Peter Clines: Ex-Heroes

“I’d explain what just happened,” said St. George, “but I’d hate to ruin the trick for you.”

The medallion let off a few black sparks as he crushed it between his fingers. Then he stepped forward and drove his fist through the ex’s skull. It exploded like an old flowerpot and Maxwell Hale’s headless corpse dropped to the ground.

* * * *

Gorgon grabbed Rodney’s arm as the punch flew by and yanked the dead giant off his feet. A backhand slap sent the huge ex sprawling.

“Doesn’t have to be like this,” the hero yelled. He lunged forward, grabbed the oversized skull, and slammed it against the pavement. “You can still quit. Run away. Take your people and get out of here.”

The monstrous ex snarled as another one of its matchbooksized teeth dropped out. “Like that, pinche , wouldn’t you? Making me lose face again?” He rolled away, grabbed a faded Boxster, and threw it at the hero.

Gorgon leaped over the car and hammered his fists down on the other man’s shoulders, driving him to the ground. “Keep fighting and you’ll lose it all, big guy.”

Rodney pushed himself up onto his knees and chuckled. “Fight’s over,” he rumbled. “You’re dead.”

He hurled an oversized fist with enough force to crush a man. Gorgon leaped up, flipped around in midair, and found himself face-to-face with Banzai.

Her face was clean and pale. A few loose hairs wafted from her ebony braid. The dead woman looked at him with cloudy eyes and blinked twice. Her lips turned down ever so slightly as she glanced from his face to the ragged hole in her shoulder.

He stumbled. Just for a moment. “Oh, baby,” he whispered.

And then she vanished in a gray haze. Enormous fingers wrapped around Gorgon’s head and squeezed. Rodney lifted the thrashing hero into the air and the other massive hand pinned the flailing legs together.

“Sucker!” he howled with glee. “I’ve had your bitch, man. She’s dry and tight and loved every minute of it.”

Rodney twisted the hero, wrenching the hips around with a bubble-wrap sound, and let Gorgon’s body drop to the pavement.

There were screams from the wall. Cheers from the SS. The gunfire picked up on both sides.

And then thunder hammered their ears.

A dozen windows shattered in nearby buildings. One of the trucks rushing the gate shook three times before exploding. A Seventeen lifted his machete to the sky and became a red cloud from the waist up even as the ex behind him spurted fountains of dark blood and meat.

Twin paths of fire tore up exes, pavement, and everything else they crossed. Rodney caught a line across his torso and shoulder that chewed his chest apart even as it pounded him back. “Hey, death breath!”

The ground shook as Cerberus thudded out of the gates, the cannons on her arms smoking. “Want to try with someone your own size?!”

* * * *

The thunder echoed across the lot, and the unibrow man looked up from the bandage he was tying on St. George’s shredded arm. The hero made a fist around the long, broken fang they’d pried from his biceps.

“Oh yeah,” said Ilya before picking off another ex. “Definitely sounds like Judgment Day.”

Outside the gate, a ripple of movement swept across the zombies. They stumbled in mid step. Their teeth began to clack.

St. George shrugged back into his patchwork jacket. “Ahhh, hell.”

“What’s going on?”

He looked out at the dead. They were flailing at the gate, pawing with no purpose. “I think we got what we wanted. Rodney’s distracted and he’s starting to lose control.”

Billie looked out at the chattering horde. “Is that good?”

“Sort of. A few minutes ago we were surrounded by sixty thousand or so exes all obeying him.”

“And now?”

“Now we’re just surrounded by sixty thousand exes.”

Her walkie squawked and Billie’s face fell. “They need you at the main gate,” she said. “It’s bad. Derek says Stealth is missing. And Gorgon is down.”

The hero’s face hardened. “You have things here?”

“We can deal with exes,” she said with a nod. “Go kick some ass.”

St. George shot into the sky, tracing a high arc toward the Melrose gate.

It wasn’t until a few hours later, looking back on the moment, that Billie, Ilya, and the rest realized he hadn’t jumped.

* * * *

Cerberus stomped forward, the ground trembling with every step. She threw aside the exes mobbing the driveway. Her arms came up and the armor selected seven hundred and thirteen viable targets for her. The first pass with the M-2s tore a hundred exes into hamburger. She watched the ammo counters spin down to triple digits as the second pass destroyed two more trucks and cleared her path across the intersection.

Rodney lumbered toward the gate and the zombies came with him. They marched in perfect lockstep, heels slapping on the pavement. The Seventeens moved forward in trucks and on foot.

As one, the dead raised their arms to point at her. Bullets pinged and sparked against the armor.

“Come on, big girl,” the dead giant shouted. He pounded on his ruined chest, and countless exes mimicked him. “You wanna give me my last chance to run away or you wanna fight?”

“You had your last chance,” growled Cerberus. “You didn’t take it.”

The cannons roared again. Between the walls of the Mount and the nearby office buildings the sound itself was a weapon. The gate guards winced. Another two trucks vanished in clouds of shrapnel, and Seventeens screamed. More exes vanished in splashes of dark blood and rotted meat. Rodney staggered back as a hundred rounds punched through him like a swarm of high-caliber hornets.

The counters dropped into double digits, single, and the cannons clanged open. The silence was deafening.

Rodney stood up and coils of meat unspooled from his stomach. The intestines spilled over the ground and he reached down to tear them loose. “Someone hasn’t been paying attention,” he laughed. “Body shots don’t do nothing and we don’t get tired. Twenty minutes with your boy toy and I’m still fresh and ready to go.”

He lunged at the armor and they met eye to eye. His massive fists clanged against the armored helmet. He drove his knee up into the battlesuit’s crotch and jerked it a foot off the ground.

Cerberus brought her own knee up and heard his pelvis crack. She shoved him away and slammed her gauntlet into his ragged face.

He grabbed a gun barrel in his hands and twisted. Metal shrieked as he tore the cannon away from the battlesuit’s arm.

Inside the helmet a handful of warnings flashed. Two subsystems shut down on their own to prevent shorts.

The giant lifted the cannon over his shoulder like a club and grinned. His swing caught the battlesuit in the shoulder. The blow echoed inside the armor, rattling her teeth. Her viewscreens flared and sizzled with static.

“I’m death incarnate,” he bellowed. “I killed the Gorgon. I killed the world. And it just makes me stronger!”

“Yeah, you’re big and tough,” Cerberus said. “And you know what else?”

She slammed her fist forward with a crackle of electricity. The arcs lashed at Rodney before the impact hurled him across the street. The battlesuit left cracks in the pavement as it raced forward, knocking exes aside, and sank its fingers into the giant’s ribcage. She hefted him to his feet and a piledriver slammed into his face. Teeth sprayed across the intersection.

“You’re meat,” she roared. “I’m steel and you’re nothing but a bag of meat.”

The second punch shattered his cheekbone and one side of his face sagged like putty. She brought both fists down and his shoulder blades crumbled beneath them.