Ex-Heroes (3 page)

“God, yes,” he said. “I dreamed about ultimate cheeseburgers last night. A big pile of them, all warm and wrapped in paper. I’d kill for some meat these days.”

She laughed. “One other thing?”

“Sure.”

“Can you talk to Josh? I think it would mean a lot to him.”

“Why?”

“He’s getting depressed again.”

“I mean, why would it mean anything coming from me? Heck, at this point you probably know him better than I do.”

“I do,” she said with a nod. “And that’s why I think he still relates better to you than he does to me. Not to swell your head or anything, but he used to be one of you and now he’s just one of us.”

“Wow. How super-phobic of you.”

She smiled. “Did you just make that up?”

“No, I heard Ty O’Neill use it once. You know it’s a hell of a lot more than just losing his powers, right?”

“I know,” she said. “But there’s only so much I can deal with. The dead wife I can relate to. Loss of god-like powers...” She shrugged.

He sighed. “Yeah, okay. Where is he?”

“In the infirmary. Doing his rounds.”

“Ahhh,” said George. “Spreading his cheer and goodwill to all the patients.”

* * * *

The man once known as Regenerator stood by a hospital bed, checking his patient’s chart. His right hand rested in the wide pocket of his lab coat and a purple stethoscope dangled around his neck. The young man in the bed was out cold, his lower leg bound tight with white gauze.

St. George cleared his throat. “What’s up, Doc?”

Josh Garcetti glanced up from the chart. “Hey,” he said. Without moving his pocketed hand he hung the clipboard at the end of the bed and held out his left. “Long time no see. What’ve you been up to?”

St. George caught the awkward hand and shook it. “Trying to survive the end of the world. You?”

“Same thing, smaller scale.” He made no attempt at a smile. The two men were close to the same age, the same height, but even slumped Josh’s shoulders were broader. Like so many people these days, his hair had gone gray years before it should have, and a few strands of pure white highlighted the mop. In white makeup, he could’ve passed for a somber Greek statue. In the lab coat, he was almost spectral. They walked back to the hallway. “Heard you’re heading out later today.”

“Around eleven.”

“Who’s going with?”

“Cerberus and Barry. I just came over to tell Connolly you’ll be on solar all afternoon.”

The doctor nodded and leaned against a set of file cabinets. A beat passed. Then another.

“You should come out some time.”

Josh shook his head. “No. Thanks for the offer, but no.”

“I think it’d do you some good.”

“How?”

“You haven’t gone out once. Hell, have you even been near an ex since...?” St. George paused again before giving an awkward nod at the pocketed hand.

“Not really, no.”

“We could use you out there. You’ve got experience.”

“I have experience in field hospitals,” he said with a shake of his head. “I was never much of a fighter. Just good at not getting hurt.”

“You were good at making sure no one else got hurt, too.”

“No,” he said. His face hardened. “No I wasn’t.”

“Fuck. You know I didn’t mean it like that.”

He closed his eyes. “I know. Sorry.”

“It’s coming up on two years, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Eleven more days.”

“You know...” said St. George as he edged out onto the emotional thin ice, “last year things were still pretty hectic. You want to get a drink or something? Talk? We could get Barry, Gorgon, maybe even convince Danielle to take the damned armor off.”

Josh turned to the cabinet behind the counter and examined the contents with sudden interest. “Again, thanks but no. I’m just going to stay home. Besides, Gorgon wouldn’t want to see me.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“Let’s just drop it, okay?” He massaged his temple with two fingers.

“You should really come out, though.”

Josh opened his eyes. “Look, it’s a nice thought, but let’s face it. I’m too much of a distraction out there.” He pulled his other hand out of the lab coat’s wide pocket. “Everyone’ll just be looking at the damned bite instead of watching their own asses.”

As he raised the hand the sleeve sagged a bit and revealed part of his withered forearm. The flesh was pale and splotched with gray. Dark veins ran into his palm and met up with yellowed fingernails. The teeth marks were still visible, a semicircle of ragged holes just beneath his wrist.

For the first few months of his superhero career Josh Garcetti called himself the Immortal. He could heal from wounds in less time than it took to make them. Fire, bullets, broken limbs—he laughed at all of them. Then he discovered how to share his healing factor with others and he became Regenerator.

Then his wife died. And then the world went to hell. And then an ex bit his right hand. In one of the last field hospitals, as everyone pulled out and all the last-ditch emergency plans kicked in, a dead cop rolled over on the slab and sunk his teeth into Regenerator. Put him in a coma for three weeks, but it didn’t kill him and he didn’t change. For the past fourteen months his healing factor had done nothing but keep the infection from spreading past his bicep.

St. George tried not to stare at the hand. “You can’t hide in here forever, Josh.”

“Of course I can,” he said. “What do you think we’re all doing?”

They looked at each other for a moment. The hero made a noise that was half snort and half sigh, accompanied by a puff of black smoke.

“Look,” said the doctor, “I’ve got some immunizations to get ready for and an inventory to do. It was good seeing you, George. Be careful out there, okay?” He worked the hand back into its pocket, gave a faint bow with his head, and walked away.

* * * *

St. George stepped back out into the open air. “Hey,” the hero called to the guard with the salt and pepper hair, “what’s your name, anyway?”

“Jarvis,” he said with a grin. The guard gave a sharp, three-fingered salute. “Pleased to meetcha.”

“Same. Melrose gate. Eleven.”

“See you at eleven,” echoed the bearded guard.

St. George gave him a nod and launched himself up to the roof of the hospital. Another kick got him up and over the stages to the east and headed toward Four.

Four had been a stage once. They’d found some plaques and paperwork that said shows like
Deep Space Nine
and
Nip/Tuck
had been filmed there. They’d stripped all the operating room sets there for Zukor, used the set walls for housing, and tied it into one of the Mount’s nearby power houses with heavy cable from the nearby lighting warehouses. Now it reeked of ozone and the air danced on St. George’s skin.

At the center of Four was the electric chair. It was a set of three interlocking circles forming a rough sphere, but the nickname had stuck. Each ring was wrapped with copper wire stripped out of three miles of cable. Five people had spent a month building it. St. George thought it looked just like an enormous toy gyroscope.

Floating inside the sphere was the blinding outline of a man. It was a reversed shadow, like looking at the sun through a man-shaped cutout. Arcs of energy shot from the white-hot figure to snap and pop against the copper rings.

“Morning, Barry,” the hero shouted over the crackling of power.

The glowing figure shifted in the sphere. It had no eyes, but St. George knew his friend was looking at him. A voice made of static echoed over the electric noise.
Morning,
it buzzed.
You ready to head out?

St. George shook his head. “Not yet, but I asked everyone to switch over early. Thought you might like a bite to eat and a nap.”

God, yes,
sighed the brilliant wraith. It shifted again and examined the building.
Where’re my wheels?

“Over by the door.”

The outline nodded.
Catch me
, it buzzed.

There was a twist of lightning and the figure was outside the sphere. It sank to the floor and the concrete began to smoke. The shape grew dim, the air flattened, and a gaunt, naked man tumbled to the ground with the sudden “whuff” of a flame being snuffed out.

“Oh, Jesus!” he shouted. “It’s freezing in here. Where’s my clothes?”

“On the chair.” St. George scooped him up, taking the dark-skinned man in one arm like a child.

“Get me over there, for Christ’s sake.”

“Wuss.”

“Big man, picking on the naked cripple,” Barry said. “Get me some damned pants.”

They crossed the room and St. George lowered his friend into the wheelchair. Barry dug through the bundle of clothes and wrestled his way into the sweatpants. He’d been dressing in the chair for most of his life, so it didn’t take long. He tugged a tee shirt over his stubbly head and wrapped himself in a fleece jacket. “No shoes?”

“What do you need shoes for?”

“My feet are cold.”

“So put on the other pair of socks.”

“Are they still serving breakfast?”

“Yeah. And I got you something to eat on the way.” He dropped a shrunken muffin in the other man’s lap.

“Thanks. Which truck are we taking out?”

“
Big Red
, I think.”

“Good,” said Barry through a mouthful of pastry. “The shocks on
Mean Green
suck so bad I can feel it in
my
ass. You know what?”

“What?”

“I think this is the best blueberry muffin I have had in my entire life.”

“I’m sure Mary’ll be glad to hear someone liked them.”

“And I’m not just saying that because it’s been four days. This is one spectacular muffin.”

St. George spun his walkie in his hand. “You know what you want? I can call ahead, have something ready.”

“I will have,” he said with great thought, “a stack of at least five pancakes. Lots of syrup and whatever’s passing for butter these days. Some potatoes. And any of those powdered eggs they’ve got left.”

“That it?”

“We’ll talk later about what I’m taking with me for lunch. So, what’s going on?”

“How so?”

“You’re transparent, boy scout.”

St. George shrugged. “Just talked to Josh.”

“Oh, joy. How’d that go?”

“Same as always. Self-pity, a little self-loathing, determined to end his life a lonely martyr.”

Barry pushed another lump of muffin into this mouth. “One thing you have to say about our brave new world. It’s very consistent.”

* * * *

Big Red
was parked next to the guard shack. It was a twenty-four foot truck that had been used for hauling set dressing back when the Mount was in the movie business. The new residents had cannibalized and customized it for scavenging runs. They’d chopped off most of the box and built a new frame for it, making it into a gigantic pick-up. It had a backup gas tank, a winch, and a cow catcher that had served as a battering ram once or twice. The double-cab sat four, another six rode in the bed, and a steel grill let two more ride on top of the cab. A petite woman with yellow and black stripes in her short hair was already there, seated on an old couch cushion. Lady Bee had an M-16 slung over her shoulder and a tactical holster strapped to one thigh. Someone once told St. George she’d been a movie costumer in the old days. She blew him a kiss as he walked past the truck.

Luke Reid was at the wheel, as always. He was a blond, broad-shouldered Teamster who used to drive trucks for a living before everything went south. St. George saw Jarvis in
Big Red
’s back, along with Ty O’Neill, Billie Carter, Ilya, and a few others he sort of recognized. They all gave him salutes and determined nods. Barry was already asleep in the giant truck bed, stretched out on a thick pile of furniture blankets with his wheelchair strapped to the wall next to him.

St. George walked up to the Melrose Gate and stopped a few feet away from the dozens of grasping hands reaching and clawing between the bars. The exes had the gate mobbed, as they always did. It was the only place they could still see into the Mount, see all the succulent, tasty people standing inside.

Although, no one was sure if exes could see anymore.

Almost no one used the word zombie. They’d been “exes” since the first presidential press conference. It made them easier to accept, somehow. The ex-living. Ex-people. Most of them still looked human. Usually the uninjured ones and the newer ones that hadn’t fed.

The former citizens of Los Angeles reached for St. George with discolored, rotting fingers. He could hear their joints pop as they moved. Dozens of jaws hinged open and closed, clicking their dark teeth together.

A curly-haired blonde whose mouth was caked with gore. A bald man with a gashed scalp and one ear. On opposite ends of the gate were a man and a woman in running clothes. By the left hinge, next to the female runner, was one with a face scoured down to the bare bone. A teenaged boy with a
Transformers
shirt and a clotted stump where his left hand should’ve been. A grandmotherly woman in a business suit stiff with blood. A black man near the break in the gate who stood still and stared back at St. George with blank eyes.

Their skin was anywhere from sidewalk gray to white, sometimes colored with dark purple bruises. Their eyes were all dull and faded, like cloudy glass. Many of them were just worn out. Flesh dry and cracking from months in the sun. Covered with injuries that would never heal but could never kill them.

St. George didn’t recognize any of them. That always made it easier.

A huge blue and platinum statue thudded over to stand next to him. His head didn’t even reach the stars and stripes stenciled across its armored biceps. The titan’s androgynous lines made it hard to think of as anything but an 'it', even knowing there was a woman inside. She looked down at the hero with bright lenses the size of tennis balls. “You know I hate doing this, right?”

He nodded. “You’ve mentioned it.”

Cerberus turned her gaze to the crowd of exes. “Just so you remember on the day I finally snap. Where’s Barry?”

“Asleep in the truck. You charged up?”

The armored figure gave a clumsy dip of her head. The Cerberus Battle Armor System wasn’t built for subtlety. Of course, she hadn’t built it with subtlety in mind. Even without the M-2’s mounted on her arms, Cerberus could take on almost anything left in the world. St. George had seen the nine-foot battlesuit rip a vault door off its hinges, lift a cement truck, and wade through a swarm of exes without scuffing the paint.