Peter Clines: Ex-Heroes

St. George walked up to the Melrose Gate and stopped a few feet away from the dozens of grasping hands reaching and clawing between the bars. The exes had the gate mobbed, as they always did. It was the only place they could still see into the Mount, see all the succulent, tasty people standing inside.

Although, no one was sure if exes could see anymore. Almost no one used the word zombie. They’d been “exes” since the first presidential press conference. It made them easier to accept, somehow. The ex-living. Ex-people. Most of them still looked human. Usually the uninjured ones and the newer ones that hadn’t fed.

The former citizens of Los Angeles reached for St. George with discolored, rotting fingers. He could hear their joints pop as they moved. Dozens of jaws hinged open and closed, clicking their dark teeth together.

A curly-haired blonde whose mouth was caked with gore. A bald man with a gashed scalp and one ear. On opposite ends of the gate were a man and a woman in running clothes. By the left hinge, next to the female runner, was one with a face scoured down to the bare bone. A teenaged boy with a Transformers shirt and a clotted stump where his left hand should’ve been. A grandmotherly woman in a business suit stiff with blood. A black man near the break in the gate who stood still and stared back at St. George with blank eyes.

Their skin was anywhere from sidewalk gray to white, sometimes colored with dark purple bruises. Their eyes were all dull and faded, like cloudy glass. Many of them were just worn out. Flesh dry and cracking from months in the sun. Covered with injuries that would never heal but could never kill them.

St. George didn’t recognize any of them. That always made it easier.

A huge blue and platinum statue thudded over to stand next to him. His head didn’t even reach the stars and stripes stenciled across its armored biceps. The titan’s androgynous lines made it hard to think of as anything but an ‘it,’ even knowing there was a woman inside. She looked down at the hero with bright lenses the size of tennis balls. “You know I hate doing this, right?”

He nodded. “You’ve mentioned it.”

Cerberus turned her gaze to the crowd of exes. “Just so you remember on the day I finally snap. Where’s Barry?”

“Asleep in the truck. You charged up?”

The armored figure gave a clumsy dip of her head. The Cerberus Battle Armor System wasn’t built for subtlety. Of course, she hadn’t built it with subtlety in mind. Even without the M-2s mounted on her arms, Cerberus could take on almost anything left in the world. St. George had seen the nine-foot battlesuit rip a vault door off its hinges, lift a cement truck, and wade through a swarm of exes without scuffing the paint.

The guards had already unlocked the gate’s four reinforcing legs, and Derek and Carl stood waiting on either end of the long pipe resting across the Melrose Gate.

“Everyone ready?” shouted St. George. “Gate? Luke? Guards?”

They all nodded.

He leaped into the air and soared over the archway. As he sank back to street level outside the gate, his foot lashed out and an ex flew back. He grabbed two more by their necks and hurled them across the six-lane street.

The exes sensed life and the mob closed on him. Hands grabbed at him. Bony arms wrapped around his neck. A faceless thing that may have been a woman once bit down on his arm and lost two teeth.

St. George seized a wrist, swung the dead thing in a wide circle, and knocked down half a dozen more before launching it into the air. It clanged into the stoplight over the intersection. He slammed his palm into a breastbone and the ex flew back through some bushes into a wall. Another tried to grab his calf as it crawled to its feet and his boot broke its spine just above the shoulder blades.

“Still creeps me out, watching that,” said Derek.

Carl stared out at the battle. “Seeing them pile on him?”

“Seeing them not do anything to him.”

“Open it up,” barked the battlesuit. Cerberus clenched her three-fingered hands into fists as big as footballs.

The guards hefted the pipe from its brackets and trotted out of the way. The gates swung open and Cerberus stomped out. Some of the clawing exes were dragged along, their arms tangled in the gates. She brought her armored fist around like a wrecking ball and shattered their skulls. Another punch crushed an ex’s chest even as it sailed backward.

St. George flung off a dead man gnawing at his shoulders. The ex slammed into an old grandmother and they both tumbled away from the gate. Another one reached for him and the hero grabbed its elbow and swung it into the air. Its flailing legs knocked down three more exes before the arm snapped off and it tumbled away across the cobblestones. “Make a path!” he shouted.

Cerberus spread her fingers and brought her stun fields up. Her gauntlets sparked and snapped with white lines. The titan stomped toward the street and exes dropped at her touch. She left a path of figures wiggling on the ground behind her. “Bring it out!” she bellowed with a wave.

Big Red ’s engine growled and Luke guided the truck forward through the gate. The heavy tires crushed legs, arms, and skulls beneath them. A few exes flailed at the cab and the truck bed. None of them could reach that high, but the men and women in the back shoved them off with pikes and spears anyway. The salt-and-pepper man stabbed his weapon down through a chubby woman’s skull and she dropped.

The guards pushed the gate shut behind them, the two sides meeting just as the truck cleared. There was a clang as the pipe dropped back into place, followed by the click of the legs dropping back into their brackets. Derek gave a thumbs-up through the bars.

“We’re out,” yelled St. George. “Cerberus, mount up.” He swung his arms and sent two exes hurling through the crowd like a pair of bowling balls into a forest of pins. There were already four or five dozen more shambling down the street toward the gate from either direction, drawn in by the movement and the noise.

The lift gate carried the battlesuit up to the bed, then folded up behind her. Cerberus turned to watch their rear, and the truck swayed with each step. She turned her head and signaled the driver.

“Rolling out,” called Luke. Big Red growled, swung to the left, and picked up speed as it headed down Melrose Avenue. Exes were battered aside by bumpers or fell beneath the wheels. St. George flew up and landed on the reinforced rack on top of the cab next to Lady Bee.

Guards waved to them from the Mount’s walls and watchtowers as they headed off into the wasteland that had once been Los Angeles, destination for tens of thousands of dreamers every year.

St. George dropped down to the cab’s running boards. “You still want to head over to Vermont and straight up?”

The driver nodded. “Nice and clear all the way to Hollywood Boulevard. That’s where you wanted to start, right?”

The hero nodded.

Big Red rolled down Melrose. St. George and Cerberus had spent weeks clearing off the roads surrounding the Mount. Here and there exes stumbled out of open doors or from behind wrecked cars. They staggered and loped toward the truck with grasping arms, then forgot it when it was a block away.

“I’ve been thinking,” said Lady Bee as St. George swung back up to the roof rack. “I bet Spider-Man would kick your ass.”

He peered over his sunglasses at her. “What?”

“Spider-Man,” she said. “If the two of you fought, he would totally kick your ass.”

“Spider-Man’s not real, y’know. He’s a comic book character.”