Peter Clines - Ex-Heroes

Ilya called to him from the truck. “Problem, boss?”

“No,” he said with a glance over his shoulder. He braced his free hand on the ex’s forehead and slid his digits free. Another tooth dropped. The dead woman pawed at his arm for a moment, like a kid dealing with a schoolyard bully, while he flicked the gummy saliva from his fingers. Then the heel of his palm chopped through the thing’s spine, severing its head. The body collapsed and the head tumbled away.

The small ex—-the child—-was on its feet. It staggered at him on stumpy legs, gnashing milk teeth in its small mouth. He couldn’t tell if it had been a little boy or a little girl. It stumbled past the headless corpse of its former mother, and its stubby fingers reached up for a hungry hug.

St. George sighed, drew his leg back, and drove his toes into the ex’s chest. Thin bones cracked under his boot as the red leash snapped and the dead child was launched into the air. It soared up past the rooftops and crashed down a dozen blocks away in a splash of bone and meat.

He looked back at the truck and scraped the tip of his boot across the pavement. Ilya stood on the lift gate, looking back at him. “I hate the little ones,” the hero said.

* * * *

One of the restaurant’s big picture windows had been shattered. A body was draped over the sill. Its legs had been chewed down to gristly bones. Lee gave it two hard kicks to make sure it was dead.

The inside was messy, but not destroyed. A few chairs had been tipped, some glassware broken. Lee stomped his foot a few times and crouched to make sure nothing was hidden beneath the tables. Jarvis kept his rifle trained on the archway to the kitchen.

“Looks clear.”

Andy slung his rifle over his shoulder and dragged the window-corpse into the restaurant. One leg fell apart as it bumped over the sill, dropping a few bones outside on the sidewalk. Jarvis blinked at him. “Whatcha doing?”

“Just showing a little respect for the dead,” said Andy. “Figure it can’t hurt.” He laid the body out flat, dusted off his gloves, and crossed himself with his thin fingers.

“When you’re done, grab all those salt-and-pepper shakers,” said Lee. “And check the wait station.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Andy straightened up and grabbed the spices from the closest table.

Lee and Jarvis swung around the main counter, both rifles aimed low. Another body was sprawled in the narrow space, its face and torso eaten away. The floor was dark with old blood and old footprints. Jarvis kicked it in the foot. “Dead.”

Something gleamed deep in the space beneath the cash register. Lee batted a few boxes aside under the counter to reveal a polished wooden stock. “Holy shit!”

“What’s up?”

“Somebody wasn’t getting robbed again, that’s what I’m getting.” Lee pulled the sawed-off shotgun out and set it across the counter. He dug around and produced two boxes of shells.

“Wow,” said Andy. “Never struck me as that kind of neighborhood.”

“Apparently no one told them,” chuckled Jarvis.

Lee glanced into the kitchen. The back room was an open space, split only by a rolling chrome table with a wire shelf on it. He saw a back door and a large freezer. “You want the kitchen, I’ll play lookout?”

“You giving me the option?”

“Nope. Just being polite.”

Lee pressed his back against the arch so he could see both rooms. Jarvis slipped past, keeping low. He reached out to tap the muzzle of his rifle on a shelf and the wire chimed and rattled. His finger tapped on the trigger guard five times before he moved to the back door. It was solid, with a heavy deadbolt locked into the frame.

“We’re good,” Jarvis said. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and checked the dusty shelves.

Lee turned his head back and saw that Andy had finished with the tables and was rooting through the small cubby of the wait station. A box of sugar packets dropped into his bag, along with more shakers.

In the kitchen, Jarvis tapped a large plastic bin with his foot. “This whole thing’s flour. Still good, sealed up tight. Got an industrial-sized can of baking powder and some big spice jars, too. Haven’t checked that first aid kit or the fire extinguisher yet.” He pointed at the steel cases mounted on the wall. “We’ve even got a cart.”

“Nice. Call it in and let’s get it out to the truck.”

* * * *

Half a block behind Cerberus, Big Red rumbled to life and began inching up the street toward her. She brought all her sensors up to full and scanned the area. Looking north, east, and west, there were seven exes in range of her optics. The nearest one was three blocks away to the north, at Vermont and Franklin.

Franklin.

Eleven and into the street. It was just over a hundred feet away from the intersection where she stood sentry. The armor’s targeters highlighted it and zoomed in.

It was a woman. Thirty, tops, when she changed. Long, brown-blonde hair, pointed face, very thin. Her shirt sagged open to reveal a black bra and a trail of blood ran down her torso from her neck, accenting her tiny breasts. Her head hung at an odd angle, probably a broken neck, but her lips were still wet from a fresh kill.

Cerberus raised an arm, lining up a phantom weapon on the ex’s skull. Despite the warning lights flashing in her visor, the armor still moved as if the massive M2 Brownings were mounted on it. It had been over a year since Stealth confiscated them, insisting the ammunition had to be saved for a real emergency.

The ex saw her move. Wiry arms creaked up, hands groping, and the shift in balance made it totter for a moment. Then its left foot shuffled forward and it staggered across the pavement.

If she still had her cannons, she could’ve turned its head into vapor. And the ex two and a half blocks north. Even the three she saw way up on top of the hill at Los Feliz, almost three-quarters of a mile away. She’d built the suit for that kind of accuracy. Five shots, five headless exes.

If she had her cannons. Like an amputee missing her limbs, her arms itched for them.

The grasping ex had covered half the ground between them. It was working its jaws and the armor’s mics picked up the click-click-click of teeth.

Without the cannons, all Cerberus had was up close and personal. She had to let the exes walk up to her, crowd her, claw at her as they tried to find a way past the armor. Even powered down, the suit was a match for undead fingers and teeth. But they’d try for hours and days and weeks because they didn’t know they couldn’t get through.

They had swarmed around her for two days that first time the power cell died. Thirty-one and a half hours in the armor as fifty exes pawed at her and groped her and stared with blind eyes. Thirty-one and a half hours before the Dragon and Zzzap found her.

The ex was less than ten feet away. Cerberus realized the woman wasn’t wearing a black bra, but a whole lingerie ensemble under her clothes. A corset or merry widow or some such thing she’d never bothered to learn the name of. Its mouth was glossy with red lipstick.

“Someone had hopes for their last night.” The towering battlesuit coughed out a grim laugh. “Guess you didn’t get eaten the way you wanted, eh?”

She reached out and set one armored gauntlet on the ex’s shoulder. The other one came down on its blonde head, the huge fingers wrapping around it. Her wrists flexed, the ex’s skull came away from its crooked neck with a sound like dry wood, and the body slumped to the ground.

Cerberus held the blonde head out at arms length, letting the black fluid leak out of it while it snapped its jaws at her. When it stopped draining, she tossed it down the road. Her targeting software tracked every bounce, turn, and spin.