St. George landed on his knees and made an awkward lunge back to his feet. Claws slammed into his back and hurled him against a dusty Ford. His skull left a dent in the frame and the world blurred.
Rounds snapped and popped against the dead thing’s leathery skin. It didn’t notice. A ricochet caught an ex in the side of the head and it dropped.
The hero staggered to his feet and grabbed the demon’s tail again as it lashed out. It dragged him across the pavement, tripping countless exes as it tried to shake him off. He twisted the length of muscle and felt bones snap under the leathery skin. Another car rushed up to slam into his back.
The barbed tail snapped like a whip and flung St. George back at the Mount. The mob of exes grabbed at his limbs, his coat, his hair. He shook them off, hurling bodies into the air, and got his feet back on the ground.
The ground was shaking.
Cairax lumbered forward, looming over the horde. Another swipe hurled St. George back again. He tried to focus, tried to make himself light, and slammed into the wall. He slumped to the ground and the exes swarmed over him.
Behind him, the demon roared in delight.
* * * *
“Holy Christ,” said Billie as St. George hit the wall. She’d glanced back away from the street and was frozen. One of the other guards, a man with a dark unibrow turned and his jaw dropped. Ilya threw a look over his shoulder.
Looming over the buildings to the west, a huge sphere of blackness swelled, so dark they could see its edges against the night sky.
* * * *
Stealth heard the cries over the gunfire, saw the dark void swelling at the Gower gate, and knew what it was. The top priority was making Rodney lose control of whatever other dead heroes he had brought to the Mount.
She drew her weapons and leaped down into the crowd, her cloak spreading to slow her fall. The Glocks spat out two-four-six-eight rounds each before she landed in the space they’d carved for her in the mob. A quick split kick broke jaws on two exes. A sweep took down four and gave her a beat.
With one smooth motion she holstered both pistols, swung the cloak aside, and grabbed the two ASP batons stored across the small of her back. A flick of each wrist snapped two feet of black chrome into position. The move flowed into a pair of strikes that shattered heads on either side of her. The batons whipped out again and beat out a drumroll of broken bones, making sure none of the dead things she’d knocked down would ever get back up.
She spun and smashed one baton through a dead brunette’s forehead. The other cracked open a teenage boy’s skull. Her boot lashed out to break the neck of a pink-haired woman. An old man. A small girl caked in blood. A businessman. A police officer with a gaping hole in its chest. Her weapons cut through the air as she marched forward and exes dropped around her.
A heavy Asian woman fell and revealed a Seventeen with a green bandanna wrapped around his head. He was dizzy, still trying to shake off the sight of Gorgon’s eyes. He looked at Stealth, blinked, and tried to raise his rifle.
One baton struck the rifle barrel and jarred it from the Seventeen’s hands, even as its twin swung back to crush another zombie skull. Her grip switched and the first baton bounced up from the rifle to catch him under the chin. His mouth sagged. She brought the other down and broke his wrist, then drove a kick into his chest. He hit the ground just as the pain reached his brain and he tried to scream through the fractured jaw.
Four swings bought her another moment. She’d worked her way out past the gardens flanking the gate. The guards on the wall were putting exes down one after another, but it was like dropping pebbles to divert a flash flood. The Seventeens were firing at the Mount, but it was random. They were children playing a game, not an army.
Near the center of the intersection, she saw Rodney Casares bring his massive fists around and Gorgon leap out of the way. He threw a punch that sent the monstrous ex staggering back. If the Seventeens were recovering, the hero was already losing their strength.
Stealth spun through the mob. Her weapons put down seven exes and three Seventeens. A spinning kick crushed another skull, the batons crossed to force down a rifle, and a head butt left a gangster reeling.
She lunged forward and thrust the batons into either side of an ex’s head, a rough-looking man with a beard, and its skull caved in as the weapons collapsed back to their storage position. Her elbows sent two dead people stumbling back and her hands dipped forward to pull the Glocks out again.
Nine rounds dropped five exes, left two Seventeens screaming and clutching their knees, and gave her a clear shot at Rodney Casares, less than fifteen feet away.
She thumbed the selector and her right pistol emptied its magazine into the giant’s head. Eighteen rounds clustered on the cross tattoo. The huge ex staggered back and fell.
A Seventeen screamed and brandished his Uzi. She put a round through his knuckles and the machine gun’s magazine exploded in his hand. One of the trucks surged forward and two shots through the windshield brought it to a stop.
Gorgon glanced at her. “What the hell?”
“He has drawn Midknight down from the hills.”
“Fuck.”
“Oh, that’s nothing, bitch,” hissed Rodney. The enormous fist sent Stealth sprawling. Her body vanished back into the crowd of zombies and gangsters. The rounds had stripped away half his face down to the bone.
His right eye streamed down his face and over the gigantic teeth. A flap of skin the size and texture of a fried egg hung loose from the bottom of his jaw. “Now,” rumbled the dead thing to Gorgon, “round two. Ready to finish this?”
* * * *
Under a veil of shadows, the exes shook the Gower gate. They pulled. They pushed. They pulled. The metal spars of the gate screeched back and forth.
Lady Bee fired down into the zombie mob from her perch. The muzzle flash was dim and the sound was dull. “Keep at it,” she shouted. She traded out magazines and her AK spat a few more muffled rounds into the dead.
A handful of guards were cowering from the blackness. The rest were stabbing through the bars with their weapons.
Cerberus took an uneven step toward the gate. The battlesuit’s left leg twitched and jerked forward. It made her limp. “It’s Midknight and his damned EMP field,” she shouted, her voice full of static. “Whatshisname turned it back on full force.”
I know , yelled Zzzap.
One of the guards, the keen listener, lunged forward with his pike and stepped too far in the darkness. A withered hand grabbed his wrist and pulled him close enough for a second one to seize his forearm. He was dragged against the gate where dozens of hands and chattering jaws took him apart in seconds. His meat left bloodstains on the bars as it vanished into the crowd.
The battlesuit’s eyes flickered. “Can you take him out?”
Zzzap flew up and looked out over Gower. It was a cold blur to his eyes. Nothing alive. Nothing warm. Just a shapeless, shifting mass.
I can’t see him, shouted Zzzap. He’s just another dead thing.
At the squealing, shaking gate, someone else was screaming.
But only for a moment.
Twenty-Six
NOW
Thousands of the dead swarmed the Lemon Grove gate. Gray hands tore at the bars and beat at the walls.
Billie and the others dropped exes from the trailer roof. Her M-16 barked and another shot blew the head off a dead man in orange coveralls. She looked down at the mass of figures against the wall. “Where is he?”
“They got him,” wailed another man. “They got him.”
“He’s the fucking Dragon,” she bellowed. “They didn’t get him.”
In the middle of the road, Cairax rose above the sea of exes and roared. The demon waded toward the gate. Its long fingers stretched and flexed.