Ex-Patriots (41 page)

“They’re coming from Yuma,” said St. George.
“These aren’t random wanderers. They’ve been moved into position.
It wouldn’t surprise me if he’d been herding them out here for
months. He might have half the population of the city here.”

There’s also a couple good-sized packs
inside the fence line. One’s coming this way from the north.
He
looked at Freedom.
I didn’t see many of your people,
though.

The officer raised an eyebrow. “What do you
mean?”

I mean I don’t see anyone. Shouldn’t they
all be on guard towers or making barricades or something?

“They’re probably already in position.”

I’d still be able to see them.

“Most of these buildings have a degree of
shielding for heat and radiation,” said Kennedy. “Once someone’s at
their post they’d be shielded.”

The towers have radiation shielding?
scoffed Zzzap.
Still, shouldn’t there be a couple stragglers or
something? Somebody still moving somewhere?

“The Army isn’t big on stragglers,” said
Kennedy.

St. George silenced them with a gesture.
“What about evacuation, then? You must have a plan. You didn’t
think some chainlink fences were going to hold forever.”

“We can’t abandon our post,” said
Freedom.

“You sure?”

“It’s out of the question,”

“Okay, then,” St. George said. “Last thing
then. Can all of you hold the gate here while I get to the
helipad?”

“Sir,” said Freedom, “I think we owe Mr.
Smith more than that.”

* * *

Harrison led his squad up the staircase into
the records building. Smith was right behind him. Taylor and Hayes
dragged the prisoner with Polk at the rear. The sergeant stepped
into the dim hallway, checked each direction, and waved them to
follow. From the stairwell it was a short jog to the lobby, and the
lobby doors were a few hundred yards from the helipad.

Harrison’s jacket was stained red just below
his chin. There were drops on his collar, too, just below his ears.
“Sir,” he said, “if we’re taking the Black Hawk, what about the
rest of the men? Will they meet up with us later?”

Smith sighed. “I’m afraid we’re going to have
to leave them behind,” he said.

“I’m not sure I follow you, sir.”

“Getting this prisoner to Groom Lake is our
top priority. And don’t you remember, Colonel Shelly gave me vital
orders that need to be delivered there?”

“Yes, but... Sir, there’s a thousand soldiers
and support staff here. We can’t abandon all of them.”

“Necessary losses, I’m afraid. You
understand, don’t you?”

Harrison reached up and wiped away more
blood. It flowed from his ears and nose in a set of steady streams.
He blinked and his tears were stained pink. “That... with all due
respect, sir, we can’t do that.”

“I understand,” said the agent with a
sympathetic nod. He looked at the cloaked woman. “Moral conflict,”
he said, shaking his head. “It starts to break down their brain. A
vicious circle, really. The degradation of affected areas frees
them from my control, which means I need to exert more influence,
which leads to more degradation.”

The staff sergeant looked up from his bloody
hands. “Sir?”

“It’s always good to know there are men like
you in our armed forces,” said Smith. “Men who aren’t going to
blindly follow orders without at least questioning the morality of
them. Could I have your sidearm, sergeant?”

“Of course, sir.” Harrison pulled the weapon
from its holster, checked the chamber and the safety, and handed it
grip-first to the agent. “It’s all set to go, sir. You just need to
flip the safety.”

“That’s this one here, right?” He pointed at
the tiny lever over the red dot.

“Yes, sir.”

Smith flipped the lever with his thumb and
fired four shots into Harrison’s chest. The sergeant fell back
against the wall and dropped his Bravo. His vest had taken most of
it, but he still wheezed out some air.

Smith peered down the sights and squeezed the
trigger a few more times. One shot went into Harrison’s throat. The
next one tore open his cheek along his jaw line. The last three
turned his head into a red and ivory mess.

The soldiers had their weapons up. They’d
thrown Stealth to the ground and had Smith in their sights. “Do not
move, fucker,” roared Taylor.

The young agent blew smoke from the pistol’s
barrel. “Staff Sergeant Harrison was collaborating with the enemy,”
he said. “You all knew that, right?”

“Of course, sir,” said Polk, lowering his
weapon.

“I’m only sorry I didn’t shoot the traitorous
fuck myself,” muttered Taylor.

* * *

“We’re not going to make it until
reinforcements get here,” the sergeant told Danielle. He had to
raise his voice over the chattering teeth. “We’re going to have to
fall back.”

She looked over her shoulder. “Fall back to
where?”

The soldier looked at the hordes of undead
pouring through the fence. “As far as we can,” he said. “Our ammo’s
not going to last much longer. I think your robot’s running out of
juice, too. Hopefully we’ll meet up with our reinforcements and we
can form a new line.”

“So, you’re talking about a retreat,” she
said.

“Yeah,” he muttered, “basically.”

His eyes shifted around for a minute and two
or three expressions flicked across his face. Then he swung his
rifle up and aimed it past her. She cringed as it went off.
Something hit the ground behind her.

A group of ex-soldiers had come up behind
them. Almost twenty of them. The sergeant had killed the one
reaching for her. He yanked her out of the way and let off a dozen
rounds. Three dead men and a woman dropped.

The soldiers shifted into a circle. Four in
front, three in back. Danielle could see there weren’t enough of
them. They were exposed.

She forced one of her Berettas away from her
body and tried to remember every offhand comment Stealth had ever
made about firing a gun. She squeezed the trigger. An ex-soldier a
few yards away jerked up and its shoulder went limp. She fired off
two more shots and the zombie dropped.

One of the soldiers facing the fence
hollered. An ex had dropped on top of him. He was trying to kick it
away and bring his rifle up, but the weapon was tangled in the dead
woman’s limbs. Danielle shoved the pistol at the ex’s skull and
blew it apart, but there was already another one clawing at the
soldier’s feet. She flinched back against the solid safety of the
wall.

The sound of teeth was drowning out
everything. She barely heard the sergeant yell as his rifle ran dry
and he clubbed an ex with it. One soldier wrapped his hands around
a zombie’s neck and tried to twist its skull off. The circle was
overwhelmed.

They were all around her.

She emptied the first pistol, pulled out the
second, and looked for a target. There were too many, too close.
There were at least a hundred coming through the fence. Still more
than a dozen coming from the base. She fired until her fingers
ached and the slide locked open. Half the soldiers were down,
wrestling with zombies. She was pretty sure two of them were
already dead.

One of the exes reached for her with withered
fingers. Danielle threw her pistol and it bounced off the snapping
jaws. She was exposed. Weak. Flesh. The ex’s hand slid up her arm,
headed for the exposed flesh of her face.

A metal hand reached down and crushed the
dead man’s skull. It flung the body back into the mob. “Come on,”
said Cesar. “We gotta get out of here.” He batted away two more
exes with a shrug of the battlesuit’s shoulders.

Metal fingers closed on her waist and lifted
her into the air. She was even more exposed. They set her down on
the armor’s shoulders and she grabbed the helmet for balance. “Put
me down,” she shouted. She banged her fist on the metal skull.
“We’ve got to get somewhere safe. We all do.”

“Doctor Morris,” said the battlesuit,
“there’s nobody left. Its just us.”

She looked down.

The exes had overrun the small defense line.
The soldiers were dead. One was still twitching but had a trio of
exes gnawing on him. She was pretty sure one had put his rifle in
his own mouth and the sound had been lost in all the gunfire.

A pair of exes reached for her feet, but she
was high enough up that all they could do was brush her heels. The
titan swatted them away. Danielle wrapped her arms tighter around
the helmet as the battlesuit stomped down the road.

She looked back at the guard towers flanking
the hole in the fence. The soldiers there were still picking off
exes with their rifles, but it was pebbles to divert a flood. One
of them looked at her and she could see his eyes from fifty yards
away.

“We’re going to come back,” she shouted. “I
promise. Just hang on.”

He gave her a weak wave that looked like it
ended in a thumbs-up. The other one just kept shooting at the
dozens of exes stumbling past his tower.

* * *

Smith had put Polk in front to replace
Harrison and left Taylor and Hayes to wrestle with Stealth. They
marched through the lobby of the records building and pushed the
doors open. Smith took a breath, straightened his tie out of habit,
and looked at the scene in front of them.

The Black Hawk rested on the pad about five
hundred feet away. Its engines were thrumming, even though the
rotors were still. A soldier in a flight helmet pumped fuel into
the chopper’s tanks and looked over his shoulder.

To one side of the helipad was a mob of
ex-soldiers. Sixty, maybe seventy of them. They had the pilot’s
attention. Smith saw the flash of green on their heads and a few
with rifles swinging on straps. Their teeth clacked together, but
over the engines it was more a tremble in the air than an actual
sound. There were maybe a hundred yards between the first few
zombies and the helicopter.

Sergeant Monroe, flanked by Truman and
Jefferson, came from the other direction. They were about as far
from the helipad as Smith and his group. They were sprinting, even
with their oversized rifles.

A shadow flitted across the ground. Smith
looked up and saw St. George plunging out of the sky. His boots hit
the tarmac twenty feet in front of them. One of them had a ragged
heel.

“Well,” said Smith, “this should be
interesting.”

“Stealth,” the hero yelled over the
helicopter, “you okay?”

“I am uninjured,” she said. “I trust you
received my message?”

St. George looked Smith in the eye. “Oh,
yeah,” he said. “Everybody got it.”

Smith smiled at him. “You don’t think you can
beat me, do you?”

The hero stopped in his tracks. Indecision
flickered on his face. He glanced at Stealth, then at the soldiers
flanking her. His brow knotted up in concentration.

Smith marched his group past the hero. He
paused to give St. George a friendly punch in the arm. “I’m sure
we’ll see each other again,” he said. “You’ve got way too much
potential to be running around without guidance.”

St. George raised a fist and glared at
him.

Monroe and his men were at the Black Hawk,
weapons ready. Smith shouted to them while he jabbed a finger
toward the exes. “You don’t want to let them reach the helicopter,
do you? Get in there and protect American property.”

A thread of blood trickled out of Monroe’s
nose, then Truman’s. The three super soldiers fell back and took up
position across the helipad. Gunfire drowned out the helicopter.
Their Bravos ripped the exes apart one after another. Some of the
exes stopped clacking their teeth together and raised their own
weapons.

Smith turned to Taylor and Hayes. “Get her on
board.” He glanced at his prisoner. “You said you wouldn’t cause
any problems, remember?”

“I do.”

“Good.” He led them to the Black Hawk. “God,
this is almost too easy.”

“He will beat you,” Stealth said as they
marched her forward.

Taylor smacked her in the ribs with his rifle
and she stumbled. He yanked her upright. “Not going to happen, you
fuck—”

St. George’s punch caught him in the back of
the head. The hero grabbed Taylor by the jacket, spun, and hurled
him back through the doors of the records building. The soldier
flew through three of the huge panes of glass and hit the far wall
of the lobby.

He turned back to Smith’s group and Polk
emptied his Bravo at the hero. St. George could hear brass and
links from the ammo chain falling like metal raindrops. He tried to
brace his foot behind him, slipped, and stumbled back. Polk sprayed
another hundred rounds at St. George, then threw the heavy rifle at
the hero for good measure.

Smith swung through to the pilot. “Take
off.”

“Sir, I’m not sure if we have enough fuel,”
he said. “We’re going to have to leapfrog if you want to make it
all the way to Groom Lake.”

“Are you able to get this damned thing in the
air or not?”

“Of course, sir.”

“Then do it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Hayes forced Stealth down onto the bench. It
was awkward with her arms twisted behind her, but he pushed her
back and strapped the seatbelt across her hips. He reached over her
for the flight harness. She glared up at him.

* * *

St. George dragged himself out of his panic
and doubt. He could hear the pitch of the engines changing. And
below it he could hear shouting.

The exes had expended their meager weapons,
but Jefferson had been hit twice in the firefight. He was down,
trying to hold up his rifle. The trio of soldiers was pinned down
as the exes marched closer. And they were marching in perfect
sync.

The Black Hawk lifted off.

He threw himself at the exes. He grabbed one
in each hand and used them as flails to knock down a dozen others.
Legion glared at him through their eyes and turned to fight.