Ex-Patriots (20 page)

THEN

Please consider this as an addendum to my original
report, and I ask now for anyone reviewing this to excuse my
informal language. I cite extenuating circumstances.

I think this mission was the one that finally
made me wonder if Captain Freedom really was a death-magnet. I was
aware of his record when he was recruited for the project and I
became his First. It’s a bullcrap superstition. But with the way
things turned out, you have to wonder.

Yuma was overrun. We’d gotten word of
different groups of survivors holed up throughout the city. There
was a big group down on the south side. Colonel Shelly had run the
numbers and was sending us to get them. We’d expected to find a few
dozen exes at a time. Maybe as many as two hundred. It would be a
good mission for the Unbreakables, a chance to flex our collective
muscles and burn off some restlessness.

We moved out of the Proving Grounds in one
long convoy as planned. Three sections from the Unbreakables were
in the front carriers, backed up by equal numbers of norms. Behind
us were a dozen Humvees. Captain Freedom was in the lead with
section Eleven. I was with him. He likes to be in the front,
setting an example and sharing in the threat with his soldiers.
More than a few people think he has a death wish.

To be clear, Freedom’s a good man for an
officer. Like most people, brass tend to be fifty-fifty. Half of
them think they’re superior to any enlisted man, no matter how many
years of experience you’ve got over what they learned in a
classroom. Freedom’s in the other half. He’s decisive and
confident, but he’s not so chock-full of ego it makes him stupid.
He listens to his intel. He listens to his First. He listens to his
gut. And he makes great calls because of it. He’d seen Colonel
Shelly’s warning order and heard the S2 directives culled from
intel coming in from all over the country. No body shots. No
grenades. No intimidation. Just head shots.

If I may make an observation, though, there’s
a point where this becomes useless. That’s what the brass never
gets. You can’t spend years training a soldier to do
A
and
then expect him to switch to
B
in a day just because some
intel told him to. Oh, he’ll get it right during that week of
drills, but once he’s on mission those years of training are going
to kick back in and override that week.

I know training. I was a drill sergeant for
seven years before I joined Project Krypton. There’s something
special when a fuzzy hears he’s been assigned to Sgt. Paine. You
can see the dread on their faces before you even start talking. So
I knew—I know now—we were overconfident and our brains were filled
with the wrong kind of training. We went into Yuma and all that
training kicked back in.

Yeah, even for me, too. I was a former drill
sergeant who could throw a refrigerator fifteen feet. Damn straight
I was well trained and overconfident.

The convoy went forward down Freeway 95, the
long stretch when the road runs east-west but before the locals
start calling it County. The first exes were sighted at
approximately oh-nine-forty-five hours. They crawled out from
behind cars or staggered out of ditches. You could hear their teeth
clicking before you saw them. They were put down.

All the Unbreakables were carrying M240
Bravos. One of those will put a trio of rounds through a skull with
no problem. The downside to the Bravo is it’s damn loud. We knew
sound attracted the exes. Rather than four or five targets at a
time, we’d have a dozen or so staggering at us at one mile an hour.
We didn’t think it’d be a big deal. Even if one got close, all the
Unbreakables were wearing the newest ACUs. They still had pockets
for knee and elbow pads, but were also triple layered at the
shoulder, forearms, and calves—all the major bite points.

We found our first large cluster of about ten
exes close to ten-fifteen hours. They were heading our way,
stumbling down 95, bouncing off abandoned cars and trucks. Freedom
already had sections Eleven and Thirty-one flanking them when he
saw the movement. I think I saw it at the same time, but I’m not
sure.

There was another cluster just a few yards
behind the first one, maybe as many as fifteen of them. They were
almost close enough to be one big group. And there were two or
three lone exes stumbling along either side of the street. Freedom
pulled in Twelve and also brought up two sections from Charlie
platoon for support. Charlie’s most of the washouts from the
program, and Delta’s the only control platoon left at Krypton.
They’ve started calling themselves the Real Men. It’s probably
going to stick.

Section Twelve and the Real Men started at
the back and worked in. It took about two minutes to put down all
the exes with head shots. I remember I saw a few rounds punch
through chests and barked an order down the line to confirm
targets. Looking back, I should’ve seen where it was going right
then.

Captain Freedom made a point of grabbing the
last ex and twisting its head off with his bare hands. It was a
heavy man with long hair and a thick mustache. He tossed the head
underarm, letting it roll up the street like a bowling ball. A
couple soldiers chuckled at that. It was a good morale boost. We
needed it. The road was getting too clogged for the Humvees.

By ten-thirty-five the convoy had gone
another mile and a half and killed another three dozen exes.
Sections Twelve and Thirty-three dropped back to reload. The other
downside to the Bravo, for us, is it eats ammo like candy. The
spare ammo boxes were awkward things for a soldier to carry. Even
for a soldier who can bench nine-hundred pounds.

We’d also found four survivors in a mobile
home. Family of three and the son’s girlfriend. We loaded them in
one of the last Humvees. We had three with us just for potential
survivors.

From here we could see the intersection of 95
and East County 9 1/2 a hundred yards or so ahead. It had a gas
station and a Circle K. Everyone stops there if you’re taking the
long way back to the proving grounds after a night in Yuma.

There were a lot of cars there. I couldn’t
tell if it was a huge fender-bender or everyone in this part of the
city decided to drive out and all abandon their cars at the same
place. There were two or three big trucks as well, including one
semi stretched right across most of the intersection. We could see
a few exes milling around the vehicles. Nine, maybe ten. One or two
of them had seen us or heard our weapons.

We moved up nice and slow. Another four exes
stumbled out from between the cars while we did. They were finding
a path through the pile-up. We got close enough to hear their teeth
clacking together.

But there was a lot of clacking. Too much for
the exes we were seeing.

Two or three looks, a couple of gestures, and
Freedom had Twelve and Thirty-one flanking either side of the
intersection. Sections Twenty-two and Thirty-three dropped back to
watch our rear. The Humvees were about fifty yards behind us now.
Section Twenty-one moved forward towards the baker’s dozen of
exes.

By now, most of us knew how strong and fast
we are. There was a period of broken doorknobs, torn shirts, and
lots and lots of snapped bootlaces. We went through bootlaces like
you wouldn’t believe. But that was long past. Section Twenty-one
flitted across the open space and eliminated the exes. They grabbed
skulls, twisted, and moved on to the next one before any of the
dead guys could raise their arms. You can only get two or three
that way, but six people doing two or three each is a lot of damage
in less than ten seconds. Not one shot fired.

The last ex hit the pavement and Twenty-one
leaped up into the air one by one like it was the most natural
thing in the world. A fifteen foot vertical jump. They came down on
top of the semi.

“Oh, screw me,” said Taylor. We could hear
him forty feet away. He didn’t say “screw.” I see no need to use
his exact phrase, even in an informal report.

A voice crackled over my radio. Sergeant
Harrison, Twenty-one’s leader. “Unbreakable Seven,” he said. “This
is Unbreakable Twenty-one.”

“Unbreakable Twenty-one, this is Seven,” I
answered.

“Seven, this is Twenty-one. Six is going to
want to take a look at this, sir.”

Captain Freedom took three steps and leaped
into the air. Thirty-five feet from pretty much standing still, the
magnificent bastard. I had to run more, but I ended up landing on
the semi just after him. The rest of Eleven was right behind
me.

A sea of dead things. I’d read that phrase in
a few reports. Once in a book someone loaned me at the start of the
outbreaks, some horror-sci-fi thing about the Grim Reaper hunting
zombies. It always struck me as a crap phrase. Something people
said to avoid being exact. I’d dealt with hundreds of soldiers in
boot camp and never had trouble keeping them separate. I’d been at
ceremonies with over two thousand men and women present and it
never seemed like a sea.

There was a frigging
ocean
of dead
things on the other side of the pileup. It’s one thing to read
reports about the walking dead, to hear how many of them there
were. Seeing it is like getting dropped in ice water. Seven, maybe
eight thousand exes. Maybe more. After one of the first briefings
we attended together, Freedom told me the human mind can’t
comprehend numbers over one hundred. As the previous paragraph
might indicate, at the time I thought it was bullcrap. Now I’m not
so sure.

They’d been drawn this way by the sound of
our engines and our weapons, stumbling in our direction for an hour
now from all over the city. The semi across the road was acting
like a floodgate. They just piled up against it, stretching back a
mile down the double-wide road. I couldn’t see pavement anywhere.
The chattering from their teeth was like static. It went on and on
and you knew it wasn’t ever going to end. It just hung in the air
like flies over garbage.

The ones closest to the semi saw us and
surged forward. They clawed at the sides of the box. Most of them
still looked like people. I saw one that looked like it’d been set
on fire. I couldn’t tell if it’d been a man or a woman. Another one
looked like its arm had been shot off. There was a woman with dark
hair like my sister. Her jaw had been blown off. There were strings
of muscle and skin hanging off her upper teeth. The strings
twitched as the dead woman tried to clack her missing teeth
together.

“Screw me,” Taylor said again. “Screw
me.”

“Shut it right now, specialist,” I
snapped.

“Yes, sir.” He stopped making noise but his
lips kept moving.

Right there. Taylor was an arrogant jackass
but he knew to keep his mouth shut when told to. Seeing all these
things was throwing him. Heck, it was throwing me. I should’ve said
something.

A message came in from Twelve. Enough of the
exes were making it around the pile of cars that they needed to
take action. Freedom gave the word and I relayed. There was a roar
as Twelve’s Bravos cut down the dead things. Section Thirty-one
joined in a moment later.

It was gas on a fire. More exes started
staggering toward the sound. By the time the echo of the gunshots
faded another three dozen, easy, had made it through the maze of
cars. They were finding their way just by raw numbers.

“Wait here,” said Freedom.

A few quick steps along the roof of the semi
and he launched himself over to the roof of the Circle K, another
five or ten feet up. Some of the exes in the crowd shifted to
follow him through the air. They clawed the front of the store. One
of them fell through a broken window into the building.

The captain got his bearings before looking
east with a pair of binoculars. Looked at the church and the homes
about three-quarters of a mile down the road. The road we couldn’t
even see under all the exes. He shook his head. He knew what I
knew. Even if every single round in every weapon we had took out a
zombie, we didn’t have enough. Not enough ammo. Not enough time to
use it if we had it.

I looked at my watch. It was eleven-hundred
hours on the nose. I knew right then we weren’t going to be
reaching those possible survivors on the south side of the city.
They were going to have to hold out for a few more days.

Credit where credit’s due, like I said
before, the captain’s got a brain in that head of his. Some
officers will bury their soldiers rather than admit they need to
change tactics. Not many, but enough of them. Freedom’s willing to
toss a plan on the spot if common sense tells him things have to be
done different.

I’ll also go on record and say he made the
right call. If anyone reading this has any doubts, Captain Freedom
made a difficult choice, but the only viable one. I would’ve made
the same one if I’d been in command.

He dropped back down onto the semi. We all
felt the roof tremble. He was a big guy. “First Sergeant Paine,” he
told me, “let’s fall back and regroup with the transport. Tell
Twenty-two and Thirty-one to hold and give us cover until we’re
back on the ground and clear of this traffic jam. Everyone else
moves now.”

“Yes sir,” I said. I sent the order down the
lines and got back a drumroll of confirmations. Across the
intersection Sergeant Pierce with Twenty-two gestured his
understanding and his team’s readiness.

The exes were thick around the semi-trailer
now. They were flowing between the cars, like water finding the
path of least resistance. The bodies Twenty-one had dropped to get
up here were being mashed under hundreds of stumbling feet. The
captain could’ve jumped clear to safety, but no way the rest of us
could.

“The cars,” he said. “Don’t jump for the
ground, jump for the tops of the cars. It’s too high up for them to
reach us.” He pointed out a path, from an SUV to a battered station
wagon to a minivan to another minivan to another SUV to a shiny
Lexus and hitting the pavement right near section Twenty-two. “Once
we go, we go as fast as we can. Don’t stop or they’ll have time to
grab you and overwhelm you.”