Ex-Patriots

by Peter Clines

  “A hit from what?” I looked up at Kennedy, standing near Freedom on the tower. I could almost see her grinding her teeth.

  “I don’t know, First Sergeant!”

  There were voices in the background when she talked. I could hear somebody muttering and another woman. Sorensen’s wife, wanting to know why they’d stopped. There was an edge to her voice.

  A tiny figure leaped from the passenger side of the Guardian. There was a spare gas can on the roof. You wouldn’t carry one in combat, but it’s not like the exes had snipers hiding on rooftops. He looked around for a moment then dove back inside and slammed the door.

  The exes saw him moving. They heard the door. They started to veer away from the captain’s grenade show and stumble toward the armored vehicle. A few by the fence turned and we shot them in the back of the head.

  Washington came back on the radio. “Seven, this is Twelve. There’s no gas.”

  “Twelve, this is Seven. Explain.”

  “Seven, this is Twelve. There are no spare cans. We have no gasoline.”

  I saw Kennedy shoot a glare down at Gus and Wilson. I’d be the first to think they fucked up, except I saw them loading two cans on the Guardian an hour before the mission. They should’ve been there.

  Freedom set off another wave of explosions away from the carrier. A few exes paused, but most of them kept heading for the Guardian. Movement trumps sound in their tiny brains.

  The grenades didn’t help things in the carrier, either. Civilians don’t do well with explosions that aren’t on television. Washington came back on the radio and a girl’s voice was shrieking in the background. “Start the engine,” she was yelling. “Please start the engine.”

  “Seven, this is Twelve,” said Washington, “how should we proceed?”

  The first of the exes had reached the Guardian. They could see the people inside through the narrow windows. They started clawing at the sides of the vehicle.

  “Twelve, this is Seven, hold your position,” said Kennedy. “We’re going to figure a way to get you out of there.”

  “Seven, this is Twelve. The Sorensens are not dealing well with this.” The muffled sound of teeth clicking together came over the radio with her voice.

  “Twelve, this is Seven, understood,” she said. “Hold your position.”

  There were about twenty exes around the armored vehicle. In five minutes there were going to be twice as many. “Twelve to Seven. Copy.”

  “Don’t make me run for it,” said Adams in the background of the Guardian. I never thought he’d be one to panic. First night jitters, I guess. “Please don’t make me run.”

  “What’s going on?” Sorensen was next to me. “Why did they stop out there?”

  Freedom dropped a few grenades on the exes heading for the transport. It pulped some of them, but once the haze cleared I could see things with no legs dragging themselves towards the armored carrier. One of them had a hole in its stomach that daylight shined through.

  Adams snapped. He kicked open the door of the Guardian, knocked a few exes back, and tried to run. He was an Unbreakable, after all. He had a chance. Not much of one, but a chance.

  Then he yanked open the back door and pulled the girl out after him. Sorensen’s daughter. He was still going to try to get her to the base. Blood was gushing out of his nose where she’d tried to fight him off or something.

  The doc pressed himself against the gate. I pulled him back so the exes wouldn’t chew his fingers off. “What’s he doing?” shouted Sorensen. “What’s he doing?”

  Adams knocked down a bunch of exes. Hit them with his shoulder one after another. Even opened up on a few with his Bravo. He was maybe thirty yards from the Guardian, dragging the wailing girl behind him, when he stumbled. Stumble’s not the best word. He just jerked to a stop. At first I thought he slipped up on some zombie-mush from the barrage. Eddie Franklin had a better view and he told me later it was like one of his legs cramped up or something in the middle of the stride. A few people in the towers tried to give him cover fire, but it wasn’t enough.

  The girl was screaming for her father. He heard her. We all heard her.

  The exes swarmed over them. Even this far out we saw flashes of red from the girl. Adams fought for a few moments, even after his ACUs turned red. They were hidden by a press of exes, so we didn’t see them die. But I’m pretty sure we heard it, even over all the chattering teeth.

  Sorensen started howling. No other word for it. Just this raw sound coming out of him.

  Someone tried to pull the rear door shut on the Guardian and got dragged out. Three or four dead things were forcing their way through the driver’s door at the same time. I remember I heard screaming through the radio and the same screams off in the distance. It was a creepy stereo effect that made my stomach churn. Screams and gunfire and teeth.

  I kept waiting for Washington—for Britney—to leap out of the transport and up onto the relative safety of the roof. She could last for an hour or two up there. Long enough for us to get another Guardian or a Humvee or something out there.

  Sorensen was wailing in my arms. “Do something!” He looked at me and shouted up at Freedom. “Why aren’t you helping them?”

  Somebody yanked my radio out of my ear. Kennedy was standing next to me. She’d leaped down from the tower. “Sergeant Harrison,” she told me, “escort the doctor away from the fence.”

  Sorensen grabbed her sleeve. “You have to help them,” he screamed. He was crying so much his beard had two wet streaks in it. “You have to do something!”

  “I’ll lead the recovery team,” I said. “Twenty-one can be out there in ten min—”

  “Sergeant,” snapped Kennedy, “I am ordering you to escort the doctor out of sight of the fence and into that building. Clear?” She pointed over my shoulder.

  “Yes, First Sergeant.” That’s when I knew Britney was dead. They were all dead. “Clear.”

  I dragged the doctor away. I could bench press over nine hundred pounds, but he was twisting and flailing and shrieking and trying to get to the gate. If you’ve ever tried to hold a really determined four-year-old, that’s what I was dealing with. I didn’t look back. My radio was dangling around my neck and I could still hear the screams. There were less of them, but one of them was a woman.

  I kicked open the doors of the admin building, broke one of the hinges, and dropped Sorensen into a lobby chair. He was just gone. He wasn’t moving. There was a vacant look in his eyes I remember from a few guys after their first live fire test. He couldn’t process what was happening. Who could blame him? He’d just seen his daughter taken down in front of him.

  I thought about Britney. Three hours ago she’d been alive. I was very cold all of a sudden. Cold and empty, like everything in my belly had just vanished and left me hollow. I thought about sitting down, but I had a feeling I wouldn’t get back up if I did. I leaned against the wall.

  Britney was dead. Everyone in Twelve was dead. There was never going to be an Army Band again. No horn lessons for kids. No nights playing jazz down in the Gaslamp. Nothing.

  “Sergeant Harrison?” The doctor’s voice was small and reedy. He was hoarse from screaming.

  “Yes, sir?”

  He looked up at me. It was like locking eyes with a sad dog. He was calling me by name, but I don’t think he really knew who I was.

  “Are they...” he started. He coughed, cleared his throat, and whispered, “Are they going out soon to rescue Eva and Madelyn?”

  Chapter 20

  NOW

  St. George pushed the last bit of toast into his mouth. He couldn’t remember how long it had been since he had butter. He almost felt guilty for eating it.

  Across from him, Stealth sat before an empty plate with her arms crossed. She hadn’t made a sound since they’d been led to the officer’s mess for breakfast and sat down alone.

  He pushed the plate a few inches away. “Are you going to eat anything?”

  “No.”

>   “You didn’t eat anything last night, either.”

  “As usual, George, your attention to detail is beyond compare.”

  “You should eat something to keep your strength up. Might make you less grouchy, too.”

  Her head tilted inside the hood. “You are making a joke at my expense.”

  “In a good-natured way. You do need to eat.”

  “I ate last night in my assigned quarters.”

  “Ate what?”

  “Food from the dinner with Colonel Shelly.”

  “You smuggled food back to your room?”

  “I did.”

  “Weren’t you worried about someone watching you eat with all these cameras?”

  “There are three in my quarters,” she said. “I disabled the two visible ones and allowed them to think I had not discovered the one concealed in the air vent. I ate with my back to it.”

  “And then what? Slept in your uniform?”

  “Of course.”

  St. George stood up and stretched. “So you still don’t trust them?”

  “I maintain a healthy skepticism, yes.”

  A sergeant marched into the mess hall. “Good morning, ma’am, sir,” he said. “I have messages for you. Colonel Shelly has asked for a meeting with you at eleven-thirty hours to discuss reintegrating Los Angeles into controlled territory. Also Doctor Morris asked if you could join her in D lab once you’re done eating.”

  “Where is that?”

  “The far side of the complex, ma’am. East side, heading north. It’s the only tall building without satellite dishes on the roof.” He held a folded piece of paper out to her. “We also received a message from your people at the Mount. The colonel asked that you get any such communications as soon as possible.”

  Stealth glanced at the sheet of paper and handed it off to St. George.

  Just checking in. Hope things are going good with our new friends. Dark clouds here since last night, might even rain. Otherwise all good.

  —— Hiram Eggplant Jarvis

  “When was this received?” she asked.

  “About twenty minutes ago, I think, ma’am.”

  “Thank you, sergeant.”

  He gave her a polite bow of his head and left.

  The blank planes of her mask shifted. “We have a problem, George.”

  “I kind of gathered.” He held up the paper. “Unless eggplant is Jarvis’s middle name, I’m guessing it’s a code?”

  “It is, as I am sure the military has already deduced.”

  “And it means...?”

  “The message is authentic. Jarvis was to use the name of a vegetable we do not grow in the main garden as his middle name, rotating in a new name for each communication. Zzzap did not return to the Mount.” She strode out of the mess hall.

  He took a few quick steps to catch up with her. “What?”

  “Before we left I instructed Jarvis in a series of phrases and compromise words to use in any communications. References to the weather deal with us. The mention of the sun, or lack thereof, tells me Zzzap has gone missing.”

  “I think you might be overreacting just a bit.”

  “The message indicates he has been absent since last night. We were told on our arrival he had just left to return to the Mount. Since you did not see him there, the logical assumption is he went missing sometime after leaving Krypton Base. Assuming he did leave the base.”

  They pushed open a double set of doors and stepped out into the morning sun. Stealth looked even more like a walking shadow in the brilliant light.

  “Assuming he didn’t just go sightseeing or something,” said St. George. “He’s gone off flitting around the world before. You know what he told me the morning after the Fourth? He’s been thinking of flying to the Moon. Just to check it out. He was pretty sure he could make it there in under an hour.”

  “He has always made a point of telling us where he was going and for how long.”

  “Telling us, yeah. It might not occur to him to tell anyone else. Not until he gets back, anyway. You’ve got to admit, Barry can get a little absent-minded at times.”

  She stopped walking and turned to him. “You do not find this disturbing?”

  “A little bit, yeah,” he said. He glanced around and dropped his voice. “But I’m not going to declare war on the U. S. Army just because I feel a little disturbed. Do I disagree with some of their choices? Yes. Are they doing some weird things with the exes? Hell, yes. But it’s still America we’re talking about. From what Shelly was saying last night it sounds like the President might even still be alive and holed up at NORAD or something.”

  “NORAD could be as much a trap as a safe haven if a single infected person was inside. Besides, Shelly did not say the President was still alive.”

  “Yeah, but he also didn’t say he was dead, and he did say he was still getting orders from above.”

  “I hope you are right, George. But there are too many people depending on us to not make contingency plans.”

  * * *

  “I don’t know,” said Danielle. She glanced up from the circuits she was soldering. “Maybe he’s just off checking out other cities or something again.”

  St. George threw his head back and sighed with relief. “That’s what I said.”

  The redhead bent to her work again. “Besides, what could they even do to him? He’s probably invulnerable to everything they’ve got on this base, even with all the super-soldiers.”

  “Zzzap is,” said Stealth. “Barry is not.”

  “Look,” said St. George, “we’ll ask the colonel about it again at this meeting. Until then, I think we need to let this drop. I don’t want to mess anything up with accusations and then have Barry show up half an hour later bragging he spent the night racing between Hubble and the space station. Okay?”

  Stealth gave him a look he could sense through her mask. The one that meant she thought he was being foolish. “Very well, George,” she said. “If you feel this is the correct path, I shall defer to your judgment.”

  Danielle finished her work on the circuit board, blew on it, and removed it from the small clamps. She lowered it into a box that resembled a small metal coffin and reached in with a screwdriver to fasten the board in place. “In happier news,” she said, “I realized something.”

  “Please,” said St. George, “share the happier news.”

  The redhead glanced at Stealth. “You know what I said yesterday about not wanting to do all these repairs and upgrades because I thought it’d feel like giving up?”

  The cloaked woman gave a single nod.

  “Well, starting this last night didn’t feel like giving up,” said Danielle. “It made me feel guilty.”

  St. George tilted his head. “Guilty?”

  “I should’ve been doing all this stuff months ago. It’s easy work. I had enough of the parts.” She glanced up from her work again. “And people were depending on me. That’s been stuck in the back of my mind all morning.”

  Danielle pulled the screwdriver away and picked up a studded metal plate the size of a hardcover book. It had a shaft on the back that slotted into something inside the little coffin. There was a loud clack as it settled into place.

  “Shelly was right,” she said. “I wasn’t supposed to be the one in the suit. But I volunteered for it. I wanted to be Cerberus, and that’s who I am now. And I think I’m needed at the Mount a lot more than here.”

  “I am pleased to hear your decision,” said Stealth.

  St. George rapped a knuckle on the steel box. “So what is this, anyway?”

  The redhead gave a wicked grin. “It’s a new weapons mount to replace the one Peasy tore off. I’ve been playing with this thing in my head and on paper for almost two years. I might be able to have another one built and both installed by tomorrow.”

  St. George smiled. “Just in time to go home?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I think so.”

  * * *

  “Colonel Shelly g
ot tied up with some administrative things,” said Smith. Today’s suit was charcoal gray with a crimson tie. “He asked if I could go over things with you in his place.”

  Stealth crossed her arms. “This meeting is such a low priority he could neither attend himself nor send one of his staff?”

  “Is that a problem?”

  Stealth glared at the young man for a moment. Her head shifted in the hood as she glanced at St. George. He could see the effort it took her to relax. “No,” she said. “It is not.”

  “Good,” said Smith. “Thank you.”

  “We’ve got a couple questions, too,” said St. George. “A few things we want to double-check with you.”

  “Do you mind if we do these first?” Smith held up a clipboard covered with scrawled phrases and sentences. “I’ll answer anything you want afterwards. I’ve just got a lot of this fresh in my mind and I don’t want to miss anything.”

  A twist of gray smoke curled out of the hero’s nose. “I suppose so.”

  “Thanks.” Smith looked at his notes. “Now, what’s going to happen over the next few weeks is an assessment, just like I mentioned back at the Mount. The Army’s going to look at your defenses and make sure they’re adequate for the threat we’re facing. If they are, great. If not, they’ll help improve them. Odds are they’ll just leave you to keep running things the way you have. You’re doing fine, so why mess with something that’s not broken, right?”

  St. George gave Stealth a cautious glance. “Okay,” he said.

  “Can we depend on the Army for medical supplies and ammunition?”

  “Resources gets more complicated,” Smith told her, “but medical supplies are a definite yes. That includes some food and vitamin supplements, as well. The military will do an inventory and see what you already have. They’re going to give you supplies for the Mount, but they’re also going to need some things in return, just so you know.”