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.”
The hero’s face hardened. “You’ve got Stealth? Where?”
“Last chance to surrender, sir.” He held the Bravo out at arm’s length.
“You know that can’t hurt me, right?”
“I do, sir,” said Freedom. “We’re going to do this one the old-fashioned way.”
Kennedy slammed the steel stock of her rifle between the hero’s shoulder blades. The shock staggered St. George more than anything. He turned and she cracked him across the jaw with the weapon. His head snapped around and Franklin’s fist smacked into his face.
The super-soldiers closed in on the hero.
Chapter 28
NOW
Zzzap had circled the base three times. Exes were stumbling out of the hills and traipsing across miles of sand. The wide open space made their numbers look like a lot less, but he knew he was seeing hundreds and hundreds of them. In another hour or two, at a guess, there’d be over five thousand of them surrounding the base.
There were tons of them inside, too. He’d incinerated a dozen exes (and the corner of a building) with one blast and swung down to fly straight through a group of about twenty by the base’s post exchange. Most of them were left with cauterized stumps on top of their shoulders. The skull of one exploded like a grenade when he hit its cochlear implant. He shook for a minute afterwards.
He also couldn’t spot Danielle or Stealth anywhere. Stealth didn’t surprise him, but not being able to find Danielle was bothersome. It was so rare to see her out of the armor, especially when he was Zzzap, he wasn’t sure he even knew what she looked like.
And he was starving. He almost never got hunger pangs in the energy form. It didn’t bode well for when he became solid again.
Yeah, I know, he said to no one in particular. The wraith stopped in mid-air and glared off to the east. Look, why don’t you do something useful and figure out where Danielle is?
After a moment he let out a buzzing sigh and continued along the fence line. He rounded the north-east corner of the base and saw the Cerberus armor. It was stomping down a back alley between one of the lab buildings and the hospital. Going off its body language, the titan looked lost and annoyed.
It wasn’t Danielle inside, that was for sure. The suit might look the same in visible light, but Zzzap saw a handful of things that were wrong. The heat signature was different, the reactive sensors were shimmering in an odd way, and there was a strange electromagnetic haze around every system.
He flitted down just as the battlesuit stepped out into the street that ran alongside the eastern fence. Hey, he said, did you ask anyone before you took that out of your mom’s closet?
The helmet tilted up to look at him. “Bro,” it cheered. “Man, am I glad to see you.”
I’m sure the feeling would be mutual if I had any idea who you are. So who are you? You’re not Army or they wouldn’t’ve been chasing you.
“It’s me, Cesar. From the Mount.”
Who?
“Cesar Mendoza. I work on the trucks. I used to be one of the Seventeens.”
The wraith flew back a few feet and raised his palm. Not a great character reference to pull out.
“It’s okay, bro. Same team. St. George, he vouches for me.”
Got anything to back that up with?
The titan nodded its huge skull. “Yep. He said I was…damn, something from a television show.” It reached up a hubcap-sized hand and scratched its head. “He said you guys watched a bunch of seasons together. That’s how you’d know I was okay.”
What show was it?
“Oh, come on, man. I don’t even think he told me the name.” The battlesuit snapped its fingers, a noise like a hammer hitting an anvil. “I’m five. He said to tell you I’m five. That sound right?”
It sets the stage for some IQ jokes, but that’s about it.
“About time you stopped, you bastard.”
Danielle half-jogged out of the alley to the west. She gave the Cerberus armor a glare and looked like she might take a swing at Zzzap. “I’ve been chasing you for fifteen minutes now.”
Hey, he said. I’ve been looking for you, too.
“So have I,” chimed the battlesuit.
“Here’s a tip,” she panted at the gleaming wraith. “If you want someone to reach you, try moving at less than three hundred miles an hour.”