“We tried. She and Doctor Garcetti said Stealth asked them not to discuss it.”
Gorgon closed his eyes and thought of a few choice profanities. “Well, I can. He died of a gunshot wound to the throat. He bled out in under two minutes. You can look in the back of Big Red for the stains.”
The bearded man shivered and one of the ones lurking in the background stepped forward. “But there was an ex there. I’ve heard from a couple people there was.”
Another silent swear or three. “Yes. Yes, there was. You’re …Mr. Diamond?”
“Daimint. I run the leatherworks.”
“Right, of course. Sorry.”
“So the exes can talk now? Is that new?”
“We don’t think they can all talk. Just some of them.”
“Did you say exes can talk now?” echoed a woman. She dragged her husband over with her. Another couple followed them.
“They found a talking ex last night.”
“You mean they’re intelligent?”
“If they can talk, I’d guess so.”
“Holy shit,” said a newcomer, “what if we’ve been murdering them?”
“Hey, if it’s us or them, I say—”
“PEOPLE!” Gorgon punctuated the bellow with a quick snap of his lenses. He saw half a dozen people tremble and felt the faint kick of borrowed strength. The scattered conversation vanished.
“Here are the facts, to the best of my knowledge.” He threw a victory sign up for them all to see. “We have found two exes that appear to be intelligent. That’s it. Two, out of five million here in Los Angeles alone. We’re not even sure they’re real exes. It may be a trick. All of us standing here know this has never been seen before. It’s something new we’re all trying to figure out.”
A few of them looked at him but most of them examined their feet or the pavement.
“The medical team’s going to examine our prisoner tomorrow. Once they get any answers, you know we’ll get them to you. The safety of everyone here is always the priority. There’s no point getting worked up over this, okay?”
There were a few half-hearted nods and grunts. The woman who had spoken before cleared her throat. “So there really are smart exes?”
“Yes,” he said. “And here’s something else—-neither of them tried to bite anyone. I’ve talked to the one here in the cell. So has Stealth. It just stood there and talked with us. St. George, Cerberus, a bunch of the team that was out the other day, they all talked to the one out there. No attacks.”
“St. George got shot by the one out there. I’m trying to repair his coat.” This from Daimint.
“It shot him, yeah,” agreed Gorgon. “It didn’t bite him. The two we’ve seen don’t act like smart exes, they just act like people. Unfortunately the people they’re acting like are Seventeens. So get the word out, okay? All of you.”
He let the coat swing closed and crossed his arms across his chest, just below the silver star. The all-done gunslinger pose. They took the hint and began to scatter.
“Thank you,” said Richard-something.
“No problem. Let’s try to keep this sort of thing down, okay? That’s why we’ve got district leaders. Last thing we need is for people to think there’s some army of genius exes out there trying to kill us all.”
Eighteen
NOW
They stopped on the roof of a large house at the corner of Gregory and El Camino. St. George hid between the twin plaster chimneys while Stealth crouched in plain sight, her cloak blending into the tile shingles and shadows.
A line of tire-less cars stretched down Gregory Way, stacked two high along the southern sidewalk. A Hummer filled both levels at one point, as did a small orange U-Haul truck. A few yards apart, concrete road barriers were wedged up against the vehicles, pinning them in place. Chain link fence stretched out along the cars. Jagged spears of metal stood like trench spikes, and it took St. George a moment to recognize them as street sign posts. Large patches of green were spray painted across the wall of vehicles in two or three different shades.
Every fifty feet or so, a tall torch lit the night and spewed oily smoke. Men and boys clomped back and forth across the car roofs, weapons resting on their shoulders or slung under their arms. The two heroes watched them patrol and make small talk. Several of them sported bare arms or shaved heads. Even in the flickering light they could see green bandannas and patches on every one of them.
The crude wall reached off four or five blocks in either direction before fading into patchy darkness.
“I count twenty-three sentries patrolling the wall,” Stealth said. “Thirteen have firearms, only four of which are automatic weapons. The rest are armed with spears and clubs.”
St. George let his eyes drift off the wall and up and down the street. Dozens of stumps dotted the sidewalk and lawns where trees and bushes once stood. This had been a cozy neighborhood back in the day. He swept the road again. “There’s barely any exes here.”
Stealth’s head panned back and forth inside the hood. “I count at least forty along this street.”
“Forty’s nothing,” he said. “We’ve got twice that, minimum, at each gate every day.” St. George gestured at the Seventeens walking the wall. “People in plain sight, in a clear eye line, there should be hundreds of them swarming this place. That wall should be mobbed.”
“And yet the exes hardly seem to notice the humans.”
“Strange things are afoot at the Circle K,” he murmured.
“What?”
“Never mind. Do you hear music?”
She nodded. “We can cross there.” Her arm was out and pointing west, another long shadow in the night. “Midpoint between two torches. In another three minutes, if the guards follow the same pattern, none of them should be along that section of wall.”
He nodded and counted off the time in his head. They raced across the tiered rooftop and threw themselves into the night. Stealth grabbed a streetlight, spun once around the arm, and flipped across the street. She grabbed St. George’s waiting hand above the wall, kicked her legs, and sailed across to another rooftop.
He landed next to her, freezing in the shadow of a large dish antenna. She had spread her cloak and half-vanished into the darkness again. They watched the wall behind them. More concrete barriers lined this side, along with tables and patio chairs the guards had pulled from nearby houses.
The guards continued to pace and yawn. One stopped to light a cigarette on a torch. Another swung his arms back and forth to fight off the faint chill.
Stealth gave St. George a quick nod and headed south across the rooftops. He took a single leap and sailed after her, looking down on the deforested neighborhood as he went. Here and there they saw chimney smoke, and a few of the quasi-mansions were lit with flickering candles. Twice they stopped as torch-wielding patrols passed on the street or between buildings.
A long block later they were crouched on top of a Pavilions grocery store. Stealth gave him a quick nod, gestured out at the broad intersection, and vanished into the rooftop shadows. An ex’s head sat in the corner of the roof, left over from some earlier purge. It was shriveled from the sun and its jaw trembled up and down, still animated by the virus. The skull’s cloudy eyes stared at St. George and he rolled it away across the roof.
Olympic Boulevard was six lanes across, although the number of turn lanes and medians made it hard to be sure. The southbound road split just north of the east-west boulevard and created a complex doubleintersection with a triangular island in the middle of it. Music he didn’t recognize jangled back and forth between the buildings.