Ex-Patriots (39 page)

Smith shook his head as they moved to
Stealth’s cell. “She was telling the truth about the zombie
supervillain. I did not see that coming.”

* * *

“They’ve gone silent,” said Kennedy.

Freedom’s brow wrinkled.

“We’ll deal with it,” said St. George. He
gritted his teeth and pulled out the fang. It was red and slick.
More blood splattered out onto the floor. He dropped the fang in
his pocket and squeezed his palm over the wound. “I think everyone
in this building is dead. Maybe the next building over, too. How
much does that hurt you, number-wise?”

Freedom glanced at Kennedy. “If they’re all
dead,” she said, “it’s almost a quarter of our troops gone.”

“Can you still mount a defense? You must’ve
planned for something like this, right?”

Freedom gave a sharp nod. “It’ll be
difficult, but not impossible. First Sergeant,” he said to Kennedy,
“operation Red Sand is in effect.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Make sure your people understand they’re not
fighting regular exes,” said St. George. “They’re fighting Legion.
He’ll make plans of his own and react to what your people do. Or
what they don’t do.”

Kennedy nodded and began to bark commands
into her microphone.

Freedom looked at the hero and gave a quick
nod to Franklin. “What else can you tell us about this Legion?”

“We beat him before by splitting his
attention. He wasn’t experienced with his powers, so fighting on
multiple fronts made him lose control and then we just focused on
the man himself. It looks like his control may have gotten better,
though.”

“Great,” muttered Franklin. He pushed up St.
George’s sleeve.

“Stow it, sergeant.”

“Yes sir.” He pulled some disinfectant from a
pouch and wiped the blood away from the wound. It was a ragged hole
the size of a dime. “Shouldn’t’ve pulled that tooth out,” he
muttered.

“The big problem, though,” said St. George,
“is the ex-soldiers. Since he’s controlling them, he’s effectively
got a thousand people on the base already. Double agents,
guerillas, saboteurs, whatever you want to call them. He’s got a
lot of them, but I bet they’re all going for simple goals. Even if
he’s gotten better, he probably won’t risk splitting himself onto
too many complex fronts.”

“Probably?”

The hero shrugged. “He’s still just a guy,
and not a terribly bright one.”

Franklin mashed gauze on the bloody holes and
wrapped the arm with white tape.

“Sergeant Monroe,” said Freedom, “take the
rest of Eleven and clean out this building. We don’t want any
surprises two or three hours from now. If it’s down, make sure it’s
staying down.”

“Sir, yes, sir.” He bent down to the other
twitching corpse and twisted its head around to face the floor. The
body went limp.

“Jefferson, you’re with me. We need to secure
the armory and make sure the perimeter holds,” continued the
captain. “It’s going to be getting dark in about five hours and
this situation needs to be stabilized before then.”

Sunlight poured in through the barracks door
and blinded them all for a moment.
So,
said Zzzap,
how
are things on this side of the giant military deathtrap?

Freedom and a few of the soldiers glared at
him.

“I want you to go with them to the armory,”
said St. George. “Stay there and make sure they get everything they
need.”

And then?

“We get the weapons, stop the exes, and then
we go after Smith.”

Smith?

“He’s got Stealth. He’s trying to get away to
a more secure base. She’s going to be his hostage to keep us all in
line.”

Smith took
her
as a hostage?
said Zzzap.
Wow, talk about making a poor—

He froze and hung in the air for a moment,
like a statue of light.

“Barry?”

I just want to be clear on this,
said
Zzzap.
We need to get guns—lots of guns—and then rescue our
ultra-calm leader who’s been captured by Agent Smith?

St. George sighed.

Oh, this is
so
going to
rock!

NOW

In the distance they could see the opening in the
fence and the flash of weapons. The clatter of dead teeth echoed in
the air, closer than it had been.

“I’ll help at the gate,” said St. George.
“You get to the armory and do what you need to do.”

“We’ll join you there in ten minutes,” said
Freedom. “Tell Staff Sergeant Pierce you’ve got my approval. If he
asks, say you’re five by five. He’ll know what it means.”

Zzzap let out a buzzing laugh. St. George
tried not to grin. “Got it.”

Freedom gave him a quick nod and sprinted off
with Kennedy and Jefferson. The three of them were damned fast, the
hero had to admit, even the one with the broken arm. It took them
seconds to cover a hundred yards and vanish around a corner.

Watch your back,
said Zzzap. Buffy
references aside, I still don’t trust any of these guys.

“It’s not like your movies.”

Yeah, it’s going a lot worse so far.
He flitted away after the soldiers.

St. George leaped into the air and came down
in a cluster of exes stumbling through the middle fence. A sweep of
his arms sent half of them sprawling and he snapped out a backhand
that collapsed the skull of one more. Dozens of them shifted their
awkward march, heading for him instead of into the base.

He grabbed a dead woman in tiger-striped
camos and swung her into the crowd like a flail, battering one body
against several. Her boots crushed a handful of chattering skulls
before the shoulder he was holding pulled apart. He let the body’s
momentum carry it off into the crowd. It knocked down another
half-dozen exes as it soared away.

Off to his left, the head of an ex burst with
the whine of a high-velocity round. The gunfire trailed off, and he
heard shouts from behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw
the soldiers looking at him.

“Don’t stop firing,” he shouted. “Don’t worry
about me, just keep firing!”

An ex latched onto his wrist and tried to
bury its teeth in his bicep. He flexed and cracked its jaw, then
swung his elbow up to send it sprawling. Another one fell onto his
back and he shrugged it off.

The snap and crack of bullets rose in the air
around him again, matching the clack of teeth. One ex in a plaid
shirt reached out for him and dropped when the top of its head
vanished. The teeth of a dead man with a thick mustache snapped
twice and then splintered away as a round tore through its mouth
and out the top of its spine. A woman in a waitress uniform
collapsed to the ground after the back of her head burst in a
baseball-sized exit wound.

St. George spread his arms, caught a
half-dozen exes, and marched away from the soldiers. The half-dozen
caught four more, and another six got tangled in with those ten. By
the time he reached the outer fence he was pushing close to forty
of them. They flailed at his arms and neck and shoulders. Their
fingers ran through his hair and over his scalp. One tried to snap
its teeth on his cheek and pulled three of its incisors loose.

Just outside the fence line was a tall
armored vehicle with a boat-like hull. It had part of the chainlink
gate twisted beneath it. He got outside the boundary and threw the
exes at the Guardian. Some of them crashed into the vehicle, others
just stumbled back before they fell to the ground. More of the
walking dead staggered around the vehicle and tripped over their
fallen comrades.

The hero kicked a few bodies out of the way
and managed to drag the outer gate about two-thirds shut. The chain
drive on it snarled the whole way. He thought about forcing it
farther but didn’t want to risk tearing the chainlink panel. He
leaped back and did the same with the middle gate, but this one
only went halfway.

“Guess we’re lucky those were already open,”
said Pierce from behind him, “or that Guardian would’ve torn down
all of them.” The sergeant had led the super soldiers into the
fence line area while the rest of the men covered them. They moved
through the bodies and paused at each one to ensure they were down
for good.

St. George punched an ex making its way
through the opening and it flew back into a steel post. “If this is
the best luck we’re going to have, we’re in real trouble.”

They fell back into the base as the dead
resumed their relentless march forward. The sergeant nodded at the
exes. “Can’t you burn them all?”

“If we’re willing to wait the two or three
hours it’ll take them to burn, sure. We need something to block
this opening with, like a truck or something big.”

“Sergeant Stewart,” shouted Pierce. “Get hold
of the motor pool and get us a truck or the Dragon Wagon over here
pronto. Don’t worry about a full tank, just move it.”

St. George grabbed a dead man in a Marine
uniform and hurled him underhand into the crowd like a bowling
ball. “How long will it take them to get something here?”

“Three or four minutes if someone’s there,”
said Pierce. “Maybe ten or fifteen if we send a runner. That’s if I
send one of mine.”

“I’d do it if I were you.”

The staff sergeant nodded. “Guess until then
it’s still a shooting gallery,” he said. He hefted his Bravo and
hooked a new box of ammo onto it.

* * *

Danielle crouched behind the soldiers with
her back against the wall. An under-manned squad had shown up and
made a passable fire line, especially with the lone men in either
tower picking off exes with sniper shots. She had the pistols
Stealth had given her, but she couldn’t stretch her arm out to aim
them.

There was so much open space around her. Open
space and undead.

At the fence gap, the Driver did a fine job
dealing with the exes one on one. She had to admit, the battlesuit
moved in a fluid, natural way she didn’t even think was possible.
It crushed skulls and batted exes away with a casual grace. It
looked alive.

Just as the thought crossed her mind, the
armored figure turned and stomped back to the fire line. Two of the
soldiers dove out of the way to avoid being trampled. It stopped in
front of her like an oversized puppy.

“Ummmm, hey,” said the titan. “Big crowd of
zombies coming. You got any tips?”

It pointed back at the hole in the fence.
Fifty or sixty yards away, a thick mob of exes shambled forward.
There were at least two hundred of them, with dozens of stragglers
all around the main cluster. The soldiers saw the mob, too, and a
palpable wave of unease washed over the line.

“Use the stunners,” said Danielle. “That’ll
give these guys more time to make their shots.”

The armored skull tilted to the side. “The
what?”

“The stunners. The TASER fields built into
the fists,” she said. “They’ll put an ex down for a few seconds,
long enough to give us an advantage.”

The dry rasp of wind filled the air as the
exes sucked in a breath. “COMING TO GET YOU, BITCH,” they shouted.
Dozens of arms pointed across the open space at Danielle. “GONNA
STICK YOUR HEAD ON A FLAGPOLE AND CARRY IT EVERYWHERE!”

The titan looked over its shoulder and back
at her. “That’s him, isn’t it? Peasy’s still alive.”

“Yeah,” she said. There was nothing between
her and the zombies. She tried to sound calm. “Looks like he
is.”

The battlesuit froze for a moment. “Okay,
stunners,” it said. “How do I do that?”

“I thought you were controlling the
suit?”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I know
everything it does. It’s like getting a new car, y’know? I know how
to do the basics, but none of the special features.”

“Great,” muttered Danielle. “Okay, let me
talk you through it...”

* * *

Zzzap hung over the door to the armory as
Freedom’s group caught up to him. At first glance it looked like
any other building. With his own unique eyesight, Zzzap had seen
the metal door and the double-thick concrete.

Behind them, three clusters of ex-soldiers
came together to form a decent-sized mob. They staggered forward,
their teeth snapping together again and again with a sound like
wooden hail. Some of them still had the straps of their rifles
tangled in their arms.

Awwwww, you found some friends,
said
the wraith.
Good for you.

Kennedy was in the lead. She ran to the door
and yanked open a panel that covered the keypad. Jefferson hit the
wall next to her and twisted up his face as his arm slapped the
concrete. Freedom let off two more bursts from his Bravo before it
ran empty. He slung the rifle over his shoulder and pulled Lady
Liberty from her holster. The modified shotgun bellowed and a trio
of heads vanished in a spray of blood and gore.

“A little help would be appreciated,” the
captain called up to the glowing figure. Lady Liberty roared again
and the closest ex came apart into half a dozen pieces.

Kennedy tapped out a code. The keypad flashed
red and she swore.

The wraith sighed and floated forward,
putting himself between the soldiers and the undead.
Watch your
eyes.
He held out his palms, took a deep mental breath, and
focused. There was a blast of light, a howl of superheated air, and
the exes vanished in a cloud of fire and ash. So did a parked jeep,
a large swath of pavement, and the gravel beneath it.

Zzzap slumped in the air for a moment while
the desert breeze scattered the new dust. “Are you doing okay,
sir?” Jefferson squinted at the gleaming figure. He could almost
see through it at points. “You look... pale.”

Don’t give me that ‘sir’ crap,
said
the wraith.
A few hours ago you people were happy having me
locked up in a box.