Ex-Heroes (13 page)

Christian tilted her head. “How so?”

“As I said, the ex-virus itself isn’t fatal. It didn’t kill anyone. Every ex out there died of influenza, measles, blood loss... something else. They were killed by the secondary effects of the bite. They’re just as dead as anyone else you ever heard of who died from a disease.”

Richard-something raised his hand. “Do you know yet why it brings them back to life?”

Josh cracked the knuckles of his good hand against his thumb. “While a person might be dead, many elements of their body remain alive for hours, even days. You’ve all heard of hair and fingernails growing on a corpse as the skin cells continue to function. Transplants involve taking the still-living organs from a dead individual. Even at the grocery store, the beef or chicken you bought from the meat case was fresh because, on a cellular level, it was still alive.”

Doctor Connolly nodded. “The ex-virus toughens up cells, makes them hardier. So while the person dies, their individual cells don’t break down as fast, and the dead body continues on as a gigantic aggregate of living cells joined by the virus.”

“But how?”

“Still working on that one. There’s a good chance we’ll never know for sure. The ex-virus doesn’t behave like anything else on record and we don’t have the resources to study it more in depth than we are. It seems to involve the central nervous system as people have suspected from the start. That’s why destroying the brain is the only thing that stops them—-the virus is all through the body, but it primarily resides in the brain and sends impulses along the nerves. You’ll still have the enhanced cells, but nothing stimulating them into action.”

Doctor Connolly bent down and tapped her screen to advance her notes. “On top of that,” she continued, “they’re cold. It seems an active process of the infection is to lower a body’s core temperature down into the fifties after death. This helps slow the decay rate even further.”

“So,” Stealth said, “can you estimate how long they last?”

“Off everything we’ve seen so far, I’m going to say the average ex can exist for twenty-eight months before decay progresses to a point where it can no longer remain active. Give or take two months, and not counting outside influences. Farther north, with seasonal changes, one could exist for four or five years. In the tropics, with the constant heat and humidity, a few months less. That cold snap we had back in February probably added a few weeks to all their lives here.” She shrugged.

“It’s hard to make any exact estimates without knowing the particulars of patient zero,” said Josh. “Since we’ll never know exactly when she or he changed, making those initial calculations is impossible.”

Gorgon scratched his ear by the band of his goggles. “So, you’re saying they should all be dead in another year or so.”

“No,” said Connolly. “All the ones created during the initial outbreak should be. The ones that turned during the fighting should be done a few months after that. The ones that turned while we were settling in the Mount should be a few months after that. Then there are all those odd kills here and there—-the people who made it a few weeks or months past the end on their own before dying.”

“And then there’s all of us,” said Stealth.

The doctor nodded. “Yes. We have to assume a good number of the Mount’s population will change once they die. Especially any of you who have been in active contact with exes. So there’s another thirty months.”

“What can we do?”

Josh ran his fingers through his silver hair. “At the moment, nothing. There’s no way to immunize against the ex-virus. We can’t cure it once someone’s infected, assuming we even spot the infection. All we can hope for is years of controlled deaths like we practice now. Someone dies, you put a bullet in their head before anything can happen.”

“Best case scenario,” said Connolly, “no one who’s alive today will ever see the end of this. We’re looking at maybe three generations of controlled deaths before we can even be somewhat sure we’ve eliminated the virus. Six, maybe seven decades.”

Another mutter made its way through the conference room.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I wish it was better news.”

Christian rapped her nails on the table again. “Where does that leave all of us? Will we ever get to leave the Mount?”

“As I see it, we’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t,” said the doctor. “Keeping everyone centralized lets us keep tabs on everyone, but it also means the virus could spread like wildfire if there’s an outbreak. Let everyone spread out and we lose track. Someone dies in their sleep, has a bad fall and breaks their neck, and suddenly we’re starting all over again.”

“So we’re all just sup--”

“Thank you for your time, doctor,” said Stealth, cutting off further comments. “You may all leave now.”

Christian furrowed her brow, but closed her mouth. She let her fingertips chatter on the tabletop for a few moments before getting up to leave.

“That was abrupt,” said Gorgon. “Even for you.”

“There is too much to do. I cannot waste our time on inconsequential questions.”

St. George nodded. “So, now what, then?”

“Go meet up with the repair team. Your presence there will reassure them and speed the work.”

“They’ve got Cerberus.”

“You should go.”

He sighed. “Fine. I’ll radio ahead and tell them I’m half an hour out. Should get there just in time to drive back with them.”

“Thank you.”

He gave a nod to Josh as he walked out.

“You know,” said Gorgon, “that felt a lot like you were getting rid of him for the afternoon.”

“I was.” She turned to him. He couldn’t see her eyes, but somehow she could still project that cold stare. “We have prisoners. I want them interrogated.”

His smile was grim beneath the goggles. “My pleasure.”

The pavement shimmered in the sun.
Mean Green
and
Big Red
were side by side. Ty, Billie, and the rest of the guards had spread out to deal with the occasional ex while Luke and the mechanics replaced the tires of the crippled truck. The front end was done and they had both wounded wheels off on the passenger side.

The guards had split into four teams of three, watching the road in all directions. Whatever exes got too close were dispatched by one guard with a pike while the other two spotted with their own spears and rifles. They tried to avoid noise.

Cerberus walked a slow perimeter around the two trucks, followed by Jarvis. She paused at each cardinal point to stare as far as she could down the road. Her radios scanned back and forth across the wavelengths, listening for any sort of traffic amidst the static.

Jarvis sighed after their fourth circuit of the tandem trucks. “So Mark got Trebek?”

Cerberus looked down at him. “Yeah.”

“Where?”

“Culver City, nine months ago,” she said. “Someone said they filmed
Jeopardy
over there. At Sony.”

“And you’re sure it was him?”

The armored shoulders shrugged and turned back to the street. “Looked like him. We didn’t stop to check his wallet or anything.”

“So you’re not sure?”

Another massive shrug. “It looked like him to me. I mean, his mouth was all bloody and everything, but it still looked like him. The shape of his face and all.”

“Damn.” He kicked at a scrap of old newspaper. “Alex Trebek. That’s tough to beat. Ty told me he got Sulu and Chekov from
Star Trek
and that seemed pretty big. The real ones, not the ones from that remake.”

Across from them, Billie put her pike between the legs of a one-armed ex and levered them apart. The dead thing staggered, spun, and fell on its side. She drove the weapon down through its ear and the steel point clunked against the pavement.

“I got a bunch,” continued Jarvis, “but no one really huge. Megan Fox. Chris Rock. Veronica Mars. Scott Bakula. The little blonde from
Smallville
. On the same day I got the bad guy from
Heroes
and the fat guy from Seinfeld. Oh, and that morning newswoman on channel 11 who always shows too much cleavage. I’m pretty sure I saw Lindsay Lohan once, but we were driving and couldn’t stop to get her.”

“Too bad,” said Cerberus. She toggled lenses and peered along New Hampshire Avenue past Ty. Almost six blocks up the street, an ex with dark hair and white clothes stumbled toward them.

“You got any big names?”

“I don’t think so,” she said without looking at him. “I never kept track of actors.”

“How’d you live in LA and not keep track of actors?”

“I didn’t live in LA. I lived in Virginia.”

“So how do you visit LA and not look for celebrities. That’s all anyone does.”

She turned her head to the east and the armor focused its sensors down Melrose. “Most of the time I don’t know if no one tells me. They’re just exes.”

Ty spun and cracked an ex in the head with his spear, then reversed his spin to sweep its legs while it staggered. He made a show of twirling the pike and driving it through the ex’s mouth. A few teeth spun free when he yanked the weapon out.

“So, do you know anyone you got?”

Cerberus sighed. It was a raspy noise over her speakers. “A few television people,” she said. “I don’t remember any of their names. The lead actor from
House
. Apparently he was impressive. So was the woman from the assassins movie.”

“Which one?”

“I don’t know. The one with the husband and wife. They’re both assassins but they don’t know it.
The Smiths
?”

“
Mr. & Mrs. Smi
—-holy fuck! You got Angelina Jolie?!”

“Yeah, that’s her.”

“No way!” He kicked the side of the truck. “No
fucking
way!”

“Hey!” Luke glared at him.

He threw a finger to the driver and glared up at the battlesuit. “How the fuck did you get Angelina Jolie?”

“I broke her neck. It was pretty straight-forward.”

“I got to get out of the Mount more,” muttered Jarvis. “All y’all’s got better celebrities than me.”

* * * *

Gorgon marched across the lot to the holding cells by the Lansing Theater. In earlier years the little rooms had held reels of archive film. Now the solid doors kept things in instead of out.

The hero was a few yards away when he saw the puddles. Notches had been cut out of the bottom of each door, just high enough to let in air, some light, or a tray of food. Now something like cheap wine was spilling out from two of the slots.

He yanked open the nearest cell. The Seventeen had slit her wrists. Classic side-to-side, none of that new age, up and down the arm nonsense. The left gash was clean and deep, the right a bit ragged. The floor was wet and red, and the red seeped up into her shirt. A single-edged razor blade rested in her hand, the type grocery clerks used in box-cutters. The type that was supposedly hard to get after 9-11, because they were so easy to hide.

Gorgon slammed the door and opened the next cell. The kid, a teenager, had started to cut his throat and chickened out. The razor was on his cot and his hands were pressed tight over the slash in his neck. “I need a doctor,” he said as he squinted against the sunlight. “Please, I’m hurt bad.” The blood on his hands was thinned with tears.

“You’re not dead,” snapped the hero. “You’ll be fine for another half hour.” He reached forward and grabbed the blade.

“No, please! Please, I need a doctor. I think I’m gonna die!”

Gorgon locked the cell and moved to the next. The third had done both wrists, too, but he was still standing. No, Gorgon thought. Not still standing. He’s already back on his feet. Doc Connolly’s right about people carrying the virus.

The ex turned at the waist in a smooth arc, its feet shuffling to follow. Its limbs were still fresh and flexible. It stared at him with gray eyes and pulled its lips back from its teeth. One of the front incisors had a pentagram engraved on it.

Thirty seconds passed before Gorgon leaped from the cell and slammed the door. He double-checked to make sure the ex was locked in while keying his walkie. “Stealth, I know you’re always listening in,” he announced. “I need you down at the cells. Now.”

* * * *

“Cerberus,” called Luke. “Another lift?”

She thudded over and gripped the lower edge of
Big Red
. Luke gave the steel fingers a few nudges and shot her a thumbs up. The battlesuit’s exoskeleton hummed and lifted the passenger side of the truck a foot into the air. Two of the mechanics slid the heavy stands across the pavement, tapping them with mallets. Luke talked her down and
Big Red
settled back onto the steel jacks. “Thanks,” he said as the mechanics attacked the dually tires.

“Not a problem.”

“We should be ready to go in about half an hour.”

Cerberus nodded and looked over the truck. The ex in white was just over a block away, close enough to see without magnification. It was an Asian girl sporting a long braid and a bloodstained karate uniform with rainbow trim. “Ty,” Cerberus called, “heads up.”

“I see her,” he said. He saluted the titan, turned back to the street, and the ex was in front of him.

It lunged and he just got the pike up in time.

Andy dove in with the blunt end of his own spear, shoving the Asian girl over. The ex spun, twisted, and was back on its feet reaching for Ty. His pike slammed up and the creature bit down on the shaft while it lashed out at him. He thought of horror movies and the twisted things that moved too fast.

“What the fuck is this?”

Ty gave a hard shove and knocked the ex back a few feet. It caught its balance again. He held out the pike to trip it as it stalked toward him. The wooden shaft slipped between the dead woman’s knees and he gave the weapon a yank to the left.

The ex stumbled, caught its balance, and took another step toward him.

He took a few quick paces back and reached forward again to trip it, batting the woman’s foot away as it took a step. The ex swayed for an instant before it swung the foot back and lunged again.

“Shit,” muttered Ty. He heard his spotters shift their weapons, knew their rifles were coming up, and felt his heart thudding. “No firing,” he told them. “I’ve got it.”