Ex-Patriots

Chapter 30 NOW

“HOW MUCH LONGER WE GONNA KEEP THIS UP?” Hundreds of dead faces split into hundreds of grins. “YOU ASK ME, YOU GONNA RUN OUTTA BULLETS LONG BEFORE I RUN OUTTA BODIES.”

“First things first,” said St. George. “Let’s get this gate blocked.”

Freedom gave three quick hand signals and the chisel-nosed truck coughed to life. It was a long, eight-wheeled vehicle with a crane mounted on the end of it. They pulled it across the gate and the soldiers fired around and under it as the driver leaped clear.

St. George hooked his fingers under the truck’s frame and heaved. The flatbed’s side lifted up and he grunted. The damned thing was armored and weighed twice what he’d thought. He got the tires three feet off the ground, then four. He heard a rattling noise as some of the chains on the bed slid off the far side, but he couldn’t get it to the tipping point.

His forearm throbbed. He could feel his pulse in the wound and the wet bandage over it. It felt like the fang was tearing into him all over again.

Legion laughed from a hundred throats.

“Unbreakables,” shouted Freedom, stepping forward, “give the man some assistance.”

The captain’s oversized hands slammed into the truck’s frame next to St. George’s. Pierce, Kennedy, and Garfield added their strength, too. The side of the truck went up another six inches, then six more, and the five of them rolled the ponderous flatbed onto its side across the gate. The soldiers behind them cheered.

“That’s not going to hold forever,” said St. George.

“Agreed,” said Freedom. “The fence line’s been compromised in at least three places, and weakened beyond each of them.” He pointed at either side of the gate, where the chainlink sagged. “No tension, no strength.”

“Sir,” said Kennedy, “we haven’t been able to reach Captain Creed. If Colonel Shelly is dead…” She looked at him with a neutral face.

“Ranking officer?” guessed St. George. “So, what are we going to do?”

Freedom knelt and scratched a rectangle in the sand. “We’re here,” he said, pointing. He made two quick crosses on the opposite side and gestured to one on the corner. “We’ve got breaches here and here. That’s where your friends are.”

“And this one?”

“Most of third company’s there. Two more squads on the way.”

“How many is that? Fifty, sixty soldiers?”

“More or less,” said Kennedy.

“Any of them your people?”

Freedom shook his head. “We’ve got Twenty-two here. Squad Eleven’s still cleaning out the barracks. That leaves Twenty-one escorting Agent Smith.” He glanced at the gate. “First Sergeant, now that we’re here with St. George let’s get Sergeant Pierce and his people to the south east corner.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know this place,” said St. George. He nodded at the upended flatbed. “Are we going to be able to block the other holes?”

The captain looked at the map in the dirt. “Maybe,” he said after a moment. “It depends on how much Legion has to throw at us.”

“Zzzap?”

The gleaming wraith shot into the sky. When he was a few hundred feet above the base he turned in a slow circle, taking in the lay of the land. A moment later he raced back to the ground. Lots of exes coming, he said. I’d guess you’re looking at two thousand or more in any given direction.

“That doesn’t make sense,” said Kennedy. “Most of them should be coming from the southwest, Yuma. Every other direction is a hundred miles of nothing. Where are they all coming from?”

“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.

They grabbed St. George at his wrists and tried to pin his arms. Some wrapped themselves around his legs. None of them wasted time trying to bite. Five bodies had hold of him. By the time he’d crushed three skulls there were ten. He threw off four with a shrug of his shoulders and there were fifteen. They piled on, using sheer numbers to hold him down.

“Gotcha this time, Dragon,” whispered one of them.

“Gotcha good,” said another.

St. George snorted. “You think you can hold me?”

A musty arm wrapped across his throat. A hand slapped over his eyes. Fingers grabbed at his hair and ears and clothes.

“There’s a concrete truck just a little ways from here,” said one of the exes. “What if we dumped the whole thing on us? Bury you under all these corpses. What do you think?”

“I think you’re still an idiot,” said St. George.

He focused between his shoulder blades and shot fifty feet into the air. Over two dozen exes came with him, clutching his body too tight for their own good. Legion had enough time to grunt with surprise and St. George dove back down, flying head-first for the tarmac. At the last second he shifted direction and hurled himself back into the sky.

The exes rushed past him in a flurry of limbs and bodies. They smashed into the helipad. Some plowed through other undead that hadn’t been carried into the air. Skulls shattered, bones snapped, and gore splattered across the blacktop. Close to thirty exes ceased to exist.

St. George hung in the air for a moment over the pile of corpses. A few of them still writhed in the heap. He landed and wrenched their necks the way a regular man would open a twist-off bottle. The last one glowered at him and was taking in a breath to speak when he broke the top of its spine into three pieces.

Monroe and Truman snapped off bursts at the last few exes. “Sir,” shouted Monroe. He pointed down the road where another mob staggered toward them.

“Get your man back to the main gate,” said St. George. “We don’t need to stay here any longer.”

“What about Smith? He’s still got your partner, right?”

He looked up. The Black Hawk was already a quarter mile away and six or seven hundred feet up, climbing fast even as it tilted away to the north. A body flew out of the side and plunged toward the ground.

* * *

“Wait a minute,” shouted Smith. He’d swung himself into one of the chairs and started to struggle with the harness until something caught his attention. He looked across at Stealth. “I thought you handcuffed her arms in front of her.”

Hayes was still leaning over her, adjusting a last strap. He glanced down at his captive and her empty lap.

“We are now on the helicopter,” Stealth said in a loud, clear voice.

Her hands slashed through the air, the left arm still trailing both handcuffs. The open palms slammed against his ears and the super-soldier felt a wave of pain and dizziness as his eardrums ruptured. Her legs whipped up and back as she drove her heels into his kneecaps. As he staggered back she grabbed his jacket and pulled herself up to crack her head into the bridge of his nose. The floor tilted and Hayes was pitched out the Black Hawk’s open door.

Polk tried to shrug off his harness and stand up. She slammed both heels into his chest. Before he recovered she spun on her hands and circled his head with her feet. The chain of her shackles pulled tight on his throat. She jackknifed her body up and drove four punches into his forehead one after the other. He tried to block them but she was too fast and her calves were in the way. By the fourth one Polk was hanging loose in the harness. She swung back down, untwisted the shackle chain, and flipped back to her feet.

She turned to Smith. The combat knife she’d grabbed from Polk’s belt spun in her hand.

Smith yelled something at her. With the engines roaring and the wind coming in through the cabin doors, she couldn’t hear what it was.

He realized she couldn’t hear him and his eyes went wide.

She saw the pilot glance back at her. He reached for his sidearm.

She threw the knife. It sank into Smith’s throat just below his Adam’s apple. The blade missed his carotid artery.

It severed one of his vocal cords.

Smith grabbed at his throat and glared at her. She saw blood bubbling on his lips as he tried to shout commands to the pilot. The deck of the chopper tilted again.

Beneath her featureless mask, Stealth closed her eyes and leaped from the helicopter’s open cabin door. The roar of its rotors faded as she dropped away and the Black Hawk continued north.

She grabbed the edges of her cloak, letting it billow out to catch the wind. She was too high up for it to save her, she knew. Almost nine hundred feet. The cloak would slow her descent, and while she would never reach terminal velocity she would still reach a sufficient speed in the next few seconds for the impact to kill her instantly.

Then a strong arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her close. Her descent slowed and stopped, and she wrapped her own arms around his neck.

“I’ve got you,” said St. George.

“There was never any doubt.”