Ex-Isle, Peter Clines [ebook smartphone .TXT] 📗

future,” I told him, “with potential associated health and morale issues. Having cats within the walls of the Mount will decrease those factors and benefit the surviving population long-term.”

He stopped most of his sigh.

I turned my attention back to the blueprints of the Zukor Building, located on the opposite side of the parking lot from our current location. It was central enough that it could work as a hospital. “Is there anything else?”

“I guess not.”

“You should replace your uniform. Damaged like this, it creates an image of vulnerability you do not want to project at this time.”

In my peripheral vision, he looked down at his exposed chest. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I should.”

“If you have renounced your identity as the Dragon, it may be time to consider functionality over form. I suggest a more durable material. Perhaps leather or Kevlar.”

“It’ll probably deal with the draft, too.”

I raised my head to look at his bare chest. “I was not aware you felt such minor differences in temperature.”

“I don’t,” he said. “It was just a, an attempt at a joke. To lighten the mood.”

His eyes stayed on the damaged uniform, but it was clear I was the focus of his attention. Six seconds passed. He waited for some final form of consolation or advice.

A number of ways I could bring the encounter to a close passed through my mind. I discounted several that would have an adverse effect on our dealings in the future. I also discarded several that would take too long.

I stood straight and turned to him. “Twenty-two days ago, on the roof of Hollywood and Highland, you told me you wished to be a symbol of hope. This is the challenge of hope versus fear, George. Fear is a simple, base emotion felt by every mammal, one that requires no rational thought, no logic. It is an easy thing to rule by fear.”

He looked up. “I don’t want us to be ruling by—”

“It is also,” I continued, “an easy thing to be ruled by it. Making decisions based on fear requires no effort. In challenging times, many people prefer such a path. It is easier to be scared of a situation than to make the effort to understand it. Fear provides an excuse to avoid responsibility. Even before the ex-virus, there were many people throughout history who took advantage of this tendency.”

His eyes probed my mask as he tried to guess my expression. “There’s a lot to be scared of out there.”

“There is much to be aware of and cautious of, yes,” I said, “but this woman had given in to fear. She had no interest in being rescued. She had found what she thought was a safe, comfortable place to exist with her fear. You challenged that. You put her in a position of having a choice. Of being able to make decisions.”

“But she died for nothing,” he said. “Even if she thought I was there to rob her, she had a couple cans of cat food and some ramen. She would’ve made it another two weeks, tops, without us.”

I lowered my head. The cloak shifted around me. “She died because she could not face the possibility of change,” I told him. “In her mind, it made more sense to shoot her potential rescuer than to risk facing the world as it is without that fear. Had her attempted rescuer been anyone except you, she would have killed him or her, so it could be said you saved a life when this happened.”

He sighed. “I guess that’s something.”

“It is. And every person who hears this story today will know it.”

He straightened up and headed for the door. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to get some sleep so we can head out in the morn—”

“George.”

He turned to look at me.

“You have given us a better path,” I told him. “You can do what I cannot. What Gorgon cannot. You can inspire these people. You can show them hope is a real option. They do not need to live in fear in order to live.”

ST. GEORGE HUNG in the air and looked down at the Mount.

That name meant a couple of things now. If you were outside the Big Wall, the Mount was everything inside it. If you were inside the Wall, the Mount was their original film studio-turned-fortress, located at the center of the more-or-less square area the citizens of Los Angeles now occupied.

Neither of these definitions took into account being three hundred feet over the ground. Granted, only he and Zzzap ever saw the Mount from this angle. And sometimes Stealth.

Outside the Big Wall, Los Angeles was a ghost town. An empty shell of a city. Buildings stood deserted, many with gaping windows. Cars sat in the road where they’d been abandoned. Tall grass covered La Brea, Sunset, Highland, Western, and Hollywood Boulevard—formerly some of the busiest streets in the area. A baker’s dozen of small trees had sprouted along the Hollywood Walk of Fame. One had pushed its way up next to Godzilla’s star, right by the Hard Rock Cafe, and stood over twelve feet tall. A long stretch of the Hollywood Freeway had turned into a small oasis, complete with grass, shrubs, and a rainwater pond. Nature had forced its way up through every crack and crevice.

And, of course, there were exes everywhere. Even with the hundreds—maybe even thousands—St. George had destroyed over the past five years, he knew the raw number of zombies hadn’t changed much. They lurked in buildings, stumbled down streets, staggered along freeways. Sometimes alone, sometimes in packs, always hungry for the living.

But not inside the Big Wall. Inside, things were safe. Inside, hundreds of solar cells gleamed on rooftops, scavenged from all over the city. People lived more or less normal lives. They had jobs and families and even movies on the weekend.

Inside, you could almost forget the Mount was surrounded by thousands of mindless, merciless eating machines.

Although it seemed like everything was