Ex-Heroes

Eighteen NOW

They stopped on the roof of a large house at the corner of Gregory and El Camino. St. George hid between the twin plaster chimneys while Stealth crouched in plain sight, her cloak blending into the tile shingles and shadows.

A line of tire-less cars stretched down Gregory Way, stacked two high along the southern sidewalk. A Hummer filled both levels at one point, as did a small orange U-Haul truck. A few yards apart, concrete road barriers were wedged up against the vehicles, pinning them in place. Chain link fence stretched out along the cars. Jagged spears of metal stood like trench spikes, and it took St. George a moment to recognize them as street sign posts. Large patches of green were spray painted across the wall of vehicles in two or three different shades.

Every fifty feet or so, a tall torch lit the night and spewed oily smoke. Men and boys clomped back and forth across the car roofs, weapons resting on their shoulders or slung under their arms. The two heroes watched them patrol and make small talk. Several of them sported bare arms or shaved heads. Even in the flickering light they could see green bandannas and patches on every one of them.

The crude wall reached off four or five blocks in either direction before fading into patchy darkness.

“I count twenty-three sentries patrolling the wall,” Stealth said. “Thirteen have firearms, only four of which are automatic weapons. The rest are armed with spears and clubs.”

St. George let his eyes drift off the wall and up and down the street. Dozens of stumps dotted the sidewalk and lawns where trees and bushes once stood. This had been a cozy neighborhood back in the day. He swept the road again. “There’s barely any exes here.”

Stealth’s head panned back and forth inside the hood. “I count at least forty along this street.”

“Forty’s nothing,” he said. “We’ve got twice that, minimum, at each gate every day.” St. George gestured at the Seventeens walking the wall. “People in plain sight, in a clear eye line, there should be hundreds of them swarming this place. That wall should be mobbed.”

“And yet the exes hardly seem to notice the humans.”

“Strange things are afoot at the Circle K,” he murmured.

“What?”

“Never mind. Do you hear music?”

She nodded. “We can cross there.” Her arm was out and pointing west, another long shadow in the night. “Midpoint between two torches. In another three minutes, if the guards follow the same pattern, none of them should be along that section of wall.”

He nodded and counted off the time in his head. They raced across the tiered rooftop and threw themselves into the night. Stealth grabbed a streetlight, spun once around the arm, and flipped across the street. She grabbed St. George’s waiting hand above the wall, kicked her legs, and sailed across to another rooftop.

He landed next to her, freezing in the shadow of a large dish antenna. She had spread her cloak and half-vanished into the darkness again. They watched the wall behind them. More concrete barriers lined this side, along with tables and patio chairs the guards had pulled from nearby houses.

The guards continued to pace and yawn. One stopped to light a cigarette on a torch. Another swung his arms back and forth to fight off the faint chill.

Stealth gave St. George a quick nod and headed south across the rooftops. He took a single leap and sailed after her, looking down on the deforested neighborhood as he went. Here and there they saw chimney smoke, and a few of the quasi-mansions were lit with flickering candles. Twice they stopped as torch-wielding patrols passed on the street or between buildings.

A long block later they were crouched on top of a Pavilions grocery store. Stealth gave him a quick nod, gestured out at the broad intersection, and vanished into the rooftop shadows. An ex’s head sat in the corner of the roof, left over from some earlier purge. It was shriveled from the sun and its jaw trembled up and down, still animated by the virus. The skull’s cloudy eyes stared at St. George and he rolled it away across the roof.

Olympic Boulevard was six lanes across, although the number of turn lanes and medians made it hard to be sure. The southbound road split just north of the east-west boulevard and created a complex doubleintersection with a triangular island in the middle of it. Music he didn’t recognize jangled back and forth between the buildings.

All the office buildings and stores he could see had their windows smashed out. Bullet holes filled the huge orange globe of the 76 gas station across the street, and someone had set all the prices to $6.66. There was a pile of machinery in the station’s parking lot and in the dim light it took St. George a moment to realize they were dozens of smashed stoplights.

The one exception was the large brick building south of the intersection. The entrance sank below street level and thick ivy grew wild and untrimmed from the balconies. There were silver letters under the green plants, but something about the structure said law firm to him. The building was untouched and illumination poured out of the doors and windows. It was a beacon of clarity in the flickering firelight. He could hear the low purr of generators under the music that blared through a half-dozen speakers.

Most of the upper windows along Beverly had lamps or candles flickering in them. Dozens of tall torches lit the road, each one using a set of wheel rims as a weighted base. A huge fire pit had been built on the top level of a nearby parking garage, and he counted close to fifty people gathered around the pungent tire-fire. They laughed and joked and passed bottles back and forth. Down the road behind him he could see another bonfire with its own crowd. There were a few hundred people out wandering, partying, or making half-hearted attempts at guard duty.

A large, single-story structure stood just southeast of the intersection of Olympic and Beverly Drive, right in the middle of a turn lane. A handful of guards circled it and yawned. In the shifting light of the torches, St. George could see the chain link and the supports and the slow, swaying figures packed inside.

Stealth reappeared next to him. “There are no rooftop guards anywhere,” she whispered, “and no evidence the sentries include them as part of regular patrols.” She sounded annoyed. She pointed across the street at a tall building bearing the letters FI ST PROPER. “I believe that will give us the best vantage point, and the added height decreases the chance of random searches.”

Hidden by the night, they circled around, crossed the street, and scaled the building. The two heroes settled down and St. George shrugged off the backpack. They peered over the short rooftop ledge.

Beneath their last position, a single torch in the lower parking lot threw random shadows across the front of the building. In the flickering light, something large was crouched before the grocery store. Its arms were unnaturally long and spread wide. The figure shifted and steel chimed and clanked.

Stealth pulled a small, squat monocular from her belt and held it to her eye. She cursed a moment later and slid it back into its pouch. “Too bright for the starlight scope,” she said, “and it does not register on infrared.”

“So it’s big, inhuman, and dead. Narrows the choices a bit.”

She nodded. “Its lack of movement implies it is bound. I believe we can rest until sunrise.”

They settled down behind the rooftop ledge.

He shrugged out of the leather jacket. “How long do we have?”

The hooded head turned to the east. “Two and a half hours. I will take the first watch. Get an hour of sleep.”

St. George balled his jacket and tested his head against it. “You’re not going to burst into flame come sunup or anything, are you?”

She stared at him. “This is neither the time nor the place for humor.”

“Sorry.” He threw a last glance across the intersection. “Windows are all good and it’s got working generators. That says town hall to me.”

“Something of importance,” she agreed, “but I would prefer not to guess until we have more evidence.”

“Care to guess on their lack of exes?” He settled back down on the makeshift pillow. “They must be a hell of a lot more aggressive about cleaning them out than we are.”

“Except we rarely hear gunfire,” she said, “and there are no bodies.”