The wet noise hadn’t come from the ex. The side of his uniform was soaked in blood from his armpit to mid-thigh. The wetness hadn’t gone away. He’d just gone numb. Shock. He was going into shock.
He battered away another dead man and struggled through the growing crowd of exes. He just needed to finish the mission. He had to get to the demon.
Then he could rest.
Madelyn ran to her high point. The sword bounced and swung on her hip. An ex stumbled into her path and she elbowed it out of the way. She was supposed to climb the remains of the street sweeper. She needed to be high up and close enough so she couldn’t be blocked when she saw Stealth’s signal.
She pulled herself up into the cab and swung her legs around onto the hood. A quick twist and she crawled over the windshield onto the roof. It wobbled under her weight.
There were exes everywhere, more than she’d ever seen before. A thousand of them, at least. The sounds of the fight were drawing them in from all over the city. The clicking teeth and the rumbling clouds drowned out almost everything.
St. George dragged the monster up into the sky where Zzzap waited. Stealth was on the roof of an SUV, right where she said she’d be, with the big shotgun-pistol Captain Freedom called Lady Liberty. And Freedom was …
Then she saw him, covered in blood and vanishing beneath the swarm of exes in the crater.
There was a sound like a falling redwood as Cairax hit the pavement. She glanced at the fight and back to the huge captain who’d been friends with her dad.
Madelyn leaped off the street sweeper and ran to the crater, shoving exes as she went. Throwing herself into the pit was just like stage diving, at least from what she’d seen on TV and in movies. She dragged herself though the crowd, pushing and shoving and kicking at the exes. It was a struggle. They all wanted to get to Freedom as much as she did, maybe more.
She jumped into the air and kicked off a dead man’s hip. It got her close enough to grab Freedom around the neck. She threw her legs around his waist and pulled herself tight against him.
He winced and his eyes went wide. “What are you—”
“Trust me,” she told him. She pressed her body against his and squeezed with her legs. She could hear his heart thumping through his body armor. He was cold. She could feel his blood seeping through her jeans and into her coat and tried not to think about it.
The exes slowed their frantic pawing. Their grips loosened and their dead gazes drifted away. The chattering teeth moved away from Freedom. The ones on the edges of the mob wandered off. The closest ones bumped against him a few times before stumbling away.
Madelyn smiled. “Welcome to my world,” she said.
“Finish the mission,” he told her.
“We’re going to. Come on.” She loosened her grip on him and shifted her weight so she could slide over his shoulder. He put up a hand to help her. A moment later she was riding piggyback on his broad back.
He wheezed, but didn’t cry out. “Where to?”
“Get me to the far side of the street,” she said. She shook her hips and the sword swayed on her belt. “I need to be able to hand this thing off to Stealth.”
Cairax Murrain rolled its shoulder and broke St. George’s half nelson. The hero fell away and a shrug from the demon knocked him back. Cairax turned on him with a growl.
St. George went to throw a punch and an ex snagged his arm. The zombie bit down on his wrist and its teeth crumbled against his skin. He shook it off in an instant, brought his fist around, and Cairax’s tail wrapped around his throat.
The thick rope of muscle heaved him into the air. It wasn’t strong enough to choke him, but he couldn’t get enough leverage to pull it loose. He focused on his shoulders and tried to haul Cairax back into the air, but the tail shook him hard and dragged him back down.
Cairax pulled him close. The demon’s teeth whisked against each other as it spoke. Its breath smelled like rotted milk. “If dear Maxwell dies,” Cairax said, “it may save your soul, but your heart shall still be my feast.”
“I hope you choke on it,” he gasped over the tail.
Gunfire echoed behind the demon and it turned with a growl. As the horn-covered head turned, St. George saw rounds spark off the jutting points and one of the wider tusks. It sounded like someone with a machine gun.
Stealth stood on the roof of the SUV, her Glocks firing in each hand. They ran dry and she let the magazines tumble into the crowd of exes below. The guns spun in her hands, her fingers danced between grip and belt, and she was firing again. Bullets sprayed across the demon’s face like heavy rain.
Cairax took a few steps toward her, and her guns hit empty again. Its hooves thudded against the pavement and trampled a dead woman beneath them. It brushed a trio of exes out of the way with a sweep of its arm.
Then it glanced down.
The three exes had wrapped their arms tight around its long forearm. Each one held on without biting, or even gnashing their teeth at the air. They glared up at the demon.
“You ready for round two, pinche pendejo?” they asked in unison.
Cairax had time to snarl before the exes pounced on it. The tide of the undead shifted as all the exes in the area charged the demon. A dozen grabbed its other arm. A platoon’s worth of them tackled its
