“An hour? Hell, twenty minutes and I’ll be munching on your friends.”
He pulled back and hurled the dead woman up over the fence. His wounded arm flared with pain as he did. On the other side exes were pulling at the chainlink, throwing their weight back and forth.
The last ex, a teenage boy wearing a tattered Circle K shirt, glared at him. “Don’t you get it? Killing me just made me unbeatable. I’m more powerful than you—”
Yeah, yeah. The air rippled and Zzzap let his fingers sink into the dead boy’s skull. The stringy hair and dry skin caught fire. The gray eyes sizzled away. Struck you down, more powerful than we can possibly imagine, get some original material, you halfwit. The ex dropped to the ground with smoke pouring out of its skull. The wraith let out a buzzing sigh.
“You okay?”
I’m wiped. I’ve got to be honest... I don’t know how much more use I’m going to be to you.
St. George looked over at the tower guards. They’d rushed down to a waiting Humvee. One of them manned the machine gun on the roof. “Can you recharge Cerberus one more time,” he asked, “maybe hold it together for a little while longer?”
How long is that?
“If we don’t ask you to do anything else but be a presence... a day or two?”
Ouch, said the wraith. You serious?
“I need you here, Barry. They need to see us. At night they need to see you.”
Yeah, yeah, I know, sighed Zzzap. We’re heroes and all that.
*
Another truck pulled into formation. The back was filled with a heap of coats, boots, blankets, and other dry goods.
The triangle of soldiers by the main gate had been replaced by a ring of almost forty vehicles, all facing the same direction. Humvees, trucks, another Guardian. Soldiers sat in the turrets and used the heavy guns on the exes at the gate.
Stealth and Kennedy agreed regular jeeps wouldn’t offer enough protection and skipped over them. It also helped when one of the ex-soldiers stumbled across a parking lot that still had vehicles in it. The cloaked woman looked at the circled vehicles. “How many more?”
“Three. One more truck, two Humvees. But Jefferson hasn’t reported in. Neither has King. We may have lost them.”
As she spoke another truck rumbled up. It stopped outside the circle and the driver leaped out. His jacket was slashed in a dozen places. He reached back into the cab and dragged Jefferson out. “Medic!”
Two men ran for the wounded soldier. Stealth and Kennedy approached the driver more cautiously.
“Didn’t think you’d be joining us, specialist,” said Kennedy.
“Yeah, well, you know me, First Sergeant,” said Taylor. The battered soldier lowered Jefferson into the waiting arms of the medics and then spat out a mouthful of blood. “Always ending up on the wrong fucking team.”
*
Freedom had joined Pierce, Twenty-two, and the Real Men at the southern breach. There were only twenty-seven of them left. He wasn’t sure how many there had been to start with.
It was a clean break through the fence here. No chance of repairing it. Legion didn’t seem to be focusing much here, so at least the exes were providing easy targets. The soldiers had put down so many of them the ground was an uneven morass of bodies. Most of the walking dead stumbled and fell three or four times as they crossed the fence line. The air was filled with the sounds of gunfire and chattering teeth.
Three Humvees had joined them. The soldiers had fallen back around the vehicles. It was going to be tight, but it only had to get them back across the base.
He spun a new drum, his last one, onto Lady Liberty and blew the head off another ex. His radio crackled. “Unbreakable Six, this is Unbreakable Seven,” said Kennedy’s voice.
“Seven, this is Six.”
“Six, this is Seven. Wagons are circled at position one, sir. The Dragon and Sparky are falling back to our position as well.”
A new voice broke in on the channel. “You did not just call me ‘Sparky,’ did you?”
“Seven, this is Six,” said the captain. “Roger.”
“Seriously. I have a code name.”
Freedom pulled out his earbud and looked over his shoulder. He’d done his morning run past this length of fence thousands of times since he joined Project Krypton. He could see the backsides of two barracks. The post exchange was just visible between two of them, on the far side of the street someone had named Deadwood. Far past that, he could see the building with his office and the hospital where Sorensen had made him into the greatest soldier on Earth.
He took a final look at the view and shoved the earbud back in. “We’re falling back.” He bellowed it for Legion’s benefit. “Mount up and back to the main gate.”
*