monster had gnawed on him.

  A young man walked in wrapped in a towel. He was carrying a bucket of shower supplies. He glanced at George, smirked, and headed into one of the shower stalls. A moment later the sound of running water echoed in the bathroom.

  George buttoned up and headed back out to his car. He stood by it for a moment and looked around. A trio of students walked across the parking lot. He closed his eyes, counted to five, and looked at them again.

  Still just students.

  He dropped into the driver’s seat and pushed the key into the ignition. It took him a minute to gather his thoughts. Then he pulled out his phone. He tapped a few keys and closed his eyes again
while it rang.

  The ringing stopped. Nick’s voice echoed over the phone. “Hey,” he said. “What’s up?”

  “I need a favor.”

  “Yeah, sure, what?”

  George paused for a moment. “It’s a face-to-face favor,” he said, “but I can’t get over there, and I don’t think I can wait until next time we go out.”

  “Okay.”

  “I need a work favor.”

  “What?”

  “I need you to find out something for me.”

  He could hear Nick’s brow furrowing. “Okay.”

  “You said your agency represents pretty much every big name, right? Actors, directors, models.”

  “Yeah, right. If you know their name, odds are pretty good they’re with us.”

  “What about Karen Quilt?”

  Nick made a sound like a grunt. “Pretty sure she is, yeah.” The click-click-click of a keyboard echoed over the phone’s speaker. “Yeah, we rep her. And I can tell you right now, she’s not dead.”

  “It isn’t that.”

  “You want an autograph or something?”

  “I need to know what hotel she’s staying at.”

  Silence stretched out between them. When Nick spoke again, his voice was lower and more muffled. “George,” he said, “I can’t give that sort of thing out.”

  “I just—”

  “I can get fired for giving out that kind of information,” stressed Nick.

  “It’s important,” George said. “I swear. It’s nothing creepy or stalker-y, it’s just …”

  “Just what?”

  “Do you trust me?”

  “What?”

  “Yes or no. Do you trust me?”

  “Yeah, of course,” said Nick. “I’d trust you with my sister. Or money, even.”

  “Then just believe me,” George said. “It’s important, okay?”

  Another silence lived out its brief life. “No,” said Nick. “Sorry, this is one of those lines I can’t cross, y’know?”

  “Nick, please—”

  “No,” he interrupted. “The conversation’s over, okay? Done. Finished.” There was more tapping of keys. “I’ve got to get back to work. I’ll talk to you later.”

  Nick hung up.

  George slumped in the driver’s seat. It had been a stupid request. Nick had told him horror stories of people doing similar things. He’d just become one of those people.

  Except those people couldn’t pick up dumpsters. They didn’t get attacked by walking corpses. And if they were, he was pretty sure the monsters’ teeth didn’t break on their skin.

  He had to find Karen Quilt.

  He reached for the ignition. His fingers were three inches from the key when the car started. The engine purred. The dash lit up. The radio flared to life. It was between songs. “That,” said the deejay, “was totally awesome. Good to see you in action again, man.”

  He froze. Had he turned the key? It was a muscle-memory thing he did a lot of the time without thinking. There were so many things going on in his mind he might’ve started the car and then just blanked it out until he went to turn it again. Maybe a wiring issue? He could’ve turned the ignition earlier and it didn’t engage until he moved and made something in the car shift. It was a lame explanation, but of all the things going on, his car starting without a hitch didn’t rate that high. Heck, a wiring problem might even explain why it kept stalling in the mornings.

  The deejay launched into a diatribe about divorcées and saints. George shut the radio off. How did it keep getting back to religious stations, anyway? More bad wiring?

  He brushed it from his mind. He needed to head home and scour some articles online. Maybe he could find a hint about where Karen Quilt was staying. He’d been assuming it was a hotel, but maybe she had a condo somewhere in Hollywood or Santa Monica or somewhere. Common sense told him there were enough celebrity-stalking websites out there that someone had to have a general sense of where she was.

  His phone beeped. Nick had sent him a text.

  Four Seasons on Doheny—for fuck’s sake, don’t make me regret this

  George smiled and backed his car out.

  The Four Seasons in Beverly Hills stood tall, flanked by a handful of massive palm trees. It bristled with balconies but still had the color and faint lines of Spanish architecture. The entrance was discreetly blocked off from the rest of the world with a series of hedges and smaller trees.

  George drove past the entrance. Through the gap in the high shrubs he saw several valets and very few parking spaces. He went a little farther down and turned onto a side street. It took him another few minutes to find parking, and two more to find a sign that told him how long his car would be safe there.

  He walked back to the hotel. He paused to tuck his shirt in and brush himself off before he stepped through the pillars of greenery and onto the grounds. There were a few life-sized iron statues of people scattered around the entrance. He kept glimpsing them in his peripheral vision as he crossed the driveway. Their stillness was a bit unnerving. They flickered in his eyes and for a moment he saw them covered with years of green tarnish.

  The men at the valet station didn’t give him a second glance. George was sure he wasn’t the first person to dodge valet parking. He returned the doorman’s tight smile and stepped inside. The lobby looked expensive in an elegant way. It was the kind of expense that didn’t feel the need to flaunt it by being oversized.

  He saw the counter off to the side and tried to decide if he needed to speak with the regular clerk or the concierge. His experience in fancy hotels was limited to a pair of parties with Nick, neither of them at this hotel. He chose the main desk on the hope lower-ranking staff members would be more helpful than higher ones. A slim man and woman in matching shirts and blazers stood behind the high counter.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” said the man as he approached. “Welcome to the Four Seasons. How can I help you?”

  “Hi,” George said. “I’m trying to get in touch with one of your guests.”

  The man’s hands slid to a keyboard. “Of course. What room number?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have it.”

  “Name?”

  He drummed his fingers on his thigh. “Karen. Karen Quilt.”

  The man looked up from his computer screen. He locked eyes with George for a moment, then his gaze slipped to something just over George’s shoulder. There was a large mirror behind the desk, and in it George saw a man by the elevators straighten up. He was a large man, as tall as George but wider in the chest. He wore a black tee with his dark suit.

  “Is Miss Quilt expecting you, sir?” asked the clerk.

  “I’m not sure,” he said. It felt like an honest answer. He looked at the phone by the man’s hand. “Could you tell her … George is here.”

  “George …?”

  “George Bailey.”

  The man’s face twitched. Not in a good way. His eyes flitted back to the large man wearing the T-shirt with his suit.

  George was ready for it. He’d been dealing with it his whole life. “No,” he said, “really. That’s my name.” He slid his driver’s license from his wallet and held it out to the clerk.

  The man looked at the license, then to George, and then back at the license. He tilted it between his fingers under the light, then handed it back. “You have very cruel parents,” he said with a polite smile.

  “They were pretty cool past the whole name thing,” said George.

  “However, Miss Quilt was very clear she did not want to be disturbed this afternoon.”

  “I know,” ad-libbed George, “but this is kind of important, and she’s not answering her cell phone.” He decided to risk winging it. “Neither is her assistant.”

  The clerk sighed. “I will check, sir, but I’m quite sure what the answer will be.”

  George put up his hands. “If she doesn’t want to talk, I’ll move along quietly.”

  “Yes,” said the clerk, “you will.
”

  His fingers danced on the keyboard’s number pad and he picked up the phone. He turned halfway from George so the handset muffled his voice. He spoke for a few moments, listened, spoke again, and then listened again. His eyes flitted from George down to his computer screen.

  George turned away and tried to look casual. He gazed around the lobby. His eyes met the large man’s for a moment, and George gave the man a polite nod that wasn’t returned.

  “Sir,” said the clerk. “She’s waiting for you. Sixteenth floor, the Royal suite.” He gestured at the elevators.

  George stood for a moment, just as stunned by the news as the clerk was. He was pretty sure the clerk was hiding it better, though. He managed a “thank you” before he walked away.

  The elevators were all mirrors and brass. Like the lobby, they felt expensive. George looked at his reflection in the doors and brushed a few more wrinkles out of his jacket. He saw his boots and wished he’d switched into sneakers or something more casual. He was pretty sure there was a pair of sneakers in his car. He wondered how long it would delay him to run and get them.

  The elevator doors opened to reveal a smaller lobby, just as elegant. He checked the signs and headed down the left-hand hallway. It was dotted with small tables and flower arrangements.

  A man was waiting for him at the door. He was maybe an inch taller than George, but slim. His dark clothes accented that slimness. The man’s steel-colored hair was bristle-short, and a pair of round spectacles balanced across his nose. George couldn’t decide if the John Lennon glasses made the man look more like a hipster assistant or some sort of undercover Nazi officer.

  “Mr. Bailey?” His voice was dry, but not in a weak way. It was the kind of dryness found inside pyramids. A powerful rasp with tons of weight and history behind it.

  “Yeah.” George nodded and held out his hand.

  The man made no move to take it. He didn’t even seem to notice it. He gestured George through the open door and closed it behind them.