Ex-Purgatory: A Novel (34 page)

St. George stepped up and peered through the window. “Yeah.”

“It was a run, a month or two before we met you guys,” she said to Freedom. “It might’ve been one of the times we were gathering cars for the Big Wall. I remember a couple of the scavengers making guesses about the sundress and boots combo. Ilya, Al,
maybe … Billy? Did we have a Billy? I can kind of picture someone with short blond hair …”

“Billie Carter,” said Freedom. “Not a he, she.”

“Ahhh.”

Stealth looked up at the sky. “We are within half a mile of the Mount and we have seventy-five minutes of daylight left.” She gestured them down the road.

“Doesn’t sound bad,” said Barry. “I mean, as long as we don’t think about the few thousand exes outside the Big Wall any given day.”

Danielle’s back went stiff so fast she staggered. She shot an angry look at Barry.

“Sorry,” he said, “just thought I’d voice it because I haven’t heard anyone else bring it up.”

Stealth lashed out with her foot and sent an ex staggering back. It was a dead man with silver hair in a deep red UMass sweatshirt. As it wobbled, she stepped forward, brought her palm up, and caught it under its jaw. The dead man’s head tilted back and it tipped over. The back of its skull hit the curb with the sound of an egg cracking.

She glanced back at them. “We shall get as close as possible and signal the Wall guards. There are several apartment buildings and other structures near that corner of the Big Wall. We shall take shelter there until a vehicle can be sent out to retrieve us.”

“That still doesn’t really answer the question about the thousands of exes,” Danielle said.

“An actual question was not asked,” said Stealth.

They walked on for a few more feet. “Okay, fine,” Danielle said. “How are we going to deal with all the exes outside the Wall? They’ll tear us apart before we can get into a building.”

An ex stumbled out from between two cars and reached for her. St. George lunged forward, grabbed it by the neck, and heaved it up and over his head. The dead thing sailed through the air and crashed down on the street behind them, a few feet from the BMW imprisoning the sundress ex.

“Please note,” said Stealth, “the ex went after you, Danielle.”

“Yeah,” she snapped, “I noticed.” She clenched her fists again and again.

“It went after you,” Stealth said, “even though Barry and Captain Freedom were closer targets.”

Their eyes all drifted between Freedom, Barry in his arms, Danielle, and the gap between the two cars where the ex had been lurking. They looked back at the broken ex in the street. They looked at each other again.

And then they all looked up at Madelyn, still hanging on the huge officer’s shoulders.

“The ex in the car also did not react to Freedom when he moved past it. It remained focused on Danielle and St. George. The sensory filter that renders Madelyn near invisible to ex-humans has been active for some time now, most likely since her true appearance began to register in our conscious minds again.”

“Yay, me,” said the Corpse Girl, smiling.

Stealth turned and continued east. “Her abilities extend to those she has contact with, and it would seem Barry’s proximity keeps him included as well. If she can include Danielle as well, that makes the four of you free to reach a safe position near the Wall while St. George and I hold off the exes.”

“And if her powers can’t cover us all?”

“Then you will have to move quickly.”

Danielle sighed and muttered something. Stealth ignored it.

Another two intersections went by. They passed Las Palmas. A handful of exes came after them. Stealth broke several necks. Freedom backhanded one through a wooden fence with his free hand. St. George threw a few of the zombies at the trios and quartets following behind them. They sprawled in the street and cut down on pursuers. He knew it wouldn’t be good to have a few dozen exes stumbling up behind them when they reached the dense numbers around the Big Wall.

Freedom paused for a moment. “Pardon me, sir,” he said to Barry. He shifted the smaller man into his other hand. “I just need to shake that arm out for a bit.”

“Just tell me you wiped your knuckles off. You’ve been smacking zombies with that hand.”

“It’s okay, I’m wearing gloves.”

Madelyn snickered.

“And I’d just gotten comfortable on the other side.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“I’ll let it slide since you’re doing all the—What the hell is that?” Barry tried to raise himself up in Freedom’s arms. “Was someone playing Jumanji or something?”

Ahead of them the sides of Beverly were wrapped in green. Branches and leaves reached out to surround some of the nearby houses.

Tendrils and vines had grown out along the long-dead power lines. The vast expanse of green looked like the entrance to an oversized hedge maze. Or a cave.

“The Wilshire Country Club,” said Stealth.

“Looks like management gave the groundskeepers the last four years off,” said Barry.

She ignored him and pointed down the road. “Beverly continues straight through for five blocks. There are no intersections or exits.”

“So it’s a killing floor,” Freedom said.

“That would depend on how many exes are along this stretch of road. The lack of intersections limits their access as well. However, you and George both retain enough strength to tear though the fences on either side if we require an emergency exit.”

“Assuming there’s nothing on the other side of the fence,” said Danielle.

St. George looked at the green tunnel. “Are we sure we want to go this way?”

“It is the most direct route. The exit is by the southwest corner of the Big Wall. Anything else would require that we detour around the country club, at least eleven blocks in either direction.”

Stealth paused to spin and shatter an ex’s jaw with her boot. The boot came back around to strike the dead woman in the chest and knock it back over the hood of a low-slung sports car. The ex tumbled out of sight and hit the ground with a loud crack.

“It is not a favorable choice,” she continued, “but at the moment
it is the best choice. We have less than an hour of daylight left. We must move.”

She headed toward the tunnel of green.

They followed her.

On either side of the street plants grew thick and wild. Branches curled through the fence and over the sidewalk. A few had found street signs and wrapped around them like vines. Some had even reached around broken cars, wrapping them in green and making them part of the walls. It made the street feel enclosed. Constricted.

St. George could see movement ahead of them, but it was hard to break it down into individual figures. There was just enough distance to make the stretch of road blur at the end. He seemed to remember an odd jog in the road, one of the many places where the old neighborhoods of Los Angeles hadn’t lined up when they joined together. They wouldn’t be able to see the Big Wall until they were right on top of it.

The
click-click-click
of teeth rolled down the tunnel of greenery. The leaves muffled the sound, but not much. Just enough to make it hard to guess how far away it was.

St. George moved to the front to walk alongside Stealth. Danielle stayed behind them. Captain Freedom brought up the rear with Madelyn and Barry.

They’d gone a hundred feet in when the first pair of exes staggered out at them. Two dead men. One wore a blue shirt with a plumber’s logo on it. The other was bare chested and missing an arm. Its shoulder was a ragged, half-burned mess.

St. George grabbed the plumber’s outstretched arm and yanked the ex close. Its teeth snapped at his face. He grabbed the dead man by the seat of the pants, tried to ignore the soft mass beneath the denim, and hurled the zombie up and over the wall of green.

Stealth dodged the one-armed ex, tripped it, and pushed down hard on its head as it fell. The dead thing’s forehead took
the full impact of the fall. She kicked it in the back of the skull, just to be sure it stayed down.

Danielle shook her head. “This has been right outside the Mount all this time?” he asked. “How?”

“Nature runs wild,” said Madelyn. “I saw a really cool special about it once on the History Channel.”

“Well, what I meant was why didn’t we do something about it?”

“We didn’t have any lawn mowers?” said Barry.

“I don’t even remember seeing all this,” said St. George.

“It is unlikely you would,” said Stealth. “For the most part, neither you nor Barry leaves the Mount on foot. You are more used to an aerial view.”

“That’s true,” said Barry.

Another ex, a woman, stumbled toward them from down the street. St. George could see two more past her heading their way, and another four past that. “They’re picking up,” he said. “At least half a dozen.”

“Half a dozen’s not many,” said Freedom.

“We haven’t even gone one block yet,” said Danielle.

“Let none of them past us,” Stealth warned St. George. “If a significant number get behind us, we will not be able to defend ourselves on two fronts.”

St. George took a few steps, swung his hand like an axe, and crushed the side of the dead woman’s skull. The ex slumped to the ground. The next two banged their teeth together as they closed in on him. He let them get close enough to grab at his outstretched hands. They gnawed at his fingers and he slammed their heads together.

An ex pulled itself free of the vines that had hidden it and staggered at Danielle. She stumbled back and Freedom stepped forward, his free hand curled into a fist the size of a football. Before he could strike, Stealth grabbed the ex by its collar and yanked it back. As it fell over she grabbed its skull and twisted. The body thumped to the ground. Its teeth scraped on the pavement as its jaw continued to work back and forth.

Four of the walking dead blocked the road. George grabbed one by its heavy coat and swung it into the air. He slammed it
against the other three, battering them to the ground, and then hurled it as far as he could. Three blocks away the ex bounced off the wall of greenery and crashed onto a truck.

One of the others tried to crawl to its feet as they walked past. Freedom brought his boot down hard between the dead man’s shoulder blades. The zombie’s spine cracked and it slumped back down on the pavement.

They fought through another three blocks. St. George took the brunt of it while Stealth caught the rest. Freedom dealt with the two or three that stumbled up from behind.

St. George chopped through an ex’s neck and watched its skull bounce away. He glanced over in time to see Stealth flip a dead man over her shoulder and spin to kick the corpse in the head while it was still in midair. “Now you’re just showing off,” he said.

“I am testing my muscle memory,” she said. “Their numbers are not increasing as much as I expected.”

“They’re still going up, though,” said St. George. He nodded down the road. “It looks like there’s another thirty or forty to make our way through.”

She looked grim. “As Barry said, this corner of the Big Wall has an average of fourteen hundred exes, drawn here by either sounds or the sight of guards patrolling along the Wall. Even with their random movements, this section of road should contain at least one hundred of them.”

St. George walked forward with his arms spread and gathered up half a dozen exes. He looked back at Stealth. “Maybe things are going our way for once.” He shoved the exes forward and they stumbled and fell. Their bodies tripped four others staggering at the heroes. He stepped up to the pile and twisted their heads one after another.

When he glanced back, she was still grim.

He looked past her. Since entering the overgrown length of road, Danielle had pulled her arms tight against herself. She’d backed up so close to Freedom he had to push her along. Barry looked annoyed at being carried, but kept one hand on Danielle’s
shoulder. Madelyn was trying to watch everything. Her perception filter, as she liked to call it.

Up ahead the road curved off to the left. Another dozen or so exes staggered toward them. Three of them wore military helmets with their civilian clothes, while one dead man had on what looked like a batting helmet. Leftovers from one of Legion’s many attempts to storm their home.

“Not much farther,” St. George called back to the others. “The Big Wall should be right around that bend.”

“Want us to go ahead?” asked Madelyn. “We could scout around and make sure they’re ready to open the gates or pull us over the Wall.”

“The exes may not see you,” said Stealth, “but if we have all been gone for any amount of time, the guards may not react well to your appearance.”

“We’ll all go together,” said Freedom with a quick glance up at Madelyn. “All of us or none of us.”

“I’d prefer all of us,” Barry said.

“Me, too,” said Danielle.

St. George tore the hood off a car, held it in both hands, and sent it spinning into the approaching exes. It decapitated two, tore five in half through the torso, and shattered the legs of half a dozen more.

Stealth was a blur. Kicks, strikes, punches, flips. She broke bones, snapped necks, and cracked skulls. Exes reached for her and then slumped to the ground.