Outcasts (8 page)

More boots came pounding across the pavement. More yells. More weapons. I mumbled, “This is going well.”

Katie said, “She’s so cool. I hope she doesn’t get shot.”

“Might be good for her.”

Two MPs ran up, guns drawn, and began bawling orders. “Drop the weapon! On the ground! Everyone back! Drop the weapon now!” With recent hostilities on military bases, this could escalate quickly.

“Drop the weapon?!” Samantha cackled. “Drop the weapon! You think your enemies are going to drop their weapons??” She began turning in circle, one fist holding onto the helpless Captain, the other fist pressing the gun into his neck. “Stop me! Someone stop me! How will you do it? There’s only one way. Only one way to stop me. What is it?”

They didn’t know. I knew. And I hoped no one tried it.

“This is fun. Let’s turn this into a lesson. All you kiddos need to learn this. Everyone follow me!” she called. “We need more space.”

She marched the Captain away from the firing range, past the pool, across Yorktown Avenue, through a parking lot, next to a hanger, and onto the runway tarmac. Our crowd grew the whole time, swelling to over a hundred. They were nervous, agitated, but interested. Everyone with a gun had it drawn, fifty total. She halted on the airstrip, immediately encircled by Military Police and soldiers with firearms.

“Stay behind me,” I told Katie. “I’ve seen her like this before. It’s going to get weird.”

“This is Captain Comfort,” Samantha called to her audience, turning the poor man in a circle. “He wants to stick to the old way! Just keep doing what you practiced, he said! Repetition will save you! Trouble is…the old ways won’t work anymore. You aren’t fighting Al Qaeda! You aren’t fighting Islamic radicals or any other religious zealot. This is a new animal. There’s a new beast in the jungle. And it’s faster and stronger than you.”

The captain hissed, “Who are you?”

“I’ve fought the Chosen. I’ve killed more than you ever will.”

“What are Chosen?”

“Who am I, you want to know? Who are the Chosen? I went into Compton with the FBI’s HRT. None of them walked out. Brave men. Well trained. All dead except one, and he had to be carried.”

“Alright, soldier!” the ranking MP shouted. “There’s a lot of us, and only one of you. Gun down.”

“Only one of me?” she laughed. “Who cares?! I’m more than enough for you. All of you. Why? Because you’ll fight using old methods. I will take you apart, and I’m not even the one you should be scared of.”

“Oh crap,” I muttered.

She continued, “You should worry about me, but you ought to be
terrified
of him!”

“Katie, back away. I have a bad feeling.”

“Because you can shoot me! I mean,
you
can’t. But technically I could be shot. But not him! He’s too fast! That should give you a hint about how to save Captain Comfort. Bullets won’t work. So how can you save the poor Captain? Forget bullets. There’s your hint.”

“Our bullets work just fine, lady,” a growl.

“Oh really??” She howled in laughter.

I sighed. “Oh no.”

“Watch!” She raised the gun. At me. She fired three times. Some cerebral mechanism activated, computing time and distance at hyper speed, and fired synapses independently. I saw the oncoming rounds. Saw the disturbance as they cut through air. I
Moved
, twisting away from the bullets, and catching the final shot. The lead hissed and spun briefly in my hand. No idea how I do that. It’s like the phenomenon happens to someone else.

The crowd shivered again and moved away from me. I stood alone, glaring at the Shooter.

There went our anonymity. Way to go, Samantha. I tossed the hot metal onto asphalt.

She had their attention now. Well, we both did. She spoke evenly and slowly. “You will barely see them. You will not have time to use a scope. You will be lucky to get off a few rounds. And you will probably miss. So I repeat myself. How will you save Captain Comfort?”

I heard the whispers.
It’s the Outlaw! I saw him on the television! It’s him!
I was bigger than them. Taller, broader. The presence I imputed on their emotions and their psyche was stronger than normal. I
felt
big.

“You feel safe behind your guns?” Samantha continued. “Put them away. Right now. Trust me. They are doing you no good. Put your guns away or the Outlaw will disarm you. And he can. And you won’t like it.”

I could. I just didn’t want to. Slowly, alternating stares between their superior officers and me, they holstered their weapons. She wasn’t an active hostile. She was something else.

“Now you realize just how helpless you are against your enemies. Against the Chosen and Infected. You have one chance to save Captain Comfy. What is it?”

No one spoke. She growled and produced a smooth green grenade. THAT spooked them. And me. Was it real? It better not be. I hoped not. But it was. I knew Samantha. Crap.

“In all likelihood, the Captain here is dead. You can’t realistically save him. The one chance you have, and this is important…” She pulled the pin out with her teeth and released the lever. I started to count in my mind. “…you can drop grenades and pray you survive.”

One second. The troops backed away.

“You can’t hit the Chosen. You can only slow them.”

Two seconds. The Captain was white.

“And your best chance is grenades.”

Three seconds.

“It might kill you. Might kill the Captain. But you’re probably already dead when it goes off.”

She tossed me the grenade at four seconds. I
Threw
it straight up. It detonated two hundred yards high, a safe pop.

Samantha released the Captain. He collapsed to his knees. Poor guy. Only human. She disassembled the pistol with one hand and the metal parts fell noisily to the ground. “Any questions?”

“Yeah,” one of the guys said. A lot of cameras began emerging from pockets. “Can we get a selfie with you?”

Colonel Jordan wasn’t happy with us. He appeared to be a perpetually irritated, thirty-five year old black stalwart. Older and wiser and angrier than his years. And his territory was in an uproar.

Katie was besieged by the women on base. She’d been in gossip magazines, kidnapped on national television, named one of the 50 Most Beautiful People, dated the infamous Tank Ware, and now dated the Outlaw. She took pictures, signed autographs, and answered questions.

Samantha was a hit with the guys. She beat them in arm wrestling. She outshot them. She doubled them in pushup contests, screaming at them the whole time. She turned down a dozen date requests.

After thirty minutes of pestering, I finally relented to a race. Fifty guys lined up to race me across the width of the airstrip and back. I gave them a head start but I still lapped the field. They roared with delight. We played catch with a football until their fingers blistered.

It was fun for an hour. But that was enough. I wasn’t a zoo animal. Nor a circus act. I grew weary of ducking uncomfortable questions. Fortunately Colonel Jordan began blowing an airhorn and ordering everyone back to their duties. He allowed Samantha to work at the shooting range, lecturing on new techniques for battling Chosen.

“You two. Get in,” he ordered. We obeyed, Katie in the front, and me in the back. He climbed behind the jeep’s wheel and we motored back towards housing. “I’ve got over two thousand men and women stationed here, due to the threat downtown. Over thirty-five aircraft. And more arriving as soon as we complete major repairs. That’s a lot of moving parts. And the only way it keeps moving is through discipline, structure, and routine. I don’t like when those get disrupted.”

I liked this guy. Gruff. Straight to the point. “I understand, Colonel.”

“Don’t misunderstand. You and I, we have the same mission. On the same team. But I need Los Alamitos to run like a well-oiled machine. Now you two. Both of you. Reach under your seats. Packages just arrived.”

We found insulated manilla envelopes. Inside were brand new phones with text messages from Puck.

>> hey dummy key katie

>> i see u left ur phones at ur houses

>> puckdaddy transferred all ur data over to these new phones and erased the old ones

>> wiped’em clean no worries

>> don’t lose these!!!

“Aw,” Katie smiled. “Puck’s so sweet.”

“How’d he do that so fast? It’s not even dinner.”

“This is the Plus size,” she marveled. “It’s as big as a tablet.”

Colonel Jordan barked, “Speaking of dinner. You’ll be eating in your room. I don’t need my mess hall turned into a damn zoo.”

“Understood.”

“And speaking of your room, now that your secret is out, I’ve taken the liberty of moving you to nicer quarters.”

We squealed to a stop in front of what looked like a cinderblock cabin. Katie said, “Thank you, Colonel. We’re very grateful.”

“Just about every man on base volunteered to stand guard. So both entrances will have three guards at all time,” he said with a trace of pride. I didn’t bother to tell him those guards would be worthless if the Chemist attacked. But I doubted that would happen in the near future. We were expecting him. “I support you, Outlaw. We fight with you.”

Katie and I walked into our new quarters. Two bedrooms. Much nicer.

Katie checked her phone and said, “Oh look. We’re trending on Twitter.”

I quickly grew sick of my own face. On every television. On every news website. On every social media app. Katie’s pictures were great. I looked goofy.

The Outlaw’s secret identity finally revealed!

Blah.

Cellphone footage of our interactions with soldiers at Los Alamitos quickly went viral. Video of me playing quarterback for Hidden Spring High was spliced alongside the game of catch with marines yesterday. My yearbook pictures were dug up and shown in sequence on CNN, illustrating the remarkable change my body had undergone during the previous twelve months. Wow. I
had
gotten bigger. The story of my mother’s death got a lot of airtime. Katie and I watched a few minutes last night. She stroked my fingers and said, “You look so good on television. Great cheekbones.”

“I need a haircut.”

“No, it’s perfectly unkempt.”

“Next to you I look like Tarzan.”

She smiled. “Me Jane.”

Carter was furious with Samantha Gear and me. We were exposed and vulnerable. He wanted clearance to send a plane for us but I refused.

“Tell him that I’m his
ally
now. Not his employee,” I directed Samantha. We were all sitting on the girls’ bed Saturday morning, watching television. I’d slept in the other room.

Samantha frowned. “Tell him yourself, punk.”

“No. Tell him, Puck.”

The speaker on my phone rattled, “Tell him what?”

“Tell Carter we don’t need his plane. He’ll use it as an excuse to control us.”

Puck’s irritation came through. “That’ll be a fun message to deliver.”

Katie asked, “Where are you, PuckDaddy?”

“Dunno. Haven’t looked out a window in a few days. California somewhere. PuckDaddy should probably track his own location like he does yours.”

Samantha scowled at her phone. “The Priest is in the news again. That little whelp grows irksome.”

“What now?”

“He’s calling for Chase Jackson to repent and surrender himself to their guidance.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not gonna.”

“Grass Valley, California,” Puck mused. “Huh. Wonder what we’re doing here. My drivers are curious animals.”

Cory texted me when he heard the news about my secret identity.

>> I knew it. You a boss.

Cory
knew
it?! No way. His reaction was much more subdued than Lee’s, who quickly touted himself as my best friend and assistant, and had been answering questions on his Outlaw blog and enjoying the notoriety for fifteen hours straight.

Puck reported, “Carter requests you keep him apprised of your plans. And he’ll do the same.”

I asked, “What are
his
plans?”

Puck said, “Don’t think he has one. He’s in Norway. Went to monitor an 18 year old Infected kid, but she died before he got there.”

Katie said, “That’s awful.”

I asked, “What happened?”

Samantha didn’t look up from her phone. “Relax kids. Happens several times a year. This disease kills pretty much everyone who has it. Remember? We’re only able to save one Infected every couple years. And even then, they often don’t last long.”

“What a fascinating and monstrous disease you have,” Katie said, rubbing her forehead in thought. “There
has
to be a cure.”

“Katie, tell your boyfriend to quit rubbing my leg.”

“What?!” I cried. “I’m not!”

“Are too.”

“It’s just this tiny bed.”

Katie sighed. “Do I need to sit between you two?”

Samantha sniffed. “Only if you’ll rub my leg.”

“Mine too,” I said.

“Aaaaaanyway,” Puck groaned. “What’s your plan? What should I tell Carter?”

“We have two plans.” I held up two fingers that he couldn’t see. “Keep Katie safe. And remove the Chemist.”

Puck pushed maps of the city to our iPhones and iPad while Samantha and I brain-stormed. Throughout the day we’d text Isaac Anderson and get his input on various details, and to find out what the military’s plans were. Trouble was, the military was fractured. No one was sharing information or collaborating on solutions.

Samantha and I didn’t have a very elegant plan either. Essentially, the next time Puck confirmed with certainty that the Chemist was downtown, we were going hunting. We’d take supplies and weapons and we wouldn’t come back until we had him. Puck illustrated on maps where the military
thought
he hid, and where the positive sightings had been. The military’s intelligence was good. They were monitoring the city from every angle and with every known technology. Much was known about the inner workings of the fortress. Except how to storm it and eliminate targets too fast to be shot, without massive civilian casualties.

“I can get you all the equipment you need,” Anderson yawned over the speaker phone. “The remaining Navy SEALs are currently training with munitions that don’t require high levels of accuracy.”