by Peter Clines
“If we swing around to the other side of the building, sir, there’s a small lawn. It’s not much, but it’s—”
Don’t worry about it. Can you set the clothes down there?
The soldier did as asked. Zzzap settled closer to the ground, spreading his arms and legs wide. The brilliant wraith dimmed, the air settled, and the dry sound of a vacuum being filled echoed between the buildings. Barry dropped to the steaming tarmac with a thump.
“Sonofabitch!”
“Are you okay?”
He rolled onto his side and reached for the clothes. “Scraped my hand,” he said. “Nothing I haven’t done before.” He dragged the pants across the ground and twisted his legs into them. He wrestled the sand-colored T-shirt over his head, waved off the boots, and hand-walked himself over to the wheelchair. The soldiers stepped forward and lifted him in a fireman’s carry for the last few feet, setting him down in the leather seat. One of them handed him the coat. It had been stripped of rank, but the name ZZZAP was on a Velcro strip above the heart. He smiled.
“Good, sir?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Thanks for the assist. Nice jacket.” He draped it across his lap.
“Will you need an escort, sir?”
It took him a moment to understand they were offering to push the wheelchair. “That’d be nice, thanks.”
They went up the ramp into the office building. It was spotless, and the scent of cleaning chemicals hung in the air. More than half the lights were out. Colonel Shelly pulled off his cap, revealing a wire-brush scalp. He followed Barry’s eyes up to the ceiling. “Power conservation,” he said. “We try to run as few lights as possible, even at night.”
“Gotcha.”
“I appreciate your trusting us like this, sir,” he said.
“We’ve all got to start somewhere,” said Barry. “And could you not use ‘sir’? It always makes me feel like my dad’s leaning over my shoulder.”
“Force of habit, but I’ll do my best. What do you prefer?”
“Barry. Mr. Burke if that’s too casual for you.”
“I can make do with Mr. Burke. Agent Smith tells us you’ve got almost twenty-four thousand people out in Los Angeles.”
“More or less.”
An older man was waiting for them in the officers’ mess. His uncombed beard was a tangle of gray and silver, and it looked like he’d slept in his clothes for a while. He ran a finger back and forth across the tabletop, like a blind man reading a braille headline again and again.
“This is Dr. Sorensen,” said Shelly. “He’s the scientific head of Project Krypton. Captain Freedom and the rest of the Unbreakables are the result of his work.”
Barry held out his hand. “You must be very proud. They’re pretty amazing, from what I’ve seen. Not a lot of people can take on St. George mano a mano, y’know?”
Sorensen looked up from the table. His watery eyes met Barry’s and he reached out to take the hand. He moved in slow motion, as if every action needed hours of rehearsal time he hadn’t been given. “Hello,” he mumbled.
“Pleased to meet you.”
The older man moved his mouth a few times, starting half a dozen words, and then went back to examining the tablecloth.
There was a small buffet set up for them. Bacon and eggs in one chafing dish, English muffins and French toast in another. Two large pots of coffee. The soldier guided the wheelchair along the table while Barry overfilled a plate. He shoved some food in his mouth while they moved.
“Oh my God,” Barry said. “You don’t know how much you miss bacon until after the zombie apocalypse.”
“We’re spoiled, I guess,” said Shelly. He and Sorensen followed behind the wheelchair with plates of their own. “The Army keeps these places well stocked, and even with the rationing we’ve set there’s still enough food here and in Yuma for another twenty-eight months or so.”
They took places at a table. Shelly paused to say a silent grace and nodded for them to begin. Barry ate with his usual gusto while the colonel took quick, precise bites.
Sorensen had a single scoop of scrambled eggs on his plate. He pushed them back and forth with the fork, still in slow motion. Every third or fourth push one of the tines would scrape like fingernails on a chalkboard. Barry glanced from the doctor to the colonel. The officer didn’t seem to register the older man’s behavior.
“How long did it take you to get out here, Mr. Burke?” Colonel Shelly asked after a few minutes of eating. “You caused a sonic boom, didn’t you?”
“About twenty minutes,” said Barry. He crunched down on another piece of bacon and let it sit on his tongue for a moment. “The sonic boom’s a bit of a trick, though.”
“How so?”
Sorensen interrupted by dropping his silverware. “Is your energy output related to caloric intake? Does your body begin to cannibalize its own muscle and bone mass after a certain point?”
“Yes and yes.”
The doctor began to tap the fingers of his left hand against his thumb. “Is it dangerous,” he said, “for you to come in contact with other objects?”
Barry folded a piece of French toast in quarters, ate it in two bites, and washed it down with a mouthful of coffee. “How do you mean?”
“I would assume proximity to you would excite molecules to some degree. Some things may incinerate or covalent bonds could break down. Perhaps even …” He stopped tapping his fingers and mimed an explosion with his hands.
“I’ve had things go bang, yeah,” said Barry. “I feel really queasy if I come in contact with too much solid matter. I think it may be some kind of psychosomatic warning or something.” He shoved another piece of bacon in his mouth and paused to yawn. “Sorry. Minor food coma setting in. It’s been a while since I got to gorge myself like this.”
Shelly sipped his coffee. “Are you short on supplies out in Los Angeles?”
“Not short, but we definitely don’t have tons of excess. Ammunition’s running low, so our scavengers are using knives and machetes a lot more these days. We’ve managed to set up a decent-sized garden in the Mount, and we’re breeding chickens in one of the other lots, so there’s meat and eggs.”
The colonel dabbed his mouth with a napkin. “Where did you find chickens in the middle of Los Angeles?”
“There were a bunch of families from Mexico and South America who kept them in their backyards. Lots in Chinatown and Little Tokyo, too. Some of them found shelter with a group calling themselves the Seventeens.”
“The Seventeens?”
“They were a street gang that survived. They saw the Zombocalypse as a chance to go all Road Warrior and start their own little kingdom. When a bunch of them came to live with us, they brought about fifty chickens with them.”
“If I may,” said the doctor. His voice trailed off as he twisted his napkin once or twice. He set it back down next to his plate and smoothed out each wrinkle with his finger. “Ummmm, how did you acquire your abilities?”
Barry took another sip of coffee and cleared his throat.
“There was an accident involving a particle accelerator, a liquid lunch, and a pair of rubber bands.”
Shelly smiled. The doctor looked up. For the first time in the course of the meal it seemed like he’d noticed Barry sitting there. “What did you say?” His eyes were wide.
“It was a joke. Didn’t you ever read Life, the Universe, and Everything?”
“Was that Carl Sagan?”
“Douglas Adams,” he said, yawning again. “Is it really warm in here?”
The doctor and the colonel exchanged a look. “It’s always a little warm during the day,” said Shelly. “The curse of being in the desert. You get used to it after a while.”
Barry glanced up at the air vent. Little strips of colored paper fluttered in the breeze pumping out of it. He took in a deep breath and stopped himself before he yawned a third time.
Shelly and Sorensen looked at him. Sorensen’s eyes flitted to the coffee mug.
“You fu
ckers,” Barry said.
He focused inside himself, reached for the trigger in his cells that would turn him back into Zzzap, and the yawn pushed its way out. He tried to shove the wheelchair away from the table but his hands slipped and his head dropped. He heaved his chin back up, clenched his eyes shut, and tried to force the change. The trigger stayed just out of reach, and he realized he couldn’t pry his eyes back open.
He heard a clatter and felt something warm on his forehead. His last clear thought was that he’d collapsed in his scrambled eggs and it was a waste of perfectly good bacon.
There were voices he couldn’t understand, a sense of movement, and his final shreds of consciousness faded to black.
SMITH HELPED DANIELLE out of the Black Hawk and guided her out from under the slowing rotors. Freedom held out a hand for Stealth, but she ignored him and walked after Smith. The wash from the helicopter blades whipped her cloak around her like a bonfire of black flames.
Project Krypton was a collection of brick buildings painted milky white in the middle of miles of sand and rocky hills. At first glance the base didn’t look that different from the dozen or so colleges or corporate campuses Danielle had spent time on, just with more lava rocks than grass. It wasn’t until she registered that everyone’s clothing was tan that it started to seem “military” to her.
A sergeant waved Smith over and he left Danielle standing on her own. The redhead looked at the open yard, the sprawling space between structures, and on the other side of the buildings, just a few hundred feet to the west, the three chain-link walls with gaunt figures pushing against the outside fence. Even with the huge open space, the sound of clicking teeth danced on the edge of her hearing.
Her arms pulled in tight around her. She turned to check on the armor, wondering how soon before she could get it back on, and saw Stealth a few feet away.
“It’s strange,” Danielle said, “being outside without the suit on. Outside somewhere else, y’know?”
The cloaked woman looked across the tarmac at Smith, then at one of the nearby buildings. “Perhaps we can arrange for you to wait indoors while they finish unloading.”
She shook her head. “I’ll wait until they finish.”
“I shall remain with you, in that case.”
“I’m okay,” said the redhead.
“You spend every waking moment in the Cerberus armor,” said Stealth, “and you sleep in a corner under your kitchen table. I am certain these exposed conditions are causing you no small amount of stress.”
“I said I’m okay,” Danielle repeated. “Stop trying to be nice. It’s creepy.”
A lieutenant with a white armband approached, flanked by two other soldiers. “Ma’am,” he said to Stealth, “I’m going to have to ask you to please surrender your sidearms while you’re on base.”
She turned her head to him. “I will not.”
The MP’s hand settled on his own weapon, and his partners raised their rifles a few inches. Danielle saw Stealth’s pose shift. “This isn’t a request, ma’am,” said the officer. “Hand over both of your sidearms.”
“John,” called Danielle. “We’ve got a problem.”
Smith jogged back over. “What’s going on?”
“This woman refuses to surrender her weapons, sir.”
Smith looked at Stealth’s elaborate double holsters and back to the MP. “She’s a guest of the colonel, Lieutenant … Furber,” he said with a clumsy glance at the officer’s name. “I don’t think this is necessary.”
The soldier’s hand was still at his pistol.
Smith turned to Stealth. “Look, you know how the military works. This guy’s willing to let you pummel him just so he doesn’t have to break procedure and disobey an order he got six months ago. Just let it slide for now and I’m sure we’ll get it sorted out in less than an hour.”
The cloaked woman stayed focused on the MP. “I will not.”
“Can you just do it for now? I swear, Colonel Shelly will get this all resolved in no time at all.”
The blank face of her mask turned to Smith, then back to Furber.
When her hands moved, it was too fast to see. The pistols were drawn and held out to the soldier, butt first, before any of them could register it. One of the other MPs jerked his rifle up out of instinct, a few moments too late.
“Jesus,” muttered Danielle.
Furber took a slow breath and retrieved both of the weapons. “Glock 18C,” he said. “Nice. I didn’t think you could get these in America.”
“I did not,” said Stealth.
“Ammunition?”
She pulled two extended magazines from alongside each of the thigh-mounted holsters and four more stored in a pair of rigid pouches on either side of her waist. Furber looked up and down her skintight uniform. “Do you have anything else you’d like to declare before—”
“If you attempt to search my person, I will break both of your thumbs.”
Smith stepped between them. “I think we’re good, don’t you?” He gave the MP a smile. “I’m sure the colonel will agree you’ve done your duty. Thank you, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir,” said Furber. He and his squad made a quick retreat.
“So, the colonel’s running a couple minutes behind,” said Smith. “He should be here by the time we’ve got everything unloaded, and then we can see about getting you those back.” He squeezed Danielle’s shoulder and headed back over to the helicopter.
Stealth examined the triple line of chain-link fence a hundred yards away. Danielle watched the cloaked woman turn her head to follow the barricade. “Something bugging you? Besides being unarmed?”
“I am never unarmed, Danielle,” said Stealth. “You should know that. I count twenty-eight sentries along this section of the perimeter alone. There are another four in the towers and ten patrolling between the fences.”
Danielle shrugged and watched the soldiers give one of the Cerberus crates a nudge to make sure it was secure on their cart. “Not many more than we’ve got on the wall most of the time.”
The cloaked woman turned to examine the fence line to the east, almost half a mile away. “It would appear these numbers are consistent along their entire perimeter.”
“What’s your point?”
“When Zzzap did his reconnaissance, he indicated the base had limited personnel. His exact words were ‘a skeleton crew.’ ”
Danielle looked at the distant fence and tried not to think about all the open space. “Maybe they put everyone on just to impress us.”
“If they had the manpower to put such numbers on their perimeter, why would they choose not to do so on a regular basis?”
The redhead shrugged. “I’m sure they’ve got their reasons,” she said. “Besides, there’re only, what, thirty or forty exes out there. Hardly a threat against four dozen well-armed soldiers.”
“Yes,” said Stealth, “I had noticed the low numbers.”
“Once the full scope of the epidemic was clear, the Army took much more aggressive measures toward controlling it,” said Freedom. He’d moved up behind them. A few yards back, a pair of soldiers pushed the heavy cart laden with the Cerberus crates. Danielle walked over to inspect their loading job. “There were attempts to contain them, at first,” continued the huge officer, “but it came down to killing them. We used a backhoe to dig a few mass graves out there by the hills, and burned most of the ones we’d already contained.”
“Of course,” said Stealth with a faint nod.
“It took a little over a year, but we cleared out a good chunk of the surrounding region. We’ve even made some headway into Yuma.” He looked down at her. “To be honest, ma’am, I’m surprised you haven’t accomplished more at your base.”
Danielle looked up from the crates. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“No offense meant, ma’am,” he said. “I just thought, well, with your combined abilities I’d think Los Angeles would be a lot further on by now. It looked like there were a thousa
nd exes just gathered around your base.”
“We estimate fifteen hundred on an average day.”
“Again,” said Freedom, “no offense meant, ma’am, but why haven’t you done anything about them?”
The cloaked woman stared at him. Danielle recognized the look and could guess what was coming next.
“We are at a sub-base on the Yuma Proving Grounds, correct?
The city of Yuma is fifty-nine miles south-southwest of our current position.”
Freedom paused just for a moment. The corners of his mouth twitched with grudging respect. “That’s correct, ma’am.”
“So the area you ‘cleared out’ with your superior numbers and weaponry consists of the mostly empty proving ground and the outskirts of a small city, population ninety thousand, less than fifty thousand of which would have transitioned according to all known statistics regarding the ex-virus.”
The smile flattened out. “Correct again. Ma’am.”
“There are over five million ex-humans within the city limits of Los Angeles,” said Stealth. “This is one hundred times the numbers you have dealt with, and does not include the greater Los Angeles County area. If we had killed one hundred exes a day, every day, for the past nineteen months, we would have only eliminated one percent of the undead population of the city.” She paused to let the numbers sink in. “We have better uses for our time and resources.”
“I apologize, ma’am.”
“Why did you say most of them?”
Freedom blinked. “Ma’am?”
“When you were explaining the Army’s aggressive stance, you said you burned most of the ones you had contained. What did you do with the ones you did not burn?”
He set his mouth in a line and stared at her blank mask. When she didn’t budge, the huge officer leaned back on his heels. “The project director, Dr. Sorensen, asked us to get him some live specimens, so to speak.”
“What did he require these specimens for?”
Freedom straightened up to his full height. “The doctor’s a genius in the fields of neurology and biochemistry, ma’am. He was trying to determine the nature of the ex-virus and determine if anything could be done for the people who’d been afflicted.”