Peter Clines: Ex-Heroes

Jarvis squeezed off a round and dropped the overweight ex wandering out of the alley by the bookstore. The pallid woman fell face-first onto the sidewalk. They heard her nose snap on the pavement.

“And as Jarvis just pointed out,” St. George added with a glare, “don’t shoot unless you have to. The noise attracts them.” The salt-and-pepper man winced and lowered his rifle. “If you hear a shot, or shots, don’t panic. Don’t run. That just gets people hurt. One of the easiest tricks to surviving out here is to walk. Use your brains, use your walkies, find out what’s going on first. Don’t run unless you know you need to run.”

He looked at them until they all nodded their understanding. “Okay, then. Ty, David, Billie, check those apartments up there. Mark, Bee, you take Lynne and search all the ones on this side. Andy, Jarvis, Lee, you’ve got ground-level shops. Luke and Ilya stay with the truck. I’m going to mind this intersection here. Cerberus, that intersection up there is yours. Questions?”

“What about Barry?”

“Barry sleeps unless we need him.”

Ty twisted a pair of canvas bags into a wide rope and yanked it through his gunbelt. “How long do you want to spend here?”

“I’m hoping we can do this block in two hours. Move east, then north. It’ll let us hit most of these small shops.”

“I think there’s a Ralphs or Vons or something three blocks that way,” nodded Lynne.

Cerberus shook her head with a faint whine of servos. “Grocery stores were the first things people hit,” the titan said. “Assume anything with its own parking lot was looted at least a year ago.”

“I’m hoping we can get all of this street and the block to the east done today,” said St. George. “Sundown’s at seven-twelve. Half hour drive back. We should have the truck loaded and ready by six at the latest.”

Billie slapped the tactical holster strapped to her thigh. “Let’s do it.”

* * * *

Mark banged on the stairwell door three times while Lady Bee pulled the fire extinguisher from its socket. Lynne watched behind them with her rifle ready. She nodded at the gray door. “Why do you pound on them again?”

He pushed the door open with his foot and waited. The stairwell was lit by random shafts of sunlight. “You haven’t been out much, have you?”

“Not really. Too young before.”

“Noise attracts exes, like St. George said,” explained Bee. “Before you open anything—-doors, closets, whatever—you make some noise. If there are any on the other side, they’ll try to walk through the door to follow the sound and you can hear them.”

Mark nodded. “Either that or they’re far enough away you’ll have time to shoot them.” He stepped into the stairwell and gave a quick glance down and up. “Looks good. Down just leads to the emergency exit.”

“Smells like shit in here,” said Lynne.

“Lots of dead stuff in these places,” said Bee.

“Exes?”

“A lot of it’s just dead.”

“Hey,” said Mark, “more looking, less talking.”

“Oh, you love it,” said Bee. She leaned back and her eyes and rifle followed the stairwell up. “What man wouldn’t want a little time alone with two sexy singles?”

“One who knows there won’t be enough time to enjoy them,” he replied. He gave her a thumbs-up and she slid to the next landing.

“Body,” she called. “It’s down.”

“Sure?”

“Yeah. Well eaten. Not enough left to move.”

He gestured Lynne up the stairs and she joined Bee on the bloodstained landing. The corpse was a withered thing, a skeleton held together with strips of human jerky. Most of the fingers and toes were missing. A few scraps of stained cloth surrounded it. Lynne couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman.

Mark shuffled up behind them and swung around the small platform.

“Next flight looks good,” Bee told him.

He gave her a nod and worked his way up to the next level. “Second floor,” he called out. He banged three times on the door.

Lynne moved up the steps. “Exes are as stupid as everyone says, right?”

“Dumb as ants.”

“So where’d the one go that ate this guy? Or woman. Whatever it was. It couldn’t get out of here, right?”

The two scavengers glanced at each other. “Score one for the new kid,” said Mark. He craned his neck over the railing and looked up and down.

“Anything?”

“Still nothing.” He slid his bulky form up the next flight, his rifle aimed at the next landing. “Ahhhhh. Got a leak.”

Bee gestured Lynne up the stairs.

Mark pointed out the dark streams crusted on the third-floor platform. He took a few more steps and peered across the landing. “Another body,” he said. His free hand went up, back down, and traced a circle in the air. “Ex. It’s down.”

Lynne stood on her toes and leaned to see the body. “You sure?”

“Yep. Looks like it tried to go up to the fourth floor and fell straight over backwards. Cracked its skull wide open.”

“How?”

“Seen it before,” said Bee. “A body can fall pretty hard when it doesn’t try to stop itself.”

“Back down to two,” said Mark with a wave of his hand. “We’ve got a building to search and we’re falling behind already.”

* * * *

St. George jumped up as high as he could, crashing through the dried leaves of the trees. Staying focused on the small twist between his shoulders let him go up fifty feet, just a bit higher than most of the buildings. It still wasn’t real flight, even with three years of practice.

He hung in the air for a moment, looking across the rooftops. There were a dozen solar panels the next block over. Some sun-bleached shirts and shorts on a jury-rigged clothesline. Three or four blocks away, a pair of exes pushed against the railing of a rooftop patio.

He sank back down and launched himself up again. The solar cells closest to him were cracked. They might not work.

The hero turned, his arms slicing through the air, and cast his eyes down Vermont. From up here he could see for miles, to the 10 freeway. If he focused a bit, he could see slow, staggering movement everywhere. Over five million exes in Los Angeles county, if Stealth’s estimates were correct.

As he drifted toward the ground again, he saw the figure shuffling up the street. A dark-haired young woman in jeans and a T-shirt. She had one eye, and her left arm ended at the elbow. Something twisted and turned on the blacktop behind her.

He swung his legs and slipped forward, landing in the intersection past the trees. The ex swung its eye toward him and snapped its jaws while it stumbled forward. Its right arm hung back, its wrist connected to the small thing by a colorful cord. St. George saw the bright red Velcro and realized what the creature was dragging.

It was a child. Two years old at the most, leashed to the thing that had been its mother. Its clothes were tatters. Most of its face was raw and bloody from being dragged across countless miles of pavement, and he could see bone and teeth everywhere. The mother would come to a brief halt between steps, the dead child would roll and twist, and then be yanked off balance again as the larger ex shuffled on.

St. George’s boots tapped against the road and the female ex raised its stumped arm to him. It strained to pull the other forward, and the dead child flailed on the ground. This close he could see the damp trail the small ex left as it was dragged.

The hero reached out and the woman closed her mouth on his fingers. It reminded him of a small puppy as it tried to bite, one without the strength to break the skin. The mindless jaws worked up and down and tried to gnaw through his stony skin. Its tongue was a coarse piece of ragged leather against his fingertips. A tooth fell out and clicked on the blacktop.