by Peter Clines
“You see them,” asked Karen. It was a confirmation more than a question.
No, not Karen, he corrected himself.
She was Stealth.
“Yeah,” he said. He pointed around the room. “Two there, another four, I think seven over there. The doorman by the entrance. I don’t see the server anywhere.” He glanced over his shoulder. “And the bartender.”
The bartender snapped its jaws behind them. Its cheek hung open on a flap of pale flesh and showed off a row of yellowed teeth. One of them stood out, bright white against the others. St. George figured it was an implant. The dead man’s fingers reached across the bar and brushed St. George’s arm.
Stealth rolled her shoulders inside her trench coat. She’d loosened the belt to give herself a better range of motion, but he could see it still pulled in the shoulders. Her fingers flexed in the thin leather gloves and batted away the bartender’s grasping fingers.
“I’ll take care of the big group,” he said. “Can you get the others?”
“Of course.”
“Do you have any weapons?”
Stealth raised an eyebrow at him. “George,” she said, “have you ever known me to need a weapon?”
She turned and snapped out a punch like a snake striking. It caught the dead bartender on the bridge of the nose. There was a sharp crack as the bone pushed back into the skull and its face flattened out. The ex collapsed behind the bar.
He smiled. “Good to have you back.”
“And you.”
St. George stepped forward and caught the dead thing that had been Shaun by the neck. He lifted the ex off its feet and snapped its neck with a quick shift of his thumb and forefinger. The dead man’s jaws kept snapping at him even as its arms and legs sagged. He hurled the body back into the crowd and knocked down two of the others.
Not as strong as he should be, he noticed. That throw should’ve taken out the whole crowd. He wondered if it was some sort of residual block in his mind.
Behind him, Stealth brought her boot down on the crawling ex. It slammed face-first into the floor and left a dark stain on the carpet. A second kick to the back of the head made the dead man slump. A puddle of dark liquid spread out from under its head.
St. George grabbed another ex and twisted its head around. A third one, the blond man, latched onto his arm and bit down on his elbow. The ex’s teeth left a sticky circle on his sleeve and then splintered apart. He brushed the teeth fragments out of the fleece and then drove his fist through the blond man’s face.
The front of the zombie’s head collapsed beneath his punch and his knuckles broke out the back. For a moment the dead man’s skull hung on his wrist like an oversized bracelet, the limp body dangling beneath it. St. George shook his arm until the rest of the head cracked apart and the corpse fell free. It hit the ground with a thump. He kicked it away and it crashed into the booth where the two exes struggled with the table.
Another step and he grabbed two more exes, a dead man in a suit and a slim woman with bristle-short hair. Their teeth beat out a constant click-click-click. He swung them and their skulls cracked together like billiard balls. Another swing and both of them slumped to the floor.
The last of the film types stumbled toward him and he grabbed its outstretched hands. A twist of his wrist spun the dead woman around and dislocated one of its arms. He put his hand on its back and pushed. The ex flew across the bar and crashed over a table.
Something slammed into his back. The oversized doorman. Its jaws swung open, and St. George realized it was missing most of its teeth. A collection of splinters stuck up from its lower gums. Shards of bone and enamel were white against its dark tongue.
It bit down hard on his shoulder and what was left of its teeth turned to dust. He reached up, put his hand on its forehead, and shoved it away. The needles left in its jaw tore furrows in his shirt as it staggered back. Its gnashing jaws made a sound St. George could only describe as pulpy.
He took a step after the dead man and brought his hand around. The edge of his palm tore through soft flesh and brittle bones. The zombie’s head rolled to one side even as the momentum of the blow carried it to the other. It spun off the ex’s shoulders and fell to the floor. The body crashed on top of it a moment later.
St. George flicked some of the gore off his fingers. He turned and Stealth looked at him. A trio of exes slumped on the floor at her feet. “Most impressive,” she said. “You seem confident in your abilities.”
He looked at the bodies scattered around the bar. “To be honest, I’m just acting on instinct,” he said. “There’s still a lot of stuff going on in my head.”
“I understand. I am having similar issues trying to distinguish my own history from this alternate one.” She dropped to her knee and drove a punch into the back of an ex’s neck as it tried to rise. There was a loud pop and it collapsed.
He glanced at the door, and then up. “Do you think these shifts affect all of us at the same time?”
“I do not have enough data to predict such a thing.” She walked over and took his hand. Her fingers felt good threaded between his. “You are worried about Barry?”
St. George nodded. “It would suck to be him if he was in midair on a plane and shifted back to our world.”
Her eyebrow twitched. “If such a thing happened, his own abilities would most likely activate on instinct to save his life.”
“We don’t know that, though,” said St. George. “I’m still feeling kind of weak, and most of my other powers haven’t kicked in.” To emphasize the point, he glanced down at his feet. He tried to make them rise, but they stayed on the floor of the bar. There was a trick to getting off the ground, but he couldn’t remember it. He flexed his toes, tried to imagine rockets thrusting out of his feet, pictured huge wings lifting him into the air.
He stayed on the ground.
“From what I understand,” said Stealth, “you have not needed your abilities past strength and invulnerability. I am sure I could throw you from the top of any structure of significant height and your ability to fly would reassert itself.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I love you, too.”
“I am still unsure what has caused this—”
“Smith,” said St. George. “He’s back.”
Her mouth snapped shut. “Are you certain?”
“Who’s the President right now?”
Her lips pressed even tighter together. She remembered Agent Smith, formerly of the Department of Homeland Security.
“Madelyn knew,” St. George said. “She’s never even met him, but she knew all along. She tried to tell me, but the way he’d rewired my brain made me reject the idea. I told her she was crazy.”
“It would seem you owe her an apology,” said Stealth.
“Yeah. I’m guessing he found something out at Groom Lake that let him send us into another reality or something. Then he rewired our brains so we’d never know.”
She looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “This is not another reality, George.”
“Sorry?”
“This is our world. I suspected as much for some time, but knowing Smith is involved confirms it. He altered our perceptions so we did not see reality. This is why the exes were erased from our minds, so we would not realize what was around us.”
He shook his head. “That’s not possible.”
She pointed past him to the decapitated ex on the floor. “Its teeth were broken.”
“Yeah, so?”
“They were recently broken,” she said. “There was little discoloration on the inside edges and there were still shards in its mouth.”
“Okay, and …?”
She gave him the look that told him he’d missed something obvious. “There is only one thing in the bar it could’ve broken its teeth on, George.”
It took him another moment. “Me?”
“When we entered the bar you scratched your left arm. The arm closest to the doorman.”
“The shirt’s ki
nd of itchy. It’s still got those right-out-of-the-package folds that are pretty much starched into it.”
“The doorman was an ex. It was biting you.”
“No it wasn’t.”
“It was.”
St. George shook his head. “He sat on his stool the whole time. I would’ve noticed if he was chewing on me.”
Her eyebrow went up again and she looked at her arm. “Much in the same way Captain Freedom thought he would have noticed if ninety-three percent of the people at Project Krypton had died?”
When they’d first met the captain, his entire base had been under Smith’s influence. They believed they were a thriving military base with over fifteen hundred soldiers and support staff. Then the heroes had arrived and revealed that barely a hundred people were there.
St. George shook his head. “This isn’t convincing us things are a bit better than we thought they were, though. This is him telling us things are completely different. It just seems way beyond what we saw him do before.” He tugged at the sleeve of his fleece. “And if we aren’t hopping between worlds, where did this come from? It’s not mine.”
Stealth didn’t respond. She was studying her arms. She pushed the sleeve up on one and ran a finger across the skin.
“Wait,” he said, “are you okay? Did you get bitten?”
“I did not,” she told him. “I have no injuries at all.”
He sighed in relief.
“I am, however, also wondering where these clothes came from.”
He looked at her outfit. “They’re not yours?”
She shook her head. “I have only three civilian outfits at the Mount. All of them were chosen to be inconspicuous. Each of these items has been tailored to me.”
“Are you sure?”
She raised an eyebrow at him.
“So if we’re not jumping between worlds, where did you get a tailored outfit?”
“I am not sure. It is possible Smith had them constructed to add to the illusion of another world.” She pushed the sleeve back down. “Our first priority is to locate the others. You know where Madelyn is?”
“Yeah. And Freedom, Gorgon, and …”
He stopped. He closed his eyes for a moment. He took a breath and opened them again.
She was looking at him. Her eyes had the faint wrinkle at the corner that let him know she was concerned. “Gorgon?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I forgot. I forgot he was dead. I’ve been dreaming about a lot of dead people.”
She reached out and squeezed his hand. “Madelyn and Freedom, then.”
He nodded. “They’re over in Westwood, but they’re both alone. We get them, we figure out where the hell Barry and Danielle are, and then we get back to the Mount.”
Her eyebrow twitched again and an expression that looked like confusion flitted across her face. Then she bowed her head. “I concur.”
He walked to the door. It was a solid piece of wood at least an inch thick with no windows or peepholes. He rapped his knuckles against it four times and waited.
The other side of the door was silent.
They exchanged looks. He pushed the door open and slipped outside. Stealth was a beat behind him.
The street was deserted. Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound. They moved past the sidewalk and into the street, keeping their backs to each other.
“East is clear as far as I can see,” said St. George.
“As is west.” She held up her hand when he went to speak again. She turned her head to the north, then to the south. “I hear nothing,” she said.
“Neither do I.”
“I hear nothing,” she repeated. “There is no sound of teeth.”
St. George closed his eyes and listened. He turned and looked around. “What are the odds there isn’t a single ex within four or five blocks?”
“Low,” said Stealth. “The street is clean. No leaves, no trash, no debris of any kind. However, all nine streetlights I can see from this position are unlit.”
“My car’s gone,” said St. George. He looked up and down the street. “Actually, weren’t there at least four or five parked on the street when we went in?”
“There were six on this block,” said Stealth, “not counting your own Hyundai. Two Fords, two Hondas, a Chrysler, and a Volkswagen.”
A low growl made them turn. St. George balled his fists. Stealth raised an eyebrow. She didn’t look worried.
The car roared around the corner and lit them up with its headlights. The vehicle shot toward them without slowing. It tore down the road with its driver’s-side tires riding on the line of yellow dashes. Stealth took two quick steps back to the sidewalk. St. George stood his ground and stared into the headlights. The car missed him by inches. It was an old Mustang, a classic muscle car. Half of its body panels were still bare primer, the other half were glossy black.
It slowed at the corner stop sign, long enough for the driver to give St. George the finger and call out a few muffled insults. Then the Mustang rumbled back up to full speed and vanished down the street. The sound of its engine echoed in the air for a few moments and then faded away.
“Son of a bitch,” said St. George. He blinked away a few spots the headlights had left in his eyes. The street stayed bright even after the spots vanished.
They looked around at the street. Now there were five cars scattered along the curb on either side of the road, gleaming in the streetlights. One of the Hondas was gone, replaced with a small drift of leaves. George’s Hyundai was still nowhere to be seen.
In the distance, he heard the faint rumble of more cars. The bars were closing down and people were either heading home or out to after-parties. Most of them were heading east or south toward the freeways.
“Your hands are clean.”
He looked down. The smears of blood and dark tissue across his knuckles had vanished. The stains on the fleece jacket were gone, too. He looked over his shoulder at the bar. “Okay,” he said, “as far as everyone in there knows, did we just run out without paying for our drinks?”
“Focus, George,” she said.
“We don’t want them calling the cops on us.”
“There are no police to call. This is all just an illusion.”
“Right.” He looked west. “How long do you think it’ll take us to reach Westwood on foot?”
Stealth flexed her fingers. “It depends on what we find on the way.”
FREEDOM RAN PAST the packs of homeless people gathered around a few grates. People assumed Los Angeles was always sunny and wonderful, but the past few years had taught him otherwise. There wasn’t any snow, but it got cold enough at night to endanger anyone’s health. Even now, half an hour before sunrise, he caught wisps of his breath.
His morning run was almost done. It was a winding route from his Hancock Park apartment, through Beverly Hills, and then down to the recruiting office. He’d measured it out to an even eight miles. He ran it every day, rain or shine, in under forty-five minutes, depending on traffic lights. At the end of the day he ran it home.
The Army may have been done with him, but he was determined to stay worthy of his uniform.
There were more street people all along his route. They held out desperate hands as he strode past them. There seemed to be hundreds of them these days. He knew the economic crash had left many people in a bad place, but it seemed like the number of homeless had doubled or tripled in the past few months. A few of them tried to follow him every morning and night. They’d stagger toward him with their hands out, mouthing silent pleas. At his pace, they fell behind before most of them even reacted to his passing. He tried not to think about them while he ran.
Sometimes, though, in the deserted city of predawn, there was something unnerving about them. In the shadows their poses and sluggish movements struck him as aggressive, even a bit dangerous. He wasn’t sure why. Their hands seemed less pleading and more … hungry.
There was one stretch of Wilshire Boulevard that cut through the Los Angele
s Country Club, right between Beverly Hills and Westwood. Tall hedges bordered the road on either side. If he encountered other pedestrians or bicyclists here, it meant stepping off the curb and running in the road. There was nowhere else to go for two-thirds of a mile. On those dark mornings, when the homeless were gathered there, he often thought of it as Donner Pass. He wasn’t sure what made him pull that particular name from history. The street wasn’t high in the mountains or buried in snow. Which left one option. The hungry option.
At West Point he’d had a recurring dream after writing a paper on the Donner Party and how their situation could’ve been resolved aside from resorting to cannibalism. The dream had come back, as of late, and he’d had it two or three times in the past month. Maybe more.
In his dream, however, eating other men hadn’t been a last resort. The settlers had changed into soldiers under his command. He was a captain again, in charge of leading them to safety, but he kept getting conflicting orders from the President for them to stay put. Then the whole group, dozens of men and women with skin gray from frostbite, came at him like some ancient horde. Their teeth snapped at his fingers, their hungry hands grabbed at his arms and neck.
Wilshire sloped down a steep incline toward the Federal Building and 405 (he still hadn’t picked up the Californian habit of addressing all freeways as “the”). Freedom pumped his arms and thrust his legs at the ground. Banks, stores, and apartment buildings flew past him. There was no traffic on the road to judge his speed by, but he was sure he was breaking the posted speed limit.
He cut down Manning Avenue and slowed to a walk when he hit Lindbrook, still three blocks from the office. There was something on the sidewalk up ahead. For a moment he thought a car might’ve gone up over the curb. Whatever it was had more than enough mass.
Then the shapes firmed up in the morning haze. A dozen crates and shipping containers, the super-sturdy ones edged with steel, sat in front of the recruiting office. They reminded him of the cases he’d seen at traveling USO shows, the ones designed to hold equipment.
A woman half leaned in the door frame behind one of the larger cases. Her head was turned away from Freedom, and her red hair was twisted into a messy braid. She wore jeans, but her top was an Army Combat Uniform jacket with fuzzy patches instead of insignia. Her arms were crossed in a way that seemed more defensive than casual.