Peter Clines - Ex-Patriots

They screamed for three days straight. Eddie told me over chow they’d gotten so big it took huge doses of painkillers just to make them stop screaming. The whole thing was freaking him out. He’d snuck his phone in and showed me a picture of this swollen red thing that looked like a fat grub. He said it was Jacobs, and that his skull’d been pushed off his neck by all the muscles, but he was still alive cause it hadn’t actually broken his spinal cord yet. “If they can fix him,” Eddie said, “he’s still gonna be a cripple for the rest of his life.”

On day nine they stopped screaming. All at once. On day ten we were told Jacobs and Lucas had died in the line of duty. They’d be given full honors. And the old doc was gone. Eddie said he’d heard Colonel Shelly and the higher brass were furious, and the doc had pretty much fled from the base.

Anyway, we all figured that was it for Project Krypton. Three-fourths of us out of commission one way or the other. One company left. We got three days to wonder about it and then we met the new doc at a big briefing. There was this young fella with him in a dark suit, Smith from Homeland, and he smiled a lot and gave this little speech and introduced us all to Doctor Sorensen.

The new doc’s the flipside of the old doc. The old doc was actually a young fella, not much older than any of us. He was some hot-shot scientist, and kind of an asshole, to be honest. The new doc’s an older fella who feels like he should be a cool uncle or something. He’s got a big gray beard and glasses and he talks like a teacher.

They were redoing Krypton from the ground up. Nothing was going to be the same but the name. It was going to be a whole new process. That made a lot of people rumble. But Sorensen stopped that real quick before Colonel Shelly could bark at us.

“These are not going to be experiments,” he told us. “I will not be putting any of you brave men and women at risk. These are all established procedures, using tested drugs and chemicals. With some of you the treatments will take and with some they will not. But there will be no risk of…of what happened before I got here.”

Then the First Sergeant got up. He told us we’d done our duty and everyone here had carried out the requirements we’d signed up for. Even though they were keeping the number, as far as the Army was concerned this was going to be something new and the 456th was being disbanded. If we wanted out, we’d be debriefed and reassigned. We had until tomorrow morning to decide. He dismissed us.

The young fella, Smith, started working the crowd. He was shaking hands, asking questions, kissing asses. He shook mine and asked if I was going to stick around and I told him, yeah, I probably was. I said probably but I think even then I knew I was going to be part of Project Krypton for the long haul. It just felt like I belonged there.

I moved to the front of the room and realized a few fellas from Greyhound were behind me. I think we’d all been ready to get a new assignment. Yuma was boring as hell, and we’d all joined up to go overseas and kick some Al-Qaeda ass. If Smith hadn’t said anything, I think we all would’ve walked out of the room and started packing. Now it was almost a pride thing to finish what we started.

Colonel Shelly was having a talk up front with the new doc. If it was anyone else, I’d say an argument, but I knew the colonel didn’t do arguments. Or excuses.

First Sergeant Paine was there. He locked eyes with me and I knew enough to stop where I was and stand at attention. I heard the fellas lock up behind me, too. A couple people call him First Sergeant Bring-the-Paine, but not if he’s anywhere nearby. So we stood there for a few minutes while they talked and didn’t do anything except listen.

“You can’t just throw him out,” the new doc was saying. “He was in the Broadsword trials for four months.”

“And now he’s out of them, Doctor,” Colonel Shelly said, “just like everyone else.”

“It’s not that simple. The drugs and artificial hormones that idiot was filling them with are all through his system. They’re stored up in his fat cells waiting for him to have a flashback.”

“You said he was clean. You also said if they never had any reaction during the testing, odds are they never would.”

“In theory yes, but there’s always going to be residual traces in his kidneys, his skin, his fat cells. His tests said he was clean but like anyone with a history of drug use, weight loss could cause a flashback and then it’s all back in his system again.”

“Well, hypothetically, what’s the worst that can happen?”

“I don’t know,” said Sorensen. “I’m still not sure what caused the reaction in Jacobs and Lucas. There’s a dozen possible triggers. Stress. Adrenaline. A disease that strains his system. Potentially, any of it could cause spurts of muscle and bone growth.”

“And what are the odds?”

“It could happen, isn’t that enough?”

“Could it?” said Colonel Shelly. “Could it really?”

“The chances are slim I admit, but—”

“Slim is fine by me. He’s insubordinate, he struck an officer, and he’s out. He can go home and the LAPD can deal with him. If he has a reaction, it’ll kill him and then no one has to deal with him.” The colonel turned and walked away.

The new doc shook his head and followed him. “I still think it’s a mistake,” he said as he walked away.

“Specialist,” First Sergeant Paine said. He was giving me that look. “What’s your purpose here?”

“First Sergeant,” I said, still at attention, “I request to keep this duty assignment.”

St. George pushed down against gravity and launched himself higher into the sky. He was a good three hundred feet above the Hollywood Freeway now. He spun in the air as he tried to spot the source of the low drone echoing across the valley. The chattering of thousands of teeth had almost hidden the sound. If Los Angeles hadn’t been a ghost town, they never would’ve heard it.

A line of fire shot past him and burst into a red star trailing crimson smoke. Between the flare and the sun, looking west was tough now, but he was pretty sure a prop-engine plane wouldn’t be coming in from the Pacific. He could still hear the faint sound, but he thought it was getting fainter.

There was another flash, this time white light, and the air crackled and danced on his skin as the sonic boom ruffled his hair and clothes. Zzzap floated next to him in the sky.

Can you hear that?!

“Yeah,” said St. George. “Can you spot it? Radar or engine heat or anything?”

Zzzap spun around once. Right there , he said. Looks like it’s following 101. It’s transmitting a tight signal back thataway.

Zzzap pointed to the east.

“What’s it saying?”

The wraith tilted his head as if listening. It was one of a dozen habits he kept when he was in his energy form. Doesn’t sound like talking , he said. I think it’s a video feed. And I’m pretty sure this is military encryption.

“Yeah?”

I saw a lot of it during the outbreak. Looks like the same kind of patterns. It’s confusing at first, but once you get used to it it’s like reading a ransom note, one of those ones where all the letters are cut out of different magazines.

“Can we catch up with it and signal the pilot?”

Zzzap nodded. Shouldn’t be too hard. He’s only moving about eighty-five, ninety miles an hour and he’s heading right at us. Been ignoring my signals, though.

The two heroes flew higher into the sky. Zzzap moved in short hops so St. George could keep up. Five minutes later they were a thousand feet up. The air was crisp even though the sun was harsh. The gleaming wraith pointed at their target. It was a few hundred yards away and closing. They fell in next to it as it passed and kept a dozen yards between them.