Ex-Communication: A Novel (26 page)

“I’ll remember it,” grunted the dead woman. It took in a hissing breath and so did a dozen exes pressed up against the gate. They all spoke with Legion’s voice. “I’LL REMEMBER IT THE NEXT TIME YOU’RE OUTSIDE.”

“Y’know, you’re starting to overuse that trick,” St. George said. “It’s not as scary as it used to be.”

The dead woman made another messy attempt to spit at him and then her jaw started chomping up and down again. Madelyn hopped away from the ex. The teeth clacked together half a dozen times before St. George grabbed the dead thing and pitched it over the top of the Big Wall.

“Game’s changing again,” Legion said from the gate. Now it was a dead man with a helmet and a series of silver loops running along each lip. “I got guns. I got armor. Next time we do this it’s gonna be big.”

St. George walked up to the gate. “Try it,” he said. “One of these days—”

“What, dragon man?” The ex grinned at him. Half its teeth were cracked from banging against each other for months. “You can’t stop me. Can’t do anything. Go ahead and beat up a hundred stiffs. Two hundred if it makes you feel all macho. Can’t touch me, and you know it.”

Smoke curled out of St. George’s nose as he glared at the dead man through the fence. He could feel things twisting at the back of his throat and swallowed the flames down. His fingers
curled into fists and he had to fight the urge to drive one of them through the ex’s face.

Someone stepped next to him. Madelyn reached out and poked the tip of the dead man’s nose. Legion growled and stepped back from the gate.

“I can touch you,” she said, “and you’ll never know it’s coming.” She stood up straight and crossed her arms. “Damn it, that was totally cool and he couldn’t even hear me.”

The dead man squinted at the air next to Madelyn. Then its gaze flitted to the left and locked eyes with her. She took a quick step back.

“There you are,” the ex growled. “All fuzzy and blendin’ in, but I see you.”

St. George snapped his fingers. Legion glanced at him, and when the pale eyes swung back they went past Madelyn. The dead man scowled and took a few more steps back.

“I’ll figure that one out, too,” Legion said. The exes stepped back, clearing a path for him as he marched away from the gate. “You go ahead and keep thinking I’m stupid. How many people that cost you so far?” He looked back over his shoulder. “How’s your buddy with the beard doing? Jarvis?”

St. George’s fists shook. He breathed out hard and licks of flame slipped out between his lips. He took in a breath to yell after the ex, or maybe send a ball of fire, and froze.

On the far side of the street, just across the symbol burned into the pavement, two of the exes had turned to face Legion. Their faces twisted into twin expressions of pure rage. Their eyes swelled and burst, spilling blue fire across their faces.

Uncertain muttering broke out across the Big Wall.

“Rodney,” St. George called out. “Stop moving!”

The dead man sneered at him over its shoulder as it stepped onto the symbol. “It’s Legion!” said the ex. “Not your fucking servant boy to call up when you want something. Remember that next time you want to play fucking games.”

“Seriously,” yelled St. George. “Look out!”

The exes at the seal bent and swelled. A third one opened its mouth to reveal a forest of long teeth. A fourth held up hands with dagger-like fingernails.

“You’re pathetic, dragon man, and any day now I’m gonna—”

The distorted exes pounced on Legion as he stepped off the symbol. It was like watching cats fight, a ball of teeth and muscle and claws that spun and twisted too fast to see more than glimpses. More exes piled into the fight, some of them with burning eyes and some shouting in Spanish.

And then they started to explode. And Legion started to scream. It was a long howl of pure agony.

Instinct pushed St. George into the air. “Cerberus,” he shouted, “get ready to go out there. We need to—”

He dropped out of the sky and hit the pavement hard next to the silver titan.

“Don’t do it, George,” someone said.

Max stood in the street behind them. Somewhere he’d found a charcoal suit. The sleeves were pushed up to reveal the tattoos on his forearms. He had his hands pressed palm to palm against each other so his fingertips touched his wrists.

St. George leaped to his feet, focused on the spot between his shoulder blades, and stayed on the ground. Something pushed down against him. He focused harder and the something pushed harder.

Max shook his head and raised his hands without separating them. “I can’t let you go out there.”

The hero glanced out the gate. The screaming was more ragged. Between the exes he could see the bursts of blue flame and dark gore. “It’s killing him. We can’t just—”

“No great loss,” said Max. “But either way, you’re the last person who should step past the seals.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Not against that.”

Cerberus took three huge strides and set an armored gauntlet on Max’s shoulder. Her fingers flexed. “Let him go.”

St. George tried to throw himself into the air again. He couldn’t even jump while Max held him down. “Even Rodney doesn’t deserve that.”

“Not the point. You’re not a normal human, George. You’re tough. You’re strong. Your body could take possession as is. He could use you.”

“Boss,” shouted Derek from the top of the Wall. “It’s stopped.”

St. George glared at Max. The sorcerer looked at the silent street through the gate and nodded. “Don’t go out there,” he said. “Seriously.”

He glanced up at Cerberus and pulled his hands apart. St. George lifted into the air. The hero floated up and settled on the platform by Derek. Madelyn dashed up the staircase to stand next to him.

At least a dozen unmoving exes littered the street past the symbol, and enough parts and gray meat to make up another dozen. The remaining undead stumbled around like shell-shocked survivors of a bomb blast.

While they watched, another ex stopped and turned to look at them. A heavyset man in a bloodstained football jersey. It roared and flames poured out of its mouth and ragged nostrils. Its eyes boiled away. A hand came up and pointed a long spidery finger at the figures on the Wall.

“What the fuck is that?” muttered Derek. “A couple exes did that the other day.”

“And why’s it pointing at me?” asked one of the guards.

“It’s pointing at me,” St. George told him.

Derek shook his head. “Are you sure? It looks like it’s aimed right at me.”

“I’m sure. Calm down.”

“So what is it?”

“It’s death,” said Max. He was up on the Wall next to them. “It’s the most nightmarish death you can imagine.”

The ex stretched and twisted. Tusks and fangs burst from
its mouth even as its spine arched like a snake. A forest of spikes sprouted across its back and arms, shredding the football jersey. The prehistoric roar echoed from its mouth again and shook the Big Wall.

The blue flames swallowed its head, burning it down to a bare skull. Its flesh tore at the joints and the dead thing burst like a water balloon. Dark blood and gore splattered across the street.

Max raised his voice. “Cairax Murrain is going to kill every living thing it can, anyone it can reach. Make sure everyone knows. Man, woman, child … superhuman.” He looked at St. George and let his gaze drift over to Cerberus down at the gate. “Right now, the only safe place in this city is inside these walls.”

The muttering that had echoed along the Big Wall turned into nervous discussion. Some of the guards crossed themselves. Others gripped their weapons even harder. They all stared out at the symbol burned into the pavement, just a few yards out from the gate.

And a few of them were on their radios, spreading the word.

St. George grabbed Max and leaped down to Cerberus. “Great,” he snapped. “You just scared a bunch of people.”

“Good,” Max said. “Right now none of you are anywhere near as scared as you should be.”

Madelyn pushed past the guards on the Wall to race down the staircase. She leaped past the last few steps to land in a crouch on the pavement. A few quick steps put her right next to St. George again.

He barely noticed, his attention focused on Max. “Look, it’s your demon, right? If I can beat it alone, Cerberus and I can go out there and—”

“You didn’t beat Cairax, George. You beat me.”

“No, I think it was—”

“No.” Max shook his head. “What you beat was a shadow. That was Cairax Murrain starved, handcuffed, gagged, and
shoved in a sack. It’s like punching Mike Tyson when he’s asleep. And even then, the only way you beat him was taking the Sativus off and turning him back into me.”

The sorcerer turned to gesture through the gate. “What’s out there now is the real thing. No psychic chains, no magical restraints, no limits whatsoever. None. It’s at full strength and it’s seriously pissed off that I had it bound for over two years. Way, way more pissed than I thought it was going to be, and that’s really saying something. So trust me when I say you do not want to go out there. Out there, you’ve got a life expectancy of two minutes if you’re lucky.”

Cerberus’s feet scraped on the pavement. “You don’t think he’d last that long?”

“No,” said Max with a shake of his head and a meaningful stare at St. George, “I meant he’d be lucky if he died that quick.”

FREEDOM LIKED WALKING
the streets. It reminded him of being on patrol, which was much more in line with what he was trained to do. Plus, after close to three years in the desert at Project Krypton, there was something luxurious about the trees, shrubs, and small lawns of Los Angeles.

He hadn’t been thrilled with the idea of using Madelyn as a test subject, let alone with one involving exes. He understood how important it could seem on one level, but he also knew in the long run it wouldn’t mean much. Freedom was a longtime believer in Bradley’s old adage, “Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.” Having one person at the Mount who couldn’t be detected by the exes or Legion would be more of a minor convenience than a major advantage.

Especially when the one person was a teenage girl.

“Six, this is Seven,” echoed a voice over his earbud.

“Seven, this is Six,” he responded.

Even though she’d grudgingly accepted her new position at the Mount, First Sergeant Kennedy still insisted on using military protocol and call signs over the radio. It had caused chaos at first as every Wall guard, deputy, and scavenger with a radio took on a self-assigned number. She’d finally sat all of them down for a series of lessons and explained why they couldn’t
refer to themselves as Sixty-Nine, Eight-Fifteen, Red Five, SG-1, or any of the others they’d picked.

And they all still just called for St. George by name.

“Six, this is Seven,” Kennedy said. “Update on that domestic dispute at Raleigh. Got a little out of hand. We’ve got three in the brig, two injured. One civilian, one of ours.”

“Seven, this is Six. Anything serious?”

“Six, this is Seven. All injuries are minor. I’ll let you talk to the deputy when you get back.”

Kennedy using the word
deputy
meant it was one of the civilian peacekeepers. If it had been one of her own soldiers, she would’ve called them out and used verbal shorthand to let Freedom know the exact infraction. It was a habit he noticed her using more and more, keeping civilians and soldiers separate.

When Freedom had taken command of the Mount’s police force, it had been a disorganized mess. Looking back over the past months, he could admit they hadn’t helped matters by expecting everyone to conform to military standards. The call signs had been the tip of the iceberg. After a few years of postapocalyptic life, his people were as unprepared to deal with civilians as the civilians were to deal with structured law enforcement.

It didn’t help that there was a fair amount of animosity toward the soldiers. The people of the Mount had lost family and friends, lives and homes, and the U.S. Army hadn’t been there to protect them. Freedom had overheard more than a few grumbles about the men and women of the Alpha 456th Unbreakables becoming part of the command structure in Los Angeles.

Which was the problem. Freedom and his soldiers were military trying to command civilians. It was a gray area they were still exploring. He was used to conditions of absolute authority, and the huge officer was very aware the only reason the civilian
police listened to him or Kennedy was because Stealth had told them to.

He was close to the southwest corner of the Big Wall, on a street called Larchmont, when he heard a faint noise over the echo of teeth. He’d heard it before, in Afghanistan. A series of sharp pops echoing back and forth between the buildings. The sound of gunfire in a quiet city. There was nothing else quite like it.

He tapped his earbud. “This is Six,” he said. “Report. I hear shots fired?”

Another squelch of voices stepped over one another before a voice stood out. A man shouted into his microphone loud enough to make Freedom wince and grab for his ear. “It’s out,” the man yelled. “It got out!”

“This is Six,” Freedom said. “Calm down.”

“It got out,” repeated the man. “I think Katie’s dead. It was so fast, and the bullets didn’t stop it. They didn’t even slow it down!”