Ex-Patriots (22 page)

“You’ve seen them act like this before?”

“The same superhuman who damaged the Cerberus
armor,” said Stealth, “also had an ability to control
ex-humans.”

“Where’s this person now?” asked Shelly.

“What’s left of him’s at Melrose and Gower,”
said Cerberus. “I burned all the big pieces.”

“Sir,” said Freedom to the colonel, “if
you’ll pardon me I have a drill in ten.”

“Of course, captain. Dismissed.” The two men
exchanged salutes, and Freedom bowed his head to Stealth and
Cerberus.

“The immediate question,” said the cloaked
woman, “is why?”

“Why?”

“Why have you developed a method of
controlling the exes?”

“Why wouldn’t we?” countered the colonel. “If
we can’t contain the ex-virus, we need a way to control it.”

“But why use them as soldiers?”

“We were short-staffed,” Shelly said. “At the
start of the year we were down to nine hundred soldiers, and over
six hundred of those were our barely-trained civilian recruits.
They’ve come a long way since then, but it still left us with a lot
less than a base like this needs. Doctor Sorensen’s work is going
to be a huge benefit to the United States.”

“It would seem the risk of losing control
would cancel any possible benefits.”

“There’s no risk,” he said. “Besides, at the
moment we’re only using them for low-pressure jobs like sentry
duty.”

“Of course,” said Stealth. “The large numbers
at your perimeter.”

“That explains why Zzzap didn’t see anyone,”
muttered the titan. She looked back at the rows of silent exes.
“I’d love to get a better look at those control boxes.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” said Shelly. “I’m
sure you’ll have plenty of time to go over all the specs with
Doctor Sorensen once you’re set up. We could even move your lab
into the main building near his.”

“It’s better if I stay out here so the suit
has easy access,” she said.

The colonel gave her a look. “Well, that
won’t be your concern, though, will it?”

“Sir?”

“Dr. Morris, you were never intended to be
the pilot of the Cerberus suit,” said Shelly. “We both know that.
If it hadn’t been such a time-intensive, crisis situation you never
would’ve worn it into battle.” He shook his head. “Now we can get
you back in the lab and working on improvements to the system.
That’s what you want, too, isn’t it?”

“But...” the armored giant looked at Shelly,
then over at Stealth. “It will take months to get anyone up to my
level of proficiency. It’s better to have Cerberus out on the front
lines, isn’t it?”

“Of course, and Lieutenant Gibbs has been
studying the suit’s specs for some time. We even got him a working
copy of the simulator you designed.”

The Air Force lieutenant stepped forward.
“I’ve logged over fifteen hundred hours, ma’am,” he said. “You’ve
built an amazing weapons system.”

“I didn’t think the simulator was ever
built.”

The colonel smiled. “Some of our tech boys
have had a lot of time on their hands. I think you’ll find Gibbs is
qualified and ready to take over as the Cerberus pilot.”

“If,” said Stealth, “we decide to leave the
armor with you.”

Shelly took in a breath to respond and bit
his tongue. “Yes,” he said. “If that’s what we all decide.”

Her head tilted inside her hood. “It strikes
me as suspicious this point has not come up before, colonel.”

“Is it, ma’am?” He looked up at the armor.
“If I recall, Doctor Morris, the only reason you agreed to put on
the suit and fight during the outbreak was because you were worried
someone else might damage Cerberus, correct?”

“Well, yes, but I wanted to help—”

“You weren’t expecting to be the one using it
when you built it, were you?”

“No, but I was the only one who knew how to
use it to its full potential.”

“Before you were deployed in Washington, had
you ever been in a fight?”

“I’ve had several fights over the
requirements for—”

“Not arguments, doctor,” he interrupted.
“Fights. Had you ever come to blows with someone? Did you ever once
throw a punch?”

“I’d fired over ten thousand rounds through
the suit’s M2s on the firing range.”

“At wooden targets,” he said. “Did you
receive any training at all as to how deal with combat situations?
Basic tactics? Target priority? Anything?”

A rasping hiss came from the armor. A sigh.
“No.”

“So,” said Shelly, turning back to Stealth,
“the most sophisticated weapons platform on the planet has spent
the past two years in the hands of an untrained civilian who didn’t
want to be using it in the first place, and you think it’s
suspicious I want to put an experienced soldier behind the
controls?”

“I find it suspicious,” said Stealth, “the
matter was not brought up until we were here and disarmed.”

The colonel looked up at the nine-foot
battlesuit. “You call that disarmed? I think if Doctor Morris
disagreed with me, there wouldn’t be much anyone could do to stop
her, would there?”

* * *

“It’s very simple,” said Sorensen. He peered
at the elbow joint of the Cerberus armor. It was at his eye level,
and he’d pushed his glasses up onto his head to squint at it. “We
couldn’t train them because they’d died.”

“No wonder you’re a doctor,” murmured
Cerberus.

Sorensen stepped away from the battlesuit and
moved to one of the exes standing at attention. It was a dead woman
with a square jaw. “It takes three to four hours for a corpse to
make the transition to ex-humanity,” he said. “Lack of oxygen
destroys the mind and memories, leaving only core survival patterns
like eating, basic motions, and reaction to raw stimuli like sound
or movement.” He set his glasses back on his nose and rapped the
dead woman on the forehead. “There’s nothing there to train. It’d
be easier to teach a grasshopper how to type.”

Then he went silent, staring into space.

“Doctor,” said the colonel.

“Madelyn had a baby bib with a grasshopper on
it,” said Sorensen. He looked at Shelly. “Eva and I saved it. I’m
sure it’s still boxed up in the attic at our house.”

“The exes, doctor.”

“Yes,” the older man muttered. “The exes.” He
glared at them for a moment, then poked the dead woman in the
forehead again. The ex rocked back and forth. “The physical
structure of the brain still exists,” he said. “Just like a
computer processor without power. The Nest restores electrical
activity to key areas, allowing simple memories to form and
reflexes to be re-developed.”

Stealth interrupted him. “The Nest?”

Sorensen turned the dead woman’s head to the
side before pointing at the green box. “Neural stimulator,” he
explained. He looked annoyed by the question. “It took almost a
year to find precisely the right regions of the brain, the correct
amperage and voltage.”

“I would think decay within the brain would
prevent such a device from functioning for long.”

The doctor shook his head. “No, no, no,” he
said. “Yes, there’s initial decay. We have to give each subject
several EEGs to make sure it’s still viable. But once the ex-virus
takes hold the level of decay drops to almost nothing, so our
largest worry is dehydration.”

Stealth tilted her head at Sorensen.
“According to our research, the dead continue to decay, just at a
decreased rate.”

He shook his head. “Your research is wrong. A
lot of work was done before... before...” The doctor was lost in
thought for a moment. “Before things went bad,” he said. “One of
the last things they established about the ex-virus was that it’s
lethal.”

Stealth shook her head. “It is harmless,” she
said. “Individuals die from secondary infections, not from the
virus itself.”

“Humans,” he said, nodding. “That’s not the
problem. The ex-virus is a lethal bacteriophage. It attacks
necrotic bacteria and uses them to reproduce. All necrotic
bacteria. An ex’s decay rate drops by eighty-seven-point-eight
percent.”

“They smell like they’re rotting,” said
Cerberus.

“Material in their digestive tract or on
their clothes,” the doctor said. “You notice none of these exes
have the scent of decay on them. Once they’ve been cleaned, they
tend to just smell like... well, clean skin. When you calculate in
the resilience the virus creates in cellular membranes and the
lower core temperatures in the afflicted—”

“Exes could remain active for years,” Stealth
said.

“Almost eleven,” said Shelly, “by the last
estimates we formulated here.”

“It’s a magnificent freak of evolution,” said
Sorensen. “I’ve never heard of any organism in nature so perfectly
suited to keeping its host alive. Or as close to life as possible,
I suppose.” He shrugged and began to examine the velcro fuzz on the
female ex’s shoulder.

Cerberus shot a glance at Stealth while
moving a metal palm back and forth before one of the exes. “Do they
remember anything? About, you know, who they were.”

Sorensen glanced up from the velcro and shook
his head again. “That was my first hope, but no. They’re blank
slates. Not a scrap of individuality or independent thought left in
them. In fact, every time a battery pack dies, they lose any
training we’ve given them and it’s back to square one.”

“You’re sure? What if they’re... comatose or
something?”

“Positive. We’ve done numerous EEGs and MRIs.
No activity at all in either the Broca’s or limbic regions, which
means minimal language and emotion. I’d put their IQ below a lab
rat at best.”

“A rat cannot be trained to follow complex
commands,” said Stealth.

“Neither can the exes,” said Sorensen. “You
can only issue one command at a time, and it must be an order
they’ve been trained to follow. The most complex thing they grasp
is a priority scale, that some commands can supersede others.”

“Priority?”

“On a few occasions we’ve gotten them to
acknowledge soldiers over civilians, officers over enlisted men.
There’s more work needed. Speaking of which,” he turned to Shelly,
“if I may get back to my lab, colonel? I was in the middle of
something.”

“Of course, doctor. Thank you for your
time.”

“Shall I, sir?” said Smith. When the colonel
nodded, the younger man guided Sorensen out of the Tomb.

“He’s a bit off,” said Colonel Shelly, “but
believe me, he’s brilliant.”

Stealth was examining a Nest unit again. “Who
is Madelyn?”

“His daughter,” said Shelly. “He lost his
family at the start of the outbreak. We tried to evacuate them here
to Krypton, but there was an accident. His wife and daughter were
both killed.”

Stealth’s head tilted inside her hood.
“Killed?”

“What would you rather hear, ma’am? Eaten
alive? When he got the news it shattered him. He was in shock for
months, and he’s still in denial. It’s not unusual to just find him
sitting in a corner in his lab. He probably could’ve gotten the
Nest done seven or eight months sooner but he has trouble
focusing.”

The cloaked woman turned from the exes and
walked out into the sun.

“If you don’t mind my saying, Doctor Morris,
your companion isn’t very social.”

“No, she isn’t,” said Cerberus. The titan
turned and followed Stealth outside.

The cloaked woman was a pillar of black in
the sun-bleached road. “Are you going to give them the
battlesuit?”

Another metallic sigh rasped from the armor’s
speakers. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“They filmed the assembly procedure,” said
Stealth. “There are four cameras in your work space. Two visible,
two concealed. I would assume the office is monitored as well.”

“I’ll remember to be careful in the bathroom,
too,” said the titan. “Look, they already know how to assemble the
suit. That lieutenant said they’ve got all my records. They didn’t
get anything from me they wouldn’t’ve figured out after doing it
one or two times themselves.”

“Cerberus may have once been just a weapons
platform,” said the cloaked woman, “and you were once just an
engineer. But that is no longer the case. You have become a symbol
to the people of Los Angeles. A hero. If you give the battlesuit
away, that will go away as well. It will be just a weapons
platform. You will be just an engineer.”

The huge lenses looked down at her. “Maybe
that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.”

NOW

The sun hit the horizon just as St. George crossed
the Krypton fence line. He’d circled the base once to make sure
they knew he was there. A group of soldiers waited for him. They
didn’t aim their weapons at him as he landed, but they didn’t make
a point of aiming them away, either.

“Hey,” he said, pushing the biker goggles
away from his eyes. “I think you were expecting me. I’m St.
George.”

One soldier stepped forward. He was about the
same age as the hero and wore a single chevron on his chest. “Sir,”
he said, “we weren’t expecting you until later this evening.”

“I got done early in Los Angeles. Decided to
see if I could race the sun.”

None of them relaxed. “Do you have any ID on
you, sir?”

St. George blinked. “Seriously? Are there a
lot of people trying to get onto the base who can fly?”

“Standard procedure, sir,” said the soldier.
“If you don’t have ID someone here on base will have to vouch for
you.”

Twin lines of smoke curled out of St.
George’s nostrils. “Well,” he said, “I forgot my wallet about a
year and a half ago, so I guess somebody’ll have to vouch for me.
Is Freedom around?”

“Captain
Freedom is in a meeting,”
said another soldier. This one was pushing fifty and had a fair
amount of gray in his hair. Again, the hero saw only one chevron.
If memory served, it meant the man was a private.