Ex-Heroes

Prologue NOW

Katie had been on the walls of the Mount for two hours, leaning against the Earth, when St. George dropped out of the sky wearing a leather flight jacket.

She held out a fist without looking up and he rapped his knuckles against hers. They didn’t speak for six minutes, and she used the time to finish cleaning her rifle. Half the reason she volunteered for the walls was so she didn’t have to talk to people, and he knew it. She finished with the weapon, reloaded it, and adjusted her sunglasses. The rifle settled against her shoulder as she finally looked up at him.

St. George was in his midthirties, a solid six feet tall with pale eyes behind tinted lenses. Like a lot of people in the Mount, he was lean, with a body more used to surviving than being well fed. Unlike most people, he had thick brown hair that stretched down past his shoulders. It took way too much effort to cut it, she knew, and it wasn’t like it put him at extra risk.

“You’re early,” she said at last. He shrugged. “Slow day. I’m doing the rounds in reverse.”

“She won’t like that. That’s the kind of thing’s going to get you in trouble.”

“Maybe.” She tossed a pebble over the edge and tried to pick out the rap it made on the pavement from the chattering below. “You still going out tomorrow?”

A single nod from him. “We’re going to head north again. Try hitting some of the apartments and smaller shops toward Los Feliz.” He looked down at the exes milling on the streets and sidewalk below. “Nice crowd today.”

“You should’ve been at the Van Ness gate yesterday. Almost twice as many.”

“Any problems?”

She shook her head. “Stealth authorized ten rounds. Only one miss.”

“One’s enough to piss her off.”

“Yes it was.” Katie glanced at the moving figures on the street. She counted two dozen exes below on Gower. Nine male, fifteen female. Just the other night she’d gotten in a heated, after-sex discussion with Derek about whether exes even had genders.

“They don’t mate,” Derek had said. “They don’t use the parts for anything, so calling them male or female is pointless. They’re all just ‘its’.”

“So if you don’t have sex, you’re an it?”

“Well, not if you’re choosing not to have sex, no. But rocks don’t fuck. Neither do chairs or blankets or exes. So they’re its.”

Katie wondered if St. George was fucking anyone, or chose not to. Or if he was an it. The heroes still tended to keep to themselves, even the friendly ones. Still, she was guessing he’d be pretty awesome.

“Anything else?”

She handed her binoculars to him. “Look up at the sign.” She pointed up Gower to the hills, where the most famous real estate sign in the world still stood.

He took a long look. Near the ‘H’ was a small oval of darkness, maybe six feet across and ten high. It was like a dead spot on the lens, and it made the white, weather-beaten letter look more like a backwards four.

“Midknight?” Katie asked.

“Yeah,” said the hero. He sighed and smoke curled from his nostrils. “That’s him all right.”

“What d’you want to do?”

He handed her the binoculars. “Track him. He’s not dangerous up there in the hills, but if he gets down into the city he could play hell with our night defenses.”

“Why don’t you just go take care of him now?”

“Hardly worth the effort, don’t you think?”

It was her turn to shrug. “A dead ex is one less ex.”

St. George took a long, slow breath. “Like I said, he’s no danger to us up there. If he gets into the city, we’ll get rid of him. It’s a waste of time and ammo to do anything else.”

“Sorry. Was he a friend of yours?”

The air hissed out of his nose as more smoke. “Only met him two or three times. But he was a decent guy.”

“Don’t get soft. Stealth’ll have your head.”

His lips twisted into a wry grin. “She’s tried.”

Katie snorted and looked back down to the street. Right below her one of the male exes, a guy in a gore-covered casual suit, was banging its face against the wall of the Mount, trying to walk through the concrete. “You heading over to Melrose next?”

“Yeah,” said the hero. “Message for Derek?”

“Just tell him he’s an idiot and he’s still wrong.”

“I was going to tell him that anyway, but sure.”

She gave him a weak salute. St. George took a few running steps along the rubbery tar paper and hurled himself back into the air. He sailed away along the wall, heading for the gate a few blocks east.

Katie settled back against the oversized globe and watched the stumblers below. The trendy ex had managed to turn. Its shoulder dragged against the wall, and every other step sent its face swinging at the concrete again as it clicked and clacked down the sidewalk.

“Living the Hollywood dream,” she sighed, and shouldered her weapon again.