Ex-Communication

Twenty-Eight Now

MADELYN PICKED HERSELF up off Highland Avenue and checked the sword. She’d landed on it, but it didn’t look damaged. Her right hand was torn up, though. There were a bunch of long gashes on her palm from sliding on the pavement, and she was pretty sure her middle finger and ring finger were broken. Dislocated, at least.

She walked back and kicked the bike. The rear wheel had locked up and sent her flying while she was swooping around an ex. The master link had fallen off the chain, and now one end was wrapped around the gears and axle. She was pretty sure she could have fixed it if she had tools. And light. And the master link.

And the time. According to her two watches with glow-in-the-dark faces, she had about two hours until Max’s deadline. One hundred and ten minutes until hell on earth.

She waved at the ex, a desiccated man her dad’s age with a bald head. Bloodstains blended with the dark red flowers on its Hawaiian shirt, and ran down onto its shorts. “You can have the bike,” she said. “I didn’t like the color anyway.”

Madelyn checked the sword again and started walking south. She wanted to run, but her eyes didn’t work well in the dark and she didn’t want to risk another accident. While she walked she grabbed her two twisted fingers with her left hand. They throbbed, but they didn’t hurt as much as she knew they should. Dead nerves.

She took a deep breath out of habit more than anything else and pulled hard. There was a double pop and a flare of sharper pain. She wiggled the reset fingers. Not great, but she’d be able to use them.

It took her ten minutes of brisk walking to reach Sunset. She cut across the parking lot of a strip mall. If she remembered right, it was a mile to the northeast corner of the Big Wall. There was a pair of bodies on the far side of the lot. Two kids about her age, from their size and clothes. She glanced over her shoulder and across Highland to the gray shape of the high school. She wondered if your parents had to be in the film industry for you to go to Hollywood High School.

There were dozens of exes wandering in the street, but they were spaced out enough for her to dodge them. Madelyn set one hand on the sword and started jogging. Not a full run, but faster than walking. She was pretty sure she’d still see anything dangerous before she tripped over it.

After another ten minutes the abandoned cars started to thin out and the exes started to get a little denser. The noise of their jaws got louder. Another two blocks and she saw Amoeba Records and the Jack in the Box facing each other across the street. A few more yards and the Cinerama Dome loomed up in the night. She was a block from the Big Wall. She grabbed the sword and broke into a run.

The Corner came into view, and she could see the guards standing on top of the Wall. Three or four hundred exes clogged the intersection below them. The dead pawed at the stacked cars and reached for the men and women on the platform.

Madelyn didn’t want to risk being another face in the crowd. She stopped near the back of the horde and waved her arms. She jumped up and down a couple of times. “Hey,” she yelled to them. “Over here!”

One of the guards straightened up and peered out at her. A few flashlights lit up and searched her out. “Here,” she said. “I’ve got the sword!” She pulled it out and waved it over her head.

She heard them talk over the sound of the exes, but couldn’t make out any words. They gestured at her a few times, but it seemed like it was part of the discussion, not signals intended for her. One of them raised a walkie-talkie to his mouth. She started forward through the crowd and two of the guards leveled their rifles in her direction.

“Hey!” she snapped over the sound of chattering teeth. “It’s me, the Corpse Girl. I’m on your side.”

The discussion on the Corner platform had turned into an argument. One woman reached out and pushed the guard’s rifle away. He resisted and brought it back to settle on Madelyn. They were waving and pointing.

She looked at her watches. Just over an hour until the Hell-mouth opened or whatever was going to happen. “I have the sword,” she shouted. “Get St. George or Captain Freedom or someone on the radio.” She shoved an ex aside and took three more pronounced steps forward.

The two guards with rifles freaked out. One of them lifted his gun to his shoulder. The other fired from chest height. The shot echoed across Sunset Boulevard, drowning out the click-click-click of teeth for a moment.

The ex in front of Madelyn twitched and gore sprayed out of its shoulder. She felt a tug on her sleeve and smelled hot metal. The bullet had missed her. Barely.

She dove back and crouched low behind another ex, an obese man that stank of filth. A second shot rang out, and then shouts from the platform. She wasn’t sure if they were shouting at her or each other. The dead man stumbled toward the Wall, attracted by the noise, and she shuffled to stay hidden behind it. She glanced down and something dark dripped out of its pant leg.

It crossed her mind that maybe they wouldn’t let her back in. She’d snuck out without permission, and maybe they had firm rules about contact with exes. A good chunk of the population inside thought she was a prophet or omen or something, but there were also a lot of folks—probably including the two men shooting at her—who thought she wasn’t different from any other dead thing.

They had to let her back in! They needed the sword.

All her stuff was inside. She hadn’t brought her backpack or her heavy coat or anything. It had just been a given they’d let her back in. Honestly, she was hoping to impress St. George and convince him she could be useful to him and the other heroes. It would be cool to have someone like St. George impressed with her.

But maybe that wasn’t going to happen now. She glanced back down the dark road, back the way she’d come. There’d be a backpack somewhere in the high school. Now that she knew she didn’t have to hide, it’d be easier to scavenge for supplies.

Her diary was inside the Mount. If she didn’t find something to write on, she’d wake up tomorrow and maybe not even remember being there. Her memory had been getting better, but she didn’t think any of it would stick without the diary.

If they didn’t let her back in, she was going to die all over again.

Then the sounds from the Big Wall died down and a voice bellowed out across the intersection, thundering over the sounds of dead teeth.

“Madelyn!”

She waited a moment. She’d played enough video games and seen enough movies to know what happened to someone who poked their head out to look. The obese ex shuffled a few more feet and swayed back and forth.

“Madelyn, are you still there?!”

This time there was less echo. She recognized the voice and leaped up. “Yes!” she yelled back. “I’m here. I’ve got the sword!”

Captain Freedom stood on the platform, looming over the guards. One of the men who’d shot at her had vanished. Even from this far back she could tell the other one was sulking.

The huge officer waved her forward and she pushed her way through the swarm of exes. Closer to the Wall they were packed in tighter. She elbowed and shoved her way past the mindless dead.

When she was close enough, two of the guards tossed a rope down to her. She wrapped it around her wrist and they hauled her up to the platform. The exes clawed at her legs, and she had a moment of terror her invisibility had worn off somehow, but it was just random grasping as they tried to reach the people above them.

She stood on the platform before Freedom. He glared down at her. “You snuck out.”

“Yeah,” she said.

“You were ordered back to the hospital.”

“I went back to the hospital. And then I went out and got the sword. You can ground me later.” She flipped the sword over in her hand and held it out to him hilt first, just like in the movies.

“You did good, soldier,” he told her, “but it’s too late.”

She blinked. Her lids made a faint whisking noise across her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“St. George and Maxwell left thirty-nine minutes ago,” said a voice. Stealth stepped from behind the dead girl. “They hope to find Regenerator before the demon does.” The cloaked woman moved past Madelyn and down the staircase to street level.

“But what about the sword?” She held it up a little higher. “They need the sword to kill the demon, right?”

“Mr. Hale decided one of the swords that were already here on the lot would work well enough,” said Freedom. He gestured her down the stairs to Vine Street. “Now it’s time for you to go back to the hospital.”

“That’s stupid,” said Madelyn. “Why’d I even go get this thing?”

“You were told not to,” Stealth said without looking back.

“No, I mean it was a total waste of time,” Madelyn said. She hiked her coat up and slid the blade through her belt again. “You’d think with all the time he had as a ghost he would’ve known there was a good enough sword here.”

Stealth stiffened up. Her fingers curled into fists, but loosened right away. The tremor flowed through her cloak like a miniature shock wave. “Captain Freedom,” she said, “we will be heading out to assist St. George in ten minutes. Make whatever preparations you see fit.”

The huge officer was a step behind her. “I’m sorry, ma’am, what was that?”

“You heard me, Captain. Zzzap?”

His voice echoed back over their radios. “What’s up?”

“We are switching to battery power. Meet me on the South Wall at Larchmont in nine minutes.”

“Got it.”

Her pace increased. Freedom found himself shifting to a slight jog to keep up with the woman. “Madelyn,” she said, “I believe we will have use of your abilities. Under no circumstances are you to hand the sword to anyone until I tell you otherwise. Guard it with your life.”

“Okay.”

“Ma’am,” said Freedom. “What’s going on?”

Stealth stopped and spun on her heel. “Maxwell’s illogical statements about magic and an afterlife distracted me from a clear line of reasoning. Once I accepted them as fact, his lie was obvious.”

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

“Maxwell claims he has been here for just under a year and a half as a spirit,” said the cloaked woman. “Long enough to say he has seen every tattoo on every resident of the Mount.”

Freedom glanced at Madelyn. “You think she’s right about the sword?

“Not the sword,” said Stealth. Her masked face turned to him inside the hood. “After eighteen months, how could he not have known Regenerator was our prisoner?”

St. George leaped forward, his weapon raised. He’d never used a sword before, but he figured between the cutting edge and his strength he could do a fair amount of damage with one.

He’d forgotten how fast the demon was. It had been fast as an ex. It was a blur now. The sword came down and Cairax was three yards away.

The monster’s tail lashed out and parried the blade, almost knocking it out of his hand. St. George tightened his grip and felt the hilt crumple under his fingertips. He swung again, but the sword sliced air. The demon was behind him.

It laughed.

St. George spun and let the weapon swing wide. Cairax sidestepped, this time moving slow enough for him to see how easy it was. The demon glared down at him and its tail shot forward like a striking rattlesnake. It shot past his guard to punch him in the chest. The world blurred and the last panes of the pet store’s plate glass exploded against his back. He managed to hold on to the sword.

Behind the demon, Max leaped from the rooftop and drifted toward the ground. Clouds of light billowed off his hands like steam. His lips were moving, but St. George couldn’t hear the words.

Cairax Murrain stalked forward and St. George threw himself at it. He thought of every Conan and Beastmaster movie he’d watched as a teenager and brought the sword down with a roar. The demon put up its arm and the blade bit into the flesh. It felt like cutting into a tire. The hero pulled back and swung the blade again. It cut into the meat of Cairax’s forearm and hit a bone that could’ve been solid rock.

Something snapped in the sword’s handle. St. George felt the twang of breaking metal and the blade rattled against the guard. He pulled his arm back and the sword fell apart in his hands. The pommel and guard dropped away. The blade tipped and fell back over his shoulder. They all clattered on the pavement.

He stood there for a moment holding the hollow hilt.

The demon let out a deep laugh. “You face me with toys, little hero?” it rumbled. “You dishonor your namesake.”

There was a blur of motion, a hot rush of pain, and St. George was hurtling through the pet store. He shredded his way through two sets of shelves, smashed some glass terrariums, and plowed into a checkout counter. He hit the wall, felt the cinder blocks crack, and dropped to the floor. His chest was wet, and a few spots of blood spread across his tattered shirt.

The floor was trembling, like a low-level earthquake, and by the time he recognized the rhythmic tremor as footsteps Cairax had grabbed him by the head and hurled him back out into the street. He struck the rear of a car. The bumper wrapped around him, the trunk collapsed, glass shattered, and St. George found himself in the backseat.

The ground shook again. He pushed himself free of the wreckage. He grabbed the loose bumper and swung it like a bat. It hit Cairax in the side of the head with a shriek of metal on bone, tore in half, and sent the demon stumbling back. St. George leaped into the air, pulled back his fist—

—and plunged back to the ground. He hit hard, and the confusion of it dropped him to his knees. He tried to push off, to get himself moving again, and the ground pressed up against him. His body was too heavy to move. His head settled against the ground and he heard Cairax Murrain moving behind him. It was chuckling.

Max stepped into his line of sight. The sorcerer pressed his palms hard against each other, his fingers tickling his wrists. A crackle of static surrounded his hands, like the St. Elmo’s fire that marked doomed ships.

“Told you to watch your back,” said Max. He walked over to stand by the demon. “You’re not going to believe me, but I’m really sorry it had to go down like this.”