Another dead person stumbled out of an alley behind the Seven-Eleven and into the street. It was just over a hundred feet away from the intersection where she stood sentry. The armor’s targeters highlighted it and zoomed in.
It was a woman. Thirty, tops, when she changed. Long, brown-blonde hair, pointed face, very thin. Her shirt sagged open to reveal a black bra and a trail of blood ran down her torso from her neck, accenting her tiny breasts. Her head hung at an odd angle, probably a broken neck, but her lips were still wet from a fresh kill.
Cerberus raised an arm, lining up a phantom weapon on the ex’s skull. Despite the warning lights flashing in her visor, the armor still moved as if the massive M2 Brownings were mounted on it. It had been over a year since Stealth confiscated them, insisting the ammunition had to be saved for a real emergency.
The ex saw her move. Wiry arms creaked up, hands groping, and the shift in balance made it totter for a moment. Then its left foot shuffled forward and it staggered across the pavement.
If she still had her cannons, she could’ve turned its head into vapor. And the ex two and a half blocks north. Even the three she saw way up on top of the hill at Los Feliz, almost three-quarters of a mile away. She’d built the suit for that kind of accuracy. Five shots, five headless exes.
If she had her cannons. Like an amputee missing her limbs, her arms itched for them.
The grasping ex had covered half the ground between them. It was working its jaws and the armor’s mikes picked up the click-click-click of teeth.
Without the cannons, all Cerberus had was up close and personal. She had to let the exes walk up to her, crowd her, claw at her as they tried to find a way past the armor. Even powered down, the suit was a match for undead fingers and teeth. But they’d try for hours and days and weeks because they didn’t know they couldn’t get through.
They had swarmed around her for two days that first time the power cell died. Thirty-one and a half hours in the armor as fifty exes pawed at her and groped her and stared with blind eyes. Thirty-one and a half hours before the Dragon and Zzzap found her.
The ex was less than ten feet away. Cerberus realized the woman wasn’t wearing a black bra, but a whole lingerie ensemble under her clothes. A corset or merry-widow or some such thing she’d never bothered to learn the name of. Its mouth was glossy with red lipstick.
“Someone had hopes for their last night.” The towering battlesuit coughed out a grim laugh. “Guess you didn’t get eaten the way you wanted, eh?”
She reached out and set one armored gauntlet on the ex’s shoulder. The other one came down on its blonde head, the huge fingers wrapping around it. Her wrists flexed, the ex’s skull came away from its crooked neck with a sound like dry wood, and the body slumped to the ground
Cerberus held the blonde head out at arms length, letting the black fluid leak out of it while it snapped its jaws at her. When it stopped draining, she tossed it down the road. Her targeting software tracked every bounce, turn, and spin.
“All clear,” she called out over her radio. “Bring it around the corner.”
David pushed the apartment door open with his foot and counted to five. He stomped his foot a few times, then counted to five again. Rifle up, he led them into the third apartment. Billie was right behind him with her shotgun, and Ty brought up the rear after double-checking the hallway was clear.
They looked around the corner to the kitchen. Billie banged on the bathroom door a few times, and Ty did the same with the bedroom.
Something thudded against the bedroom door.
“Got one,” he called.
“I’m at the door,” said David.
“Got your back,” said Billie. She raised the shotgun.
Ty kicked the door hard and felt it slap the dead weight when the latch popped. He hit it again and it banged open. The ex was an older man with a Hawaiian shirt. Black pants and striped boxers gathered at its ankles. It stumbled back for a moment and then wiggled toward them.
“Oh, Jeez,” Billie said, biting back a laugh. She pointed to the nightstand where a pair of dentures sat in a glass of cloudy water. “It’s toothless.”
Ty put his rifle out at arms length and braced the barrel against its forehead. The stocking feet shuffled out from under it and the ex tilted back to crash against the floor. As it twisted he walked over and put a round through its temple. The corpse went limp.
Cerberus barked from their walkies. “Who fired?”
“It’s Ty. We had one ex. It’s down.”
“Copy that.”
David’s voice echoed from the living room. “We clear now?”
His partners nodded. “Clear,” agreed Ty. He glanced from the ex to Billie. “Poor bastard died getting dressed.”
“Bad enough being the living dead,” she smirked and held her fist out to him. “If I come back, promise me you’ll get my pants on.”