Ex-Patriots Read Online Free PDF

teeth to stand next to Cerberus. The
titan was staring out at Melrose Avenue. The gates were mobbed with
exes, as always. Since last fall’s battle with the Seventeens, it
felt like there were always a few more than there had been
before.
    Two years in and most people still said exes
rather than zombies. Thinking of them as ex-humans made it easier
somehow. They reached between the bars and flailed at the two
heroes with slow, clumsy limbs. Their eyes were pale and cloudy.
St. George knew from experience they were dry to the touch. All
their flesh was chalky gray, colored with dark purple bruises where
blood pooled up beneath the skin.
    Most of the exes at the gate carried some
injury that would’ve been fatal if they were still alive. Several
of them had gunshot wounds. More than a few were missing fingers or
hands. A dead woman close to the hinge had scraped two ruts in her
forehead, right down to the bone, swaying back and forth against
the gate. Another one was charred to the point it was featureless.
An elderly woman in a bathrobe was missing both eyes. A few bodies
back, away from the gate, the hero saw a male ex with a samurai
sword through its chest.
    Here and there, though, were a few of the
worse ones. The ones who still looked human. A little boy with dark
hair, a Pikachu shirt, and chalky eyes. An older man with a beard
who could’ve just spilled a few drops of wine on his shirt. A
well-curved blonde with alabaster skin and full lips. Being in the
plastic surgery capital of the world made for some very
well-preserved dead people.
    All of them worked their jaws up and down,
snapping teeth together again and again. The chattering never let
up. A few of them had turned their mouths into a mess of gore and
shattered enamel, but kept clicking the jagged stumps against each
other.
    Cerberus stared past all of them. It was easy
enough for her to look right over the mob of exes to the bone-white
cross on the other side of the intersection. It stood as tall as
the battlesuit and was marked with three bold words, each carved
into the wood and painted black.
     
    NIKOLAI BARTAMIAN
    GORGON
     
    They’d salvaged what parts of his uniform
they could. The body armor. The duster. The goggles. What was left
of him, what hadn’t been chewed apart, they burned. They’d found
his last requests sitting out in his grungy apartment.
    “This was a lot easier when I used to go out
with you,” she said.
    St. George glanced up at the armored head.
“You never liked doing it.”
    “Never said I did. I just said it used to be
easier.” Cerberus shrugged her massive shoulders and looked away
from the cross. “Let’s get it over with.”
    A few of the guards pulled the additional
support legs from the bars. Two others, Derek and Makana, flexed
their hands inside heavy gloves and stood ready to grab the steel
pipe that rested across the two halves of the gate. The exes
reached for them, and each man batted dead fingers away.
    St. George glanced back at Road
Warrior . The truck’s engine idled and Luke flashed the
headlights at him. The hero gave the driver a thumbs up and shot
into the air.
    He sailed up and over the tall arch of the
gateway. He kicked a few exes as he landed in the wide intersection
and they pinwheeled away, knocking down others as they went. The
hungry dead turned toward him and stumbled away from the gate.
    St. George let them get close. They tried to
drag him down and broke teeth on his stone-hard skin. He batted
them away with a sweep of his arm and they flew back to crash
through the horde. He threw punches and felt skulls shatter under
his knuckles. He grabbed a body by the shoulder and swung it
around, battering even more exes to the ground. His boots came down
to smash their heads. Within two minutes of landing he’d cleared
two dozen of them.
    The gate squeaked open behind him, and he
heard the deep thump of heavy footsteps. Cerberus strode out, her
three-fingered hands letting off arcs of power. Exes