Peter Clines: Ex-Communication

“Yeah,” I said with a nod. “That’s what everyone says their first time.”

ST. GEORGE WATCHEDJennifer pound one last nail into place before she saluted the sky with her hammer. “That’s it,” she said. “Done.” She gave one of the shingles a glance and whacked its nail. “Now it’s done,” she said.

There was some scattered applause from the crowd. Not much.

The guard post wasn’t impressive. The one-story structure wasn’t much more than a shack. They’d found enough lumber to give it solid walls. It had two windows and a skylight. A roll of tar paper and a bundle of shingles gave it—in theory—a waterproof roof. They’d built it in the corner between the west gate of the Big Wall and the wooden staircase that led up to the walkway on top of the barrier.

The Big Wall stood fifteen feet high on average, and in places it was almost a dozen feet thick. They’d built it by pushing cars together and stacking them one on top of another. It had been long, tedious work, with dozens of men and women holding off the exes while dozens more pushed vehicle after vehicle into line. Most of them had flat tires, and it was like forcing the cars through thick mud to move them. Even with help from the heroes, and then later from the super-soldiers of Project Krypton, it had taken just short of a year to build. When they’d finished, an industrious little boy had informed St. George the Big Wall had exactly six thousand seven hundred and eighty-one cars in it. Stealth had told the boy he was off by two.

There wasn’t anything near the wall the guards could use for shelter, though. It took only one rainy night in late February for them to realize that. The shack at the intersection of Melrose and Vine was for whoever was posted at the West Gate. There were still three more to build, one at each gate.

St. George beamed at the structure as Jennifer climbed down her ladder. He glanced over his shoulder at the crowd. “Oh, come on.” He nodded at the shack. “You people know what this is? This is the first new building in Los Angeles in three years.”

There was a quiet moment as they all stared at the little structure.

Hiram Jarvis cleared his throat. The lanky man had a dark beard streaked with premature white and gray. “Thank God,” he said. “The housing market’s finally bounced back.”

They all smiled. A chuckle danced through the crowd. “Time to invest,” called out Makana. The chuckles broke into applause. They all clapped this time. A few people hugged each other.

It was good to see a crowd of people smiling, thought St. George. It didn’t happen often enough. He pounded his own hands together.

The applause grew for a moment and then stumbled. A few people kept clapping, but the sound was off. St. George followed the dull thwack through the shifting crowd to the gate.

The East Gate was two big arrays of vertical steel pipes just inches apart. It was strong enough to stop a speeding car. The goal was to eventually get both sides of it covered with chain-link fencing to keep the undead from reaching through. A double set of bars stretched across the panels to hold them in place, one at chest height and the other two feet off the ground.

On the other side of the gate, a baker’s dozen of exes slapped their hands together. They all wore the same expression, wide eyes and a grin that was close to a sneer. As St. George got closer he could see the unhealing wounds marking all of the undead. One of the men was missing an eye. Another one slapped his hand against the ragged stump of his other wrist. There was a woman with gorgeous features who only had a few scrapes and bruises, and another who was little more than bones wrapped in papery skin. All of them had pale flesh and dull eyes. They kept clapping.

“Things are lookin’ good in there, esse ,” one of them said to St. George. It was the dead man with the missing hand. The ex beat the stump against its palm. “Lookin’ really good.”

Twin trailers of smoke rose out of St. George’s nose. “You want something, Rodney?”

The applause stopped. “I told you,” said the dead man before the other exes joined it in one voice, “DON’T CALL ME RODNEY. IT’S LEGION, DAMNIT!”

“Whatever.”

Half of the exes wandered away from the gate and milled about like the rest of the undead. Their jaws moved up and down, banging their teeth together. The ones left glared at St. George. The one-handed man tapped his knuckles against one of the pipes, and the other exes mirrored the gesture along the gate. “Someday soon, dragon man, I’m gonna get in there. You know it’s coming. You won’t be acting so smart then.”

“Someday isn’t today,” said St. George. He spat out a burst of flame through the fence.

The exes took a step back, then held their ground. It wasn’t enough fire to do more than singe them, but the one-handed man lost his eyebrows. They all glared at the hero and bared their teeth. Then their expressions went slack and their teeth started clacking against each other. They pushed their arms between the pipes and tried to reach St. George with slow, clumsy grabs.

A couple people gave halfhearted laughs and cheers, but the mood was dead. The crowd scattered. Guards turned to watch the streets outside the Big Wall while others walked up the wooden staircase to join them.

St. George turned away from the gate and saw that two people had stayed behind to speak with him. The first was Billie Carter, the nominal head of the scavengers, the people who headed out once or twice a week to search the city for whatever supplies they could find. From a distance, the Marine sergeant sometimes got mistaken for a teenage boy with a buzz cut. Up close, it was clear she was a woman who shouldn’t be messed with.

The second was Jarvis. No one was quite sure where Jarvis fit into the scheme of things. He went out with the scavengers, but it wasn’t uncommon to find him walking the Wall. He pulled shifts as a hospital guard and even spent time weeding in the gardens. His willingness to do whatever needed to be done meant everyone liked him, so they all tended to listen to him when he spoke. St. George found the man to be an endless source of cheerfulness and common sense without ever crossing the line that made cheerful people annoying.

“So,” said the hero, “are we still on for tomorrow?”

Billie nodded. “Assuming Legion hasn’t messed up the roads too bad, we should be able to make Sherman Oaks in an hour. There’s lots of little shops out there that might be worth checking out. If we can make it all the way to Sepulveda there’s a ton of apartment complexes.”

“Probably too many to hit on the same day,” said Jarvis, “but we can get a sense of how things are looking out that way.”

“There better be something,” said Billie. “We’re getting close to the point this isn’t worth it.”

St. George glanced at her. “Meaning what?”

She shrugged. “Basic logistics. If we burn ten gallons of fuel to bring ten back, we’re pretty much right back where we started. There’s still a lot of gas stations out there, but we’re getting near the point it’s going to cost us more to go looking than we’re going to get out of it. Especially with Legion making us fight for every mile we travel.”

“Always nice to get out, though,” said Jarvis.

“I’m serious,” Billie said. “Every time we head out we’re tied to the Mount, and we’re running out of rope.” She crossed her arms. “I think we need to think about setting up a forward base or two farther out. Something out in the valley, or over in Burbank. Maybe just a dozen or two people in a secure area. Someplace we can scavenge from without trucking what we find all the way back here.”