Ex-Heroes, Peter Clines [reading like a writer txt] 📗

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.

“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 into 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.