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

way to the gate, tearing off do-rags and patches. Cerberus knocked exes left and right as she marched across the cobblestone driveway.

St. George drifted above the crowd until he reached the gate. He settled to the ground and hurled the walking dead away like dolls. A baker’s dozen of Seventeens stumbled past him and through the narrow gap of the gate.

The hero slammed his fist against one last ex, a skinny man in a filthy Santa Claus suit, and sent it hurling back. He took three steps back and the gate shut with a clang.

Cerberus braced a broad foot and three-fingered hand against the struts and gave Derek a quick nod. “I’ve got it,” she said. “Go find another lock-bar.”

Stealth had over a hundred Seventeens on their knees by the guard shack, fingers laced behind their heads. Ten or twenty of them were sobbing. So were a few of the gate guards.

Katie took a few deep breaths and looked up at St. George. “Am I wrong,” she gasped, “or did we just live through that?”

THE CAPE WAS TATTERED, but I’d gotten used to it. Having it gradually fall apart ended up working like training wheels. It was shredded but I could fly better than ever. The next time I went out I was just going to trash it. To be honest, most of my Dragon costume was ruined. Runs, pockmarks, things smeared into it that were never going to come out.

Stealth had asked to meet me at sundown on top of the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood and Highland. It was a landmark. They held the Academy Awards here. Beneath me was a huge scrolling screen that had been blank for two and a half months. Kitty-cornered across the street, a fiberglass tyrannosaurus smashed through a building facade with a clock in its mouth. I had a certain sympathy for the thing that should’ve given up and gone extinct but kept fighting.

This used to be one of the busiest intersections in the city. LA’s version of Times Square. Now it was the site of a seven-car pileup and the scorched wrecks of two National Guard Humvees. Highland was a vehicle graveyard as far as you could see in either direction. In at least a third of the cars things were clawing at the windshields. I could see another three hundred or so exes wandering between the metal corpses.

You have to kill them faster than they’re killing you. That was the lesson we’d learned too late. Every person they kill comes back on their side. If they kill one and you kill one, your numbers have gone down and theirs have stayed the same. Zombies are like credit card payments. If you keep getting rid of the minimum amount, you’ll never win.

And we weren’t winning. No other way to look at it. I was sleeping three hours a night and still wasn’t making any headway. Banzai was dead. Blockbuster was dead. Cairax was dead. Regenerator was crippled and powerless. Despite dozens of emergency bulletins and training seminars, the number of exes was still growing. It was almost inevitable.

The sun brushed the horizon.

“Thank you for meeting me.”

Stealth stood a dozen or so feet behind me. As usual. God, she was hot.

“Well, it was this or use the time to eat a meal,” I said. She didn’t laugh, so I coughed and tried to brush past it. “What’s up?”

“You are no longer hiding your identity?”

I looked at the black and green mask in my hand. The face of the Mighty Dragon. “Well, as I see it, it’s moot either way. I’m pretty sure you already know who I am. Probably where I live and how I voted in the past three elections. As for everyone else …” I threw another look out at the darkened metropolis and shrugged. “I don’t think there are enough people left to make a secret identity worth the effort.”

She nodded. “I would like to discuss our options, George.”

“What do you mean?”

Her hips were like a beautiful pendulum beneath the camo cloak as she walked to stand next to me. We looked out at the dying city. “Los Angeles has been lost.”

As much as I knew it, no one had said it yet. We were still fighting, still holding blocks and stations. Cerberus fought her way over the hill with half a rifle platoon of Marines and cleaned out a good length of Sunset Boulevard in the process. Gorgon was keeping the base at Hollywood and Cahuenga safe, using survivors as batteries to keep his strength up. Zzzap was still trying to split time among four different cities.

“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

“With that understood,” she said, “I believe our energies are now best spent preparing for a prolonged siege. I have a secure area where we can protect a number of people. Certain preparations have already been made.”

“Isn’t there some sort of government plan we should be following? They must have something worked out.”

She shook her head. “The State of California and the CDC each had three possible contingency plans for a major Los Angeles viral outbreak. All six have been rendered impossible either from lack of resources or because the outbreak has spread past the established containment parameters. Under ideal circumstances, their only option at this point is sterilization.”

It took a moment for that to sink in. “Wait … you’re talking about, what, they’re going to nuke the city or something?”

The hooded woman nodded. “That is the CDC’s fallback position for an epidemic this virulent and dangerous. However, the disease is already too widespread. Destroying every city in the country would not eliminate it, and there are not enough pilots left to perform the number of required missions.”

“So … what are they going to do?”

“CDC in Atlanta stopped responding to queries seventeen hours ago. Zzzap has investigated and can see no signs of life from their command building. He believes it has been overrun or abandoned.”

“Abandoned?”

“Air Force One has gone to radio silence. The governor is missing and his mansion has