Peter Clines: Ex-Patriots

“This was a lot easier when I used to go out with you,” she said.

St. George glanced up at the armored head. “You never liked doing it.”

“Never said I did. I just said it used to be easier.” Cerberus shrugged her massive shoulders and looked away from the cross. “Let’s get it over with.”

A few of the guards pulled the additional support legs from the bars. Two others, Derek and Makana, flexed their hands inside heavy gloves and stood ready to grab the steel pipe that rested across the two halves of the gate. The exes reached for them, and each man batted dead fingers away.

St. George glanced back at Road Warrior . The truck’s engine idled and Luke flashed the headlights at him. The hero gave the driver a thumbs up and shot into the air.

He sailed up and over the tall arch of the gateway. He kicked a few exes as he landed in the wide intersection and they pinwheeled away, knocking down others as they went. The hungry dead turned toward him and stumbled away from the gate.

St. George let them get close. They tried to drag him down and broke teeth on his stone-hard skin. He batted them away with a sweep of his arm and they flew back to crash through the horde. He threw punches and felt skulls shatter under his knuckles. He grabbed a body by the shoulder and swung it around, battering even more exes to the ground. His boots came down to smash their heads. Within two minutes of landing he’d cleared two dozen of them.

The gate squeaked open behind him, and he heard the deep thump of heavy footsteps. Cerberus strode out, her three-fingered hands letting off arcs of power. Exes couldn’t feel pain, but the nerves were still there. A 200,000 volt blast along those nerves would cripple their muscles long enough to drop them. The titan swept her hubcap-sized palms across the mob by the gate and they dropped at her touch. They were struggling back to their feet when she marched over them and waved Road Warrior out behind her. The truck rolled forward and crushed exes beneath its thick dually tires. She gestured it past her and it rolled up to the intersection.

St. George leaped back over the truck, landing next to Cerberus. From the back, Jarvis tossed a long pike down to him. “Get going,” the hero said. “I’ll catch up.”

Road Warrior revved its engines and turned onto Melrose. Some of the scavengers saluted St. George and Cerberus as they pulled out, and a few waves came from the guards walking the walls.

Behind them, the hero grabbed the pike by one end and knocked down a wide swath of exes. The armored titan slammed out a punch that went through an ex’s head and caved in a skull behind it. They cleared a path back to the gate, where the guards fended off exes with more pikes.

An opening appeared and Cerberus strode through it. The gate clanged shut behind her and Derek and Makana dropped the bar back into its brackets. St. George nodded to them through the bars, batting exes away as he did. “Everyone okay?”

“Piece of cake, boss,” said Derek.

“Cerberus?”

The titan turned and looked down at him. “Burned up about a fifth of my reserves with the stun fields, but no problems otherwise.” The armored skull shifted, and St. George knew she was looking at the cross again.

“Okay, then. See you all tonight. Watch for flares.”

A few more salutes were tossed his way and St. George flew up into the sky. The withered fingers of exes dropped away from him.

St. George caught up with Road Warrior three blocks away as they were crossing Vine. Work crews had stacked cars right down the center line of the street. The Big Wall, as people called it, was still a few months from being done, but here the cars were already three high. The rare times Danielle wasn’t in the Cerberus armor she worked with a few others to figure out how to build some kind of gate here at Melrose and Vine. For now it was a large opening two lanes across.

He soared above the big truck for a while, watching the road ahead for blockages or crowds of exes. The path was clear most of the way to Highland. They’d dragged most of the cars away to use in the Big Wall. A pair of zombies stumbled into the street at Ivar and Road Warrior plowed over them. The hero flew a block ahead and landed at a gas station where the two big streets crossed.

Highland Avenue was one of the main thoroughfares of Hollywood. There’d been a lot of fighting here during the Zombocalypse as people trying to flee choked the street with cars. They’d been attacked by either exes or other panicked people trying to escape them. The people of the Mount had come out here more than a few times on scavenging runs. At different times he and Cerberus had pushed cars out of the way or even double-stacked them in places. The way was clear up Highland, but it was narrow. Very narrow in some places.

St. George waited for Road Warrior to catch up, and a minute later the big truck pulled up alongside him. Luke grinned at him from the cab. “Need a ride, sailor?”

“I was hoping you were heading my way,” said the hero. “See anything?”

The driver shook his head. “Nahh, clean sailing. You taking point?”

He nodded and banged the truck’s hood. “How’s it holding up?”

“She’s a beast,” said Luke, “but she’s dependable. She’ll get us over the hill and back.” He shook his head. “You know, there was a point when I’d make this run once or twice a day without thinking about it.”

St. George smiled. “There was a time when all I worried about were muggers and car thieves.”

Luke grinned and gunned the engine. Road Warrior swung around the corner and headed north. “Donuts,” someone moaned as they passed a shop. “I still don’t know if it’s worth living in a world with no more donuts.” It got a few chuckles.

The drive up Highland was uneventful. St. George needed to push a few cars out of the way that had tumbled from where they’d been stacked, so he balled up his leather jacket and tossed it up to Lady Bee. A handful of exes stumbled up to the truck when it slowed down and the scavengers piked them through their skulls. They came across a Prius and two electric cars and St. George marked their roofs with a large white X of spray paint he could see from the air. Gas was still a limited resource.

“This blows,” said Hector in the back of the truck. “We ever going to go over five miles an hour?”

Billie clenched her jaw and her right fist.

“It’s tricky going too fast in the city,” Jarvis said before she could respond. “A year or so back there was a buncha troublemakers who left booby traps all over the place. Spike chains, deadfalls, stuff like that. Wouldn’t want to hit one of those at speed and get stuck out here, would we?”

He stared at Hector. The tattooed man stared back for a moment, then blinked. “Sound like a bunch of punks to me,” said Hector. The corners of his mouth curled up. “Was up to me, I would’ve smacked their asses down hard.” He drove his pike through the head of a gore-covered girl who was clawing at the side of the truck.

Another chuckle worked its way through the scavengers.

It took them an hour to get up past Hollywood and Highland. The famous intersection was a mess of broken glass, sun-faded billboards, and dead cars. Luke inched the big vehicle between the burnt-out remains of a National Guard Humvee and a pile-up involving half a dozen cars and trucks. A few yards past the intersection, St. George braced his back against an eighteen-wheeler cab on half-rotted tires. He pushed it out of the way inch by inch, his boots scraping on the pavement.

The last half mile to the freeway was the worst, even when the curving road widened out to three, then four lanes. They’d been this way on scavenging runs before, but Road Warrior was a little wider and a little longer than their other trucks so the going was slow. They worked their way up past the big Methodist church at Franklin and a few scavengers bowed their heads or crossed themselves.