Peter Clines - Ex-Patriots

“So no movie, eh?”

“No, sorry.”

“I’ve got a couple games, too. Finally figured out how to run an optical mouse remote, so I can use a laptop.”

“I told you, I’ve got to get back to my place.”

“Well, if you want you can swing by my place and take all the cushions off the couch. Keep ‘em if you like. I’m never there.”

“What?”

“I just figured you’d want to build yourself a little fort to sleep in.”

She stopped pushing the chair. “Fuck you.”

“If only someone would,” he sighed. He spun his chair so he faced her. Without the handles to hold onto, her arms pulled in close to her body. “But let’s talk about you. How long were you in the armor for this time?”

“As long as I needed to be.”

“How long?”

She sighed. “Four days. More or less.”

“More or less?”

“Almost five.”

Barry looked at her. “It’s only built for three, right?”

“It can do more if it needs to.”

“No wonder you stink. Have you even eaten?”

“I can stand to lose some weight.”

“Yeah, you and all the other fat people running around after the apocalypse.”

“The suit’s getting tight in the legs.”

“Whatever,” he said. “Look, you know you’re safe in here, right? They can’t get you.”

She glanced over her shoulder toward the gate. Toward the big white cross.

“I’ve got your back,” said Barry. “George and Stealth have it. Hell, most people here love you.”

She smirked. “Not everyone.”

“Well, there’s a few idiots in every crowd,” he said. “Point is, you’ve got to stop hiding in the damned suit.”

“Mister Burke,” called someone behind him. Barry rolled his eyes at the sound of the voice and Danielle winced.

“Christian,” said Barry, turning his wheelchair. “We were just talking about you. What’s up?”

Christian Nguyen had been an L.A. councilwoman and had hung onto her small amount of power when society began to rebuild itself inside the Mount. Now she was district leader for Southeast and all of Raleigh, and some people thought she had a good chance of being mayor if everyone could agree on a fair way to do elections. She was also “super-phobic,” as some called it, and made no effort to hide her feelings.

Danielle kept it simple and called her a bitch.

Christian marched across the cobblestones with a half-dozen or so people behind her. She stopped in front of the wheelchair and glared down at Barry. “What’s this about a helicopter flying over the valley?”

“It was a Predator,” he said. “Not a helicopter.”

“Don’t try to dodge,” she snapped. “Why weren’t we told about it?”

“If you weren’t told about it, how do you know about it?”

“Everyone knows,” she said. “What I want to know is why nothing official’s been said.”

“Well,” said Barry, “Stealth figured you’d all find out in a few hours—like you did—so there was no need to make some proclamation from on high.”

Christian’s lips twisted into a smug smile. “What you mean is St. George ordered people not to talk and Stealth realized they would anyway.”

Barry felt a faint tremor as Danielle took hold of the wheelchair’s handles again. Part of him hoped she was going to ram the chair into Christian’s shins. “Yet again,” he said, “you know it all.”

“Are you going to tell us what the pilot said?”

“The pilot?”

“The helicopter pilot.”

He sighed. He made sure it was a loud sigh. “A, it wasn’t a helicopter, it was a Predator drone, and two, a Predator doesn’t have a pilot.”

“What do you mean, it doesn’t have a pilot?”

“It’s a drone, Christian. A robot.”

“A robot plane? How stupid do you think I am?”

One of her followers, a scrawny man, stepped forward and muttered something to her. She glared down at the man in the wheelchair.

“Did you want me to answer that last one,” said Barry, “or was it rhetorical?”

“I think you need to start being a bit more respectful,” she snapped. “Whatever it was, it was a symbol of the American government.”

“It was a drone,” interrupted Danielle. “Nobody knows who was controlling it. Could’ve been anyone.”

Barry nodded.

Christian’s scowl turned into a smirk. “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? To convince everyone help isn’t on the way. That the rest of the world isn’t pulling itself out of the Godless state Los Angeles has been left in.” She threw back her shoulders and tossed a glance to her entourage. “The days of Stealth’s little dictatorship are numbered,” she said. “Your power over all of us is coming to an end and you’ll make up any lie you can to hang onto it.”

“Seriously,” said Barry, “why wouldn’t we want that? You think I like spending seven days a week in a metal ball so you can read at night?”

She waved off his comments and pushed her hand at his face. He felt the chair shift on the cobblestones and he was sure Danielle was about to ram it forward. “Things are getting back to normal,” Christian said. “We’ll see where that leaves all of you.”

A murmur of consent rose from the followers. She tossed her head back, glared at Barry and Danielle in turn, and stalked off with her minions.

Barry took in a breath to shout something after her and settled for giving the finger with both barrels.

“What a bitch,” muttered Danielle.

“What are you complaining about? You got off easy.”

“She doesn’t know who I am,” said the redhead. “Most people think I’m always nine feet tall and fifteen-hundred pounds. They see a skinny, helpless woman and I’m just a face in the crowd.”

He twisted around to look at her. “You’re not helpless.”

“We’re all helpless, Barry,” she said. “As long as things stay like this, we’re all screwed.”

The last thing I could remember was trying not to shiver with all of them standing around me. I’ve got no problem with air drops, live-fire training, even being under enemy fire. I’ve been caught in two explosions in my six years of service and still have scars and a Purple Heart from one of them. But lying on an operating table, wearing nothing but a paper smock and panties while they pumped tranquilizers into my arm, that freaked me out.

I’m not supposed to freak out. Girls freak out. I’m a soldier before I’m a girl. I was born to be a soldier. It was what Dad wanted. His dad had been in the Army, and his dad before him, and his dad before him, and his before him. A line of Kennedys serving their country all the way back to the Civil War, long before someone else with our name became President.

Mom says having three girls was murder on him. He loved us, don’t get me wrong. He was the greatest dad in the world and he spent every minute he could with us, but it was rough on him not to have a son to keep up the military tradition. It killed him when Ellie, my oldest sister, decided to be a kindergarten teacher and Abby announced she was going to school to be a lawyer.

I was the youngest. And the tomboy. As soon as I was old enough to understand Dad’s quiet disappointment, I knew what I was going to do with my life. I just wish he’d lived long enough to see me make sergeant. To see how good a soldier I’d become.

So of course I jumped up when they offered to make me an even better soldier. Out of about five hundred volunteers, one hundred and eight made the final cut, two large companies’ worth. A month of shots and now some surgery. Doctor Sorensen tried to explain it to us but it was a lot of high-end words none of us understood. He told us it would be easier to explain after the operation.