Ex-Patriots (16 page)

“Hey,” said the younger man. “I know it’s
been tough, but this isn’t the day to be getting morose. This is
the day it all gets better. You saved all these people. You brought
them through hell and got them home.”

St. George looked at Freedom talking with
Danielle and Barry, the Black Hawks flanking the Melrose Gate, and
the crowd mobbing the soldiers. “I guess we did,” he said.

“Hell, yeah, you did.” Smith gave him a punch
in the arm. “Welcome back to the United States of America.”

THEN

My great-great grandfather was born a slave. On his
fourth birthday he and everyone he knew became free citizens of the
United States. When he was eighteen, he changed our family name to
what he thought was the greatest word in the English language. I
never met him, but my father did. It’s a powerful thing, to think
how short a time that was.

Now there’s a black man in the White House.
And a black man was selected to be the symbol of the new American
military. It was a long process for both of us.

My first posting as an officer was Iraq.
December of 2003. I’d been there for eight weeks, a freshly-minted
second lieutenant, when a soldier in my section, Private First
Class Adam James, found a well-constructed IED on a patrol. He was
killed instantly. From what I was told later, the two soldiers on
either side of him were dead within the hour. They were lucky never
to regain consciousness. Sergeant James Cole lost his left leg and
three fingers off his left hand. I was thrown fifteen feet into the
side of our Humvee.

Three men dead. One crippled for life. I
suffered a concussion, a broken arm that needed two pins, five
fractured ribs that got wire supports, and eleven pieces of
shrapnel which needed to be surgically removed. One of the doctors
said they took out as much metal as they put in. I know some men
and women who save such things as trophies. I didn’t want to be
reminded of failing the people under my command.

I spent three months in a hospital in
Germany, received a Purple Heart, and was put back in the field. I
always prefer to be in the field, and those days an officer who
went into the field willingly was considered an asset.

Six years later I was standing in front of
the colonel’s desk at Project Krypton, asking to be assigned to the
field. It was May fourteenth, 2009. I recall thinking later we
should mark it as the day the world ended, but that kind of
negative thinking was bad for morale.

“They’re mindless things,” Shelly told me.
“This virus turns people into walking vegetables. No real threat at
all unless they’re in large numbers. The media’s just blowing
things out of proportion again.”

I hadn’t served under the colonel for long. I
don’t think I even knew if he was married or not at that point. I
did know he was a horrible liar. Lying is a politician’s game, not
a soldier’s. All good soldiers are bad liars. The best ones are
horrible at it.

Shelly was lying. There were uprisings in
every major city. Even Yuma proper had reported a few dozen
wandering the streets. If there were dozens wandering the street in
a state where more than half the citizens carried firearms on a
regular basis, it didn’t bode well for anywhere else. But he was a
good soldier, and his orders told him it wasn’t a crisis and we
weren’t needed.

“Be that as it may, sir,” I said, “I’m
requesting deployment into one of the hot spots. The Unbreakables
are ready to go.”

“It’s still too soon for active deployment,”
Shelly said. “Sorensen thinks all of you need another month or so
of observation. Especially you, captain. It’s been three weeks
since you finished your treatments.”

“And I feel excellent, sir. Better than
excellent.”

The corners of his mouth twitched. It was
what passed for a polite smile in the colonel’s office. “The
official decision, captain, is you and your men would just be
overkill.”

The Unbreakables had only been my men for a
month. But I knew they were good soldiers. When I was first
introduced to them, Shelly and Sorensen assured me they weren’t
picked just for their names. I think the doctor found something
funny about it. I’m sure similar coincidences have happened in
every branch of the service at one time or another.

Besides, I’ve taken enough good-natured
ribbing about my name over the years. I can’t say anything about
anyone else’s. According to my mother, I was named after her father
and the sitting president when I was born. As my father tells it, I
was named for his boyhood hero, a man of honor and the greatest
soldier of two worlds. I’ve often sided with my father when the
topic has come up.

“From what I’ve heard, sir,” I said, “the
actual heroes are trying to pitch in and not having much luck. We’d
hardly be overkill.”

“Really?” said Shelly. His voice was dry.
“What exactly have you heard, captain?”

“Through official sources, sir, I’ve heard
they’ve deployed the Cerberus exoskeleton in Washington D.C.”

“Official sources is Agent Smith shooting his
mouth off again, correct?”

“Yes sir.”

“What else have you heard?”

The base was locked down, but rumors still
made their way in. A few sources said the heroes were kicking
zombie ass everywhere they went, but most of them told me the
heroes were making no headway at all. They were slowing the spread
of the infection at best. And there were a few stories that some of
them had died. Even one or two claims they’d come back, and there
were super-powered zombies overwhelming the police in some cities.
It did occur to me that no one could name which heroes had
died.

“Nothing else, sir,” I said.

He nodded. I was sure there was nothing I’d
heard that he hadn’t. “Is that all, captain?”

“Sir,” I said, “permission to speak
freely?”

“Granted.”

“As I understand it, sir, all of B company is
being pulled out of Yuma and redeployed in civilian centers.”

“Yes,” he said, “they are. There’s still more
than enough forces stateside to deal with this epidemic, especially
with a few platoons of regular Army backing them up.”

“Regardless, sir, isn’t this just what the
Unbreakables were created for? If our control group is gone, any
testing has to be over. If the testing is over, there’s no reason
for us not to be doing our jobs.”

Colonel Shelly considered my words and a red
drop swelled up under his nose. In the desert climate, nosebleeds
aren’t uncommon. First Sergeant Paine tells me two or three of the
soldiers in A company get them. I opened my mouth to say something
and the drop hit the bursting point, too big to support its own
weight. It became a red line across the colonel’s lips. A few drops
hit his paperwork.

“Damn it.” He pinched his nose and tilted his
head back.

“Can I get you anything, sir?”

“Thank you, no,” he sighed. “Captain, for the
time being you and your men are not needed in this action. You will
remain assigned to the proving ground. Those are your orders. Is
that clear?”

“Yes sir.”

That was that. He took his hand away from his
nose and returned my salute. His attention went back to the
paperwork on his desk. He yanked a kleenex from a drawer to dab at
it. I’d reached the door when he called out to me.

“Captain Freedom.”

“Yes sir?”

He held out the blood-streaked warning order
he’d been working on. “Take the Unbreakables toward Yuma tomorrow
morning and see if you can find any civilians in need of
assistance. Bring three transports with you in case you need to
evacuate anyone. Deal with any infected you encounter.”

“Yes sir. Thank you, sir.”

I left his office and got a quick salute from
his staff sergeant who was talking with First Sergeant Paine. Paine
fell in next to me as we headed out into the hall. Walking side by
side we filled the hallway. “Orders, sir?”

“Orders,” I said. “Finally.” I handed Paine
the warning order. “Get first platoon prepared. We head out at
oh-six-thirty. Any questions?”

He skimmed the paper. “None, sir.” He gave a
sharp salute and reversed direction. I walked around the corner and
almost flattened Doctor Sorensen. He glanced up at me.

“Captain,” he said.

“Doctor.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine, sir,” I said.

“What did you lift in the gym last
night?”

“I’m up to twenty-two-fifty on the bench
press, sir,” I told him. “I’m limited now by what can fit on the
bar.”

He gave a nod. “I should’ve thought of that
sooner,” he said. He reached out and pressed on my bicep with two
fingers. His hand moved up and he tried to drive his thumb into the
spot where my pecs ran into my shoulders. “Any muscle pain?”

“None at all, sir. Not even aches from
exercising.”

“Excellent.” He peered over his glasses into
my eyes. “How’s your appetite? Still good?”

“I’m on double servings, sir, but I think I’m
burning most of it off.”

“Converting most of it straight to muscle and
bone mass is more likely. Have you weighed yourself today?”

I’d started weighing myself every day while I
was at West Point. For a man my size it’s important to keep off
extra pounds. Since beginning Sorensen’s process I’d been gaining
weight steadily. “Three-hundred and twenty-nine pounds,” I told
him.

“Measured yourself?”

“Sir?”

“Your jacket seems a bit tight. I think you
may have grown another inch.”

“It’s possible, sir.”

“Remind me to check during our next
exam.”

“Yes, sir. If you’ll pardon me, sir, I need
to prepare.”

His brows went up. “What for?”

“Nothing to worry about, sir. Standard recon
in Yuma, looking for refugees and infected.”

“I see,” he said. He let it hang in the air.
“Colonel Shelly is in, then?”

“I believe he is, sir. I just spoke with him
a moment ago.”

“Thank you, captain.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The doctor had been distracted these past
weeks. His family was back on the east coast. A wife and daughter,
as I understood it. As the situation across the country had been
getting worse he’d been debating if they should come out to join
him at Krypton.

I was two yards down the hall when he called
out to me. “Don’t exert yourself if you can avoid it,” he called
out to me. “Stop if you feel any pain at all.”

Asking if I was feeling any pain had almost
become a joke with Doctor Sorensen. Once I’d been accepted into the
program he’d explained most of the process to me. The hormone and
steroid shots. The surgeries. I glazed over most of it, to be
honest. It wasn’t anything I needed to understand, and I got the
sense he was saying it the same way some officers will work through
a prepared speech whether it’s still relevant or not. He had
stressed how much it was going to hurt when my muscles started to
develop. I remember Colonel Shelly had given another of his subtle
smiles at that.

I’d been serving in Afghanistan for seven
months when, on a fine Wednesday morning in 2005, my squad was
pinned down in a village between Farah and Shindand. One man was
shot in the throat. Two took body shots in the sides that slipped
past their armor. Another got shot in the thigh. It was deliberate.
It forced us to leave him crippled and in the open, or to go after
him. When a second round struck him in the shoulder I told the
squad to lay down cover fire.

I’m big, but I’d surprised people with how
fast I could move long before I went through Sorensen’s process.
That surprise and the cover fire threw off the snipers’ first three
shots. The fourth one didn’t miss, and I felt a kick in the middle
of my back that told me my body armor had saved my life.

I never felt the fifth shot. In his report,
Staff Sergeant Drake said there’d been a sound like a huge egg
breaking and my helmet exploded on my head. I’d dropped in the
dust, my head covered with blood, right next to the soldier I was
trying to save. The rest of the squad fought off the snipers, lost
two more men, and left me there for an hour before someone decided
to make an obligatory check for my pulse.

There are just so many times you can be “one
of the only survivors” before people begin to feel uneasy around
you.

If I was a superstitious man, I’d’ve resigned
my commission at the end of my Afghanistan tour. The thought did
cross my mind, and I was going to be finishing that tour in the
hospital anyway. But I knew better. The Army was where I was
supposed to be and I was going to serve until I died. I had a duty
to serve my country. The United States had fought a war against
itself, spilled its own blood, so my great-great grandfather could
be free. So I could have this proud name.

Could I do any less for my country?

NOW

They brought Cerberus out in pieces. Each component
was sealed in heavy wooden crates. A team of volunteers lugged them
out with hand trucks and furniture dollies and rolled them down
Avenue E to the Plaza lot. Danielle stood at the intersection of E
and 3rd, reacting to every bump or rattle with a flurry of
curses.

“
Ease up,” said St. George.
“It’s packed solid. It’s not going to get damaged by any of
this.”

“I know, I know,” she sighed. “Sorry,” she
shouted to the two men who acknowledged it with a wave. Two
soldiers joined them and they hefted the crate up into the Black
Hawk. An olive-drab case replaced it on the furniture dolly. The
second wave of soldiers had brought medical supplies, some
ammunition, and a variety of odds and ends. St. George had seen one
case that seemed to be nothing more than boxes of candy bars.