“Oh yeah,” said Ilya before picking off another ex. “Definitely sounds like Judgment Day.”
Outside the gate, a ripple of movement swept across the zombies. They stumbled in mid step. Their teeth began to clack.
St. George shrugged back into his patchwork jacket. “Ahhh, hell.”
“What’s going on?”
He looked out at the dead. They were flailing at the gate, pawing with no purpose. “I think we got what we wanted. Rodney’s distracted and he’s starting to lose control.”
Billie looked out at the chattering horde. “Is that good?”
“Sort of. A few minutes ago we were surrounded by sixty thousand or so exes all obeying him.”
“And now?”
“Now we’re just surrounded by sixty thousand exes.”
Her walkie squawked and Billie’s face fell. “They need you at the main gate,” she said. “It’s bad. Derek says Stealth is missing. And Gorgon is down.”
The hero’s face hardened. “You have things here?”
“We can deal with exes,” she said with a nod. “Go kick some ass.”
St. George shot into the sky, tracing a high arc toward the Melrose gate.
It wasn’t until a few hours later, looking back on the moment, that Billie, Ilya, and the rest realized he hadn’t jumped.
Cerberus stomped forward, the ground trembling with every step. She threw aside the exes mobbing the driveway. Her arms came up and the armor selected seven hundred and thirteen viable targets for her. The first pass with the M-2s tore a hundred exes into hamburger. She watched the ammo counters spin down to triple digits as the second pass destroyed two more trucks and cleared her path across the intersection.
Rodney lumbered toward the gate and the zombies came with him. They marched in perfect lock-step, heels slapping on the pavement. The Seventeens moved forward in trucks and on foot.
As one, the dead raised their arms to point at her. Bullets pinged and sparked against the armor.
“Come on, big girl,” the dead giant shouted. He pounded on his ruined chest, and countless exes mimicked him. “You wanna give me my last chance to run away or you wanna fight?”
“You had your last chance,” growled Cerberus. “You didn’t take it.”
The cannons roared again. Between the walls of the Mount and the nearby office buildings the sound itself was a weapon. The gate guards winced. Another two trucks vanished in clouds of shrapnel and Seventeens screamed. More exes vanished in splashes of dark blood and rotted meat. Rodney staggered back as a hundred rounds punched through him like a swarm of high-caliber hornets.
The counters dropped into double digits, single, and the cannons clanged open. The silence was deafening.
Rodney stood up and coils of meat unspooled from his stomach. The intestines spilled over the ground and he reached down to tear them loose. “Someone hasn’t been paying attention,” he laughed. “Body shots don’t do nothing and we don’t get tired. Twenty minutes with your boy toy and I’m still fresh and ready to go.”
He lunged at the armor and they met eye to eye. His massive fists clanged against the armored helmet. He drove his knee up into the battlesuit’s crotch and jerked it a foot off the ground.
Cerberus brought her own knee up and heard his pelvis crack. She shoved him away and slammed her gauntlet into his ragged face.
He grabbed a gun barrel in his hands and twisted. Metal shrieked as he tore the cannon away from the battlesuit’s arm.
Inside the helmet a handful of warnings flashed. Two subsystems shut down on their own to prevent shorts.
The giant lifted the cannon over his shoulder like a club and grinned. His swing caught the battlesuit in the shoulder. The blow echoed inside the armor, rattling her teeth. Her viewscreens flared and sizzled with static.
“I’m death incarnate,” he bellowed. “I killed the Gorgon. I killed the world. And it just makes me stronger!”
“Yeah, you’re big and tough,” Cerberus said. “And you know what else?”
She slammed her fist forward with a crackle of electricity. The arcs lashed at Rodney before the impact hurled him across the street. The battlesuit left cracks in the pavement as it raced forward, knocking exes aside, and sank its fingers into the giant’s ribcage. She hefted him to his feet and a piledriver slammed into his face. Teeth sprayed across the intersection.
“You’re meat,” she roared. “I’m steel and you’re nothing but a bag of meat.”
The second punch shattered his cheekbone and one side of his face sagged like putty. She brought both fists down and his shoulder blades crumbled beneath them.
The broken giant looked up at her. “He meant something to you, eh?”
“Yes,” growled the battlesuit.
“Ahhh.” What was left of Rodney’s face split in an evil, cracked grin. “Sucks to be you.”