Peter Clines - Ex-Patriots

“That’s this one here, right?” He pointed at the tiny lever over the red dot.

“Yes, sir.”

Smith flipped the lever with his thumb and fired four shots into Harrison’s chest. The sergeant fell back against the wall and dropped his Bravo. His vest had taken most of it, but he still wheezed out some air.

Smith peered down the sights and squeezed the trigger a few more times. One shot went into Harrison’s throat. The next one tore open his cheek along his jaw line. The last three turned his head into a red and ivory mess.

The soldiers had their weapons up. They’d thrown Stealth to the ground and had Smith in their sights. “Do not move, fucker,” roared Taylor.

The young agent blew smoke from the pistol’s barrel. “Staff Sergeant Harrison was collaborating with the enemy,” he said. “You all knew that, right?”

“Of course, sir,” said Polk, lowering his weapon.

“I’m only sorry I didn’t shoot the traitorous fuck myself,” muttered Taylor.

* * *

“We’re not going to make it until reinforcements get here,” the sergeant told Danielle. He had to raise his voice over the chattering teeth. “We’re going to have to fall back.”

She looked over her shoulder. “Fall back to where?”

The soldier looked at the hordes of undead pouring through the fence. “As far as we can,” he said. “Our ammo’s not going to last much longer. I think your robot’s running out of juice, too. Hopefully we’ll meet up with our reinforcements and we can form a new line.”

“So, you’re talking about a retreat,” she said.

“Yeah,” he muttered, “basically.”

His eyes shifted around for a minute and two or three expressions flicked across his face. Then he swung his rifle up and aimed it past her. She cringed as it went off. Something hit the ground behind her.

A group of ex-soldiers had come up behind them. Almost twenty of them. The sergeant had killed the one reaching for her. He yanked her out of the way and let off a dozen rounds. Three dead men and a woman dropped.

The soldiers shifted into a circle. Four in front, three in back. Danielle could see there weren’t enough of them. They were exposed.

She forced one of her Berettas away from her body and tried to remember every offhand comment Stealth had ever made about firing a gun. She squeezed the trigger. An ex-soldier a few yards away jerked up and its shoulder went limp. She fired off two more shots and the zombie dropped.

One of the soldiers facing the fence hollered. An ex had dropped on top of him. He was trying to kick it away and bring his rifle up, but the weapon was tangled in the dead woman’s limbs. Danielle shoved the pistol at the ex’s skull and blew it apart, but there was already another one clawing at the soldier’s feet. She flinched back against the solid safety of the wall.

The sound of teeth was drowning out everything. She barely heard the sergeant yell as his rifle ran dry and he clubbed an ex with it. One soldier wrapped his hands around a zombie’s neck and tried to twist its skull off. The circle was overwhelmed.

They were all around her.

She emptied the first pistol, pulled out the second, and looked for a target. There were too many, too close. There were at least a hundred coming through the fence. Still more than a dozen coming from the base. She fired until her fingers ached and the slide locked open. Half the soldiers were down, wrestling with zombies. She was pretty sure two of them were already dead.

One of the exes reached for her with withered fingers. Danielle threw her pistol and it bounced off the snapping jaws. She was exposed. Weak. Flesh. The ex’s hand slid up her arm, headed for the exposed flesh of her face.

A metal hand reached down and crushed the dead man’s skull. It flung the body back into the mob. “Come on,” said Cesar. “We gotta get out of here.” He batted away two more exes with a shrug of the battlesuit’s shoulders.

Metal fingers closed on her waist and lifted her into the air. She was even more exposed. They set her down on the armor’s shoulders and she grabbed the helmet for balance. “Put me down,” she shouted. She banged her fist on the metal skull. “We’ve got to get somewhere safe. We all do.”

“Doctor Morris,” said the battlesuit, “there’s nobody left. Its just us.”

She looked down.

The exes had overrun the small defense line. The soldiers were dead. One was still twitching but had a trio of exes gnawing on him. She was pretty sure one had put his rifle in his own mouth and the sound had been lost in all the gunfire.

A pair of exes reached for her feet, but she was high enough up that all they could do was brush her heels. The titan swatted them away. Danielle wrapped her arms tighter around the helmet as the battlesuit stomped down the road.

She looked back at the guard towers flanking the hole in the fence. The soldiers there were still picking off exes with their rifles, but it was pebbles to divert a flood. One of them looked at her and she could see his eyes from fifty yards away.

“We’re going to come back,” she shouted. “I promise. Just hang on.”

He gave her a weak wave that looked like it ended in a thumbs-up. The other one just kept shooting at the dozens of exes stumbling past his tower.

* * *

Smith had put Polk in front to replace Harrison and left Taylor and Hayes to wrestle with Stealth. They marched through the lobby of the records building and pushed the doors open. Smith took a breath, straightened his tie out of habit, and looked at the scene in front of them.

The Black Hawk rested on the pad about five hundred feet away. Its engines were thrumming, even though the rotors were still. A soldier in a flight helmet pumped fuel into the chopper’s tanks and looked over his shoulder.

To one side of the helipad was a mob of ex-soldiers. Sixty, maybe seventy of them. They had the pilot’s attention. Smith saw the flash of green on their heads and a few with rifles swinging on straps. Their teeth clacked together, but over the engines it was more a tremble in the air than an actual sound. There were maybe a hundred yards between the first few zombies and the helicopter.

Sergeant Monroe, flanked by Truman and Jefferson, came from the other direction. They were about as far from the helipad as Smith and his group. They were sprinting, even with their oversized rifles.

A shadow flitted across the ground. Smith looked up and saw St. George plunging out of the sky. His boots hit the tarmac twenty feet in front of them. One of them had a ragged heel.

“Well,” said Smith, “this should be interesting.”

“Stealth,” the hero yelled over the helicopter, “you okay?”

“I am uninjured,” she said. “I trust you received my message?”

St. George looked Smith in the eye. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Everybody got it.”

Smith smiled at him. “You don’t think you can beat me, do you?”

The hero stopped in his tracks. Indecision flickered on his face. He glanced at Stealth, then at the soldiers flanking her. His brow knotted up in concentration.

Smith marched his group past the hero. He paused to give St. George a friendly punch in the arm. “I’m sure we’ll see each other again,” he said. “You’ve got way too much potential to be running around without guidance.”

St. George raised a fist and glared at him.

Monroe and his men were at the Black Hawk, weapons ready. Smith shouted to them while he jabbed a finger toward the exes. “You don’t want to let them reach the helicopter, do you? Get in there and protect American property.”

A thread of blood trickled out of Monroe’s nose, then Truman’s. The three super soldiers fell back and took up position across the helipad. Gunfire drowned out the helicopter. Their Bravos ripped the exes apart one after another. Some of the exes stopped clacking their teeth together and raised their own weapons.