Peter Clines - Ex-Communication

Madelyn looked at the bright line painted in front of the gate. “Yep.”

“Stay a yard back from the line and you’ll be fine. They won’t be able to touch you.”

He was reassuring her, she realized. A lot of people probably came to the gates, looking for familiar faces. A lot of those After Death folks. She gave him a nod and he turned his attention back to the creatures on the other side of the Wall.

There were two guards in the shack, but they were eating lunch. One looked at her, and his eyes lingered long enough to worry her. Then he went back to his sandwich.

It was just her and the exes. There were dead men, women, and children. Young and old. Black, white, Latino, Asian. The ex-virus didn’t discriminate.

Except for me, thought Madelyn. It doesn’t want me for some reason.

On the plus side, the exes were falling apart and she wasn’t. They were missing fingers and hair and skin. Some of them had dark sockets where there should’ve been eyes or noses or ears.

Most of the ones at the gate were watching the guards on top of the Big Wall. Their attention kept shifting to the nearest target as the men and women walked back and forth. It made them sway.

A dozen or so at the far end of the gate stretched their hands at the shack. The windows were large enough for them to see the two men inside. Their crooked fingers clawed at the air, trying to pull the structure closer.

She moved a little closer to the shack. The exes there had their eyes at ground level, but she didn’t want to get near enough for the guards to get a good look at her. She took a few steps forward and stood a foot back from the painted line.

None of them looked at her.

She took a breath and held it for a minute. “Hi, there,” she said. Her words were washed away under the torrent of clicking ivory. She tried again and it came out louder than she’d intended. One of the guards walking above her, a rail-thin woman, glanced down for a moment before continuing south along the Wall.

The exes didn’t react to the sound at all. Their heads never moved in her direction. Their grasping hands didn’t reach for her.

A dead man with sun-bleached hair stood right in front of her. It wore a tuxedo jacket over jeans and a brown T-shirt, and it took her a moment to realize the brown was all stains. It stretched its arms toward the guard shack. Two of its fingernails were missing on one hand.

Madelyn took another step and set her toes on the line. She pulled her hand from her pocket and moved it back and forth in front of the dead man’s face. The ex’s eyes stayed focused on the shack a few yards away. “Can you hear me?”

She glanced around. The guards were ignoring her for the moment, wrapped up in their breaks or their duties. She reached across the line and tapped the ex on the back of its grasping hand.

It paused for a moment, then went back to reaching for the guard shack. Both her feet were past the line. They could grab her. There were three of them who could reach her without even trying. But they didn’t try.

Madelyn slid forward, lined up between the bars, and punched the ex in the shoulder. The tuxedo corpse rocked on its feet, but its focus never shifted. All the exes around it ignored her, too.

“Hey,” yelled someone up on the Wall. “Get back behind the line!”

Madelyn looked up and saw the guard in the camos staring at her. His face was trying to decide if it was angry or scared. Two other guards were turning to see what he was yelling about.

Then everything happened at once.

An ex a few feet away, two down from the one she’d punched, shifted on its feet. It was a thin man in a long coat. It wore a helmet wrapped in digital-camo cloth. The ex looked around and she realized it was reacting. It was doing something different. Like the ones had the other day when she was out with Freedom.

It had a pistol. It slid the weapon out from under its coat and brought it up. The barrel pointed between the bars at the gatehouse. The dead man’s face pulled into a grin.

Something landed behind her. The camo guard had leaped twenty feet through the air to land on the pavement. The name on his coat said JEFFERSON . His hand reached for her shoulder. He was looking at her, not at the exes. Not at the ex with the gun.

She acted without thinking. It was like soccer. The ball came at you and you leaped to block it. You didn’t think. She knew the ex was going to shoot the guards in the shack, so she just acted.

She twisted away from Jefferson and pushed down on the gun just as the ex squeezed the trigger. The pistol jerked under her hand, and the blast sparked against the pavement in front of the shack. The arm fought back and she struggled to keep the weapon pointed at the ground. The barrel was hot now.

“Gun!” bellowed Jefferson. He leaped back and swung his rifle around. At the same time he grabbed Madelyn by the arm with his free hand and yanked her away from the gate. He was strong. Really strong. It crossed her mind he was one of her dad’s super-soldiers just as her feet left the ground and she sailed through the air. If Jefferson hadn’t held on she would’ve tumbled across the road. As it was her hat went flying and her hair spun in every direction. The landing shook her and knocked her sunglasses to the ground.

The guards up above looked confused. Some of them shot down into the exes outside the Big Wall. Jefferson fired through the gate. The ex with the pistol slumped with a hole in its head.

A dozen sleepwalking exes woke up. Their posture shifted, their eyes became alert beneath their helmets. Pistols and rifles appeared from under shirts and coats. Some of them aimed at the guard shack. A few leaned back to aim at the guards on top of the Wall. At least three aimed at Jefferson, enough to make him hesitate for a moment. Shots echoed across the street and one of the guards howled and grabbed at his arm.

None of the exes aimed at Madelyn. None of them even looked at her.

She lunged past Jefferson again and grabbed a pistol from the dead man holding it. The gun flew over her shoulder and she reached through the gate to yank a rifle away from the next ex.

The exes looked confused. “WHAT THE HELL?” they all roared at once.

The rifle was heavier than Madelyn thought it would be, so she let it clatter on the pavement halfway through the bars. She took two quick steps and grabbed a pistol with each hand. She tried to think of it like a game. The weapon-grabbing game. One of the handguns went off as she grabbed it, and another shot thundered near her head. She cringed away but didn’t feel any pain.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?” The exes looked past her at Jefferson. Then up in the air and all around them. Their heads moved in sync, like dancers or those Olympic swimmers. They were so confused they’d only fired a dozen shots so far.

She smacked a pistol out of withered fingers and brought both palms down on a soldiery-looking rifle with a curved clip. The dead man holding it fought back and snarled at the weapon. Her fist flew through the bars to punch the ex in the nose and she twisted the rifle away. She threw a clumsy kick and another pistol spun into the air.

More gunfire exploded around her. She flinched away from the exes, and just as she realized the sound was coming from behind her Jefferson dragged her clear again. He held his rifle in the other hand, snapping off shots like it was an oversized pistol. The guards from the shack joined him.

A dozen exes dropped across the width of the gate. They roared and fell and the ones behind them picked up the roar. The guards up on the Wall fired into the mob of exes. There was some return fire but it didn’t last long.

Madelyn took a few deep breaths. It had all happened so fast. She glanced at the watches on her wrist and guessed maybe five minutes had passed since she walked up to the gate.