by Peter Clines
“Rookie mistake,” he called out. “Dead things aren’t scared of--”
Cairax grabbed a dead man and hurled it up at the hero. The ex caught St. George in the side and he tumbled to the ground.
The demon moved like a snake, its spine rolling up and down as its head lashed out at him.
He swung a fist and caught it under the jaw. A tooth flew loose and Cairax staggered back from the impact.
The hero lunged up, dove in, and jerked back. A pair of exes held his coat. One was chewing on the leather, trying to work its teeth through a pocket flap. The other reached out with its free arm and grabbed a handful of hair.
He spun with his fist out and broke off the hair-puller’s jaw. The fist swung back and shattered its skull. He shook off the leather-eater and a bullet exploded its head as it stumbled back.
A voice shouted something between the gunfire. Billie, up on the roof of the trailer.
He turned in time to see the demon’s head lunge down again. The creature’s mouth was a Venus flytrap of tusks and fangs. St. George threw his arm up out of instinct and the dead thing’s dagger-like teeth punched through the leather sleeve.
Into his arm.
Agony, more pain than he’d felt in years, roared through him. The jaw hinged shut like a machine and one of the huge teeth scraped against bone as it pushed deeper into his flesh.
Cairax Murrain grinned and yanked him up into the air, shaking its head like a crocodile. St. George’s shoulder twisted and he felt himself flail. He heard people screaming, and realized through the pain he was one of them.
He coughed out a ball of fire and the flames cleared his head. He swung his legs, slammed his palm against Cairax’s snout, and tore himself free. The sleeve shredded and just for a moment he saw white spots in the air. Blood splattered the ground and he wondered how many pounds of meat were still in the ex’s mouth. At least one of its teeth was still in his arm.
St. George landed on his knees and made an awkward lunge back to his feet. Claws slammed into his back and hurled him against a dusty Ford. His skull left a dent in the frame and the world blurred.
Rounds snapped and popped against the dead thing’s leathery skin. It didn’t notice. A ricochet caught an ex in the side of the head and it dropped.
The hero staggered to his feet and grabbed the demon’s tail again as it lashed out. It dragged him across the pavement, tripping countless exes as it tried to shake him off. He twisted the length of muscle and felt bones snap under the leathery skin. Another car rushed up to slam into his back.
The barbed tail snapped like a whip and flung St. George back at the Mount. The mob of exes grabbed at his limbs, his coat, his hair. He shook them off, hurling bodies into the air, and got his feet back on the ground.
The ground was shaking.
Cairax lumbered forward, looming over the horde, Another swipe hurled St. George back again. He tried to focus, tried to make himself light, and slammed into the wall. He slumped to the ground and the exes swarmed over him.
Behind him, the demon roared in delight.
* * * *
“Holy Christ,” said Billie as St. George hit the wall. She’d glanced back away from the street and was frozen. One of the other guards, a man with a dark unibrow turned and his jaw dropped. Ilya threw a look over his shoulder.
Looming over the buildings to the west, a huge sphere of blackness swelled, so dark they could see its edges against the night sky.
* * * *
Stealth heard the cries over the gunfire, saw the dark void swelling at the Gower gate, and knew what it was. The top priority was making Rodney lose control of whatever other dead heroes he had brought to the Mount.
She drew her weapons and leaped down into the crowd, her cloak spreading to slow her fall. The Glocks spat out two-four-six-eight rounds each before she landed in the space they’d carved for her in the mob. A quick split kick broke jaws on two exes. A sweep took down four and gave her a beat.
With one smooth motion she holstered both pistols, swung the cloak aside, and grabbed the two ASP batons stored across the small of her back. A flick of each wrist snapped two feet of black chrome into position. The move flowed into a pair of strikes that shattered heads on either side of her. The batons whipped out again and beat out a drumroll of broken bones, making sure none of the dead things she’d knocked down would ever get back up.
She spun and smashed one baton through a dead brunette’s forehead. The other cracked open a teenage boy’s skull. Her boot lashed out to break the neck of a pink-haired woman. An old man. A small girl caked in blood. A businessman. A police officer with a gaping hole in its chest. Her weapons cut through the air as she marched forward and exes dropped around her.
A heavy Asian woman fell and revealed a Seventeen with a green bandanna wrapped around his head. He was dizzy, still trying to shake off the sight of Gorgon’s eyes. He looked at Stealth, blinked, and tried to raise his rifle.
One baton struck the rifle barrel and jarred it from the Seventeen’s hands, even as its twin swung back to crush another zombie skull. Her grip switched and the first baton bounced up from the rifle to catch him under the chin. His mouth sagged. She brought the other down and broke his wrist, then drove a kick into his chest. He hit the ground just as the pain reached his brain and he tried to scream through the fractured jaw.
Four swings bought her another moment. She’d worked her way out past the gardens flanking the gate. The guards on the wall were putting exes down one after another, but it was like dropping pebbles to divert a flash flood. The Seventeens were firing at the Mount, but it was random. They were children playing a game, not an army.
Near the center of the intersection, she saw Rodney Casares bring his massive fists around and Gorgon leap out of the way. He threw a punch that sent the monstrous ex staggering back. If the Seventeens were recovering, the hero was already losing their strength.
Stealth spun through the mob. Her weapons put down seven exes and three Seventeens. A spinning kick crushed another skull, the batons crossed to force down a rifle, and a head butt left a gangster reeling.
She lunged forward and thrust the batons into either side of an ex’s head, a rough looking man with a beard, and his skull caved in as the weapons collapsed back to their storage position. Her elbows sent two dead people stumbling back and her hands dipped forward to pull the Glocks out again.
Nine rounds dropped five exes, left two Seventeens screaming and clutching their knees, and gave her a clear shot at Rodney Casares, less than fifteen feet away.
She thumbed the selector and her right pistol emptied its magazine into the giant’s head. Eighteen rounds clustered on the cross tattoo. The huge ex staggered back and fell.
A Seventeen screamed and brandished his Uzi. She put a round through his knuckles and the machine gun’s magazine exploded in his hand. One of the trucks surged forward and two shots through the windshield brought it to a stop.
Gorgon glanced at her. “What the hell?”
“He has drawn Midknight down from the hills.”
“Fuck.”
“Oh, that’s nothing, bitch,” hissed Rodney.
The enormous fist sent Stealth sprawling. Her body vanished back into the crowd of zombies and gangsters.
The rounds had stripped away half his face down to the bone. His right eye streamed down his face and over the gigantic teeth. A flap of skin the size and texture of a fried egg hung loose from the bottom of his jaw.
“Now,” rumbled the dead thing to Gorgon, “round two. Ready to finish this?”
* * * *
Under a veil of shadows, the exes shook the Gower gate. They pulled. They pushed. They pulled. The metal spars of the gate screeched back and forth.
Lady Bee fired down into the zombie mob from her perch. The muzzle flash was dim and the sound was dull. “Keep at it,” she shouted. She traded out magazines and her AK spat a few more muffled rounds into the dead.
A handful of guards were cowering fr
om the blackness. The rest were stabbing through the bars with their weapons.
Cerberus took an uneven step toward the gate. The battlesuit’s left leg twitched and jerked forward. It made her limp. “It’s Midknight and his damned EMP field,” she shouted, her voice full of static. “Whatshisname turned it back on full force.”
I know, yelled Zzzap.
One of the guards, the keen listener, lunged forward with his pike and stepped too far in the darkness. A withered hand grabbed his wrist and pulled him close enough for a second one to seize his forearm. He was dragged against the gate where dozens of hands and chattering jaws took him apart in seconds. His meat left bloodstains on the bars as it vanished into the crowd.
The battlesuit’s eyes flickered. “Can you take him out?”
Zzzap flew up and looked out over Gower. It was a cold blur to his eyes. Nothing alive. Nothing warm. Just a shapeless, shifting mass.
I can’t see him, shouted Zzzap. He’s just another dead thing.
At the squealing, shaking gate, someone else was screaming.
But only for a moment.
NOW
Twenty Six
Thousands of the dead swarmed the Lemon Grove gate. Gray hands tore at the bars and beat at the walls.
Billie and the others dropped exes from the trailer roof. Her M-16 barked and another shot blew the head off a dead man in orange coveralls. She looked down at the mass of figures against the wall. “Where is he?”
“They got him,” wailed another man. “They got him.”
“He’s the fucking Dragon,” she bellowed. “They didn’t get him.”
In the middle of the road, Cairax rose above the sea of exes and roared. The demon waded toward the gate. Its long fingers stretched and flexed.
Ilya tried to line up on a target and one of the other guards, Perry, leaped onto the trailer, shaking his scope. The man sprayed most of a magazine down at the exes before he even came to rest. He stumbled and pitched off the trailer onto the curved prongs topping the fence.
They pierced up through Perry’s armpit and pinned him. He hung, howling, with a foot of steel arcing up through his shoulder and the rest of him dangling over the wall. His rifle fired off two bursts before he let go and it vanished into the crowd below.
The exes shifted focus. They reached up and grabbed feet, legs, hips, and started to tug. They sank their teeth into his flesh and tore off mouthfuls of calf and thigh. Billie emptied her rifle, but there were hundreds of them.
Perry screamed and they pulled harder and harder. There was a noise like wet magazines being shredded as he came apart. His right arm and shoulder blade stayed on the fence and he was yanked down into the horde of exes. He disappeared beneath the chattering jaws and his shrieks came to an abrupt halt. A few last exes clawed at the dangling arm and grabbed at the limp fingers.
Billie dumped a fresh magazine into the knot of dead people. Several of them fell, but she knew it didn’t matter. “St. George,” she hollered. “Get your ass up! We need you!”
Cairax grabbed the gate again and heaved. The rolling fence bent forward with a squeal and bounced back into place. The unibrow guard fired a burst into the monster’s face. One of the men on the guard shack lashed out with his pike and the demon caught the end. It heaved the shaft up, flinging the man into the sea of undead. He hit the pavement screaming and vanished under a wave of hands and teeth.
Then St. George drove his fists up and the exes went sprawling.
The hero staggered to his feet. His jacket was covered with bite marks, his skin was pale, but he was still alive. He coughed out some fire and smoke.
Yards away, the demon glared at him and tried to hiss.
St. George grabbed a blue Metro parked near the curb, sinking his fingers through the body and the door frame. He heaved the car into the air and spun with it just as Cairax lunged. The demon’s skull bounced on the hood and it staggered. He threw the little car after it and sent the dead monster sprawling.
A cheer went up as the hero stumbled out to fight the monster. He gave them a ragged salute, drove his fingers through an ex’s spine, and took a few unsteady steps after the demon. “If you need to take a breather,” he shouted, “just put your hand up or something.”
Cairax straightened up in the crowd of zombies, hefting a fallen phone pole. St. George ducked and the pole crushed dozens of exes in a wide arc. He leaped over the next swing and a handful of zombies were smashed into the burnt remains of a Volkswagen. He flipped up though the air and got his arm around the demon’s neck, wrestling past the thick collar.
The creature’s long hands twisted back, grabbed him, and brought the hero hurtling into the pavement. They smashed him down again and again before flinging him against a light post. His body cartwheeled into the crowd and the dead stumbled after him.
Cairax marched forward, reaching up over the fence at the shooters. Billie and Unibrow sprayed bullets at its face. Ilya dropped half a dozen exes near it.
“HEY!”
The demon turned and caught the phone pole in the side of its head. The battering ram slammed it against the wall of the Mount.
“You dropped this!” shouted St. George.
The dead thing hissed and the pole crushed it against the wall again. Cinderblocks cracked behind its ridged back.
* * * *
Lady Bee fired down into the exes mobbing the gate. Even a few yards away, they were just shadows. She emptied her AK and traded out clips. “What am I looking for?” she hollered.
“An ex in a costume,” bellowed Cerberus. “A blue and black costume.”
She threw a few flares out at the endless hordes, but the darkness smothered them even before they fell into the crowd. “You’re shitting me? In all this?”
Look for more dark, then, said Zzzap. Look for where it’s pitch black.
Cerberus took another limping step and stopped. The battlesuit tried to turn its head and twitched like a junkie. Her feet shifted a few inches and froze. “I’m having tons of failures,” she yelled. “The piezoelectric sensors aren’t working. I’m locking up.”
Bee dropped another handful of exes. “It’s just dark everywhere,” she shouted.
The wraith forced his way higher into the black air. He willed himself brighter and pushed out against the darkness. And again, the shadows resisted.
They pushed back hardest from the north-west.
Zzzap flew past Bee and the gate. He shifted in the air and let off another burst of light. Below his feet the black parted to reveal thousands of exes clawing up at him. They covered Gower like an open concert venue. The darkness rolled back and he resisted it again.
To the west.
Another burst guided him into the alley across the street. The consuming night had weight here. It pressed down on him, smothering his light like an ocean of ink. He let off enough energy to melt through steel and the shadows fled for a few moments.
At the heart of the darkness was a dead man, half-hidden in the alley by a thick phone pole. Scores of other exes shifted and shambled around him, packed into the narrow space. The black and blue outfit hung on the desiccated frame and made the shoulder pads seem huge. Covering his head was a heavy mask designed to look like an armored helmet with a plume and a visor. The sleeves were tattered and Zzzap could see old bite marks across the withered gray flesh.
The thing inside Midknight glared out at the hero and gave one final push. The waves of darkness lunged in for a last attack.
The glowing wraith swept them aside with a wave of his hand. The shadows shattered as the air simmered. Zzzap brought his palms up and focused.
Beneath the visor, the ex’s teeth started to chatter.
The blast was a foot across. It vaporized the ex-hero from the chest up, burned a hole through the apartment complex behind him, and went on for another two blocks before vanishing through molten pavement.
What was left of Midknight burst into flame, along with dozens of other exes in the alley. The dead h
ero crumbled into ash like charred logs. A roaring wind picked up around Zzzap as air thunderclapped in to fill the hole he’d burnt into the atmosphere. The dust scattered and disappeared.
The moon and the stars shone down from above, and Zzzap felt the radio chatter filling the wavelengths around him. The gate lights swelled up to brighten that corner of the Mount.
He let his legs hang low and burned a path through the exes, dropping a few hundred of them before he rose up over the Gower gate. The guards laughed and hollered.
“Holy shit, hot stuff,” shrieked Lady Bee with a grin. “D’you think you got him?”
Nuke the site from orbit, he called out. It’s the only way to be sure.
They cheered and the pikes lunged forward. The exes at the gate crumpled and fell.
He hovered in front of the battlesuit. How are you? Back up?
Cerberus shook her head. “Give me a minute or three,” she said. “Surge protectors saved the mainframe but I need to do a full reboot.”
Anything I can do to help?
The armored skull shook again and then her eyes went dark.
I’m going to check over at Melrose, he shouted to Bee. I’ll be back before you know it.
* * * *
Gorgon could feel the strength ebbing. It had been a rush but he was at tier three now, tops. And the Seventeens were keeping clear of his fight.
Rodney swung and missed by inches. “Slowing down,” he laughed. “Batteries are running out, huh?”
The hero ducked another punch, drove a kick into the giant’s thigh, and followed it with a trio of punches into the solar plexus. Rodney caught him in the shoulder and he spun in the air. Dozens of dead fingers grabbed and held him as the huge ex lined up another punch.
Gorgon threw off the exes and ducked as the massive fist sailed over him. He drove a punch up into the thick wrist and felt something crack.