by Peter Clines
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.
“You fuckers,” Barry said.
He focused inside himself, reached for the trigger in his cells that would turn him back into Zzzap, and the yawn pushed its way out. He tried to shove the wheelchair away from the table but his hands slipped and his head dropped. He heaved his chin back up, clenched his eyes shut, and tried to force the change. The trigger stayed just out of reach, and he realized he couldn’t pry his eyes back open.
He heard a clatter and felt something warm on his forehead. His last clear thought was that he’d collapsed in his scrambled eggs and it was a waste of perfectly good bacon.
There were voices he couldn’t understand, a sense of movement, and his final shreds of consciousness faded to black.
Chapter 15
NOW
Smith helped Danielle out of the Black Hawk and guided her out from under the slowing rotors. Freedom held out a hand for Stealth, but she ignored him and walked after Smith. The wash from the helicopter blades whipped her cloak around her like a bonfire of black flames.
Project Krypton was a collection of brick buildings painted milky white in the middle of miles of sand and rocky hills. At first glance the base didn’t look that different from the dozen or so colleges or corporate campuses Danielle had spent time on, just with more lava rocks than grass. It wasn’t until she registered that everyone’s clothing was tan that it started to seem “military” to her.
A sergeant waved Smith over and he left Danielle standing on her own. The redhead looked at the open yard, the sprawling space between structures, and on the other side of the buildings, just a few hundred feet to the west, the three chainlink walls with gaunt figures pushing against the outside fence. Even with the huge open space, the sound of clicking teeth danced on the edge of her hearing.
Her arms pulled in tight around her. She turned to check on the armor, wondering how soon before she could get it back on, and saw Stealth a few feet away.
“It’s weird,” Danielle said, “being outside without the suit on. Outside somewhere else, y’know?”
The cloaked woman looked across the tarmac at Smith, then at one of the nearby buildings. “Perhaps we can arrange for you to wait indoors while they finish unloading.”
She shook her head. “I’ll wait until they finish.”
“I shall remain with you, in that case.”
“I’m okay,” said the redhead.
“You spend every waking moment in the Cerberus armor,” said Stealth, “and you sleep in a corner under your kitchen table. I am certain these exposed conditions are causing you no small amount of stress.”
“I said I’m okay,” Danielle repeated. “Stop trying to be nice. It’s creepy.”
A lieutenant with a white armband approached, flanked by two other soldiers. “Ma’am,” he said to Stealth, “I’m going to have to ask you to please surrender your sidearms while you’re on base.”
She turned her head to him. “I will not.”
The MP’s hand settled on his own weapon, and his partners raised their rifles a few inches. Danielle saw Stealth’s pose shift. “This isn’t a request, ma’am,” said the officer. “Hand over both of your sidearms.”
“John,” called Danielle. “We’ve got a problem.”
Smith jogged back over. “What’s going on?”
“This woman refuses to surrender her weapons, sir.”
Smith looked at Stealth’s elaborate double holsters and back to the MP. “She’s a guest of the colonel, Lieutenant... Furber,” he said with a clumsy glance at the officer’s name. “I don’t think this is necessary.”
The soldier’s hand was still at his pistol.
Smith turned to Stealth. “Look, you know how the military works. This guy’s willing to let you pummel him just so he doesn’t have to break procedure and disobey an order he got six months ago. Just let it slide for now and I’m sure we’ll get it sorted out in less than an hour.”
The cloaked woman stayed focused on the MP. “I will not.”
“Can you just do it for now? I swear, Colonel Shelly will get this all resolved in no time at all.”
The blank face of her mask turned to Smith, then back to Furber.
When her hands moved, it was too fast to see. The pistols were drawn and held out to the soldier, butt first, before any of them could register it. One of the other MPs jerked his rifle up out of instinct, a few moments too late.
“Jesus,” muttered Danielle.
Furber took a slow breath and retrieved both of the weapons. “Glock 18C,” he said. “Nice. I didn’t think you could get these in America.”
“I did not,” said Stealth.
“Ammunition?”
She pulled two extended magazines from alongside each of the thigh-mounted holsters and four more stored in a pair of rigid pouches on either side of her waist. Furber looked up and down her skintight uniform. “Do you have anything else you’d like to declare before—”
“If you attempt to search my person, I will break both of your thumbs.”
Smith stepped between them. “I think we’re good, don’t you?” He gave the MP a smile. “I’m sure the c
olonel will agree you’ve done your duty. Thank you, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir,” said Furber. He and his squad made a quick retreat.
“So, the colonel’s running a couple minutes behind,” said Smith. “He should be here by the time we’ve got everything unloaded, and then we can see about getting you those back.” He squeezed Danielle’s shoulder and headed back over to the helicopter.
Stealth examined the triple line of chainlink fence a hundred yards away. Danielle watched the cloaked woman turn her head to follow the barricade. “Something bugging you? Besides being unarmed?”
“I am never unarmed, Danielle,” said Stealth. “You should know that. I count twenty-eight sentries along this section of the perimeter alone. There are another four in the towers and ten patrolling between the fences.”
Danielle shrugged and watched the soldiers give one of the Cerberus crates a nudge to make sure it was secure on their cart. “Not many more than we’ve got on the wall most of the time.”
The cloaked woman turned to examine the fence line to the east, almost half a mile away. “It would appear these numbers are consistent along their entire perimeter.”
“What’s your point?”
“When Zzzap did his reconnaissance, he indicated the base had limited personnel. His exact words were ‘a skeleton crew.’”
Danielle looked at the distant fence and tried not to think about all the open space. “Maybe they put everyone on just to impress us.”
“If they had the manpower to put such numbers on their perimeter, why would they choose not to do so on a regular basis?”
The redhead shrugged. “I’m sure they’ve got their reasons,” she said. “Besides, there’s only, what, thirty or forty exes out there. Hardly a threat against four dozen well-armed soldiers.”
“Yes,” said Stealth, “I had noticed the low numbers.”
“Once the full scope of the epidemic was clear, the Army took much more aggressive measures toward controlling it,” said Freedom. He’d moved up behind them. A few yards back, a pair of soldiers pushed the heavy cart laden with the Cerberus crates. Danielle walked over to inspect their loading job. “There were attempts to contain them, at first, but it came down to killing them. We used a backhoe to dig a few mass graves out there by the hills, and burned most of the ones we’d already contained.”
“Of course,” said Stealth with a faint nod of her head.
“It took a little over a year, but we cleared out a good chunk of the surrounding region. We’ve even made some headway into Yuma.” He looked down at her. “To be honest, ma’am, I’m surprised you haven’t accomplished more at your base.”
Danielle looked up from the crates. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“No offense meant, ma’am,” he said. “I just thought, well, with your combined abilities I’d think Los Angeles would be a lot further on by now. It looked like there were a thousand exes just gathered around your base.”
“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 sold
iers 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.”
