Ex-Patriots by Peter Clines Read Free Book Online

Lee shoved it back
again. “That’s gotta be worth major points.”
    “Vincent Price is dead,” said Al.
    “Well, yeah. They’re all dead.”
    “He was dead before this, fuckwit,” said
Hector. “Like, twenty years ago.”
    The other man scowled. “Are you sure? This
sure looks like him.”
    “Sure,” nodded the tattooed man. “He’s
dead.”
    “Maybe he came back anyway.”
    Al shot him a look. “How the hell would he
come back anyway?”
    Lee shrugged. “It’s Vincent Price. If anyone
was going to come back as a zombie it’d be him.”
    “No,” said Al, “if anyone was going to come
back as a zombie it’d be Bela Lugosi. But he won’t, because he’s
dead, too.” He slid a machete from the scabbard at his side and
chopped through the ex’s neck.
     
    * * *
     
    “Well, that’s something y’all don’t see every
day,” said Jarvis.
    At the center of the psychic’s shop stood a
round table decorated with colored scarves and cloths. Half a dozen
stubby candles had been knocked over. A crystal ball had fallen
from the tabletop and its dusty shards lay near one of the legs.
Tarot cards were scattered and turned at all angles.
    An ex sat behind the table, clacking its
teeth at them. It had been a woman once, Asian by the look of her.
It was in a wheelchair. With the brakes locked, it was wedged
between the seat and the table. Rings shivered on its bony fingers
as it reached mindlessly back and forth with its hands. Every third
or fourth pass it would snag a tarot card and slide it a few inches
on the tabletop.
    “Either y’all want to guess how long it’s
been sitting there like that?”
    “At least two years, looking at the dust,”
said Bee. “Maybe more. She could’ve died right at the start of the
outbreak.”
    “Looks like she tried to give herself one
last reading,” said Paul. “Guess she believed this stuff.” He
prodded open a small fridge with his foot and recoiled from the
smell he set loose.
    “People believe a lot of crap when things get
bad,” said Jarvis. He reached out and pulled one card from the
table. The ex clawed at the metal rings of his sleeve with feeble
fingers. He held up the image of the black knight with a skull
face. “Death,” he said with a smirk. “Guess she was right on
that.”
    “The death card doesn’t mean death,” said
Bee. “It means a transition. A change.”
    Jarvis slid a bowie knife from his belt and
stepped behind the ex. “Well, so she was still right,” he said. He
grabbed its hair, pulled its head back, and sawed through the neck.
When he was done he tossed the skull in the corner. “Let’s see if
there’s anything good in the back room.”
     
    * * *
     
    As St. George predicted, the rest of the
small plaza was picked clean. The big score was the fifty-odd
gallons of gasoline. It took half an hour to pull it all up using a
small hand pump. The scavengers killed another eight exes while
they waited.
    Two hours later they knew the next three
buildings had been stripped clean of useful materials, too. Another
sixteen exes dead, five of them with their necks snapped by the
hero’s bare hands. The scavengers grumbled. Things had been getting
tight in Hollywood proper, but it’d been a while since a mission
was this unsuccessful.
    At Barham Boulevard they found the remains of
a National Guard roadblock. Concrete dividers were flanked with
bright yellow barrels. The water that once weighted them down was
long gone. The dividers blocked half the bridge that crossed over
the Hollywood Freeway towards Universal City. At some point a
jacked-up pickup had tried to crash through the barrier. It had
wrecked a section of the roadblock but ripped up its suspension and
a tire in the process. It sat a few yards onto the bridge. The
paint had faded in the sun and a fine coat of dust had settled
across it. Broken concrete and crumpled yellow plastic trailed
behind it.
    At the far end of the bridge they could see a
matching roadblock and an