Don’t worry about it. Can you set the clothes down there?
The soldier did as asked. Zzzap settled closer to the ground, spreading his arms and legs wide. The brilliant wraith dimmed, the air settled, and the dry sound of a vacuum being filled echoed between the buildings. Barry dropped to the steaming tarmac with a thump.
“Sonofabitch!”
“Are you okay?”
He rolled onto his side and reached for the clothes. “Scraped my hand,” he said. “Nothing I haven’t done before.” He dragged the pants across the ground and twisted his legs into them. He wrestled the sand-colored tee shirt over his head, waved off the boots, and hand-walked himself over to the wheelchair. The soldiers stepped forward and lifted him in a fireman’s carry for the last few feet, setting him down in the leather seat. One of them handed him the coat. It had been stripped of rank, but the name ZZZAP was on a velcro strip above the heart. He smiled.
“Good, sir?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Thanks for the assist. Nice jacket.” He draped it across his lap.
“Will you need an escort, sir?”
It took him a moment to understand they were offering to push the wheelchair. “That’d be nice, thanks.”
They went up the ramp into the office building. It was spotless, and the scent of cleaning chemicals hung in the air. More than half the lights were out. Colonel Shelly pulled off his cap, revealing a wire-brush scalp. He followed Barry’s eyes up to the ceiling. “Power conservation,” he said. “We try to run as few lights as possible, even at night.”
“Gotcha.”
“I appreciate your trusting us like this, sir,” he said.
“We’ve all got to start somewhere,” said Barry. “And could you not use ‘sir’? It always makes me feel like my dad’s leaning over my shoulder.”
“Force of habit, but I’ll do my best. What do you prefer?”
“Barry. Mr. Burke if that’s too casual for you.”
“I can make do with Mr. Burke. Agent Smith tells us you’ve got almost twenty-four thousand people out in Los Angeles.”
“More or less.”
An older man was waiting for them in the officer’s mess. His uncombed beard was a mess of gray and silver, and it looked like he’d slept in his clothes for a while. He ran a finger back and forth across the tabletop, like a blind man reading a Braille headline again and again.
“This is Doctor Sorensen,” said Shelly. “He’s the scientific head of Project Krypton. Captain Freedom and the rest of the Unbreakables are the result of his work.”
Barry held out his hand. “You must be very proud. They’re pretty amazing, from what I’ve seen. Not a lot of people can take on St. George mano-a-mano , y’know?”
Sorensen looked up from the table. His watery eyes met Barry’s and he reached out to take the hand. He moved in slow motion, as if every action needed hours of rehearsal time he hadn’t been given. “Hello,” he mumbled.
“Pleased to meet you.”
The older man moved his mouth a few times, starting half a dozen words, and then went back to examining the tablecloth.
There was a small buffet set up for them. Bacon and eggs in one chafing dish, english muffins and french toast in another. Two large pots of coffee. The soldier guided the wheelchair along the table while Barry overfilled a plate. He shoved some food in his mouth while they moved.
“Oh my God,” Barry said. “You don’t know how much you miss bacon until after the zombie apocalypse.”
“We’re spoiled, I guess,” said Shelly. He and Sorensen followed behind the wheelchair with plates of their own. “The Army keeps these places well stocked, and even with the rationing we’ve set there’s still enough food here and in Yuma for another twenty-eight months or so.”
They took places at a table. Shelly paused to say a silent grace and nodded for them to begin. Barry ate with his usual gusto while the colonel took quick, precise bites.
Sorensen had a single scoop of scrambled eggs on his plate. He pushed them back and forth with the fork, still in slow motion. Every third or fourth push one of the tines would scrape like fingernails on a chalkboard. Barry glanced from the doctor to the colonel. The officer didn’t seem to register the older man’s behavior.
“How long did it take you to get out here, Mr. Burke?” Colonel Shelly asked after a few minutes of eating. “You caused a sonic boom, didn’t you?”
“About twenty minutes,” said Barry. He crunched down on another piece of bacon and let it sit on his tongue for a moment. “The sonic boom’s a bit of a trick, though.”
“How so?”
Sorensen interrupted by dropping his silverware. “Is your energy output related to caloric intake? Does your body begin to cannibalize its own muscle and bone mass after a certain point?”
“Yes and yes.”
The doctor began to tap the fingers of his left hand against his thumb. “Is it dangerous,” he said, “for you to come in contact with other objects?”
Barry folded a piece of french toast in quarters, ate it in two bites, and washed it down with a mouthful of coffee. “How do you mean?”
“I would assume proximity to you would excite molecules to some degree. Some things may incinerate or covalent bonds could break down. Perhaps even…” He stopped tapping his fingers and mimed an explosion with his hands.
“I’ve had things go bang, yeah,” said Barry. “I feel really queasy if I come in contact with too much solid matter. I think it may be some kind of psychosomatic warning or something.” He shoved another piece of bacon in his mouth and paused to yawn. “Sorry. Minor food coma setting in. It’s been a while since I got to gorge myself like this.”
Shelly sipped his coffee. “Are you short on supplies out in Los Angeles?”
“Not short, but we definitely don’t have tons of excess. Ammunition’s running low, so our scavengers are using knives and machetes a lot more these days. We’ve managed to set up a decent-sized garden in the Mount, and we’re breeding chickens in one of the other lots, so there’s meat and eggs.”
The colonel dabbed his mouth with a napkin. “Where did you find chickens in the middle of Los Angeles?”
“There were a bunch of families from Mexico and South America who kept them in their back yards. Lots in Chinatown and Little Tokyo, too. Some of them found shelter with a group calling themselves the Seventeens.”
“The Seventeens?”
“They were a street gang that survived. They saw the Zombocalypse as a chance to go all Road Warrior and start their own little kingdom. When a bunch of them came to live with us, they brought about fifty chickens with them.”
“If I may,” said the doctor. His voice trailed off as he twisted his napkin once or twice. He set it back down next to his plate and smoothed out each wrinkle with his finger. “Ummmm, how did you acquire your abilities?”
Barry took another sip of coffee and cleared his throat. “There was an accident involving a particle accelerator, a liquid lunch, and a pair of rubber bands.”
Shelly smiled. The doctor looked up. For the first time in the course of the meal it seemed like he’d noticed Barry sitting there. “What did you say?” His eyes were wide.
“It was a joke. Didn’t you ever read Life, the Universe, and Everything ?”
“Was that Carl Sagan?”
“Douglas Adams,” he said, yawning again. “Is it really warm in here?”
The doctor and the colonel exchanged a look. “It’s always a little warm during the day,” said Shelly. “The curse of being in the desert. You get used to it after a while.”
Barry glanced up at the air vent. Little strips of colored paper fluttered in the breeze pumping out of it. He took in a deep breath and stopped himself before he yawned a third time.
Shelly and Sorensen looked at him. Sorensen’s eyes flitted to the coffee mug.