Peter Clines: Ex-Heroes

One baton struck the rifle barrel and jarred it from the Seventeen’s hands, even as its twin swung back to crush another zombie skull. Her grip switched and the first baton bounced up from the rifle to catch him under the chin. His mouth sagged. She brought the other down and broke his wrist, then drove a kick into his chest. He hit the ground just as the pain reached his brain and he tried to scream through the fractured jaw.

Four swings bought her another moment. She’d worked her way out past the gardens flanking the gate. The guards on the wall were putting exes down one after another, but it was like dropping pebbles to divert a flash flood. The Seventeens were firing at the Mount, but it was random. They were children playing a game, not an army.

Near the center of the intersection, she saw Rodney Casares bring his massive fists around and Gorgon leap out of the way. He threw a punch that sent the monstrous ex staggering back. If the Seventeens were recovering, the hero was already losing their strength.

Stealth spun through the mob. Her weapons put down seven exes and three Seventeens. A spinning kick crushed another skull, the batons crossed to force down a rifle, and a head butt left a gangster reeling.

She lunged forward and thrust the batons into either side of an ex’s head, a rough-looking man with a beard, and its skull caved in as the weapons collapsed back to their storage position. Her elbows sent two dead people stumbling back and her hands dipped forward to pull the Glocks out again.

Nine rounds dropped five exes, left two Seventeens screaming and clutching their knees, and gave her a clear shot at Rodney Casares, less than fifteen feet away.

She thumbed the selector and her right pistol emptied its magazine into the giant’s head. Eighteen rounds clustered on the cross tattoo. The huge ex staggered back and fell.

A Seventeen screamed and brandished his Uzi. She put a round through his knuckles and the machine gun’s magazine exploded in his hand. One of the trucks surged forward and two shots through the windshield brought it to a stop.

Gorgon glanced at her. “What the hell?”

“He has drawn Midknight down from the hills.”

“Fuck.”

“Oh, that’s nothing, bitch,” hissed Rodney. The enormous fist sent Stealth sprawling. Her body vanished back into the crowd of zombies and gangsters. The rounds had stripped away half his face down to the bone.

His right eye streamed down his face and over the gigantic teeth. A flap of skin the size and texture of a fried egg hung loose from the bottom of his jaw. “Now,” rumbled the dead thing to Gorgon, “round two. Ready to finish this?”

* * * *

Under a veil of shadows, the exes shook the Gower gate. They pulled. They pushed. They pulled. The metal spars of the gate screeched back and forth.

Lady Bee fired down into the zombie mob from her perch. The muzzle flash was dim and the sound was dull. “Keep at it,” she shouted. She traded out magazines and her AK spat a few more muffled rounds into the dead.

A handful of guards were cowering from the blackness. The rest were stabbing through the bars with their weapons.

Cerberus took an uneven step toward the gate. The battlesuit’s left leg twitched and jerked forward. It made her limp. “It’s Midknight and his damned EMP field,” she shouted, her voice full of static. “Whatshisname turned it back on full force.”

I know , yelled Zzzap.

One of the guards, the keen listener, lunged forward with his pike and stepped too far in the darkness. A withered hand grabbed his wrist and pulled him close enough for a second one to seize his forearm. He was dragged against the gate where dozens of hands and chattering jaws took him apart in seconds. His meat left bloodstains on the bars as it vanished into the crowd.

The battlesuit’s eyes flickered. “Can you take him out?”

Zzzap flew up and looked out over Gower. It was a cold blur to his eyes. Nothing alive. Nothing warm. Just a shapeless, shifting mass.

I can’t see him, shouted Zzzap. He’s just another dead thing.

At the squealing, shaking gate, someone else was screaming.

But only for a moment.

Thousands of the dead swarmed the Lemon Grove gate. Gray hands tore at the bars and beat at the walls.

Billie and the others dropped exes from the trailer roof. Her M-16 barked and another shot blew the head off a dead man in orange coveralls. She looked down at the mass of figures against the wall. “Where is he?”

“They got him,” wailed another man. “They got him.”

“He’s the fucking Dragon,” she bellowed. “They didn’t get him.”

In the middle of the road, Cairax rose above the sea of exes and roared. The demon waded toward the gate. Its long fingers stretched and flexed.

Ilya tried to line up on a target and one of the other guards, Perry, leaped onto the trailer, shaking his scope. The man sprayed most of a magazine down at the exes before he even came to rest. He stumbled and pitched off the trailer onto the curved prongs topping the fence.

They pierced up through Perry’s armpit and pinned him. He hung, howling, with a foot of steel arcing up through his shoulder and the rest of him dangling over the wall. His rifle fired off two bursts before he let go and it vanished into the crowd below.

The exes shifted focus. They reached up and grabbed feet, legs, hips, and started to tug. They sank their teeth into his flesh and tore off mouthfuls of calf and thigh. Billie emptied her rifle, but there were hundreds of them.

Perry screamed and they pulled harder and harder. There was a noise like wet magazines being shredded as he came apart. His right arm and shoulder blade stayed on the fence and he was yanked down into the horde of exes. He disappeared beneath the chattering jaws and his shrieks came to an abrupt halt. A few last exes clawed at the dangling arm and grabbed at the limp fingers.

Billie dumped a fresh magazine into the knot of dead people. Several of them fell, but she knew it didn’t matter. “St. George,” she hollered. “Get your ass up! We need you!”

Cairax grabbed the gate again and heaved. The rolling fence bent forward with a squeal and bounced back into place. The unibrow guard fired a burst into the monster’s face. One of the men on the guard shack lashed out with his pike and the demon caught the end. It heaved the shaft up, flinging the man into the sea of undead. He hit the pavement screaming and vanished under a wave of hands and teeth.

Then St. George drove his fists up and the exes went sprawling.

The hero staggered to his feet. His jacket was covered with bite marks, his skin was pale, but he was still alive. He coughed out some fire and smoke.

Yards away, the demon glared at him and tried to hiss.

St. George grabbed a blue Metro parked near the curb, sinking his fingers through the body and the door frame. He heaved the car into the air and spun with it just as Cairax lunged. The demon’s skull bounced on the hood and it staggered back. He threw the little car after it and sent the dead monster sprawling.

A cheer went up as the hero stumbled out to fight the monster. He gave them a ragged salute, drove his fingers through an ex’s spine, and took a few unsteady steps after the demon. “If you need to take a breather,” he shouted, “just put your hand up or something.”

Cairax straightened up in the crowd of zombies, hefting a fallen phone pole. St. George ducked and the pole crushed dozens of exes in a wide arc. He leaped over the next swing and a handful of zombies were smashed into the burnt remains of a Volkswagen. He flipped up though the air and got his arm around the demon’s neck, wrestling past the thick collar.