Ex-Communication: A Novel Read online

Nikita took another drag on his cigarette. He wasn’t even feigning interest anymore.

  Bag two was some tools and the Century stands. Big steel things they use on movie sets. Each one’s like a tripod on steroids, with adjustable feet and height and an arm with a pivoting holder—a knuckle—at the end. They call them Century stands—C-stands—because they’ve got a hundred positions. I set them three and a half feet apart next to the assembled brackets.

  Bag three was the convex lens. Thirty-nine inches across. Damn thing weighed over a hundred pounds. It was wrapped in foam and a padded blanket and two canvas tarps. Two pins on either end of its brass frame locked into the knuckles on the C-stands. Nikita had to help me get it into place. We locked it into position and then shuffled the stands until the big lens was over the brackets. I had a laser level that did measurements. It took me another fifteen minutes to make sure the lens was level and centered over the locked arms of the brackets.

  Eighteen minutes to go. I grabbed a prybar from bag two and tossed it to Nikita. “I need you to make a line in the dirt around this,” I told him. “One and a half meters out. Make it about two inches—six centimeters deep.”

  He looked at the bar. “What for?”

  “Insulation. It’ll help keep things stable.”

  He let out a mouthful of smoke. “I am just supposed to be driver.”

  “Fifty bucks,” I told him. “Just get it done in the next ten minutes.”

  He grinned and bent down to start chopping at the ground with the hooked end of the prybar.

  I pulled a pair of latex gloves from my pocket and my travel wallet out from under my coat. It rode on a sling around my neck and shoulder. It had two small bundles in it. I opened the smaller one—the one triple-wrapped in soft leather—first.

  It was a two-inch lens I’d spent months carving. Obsidian is brittle, and there’s a trick to working it with bone tools. It took me three blatant practices and six attempts to make the damned thing. I blew some dust off it. Any imperfection—even some oil or sweat from my fingertips—would ruin all this work. I set it in the top ring of the brackets. Another few minutes of fudging with the level made sure it was straight.

  Then I pulled out the second bundle. The medallion. It went in the lower ring, and I spent another five minutes checking and double-checking that it was level. I had to resist the urge to fidget with the equipment. In and of itself, it was pretty simple. Big lens on the C-stands focuses on small lens in the brackets. Small lens focuses on the center point of the medallion.

  Nikita grunted. He’d finished his circle and was tapping out another cigarette. I pulled two packages of salt from bag one. “Fill the circle with this,” I told him. “The whole thing. There can’t be any breaks. When it’s done you can step over it but not on it.”

  He sighed and pushed the cigarette back into the pack. He tore open the first package, folded it into a rough spout, and started to pour the salt. “So what is?” he asked as he shuffled along the miniature trench. His eyes darted to the medallion. “Is more equipment?”

  “That’s what all this is about, yeah,” I told him. I saw a glint in his eyes and shook my head. “It’s not worth as much as it looks like, believe me. But if I’ve got all this right, in ten minutes it’s going to be priceless.”

  He smirked. He was halfway around the circle now. I followed the line of salt with my eyes. He was doing a good job. Not a single break anywhere. He tore open the next bag of salt.

  “Of course, I’m not going to let everything ride on one medallion,” I told him. “Even if it comes out perfect, I still need to set up a couple of fail-safes before I can use it.”

  He finished the circle. Six minutes to go. Up above us, the glare of the sun started to vanish behind the moon.

  “You might want to go back to the car,” I told him. “This is probably going to be a little disturbing if you’re not ready for it. To be honest, I’ve been working toward this for almost three years and I’m not sure I’m ready for it.”

  He glanced up at the forming eclipse and shook his head. “No big deal,” he said. He knocked his sunglasses down over his eyes, slid out another cigarette, and fumbled with his lighter again. “I big boy. Not scared of the dark.”

  “Yeah,” I said with a nod. “That’s what everyone says their first time.”

  ST. GEORGE WATCHED Jennifer pound one last nail into place before she saluted the sky with her hammer. “That’s it,” she said. “Done.” She gave one of the shingles a glance and whacked its nail. “Now it’s done,” she said.

  There was some scattered applause from the crowd. Not much.

  The guard post wasn’t impressive. The one-story structure wasn’t much more than a shack. They’d found enough lumber to give it solid walls. It had two windows and a skylight. A roll of tar paper and a bundle of shingles gave it—in theory—a waterproof roof. They’d built it in the corner between the west gate of the Big Wall and the wooden staircase that led up to the walkway on top of the barrier.

  The Big Wall stood fifteen feet high on average, and in places it was almost a dozen feet thick. They’d built it by pushing cars together and stacking them one on top of another. It had been long, tedious work, with dozens of men and women holding off the exes while dozens more pushed vehicle after vehicle into line. Most of them had flat tires, and it was like forcing the cars through thick mud to move them. Even with help from the heroes, and then later from the super-soldiers of Project Krypton, it had taken just short of a year to build. When they’d finished, an industrious little boy had informed St. George the Big Wall had exactly six thousand seven hundred and eighty-one cars in it. Stealth had told the boy he was off by two.

  There wasn’t anything near the wall the guards could use for shelter, though. It took only one rainy night in late February for them to realize that. The shack at the intersection of Melrose and Vine was for whoever was posted at the West Gate. There were still three more to build, one at each gate.

  St. George beamed at the structure as Jennifer climbed down her ladder. He glanced over his shoulder at the crowd. “Oh, come on.” He nodded at the shack. “You people know what this is? This is the first new building in Los Angeles in three years.”

  There was a quiet moment as they all stared at the little structure.

  Hiram Jarvis cleared his throat. The lanky man had a dark beard streaked with premature white and gray. “Thank God,” he said. “The housing market’s finally bounced back.”

  They all smiled. A chuckle danced through the crowd. “Time to invest,” called out Makana. The chuckles broke into applause. They all clapped this time. A few people hugged each other.

  It was good to see a crowd of people smiling, thought St. George. It didn’t happen often enough. He pounded his own hands together.

  The applause grew for a moment and then stumbled. A few people kept clapping, but the sound was off. St. George followed the dull thwack through the shifting crowd to the gate.

  The East Gate was two big arrays of vertical steel pipes just inches apart. It was strong enough to stop a speeding car. The goal was to eventually get both sides of it covered with chain-link fencing to keep the undead from reaching through. A double set of bars stretched across the panels to hold them in place, one at chest height and the other two feet off the ground.

  On the other side of the gate, a baker’s dozen of exes slapped their hands together. They all wore the same expression, wide eyes and a grin that was close to a sneer. As St. George got closer he could see the unhealing wounds marking all of the undead. One of the men was missing an eye. Another one slapped his hand against the ragged stump of his other wrist. There was a woman with gorgeous features who only had a few scrapes and bruises, and another who was little more than bones wrapped in papery skin. All of them had pale flesh and dull eyes. They kept clapping.

  “Things are lookin’ good in there, esse,” one of them said to St. George. It was the dead man with the missing hand. The ex beat the stump against its palm. �
�Lookin’ really good.”

  Twin trailers of smoke rose out of St. George’s nose. “You want something, Rodney?”

  The applause stopped. “I told you,” said the dead man before the other exes joined it in one voice, “DON’T CALL ME RODNEY. IT’S LEGION, DAMNIT!”

  “Whatever.”

  Half of the exes wandered away from the gate and milled about like the rest of the undead. Their jaws moved up and down, banging their teeth together. The ones left glared at St. George. The one-handed man tapped his knuckles against one of the pipes, and the other exes mirrored the gesture along the gate. “Someday soon, dragon man, I’m gonna get in there. You know it’s coming. You won’t be acting so smart then.”

  “Someday isn’t today,” said St. George. He spat out a burst of flame through the fence.

  The exes took a step back, then held their ground. It wasn’t enough fire to do more than singe them, but the one-handed man lost his eyebrows. They all glared at the hero and bared their teeth. Then their expressions went slack and their teeth started clacking against each other. They pushed their arms between the pipes and tried to reach St. George with slow, clumsy grabs.

  A couple people gave halfhearted laughs and cheers, but the mood was dead. The crowd scattered. Guards turned to watch the streets outside the Big Wall while others walked up the wooden staircase to join them.

  St. George turned away from the gate and saw that two people had stayed behind to speak with him. The first was Billie Carter, the nominal head of the scavengers, the people who headed out once or twice a week to search the city for whatever supplies they could find. From a distance, the Marine sergeant sometimes got mistaken for a teenage boy with a buzz cut. Up close, it was clear she was a woman who shouldn’t be messed with.

  The second was Jarvis. No one was quite sure where Jarvis fit into the scheme of things. He went out with the scavengers, but it wasn’t uncommon to find him walking the Wall. He pulled shifts as a hospital guard and even spent time weeding in the gardens. His willingness to do whatever needed to be done meant everyone liked him, so they all tended to listen to him when he spoke. St. George found the man to be an endless source of cheerfulness and common sense without ever crossing the line that made cheerful people annoying.

  “So,” said the hero, “are we still on for tomorrow?”

  Billie nodded. “Assuming Legion hasn’t messed up the roads too bad, we should be able to make Sherman Oaks in an hour. There’s lots of little shops out there that might be worth checking out. If we can make it all the way to Sepulveda there’s a ton of apartment complexes.”

  “Probably too many to hit on the same day,” said Jarvis, “but we can get a sense of how things are looking out that way.”

  “There better be something,” said Billie. “We’re getting close to the point this isn’t worth it.”

  St. George glanced at her. “Meaning what?”

  She shrugged. “Basic logistics. If we burn ten gallons of fuel to bring ten back, we’re pretty much right back where we started. There’s still a lot of gas stations out there, but we’re getting near the point it’s going to cost us more to go looking than we’re going to get out of it. Especially with Legion making us fight for every mile we travel.”

  “Always nice to get out, though,” said Jarvis.

  “I’m serious,” Billie said. “Every time we head out we’re tied to the Mount, and we’re running out of rope.” She crossed her arms. “I think we need to think about setting up a forward base or two farther out. Something out in the valley, or over in Burbank. Maybe just a dozen or two people in a secure area. Someplace we can scavenge from without trucking what we find all the way back here.”

  St. George bit back a smile. “Stealth suggested something similar a few weeks ago,” he said. “I wasn’t sure how the idea would go over.”

  “You could’ve asked us,” said Billie.

  “She said if I waited you’d probably come up with the idea yourself. You specifically, Billie.”

  “’Course she did,” smirked Jarvis.

  “What if we try this? I can do a few scouting runs out into Van Nuys or maybe out toward Glendale. Maybe there’s another small studio out there we could use, or a school.”

  “There’s a National Guard armory out in Van Nuys,” said Billie. “We had you check it out once. You said it still looked secure. We could definitely use whatever ammo’s there.”

  The hero nodded. “We’d need to check it again. It only had one fence, right?”

  She nodded.

  “There’s also downtown,” said Jarvis. “We’ve avoided it till now, but maybe it’s time to think about heading that way.”

  The hero shook his head. “Downtown’s still a death trap,” he said. “Stealth figures there’s still at least six or seven hundred thousand exes down there. Plus it’s wall-to-wall cars and tons of barricades the National Guard left behind. We wouldn’t get five blocks before we were overrun, even if we had Cerberus and all of Freedom’s soldiers with us.”

  “You could do some advance scouting and pave the way,” Billie said. “You’ve made it down to the toy district three years now for Christmas.”

  He nodded. “That’s why I know downtown’s a bad idea. It’s hell to grab a few trash bags full of Barbies and knockoff Transformers all on my own.”

  “One other issue,” said Jarvis, “if y’all don’t mind me bringing it up.”

  “Depends,” said St. George. He gestured up the street and the three of them walked north along the Big Wall.

  “Elections,” said the bearded man. “We still shooting for six weeks from tomorrow?”

  “Last I heard,” said the hero. “Why?”

  Jarvis shrugged. “Still time for someone to throw their name in the hat for mayor.”

  St. George shook his head. “I told you, not me.”

  “You should,” said Billie. “You’re the natural choice.”

  Jarvis nodded in agreement. “Everybody knows you,” he said. “Pretty much everyone likes you. Only ones who don’t still have to admit you’ve saved us all a dozen times over. You’re a natural, boss.”

  “Same holds for you and Billie,” the hero said.

  She snorted.

  “I’m serious,” he said. “Jarvis, you’d make a great mayor. Why aren’t you running?”

  “To tell the truth,” said the salt-and-pepper man, “I couldn’t stand the cut in pay. Got me a pretty extravagant lifestyle to keep up.” He raised his chin and straightened the lapel of his threadbare coat. “All kinda besides the point, though. If someone else don’t step up, it’s going to come down to Christian and Richard. And Richard just ain’t mean enough for politics here in the big city.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “I’m just saying, if nothing changes in the race there’s a good chance six weeks from now things are going to be real different around here. Might be best to get stuff done earlier than later, know what I mean?”

  St. George shook his head. “We can’t start making this an us-and-them thing,” he said. “It took us over a year to get the Seventeens integrated. Last thing we need is to start making up political parties and dividing everyone that way.”

  “People are already divided, boss,” Jarvis said. “Just the nature of the beast. Some folks want to go forward, some folks want to try to go back. There’s all the religious nuts, too.”

  “Hey,” said St. George. “Tolerance.”

  “Sorry, boss,” said Jarvis. “Seriously, though, have you listened to some of this A.D. stuff?”

  “It’s all classic Book of Revelation,” said Billie. She tipped her head at the Big Wall. “It’s not that out there, all things considered. Pretty easy to think we’re living in the end of days.”

  “I never knew you were religious,” said St. George.

  “I’m a Marine and I was in Afghanistan for a year and a half,” she said. “I’m religious enough, I just don’t push it on anyone. You know they all back Christian, righ
t?”

  “The A.D. folks?” asked the hero. “Not too surprising. She’s been with them from the start, hasn’t she?”

  Billie nodded. “Someone told me she lost a niece when everything went to hell.”

  “I think I heard that once.”

  “Still,” said Jarvis, “y’all get my point. Still a lot of work to do and we ain’t quite the unified front we were a couple years ago.”

  “Yeah,” said St. George. “I was saying something about this the other night. Is it a good thing or a bad thing that we’ve gotten big enough for people to start splitting apart?”

  “What’d you decide?”

  “That we’d have to wait and see.” He shrugged. “Anything else?”

  Billie shook her head. “I was going to put together a weapons detail tonight, make sure everything’s good for tomorrow’s mission.”

  “Did that yesterday with Taylor,” said Jarvis. “Double-checked everything.”

  Billie shrugged. “So I’ll have them triple-check it. What else is there to do?”

  St. George shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat. “Maybe we should just relax.”

  “Sorry,” said Billie, “you used some word I don’t know.”

  “I’m serious,” St. George said. He gestured at the Big Wall and let his hand swing back to the gate. “Things are tight, but we’re at the point that we have to start living again. All of us. We can’t make every minute of every day about survival.”

  “Legion’s still out there,” Billie said.

  “Out there,” said St. George. “Not in here.”

  Jarvis shrugged. “Okay.”

  Billie looked at him, then at St. George. “That’s it?” she asked. “We’re just supposed to do … nothing?”

  “Not nothing,” he said. “Just take a night off. Have a beer with some friends, play a game, watch a movie, hook up with someone. Go … I don’t know, do whatever you used to do on your nights off.”

  Her lip twisted toward a frown, but he saw her force it back into a flat line. “What if I go work on some ideas for that forward base? Some basic supplies and requirements?”