Peter Clines - Ex-Communication

St. George finished slicing and added the mushrooms to the pot. “Look, they have to find out sometime, right? I’m surprised no one’s figured it out yet. So this is a fine way to do it.”

“I am not convinced of that.”

“Are you getting scared?”

She stiffened. “Of course not.”

“It’d be totally natural if you were a little nervous about this.”

She stared at him. “I am not scared and I am not nervous. You may stop your clumsy attempt at reverse psychology, George.”

“I thought it was clever and subtle.”

“It was not.”

“Cute and endearing?”

“On a childish level, perhaps.”

Someone knocked on the door, tapping out a rapid drum solo. St. George smiled at her. “Last chance to vanish into a shadow.”

“Do you wish to answer the door or shall I?”

He wiped his hands on a dishtowel. “I’ll get it. Don’t want to freak everyone out right off the bat.”

She dipped her head and set the glasses on the table.

Danielle and Barry waited in the hall. His wheelchair was aimed at the door, ready to enter. She stood behind him, one of her hands clutching the chair’s handle.

“Hey,” said St. George. “Thanks for coming over.”

“Free food, good friends, a night away from the chair,” Barry said. He tipped his bald head back and smiled. “You know I’m all over that.”

Stealth was right. Barry looked calm. His thin frame was relaxed, free of the odd jerks and tics the energy form had developed over the past few months. He looked … normal.

Danielle snorted. Her strawberry-blond hair was tied back in a messy ponytail, away from her freckled face. He could see a collar of black spandex under her shirt, the Cerberus contact suit. It served as her security blanket outside the armor.

Her knuckles were white on the wheelchair’s handles. She lifted her free hand to reveal a bottle. “I brought presents.”

It took him a minute to register what she was holding. “You actually have wine? Real wine?”

“I’ve been saving it,” she said with a shrug. It was a tight, contained movement. “You said tonight was something special, so …” She shrugged again.

Barry looked between them. “Special? What have you two been keeping from me?”

“Beats me.” She pushed the wheelchair into the apartment and her shoulders relaxed by a few degrees once they were inside. “Is it just us?”

“Not exactly,” said St. George.

“Please tell me it’s not Freedom,” said Barry. “I’m sorry, but that guy can be so upti— … oh.”

Stealth stood by the table. Her arms hung straight at her sides.

St. George stepped forward and took her hand. Her fingers wrapped around his. “Guys—Barry, Danielle—this is Karen.”

Danielle’s eyes went wide. Her shoulders tensed back up. Barry gaped.

Stealth shifted under their gazes. “Good evening,” she said. A moment passed and her free hand went up to sweep a strand of ebony hair away from her face. As she lowered it, she paused to tug at the collar of her blouse.

The silence stretched out for another few seconds before Danielle cleared her throat. “Hello,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting … we … We didn’t know George was … seeing anyone.”

“You,” said Barry, “are very pretty.”

Stealth’s lips twitched and she dipped her head to him. “Thank you.”

Danielle set the wine down on the table. Then she picked it back up. “George, do you have a corkscrew?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

The redhead nodded, glanced at the other woman again, and vanished across the room. St. George separated his fingers from Stealth’s and followed Danielle into the kitchen.

She turned on him as soon as he stepped through the doorway. “It’s her, isn’t it?” whispered Danielle. It wasn’t a question.

“What?”

“Don’t play stupid, George.”

“I’m not playing.”

She glanced back at the living room with wide eyes. They could hear Barry filling the air with small talk. He was quizzing the dark-haired woman on her favorite movies.

Danielle looked at St. George. “Want to know something? Women size each other up all the time. We’re way more competitive than men. That’s why no one ever knows who I am out of the armor.”

“What are you getting at?”

“I know those hips and that rack, I just never see them without black spandex and leather straps stretched across them. And besides, I screened her when we moved into the Mount, remember? I didn’t see her face, but I know she’s black.”

A wisp of smoke sighed out between his lips. “Don’t say anything, okay?”

“Don’t say anything?!” Danielle swung the bottle back at the doorway. “What the hell is going on?”

“She’s trying to socialize, okay? She hasn’t dealt with anyone without her mask on in three years.”

“And you know what that says to me? She’s going to kill us all because we’ve seen her face.”

“Please,” he said. “Just be cool about this. For me. She needs it.”

She glared at him for a moment, then thrust her hand out. “Corkscrew.”

He pulled open a drawer, fumbled through the collection of kitchen tools, and held up a corkscrew. “Thank you,” he said.

She pulled it from his fingers. “Don’t thank me yet.” She took a deep breath and headed back into the living room. She ran into Stealth in the doorway. They stood eye to eye for a moment.

“Have you started the pasta?” Stealth asked.

Danielle swallowed. St. George shook his head. “No, I was just about to.”

“I will take care of it,” she said. She stepped to the oven. Danielle vanished back to the living room.

Barry gave a couple frantic waves when St. George returned, and the hero crouched by the wheelchair. “Where?” demanded Barry. “Where in God’s name did you find a woman like that?”

“What?”

“Her. Karen. Where’d she come from?”

He blinked and exchanged a glance with Danielle. “Are you serious?”

“Of course I am.”

“You … you probably just never noticed her before.”

“It’s the Mount,” hissed Barry. “You can’t hide someone who looks like that. Was she from Yuma?”

St. George shook his head. “No, she’s been with us all along.”

“Liar. I know her from somewhere, though.”

“Maybe right here?”

“Your Jedi mind tricks won’t work on me. I’ll figure this out.” He drummed his fingers on the arm of his wheelchair.

Stealth stepped back into the main room. “Dinner should be ready in fifteen minutes,” she said. “The wine should have just enough time to breathe.”

“It was only a step above Two Buck Chuck before the end of the world,” said Danielle. Her lips twitched into a smile. “I’m not sure if breathing’s going to help it any.”

“Still,” said Barry, “it’ll be better than that fruit cider–stuff they’re brewing down in Larchmont.”

“I’ve got a bottle of that, too,” said St. George. He tipped his chin at Danielle. “Did you finish gathering up all those helmets?”

She shook her head. “Not yet. I went out with Cesar riding shotgun and got maybe two-thirds of them. We might’ve missed a couple.” She sank the corkscrew into the top of the wine bottle. “Something kind of strange I meant to tell you. There’s a lot of military helmets out there.”

“There were several units of Marines and National Guard in Los Angeles before the fall,” said Stealth.

Danielle nodded. “I’d expect some, yeah, with all the stuff Legion scavenged. The percentage just seems kind of high. I mean, didn’t we gather up a lot of that stuff when we were setting up the Mount?”

“Has anyone else thought that we need a new name?” asked Barry. He’d already started in on the first loaf of bread. “I mean, this is the Mount here, yeah, but are we going to call everything inside the Big Wall ‘The Mount’ or what?”