Ex-Heroes by Peter Clines (cheapest way to read ebooks TXT) 📕

coffin. I went to work. I went out on patrol. I went to counseling. People everywhere told me how sorry they were for my loss and assured me things would get better if I just gave it time. That’s all I needed was time. And then I’d go home and feed the thing that had been my wife.

One day, after six weeks of this, I came home and it was gone. Mrs. Halifax, our neighbor from two doors down, was dead on the dining room floor. She had a key, in case we needed her to feed the cats. There was a casserole dish near her right hand. Her right hand was six feet from her body, along with the rest of that arm where it had been gnawed through. She’d been gutted and eaten, by the look of her.

I called the police. I think that was when the denial kicked in. I’d been at work the whole time and dozens of people could vouch for me. There was no evidence, so I couldn’t’ve done anything. Nothing but an empty stretcher in the living room, which a grieving doctor could explain with no problem.

I did nothing wrong. The police agreed I’d done nothing wrong.

That Saturday I heard about the woman attacking some Seventeens outside a movie theater. The woman who clawed and bit and ate an ear. The Channel 7 reporter said they put over twenty rounds into the woman before she stopped.

They brought the body to our morgue. The face was gone. Most of the left hand had been shot off. But it still had Meredith’s hair, and the little scar under her right breast.

I made sure she stayed a Jane Doe.

Two weeks later I heard about another attack. Nine days after that the Mighty Dragon told me Stealth had called in Zzzap to help search the city for “some kind of infection.” By month’s end we had an uprising. The month after that it was a war.

Then the war was over. And Meredith was still gone. And my powers were all but gone. And most of the world was gone.

They’re going to find out. I try to slow down the tests, contaminate the samples, corrupt the data where I can. But there’s only so much I can do.

Julie Connolly is a smart woman. Very smart. If the world hadn’t fallen apart she’d be a top doctor by now, I have no doubt. I think she suspects. She doesn’t know why I’m dragging my feet, can’t believe I’d be messing with results. But it’s nagging in the back of her mind. I can see it in her eyes when she looks at me.

They’re going to find out.

And when they do, they’ll kill me.

GORGON DROVE HIS FIST into Josh’s stomach again.

The doctor slammed into the wall and his handcuffs chimed as he sank down to the lobby floor. “You have to understand,” he coughed. “I wasn’t … I just wasn’t thinking right. Haven’t you ever lost someone you loved?”

“Yes,” growled Gorgon.

They stood in the Roddenberry lobby, the closest Cerberus could get to Stealth’s office. As it was, the battlesuit rested on one knee, its head scraping the ceiling. Zzzap hovered nearby, lighting the entire lobby even as he charred the ceiling panels.

Josh coughed again. “And what would you do, Nick?” he said. “If you could bring Kathy back right now, if you had that power, wouldn’t you use it? Wouldn’t you try to do it?”

The goggles lowered to the floor.

“I did what any of you would’ve done,” he told them. “George, wouldn’t you try to save someone if you had the power? I tried to save the woman I love and I … I made a mistake. That’s all. Just a mistake.”

“You killed the world,” said Stealth. “Billions of people are dead because of what you did.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong!”

St. George was standing off to the side, still bare-chested, kneading his scalp with both hands. “So now what?”

“What do you mean?”

He threw a glance at Josh. “What do we do with him? This is … Jesus, this is huge. This is war crimes huge.”

“He makes Hitler look like a fucking saint,” muttered Gorgon.

“Do we tell everyone? Do we lock him up forever? Do we …” St. George’s voice drifted off.

“I think we’re missing the big issue here.” They all looked at Cerberus. “You started this. Can you stop it?”

Josh turned to her. “What?”

“This all stems from your powers. Can you undo what you did?”

“No.” He shook his head. “No, of course not. I can’t un-heal someone. Don’t you think I would’ve done that years ago if I could?”

This isn’t healing, though, said Zzzap. This is … this is just unnatural.

“Unnatural,” smirked the doctor. “You’re a walking fusion reactor. George is bulletproof. Nick’s a fucking vampire, for Christ’s sake. And you’re saying I did something unnatural?”

Gorgon was still looking at the floor. “Is it tied to you?”

“What?”

“You created all these things with your power. Even if you can’t stop them, are they still linked to you somehow?”

Josh shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe?”

“There is a simple way to find out,” said Stealth.

It was a scene from a Western. She pulled the Glock so fast, like a quick-draw artist, that there was no time to stop her. Josh’s forehead burst before most of them even realized she had the pistol out. St. George was just starting to lift his arm when the doctor’s eyes rolled back in his skull. Josh tipped over backward, hitting the wall just under the splatter. Blood poured out of his mouth and the ruined mass of his nose.

“What the HELL!?!” shouted St. George over the echo of the third gunshot.

Stealth looked at him as she holstered the pistol, and her voice almost sounded confused. “It seemed like the simplest solution to all our problems.”

“You know, every time I start to think there’s really something human under that mask, you go off and—”

Josh lunged up and took in a deep, rattling breath.

Oh, Jesus, said Zzzap. Stealth had her pistol back out.

Josh’s eyes trembled and