Ex-Heroes

Subtle Beauty THEN

SWAT Sergeant Hall considered telling me to leave, or perhaps something more emphatic. I could see it in his eyes. If he could see my face, I am sure he would have nodded and ignored everything I said, even though I had saved his life on two separate occasions. The mask over my face is a relief. It covers my eyes, nose, cheeks, and lips. It hides my curse and makes discussions such as this one easier.

I have become known as Stealth, although it is not a name of my choosing. I believe some people consider it a “sexy” name appropriate for a female hero. I am, in fact, a beautiful woman and have been all my life. It has never made a difference to me, and I have made no special efforts or arrangements to either preserve or enhance my looks, but I have been reminded of this fact by every man I have ever met and several women as well. In that sense, beauty has become like a rash I cannot rid myself of, but is not worth the effort of removing by some drastic measure.

“You cannot reason with them,” I told Hall again. “They cannot be intimidated by displays of force or numbers. Your men must begin aggressive measures if you hope to hold them back.”

“And by aggressive you mean killing them?” He glanced back at the wall of riot vehicles waiting to move out. In the distance we could hear the loudspeaker warnings and faint cries. “I can’t order my men to fire on sick civilians.”

“If it helps you and your men, by any possible definition the infected are already dead. As the president said in his address, they are exhumans, no longer alive.” I gave a slow nod from my position on the wall. A quick-release carabiner on a drainpipe created the illusion I was clinging to the bricks above him, yet another sleight of hand to give me power and authority. “Do not attempt shots to cripple or immobilize. They will have no effect. Only decapitation or destruction of the brain.”

He shook his head. “I don’t need to hear more of this zombiemovie bullshit.”

“It is the most effective method.”

“Great. Maybe next we can try fighting them with the Force.”

One of the other SWAT officers shouted above the din. “Snipers have movement three blocks south. A group of infected coming this way.” They looked to Hall for a decision.

I understood bad decisions. As a junior in high school I participated in three successive beauty pageants: Teen California, Teen USA, and Teen Universe. The Teen Universe was the one I was interested in because it came with a full scholarship to the college of my choice. Winning the other two were merely requirements in reaching that goal. In retrospect, this chain of decisions may have been the worst mistake of my life.

My eyes met his again. “I understand your frustration, Sergeant Hall, but we are running out of time. The chances of containing this outbreak are already low.”

“Do you know what’ll happen if we start shooting at civilians?”

“I have an excellent idea of what will happen if you do not.”

He shook his head. “The CDC will be here in—”

“They will not come,” I told him. “There have been major outbreaks on the east coast around Washington. All resources are being focused there. It is up to you and your men to contain this here. I will give you all the help I can.”

Another call came from the vehicles. As Hall turned, I reached back, released the carabiner, and swung to the left. The trick to moving swiftly while climbing is using your arms and minimizing your legs. I slid around the corner and up.

Sergeant Hall was right-handed, which meant he favored his right side overall. I had chosen my “crouching” position on the wall before hand, and it allowed me a quick exit to his left. When he turned back from the armored barricades, his eyes first passed through all the space I had occupied. When something vanishes from sight, human nature is to look side to side first, then up. Since his head was already moving left, he would turn his eyes back to the right, giving me a few seconds to complete my “disappearance” and add to the illusion.

Not all my power is sleight of hand. I graduated class valedictorian with eight new school records in track and field. I had also broken most of the weightlifting records, but this was overlooked because my school did not have a women’s weightlifting team. Despite being offered full scholarships to both MIT and Yale, my guidance counselor, Mr. Passili, suggested I might want to use my pageant prizes to attend one of the “easier” colleges “better suited to a young woman like yourself.”

Neither he nor the school pressed assault charges, although I was told years later it was still apparent his nose had been broken. My first semester at MIT I made Dean’s List with a perfect 4.0. I sent a copy of my grades to Mr. Passili, but never got a response.

There was a police sniper on the far corner of the rooftop, but he was too busy watching the streets to notice my arrival. I moved to the southeast corner and dropped to a lower building. Two more rooftops led me to the alley where my motorcycle waited. I landed on the seat, cut down Cahuenga, and headed across town on Sunset.

I passed eleven infected in three blocks and shot each of them in the forehead. At Sunset and Las Palmas I stopped to put another round in the ear of a gray-skinned boy with a bloody mouth.

I was revising my estimates. Perhaps things had spread too far. Most civilians were following instructions and staying indoors, although some went too late. Stories were already circulating of the unlucky people who locked themselves in with infected family members who turned hours later. There was also a bothersome number who insisted on going out to fight the infected on their own. The majority of them were being killed, and a fair number became carriers themselves. If it spread any further, a safe zone would need to be established.

Several other “superheroes” had joined in the attempts to hold back the contagion. Regenerator, Banzai, and Gorgon were trying to keep order at the emergency shelters and field hospitals. Blockbuster, Midknight, and Cairax were holding the west side. Zzzap was attempting to fight on both coasts, but I knew the constant travel was taxing him. The armed forces had deployed a prototype exoskeleton, heavily armed and armored, in Washington, D.C., to help with containment, although I believed it was a publicity stunt to boost morale rather than a serious stratagem. The Dragon was, at my suggestion, fighting the exes directly since he was one of the few who could. I was worried he was beginning to develop some kind of feelings toward me.

In college I took several lovers, both male and female. It sprung from a desire for experimentation, although not in the way most college relationships are labeled. As I had suspected, sex turned out to be a fleeting diversion with no real rewards. Even more annoying, my skill as a partner was often judged on my appearance and not on any other abilities or aspects I brought to the arrangement. It was through these experiments I realized my beauty would always be my defining trait, no matter what a given situation required.

Over junior and senior year’s winter and summer breaks I was offered jobs modeling for Victoria’s Secret and Abercrombie & Fitch. I took them all and appeared in eleven different catalogs and two in-store ad campaigns. The money paid for two years of masters studies where I wrote a groundbreaking thesis on DNA fragment tracking and identification. Despite complete faculty backing, no journal would publish a scientific paper written by a twenty-two-year-old underwear model. Twenty-two rejections. By sheer coincidence, that year I was also ranked number twenty-two on Maxim ’s “Hot 100 List,” between Elisha Cuthbert and Cameron Diaz.

I have double doctorates in biochemistry and biology, with further studies in psychology, anthropology, and structural engineering. I wrote a book on memory structures and mnemonic devices explaining how anyone could improve their recall by at least threefold. It sold less than four thousand copies and now can only be found in remaindered bookstores with a “70% Off” sticker. By contrast, a paparazzi photo of me posing on a runway at Cannes was downloaded over twenty-three million times because my top slipped and there is a clear view of my left nipple.

I knew I had the physical prowess and skills to have a direct, positive effect on the city of Los Angeles. If people were only willing to see me as an object, however, then I would oblige and operate outside the judicial system as an unnamed thing.

My last civilian appearance was an episode of Jeopardy! at the age of twenty-six. I won seven episodes in a row by runaways before I became bored and stopped trying. I was the longest-running female contestant the show had ever had. That money, $570,400, financed my uniform and equipment.

A quartet of exes stumbled into view on Las Palmas drawn out by the noise of gunfire. Three women and a man. They had fresh blood on their mouths. I gunned the bike’s engine, spun the rear around, and headed toward them. A fifth and sixth wandered out of the narrow space between buildings. I came to a halt a dozen yards from them. With both weapons firing, it took three seconds to eliminate all of them.

While I listened for signs of trouble, I reloaded. Both of my Glocks are the 18C military variant with the extended magazine, but it was not an evening to be caught low on ammunition. I carried four spare clips in my harness, plus the two in the pistols. There were an additional two hundred rounds in the cycle’s saddlebag. I had used a quarter of my ammunition in ninety minutes of patrolling.

Another ten minutes and twenty-three more kills brought me to La Cienega. A major intersection. A police car sat near the sidewalk, three of its four doors hanging open, the front crumpled against a Ford truck. Skid marks indicated the driver had hit the brakes, tried to swerve, and crashed.

There were fourteen bodies surrounding the vehicle. I could see one dead officer on the pavement by the driver’s side door. A Mossberg police shotgun lay a few feet from his left hand. The others had been exes. Besides the fatal head shots, they each had a collection of bullet wounds in their arms and chests. One had the curling wires of a Taser trailing from his stomach.

I heard a moan from the far side of the car.

The other officer, a woman, was bleeding. She had dark hair, the bulk of a bulletproof vest under her shirt, and a set of pins and tags identifying her as ten-year veteran Officer Altman. Her left arm had been bitten several times. Two fingers were missing from that hand, along with part of a third, and she had made a rough bandage from a bandanna. Her right ankle was soaked with blood. Her left cheek hung open. She was crying. She was still alive.

“How long since you were bitten?”

She jumped and tried to raise her gun before she saw me. “Oh, thank God,” she said.

“How long? If it has been less than two hours there is a slim chance you can be saved.” Even as I said this, though, I took note of the paleness of her skin by the wounds. She was sweating and her eyes were having trouble focusing.

Altman shook her head. “They overwhelmed us. We tried the Taser, warning shots. They just kept coming.”

“You have been told not to waste time with such measures,” I said. “The only way to stop them is to kill them.”

Her eyes hardened for a moment and she glared at me. “They’re still people.”

“They are not. That is why your partner is dead and you have a day at best. Have you radioed for assistance?”

She shook her head. “One of them bit through my microphone cord. I can’t reach the car radio.”

I walked around the car and closed doors until I reached her partner. He twitched twice and I put a round through the base of his neck. Altman cried out at the sound. At this range, the vertebrae exploded. The twitches stopped.

“The car is still secure. I can leave you here until help arrives, or you can attempt to drive.”

“You’re not staying?”

“No.” I lifted her to her feet.

“Fuck you.”

“There are too many exes at large. The next twenty-four hours will decide if Los Angeles can be contained or if it will be lost. That outweighs the needs of one police officer who ignored the order to make kill shots.”

Altman settled into the driver’s seat and dragged her legs into the car. I pulled her partner’s sidearm, his spare ammunition, and retrieved the Mossberg. “It may be several hours before help can reach you,” I told her. “You will need to defend yourself until then. Do you have food and water?”

She snorted back a laugh. “What, like a box of donuts?”

“A first aid kit?” She nodded. “Use whatever antibiotic agents you have in it. It may give you extra time.”

“You really think I’ve got a chance?”

“It is difficult to say. There have been some cases of recovery, if the victim receives immediate medical care.”

“How soon is immediate?” I paused. “The attacks happened in a hospital.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” I ordered her to lock the doors and left her. If she did die, she would be trapped in the vehicle. As I walked back to the motorcycle I shot two women, each wearing a House of Blues staff shirt. The bike roared back to life and I resumed my path across Sunset.

In one of the earlier Sherlock Holmes mysteries, Arthur Conan Doyle (not yet a Sir) made an observation on logical deduction. When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

There is, however, a specific flaw in that maxim. It assumes people can recognize the difference between what is impossible and what they believe is impossible.

The ex-humans have been appearing for twelve weeks now. Three months since the first known sighting. They have been captured, studied, and killed. There are warning posters, public service announcements, and news reports. Yet people still cling to the impossibility of the living dead even as it looms over them, attacks their homes, and devours their neighbors. Soldiers, police, and private citizens force themselves to believe the exes are just infected with some curable disease, despite all the evidence, and will not take the necessary steps. They will not accept the truth. They will not act on it.

The outbreak will not be contained. It is too late. The world as we know it is over.