“It is always unfortunate when sacrifices must—”
“Don’t,” he said.
The old man’s wife kept sobbing until someone led her away.
Twenty-One
NOW
“Something’s going on.”
It was almost three in the afternoon, and a crowd gathered at the wooden stage. Die-hard Seventeens were closest to the platform, sporting weapons and showing their tattoos. Others drifted in behind them forming a loose outer ring. Within an hour the broad intersection was filled with thousands of people.
“Cairax,” he whispered with a nod. The demon ex had stopped its slow struggle against the chains. It grew still and sat. Its tail fell limp.
Even from here he could hear the low thuds echo from within the ivy-covered building. It was a sound he knew from armored battlesuits and movie dinosaurs. The footsteps came closer, and something moved in the darkness of the building.
The hunched figure stepped through the double doorway with its head bowed low. Once the sunlight hit its skin it straightened up and added another three feet to its size. Then it stepped out of the sunken entrance and added another two. A quartet of Seventeens flanked it, three men and a woman, each with a rifle slung over their shoulders and a machete tucked in their belt. The crowd howled and cheered and the giant threw two gang signs over its head with long fingers. A green bandanna crisscrossed each wrist and palm.
Its whole body was distorted. The arms were too long and thick, the chest and shoulders too broad beneath the tight wifebeater. It was bigger than Cerberus by at least two feet. St. George checked it against the man standing next to it.
“Eleven-and-a-half-feet tall,” whispered Stealth. “I would estimate seven hundred twenty-five pounds.” Her finger danced on the camera’s button.
And it was dead. After all this time, St. George knew that skin tone at a glance. He spun the dial of his monocular, pushing the lens as tight as it could go.
A tattoo of a cross decorated its right temple running into the black buzzcut. On the opposite side of its head were a few flaps of inked flesh where the ear had been ripped away to show sinew and ivory. Beneath the dark eyebrows the bone had swollen and bulged, like some museumexhibit caveman. The thick brow made the sunken eyes look even deeper, pearls of cloudy white in skull sockets. It had enormous teeth, the size of matchbooks, and its jaw pushed out to hold them all.
“It looks like a gorilla,” he muttered. “Zombie Mighty Joe Young.”
It lumbered across the street and onto the makeshift stage. Applause, cheers, and hollers echoed back and forth across the street. The ex held its monstrous arms up to the crowd like so many rulers before it.
“Look,” she murmured. “The ones in the pen.”
Across from the platform, three hundred exes had stopped milling in the cage. Now withered salutes rose over their heads. A few blocks away, the exes in the second pen did the same.
“Jesus,” he said. “What the hell is going on?”
Mighty Joe leered at the crowd and pumped his fists in the air. The exes thrust gaunt hands upward again. He brought his palms down to quiet the crowd and hundreds of dead arms flopped to their sides.
“They’re responding to him,” Stealth said.
“ DIECISIETE! ” shouted the monstrous ex. His voice echoed out of the swollen chest and down the block. “Forever and always!”
Most of the crowd echoed the cheer and howled. The exes opened their mouths in a silent shout.
“Eight more youngbloods,” he roared. “They done their duty, shown their loyalty to the SS. They’re in!”
A small line formed at the edge of the stage. Three Latinos, two Asians, two African-Americans, and a white girl. They were barechested except for the woman in her bra.
The first one walked onto the stage, very small next to Mighty Joe. The ex unwound one of his bandanas as a bodyguard grabbed the young man’s forearm. Beneath the green cloth, the huge palm was pitted and slashed. He made a fist, shook his hand a few times, and the wounds glistened wet.
The female bodyguard pulled out her machete, cleaned the edge between two fingers, and pulled it across the fledgling Seventeen’s hand. The man gritted his teeth as blood swelled up. The monstrous ex reached down and the bleeding limb vanished within his huge fingers. “One of us,” he rumbled. He took the hand away and slapped his palm down on each of the man’s shoulders.
The youngblood’s legs trembled under the impact and he nodded his head. They guided him past the giant to an old woman who washed out the wound and sponged the gore from his shoulders. Her peroxide foamed on his skin. The bodyguard was already slashing the next palm.
“Deliberate infection,” mused Stealth. She lowered the camera.
“Followed by immediate disinfection. If this is patient zero, maybe he’s got some purer strain of the ex-virus. Could be why some come back smart. He obviously is.”
“Perhaps. I do not believe it is an ex,” she said. The infrared monocular was pressed up to her eye again. “Its body temperature is seventy one degrees. Twenty degrees higher than the average ex.”
“And almost thirty lower than the average human,” said St. George. “What the hell is he, then?”
“I am not sure.”
“Doesn’t look like he’s got universal appeal, either.” Half the mob shifted on their feet, not cheering with the hardcore Seventeens near the stage. The crowd members toward the back studied the ground or cast wary eyes at the ritual the huge ex was conducting.
“I would guess many of them did not realize they were sheltering with a street gang, let alone one led by a monster. They were looking for safety.”
The ex turned to the group that had crossed the stage. Each of them had tied their hand in a swatch of green even as he rewrapped his own. “You’re in forever now,” he bellowed. “All of you. Even if you die, even if you come back, you’re always a Seventeen.”
He slammed his hands together once, twice, three times. The crowd picked up the applause. The youngbloods caught dozens of backslaps, headrubs, and arm punches.
“Getting close to two years since I got this.” Mighty Joe continued. “Two years since I became the biggest boss in the city. Getting bigger and badder every day.” He flexed arms like beer kegs and the crowd whistled and shouted.
“Everybody went down except us. The Bloods, the Crips, the XV3s. The police caved, the Army caved, even the fucking Marines went down. And we’re still here and we’re deep!”
He punched the air again. The Seventeens in the crowd howled and raised their weapons. A few shot at the sky. The exes threw up their arms. A low chant worked its way through the crowd and faded just as quick.
St. George tilted his head. “What are they saying? Ammo?”
“I believe they were calling him master of Mary. I am not sure of the refer …” She paused and her body stiffened. “That is not patient zero.”
“How do you know?”
“A connection I should have seen earlier.” Her words were almost lost in Mighty Joe’s next bellow.
“We’re the best, the strongest, the fucking chosen of God,” the ex told the crowd. “It’s why we lived, they died, and now they’re with us.”
He threw an arm out to the caged exes. They returned the salute.
“We’re the rulers of the new world. This whole city is going to be our turf. There’s only one thing keeping the SS from being absolute kings of southern California—that fucking fortress of freaks holding down Hollywood.”
St. George shifted.
“You all know I’ve got business with one of them. A lot of you do, too. I’m gonna carve my name in his chest, gouge out his fucking vampire eyes, and wear his skull as a necklace for my two-year anniversary.” He pounded his chest with a fist like a gallon milk jug. Hundreds of dead hands slapped their ribcages in solidarity.
Stealth’s eyes went from the stage to the exes and back.