Ex-Patriots (26 page)

“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?”

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?”