Description: Prologue NOW Pretty much everything St. George could see was on fire at this point, including most of the zombies. The fire had started a block south of the Big Wall about four hours earlier, just before sundown. Nobody was sure how. The flames crawled north across a dozen overgrown lawns that hadn''t been watered in five years or rained on in five months. Then they climbed a few trees, and a light wind had pushed embers into the houses. Now three city blocks of inferno lit up the night. The blaze reached for the Big Wall as it looked for more to consume, and the people of the Mount fought back as best they could. Half of them ferried buckets of water out to the flames or beat down the lawns with damp blankets. The other half--and St. George--pulled guard duty, keeping the firefighters safe from the exes. The zombies--the ex-humans--had first appeared years ago. The undead had overrun cities, then countries, then whole continents. In the space of a year, the population of Earth dropped by more than ninety percent. The living population, anyway. Now millions of exes walked the streets of Los Angeles, and hundreds of them stumbled through the flames around the Mount. The click-click-click of their teeth meshed with the pop and crackle of burning wood. Sound and movement attracted them. Sound and movement and food. The one St. George held by the throat pawed at him and clicked its teeth. It flailed at his face and scraped against the black leather of his jacket. The dead thing had a better chance of getting through the leather than through St. George''s stone-like skin. Two of the ex''s gaunt fingers hooked in his long hair but slid free as fast as they''d gotten tangled. Yellow-orange flames raced across its body, burning away clothes and hair. It could''ve been a woman once, or a slim man with long hair. Too much of its body had burned for him to be sure. Ex-flesh didn''t catch fire easily, dried out from years in the sun, but their hair and clothes could burn. Sometimes, when it did, what little fat they had left became fuel, just like a candle. St. George flicked his wrist and the ex sailed across the street, its spine wrapping around a parking sign''s squared-off steel pole. Off to his left, two teams of people slapped at the fire with quilted blankets. Others kept the fabric soaked with water from buckets. They smothered the flames a few inches at a time. It was a slow, steady process, perfected after four or five similar fires over the years. Two more exes lurched toward one of the firefighting teams and a figure loomed out of the smoke to meet them. Captain John Carter Freedom, leader of the 456th Unbreakables super-solider platoon, stood just shy of seven feet tall and almost half that wide. The flickering firelight gleamed across his dark scalp. He reached out and grabbed one of them with a gloved hand that covered the zombie''s shoulder. A flex of his tree-trunk arm sent the dead woman sprawling. His massive fist came around and shattered the other ex''s skull. St. George grabbed a zombie and flung it back the way it came. He tossed another one after it. The second one ended up draped in the branches of a burning tree, biting at the air. A sound brushed against his ears. He''d almost missed it under the crackle of the burning lawns and bushes. He focused on a spot between his shoulder blades, felt an itch, and pushed himself up into the air. His boots went up a foot, then a yard, and then he was twenty feet over the pavement, looking out at the burning buildings and trees. A mob of ex-humans stumbled and staggered up the street. At least another two hundred of them. Men and women and children, all reduced to dead things with endless appetites. St. George had been expecting the sounds of the fire and shouting humans to attract the dead. There were probably similar groups closing in from the east and west. He''d expected them much sooner, truth to be told. He went higher. A few hundred feet up the smoke thinned out and he could see for a few miles in every direction. The city of Los Angeles had been dark for almost five years now, even more so on moonless nights like this one. Downtown was a shadowy hand stretching up toward the starry sky. To the west he could see the black expanse of the Pacific. The only real light came from below him. The Mount, formerly just a re-fortified film studio, had expanded out from the studio''s original boundries. Now it was a huge square that stretched over a good chunk of Hollywood. Surrounding it was the Big Wall, shining lights out into the surrounding streets. The undead filled those streets. Hordes like concert crowds shuffled through the shadows. There were always a few hundred around the wall, but now four or five times that were closing in, drawn by the flickering firelight and the noises that came with it. St. George tapped his radio. "Captain? Company''s coming. Time to go." "Freedom to St. George. Copy that, sir. What direction?" "All of them. Pull everyone back inside the Wall. We''ve got maybe five minutes." "St. George," shouted a voice behind him. "Drop''s ready." He flew back to the triple-stacked cars of the Big Wall. People dashed back and forth across the series of platforms that topped the structure. A dozen of them prepped water drops for him. Trashcans and tall recycling bins, all doubled up so they wouldn''t burst when he lifted them. Usually rainwater filled them, but that went fast in a big fire like this one. The crew had hoses and filled the containers as fast as they could from the weak streams. The rest of the wall-walkers, armed with rifles and pistols, watched for exes. Many of them also carried baseball bats, golf clubs, and other blunt instruments. If an ex slipped past the firefighters, the guards made sure the dead didn''t get any closer. St. George dropped down next to a plastic trash barrel. A man with scruffy blond hair yanked his hose away and stuck it into the next container. "Should have another one ready in about two minutes," he told the superhero, gesturing at one of the other barrels. St. George nodded and worked his fingers underneath the trash barrel. He grabbed the rim with his other hand and heaved. His feet lifted up off the Big Wall and he soared back to the flames, water sloshing out as he went. A nearby lawn with a medium-sized apple tree burned. He swooped down through the air and shook water out of the barrel. It splattered through the leaves of the tree and smothered most of the fire. He made another pass and dumped the rest of his water across the tall grass. The lawn wasn''t out, but it was enough for one of the firefighting teams to leap in with their blankets and pound out the last licks of flame. A blackened, steaming ex lumbered toward the team. St. George dropped down and slammed it with the barrel. The impact knocked the dead thing back into a gaunt zombie in a charred, bloody business suit. Both of them tumbled to the ground. He flew back to the wall and swapped his water barrel for a full one. He could empty all twelve faster than the teams could fill them back up, so he''d drop a few hundred gallons, then keep the exes away from the firefighters until the water team got three or four more refilled. Then the whole cycle would begin again. &n

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