Ex-Communication, Peter Clines [ebook reader online free txt] 📗

you just come looking for me.” He tapped the name on his chest. “Sergeant Mike Truman.”

“Thank you,” she said again.

The other guard’s mouth twitched. His eyes flitted between the sunglasses hiding the dead girl’s eyes and the pale skin of her neck. His fingers did a subdued dance on the strap of his rifle.

Freedom gave him a look. “As you were, men,” he said. Truman gave a sharp salute and turned to continue his patrol along the wall. The civilian guard stared at Madelyn for another moment, then turned to follow his partner.

She watched them walk away, then let her eyes drift down beyond the Big Wall. A hundred or so exes were there, pressed up against the stack of automobiles. The constant click-click-click of their teeth echoed even louder here. Their dead eyes followed the two guards as they walked away along the Wall. Many of the staggering corpses went after them.

“Do I really look that much like them?”

Freedom stepped up behind her and the exes shifted their attention to him. They reached up and grabbed at the air. “According to my mother,” he said, “looks aren’t everything.”

“Your mom never went to high school, I guess.”

The exes clawed at their side of the Wall for a few moments, trying to reach the platform. Then they grew still. Their chattering jaws went silent.

Madelyn’s eyebrows went up. “What’s going—”

“Hey, big guy,” rasped one of the exes. It had been a tall, dark-skinned man with a thin beard. One of its eyes was missing, and the opposite arm. The bloody rags of the shirt fluttered as it moved.

Madelyn shrieked and jumped back. Her oversized sunglasses dropped again, and this time they fell into the swarm of dead people below. Freedom stared down at the dead man with practiced disdain. “Did you want something?”

The ex blinked. Its eyelids flapped over the empty socket. “Getting lazy, esse,” said Legion. “Forgot to call me ‘sir.’ ”

“I didn’t forget,” said Freedom. “I made a point of not using it.”

The dead man barked out a laugh. It opened its mouth and a handful of exes around it spoke in sync. “Yeah, you the big tough guy, hiding behind a gate,” they said. “Adams thought he was tough, too.”

Freedom’s jaw shifted.

“You remember Adams, right? He was one of your guys. Now he’s one of mine.”

“This is him?” asked Madelyn. “This is the guy who can talk through exes? He controlled them out at your base?”

“Yes,” said Freedom.

Madelyn stared at the dead man. It ignored her and continued to glare at Freedom with its one good eye. She set her jaw. “He killed my mom?”

“Since we got a moment alone,” said Legion, “I’m going to make you a deal, big guy.”

Freedom made a point of turning his head away from the swarm of exes and looked Madelyn in the eye. “No,” he said. “That was something else.”

“But he controlled the exes?”

The dead man twisted his head, and the dull eye panned back and forth across Freedom’s face. “Game’s changing again, Cap,” the exes said. “You guys’re always too slow. Always playing catch-up. You running out of time to do that.”

The huge officer crossed his arms. It was like watching two tree trunks braid themselves. “What are you saying?”

“Saying you’ve got a chance,” said the dead people. “You gather up all your soldier boys and leave. Go back out to the desert or wherever you want. You just all leave Los Angeles. Nothing’ll touch you. You can just drive away.”

Freedom said nothing. He stared at the exes. It was another practiced stare. After a moment, the handful of dead people shifted their feet. Madelyn’s sunglasses crunched beneath a heel.

“Damn it,” she muttered. “Y’know, until I came here I don’t think I lost a single pair of glasses.”

“Here,” said Freedom. He pulled off his headgear and handed it down to her.

“You sure?”

“I’ve got three,” he said.

Madelyn adjusted the strap and tugged the cap over her head. It shaded her eyes enough someone would have to look twice to see her bleached irises. She smiled up at him. “Good?”

He nodded.

“That supposed to impress me?” asked the exes.

Freedom glanced down at them. “Sorry?”

“Magic tricks ain’t gonna save the day,” Legion said. “Don’t go thinking you can distract me with bullshit.”

The huge officer hardened his stare at the dead man. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The dead faces below twisted into a dozen identical scowls. “Don’t play games with me, big man. Where the hell’d your hat go?”

ZZZAP FLOATED INSIDE the electric chair, annoyed as all hell, and shot little bolts of electricity out of his finger at one of the rivets.

It wasn’t really his finger. It was just an outline, a shape his subconscious formed to help him relate to the energy form. It was closer to a mathematical model than flesh and bone. And he wasn’t really shooting electricity. It just streamed off him as potentials shifted, like a giant Tesla coil. It was an easy trick to do with all the conductive material in the cage, and it only added up to half a pound or so of himself that he was burning off each day.

Truth be told, he wasn’t even aiming at the rivet. He didn’t have that kind of fine control. It was just excess power that struck there instead of somewhere else along the copper-wrapped rings. If he actually fired a blast of energy at the rivet, he’d annihilate the electric chair, most of his entertainment center, and the far wall of Four. Not to mention the east and west walls of Five across the street, Zukor past that, part of the old telecommunications building, the lobby of Roddenberry (which would piss off Stealth to no end), the Gower manufacturing mill, and a little office complex past that which had been single apartments for two years now.

So, really, he wasn’t doing anything. Except being annoyed as hell.

St. George and Stealth were angry at him. And he knew they had every right to be. Max