by Peter Clines
“No,” he told her, even as an image of gray-skinned settlers flashed in his mind. It occurred to him he still didn’t know who the woman was. “No, I am not.”
“It’s okay,” said George. “Someone did something to our minds. It’s not your fault you can’t remember.”
“My fault?” said Freedom. He felt his hands clench into fists and forced them straight. “What are you implying, sir?”
“Someone did what to our minds?” asked Dr. Morris.
“We are wasting time,” said the supermodel. “Convince them the direct way, as Madelyn convinced you.”
“She didn’t really convince me, remember?”
“George,” she said, “we do not have time.”
He sighed and looked at the crates. He pointed at one the size of a desk and glanced at Dr. Morris. “That’s the back section, right? Armor plates, spinal computer, all that stuff? It’s, what, three hundred and fifty pounds, not counting the case?”
“Yeah,” she said. “How’d you know?”
“I’ve helped you get in or out of the armor a couple hundred times. That’s the only case big enough for it.”
Her face twisted up. “Who are you people?” she asked.
George grabbed the sturdy handle. The road case leaped into the air and he caught it with his free hand. Dr. Morris gasped. Freedom tensed. George balanced it for a moment, then pushed it up to the roof with one hand.
They stared for a moment, and then Freedom set his jaw. “Sir, that’s government property,” he said. “Set it down.”
“Gently!” snapped Dr. Morris. “Do you have any idea what that costs?”
George let the case drop back down so he could balance it in both hands. “You’re always so worried about it,” he said, “even though it’s built like a tank.”
Freedom took a step and placed himself between George and the rest of the boxes. “I think you and your friend need to leave, sir.”
George looked at him for a moment. “Catch,” he said as he tossed the case at Freedom.
Dr. Morris snarled. Freedom lunged forward. He grabbed the large case in his arms like a man catching a baby. He held on to it for a moment, not wanting to shift his balance until he was sure he had it.
“It would seem,” said the dark woman, “George is not the only strong one.”
Freedom set the case down. It thudded against the thin carpet. He stared at it for a moment.
Dr. Morris looked at the case, then her eyes darted between the two men. “How did you do that?” she asked George.
“How did I pick it up? With my arms.”
“No, seriously. How did you lift it?”
The thin man took a slow breath. “Well,” he said to Freedom, “I can tell you how you did it.”
“Adrenaline,” said Freedom. “I’ve seen men do amazing things in combat.” It was true. He’d seen soldiers kick down doors with no effort and hurl opponents across rooms. One man had bent the door of a burning Hummer when he pulled it open to rescue a squadmate. The human body was an amazing machine, powerful and durable all on its own without any help from …
Where had he heard that phrase? He’d heard it from an Army physician. A doctor.
“You were part of a special project,” said George. “They were trying to create super-soldiers. Well, not just trying. They made super-soldiers.”
Freedom felt his eyes start to roll and managed to keep his gaze locked on the smaller man. Dr. Morris made no such attempt. “Seriously?” she muttered. “That’s the best you’ve got?”
“You were stationed at the Yuma Proving Ground,” said the supermodel, “on a subbase designated Project Krypton. The man in charge of the program was Dr. Emil Sorensen, considered one of the world’s experts in neurology and biochemistry, among other fields.”
Krypton. Sorensen. The names sparked a headache right behind Freedom’s eyes, like nails going through his temples. He turned his head away to focus and found himself staring at the portrait of the President. John Smith stared down at Freedom and smiled. It looked like a fake smile.
“This is nonsense,” he said.
“It’s not,” said George. “It’s real.”
The pain in his head got worse. It was like someone tapping on his skull. The old Chinese water torture, obsolete now that more ruthless ways had been found to torture people with water.
“I’d like you to leave, sir,” he said. “And you, too, ma’am.”
“Sorry, Captain,” said George. “Not without you.”
He turned around. “I’m not a captain anymore.”
“You are,” George said, “someone just told you to forget.”
He looked over at Dr. Morris. She was wiping her hand across her nose. There was blood on her lip and on her fingers. “You want to hear something funny?” she asked the room. “I kind of dated the President for a while. Back before he got married.”
“We know,” said the dark woman.
“I hadn’t thought about that in … in ages, I guess.”
Freedom took a step toward George. “Get out now,” he said. The clicking pen was playing hell with his headache. He set a hand down that covered the smaller man’s shoulder. “Please don’t make me use force.”
George shot a glance at the dark woman. She bowed her head once and he looked back up at Freedom. “If it helps,” he said, “just remember this is the rematch you always wanted.”
“Sorry, sir?”
George pushed out his hand to shove Freedom in the chest. It wasn’t a particularly fast or skilled move. It made Freedom think of Combatives training. His own arm dropped down for an easy block, and he started thinking of ways to politely throw the couple back out on the street.
George’s hand pushed past the block. It was like trying to stop a moving truck. Or a tank. Freedom had just enough time to remember how the man had held the steel-lined case up over his head and then George’s palm connected with his sternum.
The front door flew away, the office blurred, and something slammed into Freedom’s back just before he heard wood crack and splinter behind him. He found his footing and glanced over his shoulder. His desk had been crushed between his back and the far wall of the office.
George stood a dozen feet away with his hand out. Dr. Morris’s mouth hung open. The supermodel had the faintest hint of a smile on her face.
Freedom stood up and brushed himself off. Then he took three running steps forward and slammed his fist straight into George’s stomach. It was like hitting a tree trunk, but he’d already committed to his follow-through punch. His knuckles cracked against George’s jaw, but the smaller man’s head barely moved.
He hadn’t even raised his hands to defend himself.
Dr. Morris swore. Then swore again.
Freedom stepped away from George and glanced over. Dr. Morris was standing in the center of the room. She looked angry and confused. Her arms were pulling in toward her body, being forced back out, and pulling in again. “Where is it?” she snapped. “Where’d it go?”
It took him a moment to figure out what she was talking about. Nothing looked out of place. He was too used to seeing the middle of the office empty.
The cases for the Cerberus Battle Armor System had all vanished.
Freedom felt a surge of suspicion again, but he knew it was foolish. It would be impossible to move all the crates in the few seconds he’d been fighting with George, let alone to do it without anyone noticing.
“What did you do with it?” Dr. Morris glared at the supermodel.
The woman and George ignored her. They were both looking around the recruiting office. “Our perceptions have switched back again,” said the supermodel.
“Yeah.”
Then Freedom noticed the office itself. The floor wasn’t carpet, it was a dark, industrial-looking tile. It was covered with faded takeout menus and drifts of broken glass.
One of the picture windows had a pile of tables in front of it, a makeshift barricade. The other one was cracke
d. A huge spiderweb spread across the glass. The threads at the center were blurred with dark brown smears he recognized as dried blood. The wooden walls were just a cheap laminate. It was peeling off in places. The recruitment posters were gone. A bland painting of yellow and blue flowers sat on the floor. Its frame was cracked.
His desk had vanished. In its place were a counter and the remains of a large glass case. A cash register sat on its side on the floor. The presidential portrait was now a large chalkboard. Half of it was a colorful menu of pastries and coffee drinks. The other half had been blurred into pale streaks and replaced with messy letters made of thick pink strokes of chalk.
END OF WORLD
SPECIAL
$6.66
Something dripped on his lips. He reached up and his hand came away red. His nose was bleeding, just like Dr. Morris’s was. He didn’t remember George punching or head-butting him. His mind flitted down a list of airborne toxins and the location of the pro-masks in the back room even as he registered that George and the women were fine.
Adams’s pen clicked away. And then Freedom realized Adams hadn’t come in yet. In fact, it was his day off.
He turned toward the sound.
Adams’s desk was gone. A table large enough to sit five or six people was there. It had been pushed back against the wall, pinning the one occupant in its seat.
It had been a man. It was wearing a threadbare, old-pattern camo jacket from the eighties that had faded well past cook whites. It had the same color hair as Adams, but much longer. A larger nose and wider jaw, too. Its eyes were dead white and its skin was gray. Settler gray, just like Freedom’s dreams.
The dead man reached for them across the tabletop, its dry fingertips drawing lines in the dust. Its mouth snapped open and closed again and again. The clicking teeth echoed in the room.
Dr. Morris made a low noise, something between a growl and a squeal. Her arms had wrapped tight around herself again. “What’s going on?” she hissed. “What the fuck is going on?”
Another half-dozen dead people crowded the door, and Freedom could see more in the street wandering toward the office. Or coffee shop. Whatever the place was. Some of the dead people were missing eyes or teeth. One looked like it had been scalped. A woman near the front of the group wore a shirt that said NAVY in large letters. It was splattered with blood. So was her mouth.
“Where in God’s name are we?” asked Freedom.
“We’ve switched back,” said George. “We’re seeing the real world now.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Dr. Morris.
“Look, you just have to trust us,” said George. “Someone’s been messing with our minds, making us see the world the way he wants to get us out of the way.” He walked over to the dead thing at the table and placed his hand on top of its head. Its neck flexed for a moment as it tried to stretch its mouth up to his fingers. Then George turned his palm and twisted the corpse’s head around like a man opening a bottle. The dead thing’s spine popped twice, like a log in a fire, and it slumped on the tabletop. Its jaws still hinged back and forth.
It struck Freedom he’d made no move to stop George, and had no reaction to the snapped neck. He knew on some level it hadn’t been a murder. It had been weeding.
“You both need to come with us,” said George. “We’re heading onto campus to pick up someone else, and then over into Hollywood.”
“Do you have a car or a truck or something?” asked Dr. Morris.
“We do not,” said the supermodel. “We are on foot.”
The redhead blinked. “On foot? With those things out there?”
The dead men and women pawed at the glass and banged their teeth against each other.
“We’ll be okay,” said George. “We can hold them off until we get to the Mount.”
The name resonated in Freedom’s head. “The Mount?”
“Our base of operations,” said the dark-skinned woman. “Your memories have been clouded so you do not remember. An epidemic has decimated the world. The survivors here in Los Angeles have formed a safe compound in Hollywood.”
“We need to find the armor,” said Danielle, wiping her nose again. Her hand was covered with blood. “I can’t go out there without the armor.”
“It’s probably at the Mount,” said George. “Waiting in your workshop.”
Danielle shook her head. “It better be,” she muttered. “If I find out Cesar went joyriding, I’ll … Who the hell is Cesar?”
“Good,” said George. “It’s starting to come back to you.”
Freedom closed his eyes and tried to will away the pain in his skull. “I need more than this, sir,” he said.
George glanced at the door and the figures pressed against the glass. “More than that?”
“You’re asking me to abandon everything I believe in,” said Freedom.
The dark woman’s gaze dropped to his chest, and her brow furrowed. “It would appear” she said, “that we are not.”
Freedom looked down. His ACU was old and worn. He could see two seams where it had been repaired, and recognized the careful stitchwork his mother had taught him as a boy. On his chest was a Velcro patch with two black bars on it, faded to charcoal.
His captain’s rank.
TWENTY-FIVE
ST. GEORGE STARED at the exes outside the door. Another seven or eight of them had wandered over to the little coffee shop while he and Stealth convinced Danielle and Freedom. He counted fifteen out on the sidewalk now. Another twenty or so out in the street hadn’t figured out there was food in the café, but they would soon enough.
He looked back at the others. Stealth had found a broomstick somewhere in the back. It was one of the longer ones from the oversized, industrial push brooms, and there were a few swaths of duct tape on it. He wasn’t sure if she was planning on using it as a spear or some kind of fighting staff.
Danielle still had her arms wrapped around herself, but she didn’t seem quite as panicked as she had a while ago. She kept looking around the room. He was pretty sure she was hoping the armor cases would reappear.
Freedom walked up to him. The huge officer had pulled a thick pair of gloves from one of the pockets of his uniform and was working them tight around his fingers. “What’s the plan, sir?”
“Well,” said St. George, “I’m thinking we open the doors, I’ll push these first few back, and then we’ll loop around and head down Glendon Avenue back to campus.”
“Where Madelyn is,” said Freedom.
“Right.” He saw the officer’s expression. “She should be safe until we get there,” he added. “The exes probably don’t even know she’s there.”
“It would be safer to travel on rooftops,” said Stealth.
“It would.” St. George nodded. “But I think you’re the only one who could get up there. Danielle’s human, Freedom’s still a bit unsure of his abilities—no offense, Captain.”
“None taken, sir,” said Freedom.
“—and I still can’t fly for some reason.”
“I’m sorry,” said Danielle. “Did you just say ‘fly’? Like in, fly through the air?”
“Yeah,” said St. George. “Just like Superman. Sort of.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Says the woman with the computerized battle armor.”
She snorted and looked around the café again. “Not at the moment.”
“So we’re stuck on the ground,” said St. George.
“It is almost nine,” said Stealth. “I estimate it will take us at least seventy minutes to retrieve Corpse Girl. If our goal is to cross the city and reach the Mount before sundown, we should proceed.”
“Agreed,” said Freedom. “From what you’re saying, the last thing we want is to be out after dark.”
“Okay, then,” said St. George. “I’ll take the lead. Stealth, you follow. Freedom, watch our back. Danielle, stay between us and keep safe. We’ll have you back inside Cerberus before you know it.”
; She grunted and forced her arms down to her sides.
“Everyone ready?”
They all nodded.
St. George shoved the door open.
The first ones were the easiest. He spread his arms wide as he marched out of the door and gathered them up. A few lunging steps carried the exes to the curb. It was a six-inch drop, but it was too much for the mindless dead. They stumbled and tripped and fell over. Two of them hit the pavement hard, skull first. Their teeth stopped chattering.
Out in the road, the other exes saw the movement. Chalk eyes turned to him. The dead all shifted their gait and staggered toward him.
He thought about setting fire to the pile of exes. In the back of his throat he could feel the light touch of smoke. He knew there was a trick to it, a way to make the smoke turn into flames, but he couldn’t remember it. Like getting off the ground, it was something Smith’s blocks were still keeping hidden from him.
He glanced over his shoulder. “Come on.”
The four of them worked their way down the sidewalk. St. George grabbed exes by their jackets and shirts and blouses and hurled them out into the street. Behind him he heard Stealth’s makeshift staff slice through the air twice, each time followed by the sound of breaking bone. Freedom let out two quick breaths—boxer’s breaths—and St. George heard two more bodies fall.
They made it to the corner and he looked down Glendon. There were fewer exes, but the street seemed a bit narrower. He risked a quick glance back. “How’s it looking behind us?”
“If we can keep up this pace, sir, we should be fine,” said Freedom. “We’re moving faster than they can catch us.”
St. George gazed at the zombies on Glendon. They were already shuffling in their direction. “It might be getting rough, then,” he said.
He looked around and spotted a 2 HOUR PARKING sign. He batted an ex away and heaved on the sign until something underground snapped and it came loose in his hands. He spun the square pipe once to get a feel for it. Then he brought it around like a club and crushed four skulls with one swing.
They moved down the center of the street. St. George took a few steps, shifted the pipe in his hands, and the steel sign changed from blunt instrument to edge-on blade. One swipe and it cut open three exes. A man and two women. Their clothes parted, their flesh gaped open, and their guts spilled out in front of them. Thin and thick intestines uncoiled onto the pavement. Stomachs, hearts, and other gray pieces of meat he couldn’t identify tore loose and splatted against the ground. The exes swayed for a moment, their center of balance gone, and then tripped over their own insides.