Ex-Heroes (22 page)

Oh, perhaps. However, in retrospect, I think I shall remain in this skin. If there is any chance for me to survive, it will be in this form, yes? As Maxwell I had an hour or so left, less if you decided to conserve any more resources. No, I believe Cairax has a far better chance of fighting off the infection... or any of the dangers that apparently come with it.

Gentlemen, I asked you to please keep—-ahhh, there. See what has happened? I did warn you about the tail. Doctor, please, please, do not waste your time. You and I both know there is no chance he survived that. My dear friend, perhaps you should place your rifle down on the floor and lie face down. That will be a safer place for you to avoid your companion’s fate. Thank you. Doctor dearest, if you could get next to him. I would hate for you to be hit by any loose metal when I go through the wall.

Where? Back to the shore, back to the sand. While we fritter away time here the contagion continues to spread. We need every hand fighting it for as long as they can and I have, if you will pardon the phrase, an appetite for destruction. If we are all lucky, being in this skin may give me several days, perhaps weeks, to rip and shred.

No, no, my dear little doctor. You are perfectly safe. I may look like a monster, but I am still Maxwell Hale inside this skin. I would never harm another human being.

Very well. I would never
deliberately
harm another human being. Is that better?

The ingratitude of some people...

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 clean up 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 Blvd. 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 bruise-colored 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. Particle-board 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 cross-bar? 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.