Ex-Patriots (13 page)

“Does the Guard even have that many people
left in country?” asks Eddie. “Most of them are in Iraq, aren’t
they?”

Ryan shrugs in between curls.

Kennedy wipes some sweat off her forehead.
“Is it getting that bad? Are people looting or something?”

Gus slaps his plate on the bar and shakes his
head. “I heard it’s not like a regular flu, whatever it is. People
get sick but they keep walking around and infecting people.”

Monroe taps his plate into place. “I heard it
was turning people into zombies.”

“Fuck that,” I say. “That’s bullshit.”

“My brother’s in Queens. He says he’s seen
people wandering around biting other people.”

Kennedy leans back on the bench. “Hate to
agree with Taylor,” she says, “but that sounds like bullshit.” She
grabs the bar and takes in a few deep breaths. Her arms tighten and
the bar comes off the stands. Nine-forty. Fucking cunt.

“What I want to know,” says Eddie, “is why
aren’t they sending us out?”

“Because we’re not in the National Guard,” I
say.

“Yeah, fuck that. If they’re locking down the
base it means things are bad. People need help out there and it
sounds like they need everyone they can get.”

“You want to go haul that flu virus off to
Guantanamo?” says Britney with a grin.

“I don’t like sitting here on my ass,” Eddie
tells her.

“Yeah, your ass looks well sat-on,” grunts
Kennedy between presses. Most of them chuckle. She’s telling jokes.
The bitch is
telling jokes
while she breaks my record. I
want to throw one of my dumbbells at her head and see what
happens.

It gets the attention back on her, which is
what she wanted. Seven reps. Eight. Nine. Ten. Ten reps of
nine-hundred and forty pounds. The bar clangs onto the stand and
almost bounces off before Gus grabs it.

They’re all pounding her back and
congratulating her. She’s got wide eyes. Runner’s high. I drop the
dumbbells back on the rack with a clang. It’s my turn. Time to get
my record back and—

And she flops back onto the bench. She’s
staring up at the bar, and I swear to fucking God if she says what
I think she’s going to say I will kill this bitch.

“Do it,” she says. “Two more.”

Fucking cocksucker bitch cunt
whore
!

They all stop talking and stare at her. It
already looks like a cartoon barbell, there’s so much weight on it.
There’s about three inches clear at either end. Just enough to fit
one more plate.

“Sarge,” says Monroe, “you sure? That’s—”

“One thousand ninety,” she says. She nods.
“Sorensen says we should be able to break a thousand. So let’s
break it.”

There’s another moment of quiet and then
they’re all hollering and stomping. Kennedy the she-bitch is still
staring at the bar. Gus and Monroe trek across the gym, grab the
last seventy-five pound plates, and lug them back across the gym.
One plate is nothing to any of us these days. They’re carrying them
one-handed. She’s got seven on each side of the bar now.

I’ve gotta admit, I’m pissed but I want to
see if she can do it.

She swings her legs up, crosses her ankles,
and we can all see her abs tighten. Her arms spread a bit and her
fingers wrap around the bar. Gus and Monroe are standing on either
side. That’s a fuckload of weight for one guy to spot. Even for
us.

She takes in a deep breath. Then another. Her
arms tense up and the barbell comes off the stands. The bar’s
wobbling, there’s so much fucking weight on it.

It goes down real slow. She’s sucking in air
while it comes down on her tits. Just brushes her nipples. Fucking
little cock tease.

She breathes out hard and the bar goes up.
One thousand and ninety pounds. Over half a ton.

The first rep is a little slow, but then the
bitch does a second. And a third. And a fourth. She almost gets the
fifth one up but her arms start shaking. Gus and Monroe lean in and
she barks at them to back off. Sweat’s pouring off of her. You can
hear it hitting the floor. And she forces the bar up. Five reps of
more than half a ton each.

She rolls up off the bench and the whole
squad is hollering and pounding her back and hugging her. She’s the
fucking bitch hero of the moment. She goes through and punches
everyone in the shoulder one by one. Her knuckles land right where
Monroe slapped me, right where I got my shot. Fucking cunt probably
did it on purpose.

There’s a rattle down at the far end of the
gym, and we all turn to look. A bald black guy is using the other
bench down there. A big guy. Six-eight, maybe six-ten, easy, and
built like a fucking linebacker. He’s just hoisted his own barbell
off of the rests. We’ve got every big plate in the gym so he’s
loaded up his bar with thirty-fives. After so much time in the gym,
we can all tell the plates apart on sight. He’s got three-twenty on
there and he starts doing these clean, precise reps, one after
another.

Britney looks at him, already getting her
panties wet. “Who’s that?”

“Our new CO,” says Ryan. “Just transferred
in. He’s in the program now, too.”

“Kind of late in the game, isn’t he?” says
Eddie. “Take him forever to catch up to Sergeant Kennedy.”

They chuckle and punch her in the shoulder.
She bats their arms away, stuck up bitch. I take the fucking high
road, cause I’m such a nice guy and this guy looks like a real man.
“Wasn’t that long ago we were all proud doing three hundred,” I
say. “I bet by the time he’s done with his shots he’ll be blowing
her out of the fucking water. No offense, sarge.”

“None taken,” she says. “He’s welcome to
try.” And you can see in her eyes the bitch is looking forward to
the fight.

Ryan looks at her, then at me. “You guys
don’t know?”

“Know what?”

Ryan grins. A big shit-eating grin. “He
hasn’t started yet.”

Sergeant Kennedy looks over at the big
officer, pumping out rep after rep like a machine. He’s done
twenty-five now, and it doesn’t look like he’s going to be slowing
down anytime soon. “Hasn’t started what?”

“The process. Sorensen hasn’t done anything
to him yet.”

We all watch him for a moment. He’s up to
thirty reps, easy.

“All of us guinea pigs are already obsolete,”
says Ryan. “You’re looking at the next generation of super
soldier.”

He drops the barbell back on the stand at
thirty-five reps. Thirty-five fucking reps of three-twenty. And
he’s not enhanced yet. He sits up and looks at all of us, and that
fucking look lets us know he could take any of us grunts right now,
shots or no shots.

No fucking way.

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.