“Drop the gate,” shouted St. George. He batted exes away, clearing a path for the battlesuit. Jarvis, Lee, and Lynne fired into the crowd while the others stabbed down with their pikes.
Cerberus swung her arms, shaking off the undead, and the pikes knocked them away. St. George peeled them from her, hurling them into the swarm. Bodies vanished beneath the shambling horde.
She stomped onto the metal lift gate and Luke flipped the switch, raising her up with a whine of hydraulics. “Hop on,” he yelled to St. George.
The hero cracked an ex across the jaw and shook his head. “I’ll slow the lift. Get her on board.”
“Damn it, boss—”
“Give me a pike!”
Someone tossed the flagpole down to him and he swung it like a bat, cracking half a dozen exes in the skull. He pulled back and swung again, knocking down another handful before the shaft cracked. He rammed the broken pike through an ex’s skull and kicked the corpse away.
Cerberus stepped up onto the bed of Big Blue and the lift gate gasped with relief. Luke toggled the switch and the metal plate swung up to block them in. “All aboard,” he hollered.
Johnny K gunned his engine and brought the truck around, crushing exes as it made a wide turn.
Dozens of hands pawed at St. George, grabbed his clothes, his hair, his limbs. He lashed out, felt them fall even as new hands reached for him. They pinned him with sheer numbers and he felt a swarm of teeth across his body.
This would be a good end, he thought. Overwhelmed saving my team. A good way to be remembered.
There was a roar of automatic fire and skulls exploded around him. Bullets slapped his head and shoulders like hailstones. His sunglasses shattered and his headset twisted into plastic scrap. The weapons barked again and exes sprayed blood and meat over him as they slumped and fell.
In the back of Big Blue , Lady Bee stood with Jarvis, Luke, and Ilya. Their weapons coughed up smoke. Jarvis dropped his empty magazine and reloaded.
St. George wiped gore from his face. The rounds had cleared a wide arc round him. “What the fuck are you doing?!”
“You’re bulletproof,” shouted Bee with a grin. “Stop whining and get in the truck.”
He landed next to the stripe-haired woman. “You just wasted a ton of ammo.”
“Maybe we just wanted an excuse to shoot you,” said Ilya with a smile.
“Thanks.”
“No worries, boss.”
Nine
NOW
The pipe clanged down across the gate, and the dead resumed their eternal grasping though the bars. The clatter of their teeth trembled in the air.
St. George stood and watched them. Big Blue was getting unloaded behind him. Lynne had just punched Jarvis hard in the back of the head. Mark was already halfway to the hospital.
“She wants to see you,” said Gorgon. “First thing.”
“I’m covered in shit,” the other hero said without looking away. “Infected blood. Rotted meat. I think some actual shit.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
St. George studied one ex, a rough-bearded man caked with as much dirt as blood. It had a gold tooth that flashed every time its jaw snapped shut. “What happened with the Seventeens?”
Gorgon shrugged. “About fifty. I just got up on the wall and dropped half of those imbeciles.”
“So you’re feeling pretty good.”
“Better than I have in ages.” He cracked his knuckles. “Tier five, easy. Want to go a few rounds?”
“I want to burn these clothes. And then get in the shower until sometime tomorrow.”
“She said first thing,” echoed Derek from the guard shack. He sighed and spat a stream of fire at the ground.
* * * *
It was a five minute walk to “city hall.” He could’ve made it in one good leap from Melrose, but he wasn’t in the mood to rush. Instead he shrugged out of his jacket and tried to wipe some of the gore from it.
The building was named Roddenberry, after the man who created Star Trek . Like most of the newer structures in the Mount, it had been built without any consideration for what was around it. The lines and windows belonged on a college campus, not wedged between warehouselike workshops and the old water tower.
The elevators worked, but the stairs took more time and he could tell himself he was going easy on Barry. His boots echoed in the empty stairwell.
Stealth had claimed the entire executive fourth floor as her own. Most people in the Mount thought it was a status thing. St. George knew it was because it was central, had the best sight lines, and was already wired for mass communication. She wasn’t the type who cared about status.
He rapped on a polished door and walked in. There was a large table people once sat at and discussed syndicated television shows and DVD box sets. Now all the chairs were gone and it was covered with maps and reports from across the lot. She’d moved over two dozen screens into the room, showing every street and every entrance into the Mount. She kept the curtains pulled, and the lights were dim if they were ever on.
Somewhere up here, past the low-profile door at the far end of the room, was a small suite where she lived. Or at least, where she slept, ate, and showered. The office of some high-end producer who just wanted his own full, private bathroom and a place to take a nap. St. George had never seen it, and only knew it was there because she’d let it slip once seven months ago. He knew it pissed her off to think she’d admitted to any sort of need or weakness.
“You smell horrible.”
Stealth stood in the shadow of the open door behind him. As always, she wore her full uniform, even the mask. Her face was a tight, black surface of vague features, hidden even further by the shapeless charcoal hood shrouding her head. As far as St. George knew, no one had ever seen her face.
“You told Gorgon you wanted to see me first thing,” he said. “So I’m here wearing four or five liquefied exes.”
“You could have showered.”
“That’s not how they heard it.”
She stood an inch or two shorter than him, but her cloak and hood made it hard to be sure how much. They wrapped her like a flimsy toga, barely disguising her figure. Her charcoal and gray uniform could’ve been body paint. “Would you prefer to clean up and speak later?”
“Are you actually offering me a choice?”
She stared at him for a long moment. “No,” she said, “but I know you like to feel you have one.”
He smirked. “What happened with the Seventeens?”
“You first, please. Mark Larsen. How was he attacked?”
“Just bad luck. An ex stuck in a shower. They didn’t see it or hear it until it was on top of a rookie.”
“Lynne Vines?”
“Yeah. Mark tried to pull it off her. It broke its own neck to bite him.”
“Nothing they could have done differently?”
“Not as I understand it.”
“Is he going to live?”
St. George looked at his boots. “I wouldn’t put money on it, but anything’s possible.”
She nodded. “Now, the trap.”
“Not much to tell. They knew we’d be heading back that way. They dropped a jammer and a spiked chain across the road.” He described every detail he could remember about the road, the time, even the chain itself. She prodded him now and then. He talked about waiting for the ride and killing the exes.
“So you were protecting yourselves for twenty-five minutes and then your team fired several bursts on full auto to save you.”
“I didn’t need saving.”
“They thought you did and acted accordingly, that is what matters. How much ammunition?”
“All together?” He ran some numbers through his head. “Three-fifty, maybe four hundred rounds.”
“The truck?”
“It’s a landmark right now. Needs all new tires, possibly new wheels. If we can get a crew there in the morning before the Seventeens strip it, it should be salvageable.”