Ex-Patriots (36 page)

“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.”