Ex-Communication: A Novel (5 page)

“What are you getting at?”

“I’m just saying, if nothing changes in the race there’s a good
chance six weeks from now things are going to be real different around here. Might be best to get stuff done earlier than later, know what I mean?”

St. George shook his head. “We can’t start making this an us-and-them thing,” he said. “It took us over a year to get the Seventeens integrated. Last thing we need is to start making up political parties and dividing everyone that way.”

“People are already divided, boss,” Jarvis said. “Just the nature of the beast. Some folks want to go forward, some folks want to try to go back. There’s all the religious nuts, too.”

“Hey,” said St. George. “Tolerance.”

“Sorry, boss,” said Jarvis. “Seriously, though, have you listened to some of this A.D. stuff?”

“It’s all classic Book of Revelation,” said Billie. She tipped her head at the Big Wall. “It’s not that out there, all things considered. Pretty easy to think we’re living in the end of days.”

“I never knew you were religious,” said St. George.

“I’m a Marine and I was in Afghanistan for a year and a half,” she said. “I’m religious enough, I just don’t push it on anyone. You know they all back Christian, right?”

“The A.D. folks?” asked the hero. “Not too surprising. She’s been with them from the start, hasn’t she?”

Billie nodded. “Someone told me she lost a niece when everything went to hell.”

“I think I heard that once.”

“Still,” said Jarvis, “y’all get my point. Still a lot of work to do and we ain’t quite the unified front we were a couple years ago.”

“Yeah,” said St. George. “I was saying something about this the other night. Is it a good thing or a bad thing that we’ve gotten big enough for people to start splitting apart?”

“What’d you decide?”

“That we’d have to wait and see.” He shrugged. “Anything else?”

Billie shook her head. “I was going to put together a weapons detail tonight, make sure everything’s good for tomorrow’s mission.”

“Did that yesterday with Taylor,” said Jarvis. “Double-checked everything.”

Billie shrugged. “So I’ll have them triple-check it. What else is there to do?”

St. George shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat. “Maybe we should just relax.”

“Sorry,” said Billie, “you used some word I don’t know.”

“I’m serious,” St. George said. He gestured at the Big Wall and let his hand swing back to the gate. “Things are tight, but we’re at the point that we have to start living again. All of us. We can’t make every minute of every day about survival.”

“Legion’s still out there,” Billie said.

“Out there,” said St. George. “Not in here.”

Jarvis shrugged. “Okay.”

Billie looked at him, then at St. George. “That’s it?” she asked. “We’re just supposed to do … nothing?”

“Not nothing,” he said. “Just take a night off. Have a beer with some friends, play a game, watch a movie, hook up with someone. Go … I don’t know, do whatever you used to do on your nights off.”

Her lip twisted toward a frown, but he saw her force it back into a flat line. “What if I go work on some ideas for that forward base? Some basic supplies and requirements?”

St. George sighed. “If it’s what you want to do, fine, but you don’t have to. You can just take the night off. It won’t be the end of the world.”

“Yeah,” agreed Jarvis. “End of the world happened years ago.”

IT WAS A
little over a block from the West Gate down to the church, maybe two blocks from where St. George left Billie and Jarvis. He knew flying there was silly, but it was always good for people to see one of the heroes during the day.

Plus, it just felt cool to fly. Breathing fire and bending steel bars were great, but pushing himself away from the ground and hanging in the sky was just amazing. He’d never felt so free in his life.

He soared up a good thirty feet above the trees and spun once in the air. Far to the north, up in the hills, stood the letters of the Hollywood sign. It was getting gray after years of neglect. The thought crossed his mind of going up there with a few gallons of water and washing it. It’d be a big boost for everyone to see the whole thing bright and white up above them.

Two blocks west were the walls of the Mount, their original fortress. From here he could see the huge globe of the Earth balanced on one corner of the studio wall. Just past the globe and the stages there, he could see the top floor of the Hart Building. He knew he had to head over there soon, but wanted to make another stop first.

To the south, just inside the Big Wall, was the church. It wasn’t the only church inside the barriers. They’d found a dozen of different sizes, denominations, and languages—but
not one synagogue or mosque, which had caused a fair amount of grumbling. The one at Rossmore and Arden was the one St. George always thought of as
the
church, though. It was a large, Gothic building, with arched facades in the front and back and a cross on the high rooftop above the doors. He wasn’t a particularly religious person, but he understood the need for symbols.

He landed on the steps. The big square doors were open to let in the breeze. He walked inside.

The church was lit by windows and a few candles. A dozen people were scattered through the pews. Two men stood near the back of the church, right by the door, speaking in hushed tones. One of them glanced at St. George and gave a faint tip of his head in acknowledgment.

Andy Shepard, former scavenger, was now Father Shepard, although he’d at least gotten most everyone to go with Father Andy. He tried to argue that he’d never been ordained, but eventually he broke down under the realization it was him or nothing for the practicing Catholics left in Los Angeles. They’d even found him a collar.

And the number of practicing churchgoers had gone up since the Zombocalypse. There’d been prayer and spiritual guidance inside the Mount, but it was a huge thing for many people to set foot in a church again once the Big Wall was finished. Especially if it had been their church before the end of the world. St. George had noticed how many people headed to the different services each Sunday morning. Not surprising, all things considered.

Father Andy exchanged a last few words with the other man and they shook hands. Then he stepped over to St. George and extended the hand again. “A bit weird to see you here,” he said. “What’s up?”

“Just checking in,” said the hero. “I was flying by, realized I hadn’t talked to you in a while. How are things going?”

Andy shrugged. “Not bad. The confessional’s been busy.
There’s a lot of people who’ve been burdened by things they’ve done, stuff they want to get off their chests.”

“Anything I should know about?”

Andy shook his head. “It’s survivor’s guilt more than anything else. That’s why all the churches are so popular. Hell, my last sermon was standing room only. Can’t tell you the last time I saw that in a church.”

“Are you allowed to say ‘hell’ now that you’re a priest?”

“I have to say ‘hell.’ It’s part of the job description. Although, technically, if I’m the last one left I think it makes me the Pope.”

“Pope Andy the First does have a ring to it,” said St. George.

The priest shook his head. “I’ve got to be honest. After all we’ve seen, I’d be tempted to take the name Thomas.”

St. George smiled.

“Nothing else?” asked Father Andy.

The hero looked up at the big cross above the altar. “What can you tell me about the A.D. folks?”

Andy let out a noise somewhere between a chuckle and a snort. Then he shrugged. “Well, they’re following general Christianity, for the most part,” he said. “More of an oversized prayer circle or Bible study group than an actual religious sect. I mean, in the big scheme of things, they’re like all of us. They’re trying to understand God’s plan and establish a set—”

“No,” said St. George. “I’m not looking for a polite religious comparison. I want to know what you think about them.”

The priest took in a slow breath, leaned against the back of a pew, and lowered his voice. “Look, I know every religion thinks every other religion’s got it wrong, so anything I say they could probably say against me, but still … these people are grasping.”

“How so?”

“How well do you know your Bible?”

St. George shook his head. “Not at all really. I mean, I know a couple of the stories, but …”

“Don’t worry about it.” Andy crossed his arms. “The After Death folks go through the Bible and cherry-pick verses that
fit what they want to believe. Thessalonians, a fair amount of Revelation, one of them even spouted a few verses of Ezekiel at me once. They just pull stuff from anywhere without considering context. Have you ever heard the phrase ‘When there is no room in Hell, the dead shall walk the Earth,’ or some variation on it?”

“A few times, yeah.” He took an educated guess. “Is it from Revelations?”

“Revelation, singular,” said Father Andy. “And no, it isn’t. It’s just the tagline from an old zombie movie.”

“It’s not even based on one?”

Andy shook his head. “But they’re still treating it like the word of God. They just clutch onto anything that lets them cope with what’s happened to the world. More to the point, they try to spin all of it their way, no matter what the context or classical interpretation is. These days, I’m pretty damned liberal in interpreting the word of God, but I still can’t see any way to resolve their beliefs with what the book actually says.”

“You can say ‘damn,’ too?”

“Yep. Seriously, we all need to cope in our own way, but their whole mind-set is just a little too zealous for my liking. And I’m saying that as a Catholic priest.”

“Yeah.”

Father Andy uncrossed his arms and set them down on the back of the pew. It was a very relaxed pose. “I would’ve thought Stealth would’ve had all this down in a file somewhere already. With much more precise references.”

“She probably does,” the hero said with a shrug. “I was just flying by and saw the church, and their church a little farther down. Figured I’d stop by and talk to you about them.”

“That’s all?”

“Yeah. Why?”

Father Andy met his eyes for another few seconds and then nodded. “Okay,” he said. “But you know, if you ever want to talk about anything …”

“I know where to find you.” They shook hands again. “Do you miss going out on scavenging runs?”

The priest smiled. “Going out to fight with zombies over cans of beans? Not as much as you’d think.”

St. George sailed back into the air. He flew in a lazy circle and swung down by the southwest corner of the Big Wall. The After Death church was below him, a newer building that looked more like a meeting hall than a place of worship.

There were three people he didn’t recognize standing in the parking lot, each with a book tucked under their arm. One of them caught a glimpse of him and they all shielded their eyes to look up. They smiled and waved. The man who’d first seen him looked more familiar when he smiled.

It occurred to St. George, not for the first time, that there were enough people living in Los Angeles now that he couldn’t recognize them all on sight.

The people went back to their discussion. St. George widened his flight circle to take him out over Larchmont and back across the South Wall. A few sentries waved or saluted as he flew past. He returned the gestures.

He passed over rows of houses that once had prices in the high six figures, maybe even seven. Most of them were first come, first serve now. Many of them had solar panels on their roofs, scavenged from across Los Angeles. It had only taken the end of the world to make the city embrace green technology.

He flew north and passed over the Melrose Gate. It was still strange to see the gates standing open and the streets mostly empty.

Cerberus was outside on the edge of the cobblestones, just where the road turned back to sun-cracked pavement. The armored battlesuit looked up at him with tennis ball–size lenses. He waved, and the metal skull returned it with a casual nod
before turning and heading down the street. It had been in front of Gorgon’s cross, a memorial to another hero who’d died defending the Mount over a year ago. That meant it was Danielle in the suit.