Ex-Patriots (28 page)

Stealth walked alongside him. She’d said
nothing since they left the conference room.

“You were right,” he said to her. “We
shouldn’t’ve trusted them. Hell, Barry was right. The military
always turns evil during a zombie apocalypse.”

“They are not evil,” she announced. “They are
doing what they believe is right, in a way consistent with the
training and orders they have received. I once held many of the
same views myself. Over the past two years you have convinced me
otherwise.”

“They’ve got Barry locked up somewhere and
you don’t think that’s evil?”

“Is it so different from what we do? At the
Mount he is often trapped in the electric chair for eighteen hours
at a time.”

St. George shook his head. “He volunteers for
that.”

“He volunteers because we have placed him in
a position of unavoidable responsibility. By eating an apple and
staying in the chair he can provide power to over twenty thousand
citizens of Los Angeles for lights, security, cooking,
entertainment, and more. If he leaves the chair, they will have
none of these things.”

“It’s not the same.”

“It is, George,” she said. “It is why I had
the chair built. Once it existed, I knew he would not fail us.”

“But that’s different. We’re on the fringes.
We’re just trying to survive. This isn’t what it was supposed to be
like. I thought...” He sighed and let another mouthful of smoke out
into the air.

“What?”

He kicked at a rock and it skittered through
the chainlink to hit an ex-soldier’s boot. “I guess I was like
Danielle,” St. George said. “I always figured someday everything
would go back to normal. Someone would drive up outside the gates
and tell us everything was okay, we could all go home. I could go
back to being a maintenance guy who got Thai food from the place on
the corner and dressed up in a costume to fight muggers. You could
go back to... whatever it was you did for a living.”

“I was a retired fashion model with multiple
athletic championships and doctoral degrees,” said Stealth. “By
most standards I was independently wealthy.”

“Wow,” he said after a moment. “You really
are Batman, aren’t you?”

“You are avoiding the subject, George. What
do we do now?”

“What do you mean?”

“We must free Zzzap and also ensure Danielle
and the Cerberus suit return with us to Los Angeles. How will we do
this?”

He stopped walking and looked at her. “We
can’t,” he sighed. “I don’t like it either, but like you said,
they’re not evil. They’re the good guys.”

“They seek to undo much of our work at the
Mount and to bring a sizeable part of our population under their
direct control.”

St. George glanced around. They were a few
dozen yards from the closest guard tower. There was one soldier in
it, half-watching them.

“It would appear we are between shifts,” she
said. “There are minimal human guards on patrol to hear our
discussion, and I have guided us away from the perimeter cameras
and microphones.”

“Look,” he said in a lower tone of voice,
“this isn’t some movie supervillain or something. It’s the United
States Army, acting under orders of the President. It’s like Smith
said, we’d be committing treason.”

“Would we? We cannot be traitors to a
non-existent country. Are we still living within the United
States?”

“Of course we are.”

“Geographically, perhaps, but a nation is
defined by more than mere borders.” She turned to the fence and
looked out at the dirt and scrub of the proving ground. Three exes
were stumbling toward them out of the desert. “All of this land was
once Native American territory, correct?”

He shrugged. “I guess.”

“Suppose an individual came to you claiming
to be the representative of that territory. If they demanded you
follow their laws and obey their commands, would you?”

“Are we on a reservation or something?”

“No.”

“Then I’d probably be as polite as possible
but keep following the current laws as best I could.”

She nodded. “Just as you have at the
Mount.”

They looked out at the sand for a few
minutes. A trio of exes pawed at the outer fence. One was a topless
woman with clotted filth in her hair. Another, an elderly man with
one arm, had a pair of spectacles hanging around his neck by a
chain.

“I feel sick.”

“It is understandable. You have spent the
past two years awaiting the arrival of the authorities. Of someone
who would relieve you of responsibility for the Mount. You have
just realized no one is coming. You are the authorities. You are
and always will be responsible for the people of Los Angeles.”

“And this isn’t freaking you out?”

“I have told you before, George, I am not an
optimist. I have never expected us to be saved or relieved of duty.
I accepted this responsibility two years ago.”

She turned and continued along the inside of
the fence. St. George took a few quick steps to catch up with her.
“You’ve already got a plan, don’t you?”

“You will go back to Danielle and get her to
the workshop where Cerberus is being stored. In turn, she can
direct you to Sorensen. I am certain he knows where Zzzap is being
held. Once Danielle is back in the armor, we shall demand transport
back to Los Angeles. If they refuse, we may have to steal it.”

“That’d be great if any of us knew how to fly
a Black Hawk helicopter.”

“I do,” she said, “but I believe a basic M35
cargo truck will get us back to Los Angeles in four days at the
most.”

“Okay,” he said, “what are you going to be
doing during all this?”

“I shall give Colonel Shelly a final chance
to present evidence of his claims that the federal government is
still functioning and to convince me that his plan represents our
best option. Barring that, I shall convince him to allow us to
leave without incident.”

“Just to be clear,” said St. George, “when
you say ‘convince him’ are you talking about attacking a U.S.
military officer?”

“Of course not,” said Stealth.

“That wasn’t very convincing.”

“George, we do not have time for this. It is
twelve-forty-three. You must endeavor to have Danielle at her
workshop and Zzzap freed by one-thirty.” Her head turned to him
within her hood. “Are you comfortable with this? I do not want to
influence your decision.”

“You influence most of my decisions,” he said
with a half-hearted smile. He took a slow breath. “No, I don’t feel
comfortable about this at all, but sometimes the right thing to do
isn’t the comfortable thing. And this feels right.”

“Then it must be so,” she said.

“How can you be so sure?”

She stopped and turned to him. “Because you
think it is, and you are the only person I have ever known who
always does the right thing.”

They looked at each other, and George
realized an opportune moment had just slipped past him again. He
cleared his throat and tried to brush it aside. “I hope so,” he
said. “Six months from now I don’t want any of our people walking
between fences like Bub there.” He gestured at an ex staggering
along on patrol.

“Bub?”

He nodded at the ex-soldier with the dangling
rifle. “Barry makes me watch a George Romero movie every other
month. The zombie with the gun is named Bub.”

“I do not understand.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

NOW

The soldiers marched down the dim hall with an easy,
even stride. They were two of the older recruits, both in their
thirties and specialists. A year of guard duty with nothing more
challenging than a handful of exes had relaxed them, but they still
paused when they turned the corner and saw the darkened
hallway.

One of the fluorescent tubes flickered for a
moment, then went black again.

“Dead light,” said one soldier. He nodded at
the office door. “The colonel’ll be pissed the next time he works
late. Remember to tell maintenance.”

“You remember.”

“It’s your turn to write up reports.”

“Asshole.”

“Hey, you lost fair and square.”

They turned the corner, still trying to pass
off their paperwork, and Stealth dropped down from the ceiling.

The colonel’s office was locked with a
Medeco3 deadbolt, but she had seen schematics of the tumbler
mechanism at a seminar in Las Vegas several years earlier. Six
minutes of work and she was inside the reception area of Shelly’s
office. The door closed behind her without a sound and she
re-engaged the lock.

Her fingers skimmed the adjutant’s desk. She
looked at letterheads and printed emails, paged through the
appointment book and the desk calendar. She considered the
computer. Based on the personal items on the desk and in the
drawers, she was confident she could break the adjutant’s password
in less than ten attempts. However, there was little chance the
materials she needed were on his hard drive.

The inner office door was not locked. She
paused to listen for overt movement or heavy breathing, signs of
someone working or even sleeping. If there was anyone in the
office, they were making a point of being as quiet as her.

She opened the door and slipped inside.

Colonel Shelly sat behind his desk, face down
on a set of disciplinary reports. Red lines ran from his nostrils,
his ears, and his left eye. Enough of it had pooled on the desk to
start spreading out past his skull.

There was a faint rustle of hair on linen
from behind her. The low hiss of a seat cushion shifting.

“What happened to him?” Stealth asked in a
clear voice.

“If I had to guess,” murmured Sorensen, “I
would say he suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Three or four
blood vessels all bursting at once. He never knew what happened. It
was just like flipping a switch. Alive. Dead.”

The doctor sat in a chair against the far
wall, half hidden in shadows. It wasn’t clear to her if he was
relaxed or stunned. He stared at the corpse.

“Believe it or not, it may have saved him
from the ex-virus,” Sorensen continued. “If certain key parts of
his brain were destroyed by the hemorrhaging, there won’t be enough
left for the virus to reanimate.”

Stealth slid behind the desk and examined the
body. It was still warm. Dead within the past two hours. There were
no visible bullet wounds in the head, and the doctor didn’t appear
to be armed, but she did not rule out the possibility of a low
caliber shot in the mouth.

“What are you doing here, doctor?”

His eyes flicked up to her for a moment,
looking over the edge of his glasses. “I was going to ask if they’d
found Eva and Madelyn yet.”

She moved in front of him. “Your wife and
daughter?”

He bobbed his head up and down.

“We were told your family was killed by exes
during a recovery mission.”

Sorensen turned his head and glared at her.
“Captain Freedom never recovered their bodies,” he said, “so they
must have gotten away.”

“It is far more likely they were devoured or
dismembered to a point where they were not recog—”

“They got away!” snapped Sorensen.

He leaped up and Stealth shifted her weight
to her back leg for a kick.

“Colonel Shelly was sending out patrols to
look for them. He promised me. Madelyn’s a smart, special girl. She
got away.” The doctor tilted his head. “The real question is what
are
you
doing here?”

“I was hoping to speak to the colonel about
his claims of contact with a governing body. Why do you believe he
suffered from a hemorrhage?”

“He’s not the first,” said the doctor. He
walked to the desk. “Three people have died the same way. They all
had too much on their minds. Very conflicted, just like the
colonel.”

“Conflicted?”

“He didn’t want any of you out here. He just
wanted to establish contact, make sure you were doing a good job,
make sure you were all safe...” His voice trailed off again and he
ran his fingers back and forth on the desk. The tips passed just a
few inches from the puddle of blood.

“Doctor?”

“And then he changed his mind,” said the
older man. He drummed the fingers of his other hand against his
thumb. “Between breakfast and lunch. Just like someone flipping a
switch.”

Stealth stared at him as he traced lines on
the desk. “Did you have something to do with this, Doctor?”

“No, no, no.” He stopped tracing lines and
glared at her for a moment like an angry child. Then his face went
slack. “I didn’t mean for it to happen like this,” he whispered
through his fingers. “Any of it. I just wanted them to leave me
alone.”

“Who?”

“The dead. The dead keep talking to me. I
just want to be left alone and everyone keeps talking to me.”

She heard the footsteps and spun. A trio of
soldiers stood at the door. Each wore the patch that marked them as
super soldiers. The closest one was a staff sergeant named PIERCE.
He looked at the body. The other two looked at her.

“So sorry,” said Sorensen. He sank back into
his chair. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

Stealth threw a punch at the soldier next to
Pierce and the man blocked most of it. He was too fast, she
realized, and they were ready for her. She swung her heel around in
a wide kick. They dodged again but it gave her time to grab the ASP
batons stored across her back.

She brought the weapons up and Pierce and the
other man, Hancock, grabbed her arms. Her legs kicked up, caught
the third soldier under the chin with her boot, and let her flip up
and over. The movement surprised them enough for her to twist
free.

The third man stumbled back. She spun and
drove a kick into Hancock’s stomach as she snapped the batons open
and fractured Pierce’s wrist. She swung her leg back to Pierce
and—