Ex-Patriots (4 page)

They threw rough salutes to the hero. Most of
them were shaking out the chainmail armor and checking sizes
against themselves. None of them looked pleased.

“Trade ‘em if you have to,” said Billie.
“They’re sort of sized. Let’s get everyone as close as we can.”

“Did we get the sleeves?” St. George asked
Jarvis.

The salt-and-pepper man shook his head. “No
go, chief,” he said. “He says at best he’d need another day.”

St. George frowned and looked at Billie. She
shrugged.

“I feel like I should be in
Lord of the
Rings
or something,” said Lee.

A set of chainmail armor hit the pavement
like a bag of pennies. “This stuff sucks, boss,” said Paul.

Lady Bee nodded in agreement. She’d gotten
the nickname from her striped hair. “None of it fits right and it
weighs a ton,” she said. “And I’m pretty sure I asked for a
chainmail bikini.”

“I asked for Bee to get a chainmail bikini,
too,” chimed Ilya. She blew him a kiss and everyone laughed.

St. George waved them all to silence. “Hey,”
he said, “anyone else with bulletproof skin raise your hand.”

Lee cleared his throat and started to put up
his palm. Billie cuffed him across the back of the head.

“You need to have something out there,” he
continued. “It’s been five months since anyone’s been bitten, but
we’ve had two close calls in the past month. If everyone kept their
leathers on it wouldn’t be a problem. But it’s too damned hot and
once one person pulls off their jacket we all do.”

They all glanced at each other. Everyone was
in tank tops and t-shirts with their leathers piled next to them.
Paul prodded the chainmail with his boot. “Is this our only
choice?”

“Think of it like a shark suit,” said Jarvis.
“They can still bite y’all, they just can’t break the skin. And
it’s a lot cooler.”

“Except it weighs twenty pounds so we’ll just
get hot that way,” muttered Lynne.

“Chain mail bikini would weigh a lot less,”
said Bee. “I’m just saying.”

“Shit looks gay.” They all glanced back at
Hector. He scratched his neck by the razor-stubble that was his
hairline. “I ain’t wearin’ it.”

Billie’s nostrils flared and St. George set a
hand on her shoulder as she went to step forward. “It’s armor,
people,” he said. “It’s not the greatest solution, but it’s what
we’ve got. If we find something better, or it starts getting cool
again, it’s gone. But for now you wear it so you can all come home
at the end of the day and brag about killing famous exes.”

There were a few mutters. Lee worked his arm
into one of the sleeves and flexed a few times. It made a metallic,
rustling noise. Lady Bee raised her hand.

The hero tipped his head to her. “What’s up,
Bee?”

“Does this mean I’m not getting the chainmail
bikini?”

“Give it up.”

“I like my jokes like I like my men,” she
said with a wink. “Ridden to death.”

Jarvis dropped the last empty box on the
cart. “Who didn’t get any?”

Ilya raised a hand. So did a scruffy
redheaded kid and a rail-thin older woman.

St. George sighed and made a decision. “You
two are out for today,” he said. “We should have enough next time
we go out.”

“They can have mine,” called Hector.

“Ilya, can I trust you to keep your leathers
on?”

The dark-haired man gave a sage nod. “You got
it, boss.”

“Hey, I’ll keep mine on, too,” said the thin
woman.

St. George shook his head. “Sorry. Ilya’s
probably the only person I trust to sweat it out.” He looked at the
group. “Everybody else, let’s get ready to move out.”

Luke stood up on the hood of
Road
Warrior
and swung himself through the cab’s window. Billie
slapped her hands together. “You heard the man,” she bellowed.
“Armor up, gear up, load up.” She pointed a stern finger at Hector.
“You, too, de la Vega, or its back to the mushroom farm.”

St. George walked towards the tall archway
and the sound of chattering teeth to stand next to Cerberus. The
titan was staring out at Melrose Avenue. The gates were mobbed with
exes, as always. Since last fall’s battle with the Seventeens, it
felt like there were always a few more than there had been
before.

Two years in and most people still said exes
rather than zombies. Thinking of them as ex-humans made it easier
somehow. They reached between the bars and flailed at the two
heroes with slow, clumsy limbs. Their eyes were pale and cloudy.
St. George knew from experience they were dry to the touch. All
their flesh was chalky gray, colored with dark purple bruises where
blood pooled up beneath the skin.

Most of the exes at the gate carried some
injury that would’ve been fatal if they were still alive. Several
of them had gunshot wounds. More than a few were missing fingers or
hands. A dead woman close to the hinge had scraped two ruts in her
forehead, right down to the bone, swaying back and forth against
the gate. Another one was charred to the point it was featureless.
An elderly woman in a bathrobe was missing both eyes. A few bodies
back, away from the gate, the hero saw a male ex with a samurai
sword through its chest.

Here and there, though, were a few of the
worse ones. The ones who still looked human. A little boy with dark
hair, a Pikachu shirt, and chalky eyes. An older man with a beard
who could’ve just spilled a few drops of wine on his shirt. A
well-curved blonde with alabaster skin and full lips. Being in the
plastic surgery capital of the world made for some very
well-preserved dead people.

All of them worked their jaws up and down,
snapping teeth together again and again. The chattering never let
up. A few of them had turned their mouths into a mess of gore and
shattered enamel, but kept clicking the jagged stumps against each
other.

Cerberus stared past all of them. It was easy
enough for her to look right over the mob of exes to the bone-white
cross on the other side of the intersection. It stood as tall as
the battlesuit and was marked with three bold words, each carved
into the wood and painted black.

NIKOLAI BARTAMIAN

GORGON

They’d salvaged what parts of his uniform
they could. The body armor. The duster. The goggles. What was left
of him, what hadn’t been chewed apart, they burned. They’d found
his last requests sitting out in his grungy apartment.

“This was a lot easier when I used to go out
with you,” she said.

St. George glanced up at the armored head.
“You never liked doing it.”

“Never said I did. I just said it used to be
easier.” Cerberus shrugged her massive shoulders and looked away
from the cross. “Let’s get it over with.”

A few of the guards pulled the additional
support legs from the bars. Two others, Derek and Makana, flexed
their hands inside heavy gloves and stood ready to grab the steel
pipe that rested across the two halves of the gate. The exes
reached for them, and each man batted dead fingers away.

St. George glanced back at
Road
Warrior
. The truck’s engine idled and Luke flashed the
headlights at him. The hero gave the driver a thumbs up and shot
into the air.

He sailed up and over the tall arch of the
gateway. He kicked a few exes as he landed in the wide intersection
and they pinwheeled away, knocking down others as they went. The
hungry dead turned toward him and stumbled away from the gate.

St. George let them get close. They tried to
drag him down and broke teeth on his stone-hard skin. He batted
them away with a sweep of his arm and they flew back to crash
through the horde. He threw punches and felt skulls shatter under
his knuckles. He grabbed a body by the shoulder and swung it
around, battering even more exes to the ground. His boots came down
to smash their heads. Within two minutes of landing he’d cleared
two dozen of them.

The gate squeaked open behind him, and he
heard the deep thump of heavy footsteps. Cerberus strode out, her
three-fingered hands letting off arcs of power. Exes couldn’t feel
pain, but the nerves were still there. A 200,000 volt blast along
those nerves would cripple their muscles long enough to drop them.
The titan swept her hubcap-sized palms across the mob by the gate
and they dropped at her touch. They were struggling back to their
feet when she marched over them and waved
Road Warrior
out
behind her. The truck rolled forward and crushed exes beneath its
thick dually tires. She gestured it past her and it rolled up to
the intersection.

St. George leaped back over the truck,
landing next to Cerberus. From the back, Jarvis tossed a long pike
down to him. “Get going,” the hero said. “I’ll catch up.”

Road Warrior
revved its engines and
turned onto Melrose. Some of the scavengers saluted St. George and
Cerberus as they pulled out, and a few waves came from the guards
walking the walls.

Behind them, the hero grabbed the pike by one
end and knocked down a wide swath of exes. The armored titan
slammed out a punch that went through an ex’s head and caved in a
skull behind it. They cleared a path back to the gate, where the
guards fended off exes with more pikes.

An opening appeared and Cerberus strode
through it. The gate clanged shut behind her and Derek and Makana
dropped the bar back into its brackets. St. George nodded to them
through the bars, batting exes away as he did. “Everyone okay?”

“Piece of cake, boss,” said Derek.

“Cerberus?”

The titan turned and looked down at him.
“Burned up about a fifth of my reserves with the stun fields, but
no problems otherwise.” The armored skull shifted, and St. George
knew she was looking at the cross again.

“Okay, then. See you all tonight. Watch for
flares.”

A few more salutes were tossed his way and
St. George flew up into the sky. The withered fingers of exes
dropped away from him.

NOW

St. George caught up with
Road Warrior
three
blocks away as they were crossing Vine. Work crews had stacked cars
right down the center line of the street. The Big Wall, as people
called it, was still a few months from being done, but here the
cars were already three high. The rare times Danielle wasn’t in the
Cerberus armor she worked with a few others to figure out how to
build some kind of gate here at Melrose and Vine. For now it was a
large opening two lanes across.

He soared above the big truck for a while,
watching the road ahead for blockages or crowds of exes. The path
was clear most of the way to Highland. They’d dragged most of the
cars away to use in the Big Wall. A pair of zombies stumbled into
the street at Ivar and
Road Warrior
plowed over them. The
hero flew a block ahead and landed at a gas station where the two
big streets crossed.

Highland Avenue was one of the main
thoroughfares of Hollywood. There’d been a lot of fighting here
during the Zombocalypse as people trying to flee choked the street
with cars. They’d been attacked by either exes or other panicked
people trying to escape them. The people of the Mount had come out
here more than a few times on scavenging runs. At different times
he and Cerberus had pushed cars out of the way or even
double-stacked them in places. The way was clear up Highland, but
it was narrow. Very narrow in some places.

St. George waited for
Road Warrior
to
catch up, and a minute later the big truck pulled up alongside him.
Luke grinned at him from the cab. “Need a ride, sailor?”

“I was hoping you were heading my way,” said
the hero. “See anything?”

The driver shook his head. “Nahh, clean
sailing. You taking point?”

He nodded and banged the truck’s hood. “How’s
it holding up?”

“She’s a beast,” said Luke, “but she’s
dependable. She’ll get us over the hill and back.” He shook his
head. “You know, there was a point when I’d make this run once or
twice a day without thinking about it.”

St. George smiled. “There was a time when all
I worried about were muggers and car thieves.”

Luke grinned and gunned the engine.
Road
Warrior
swung around the corner and headed north. “Donuts,”
someone moaned as they passed a shop. “I still don’t know if it’s
worth living in a world with no more donuts.” It got a few
chuckles.

The drive up Highland was uneventful. St.
George needed to push a few cars out of the way that had tumbled
from where they’d been stacked, so he balled up his leather jacket
and tossed it up to Lady Bee. A handful of exes stumbled up to the
truck when it slowed down and the scavengers piked them through
their skulls. They came across a Prius and two electric cars and
St. George marked their roofs with a large white X of spray paint
he could see from the air. Gas was still a limited resource.

“This blows,” said Hector in the back of the
truck. “We ever going to go over five miles an hour?”

Billie clenched her jaw and her right
fist.

“It’s tricky going too fast in the city,”
Jarvis said before she could respond. “A year or so back there was
a buncha troublemakers who left booby traps all over the place.
Spike chains, deadfalls, stuff like that. Wouldn’t want to hit one
of those at speed and get stuck out here, would we?”

He stared at Hector. The tattooed man stared
back for a moment, then blinked. “Sound like a bunch of punks to
me,” said Hector. The corners of his mouth curled up. “Was up to
me, I would’ve smacked their asses down hard.” He drove his pike
through the head of a gore-covered girl who was clawing at the side
of the truck.

Another chuckle worked its way through the
scavengers.

It took them an hour to get up past Hollywood
and Highland. The famous intersection was a mess of broken glass,
sun-faded billboards, and dead cars. Luke inched the big vehicle
between the burnt-out remains of a National Guard Humvee and a
pile-up involving half a dozen cars and trucks. A few yards past
the intersection, St. George braced his back against an
eighteen-wheeler cab on half-rotted tires. He pushed it out of the
way inch by inch, his boots scraping on the pavement.