Ex-Patriots

by Peter Clines

  It is true, by the way. Some schools give students straight A’s if their roommate dies. And if I’d known what an animal her roommate would be during grief sex, Christy would’ve died a few weeks sooner.

  Anyway, it was after the Christy incident that I started thinking a lot more about what I did and what I could do with it besides getting good grades and porn star-level sex every weekend. College wasn’t going to last forever, after all. I needed a post-graduation plan. Something more than the grad school and grades of my choice. Summa cum laude would attract too much attention, but a solid cum laude would make my resume believable without being noteworthy, wherever I ended up.

  It’s amazing how many people in the world make a living by backstabbing or blackmailing or screwing their way into a position of almost-power, and it’s amazing how many people let them. All those clingers and hangers-on who get maximum benefits for minimum effort. The trick is just to find the most powerful people you can and latch on. In that sense, I wasn’t doing anything any different than thousands of other people.

  And the thing is, most people are easy-to-manipulate idiots anyway. They want someone to tell them what to do, no matter how much they say otherwise. Just pay attention to any election and see how often morons get convinced to vote against their own best interests. Heck, they’ll cheer and sing as they screw themselves over and make someone else rich and powerful.

  The White House was the obvious first choice. Too high-profile, though. Plus, at best you’ve got eight years before someone new comes in and cleans house. These days most politicians are way too partisan to hang onto someone from the last administration’s staff, even if they’re doing a good job. I could make them keep me, sure, but then I’d stick out like a sore thumb. And the goal, as Monty Python says, is not to be seen.

  Then there was a month checking out Fortune 500 businesses. It’d be easy to have some CEO hire me on as a personal consultant or something. Thing is, most of those guys are rich, but their power’s limited to one little sphere of influence. Think about it. How many high-end movie studio executives can you name? None, right? They step outside of Hollywood and they’re just another schmuck in a town car.

  So what did that leave me?

  I was getting a guy to write a biochem paper for me senior year when I had my epiphany. I was wasting my time trying to find someone with all the right qualifications. I didn’t need to find powerful people.

  I needed to make powerful people.

  One college job fair later I was recruited for the Department of Homeland Security, complete with a generous signing bonus. DHS was pretty much custom made for me. What better place for an influential guy than a whole government agency created to lean over everyone’s shoulders?

  I got assigned a nice office and spent six months trying to find what I wanted. The Cerberus Battle Armor System seemed like the best place to start. I could get the project greenlit, into production, and then have a whole platoon of armored bodyguards throwing themselves in front of the guy I was already standing behind.

  Plus, to be honest, I hadn’t nailed a redhead in a while. Doctor Danielle Morris was rude and talked to me like I was an idiot. Her whole superior attitude made it even more fun later when she was on all fours in bed.

  Of course, three months after I got myself assigned to the Cerberus project the superheroes showed up. Honest-to-God superheroes flying around, fighting crime, shooting ray beams, and all that stuff.

  I admit, there was a week or two when the thought of a costume ran through my mind. I pictured myself squaring off against the Mighty Dragon or the Awesome Ape and getting them under my control. Blockbuster and Cairax both seemed pretty powerful, too. It’d be like collecting action figures or something.

  Then I came to my senses. No masks. No capes. Nothing that involved revealing myself. Everybody goes after the guy they see. Nobody goes after the man behind the throne.

  Maybe a month later I heard rumors about some Reagan-era program, Project Krypton. It was like the Star Wars defense system—no one expected it to work. It was just something else the Soviets would need to match our research on and drive themselves deeper into bankruptcy doing it. Except Project Krypton worked. They got some serious results before the project was mothballed at the end of the Cold War.

  When all those superheroes started showing up, though, it got people thinking. Especially me. They reactivated the program. I got transferred to it.

  I mean, the battlesuit is a great idea, but it’s a thing. Things can break down. They can run out of bullets or batteries. And your power runs out with them. But if the power’s something inherent, something the soldier is, not something they’re wearing, then it can’t go away.

  Besides, the military was a great place for me. After knowing a few over-eager ROTC students in college, I almost didn’t need any power to manipulate them. Say terrorism and patriotism in the right order and half the soldiers I met would shoot their own mother without asking why. The other half... well, they’d do it if I asked them.

  Granted, when the exes showed it up it was a big wrench in my plans. Now nobody else could wash out of the program. I was still weeding through candidates, figuring which ones were easiest to influence without risking their brains bursting. Too many people die of multiple aneurisms and it starts to look suspicious. It starts to draw attention.

  So I had to put a bit more thought into getting rid of the troublesome super-soldiers. The ones whose morals or sense of duty were too strong. But it wasn’t that hard. After all, they’ll do or believe anything I tell them. I can make them think their vehicle’s going to run out of gas. Or they should run full-speed into a mob of exes when the smart thing to do is to sit tight. Or that they should put a gun in their mouth.

  Now, though, it looks like I might get the best of both worlds. The heroes are alive out in Los Angeles, and they’ve got a pile of civilians with them. Hell, the Cerberus suit might even still be out there somewhere. At first Shelly was all for letting them stay self-governed and alone, but a quick Q and A changed his mind for him. So now a team’s heading out to welcome them back to the United States of America. I’ll ask if I can tag along, too. In an advisory position, of course.

  After all, what do you get when you’re the ultimate power behind the throne?

  You get ultimate power.

  Chapter 27

  NOW

  There were, by Specialist MacLeod’s guesstimate, about a thousand exes around the Krypton fence. He was good at guesstimates. Not even three years ago he’d worked the produce department at the Albertsons on West 24th where he’d amazed coworkers with the ability to put a number to avocados on an endcap or jalapenos in a bin. Since he’d signed up, he was still amazing people, but now it was spent brass on the firing range or zombies at the fence.

  A thousand was more than usual, but not by a huge amount. A lot of them seemed to be stumbling across the desert these past few days and joining the mobs at the chainlink. The open space muffled their chattering teeth, but not by much.

  Still, it was quieter up in a watchtower than down on the ground. Morning run around the perimeter always creeped him out. A lot of the dead things at the fence were wearing the same uniform he was, and he didn’t like to see it up close. Heck, the ex-soldiers walking the perimeter were bad enough.

  His watch ended at fourteen-hundred. Fifteen more minutes and he was off duty. Pulling a shift alone sucked and he couldn’t wait until it was over.

  He looked along the north side of the fence and gave a wave to D.B. over at the next tower. He was stuck with a solitary shift, too. The soldier waved back and MacLeod wandered across his tower’s small deck to look down at the gates. Three layers of steel pipe and chainlink between him and the dead.

  Movement made him glance back into the base. A figure was wobbling across the open space between the gate and the helipad. At first MacLeod thought the back and forth gait might mean it was First Sergeant Kennedy, but just as quick he realized it was more of a stagger th
an a pleasant sway. He lifted his binoculars and confirmed one of the ex-soldiers was heading for the gate.

  He picked up the tower’s handset and punched in the extension for the zombie handlers. “Short Bus, this is Tower two,” he said, “I think one of your kids is skipping class. You know anything about it?”

  “Negative, Tower. Do we have a dead Nest?”

  “Don’t know. Doesn’t seem to be feral, just wandering.”

  “Copy. Someone probably gave it a vague order and now it’s trying to walk to Washington or something. I’ll send somebody out to retrieve it.”

  “Copy that, Short Bus.”

  Below him the ex had smacked into the inside fence and was still trying to walk through it. The zombie tilted and slid along the chainlink. It swayed as its head and shoulders slapped the fence again and again.

  MacLeod sighed and wished he had a cigarette. He looked west and saw more figures dotting the horizon. Damn, there were a lot of exes today. He wondered what made them all wander in the same direction.

  Over the chatter of teeth he heard a faint beep. Then two more. Then a fourth and fifth. He looked back down to the gate.

  The lone ex was at the keypad for the gate controls. One finger from each hand stuck out. It stabbed at the keys with quick, precise movements.

  It took MacLeod a few seconds to register what he was seeing. By then the red lights had started to flash. He saw movement between the fences as soldiers ran to safety. The exes outside the fence lumbered toward the gate with far too much purpose. Their teeth had stopped chattering. After two years of listening to the click-click-click of enamel he thought nothing could be more unnerving. A hiss filed the air, a sucking noise, and he realized they were breathing. A thousand exes were pulling air into their shriveled lungs.

  When they spoke, it was in one voice.

  “CALL ME LEGION,” roared the exes, “FOR I AM MANY.”

  Their leathery voices echoed across the desert plains and between the buildings of Krypton and broke down into a dry laughter.

  * * *

  “It’s a nine-foot-tall, red-white-and-blue robot built like a linebacker,” growled St. George. “Where the hell did it go?”

  After watching a dozen or so soldiers file out after the battlesuit, Sorensen had asked to be left at the workshop. He seemed fine with being left behind, and said he’d try to contact Freedom or Smith through normal channels. St. George and Zzzap had returned to the skies to hunt down whoever was wearing the Cerberus battle armor.

  Invisibility field? said Zzzap.

  “I think if Danielle could turn invisible, she would’ve mentioned it before now.”

  Yeah, but that isn’t Danielle.

  Legion’s roar echoed up from the base below them. The two heroes looked at each other.

  “That’s that,” said St. George. “We’re out of time.”

  Joy.

  “Fly the perimeter, make sure there aren’t any gates or openings at risk. Keep an eye out for Stealth, Danielle, or the Cerberus suit. Burn any ex you find.”

  On it. You?

  “I’ll take the main gate. I’m willing to bet he goes for the obvious choice again.”

  Zzzap nodded. Grab a radio if you can find one. I’ll be listening for you.

  They split up. St. George headed south for the base’s entrance. He was a few hundred yards away when he saw muzzle flashes and the echo of gunshots reached him. He dropped to the ground and his boots scraped the concrete.

  One man, a specialist with MACLEOD on his coat, jabbed at a control panel again and again. The ex laying at his feet was missing most of its skull. The soldier slapped the box, entered the code once more, and threw a panicked glance at the gate.

  The three chainlink gates had only opened a few feet, but it was enough. Now they were crammed with bodies as exes pushed and heaved at the gate. At least a dozen blocked the innermost gate from closing, and more clogged each opening past that. The motors made a grinding noise over the chattering of teeth.

  A few dozen soldiers—the less-experienced civilian ones, the hero realized—were at the gates. They beat at exes with rifle butts and tried to force them back. A few fired close-range bursts, but most of them were too panicked to aim for the head. Their bullets tore off arms and blew holes in chests. Less than half the ones that went down stayed down, and many of them fell inside the gate.

  “Back off,” shouted St. George. “Give yourselves room to shoot.”

  The hero pushed between two soldiers and put his heel through a teenage ex’s skull as it crawled along the ground. He grabbed a dead man wearing a Sam’s Club vest and threw the zombie up and over the fences. It cleared the first two and hooked a leg on the last one as it descended. It hung there and flailed in slow motion.

  All at once the exes stopped chattering. They looked at the hero advancing on the gate and grinned. “DRAGON MAN,” they said. “NOT GOING TO SAVE THE DAY THIS TIME, ESSE.”

  St. George brought his fists down like hammers and shattered two skulls, then swung them out to break two more. The dead things pushed at the fence line. Close to fifty of them threw their weight at the innermost gate.

  He looked back at the soldiers. “Come on,” he shouted. “Help me clear the damned gate! Line up and take your shots.”

  “THEY’RE TOO SCARED,” said the exes. “I BEEN WATCHIN’ FOR MONTHS. THESE SOLDIER BOYS ARE GREEN AND YELLOW.” The dead things broke into another fit of laughter.

  St. George sucked in air and sprayed flames out onto the exes. It burned hair and melted eyes. Some of the brittle clothes and skin caught fire. They flailed and stumbled back for a moment. Then their teeth started chattering again and the dead things shambled forward. He swept his arm in front of him and broke skulls, jaws, and necks.

  It made enough of a gap for him to grab one side of the gate and push it two feet more closed. That got him close enough to grab the other section and yank at it. He heaved them together, crushing exes between them, and a smell reached his nose. Just beneath the scent of burnt hair and flesh was metallic smoke.

  The soldier by the keypad freaked out. “The motors,” MacLeod yelled. “They burnt out the motors for the gate!”

  “I can close it,” shouted St. George. “Just take down a few of them!”

  Something heavy stomped up behind him, and two massive hands clanged against the pipes lining the gate. Servos hummed and Cerberus pushed the two halves of the gate together. Exes crumpled and burst between the chainlink panels.

  “See?” crowed the battlesuit. “Told you I could do good stuff, St. George. You shoulda had more faith in me.”

  “Cesar?” St. George looked at the huge eyes looming over him. “Is that you?”

  “Damn straight,” said the titan. It turned and pressed itself against the gate, using its bulk to hold the two sections shut. The exes reached through the chainlink with pale fingers that scrabbled on the armor plates.

  “How the hell did you get here?”

  “Was easy, man,” said the battlesuit. “Knew you guys would need me, cause everyone knows you can’t trust the government, right?” He slurred the word into goverrment. “So I switched into the helicopter while we were loading the suit up back at the Mount. Then I snuck out of the helicopter into a jeep, and then she picked the jeep up with the suit and I was in. It was that easy. Pretty cool, huh?”

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  The titan shrugged and its shoulders scraped on the chainlink fence. “I was going to once we were all alone, see, but Stealth kept hanging around with Doctor Morris and then she shut the suit off and it made me, like, sedated, y’know?”

  “Where the fuck are the Gatekeepers?” bellowed one of the soldiers. He looked at Barracks Eight a hundred yards away. “It’s been over ten minutes since the perimeter alarms went off.”

  One man with sergeant’s stripes and the name STEWART separated himself from the others. “Yates, Benton,” he snapped, “go find out what the hell is taking them so long. The
rest of you take up positions. You know the drill—single shot, pick your targets, now move.” He glared at St. George and whispered something into his radio.

  “Hey,” said the battlesuit. There was a squawk from the speakers and Cesar’s next words were a metallic whisper. The armored skull nodded at the sergeant. “I can hear that guy talking in my head. They’re coming for us, man. We gotta split.”

  * * *

  Freedom and his squad burst from the old reactor complex and double-timed it across the base. Their pace would’ve made Olympic sprinters jealous. It didn’t feel fast enough.

  “Unbreakable Twenty-two,” he snapped into his radio. “This is Unbreakable Six.”

  “Unbreakable Six, this is Twenty-two,” came the reply.

  “Twenty-two, this is Six,” said Freedom. “Main gate, double-time. Hostiles inside and out.”

  “Six, this is Twenty-two. Understood. ETA five minutes.”

  It was going to take him six minutes to get all the way back across the base. Smith had suggested checking on Zzzap, and sure enough the electrical man was out. Sorensen was missing, too. He was supposed to be helping the base medics take care of Shelly. According to the soldiers on guard duty at the old reactor, the doctor had sided with the heroes. He’d led St. George there and helped free the prisoner.