Ex-Communication - Ex-Heroes 03

by Peter Clines

  “Yeah,” he said. “We did.”

  She wrapped her arms around him and allowed him to lift her up. She settled on her feet and took a few cautious steps. “I appear to be uninjured.”. He focused onndss not.”

  “Good.”

  Madelyn waved them over to Freedom. The huge officer lay on the far side of the street, sheltered by the car the dead girl had dragged him behind. His hand wrapped over the bloody wound in his side. His breathing was ragged.

  St. George looked around. “Try to find Barry,” he told Madelyn.

  She nodded and darted away. Stealth followed her.

  He crouched and set a hand on Freedom’s forehead. It was burning hot. His eyes blinked open and he looked at the hero. “I take it we won, sir.”

  “Seems like it,” said St. George. “You look like crap, Captain.”

  “I think the demon’s tail might’ve been poisonous. And I’ve lost a lot of blood.”

  “Can you walk?”

  “No idea.”

  St. George helped the big man to his feet. He swayed for a moment, then fell against a car. “I think I’ll wait here, sir,” he coughed.

  “Zzzap’s alive,” Madelyn called from a few yards away. “And he’s … uhhh, naked.”

  “That’s normal,” said St. George. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked Freedom.

  “I’ve had worse.”

  St. George glanced around for something to cover his friend as he made his way across the rubble. He didn’t have much left in the way of clothes himself. Pretty much everything that could burn near the demon had burned.

  A few yards from Barry was the center of the spiderweb. Dozens of long bones lay there in a heap. A distorted skeleton, like the remains of a dinosaur. Scraps of charred flesh hung on the long bones. A long shard of gleaming metal stood between two ribs. It was the only thing not covered in dust.

  Stealth tapped the horned skull with her boot and it fell free of the pile. It looked swollen and round. The sockets were too large. The jaw bristled with teeth like daggers. The spine dragged after it, bound together with threads of gristle.

  Barry sprawled on the pavement. His dark skin was covered with ash. St. George remembered the ghastly look from 9/11 footage. The hand that had held the sword was still spread wide open, as if it had cramped that way.

  Madelyn’s fingers danced down her shirt and she shrugged out of her flannel. Her bra and her skin were the same shade of white. She draped it across Barry’s lap. The other man’s eyes fluttered as she did.

  Barry looked up at them. “You guys are still alive?”

  “Yeah,” said St. George. He kneeled. “Barely.”

  “Am I still alive?”

  “I hope so. We don’t need any more ghosts.”

  Barry nodded. “Cairax?”

  St. George tilted his head back toward Stealth. “You got him.”

  “Wow.” He started to relax, then his eyes snapped open. “Oh, crap,” he said. “Crap, crap, crap.”

  “What’s wrong?” Madelyn asked.

  “Are you okay?” , but Freedom couldcedead womanSt. George tried to check his friend’s body and wondered what he wasn’t seeing.

  Barry’s eyes were wide with terror. “I can’t feel my legs. I think … I think I’m paralyzed.”

  St. George looked at his friend for a moment, then burst out laughing. Madelyn giggled. Barry kept the act up for another few seconds before a grin broke out across his face.

  “Well, damn,” Barry said after a minute of laughter. “I always wanted to do that.”

  “Do what?”

  He smiled at them. “I think we just saved the world.”

  St. George stood up to join Stealth and saw the exes.

  At least three hundred of them stood halfway down the street, near the crater. They stretched across La Brea Avenue, blocking it, at least four or five rows deep. Their arms were crossed. Their jaws didn’t move. He glanced over his shoulder and saw a similar line behind them, and one in either direction on 3rd Street.

  They were surrounded.

  “I have no ammunition,” said Stealth. “I assume the captain is incapacitated. Is Zzzap well enough to fight?”

  “Maybe,” said St. George. He did a double take and stared at her face. The hole in her mask had vanished.

  “Focus, George,” she said.

  “How did you—”

  “I carry a spare mask in my belt.” She tipped her head to the line ahead of them. “Be ready.”

  One of the exes marched forward. It had been a tall, lean black man once. Two fingers were missing off its left hand. A gaping hole in its side was clogged with ropy lengths of meat that had probably been intestines before they were hit with a shotgun blast. It had both eyes, and St. George could see Legion’s expressions behind its face.

  The ex stopped ten feet away from them, just past where the spray of ash and dust ended. St. George rolled his fingers into fists. He felt Stealth tense next to him.

  “Could kill all of you fuckers right now,” said the dead man. The fingers of its mangled hand curled into a fist, then went loose again. Its jaw shifted side to side.

  The heroes didn’t move.

  The ex shook its head. “You got an hour.”

  St. George waited a few moments. He let a few curls of smoke twist out of his nose. “Meaning what?”

  “Got an hour to get back behind your Wall,” Legion said. “Nothing’ll bite until then. After that, you’re on your own.”

  “Just like that?” said St. George. “After all this time, you’ve got us down and beat and you’re just walking away?”

  “No,” said the ex. “You’re walking away. I’m lettin’ you.”

  “I do not believe you,” said Stealth.

  “The fuck do I care if you believe me or not?”

  St. George looked the dead man in the eye. “Why?”

  Legion waved the mangled hand, but Freedom couldcedead woman at the web of ash. “I ain’t stupid. El demonio here was gonna trash my city. You helped stop it. Gets you a pass. One time only.”

  St. George and Legion stared at each other for a moment, and then the hero nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “Yeah, fuck you, too,” said the ex. “Last thing I want is to owe you anything.”

  “One hour, then,” said St. George.

  Legion grunted at the hero and glanced at Stealth.

  She crossed her arms. “This changes nothing.”

  “Damn straight.”

  “You are a murderer.”

  “Take a look in the mirror, puta,” the ex snorted. “We’re all killers. I just killed people you liked more, that’s all.”

  The dead man turned and walked away from them.

  “And what happens next time we’re outside?” called St. George. “We’ll just go back to trying to wi

  I WAS DOWN in Venice. I don’t go there often. I’m not a big swimmer, and I’ve never surfed once. As the Mighty Dragon … well, there’s a lot of wind coming off the ocean. Even with the cape-wings, I can’t really glide down there, so my mobility gets cut down. It all just becomes exaggerated hops. And it makes me feel kind of silly. Yeah, I’m hopping fifty or sixty feet at a time, but it just seems undignified for a superhero to be bouncing around.

  But there’d been some weird stories coming out of Venice over the past month. People said a monster was stalking the boardwalk. I’d seen a news report saying it was a giant purple dinosaur (and, wow, did Fox make a lot of lame jokes about that). A few homeless folks who’d seen it said it was one of the aliens from the Sigourney Weaver movies.

  I knew of four heroes who’d taken up in L.A. There was me. There was the guy with the headgear, Gorgon. There was Midknight. And there was the ninja-Batgirl woman. I’d caught her watching me one night while I dealt with some muggers, but she was gone by the time I finished with them.

  I generally worked around my home. Hollywood, Los Feliz, a bit of Koreatown. Midknight was out in the Valley, Burbank u
sually. Gorgon was over on the west side, Beverly Hills and West Hollywood. The ninja-woman stayed around downtown and the Rampart district, but sometimes I’d hear stories of her in other parts of the city.

  No one covered the beaches. So after the fourth or fifth report of the monster, I decided to check it out. I drove over, parked in a corner of that big lot right at the end of Venice Boulevard, the one before the beach, and changed into my costume in the backseat. I figured enough surfers probably changed in and out of wetsuits there that I wouldn’t draw too much attention, even at night in December.

  It’s kind of silly, I know, but it surprised me when I learned the Venice Boardwalk was made of concrete. It’s just a big sidewalk. You hear “boardwalk” and you just think … well, wood. I thought the whole thing would look like the Santa Monica Pier.

  Anyway, I was coasting around in the sky as best I could and came in for a landing on one of those tall apartment buildings right on the waterfront. A few homeless people saw me and pointed. I’d been doing this for almost six months now. People tended to recognize the costume by this point. One guy with a shaggy beard saluted.

  Then I heard the wail. Somebody in a lot of pain. They yelled again and I saw a few of the people on the boardwalk scatter.

  A few steps launched me through the air and north along the beach. The wind knocked me around. I went maybe twenty or thirty yards and managed to land on a shop without slipping off and crashing.

  The cries were clearer now, but as I tried to pinpoint them they shifted. New voices started yelling. And they were scared. I was hearing screams, not yells.

  I got a better sense of where it was coming from, about two blocks away down the boardwalk, and just as I did three teenagers came running out of an alley. Three boys. They were gang age, but weren’t wearing any colors. What they were wearing looked a little too high-end for gangs, too. All just a little too shiny and new. I wasn’t an expert on footwear, but I was pretty sure those wer remember falling asleepOEofA cen’t Payless sneakers.

  Whoever they were, they were terrified.

  I stepped off the rooftop to soar down to street level.

  The last kid was maybe a yard out of the alley when something reached out after him. At first I thought it was a spear or a board. Something long and thin that somebody’d thrown after them. Then the end split open and wrapped around the kid’s head like something out of a horror movie. The arm yanked him back into the alley.

  I was halfway to the ground. I shifted my cape and glided toward the alley. The other two kids ran below me. One of them gave me a glance, but they never looked back. The closest one smelled like piss.

  I ran over to the alley. It took a second for my eyes to adjust to the gloom and see what the arm was attached to. I was right. It was something out of a horror movie.

  On a guess it was maybe nine or ten feet tall, but it was tough to be sure because it was hunched over. It was more or less human-shaped, but the proportions were off. It was too tall and thin, like a person who’d been stretched out on a rack and stayed that way. It made every step and swing of its arms seem unnatural. It had a tail that looked like a cross between a dinosaur and a scorpion.

  Its head looked like a fish. One of those deep-sea fish with the huge eyes and teeth so long it could barely close its mouth. Half a dozen stubby horns circled its scalp like a weird crown or something.

  It had the third kid by the ankles, hanging him upside down so the boy’s eyes and its were level. Its tongue was out, this long thing like a snake. It was poking the kid on the nose. The kid was bawling, almost drowning in his own snot. There was a glossy stain on his jeans and it was creeping into his shirt as it followed gravity.

  “Hey,” I shouted. “Put him down, whatever you are.”

  I felt stupid as soon as I said it. Mon what?”

  ST. GEORGE HUNG in the air over the water tower. It wasn’t the highest point inside the Big Wall, but it was familiar to him. He needed a good dose of familiar.

  It had been two nights since Cairax had died or been banished or whatever. St. George had flown Freedom to the hospital. Stealth and Madelyn passed through the South Gate of the Big Wall forty minutes later, and ten minutes after that the exes were banging their teeth together again. There hadn’t been a sign of Legion since then.

  His own wounds were healing. As he’d learned the last time he fought the demon, his immune system was powerful enough to handle any disease he encountered. Dr. Connolly took a trio of blood samples this time. “Who knows how long it’ll be before something breaks your skin again,” she said.

  Freedom was still in intensive care. His ribs had been set and taped, and he’d received several transfusions. Freedom’s massive frame held over fifteen pints of blood, and he’d lost more than six. His soldiers had lined up to donate. Even the ones who didn’t match his type insisted on donating to the slowly growing blood bank.

  He was racked with disease. Connolly was pretty sure Cairax Murrain’s last gift to Freedom was a fast-acting case of the bubonic plague. The huge officer was in quarantine with three different IVs filling him with fluids and antibiotics. St. George had wanted to try a transfusion, to see if his blood would help Freedom fight off the disease, but he was the wrong blood type. “Besides,” Connolly told him, “I’m not entirely sure your blood wouldn’t treat his whole body as an infection.”

  Last St. George had heard, she was prepping an ice bath to bring the captain’s temperature down but expected him to make an eventual recovery. “It would’ve killed anyone else by now,” she said, “but the man’s got the constitution of a bull elephant.”

  The sun came up seven hours early and bathed the water tower in brilliant light. St. George’s musings vanished with the darkness. I thought I might find you here.

  “Hey,” he said. “What are you doing out of the chair?”

  I asked Stealth if I could come talk to you.

  “And she said yes?”

  Yeah. Most folks are already asleep, and there’s hours of battery li. He focused onass not.”fe.

  “So,” he asked his friend, “what’s up?”

  I just wanted to say good-bye.

  St. George smiled. “You flew over here to tell me you’re going back to Four?”

  No, George. I came to say good-bye.

  A faint chill shimmied down St. George’s back. “What do you mean?”

  Now that I know what I am, I realize I’m not supposed to be here.

  “What?”

  Zzzap tilted his head back and looked out into space. It’s time to return to my place in the heavens. Time to embrace my destiny.

  “Barry, what the hell are you talking about?”

  Good-bye, George. You’ve been a good friend. I’ll miss you.

  “Wait, you can’t be seri—”

  The gleaming wraith shot up into the sky, a falling star in reverse. In an instant he was one pinprick of light among thousands. Another star in the night.

  And then he was gone.

  St. George stared up into the sky, his jaw still open, unsure what had just happened. The after-image of Zzzap still burned his eyes. He shouted his friend’s name, then yelled it again over their private radio channel.

  No response.

  He sank down and the heels of his new boots clanged against the roof of the water tower.

  Then a bolt of light shot down out of the night and halted in front of him.

  Nah, I’m just screwing with you, said Zzzap.

  “You bastard,” said St. George. “I think I just had three different heart attacks.”

  Let’s be real. This place would fall apart inside of a week without me.

  “So you don’t think you’re an archangel now?”

  Oh, hell no, said the gleaming wraith. Last thing I want is to be a religious figurehead. Plus, isn’t there a law or a commandment about impersonating God or something like that?

  “Maybe the one about false idols?”

  Yeah, that sounds about right. Besides, I
was just a good symbolic representation of an archangel, not the real deal.

  They hung there for a moment, looking down at the city. Song, who’

  many people had moved out when the Big Wall was done, the population of the Mount itself had dropped to almost nothing. It was clearest at night, when they could see how few lights there were at the center of their square mile of city.

  So, Zzzap said. Maddy Sorensen’s really the Swamp Thing, huh?

  “What?”

  Swamp Thintomy Lesson” by Alan Moore?

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Is this another television show?”

  No, said the wraith. Well, yeah, but that’s not what I’m … You know Trader Joe’shoofA cwhat, forget it. It’s not my fault you’ve got huge holes in your education.

  “Fine.”

  I was referring to the fact she’s ninety percent nanites or whatever she is.

  “How’d you hear about that?”

  Dr. Connolly told me about it while I was getting checked out after we got back. We were talking about Freedom and Dr. Sorensen, and then Maddy came up.

  “She’s supposed to be keeping it a secret.”

  Zzzap nodded. She is. I think she just figured since I was one of the cool kids I’d be hearing about it sooner or later. He turned in the air and looked northwest, toward the hospital. Are you going to tell her?

  St. George shrugged. “I don’t know. This is up there with ‘you’ve got cancer’ or ‘your wife is dead’ or that sort of thing. I think if we decide to tell her it needs someone better trained than me.”

  I think it’s probably better if it comes from you.

  “How do you figure?”

  You know she’s got a huge crush on you, right?

  “What?”

  Yep.

  “Ignoring the twice-her-age thing, I thought she was into Freedom.”

  The gleaming wraith shook his head. He’s the big brother she always wanted. I think he’s fine with that, too. It’s letting him deal with that rucksack of guilt he’s always carrying around. You’re the one she’s having schoolgirl dreams about.