Ex-Patriots

Chapter 27 NOW

There were, by Specialist MacLeod’s guesstimate, about a thousand exes around the Krypton fence. He was good at guesstimates. Not even three years ago he’d worked the produce department at the Albertsons on West 24th where he’d amazed coworkers with the ability to put a number to avocados on an endcap or jalapenos in a bin. Since he’d signed up, he was still amazing people, but now it was spent brass on the firing range or zombies at the fence.

A thousand was more than usual, but not by a huge amount. A lot of them seemed to be stumbling across the desert these past few days and joining the mobs at the chainlink. The open space muffled their chattering teeth, but not by much.

Still, it was quieter up in a watchtower than down on the ground. Morning run around the perimeter always creeped him out. A lot of the dead things at the fence were wearing the same uniform he was, and he didn’t like to see it up close. Heck, the ex-soldiers walking the perimeter were bad enough.

His watch ended at fourteen-hundred. Fifteen more minutes and he was off duty. Pulling a shift alone sucked and he couldn’t wait until it was over.

He looked along the north side of the fence and gave a wave to D.B. over at the next tower. He was stuck with a solitary shift, too. The soldier waved back and MacLeod wandered across his tower’s small deck to look down at the gates. Three layers of steel pipe and chainlink between him and the dead.

Movement made him glance back into the base. A figure was wobbling across the open space between the gate and the helipad. At first MacLeod thought the back and forth gait might mean it was First Sergeant Kennedy, but just as quick he realized it was more of a stagger than a pleasant sway. He lifted his binoculars and confirmed one of the ex-soldiers was heading for the gate.

He picked up the tower’s handset and punched in the extension for the zombie handlers. “Short Bus, this is Tower two,” he said, “I think one of your kids is skipping class. You know anything about it?”

“Negative, Tower. Do we have a dead Nest?”

“Don’t know. Doesn’t seem to be feral, just wandering.”

“Copy. Someone probably gave it a vague order and now it’s trying to walk to Washington or something. I’ll send somebody out to retrieve it.”

“Copy that, Short Bus.”

Below him the ex had smacked into the inside fence and was still trying to walk through it. The zombie tilted and slid along the chainlink. It swayed as its head and shoulders slapped the fence again and again.

MacLeod sighed and wished he had a cigarette. He looked west and saw more figures dotting the horizon. Damn, there were a lot of exes today. He wondered what made them all wander in the same direction.

Over the chatter of teeth he heard a faint beep. Then two more. Then a fourth and fifth. He looked back down to the gate.

The lone ex was at the keypad for the gate controls. One finger from each hand stuck out. It stabbed at the keys with quick, precise movements.

It took MacLeod a few seconds to register what he was seeing. By then the red lights had started to flash. He saw movement between the fences as soldiers ran to safety. The exes outside the fence lumbered toward the gate with far too much purpose. Their teeth had stopped chattering. After two years of listening to the click-click-click of enamel he thought nothing could be more unnerving. A hiss filed the air, a sucking noise, and he realized they were breathing. A thousand exes were pulling air into their shriveled lungs.

When they spoke, it was in one voice.

“CALL ME LEGION,” roared the exes, “FOR I AM MANY.”

Their leathery voices echoed across the desert plains and between the buildings of Krypton and broke down into a dry laughter.

* * *

“It’s a nine-foot-tall, red-white-and-blue robot built like a linebacker,” growled St. George. “Where the hell did it go?”

After watching a dozen or so soldiers file out after the battlesuit, Sorensen had asked to be left at the workshop. He seemed fine with being left behind, and said he’d try to contact Freedom or Smith through normal channels. St. George and Zzzap had returned to the skies to hunt down whoever was wearing the Cerberus battle armor.

Invisibility field? said Zzzap.

“I think if Danielle could turn invisible, she would’ve mentioned it before now.”

Yeah, but that isn’t Danielle.

Legion’s roar echoed up from the base below them. The two heroes looked at each other.

“That’s that,” said St. George. “We’re out of time.”

Joy.

“Fly the perimeter, make sure there aren’t any gates or openings at risk. Keep an eye out for Stealth, Danielle, or the Cerberus suit. Burn any ex you find.”

On it. You?

“I’ll take the main gate. I’m willing to bet he goes for the obvious choice again.”

Zzzap nodded. Grab a radio if you can find one. I’ll be listening for you.

They split up. St. George headed south for the base’s entrance. He was a few hundred yards away when he saw muzzle flashes and the echo of gunshots reached him. He dropped to the ground and his boots scraped the concrete.

One man, a specialist with MACLEOD on his coat, jabbed at a control panel again and again. The ex laying at his feet was missing most of its skull. The soldier slapped the box, entered the code once more, and threw a panicked glance at the gate.

The three chainlink gates had only opened a few feet, but it was enough. Now they were crammed with bodies as exes pushed and heaved at the gate. At least a dozen blocked the innermost gate from closing, and more clogged each opening past that. The motors made a grinding noise over the chattering of teeth.

A few dozen soldiers—the less-experienced civilian ones, the hero realized—were at the gates. They beat at exes with rifle butts and tried to force them back. A few fired close-range bursts, but most of them were too panicked to aim for the head. Their bullets tore off arms and blew holes in chests. Less than half the ones that went down stayed down, and many of them fell inside the gate.

“Back off,” shouted St. George. “Give yourselves room to shoot.”

The hero pushed between two soldiers and put his heel through a teenage ex’s skull as it crawled along the ground. He grabbed a dead man wearing a Sam’s Club vest and threw the zombie up and over the fences. It cleared the first two and hooked a leg on the last one as it descended. It hung there and flailed in slow motion.

All at once the exes stopped chattering. They looked at the hero advancing on the gate and grinned. “DRAGON MAN,” they said. “NOT GOING TO SAVE THE DAY THIS TIME, ESSE .”

St. George brought his fists down like hammers and shattered two skulls, then swung them out to break two more. The dead things pushed at the fence line. Close to fifty of them threw their weight at the innermost gate.

He looked back at the soldiers. “Come on,” he shouted. “Help me clear the damned gate! Line up and take your shots.”

“THEY’RE TOO SCARED,” said the exes. “I BEEN WATCHIN’ FOR MONTHS. THESE SOLDIER BOYS ARE GREEN AND YELLOW.” The dead things broke into another fit of laughter.

St. George sucked in air and sprayed flames out onto the exes. It burned hair and melted eyes. Some of the brittle clothes and skin caught fire. They flailed and stumbled back for a moment. Then their teeth started chattering again and the dead things shambled forward. He swept his arm in front of him and broke skulls, jaws, and necks.

It made enough of a gap for him to grab one side of the gate and push it two feet more closed. That got him close enough to grab the other section and yank at it. He heaved them together, crushing exes between them, and a smell reached his nose. Just beneath the scent of burnt hair and flesh was metallic smoke.

The soldier by the keypad freaked out. “The motors,” MacLeod yelled. “They burnt out the motors for the gate!”

“I can close it,” shouted St. George. “Just take down a few of them!”

Something heavy stomped up behind him, and two massive hands clanged against the pipes lining the gate. Servos hummed and Cerberus pushed the two halves of the gate together. Exes crumpled and burst between the chainlink panels.

“See?” crowed the battlesuit. “Told you I could do good stuff, St. George. You shoulda had more faith in me.”

“Cesar?” St. George looked at the huge eyes looming over him. “Is that you?”

“Damn straight,” said the titan. It turned and pressed itself against the gate, using its bulk to hold the two sections shut. The exes reached through the chainlink with pale fingers that scrabbled on the armor plates.

“How the hell did you get here?”

“Was easy, man,” said the battlesuit. “Knew you guys would need me, cause everyone knows you can’t trust the government, right?” He slurred the word into goverrment . “So I switched into the helicopter while we were loading the suit up back at the Mount. Then I snuck out of the helicopter into a jeep, and then she picked the jeep up with the suit and I was in. It was that easy. Pretty cool, huh?”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

The titan shrugged and its shoulders scraped on the chainlink fence. “I was going to once we were all alone, see, but Stealth kept hanging around with Doctor Morris and then she shut the suit off and it made me, like, sedated, y’know?”

“Where the fuck are the Gatekeepers?” bellowed one of the soldiers. He looked at Barracks Eight a hundred yards away. “It’s been over ten minutes since the perimeter alarms went off.”

One man with sergeant’s stripes and the name STEWART separated himself from the others. “Yates, Benton,” he snapped, “go find out what the hell is taking them so long. The rest of you take up positions. You know the drill—single shot, pick your targets, now move.” He glared at St. George and whispered something into his radio.

“Hey,” said the battlesuit. There was a squawk from the speakers and Cesar’s next words were a metallic whisper. The armored skull nodded at the sergeant. “I can hear that guy talking in my head. They’re coming for us, man. We gotta split.”

* * *

Freedom and his squad burst from the old reactor complex and double-timed it across the base. Their pace would’ve made Olympic sprinters jealous. It didn’t feel fast enough.

“Unbreakable Twenty-two,” he snapped into his radio. “This is Unbreakable Six.”

“Unbreakable Six, this is Twenty-two,” came the reply.

“Twenty-two, this is Six,” said Freedom. “Main gate, double-time. Hostiles inside and out.”

“Six, this is Twenty-two. Understood. ETA five minutes.”

It was going to take him six minutes to get all the way back across the base. Smith had suggested checking on Zzzap, and sure enough the electrical man was out. Sorensen was missing, too. He was supposed to be helping the base medics take care of Shelly. According to the soldiers on guard duty at the old reactor, the doctor had sided with the heroes. He’d led St. George there and helped free the prisoner.

Freedom tried to think of himself as a rational man. It was one of his strengths as an officer. He knew hate was an irrational emotion. Nevertheless, there were things he hated. Cowardice was one. Betrayal was another. And he couldn’t think of a worse form of betrayal than treason.

It was one of the few things he had in common with Smith.

The agent had delivered the bad news. Shelly was not doing well. The colonel was hanging on, but his injuries were too great. “He may end up comatose,” Smith had said. “Can you believe that?”

Freedom’s grip tightened on his Bravo, and he felt the comfortable weight of Lady Liberty on his hip. The superbeings from Los Angeles—he couldn’t call them heroes anymore—were going to pay for what they’d done here.

* * *

St. George leaped thirty feet and landed next to a sign warning all visitors to declare weapons and electronics. He ripped the metal sign post out of the ground. His fingers crumbled the concrete mass at the end like a lump of dried mud. “Cesar, listen to me,” he said, soaring back to the fence. “You want to be part of the team, right?”

“Hell yeah!”

“Here’s what I need you to do.” He bent the post into a large U shape. The sign got in the way so he broke the rivets and tore it off the post. “I need you to find Danielle,” he said. “Doctor Morris. Head back to the workshop. If you find her, your job is to keep her safe. Got it?”

“Got it? What about everyone else?”

He pushed the U through one side of the gate. “If you find soldiers in trouble, help them out. If you find exes, just kill them.”

The titan’s head tilted. “Kill ‘em? All on my own?”

St. George looked up at the armored skull as he worked the sign post around and out the other side of the gate. “While you’re in that suit you’ve got as much armor as a tank and you can rip a Hummer apart with your bare hands. You can handle exes with no problem.”

“Right,” said the titan. “Okay. Still gettin’ used to this. What if I see Zzzap or Stealth?”

“Tell Zzzap to make sure your batteries are good. If he asks, tell him…” He tried to think of a good code phrase while he twisted the signpost like an oversized garbage tie. The posts of the gate squealed and bent in until they touched. “Tell him I said you’re five by five.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It’s from one of his favorite shows. He made me watch four seasons’ worth of it. He’ll know what it means.”

“Okay. And Stealth?”

For a moment he considered telling Cesar to stay at the gate, but he knew the kid would be more useful searching the base. “Stealth can take care of herself,” he said. “Don’t worry about her. Find Danielle, find Zzzap, keep as many people safe as you can.”

The gate was holding for now. Hopefully they wouldn’t need to open it soon. Close to a hundred exes lined the inner fence, with more pouring through the open outer gates. The soldiers had fallen into a good rhythm and bodies were piling up almost as fast as they trickled in.

Almost as fast.

He banged the titan on the shoulder. “Get going.”

The battlesuit gave him a thumbs up and charged away. St. George spotted Stewart. “Sergeant,” he yelled, “shouldn’t you have reinforcements by now?”

The man gave him an angry glance and continued to direct the soldiers thinning out the dead.

“Hey!” St. George took a small leap and sailed down to the ground in front of the sergeant. “I know I’m not high on the chain of command, but you’ve got a serious problem here.”

“Sir,” Stewart barked, “we have things under control. Please step back.” He had two inches on the hero and he knew how to use it.

St. George took a breath, counted to five, and let it slip out of his nostrils as smoke. “Have you ever seen exes talk before, sergeant?”

It shook the sergeant for a moment, but he recovered. He didn’t answer.

“I have, and nothing good came of it. We lost a lot of people. Friends.” He glanced over his shoulder at the base. “I don’t want the same thing to happen here.”

The sergeant looked at the soldiers. “There should be a hundred men here,” he said. He pointed at Barracks Eight. “They’re the first responders for a perimeter alarm.”

“And they’re not responding,” nodded St. George. “How long has it been since you sent those guys to investigate? About five minutes?”

“Almost, but we haven’t heard anything.”

“If they didn’t radio you, what would you have heard over all this?” The hero gestured at the soldiers picking targets through the fence. “I’m going to go check it out. Can you spare a radio?”

Stewart opened his mouth, then paused. “I’m supposed to keep you under observation, sir,” he said.

St. George gave another nod. “Feel free to observe me heading over to that barracks, then. When Captain Freedom gets here make sure he knows where I am, too.”

“Yes, sir.”

He shot into the air and covered the hundred yards in seconds. Barracks Eight was silent. St. George was pretty sure someone was supposed to be standing guard duty, too. Billie Carter had called it the anti-fuckery patrol. The barracks across the street also didn’t have anyone standing guard.

He stepped inside.

The lobby was covered in blood. There were three dead bodies, two men and a woman. Their throats had been ripped open to kill them fast and quiet. He could see bloody handprints on the woman’s uniform where her arms had been held, and a smear across her face where they’d covered her mouth. One man’s jaw had been pried open until it snapped.

There was a shuffling noise down the hall. Two ex-soldiers shambled toward him. Each one had a useless Nest device. Their teeth clacked together like a rock drummer banging his sticks before a song.

“Anyone here?” he shouted. “Anyone? Help’s here.”

Behind the exes the first-floor rooms were all open. He saw blood pooling in some of the doorways. A limp hand stretched out from one room.

He counted to ten and heard nothing but the click-click-click of teeth echoing through the building. Then a noise came from behind him.

Freedom and a handful of super-soldiers stood in the main entrance. “Sergeant Pierce,” said the huge officer, “take your squad and return to the main gate. Provide tactical support and hold position there.”

“Sir,” said the sergeant with a quick salute. A handful of men vanished back outside.

Freedom took another step forward and raised his Bravo. “St. George, get down on your knees and place your hands on your head.”

“Are you serious?” The hero shook his head. He heard the awkward footsteps of the exes in the hall behind him. “All this going on and you want to fight with me?”

A Bravo roared and the zombie behind St. George was headless. Sergeant Kennedy stepped around the hero and twisted the skull of the other one. Two of the other super-soldiers, Franklin and Monroe, moved up on either side to cover her.

And also, St. George noticed, to surround him.

“There’s enough to deal with in our current crisis without having rogue elements on the base,” said Freedom. “Your partner is in custody. You will surrender now. Sir.”

The hero’s face hardened. “You’ve got Stealth? Where?”

“Last chance to surrender, sir.” He held the Bravo out at arm’s length.

“You know that can’t hurt me, right?”

“I do, sir,” said Freedom. “We’re going to do this one the old-fashioned way.”

Kennedy slammed the steel stock of her rifle between the hero’s shoulder blades. The shock staggered St. George more than anything. He turned and she cracked him across the jaw with the weapon. His head snapped around and Franklin’s fist smacked into his face.

The super-soldiers closed in on the hero.