The demon tossed the car aside and glared down at him. A broad, thick-toed foot stomped down on the hero’s injured arm. More meat pulled away from the bones and blood spurted across the monster’s almosthoof.
Something was thumping. St. George shook his head, shook it again, and the sound became clear. The dozen or so people behind the wall were chanting.
Chanting his name.
Even Cairax seemed to notice. It looked at the half-bent gate and then back at him.
St. George, the Mighty Dragon, pushed against gravity, shot up, and threw all his strength into a single punch. Dozens of oversized teeth sprayed out across the street as the monster’s jaw shattered. A second punch crushed its ribcage and he felt the shredded muscles of his arm howl.
He threw a third, fourth, and fifth, knocking the demon back with each one. Both fists came together and he felt its sternum crack. Another thrust against gravity let him grab the leathery brow ridge in one hand and a tusk in the other. His boots braced against the monster’s chest and he twisted its head with all his strength. The skull yanked to the left— And stopped.
He could feel the muscles knotting up under the leather collar. Resisting. The saucer eyes glared at him.
It grabbed his wounded arm, squeezed the raw flesh, and flung him off. An enormous claw smashed him to his knees hard enough to crack the pavement. Exes pawed and grabbed and held him down while they gnawed at his skin.
Cairax wrapped its spidery hand around the fallen hero’s hair, bent down, and roared with glee. The severed stump of its tongue waved before his eyes and something bumped against his chin. St. George’s eyes glanced down and saw a glimpse of silver swinging back and forth from the monster’s collar.
The Sativus medallion.
The thought crossed his mind in an instant. The hero threw off the exes holding his arm. He tore the medallion away and sparks popped against the monster’s purple hide as the silver links snapped.
Cairax Murrain twitched and pointed a talon at him. Then it trembled, opened its monstrous, sagging jaw, and collapsed in on itself in a swirl of dark flames and smoke.
In the demon’s footprints stood an ex with a mop of black hair and a library of tattoos across its yellowed flesh. Pentagrams, long lines of Latin, and scores of Egyptian hieroglyphics. The heavy collar hung like a huge ring on the dead man’s neck. The naked ex staggered and closed its mouth with a solid clack, then looked down at its tiny limbs. The thing behind its eyes looked confused.
“I’d explain what just happened,” said St. George, “but I’d hate to ruin the trick for you.”
The medallion let off a few black sparks as he crushed it between his fingers. Then he stepped forward and drove his fist through the ex’s skull. It exploded like an old flowerpot and Maxwell Hale’s headless corpse dropped to the ground.
* * * *
Gorgon grabbed Rodney’s arm as the punch flew by and yanked the dead giant off his feet. A backhand slap sent the huge ex sprawling.
“Doesn’t have to be like this,” the hero yelled. He lunged forward, grabbed the oversized skull, and slammed it against the pavement. “You can still quit. Run away. Take your people and get out of here.”
The monstrous ex snarled as another one of its matchbooksized teeth dropped out. “Like that, pinche , wouldn’t you? Making me lose face again?” He rolled away, grabbed a faded Boxster, and threw it at the hero.
Gorgon leaped over the car and hammered his fists down on the other man’s shoulders, driving him to the ground. “Keep fighting and you’ll lose it all, big guy.”
Rodney pushed himself up onto his knees and chuckled. “Fight’s over,” he rumbled. “You’re dead.”
He hurled an oversized fist with enough force to crush a man. Gorgon leaped up, flipped around in midair, and found himself face-to-face with Banzai.
Her face was clean and pale. A few loose hairs wafted from her ebony braid. The dead woman looked at him with cloudy eyes and blinked twice. Her lips turned down ever so slightly as she glanced from his face to the ragged hole in her shoulder.
He stumbled. Just for a moment. “Oh, baby,” he whispered.
And then she vanished in a gray haze. Enormous fingers wrapped around Gorgon’s head and squeezed. Rodney lifted the thrashing hero into the air and the other massive hand pinned the flailing legs together.
“Sucker!” he howled with glee. “I’ve had your bitch, man. She’s dry and tight and loved every minute of it.”
Rodney twisted the hero, wrenching the hips around with a bubble-wrap sound, and let Gorgon’s body drop to the pavement.
There were screams from the wall. Cheers from the SS. The gunfire picked up on both sides.
And then thunder hammered their ears.
A dozen windows shattered in nearby buildings. One of the trucks rushing the gate shook three times before exploding. A Seventeen lifted his machete to the sky and became a red cloud from the waist up even as the ex behind him spurted fountains of dark blood and meat.
Twin paths of fire tore up exes, pavement, and everything else they crossed. Rodney caught a line across his torso and shoulder that chewed his chest apart even as it pounded him back. “Hey, death breath!”
The ground shook as Cerberus thudded out of the gates, the cannons on her arms smoking. “Want to try with someone your own size?!”
* * * *
The thunder echoed across the lot, and the unibrow man looked up from the bandage he was tying on St. George’s shredded arm. The hero made a fist around the long, broken fang they’d pried from his biceps.
“Oh yeah,” said Ilya before picking off another ex. “Definitely sounds like Judgment Day.”
Outside the gate, a ripple of movement swept across the zombies. They stumbled in mid step. Their teeth began to clack.
St. George shrugged back into his patchwork jacket. “Ahhh, hell.”
“What’s going on?”
He looked out at the dead. They were flailing at the gate, pawing with no purpose. “I think we got what we wanted. Rodney’s distracted and he’s starting to lose control.”
Billie looked out at the chattering horde. “Is that good?”
“Sort of. A few minutes ago we were surrounded by sixty thousand or so exes all obeying him.”
“And now?”
“Now we’re just surrounded by sixty thousand exes.”
Her walkie squawked and Billie’s face fell. “They need you at the main gate,” she said. “It’s bad. Derek says Stealth is missing. And Gorgon is down.”
The hero’s face hardened. “You have things here?”
“We can deal with exes,” she said with a nod. “Go kick some ass.”
St. George shot into the sky, tracing a high arc toward the Melrose gate.
It wasn’t until a few hours later, looking back on the moment, that Billie, Ilya, and the rest realized he hadn’t jumped.
* * * *
Cerberus stomped forward, the ground trembling with every step. She threw aside the exes mobbing the driveway. Her arms came up and the armor selected seven hundred and thirteen viable targets for her. The first pass with the M-2s tore a hundred exes into hamburger. She watched the ammo counters spin down to triple digits as the second pass destroyed two more trucks and cleared her path across the intersection.
Rodney lumbered toward the gate and the zombies came with him. They marched in perfect lockstep, heels slapping on the pavement. The Seventeens moved forward in trucks and on foot.
As one, the dead raised their arms to point at her. Bullets pinged and sparked against the armor.
“Come on, big girl,” the dead giant shouted. He pounded on his ruined chest, and countless exes mimicked him. “You wanna give me my last chance to run away or you wanna fight?”
“You had your last chance,” growled Cerberus. “You didn’t take it.”
The cannons roared again. Between the walls of the Mount and the nearby office buildings the sound itself was a weapon. The gate guards winced. Another two trucks vanished in clouds of shrapnel, and Seventeens screamed. More exes vanished in splashes of dark blood and rotted meat. Rodney staggered back as a hundred rounds punched through him like a swarm of high-caliber hornets.