Ex-Heroes (23 page)

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 skinhead-like buzzcut. He shook her off and shouted at her in Spanish.

“What are they saying?”

“The woman’s 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.

“Something’s going on.”

It was almost three in the afternoon, and a crowd gathered at the wooden stage. Die-hard Seventeens were closest to the platform, sporting weapons and showing their tattoos. Others drifted in behind them forming a loose outer ring. Within an hour the broad intersection was filled with thousands of people.

“Cairax,” he whispered with a nod. The demon ex had stopped its slow struggle against the chains. It grew still and sat. Its tail fell limp.

Even from here he could hear the low thuds echo from within the ivy covered building. It was a sound he knew from armored battlesuits and movie dinosaurs. The footsteps came closer, and something moved in the darkness of the building.

The hunched figure stepped through the double-doorway with its head bowed low. Once the sunlight hit its skin it straightened up and added another three feet to its size. Then it stepped out of the sunken entrance and added another two. A quartet of Seventeens flanked it, three men and a woman, each with a rifle slung over their shoulders and a machete tucked in their belt. The crowd howled and cheered and the giant threw two gang signs over its head with long fingers. A green bandanna crisscrossed each wrist and palm.

Its whole body was distorted. The arms were too long and thick, the chest and shoulders too broad beneath the tight wifebeater. It was bigger than Cerberus by at least two feet. St. George checked it against the man standing next to it.

“Eleven and a half feet tall,” whispered Stealth. “I would estimate seven hundred twenty-five pounds.” Her finger danced on the camera’s button.

And it was dead. After all this time, St. George knew that skin tone at a glance. He spun the dial of his monocular, pushing the lens as tight as it could go.

A tattoo of a cross decorated its right temple running into the black buzzcut. On the opposite side of its head were a few flaps of inked flesh where the ear had been ripped away to show sinew and ivory. Beneath the dark eyebrows the bone had swollen and bulged, like some museum-exhibit caveman. The thick brow made the sunken eyes look even deeper, pearls of cloudy white in skull sockets. It had enormous teeth, the size of matchbooks, and its jaw pushed out to hold them all.

“It looks like a gorilla,” he muttered. “Zombie Mighty Joe Young.”

It lumbered across the street and onto the makeshift stage. Applause, cheers, and hollers echoed back and forth across the street. The ex held its monstrous arms up to the crowd like so many rulers before it.

“Look,” she murmured. “The ones in the pen.”

Across from the platform, three hundred exes had stopped milling in the cage. Now withered salutes rose over their heads. A few blocks away, the exes in the second pen did the same.

“Jesus,” he said. “What the hell is going on?”

Mighty Joe leered at the crowd and pumped his fists in the air. The exes thrust gaunt hands upward again. He brought his palms down to quiet the crowd and hundreds of dead arms flopped to their sides.

“They’re responding to him,” Stealth said.

“
DIECISIETE!
” shouted the monstrous ex. His voice echoed out of the swollen chest and down the block. “Forever and always!”

Most of the crowd echoed the cheer and howled. The exes opened their mouths in a silent shout.

“Eight more youngbloods,” he roared. “They done their duty, shown their loyalty to the SS. They’re in!”

A small line formed at the edge of the stage. Three Latinos, two Asians, two African-Americans, and a white girl. They were bare-chested except for the woman in her bra.

The first one walked onto the stage, very small next to Mighty Joe. The ex unwound one of his bandanas as a bodyguard grabbed the young man’s forearm. Beneath the green cloth, the huge palm was pitted and slashed. He made a fist, shook his hand a few times, and the wounds glistened wet.

The female bodyguard pulled out her machete, cleaned the edge between two fingers, and pulled it across the fledgling Seventeen’s hand. The man gritted his teeth as blood swelled up. The monstrous ex reached down and the bleeding limb vanished within his huge fingers. “One of us,” he rumbled. He took the hand away and slapped his palm down on each of the man’s shoulders.

The youngblood’s legs trembled under the impact and he nodded his head. They guided him past the giant to an old woman who washed out the wound and sponged the gore from his shoulders. Her peroxide foamed on his skin. The bodyguard was already slashing the next palm.

“Deliberate infection,” mused Stealth. She lowered the camera.

“Followed by immediate disinfection. If this is patient zero, maybe he’s got some purer strain of the ex-virus. Could be why some come back smart. He obviously is.”

“Perhaps. I do not think it is an ex,” she said. The infrared monocular was pressed up to her eye again. “Its body temperature is seventy-one degrees. Twenty degrees higher than the average ex.”

“And almost thirty lower than the average human,” said St. George. “What the hell is he, then?”

“I am not sure.”

“Doesn’t look like he’s got universal appeal, either.” Half the mob shifted on their feet, not cheering with the hardcore Seventeens near the stage. The crowd members toward the back studied the ground or cast wary eyes at the ritual the huge ex was conducting.

“I would guess many of them did not realize they were sheltering with a street gang, let alone one led by a monster. They were looking for safety.”

The ex turned to the group that had crossed the stage. Each of them had tied their hand in a swatch of green even as he rewrapped his own. “You’re in forever now,” he bellowed. “All of you. Even if you die, even if you come back, you’re always a Seventeen.”

He slammed his hands together once, twice, three times. The crowd picked up the applause. The youngbloods caught dozens of backslaps, headrubs, and arm punches.

“Getting close to two years since I got this.” Mighty Joe continued. “Two years since I became the biggest boss in the city. Getting bigger and badder every day.” He flexed arms like beer kegs and the crowd whistled and shouted.