Peter Clines: Ex-Heroes

The broken giant looked up at her. “He meant something to you, eh?”

“Yes,” growled the battlesuit.

“Ahhh.” What was left of Rodney’s face split in an evil, cracked grin. “Sucks to be you.”

Cerberus grabbed his skull in her steel fingers and twisted. There was the sound of a tree trunk splitting, an ice shelf cracking, and the battlesuit tore the giant’s head loose. She gouged out the one good eye, pulled back her arm, and sent the hunk of bone and flesh hurling into the sky.

The huge, headless body toppled to the ground a dozen or so feet from Gorgon.

And then …

* * * *

Things went mad. Screams echoed across the broad intersection as the dead turned on their former allies. Exes swarmed over the Seventeens and the gangbangers vanished under scores of teeth and grasping hands. Some were caught off guard. Others went down fighting. The entrance to the Mount had shifted from assault to feeding frenzy. The exes weren’t focused or guided. They were just killing. Their teeth chattered like a tap school for the insane. A truck lurched to a halt on the cobblestone driveway and Stealth smashed the butt of her pistol across the driver’s head. She dragged him from the cab and threw him at the gate. The guards grabbed the dazed Seventeen and dragged him through the opening. A dead man with a mohawk grabbed at his legs, but the cloaked woman shattered the ex’s skull with a baton slash. One of the Seventeens’ other trucks roared to life and plowed through the mob. Gangers clawed their way into the bed. More than one was pulled back by dead fingers. An old man with white hair and bloody teeth attacked a woman with dozens of braids. A gray-skinned Latina sank her teeth into a tattooed man. The guards drove back the dead and fought the gate shut.

Bodies clogged the opening. Some were struggling to get in, others were dragging them back. Cerberus looked back at Gorgon’s body, twisted and sprawled on the pavement, and saw a Seventeen swinging his rifle like a club at everything that moved. The boy was sixteen at the most, alone, and he was close to breaking. He was surrounded by hungry dead things. Another truck turned and fled. It was all but empty. People shouted and waved and were ignored. Cerberus reached out and grabbed the boy, hefting him up onto her shoulders. He shrieked and flailed until he realized he was safe. The battlesuit took four steps toward the gate, batting exes aside like flies, and pulled another Seventeen from the mob. And then …

* * * *

St. George dropped out of the sky, leaving a trail of flames in the air behind him. He arced across the road until he was before the Melrose gate. The hero pushed down, forcing gravity to its knees and demanding it obey him.

And gravity, after a brief struggle, acknowledged his superiority.

St. George, the Mighty Dragon, hovered in midair over the intersection, floating above the mob. The tattered remains of his coat fluttered behind him. Smoke curled from his mouth and nose and wreathed his skull like a dark halo. Held out at arm’s length was the prize he’d plucked in midair.

Rodney’s head. “THIS WAR IS OVER!” His voice echoed across the street, over the chattering, and flames sparked in his mouth. He held up the severed head for everyone to see, then threw it down into the hordes. Exes staggered after the ball of flesh and bone.

“Anyone not wearing a green bandanna or scarf is welcome to take shelter inside the Mount,” he shouted. “I wish the rest of you the best of luck making it back to your compound.”

Below him, the horde of living dead continued to rip and tear and claw at the Seventeens. The clacking of teeth drowned out most of their screams. Some of them fought their way into the remaining trucks. Many more were dragged back out and torn to shreds.

Close to the wall, a bald man with a mustache smacked an ex away with a baseball bat. Then he reached up, tore the green cloth from his arm, and ran for the gate. The woman next to him did the same with the bandanna holding her dark hair.

Guards on the wall set down covering fire where they could. Dozens of Seventeens battered their way to the gate, tearing off do-rags and patches. Cerberus knocked exes left and right as she marched across the cobblestone driveway.

St. George drifted above the crowd until he reached the gate. He settled to the ground and hurled the walking dead away like dolls. A baker’s dozen of Seventeens stumbled past him and through the narrow gap of the gate.

The hero slammed his fist against one last ex, a skinny man in a filthy Santa Claus suit, and sent it hurling back. He took three steps back and the gate shut with a clang.

Cerberus braced a broad foot and three-fingered hand against the struts and gave Derek a quick nod. “I’ve got it,” she said. “Go find another lock-bar.”

Stealth had over a hundred Seventeens on their knees by the guard shack, fingers laced behind their heads. Ten or twenty of them were sobbing. So were a few of the gate guards.

Katie took a few deep breaths and looked up at St. George. “Am I wrong,” she gasped, “or did we just live through that?”

The cape was tattered, but I’d gotten used to it. Having it gradually fall apart ended up working like training wheels. It was shredded but I could fly better than ever. The next time I went out I was just going to trash it. To be honest, most of my Dragon costume was ruined. Runs, pockmarks, things smeared into it that were never going to come out.

Stealth had asked to meet me at sundown on top of the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood and Highland. It was a landmark. They held the Academy Awards here. Beneath me was a huge scrolling screen that had been blank for two and a half months. Kitty-cornered across the street, a fiberglass tyrannosaurus smashed through a building facade with a clock in its mouth. I had a certain sympathy for the thing that should’ve given up and gone extinct but kept fighting.

This used to be one of the busiest intersections in the city. LA’s version of Times Square. Now it was the site of a seven-car pileup and the scorched wrecks of two National Guard Humvees. Highland was a vehicle graveyard as far as you could see in either direction. In at least a third of the cars things were clawing at the windshields. I could see another three hundred or so exes wandering between the metal corpses.

You have to kill them faster than they’re killing you. That was the lesson we’d learned too late. Every person they kill comes back on their side. If they kill one and you kill one, your numbers have gone down and theirs have stayed the same. Zombies are like credit card payments. If you keep getting rid of the minimum amount, you’ll never win.

And we weren’t winning. No other way to look at it. I was sleeping three hours a night and still wasn’t making any headway. Banzai was dead. Blockbuster was dead. Cairax was dead. Regenerator was crippled and powerless. Despite dozens of emergency bulletins and training seminars, the number of exes was still growing. It was almost inevitable.

The sun brushed the horizon. “Thank you for meeting me.” Stealth stood a dozen or so feet behind me. As usual. God, she was hot. “Well, it was this or use the time to eat a meal,” I said. She didn’t laugh, so I coughed and tried to brush past it. “What’s up?”

“You are no longer hiding your identity?” I looked at the black and green mask in my hand. The face of the Mighty Dragon. “Well, as I see it, it’s moot either way. I’m pretty sure you already know who I am. Probably where I live and how I voted in the past three elections. As for everyone else …” I threw another look out at the darkened metropolis and shrugged. “I don’t think there are enough people left to make a secret identity worth the effort.” She nodded. “I would like to discuss our options, George.”