Ex-Heroes

Twenty NOW

Mike and John stood in the small parking lot across from the cells and debated what to do with the prisoner. “Does he need to eat?”

John shrugged his lanky shoulders. “Of course he needs to eat.”

“Yeah but he’s …” Mike shrugged back and scratched his beard. “He’s an ex. Does that mean he only eats people or meat or what? What do we give him?”

“Good point.”

“I mean, I haven’t had any meat in two months. Remember when they found that case of tuna?”

“Yeah.”

He mulled it over. “They’ve gotta have some canned meat stored away in the food bank. You think they’d free up some Spam or something for a prisoner?”

“I don’t know if Spam counts as meat either.”

“Well, fuck him. If we get him something and he doesn’t want it, we can eat it.”

“Good point,” nodded John with a grin.

They banged on the door. “Hey,” called Mike. “You hungry? What do you want for breakfast?”

A thump and some scuffling came from inside.

“What’s his name?”

John’s narrow shoulders bounced again. “I don’t know. Everyone just said the dead guy.”

They unlocked the door. The ex-Seventeen had fallen off his cot and was struggling to his feet. The cell stank and the blood had dried in a wide scab across the floor.

John peered around his partner’s bulk and cleared his throat. “Hey, dead guy, what’s your name?”

The ex’s skin had gone chalky gray. He stared at Mike and displayed his engraved tooth. His jaws clacked together once.

Mike glared back at the ex. “Don’t give me any of that gang attitude, dipshit,” he said. “We’re trying to be decent people. You play nice, we’ll get you some breakfast, maybe something to read, whatever. You want to be a dick, we can just leave you in here.”

The ex took a shaky step forward, then another. It raised its hands.

John took a step back. “Mike …”

The dead thing snapped its teeth together again. And again and again. It made an awkward grab at Mike’s beefy arm and opened its mouth wide.

He took a quick step back just as John grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled. They stumbled through the narrow door, tripped over each other’s legs, and fell. The ex shuffled out after them and tripped over a swollen crack in the pavement. It dropped onto John’s leg with its mouth open and began to chew.

“SHIT!” Blood blossomed through his jeans, as John tried to shake the zombie off.

Mike rolled to the side and drove three hard kicks into the ex’s skull. His sneaker slapped and bent on its head, but knocked it off his friend. The jaws flung a few red drops as they clacked together.

John dragged himself back and Mike fired one last kick at the dead thing. He tried to scamper away and the ex followed him. It crawled on all fours and bits of fresh calf dropped from its mouth.

“HELP!” screamed John. He tried to hold his hand over the wound as he pulled his skinny frame back. “EX! Ex inside the wall!”

Mike threw another kick and caught the dead thing across the jaw. Its teeth snapped on the sole of his Converse and gnawed at the slab of rubber. He shook his foot, but the ex hung on like a pit bull. It reached up and wrapped its arms around his leg. The hands didn’t grab so much as press together on his knee.

The jaws snapped open and shut and now the teeth were on the ball of his foot. His little toe was in the Seventeen’s mouth. He could feel the incisors through the canvas, like a chisel pressing down hard. A bone snapped and Mike screamed as his eyes watered up.

He heard the drumroll of boots on pavement. A blue and gold blur landed on the ex and pushed it flat against the ground. The figure wiggled, bent down, and the ex’s head jerked back. Mike felt his foot slip just a bit free of the teeth. The blurry shape yanked again as the jaws tried to swallow more sneaker. The dead man’s skull twisted back and Mike’s heel banged against the pavement. He dragged himself away and wiped his eyes clear.

Lady Bee rode the ex like a horse, her heels on its spine and her studded belt circling its throat. She held an end in either hand, steering the jaws away from her. “Put it down!”

Derek, the Melrose guard, leapt across John with a sledge. The handle slid through his grip and he brought the weight up and over in a high arc. The ex’s skull collapsed and dark blood spurted from its ears and nose.

The belt slithered around the limp neck. Bee looked at the splatters of gore on it, sighed, and dropped it by the corpse.

John shuddered. His pant leg was balled at his knee and his wide eyes were stuck on the ragged bite in his calf.

“You people,” Derek shouted at an approaching group. The guard pointed at John while he reached for his walkie. “He’s been bitten. Get him over to Zukor. Carry him. Melrose gate?”

“Go for Melrose,” buzzed his headset.

“Ex down over by the Lansing Theater cells. Need a cleanup crew.”

“Got it.”

Bee pulled off Mike’s gummy shoe and sock. His arch and half his toes were bruised and twisted, but there was no blood. She whistled.

“You’re shit-lucky,” said Derek. “Broke your foot but it didn’t break the skin.”

“Oh thank God,” cried Mike. “Thank God.”

“What the hell were you thinking?” said Bee.

“It was a prisoner. They said he was a smart one, that he could talk and everything. We were trying to find out if he wanted anything for breakfast.”

She and Derek each got an arm under him and lifted him to his feet. “And he attacked you?”

“Yeah, he attacked,” Mike said. Bee was too short on one side, Derek too tall on the other. His foot swung and he winced. “It was just another fucking ex. It came at us, tried to bite me in the cell, and we tripped.”

“Did he say anything? Did you piss him off?”

“It’s an ex,” said the hobbled man. He shifted to put his arm across her shoulders. “No talking, no thinking, just eating.”

Derek looked at the corpse. “You sure?”

“Why don’t you go ask John? I think he got a better look.”

“Come on, smart guy,” said Bee. “Let’s get you to the hospital. I know you’ve been dying to get your hands on me.”

“Dream on, slut.”

“See, that’s what a woman loves to hear.” She gave the broken foot a light tap with her boot and he bit back a moan. “Why’s it so hard for most of you guys to figure that out? You got this?”

Derek nodded, and Bee and Mike limped away.

* * * *

They’d found a comfortable spot on a rooftop that gave them a view. The elevator tower made a bit of shade from the late morning sun. Stealth had slid out of her cloak just before sunrise, making a sniper’s nest for herself on the gravelly roof. St. George tried very hard not to look at her painted-on bodysuit and think about how easy it was to picture her naked.

She peered over the edge of the roof and down at Olympic Boulevard. From here they could see the triangular intersection that seemed to be a central plaza. People walked the streets in large groups that looked like work gangs. Her fingers produced the monocular from her utility belt, and she aimed the lens at the bound thing across from them. St. George pulled one of his own from a side pouch of the backpack.

The dead thing that had been Cairax was chained to the front railing of the Pavilions grocery store. It was a two inch pipe, sunk deep in the concrete, and the bright, chipped paint clashed with the demon’s bruisecolored hide. Its arms were stretched wide, and St. George guessed there were over fifty feet of thick steel links keeping those limbs tight against the rail, with maybe another fifty crossing back and forth over its chest and neck. The spiked tip of the long tail was bound to another pipe. Its head leaned forward, and the oversized fangs gnashed together like a slow-moving kitchen appliance. A pair of Seventeens stood a lazy watch at a small table.

Without looking up, Stealth asked “Is that enough to hold it?”

“Probably.” St. George had teamed up with Cairax a few times in the old days. He knew the monster was at least as strong as he was before becoming one of the tireless undead. “If he still had a brain, and some leverage, he could get out, but I’d say he’s pretty safe like that. His tongue’s been cut out, too.”

“Or bitten off.”

At the triangular center of Beverly and Olympic dozens of thick plastic pallets had been piled together into stacks a yard tall. Particleboard sheets crossed back and forth on top to make a platform fifteen feet square. A dirty section of carpet had been thrown across the center. It was backed up against a tall, spiraling monument of some kind. A severed head was speared on top of the metal center pole.

“Could be a stage,” offered St. George. “Maybe they do live concerts.”

He felt her eyes shift to him from her monocular even though her head didn’t move. “There are bloodstains on the rug. I do not think it is from a musical performance.”

“Depends on the band.”

Another group walked by, this one armed with farm implements.

“All in all, it doesn’t seem too different from how we’re living.”

“Except our guards watch the exes,” she said, “not the civilians.”

The cage measured thirty feet on a side and took up the short turning lane. It was made of the portable fence sections used for concerts and county fairs. Each panel was bolted together, plus extra chains had been wrapped around each connection. Braces reached down to buttress each section, and shiny white sandbags weighted each leg. A dozen sheets of fraying plywood were bolted against the walls. A similar structure could be seen a few blocks west on Olympic, past El Camino.

“I count approximately three hundred exes in the closest pen,” murmured Stealth, “but I have yet to see one walking about.”

“Sunlight speeds up decay.” He gave an awkward shrug. “Maybe the smart ones stay inside until dark.”

Stealth pulled a slim black panel from her belt and lifted it over the edge of the roof. The camera took three silent pictures. “Does that strike you as a very solid structure?”

“The pen? I was just thinking about that. It looks flimsy as …Wait a second.” He squinted into his monocular. “See the door with the plywood crossbar? Look three bodies over from that, to the right.”

“Yes?”

“The bald ex with tattoos. That’s the one that chased Big Red and Cerberus. The one the Seventeens were taking orders from.”

She adjusted the camera lens and brought the dead man into sharp focus. “Are you certain?”

“I was to face to face with him. I’m sure. You can see where Billie shot him.”

The hooded woman lowered the camera. “If he is intelligent, why is he penned in with the others?”

“He looks kind of mindless now, doesn’t he? A regression of some kind?”

She nodded. “Or progression. Perhaps the intelligence is a temporary condition.”

“Would explain why none of them are walking around free. Can’t risk having one turn.”

“Still …” Her face shifted beneath the mask, and he recognized the frown. “Why keep the pens within their safe perimeter?”

“You mean why not keep them two or three blocks away outside their wall? Good question.” They studied the cage and St. George watched the sentries pace back and forth and light a pair of cigarettes. “They don’t follow the guards,” he said.

“Some of them do,” she corrected him, “but they seem listless.”

“Drugged?”

“Without an active cardiovascular system, toxins and sedatives will not circulate throughout their bodies.”

“As far as we know. Still …same question. Why keep hundreds of exes within your safe zone, locked up in flimsy cages with minimal guards?”

* * * *

Gorgon was just past the Hart building when Richard called out to him. The older man had Christian with him. They took a few quick steps to catch up with him and tried to keep pace. “What’s going on?” Richard asked. “I heard there was an attack this morning. Inside the walls.”

The hero nodded. “John Willis. They’ve got him in Zukor but it doesn’t look good.”

“People say the prisoner, the smart ex, got loose and attacked him.”

Gorgon shook his head. “It didn’t get loose. They let it out by accident. And according to at least three witnesses, it wasn’t smart anymore. It’d gone …I don’t know, feral I guess? Mindless?”

Christian fell in step on his other side. “Are you sure?” It was the first time he’d heard her voice close to civil.

“It was dead by the time I got there. Bee and Derek Burke put it down. She seems pretty sure it was a regular ex at that point.”

She raised a pencil-thin eyebrow. “Pretty sure?”

“I trust her judgment.”

“I see,” said Christian.

Gorgon stopped in the plaza. His knuckles went on his hips. Sheriff pose. He had two inches on Richard, but it was just enough to look down at him. Christian looked him in the eye. A few people walked by and ran their eyes across the impromptu meeting.

Richard twisted his big ring. “It’s just …last night you were saying the smart exes weren’t attacking anyone, then this morning one did.”

“Well, yeah, but it was just a regular ex again.”

“So you think,” said Christian. “What’s the problem?”

“People are scared and we don’t know what to tell them.”

“Tell them to stay calm. It’s still safe inside the Mount. The walls are solid. The fences are solid. The guards are there. We’re all here.”

“So there’s nothing going on? No need to worry?”

Behind his goggles Gorgon shut his eyes and counted to three. When he opened them, a few people were standing nearby, casually eavesdropping while they looked at a years-old display of photos on the plinth. “These little meetings would go so much faster if you didn’t beat around the bush.”

Richard nodded. “Sorry. It’s just …” He twisted the ring again. “Two of the wall guards say they saw St. George and Stealth leave last night.”

“Leave?”

“Leave the Mount,” Christian said. Her voice had found its cold edge again. “Katie O’Hare was on wall duty and she said she saw them leaving over the physical plant.”

Gorgon tilted his head.

“They didn’t check out. They left between two guard posts. So no one would see them. And no one’s seen St. George today.” She gestured up to the sky with her chin.

“Yeah,” said the hero. “I figured people would notice eventually.”

Richard’s eyes went wide. “So they did leave? They left the Mount?”

“They had a job to do. It’s not that big a deal. He leaves the Mount all the time. Usually at least twice a week on some kind of mission.”

“But she doesn’t,” said Christian. “Why did she leave?”

“Because they had a job to do.”

“That needed both of them?”

“It’s just a mission. They should be back late tonight. Maybe tomorrow morning.”

Christian tilted her head. “Will they?”

He counted to three again and told himself not to open the goggles. When he looked again, four more people had stopped to listen. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s a simple question,” she said. “Will they be back?”

“Of course they will.”

“You know what I think?”

“I’m breathless to know.”

“I think they left us. I don’t think they’re coming back.”

Gorgon laughed. “Where the fuck do you get this stuff?”

“I think they discovered the exes were getting smarter and realized we were doomed here. And they decided to take off and find somewhere better.”

Gorgon opened his mouth, stopped, and then tried again. “Honestly, I don’t even know what to say to that.”

“How about the truth?”

“I told you the truth. They’re off on a mission. They’ll be back tonight or tomorrow.”

“A mission about the smart exes?”

“Sort of.”

“Sort of?” She shook her head. “You know, it was bad enough before when you were all just vigilantes. Now we’re all completely dependant on your kind.”

“My kind?”

Richard’s eyes bugged. “Christian, that’s—”

“Invulnerable, strong, fast—-the world’s still pretty safe for all of you.”

Gorgon’s fingernails bit into his palms. “Plenty of my friends are dead, too.”

“We need you to survive, but you don’t need us. Why wouldn’t you all just leave when things get bad?”

He leaned in close. “Because we’re all better people than you.”

Someone let out a quick cough of laughter.

Christian glared at him.

He stepped back and turned to Richard. The older man had tried to sink into the crowd. “Richard, you may want to take Mrs. Nguyen away before I put her in a coma for two or three weeks.”

“I can walk myself,” she spat. The crowd recoiled as she marched through them.

The older man twisted his ring. “I’m sorry. We just wanted answers. I didn’t expect her to just pounce on you like that.”

The hero looked at him. “Oh, come on. How long have you known her?”

“You know what she’s like. It’s like a game to her. She just says thing to piss people off.”

“Yeah,” said Gorgon. He sighed and watched the crowd. Most of them were following Christian as she spewed angry rants. “The things everyone’s thinking.”

“No, no,” insisted Richard. “You know how much we—”

“I know how everyone here feels,” said the hero. He tapped his goggles. “People think because of these I don’t see things. Stealth doesn’t, hiding in her little batcave. St. George doesn’t, flying up in the air. But I see it all, every day. They’re glad I’m here, but don’t try to tell me people love me.”

* * * *

They slid across the roof. St. George pushed ever-so-slightly against gravity and skimmed across the bleached-white tar paper. He walked on his fingertips, his toes dipping down to drag every few yards. Another severed head sat there, bobbing up and down as it worked its jaws. He gave it a slap with the back of his hand and it rolled a few feet away.

It took Stealth a minute to catch up to him. She moved silently on her palms like a black spider. As she reached him she shifted her shoulders and let her cloak slide back to the roof. The camera hummed as she photographed the structures from the new vantage point.

A murmur of discontent echoed up and they looked to the street.

Two Seventeens were dragging an older man with tanned skin and silver hair across the intersection from the ivy-covered brick building. He’d been stripped to the waist, his flabby torso was bruised, and one of his eyes was swollen shut. A few civilians followed them, and a crowd began to gather. One of the followers, an older woman, wailed and sobbed. She grabbed at one of the Seventeens, a man with a skinheadlike buzzcut. He shook her off and shouted at her in Spanish.

“What are they saying?”

“The woman is begging for mercy,” Stealth translated. “The man said it is too late, he has been sentenced. Now she is saying if they let him go they will both leave.”

From the rooftop they could see Buzzcut’s grin as they dragged the man away behind the pen of exes. A moment later he reappeared, and both heroes realized what they’d missed on the far side of the pen the night before.

Buzzcut dragged the older man to the top of the stairs. They stood on the small platform above the cage and the Seventeen yelled to the crowd. There were three or four hundred people in the street and still more drifting from the buildings.

“You know how this goes,” repeated Stealth. “Sentence has been passed. If the boss wants, he will still be spared.”

St. George took a breath and shifted on the gritty roof.

The old man shouted something and Buzzcut clubbed his head.

“He is a monster,” echoed Stealth.

The Seventeen turned the old man toward the cage. The exes were clawing at the air. Their clicking teeth were like a speed typist gone mad.

St. George went to stand up and Stealth slammed her hand onto his arm. It would’ve broken bones in a normal person. “No,” she snapped.

“They’re going to—”

“You cannot save him.”

“I have to try.” He shrugged off her grip, rolled to his feet, and saw Buzzcut push the old man.

She was a blur, spinning, sweeping his legs, knocking him back down. His head cracked into the rooftop and she was on top of him, straddling him, her forearm pressed into his throat.

He heard the screams and the gasp of the crowd.

“He is too far,” she hissed. “He is already dead and you will reveal us for nothing!”

He grabbed her arms. She weighed nothing and he knew he could throw her clear across the roof and there was nothing she could do to stop him.

“The old man will still be dead and you will fail the Mount. Everyone there is depending on you.”

The screams broke into a wet cough. All they could hear was the murmur of the crowd and the wailing of the man’s wife. Beneath it were clicks and the sound of tearing meat. Someone, Buzzcut, was laughing.

“Get off me,” St. George said.

She slid to the side. “We had no choice.”

“I know.” He stared up at the sky. “Just …don’t talk to me for a while.”

“It is always unfortunate when sacrifices must—”

“Don’t,” he said.

The old man’s wife kept sobbing until someone led her away.