An Ex-Heroes Collection

by Peter Clines

  Danielle looked up and her eyes widened. She pushed her way out of Freedom’s arms and ran ahead. He tried to grab for her, but the move swung Madelyn across his back.

  “I’ve got her,” said St. George. He set the boxes down and took off after her. He knew where she was going. They should’ve planned on it.

  Right behind Roddenberry, one street over, was the scenery shop they’d cleaned out years ago and turned into Danielle’s workshop. She’d reconfigured the whole place for the Cerberus armor. She even made a small apartment for herself in the back so she never had to be far from the battlesuit.

  The wide doors were open, and she ran in without hesitating. St. George was a few yards behind her. Her scream echoed inside the dark workshop.

  He raced in. The moon didn’t put much illumination through the skylights, but it was enough. His eyes were already used to the dark.

  Danielle stood still. Her arms were tight across her chest, pulling so hard he thought she might hurt herself. She looked unharmed. St. George followed her eye line over to Lieutenant Gibbs.

  Gibbs was one of the Project Krypton survivors. He’d been an Air Force officer—not one of Freedom’s super-soldiers—who found himself at Krypton when the Zombocalypse set in and the chain of command fell apart. He’d been the intended pilot for the Cerberus suit, and had spent hundreds of hours in a simulator for it. Danielle had even let him wear it half a dozen times.

  What was left of him was spread across the workshop floor. He’d been pulled in half, by the look of it. His legs and hips were missing, along with his hands, left forearm, and face. If it wasn’t for the nametag on his Air Force coat, he would’ve been a piece of meat.

  The Cerberus Battle Armor System was in pieces. The first thought in St. George’s mind was old Universal horror movies, when the villagers inevitably stormed the lab and destroyed whatever they found there. At least a third of the battlesuit was missing. The sections scattered across the floor had been battered and gouged. Wiring had been pulled out in clumps. The gauntlets looked like they’d been attacked with a pair of crowbars.

  The helmet sat on the table like a decapitated head. The lenses of both eyes had been smashed. The speakers had been ripped out. There was a dent in the forehead that might’ve come from a sledgehammer. Broken glass from the interior screens surrounded the metal skull. Half a dozen connectors hung limp, their ends cracked or smashed or missing altogether.

  Danielle gritted her teeth. She raised her fist away from her body and then slammed it into her arm again and again.

  They put down seven more exes on the way to Roddenberry. St. George knew almost all of their faces. One was too mauled to be sure. The two in the lobby weren’t familiar, although Stealth took down a third behind the reception desk before he could get a good look at it. The main stairwell was clear, but there was one more outside Stealth’s fourth-floor office. It had been Rocky, the man who made chain-mail armor for the scavengers. St. George turned the dead man’s head all the way around. The teeth kept chattering, so he carried the body to a window and let it drop four stories to the ground.

  When he got back to the office, Stealth had pulled open the blinds to let in what light she could. Her office had been the floor’s main conference room once, back when the Mount was in the movie business. She’d turned it into a war room of video screens and covered the marble table with maps.

  Most of the screens had been smashed. Her many maps of the city, state, and the rest of the country had been torn apart. From the ashes on the table and the soot on the ceiling, it looked like some of them had been burned.

  St. George saw a piece of black fabric on the edge of the ashes and realized they’d burned more than her maps.

  Danielle’s shoulders dropped at least an inch in the enclosed office. Freedom found an office chair with arms and set Barry down in it. Madelyn slipped off his broad shoulders and sat on the edge of the table.

  Barry looked at the broken screens and ashes. He traded a look with St. George. “Man,” he said. “They must’ve really hated us.”

  “They were scared,” said St. George. “They needed a target to take it out on. One they could beat. We weren’t here, so we were the easy ones.”

  “Keep telling yourself that,” said Danielle. “Nick always had these people pegged. They were glad for us when we were here, but they never liked us.”

  “We should secure the perimeter,” said Freedom. “Make sure this floor’s clear and sealed off.”

  “The elevators are inoperative without power, but there is one other stairwell to secure.” Stealth looked at St. George. “Check the other offices and supply closets on this floor. Dispose of any other exes which may have ended up here.”

  “Don’t suppose you’ve got a flashlight?”

  Stealth paused for a moment and glanced at the others. “In my quarters,” she said. “In the second closet.”

  St. George nodded and headed for the door at the far end of the conference room. It was camouflaged to blend in with the wall. He pulled it open and walked through to her spartan apartment. He did a quick check in the small bathroom and both closets. He was pretty sure they’d been cleaned out. Stealth had so few personal things, it was hard to be sure.

  He found a trio of big Maglites, and also two smaller ones and an electric lantern. He clicked the button on each Mag to make sure the batteries still worked. The lantern lit up the room.

  He went back to the office and handed out the lights. Stealth hung the lantern from a piece of heavy wire she pulled from above the ceiling tiles. Freedom was out blocking the stairwell door with a desk.

  St. George headed down the hall. Most of the doors were unlocked, and the rooms bare. Stealth had cleaned the offices out herself back when she’d claimed the floor as her personal lair.

  Four rooms away he heard a muffled click-click-click through the door. He opened the small office and saw an ex stumbling against the window. The door swung open and tapped the far wall. The corpse turned at the noise. It had been a little girl. He recognized the face, but couldn’t think of a name to go with it. The dead thing’s left shoulder was a mess of gore and blood.

  The ex staggered across the empty room. Its arms reached up for him and pale fingers clawed at the air. Its little teeth tapped against each other again and again.

  He let it grab his hand and it gnawed on his fingers. Some of the little teeth broke on his skin, and their shards sprinkled on the carpet like snow. He sighed, then reached down to grab it by the back of the neck. He squeezed and felt the bones splinter and crumble under the skin.

  The jaws kept working on his fingers like an eager kitten. Then the weight of the limp body pulled the teeth off him and it slumped to the floor. The head bounced on the carpet and kept gnashing its teeth. He scooped up the dead girl and carried it to the window. It hit Avenue E right in front of Danielle’s workshop.

  He still couldn’t remember her name. He tried to blame Smith’s brainwashing and push it from his mind. He closed the door behind him.

  St. George checked two more empty offices, then found one filled with desks, chairs, and other pieces of office furniture. It had never crossed his mind that Stealth had to put everything somewhere. He wasn’t sure why she’d cleaned out all the offices to start with. It had never come up.

  In the hallway on the far side of the building, the knob on the first door stuck. He tried to jiggle it twice, but it was solid. The door was locked.

  He thought about leaving it. An ex wouldn’t’ve locked doors. Even if it somehow had, it couldn’t unlock them.

  He sighed. A twist of his wrist snapped the tumblers inside the lock. The knob turned with a metallic rustle and a scrape.

  The room was dark, but it smelled different. His flashlight beam hit the pile of blankets and the bag of empty cans and he realized what it was. The room smelled like the stages in the Mount when they’d first been converted into apartments. It was the smell of living in a small area.

  Something moved ac
ross the room. He saw the figure, a shadow against the slightly brighter window. It was holding its arms out.

  He brought up the flashlight and a gunshot thundered in the room. The round struck his front teeth, right on the left incisor, and made his gums throb. The flashlight and the bullet dropped to the carpet. He brought his hand up to press it against his lips. “Son of a bitch,” he said, “that stings.”

  “Goddammit,” muttered the figure. It was a female voice. “I save my last bullet all this time, and then I waste it on you. Makes sense.”

  St. George heard footsteps running in the hall. He reached down and grabbed the flashlight just as Stealth appeared in the doorway. The woman in the room winced away from the bright light and threw her arm across her face, but his mind had pieced enough elements together to identify her. “Are you okay?” he asked. “We’ve got food and water, and I think some basic medical supplies.”

  He lowered the beam, and Christian Nguyen glared at them.

  WHEN THEY GOT back to Stealth’s office with Christian, Madelyn was fast asleep in Freedom’s arms. Her eyes were half-open, and her jaw hung slack. Her body sprawled like a limp rag doll.

  Christian shuddered at the sight and muttered something so low St. George couldn’t hear it.

  Freedom looked at Christian. “Miss Nguyen,” he said. “Good to see you, ma’am.”

  She said nothing. St. George gestured her to a chair. He nodded at Madelyn. “Is she okay?”

  “Just sleeping,” said the big officer. “Or whatever it is she does. Recharging?”

  “As good a term as any,” said Stealth.

  “She yawned and almost fell over just before we heard the gunshot,” said the captain.

  St. George heard a rattling noise. Danielle pushed Barry out of Stealth’s office, using the office chair for a wheelchair. Barry looked slightly more comfortable with it than he did being carried. He had a pillow and a blanket on his lap.

  Freedom set Madelyn down on the table and arranged her body so it looked natural, careful that her feet avoided the pile of ashes and burned material. Barry handed him the pillow and the huge officer tucked it under her head. He draped the blanket over her and slid her eyelids closed.

  “So,” Danielle asked Christian, “how did you end up here?”

  The Asian woman glowered at them. “It was what I could reach when the exes came,” she said. “I thought that psychotic bitch might’ve set some traps or defenses or something that would make it safer.”

  “Watch your mouth,” said St. George.

  “Make me,” snapped Christian. “I’m sorry you don’t want to be reminded that she finally ran out on all of us, but—”

  “More likely,” said Stealth, “I would guess he is hoping to make you restrain yourself before I come up with a more direct way of silencing you.”

  Christian gave the unmasked woman a nasty look, took in a breath to respond, and then she recognized the voice. Her face softened and she shrank back.

  “What happened here?” demanded Stealth. “Was it Legion? Did Agent Smith cause this somehow?”

  Christian’s eyebrows went up at Smith’s name. Then her usual surliness surged over her brief surprise. She settled back in a corner of the room and glared at the heroes. St. George wasn’t sure if it was mild shock or plain old stubbornness.

  Stealth took a step toward the former councilwoman, but he held her back.

  “You should get some sleep,” said Barry. “You look fried.”

  “It’s been a rough two days,” St. George said. “I think I am kind of fried.”

  “Both of you sleep,” said Freedom. He nodded to St. George and Stealth. “You need it more than any of us. We can do shifts until we all get caught up.”

  “We’ll … we should …” St. George tried to come up with a protest, but part of him realized in the few moments of downtime his brain had started shutting down all on its own.

  “I’ll wake you up in four hours,” said the captain.

  Stealth took St. George by the arm and guided him back to her quarters. The small cot still had a sheet on it. It looked glorious.

  He pulled the shirt off over his head and popped two buttons off in the process. It smelled like death. There were dark stains and splatters all over it, but not enough to hide the fact it had been white once. A few stitches had split on one shoulder. He let it drop on the floor. He didn’t look forward to putting it on again when he woke up.

  Stealth peeled off the ragged fleece jacket. There were two or three dark patches on the arms that had dried into little spikes. Blood and gore had soaked through the fleece to make a few spots on her bra. She placed her baton and the pistol she’d taken from Billie’s body and placed them on top of the jacket.

  They stretched out on her thin mattress. There was no blanket or pillows, but it felt luxurious to not be standing. She pulled his arm around her shoulders and pressed herself against him. Her skin was warm. She was always warm.

  He kissed her forehead, and he was pretty sure she kissed him back, but he was already asleep.

  It’s the early days of the outbreak. I don’t even know it’s an outbreak yet. In four days, I will meet the woman who will change my life forever. She will tell me the monsters are the result of an infection. A year and a half from now, we will learn where the infection came from. Two days after that she will tell me her name.

  There are almost a dozen monsters—exes—in the parking lot with us. They are hunting homeless people. They won’t be exes for another two weeks, when the President refers to them as ex-humans for the first time in a televised statement. The name will stick.

  A dead thing grabs my cape and tugs me off balance. I spin around and hit it in the head with a backhand. Its skull cracks under my knuckles.

  With me is Gorgon. His vampiric gaze is useless against the monsters—the exes—but earlier we stopped a minor gang skirmish, and for another hour or so he is superhuman. He grabs an ex by the wrists and swings, throwing it across the pavement. His leather duster whirls open as he does. I know he looks much cooler than I do, but I am still proud of my red and green costume.

  I’m aware this is a dream. Far more aware than I’ve been in a long time. This is the past replayed as present.

  I slam my hand out and an ex flies across the parking lot to slam into a brick wall head-first. It slumps to the ground. Gorgon—his name is Nikolai, but I don’t know that yet—punches the last one in the jaw. Its head spins from the blow, and he grabs it and twists even more. Its neck breaks with a sound like driftwood and it drops.

  A year and a half from now Gorgon’s body will be twisted by a giant monster—a bastard of the ex-virus and a failed super-soldier project—and his own spine will break in four places. His death will be quick. My friends and I will tell ourselves it was instantaneous.

  He turns and looks at me. The dark irises of his goggles gleam in the streetlights. He shrugs and settles the long jacket around his body. The jacket looks wrong without the silver sheriff’s star on it, but that is still almost nine months away, and I realize I’m looking at him through my eyes, the eyes that have seen all this before.

  This is the point where most dreams collapse. The point where you become too conscious of the dream and start thinking about it rather than experiencing it.

  “Okay,” says Gorgon, “you’re clear this is all in your head, right?”

  I stare at him. This is not how the past went. I’m not sure what to say.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, George,” the other man growls. “It’s a dream. Just a bunch of stuff you dredged up from your memories to help you figure stuff out. You’ve beat him on this level before, when you saved Karen out at Project Krypton.”

  Gorgon was dead months before I traveled to Krypton. He never learned Karen’s name. No one else did, not until the night—

  “It’s not me, you idiot,” he snarls. “This is all just you. All of it. Smith made you provide all the details, made you build your own prison, but you stuck me in
here to help you remember the truth. You’re just talking to yourself.”

  “Like Fight Club?”

  “Yes, just like Fight Club, except I’m way better looking than Brad Pitt.”

  I snort back a laugh and realize I’m not wearing my mask. My old costume, the Mighty Dragon, is gone. I’m back in my leather flight jacket, the one that was charred to bits fighting the demon, Cairax Murrain. I’ve got a pair of goggles of my own, but they’re pushed up on my forehead, holding my hair in place. “You were just a clue,” I say. “Because I knew you weren’t supposed to be here.”

  He nods back and looks down. His body is twisted under the coat. His clothes are wrapped tight around his waist. His toes point behind him. One of his knees bends at a strange angle. “Looks like everyone dredged up some dead people to gnaw at them. Plus you had that stupid parrot sketch and all the clicking sounds. Little things your subconscious was trying to get your attention with so you’d know none of this was real.”

  The parking lot has vanished into a dark gray blur. The dream is starting to fade away. Or maybe I just can’t focus on it because I don’t need it anymore. Even as I think this, another ex lumbers out of the darkness behind Gorgon. It’s a man in a suit. It has a very colorful tie. Even in death, its smile is broad and insincere.

  I step forward to knock it away, but Gorgon stops me. He glares at me through his goggles. “Don’t you get it?”

  I look back at him, then at the ex. It’s only a few feet from us. “Get what?”

  “Jesus, you’re dense sometimes.” He turns and points at the ex. It has a United States flag pin on its collar, and also a small pin showing a bear. The seal of California. “How often do you have to have something set out right in front of you?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Gorgon turns and the ex grabs his shoulder. It bites into his bicep, but the leather duster protects him. It gnaws away at the material. He shakes it loose and drives the heel of his palm into its forehead. It stumbles back and tips over. It makes no attempt to slow its fall and its skull hits the ground with a crack. The noise is loud enough that I realize—on that higher dream-level—that it’s going to wake me up. The last shreds of memory fall away, but Gorgon says one last thing before they do.