“We estimate fifteen hundred on an average day.”
“Again,” said Freedom, “no offense meant, ma’am, but why haven’t you done anything about them?”
The cloaked woman stared at him. Danielle recognized the look and could guess what was coming next.
“We are at a sub-base on the Yuma Proving Grounds, correct? The city of Yuma is fifty nine miles south-south west of our current position.”
Freedom paused just for a moment. The corners of his mouth twitched with grudging respect. “That’s correct, ma’am.”
“So the area you ‘cleared out’ with your superior numbers and weaponry consists of the mostly-empty proving ground and the outskirts of a small city, population ninety thousand, less than fifty thousand of which would have transitioned according to all known statistics regarding the ex-virus.”
The smile flattened out. “Correct again. Ma’am.”
“There are over five million ex-humans within the city limits of Los Angeles,” said Stealth “This is one hundred times the numbers you have dealt with, and does not include the greater Los Angeles county area. If we had killed one hundred exes a day, every day, for the past nineteen months, we would have only eliminated one percent of the undead population of the city.” She paused to let the numbers sink in. “We have better uses for our time and resources.”
“I apologize, ma’am.”
“Why did you say most of them?”
Freedom blinked. “Ma’am?”
“When you were explaining the Army’s aggressive stance, you said you burned most of the ones you had contained. What did you do with the ones you did not burn?”
He set his mouth in a line and stared at her blank mask. When she didn’t budge, the huge officer leaned back on his heels. “The project director, Doctor Sorensen, asked us to get him some live specimens, so to speak.”
“What did he require these specimens for?”
Freedom straightened up to his full height. “The doctor’s a genius in the fields of neurology and biochemistry, ma’am. He was trying to determine the nature of the ex-virus and determine if anything could be done for the people who’d been afflicted.”
“And what did he determine?”
“I couldn’t say, ma’am. I’m a soldier, not a doctor.”
“This is everything, right?” interrupted Smith. He’d wandered back and was looking over the cart. “Nine crates altogether. Looks like we didn’t lose one between Los Angeles and here.”
No one returned his broad smile.
Danielle checked the boxes and gave a nod. “Everything looks good.”
“And here’s the colonel,” said Smith. He waved to a quartet of men. Freedom’s back went stiff and he delivered a sharp salute, as did the soldiers around him.
“As you were,” said the officer. He held out his hand. “Colonel Russell Shelly, commander of Project Krypton. On behalf of the United States Army, I’m honored to welcome you both to the Yuma Proving Ground.”
Danielle shook his hand. Stealth ignored it.
“You just missed your companion, Zzzap,” said Shelly. “He left about fifteen minutes ago. Did you get his messages?”
“If he had a full stomach he probably forgot to send them,” scoffed Danielle.
“Well,” said Shelly, “why don’t we get out of the sun? We could have lunch if you like. Or we’ve got a shop set up for you, Doctor Morris. Want to take a look and see if it meets with your approval?”
Smith cleared his throat. “Sir, there’s a matter of some weapons and ammunition. Miss…Stealth had her guns confiscated when we arrived.”
The colonel looked at her and his eyes dropped to her empty holsters. “Very sorry about that, ma’am. Standard procedure for wartime, you understand. My people are just as antsy about armed strangers as yours are.”
“Since she is a guest,” said Smith, “in the interest of diplomacy, I told her we’d get them back to her. Would that be okay, sir?”
He nodded. “Of course. Sergeant, find the officer on duty,” he said to one of his staff. “As soon as those weapons are processed at the armory, have them unprocessed and returned to our guest.”
“Yes, sir.” The soldier saluted and headed off.
“Why don’t we go look at the workshop,” said Danielle. “That’ll let me open the crates and check on the armor.”
“If you like,” said the colonel. He gestured them down a dusty concrete road. “It’s about a ten minute walk if you don’t mind conserving some gasoline. Mr. Smith gave us a list of what he thought you’d need. We got the last of it set up this morning.”
The cart with the crates caught on a rock and jammed to a stop. The two soldiers wrestled with it for a moment. Danielle stepped back to make sure none of the boxes had shifted.
“Not all of your soldiers have enhanced abilities,” said Stealth.
“That’s correct, ma’am,” Shelly said. “The ex-virus caught us in the middle of the program. When the President declared a national state of emergency, we barely had fifty soldiers through the process, plus Captain Freedom. We had a hundred and fifty or so washouts, plus another hundred and eight who were serving as our control group. In the time since, we’ve lost about half of those numbers.”
“Yet it would appear you have more than that serving here on base.”
“Some of them are survivors from other sub-bases like Lieutenant Gibbs here.” He gestured at a man walking with them in digital camos with a tiger-stripe pattern. “There’s just over thirteen thousand square miles to get lost on here at Yuma. When things got bad, everyone locked down where they could. A lot of them couldn’t. We were lucky Krypton had been built to be secure and self-contained. Once the situation stabilized, we started to expand, secure other areas, and find other units that had holed up. At the moment, I seem to be the senior officer left alive, so people from all branches are under my command.”
“And civilians?”
“There aren’t many civilians left, ma’am,” said the colonel. “We saved about eleven hundred people from Yuma.”
Danielle coughed. “That’s it?”
“Unfortunately, yes. There were a lot of folks who felt they were safer in their homes with a shotgun and a few pistols than putting themselves under military control. With our own limited manpower, it came down to picking our battles. We could rescue three or four willing families in the time it took to get one irrational resistor out of their home. So we did what we had to do, even if it meant some people got left behind.”
Stealth moved her head left to right. “Where are these civilians now?”
“Right here, ma’am.” Shelly nodded at the soldiers pushing the cart. “It was around New Year’s last year that we realized the solution to both of our problems. We were short on manpower. We had over a thousand civilians who needed organization and a way to contribute. Two birds with one stone.”
Danielle blinked and looked at the soldiers. “You drafted them all?”
Shelly shook his head. “No one was drafted. We had Smith explain the situation, so no one would feel coerced. He made the offer and seven hundred of them signed up. We ran four separate boot camps.”
“I would think the majority of the civilians would not have been viable candidates,” said Stealth.
“Not normally, no, but these aren’t normal times. We took anyone over sixteen and under forty-five.” He coughed. “Between you and me, more than a few of them did it just to get in shape. Here we are.”
The building was an oversized garage, first in a row of near-identical structures. Smith stepped forward and tapped a code on the keypad next to the main door and it began to roll open. “I used all your old codes,” he said to Danielle. “Do you still remember them?”
“Some,” she said. “It’s been a while since I needed to use a confirmation code for anything not related to the suit.”
He nodded. “Do you still have all the same passwords?”