Ex-Patriots

Chapter 11 NOW

Barry’s words were still echoing in St. George’s ear when the second Black Hawk dropped a belay line. The rope hadn’t even uncoiled before a soldier slid down fast. He was halfway down when the end of the line swung free, a good hundred feet over the Plaza lot.

“It’s too short,” said St. George, stepping forward. He focused, started to rise, and the soldier kneeling by the first helicopter opened fire with his rifle. The rounds hit hard. He imagined it was a lot like getting blasted by a firehose would be for normal people. The hero dropped back to the ground. He glanced up and the man on the belay line shot past the end and fell.

The soldier ended his hundred foot drop and hit the ground like a falling tree. The pavement cracked out from the impact point and kicked up two years’ worth of dust the first helicopter had swept into small drifts. Bits of gravel and dirt pitter-pattered down across the area.

St. George was back on his feet, taking in a breath to shout for medical help. In those few instants the dust cleared and he froze. The man hadn’t fallen from the line.

He’d jumped.

The soldier straightened up from the crouch he’d landed in, a move that reminded St. George of Arnold Schwarzenegger traveling from the future in the Terminator movies. He was a black man, at least nine inches taller than the hero, and a good foot wider. He focused on St. George with shining green eyes in a face shadowed by his helmet. There were two black bars on his chest, and stitched across the left side of his digital-patterned camos was one word.

FREEDOM

He pulled the biggest pistol St. George had ever seen from a thigh holster. It had a drum like an old Tommy gun and venting on the barrel. The muzzle came to bear on him as the huge officer barked out a command.

“Stand down, sir,” said Freedom, stepping forward. “Get on your knees with your hands on your head.”

“Hey,” said St. George. “There’s no need for this. It’s just a simple misunderstanding.”

“On your knees!” The captain grabbed the hero by the shoulder with his left hand and shoved down. St. George brushed the hand aside.

“I think you need to take a few deep breaths and calm—”

There was a sound like a sledgehammer hitting concrete as Freedom’s knuckles caught him under the chin. A shrub whipped St. George from behind and the wall of the gatehouse hit him in the back. He felt it crumble. The soldier marched forward, holstered his oversized pistol, and dragged the hero back to his feet by the lapels of his leather jacket. The man spun on his heel and threw St. George half a block down to 3rd Street.

The hero hit the pavement and skidded into one of the oversized planters. The concrete cracked and soil spilled out over him. He cleared his head with a quick shake and pushed himself back to his feet.

Freedom marched forward again. “Sir, stay on your knees and put your hands on your head,” said the huge soldier. “This is your last warn—”

St. George leaped up, grabbed the officer’s swollen biceps, and shot into the air.

When they were a hundred feet over the Mount he held the larger man up at eye level. “Unless you want to make that drop again,” he said, “I suggest you—”

Freedom slammed his helmet into the bridge of St. George’s nose. When the hero didn’t release him, he did it again.

Smoke curled up from St. George’s nostrils. He glared at the soldier for a moment and opened his hands.

The other man dropped six feet and grabbed hold of the hero’s boot with iron fingers.

“Oh, come on!” snapped St. George.

* * *

The soldier who’d taken the man named John to the ground dragged him back to the helicopter. The others shouted until the gate guards dropped their weapons, walked closer to the Black Hawk, and fell to their knees. Then they took up defensive positions around the chopper. Two of the soldiers kept the guards at gunpoint. Two others watched the nearby buildings for opposition.

One of the last two, a specialist with TRUMAN on his jacket, looked all around. “Where’d the woman go?”

“What woman?” The other soldier, labeled FRANKLIN, had been one of the last to disembark.

“With the black cape. Where’d she go? She was right here before the captain arrived.”

All six of them scanned the area around the helicopter. There was ten feet of open space in every direction. Where the woman had been standing, on the far side of Freedom’s impact crater, there was twice that distance to the nearest piece of cover. And most of that cover had been destroyed when the captain had punched the guy claiming to be the Mighty Dragon.

One of the civilian guards, a beefy man with dreadlocks, chuckled. He kept his hands on his head and raised his voice so they could hear him across the distance. “You guys might as well give up now,” he said.

“Keep it quiet,” snapped one of the soldiers watching him. “I’ll tape your mouth if I have to.”

He laughed again. “You guys are so seriously out of your league here.”

The five soldiers exchanged a quick set of looks. Then they looked at each other again. “Hey,” said Franklin, “where the hell did Mike go?”

* * *

At Four, Zzzap searched the air for information. Telemetry danced around him from all five helicopters, and here and there a terse command from the troops on the ground. He knew their call sign was Unbreakable and it sounded like another squad from the same platoon was getting ready to deploy. On the Mount’s frequencies the Melrose Gate had gone silent, but many of the spotters on the wall stepped on each other in their rush to report in. The soldiers had taken the Melrose guards prisoner. Three people reported gunfire but weren’t sure from what or at who. And they’d seen St. George carry someone into the air and start to wrestle with him.

He sent a pulse out to Stealth. He knew it reached her cowl radio, but she didn’t respond. Which meant she was fighting the other soldiers. It shouldn’t be too hard for her. If he’d gotten the numbers right, there were six or seven on the ground and maybe that many more getting ready to deploy. A ridiculously small amount, from his limited experience with the military. The sun was almost up but there were still a ton of shadows. With home-court advantage, Stealth would probably have the soldiers disarmed and hogtied before the—

Zzzap had an ugly thought. There was no reason for it, but a lot of things made sense if he was right. Maybe whoever gave this platoon of soldiers their call sign was as big a movie fan as he was. Which would explain why they didn’t need to put that many soldiers on the ground. And why one of them was trading punches with St. George.

Keep an eye on things here, he said to no one in particular. I think they might need some extra help out there.

* * *

St. George tried to shake the larger man loose, but Freedom’s grip couldn’t be broken. He kicked the huge soldier in the wrist again but it didn’t seem to have any effect. The hero finally dove down towards 12th Street in the middle of the North-by-Northwest residential area. He pulled up at the last minute and slammed the other man against the ground, confident it wasn’t a lethal tactic. At this point he wondered if it would even slow the soldier down.

Freedom tumbled across the pavement and rolled to his feet next to the capsized truck that blocked the North Gower Gate. His helmet skittered loose across the street. He drew his oversized sidearm and squeezed off four thundering bursts at St. George. Over a dozen slugs hit like punches. They pattered off the hero’s chest and shoulder and chimed on the ground with the spent shells from the pistol.

St. George glanced over his shoulder, but it looked like most of the stray rounds had just taken chunks out of Thirty-One’s outer wall. “Look,” he said, “isn’t this a little cliché? I’m one of the good guys. I’m pretty sure you’re one of the good guys. Let’s pull our heads out of our asses before either side does something stu—”

The four guards from Gower Gate lunged forward with pikes and weapons drawn. One of them howled a battle-cry. A pike got close to Freedom and he grabbed it by the end and snapped the tip off. He blasted the ground by their feet. “Drop your weapons,” he bellowed.

The guards smiled. One pointed behind him.

He turned and St. George’s fist cracked across his jaw. The soldier shook it off and a second punch knocked him back against the truck. He swung a roundhouse with his free hand but the hero leaped away and up.

Freedom holstered his weapon and charged across the pavement. He leaped up and tackled St. George in mid-air. The hero’s concentration faltered and they slammed into the ground.

The huge soldier drove three quick punches into St. George’s face with the distinct sound of large stones being slammed together. Each one drove the smaller man’s skull down into the pavement until the surface cracked. “You will stand down, sir,” said Freedom. “I’m not going to tell you ag—”

St. George slammed his palm up. Hard. It caught Freedom in the breastbone and knocked him a dozen feet into the air. The soldier hit the ground running and threw himself back at the hero before he could finish getting to his feet. The two slid across the road and into the side of Thirty.

Freedom brought his knee up and St. George folded over with an all-too-human pain. The huge man drove his fist into the hero’s gut twice, then grabbed his collar and threw him back out into the street. St. George coughed out some smoke and a few tongues of flame.

At which point the gate guards opened fire.

A dozen rounds struck Freedom in the back. He turned and caught a dozen more in the chest and arms. He lunged forward, far too fast for a man his size, and three of the guards had been disarmed and knocked down before the fourth had time to re-aim. The soldier took another burst to the chest before snapping the edge of his palm against the guard’s temple. The man dropped like an empty set of clothes.

St. George grabbed Freedom by the neck and hurled him away from the gate. The soldier was charging forward again before the hero could finish turning. They traded blows that echoed in the tall canyons of North-by-Northwest. Then Freedom blocked a roundhouse punch and slammed his fist up into St. George’s gut. The impact sent him sailing into the air. He soared up and over the spiked top of the Gower gate.

He landed outside the Mount.

“Son of a bitch,” muttered St. George as the exes swarmed over him.

* * *

Stealth’s arm swung around and delivered a fast strike to Specialist Truman’s throat before she dragged him between the potted shrubs. One blow to paralyze the voice box and give her time to incapacitate him. The man let out a faint hiss of air. It was a weak noise under ideal conditions. With the Black Hawk’s rotors still making a last few circles in the air, he was effectively silenced.

The soldiers were each carrying an M240B as a standard weapon and a complete set of body armor with no apparent effort. It indicated great strength, bordering on superhuman. It was more time-consuming, but she delivered a series of strikes across Truman’s body. Biceps, armpits, pectorals. Each one hit a nerve cluster, the end result being two arms numb from the shoulders down.

When he still rolled up and grabbed for her she realized how dense his muscle tissue must be. She frowned beneath her featureless mask and drove a punch into his forehead, right where his eyebrows met. He dropped.

Nine seconds to stop one man. Too long. The others had noticed he was missing. She heard one of them call out for him. A change in tactics was required. The soldiers had already demonstrated one weak point. It was somewhat distasteful, but she would have to exploit it.

She jumped up, kicked off the concrete planter, and flipped through the hedges.

* * *

On an average day, there were anywhere from a hundred to two hundred ex-humans milling around on the street outside the Gower gate. A decent amount of noise could draw another hundred on top of that. St. George put the mob of exes he’d fallen into at about one-fifty with another hundred or so close by.

They fell on him with hungry teeth that broke on his skin. Withered lips and fingers worked their way over his arms and shoulders and legs. The only good thing about two years of the undead in Los Angeles was most of them had dried out by now.

He pushed down against gravity and rose up through the mob, carrying half a dozen chattering exes with him. They dropped off as he rotated in the air, some of them knocking down other dead things as they fell. He turned back to the Mount and the first rounds hit him.

The drum-fed monster Freedom carried spat out ten rounds in a two-second burst, and each one hit like one of his punches. The soldier had leaped to the top of the white truck that blocked the gate. “Please stand down, sir,” he called out. “I don’t enjoy doing this.”

St. George faltered in the air as a second burst caught him in the chest. He dipped low enough for thin fingers to grab at his boots again.

Freedom lined up a third shot when he heard the air sizzle behind him and saw how dark his shadow had gotten. He spun and fired off another burst. There was a hiss as the rounds vaporized inches from Zzzap. The captain wasted some more ammunition. There was a hollow clang from his oversized pistol.

Well, said the wraith. He held his hand up. The air in front of his palm twisted and rippled from the heat. That was all pretty impressive until the part where you got here.

“You would be Zzzap, correct, sir?”

Thank God someone knows me. I’m sick and tired of being mistaken for Stealth.

“Give it a rest,” said St. George. He shook off the last ex and drifted over to hang a few yards above the soldier. Smoke was billowing out his nostrils and between his teeth. “So, feel like having that calm talk, now?”

The huge officer looked at each of the heroes in turn and then dropped his oversized pistol. It clattered on the roof of the truck as he raised his hands. “I choose to decline at this time, sir,” he said.

What about name, rank and all that stuff?

“Captain Freedom, sir,” he said. “Alpha 456th Unbreakables, first U.S. Army super-soldier company.”

There was a long pause.

Oh, that is too cool, said Zzzap.

* * *

The woman in black came over the hedge. She spun in the air and her cloak spread like a huge set of wings. It blotted out the sky as she came down at Franklin and the squad’s sergeant, Monroe. Their weapons came up and twin bursts ripped into the darkness. Her descent didn’t shift in the slightest and shadows raced on the ground below her. The sergeant fired another burst as Franklin dove to the side. She came down on the sergeant. He fought for a moment, a thrashing shape beneath the cloak, and then he tossed the fabric aside.

“Nothing,” said Monroe. “Just her cape. She’s gone.”

“She was there,” said Franklin. “We saw her.”

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” said the man in the suit. He was still in the helicopter’s crew compartment.

“Not now, sir,” said Monroe. “We’ve got a hostile in the area.”

“Yeah,” said the man. “I’m very aware of that at the moment.”

The sergeant shot a look over his shoulder. John was sitting very still. His arms were at his sides and his head was tilted back. Monroe gave his eyes a moment to adjust to the shadows inside the Black Hawk and saw the harness straps pulled tight across the man’s arms and body. His collar and tie sat funny, and another second of light-adjustment let the sergeant pick out the black chrome bar pressed against the man’s throat.

Monroe blinked. It had only been a few seconds since he turned his head, but now he could see the very feminine shadow behind John. She gave a slight dip of her head, an acknowledgement he’d spotted her. Then she pulled herself closer to the man named John. On either side of the helicopter soldiers raised their weapons.

“The M240B has a prodigious rate of fire,” she said in a clear voice. “Seven hundred-fifty rounds per minute at its lowest setting. It is not a weapon designed for pinpoint accuracy, however. Firing into an enclosed space will almost guarantee you hit your civilian advisor.”

The weapons stayed up.

No one moved.

“You know what I think?” said the man in the suit. “I think we should all take a moment here and relax. Wouldn’t that be good? Let’s all stop and calm down for a moment before this gets any more out of hand.”