He shot toward the door and there was a deafening crack. Zzzap flailed in the air, then rushed the door again. There was a second report, and the wraith was hurled away a second time. His outline blurred for a moment, then pulled back to a crisp silhouette.
The doctor polished his glasses on his shirt sleeve and balanced them back on his nose. “I’m sure you’re familiar with the concept of a Faraday cage, Mister Burke,” he said. “They were very popular with scientists and espionage agencies because they block out all outside signals and interference. One as well-built as the one around this chamber can block any type of electromagnetic signal. Cell phones, television, radio waves— it can keep all of it out.”
The rumpled old man smiled at the gleaming wraith.
“Which also means it can keep anything in.”
Smith cleared his throat. “I know you don’t want to hurt anyone,” he said. “But I’d guess just hanging out in an enclosed space like this with you isn’t... well, it’s probably not healthy for any of us mere mortals in the long term.” He nodded at the soldiers. “Definitely not for these two who are going to be here monitoring you. Maybe you should go back into the core?”
Sorensen was still smiling. Zzzap glared at him. He didn’t have eyes, but they all sensed the glare. He drifted towards the window.
“If it makes you feel any better,” said Smith, “I just lost a bet with Colonel Shelly. I was sure you’d get out.”
Yeah, thanks. That makes it all much better.
Chapter 19 - Sad Songs
THEN
I didn’t even want to be in the Army. I wanted to be in a jazz band. Get out of college, make a little money giving kids horn lessons, and spend my nights playing trumpet somewhere down in the Gaslamp district as Harry Harrison and the Starlighters or something like that. That was my real dream.
Yeah, I know. There was a writer named Harry Harrison, too. Only about ten thousand people have told me that, thank you.
Then the White House had to start this stupid war in the Middle East while I was in high school and it looked like I might get drafted. People were talking about the draft, can you believe it? That was what I heard all through college. There hadn’t been a draft in forty years, and the last time was for a stupid, pointless war, too. If the Repugs stayed in power after the election, everyone on campus knew they’d keep the war going.
Dad sat me down. He’d done a stint in the Navy right out of high school and he explained why. If there’s a draft, they decide where you go. If you enlist on your own, you get a lot more say in where you go. He spent Vietnam on board the Will Rogers, slept in a warm bunk almost every night, and never got shot at once.
So I went to the recruiting office just before I graduated college and the Army officer told me there was an Army band. They’d actually pay me to play trumpet for four years. I signed up and told Dad it was one of the best decisions I’d ever made.
Yeah, I joined Krypton right after I made sergeant. What better way to stay off the front line than to volunteer for a stateside experiment? And there was a decent chance I’d end up in the control group, so I wouldn’t even have to deal with side effects or anything, right?
Little did I know.
I made the cut. The surgery took. Three weeks later I raised my horn to lips, took a firm grip, and dented the outer cylinders. Gus and Wilson thought it was funny as hell. Wilson dug up a bugle for me a few days later, left it on my bunk.
Fucktards.
Of course, all this was all kind of moot. Turns out no one’s just a musician when there’s a war going on. First it was in the Middle East, but then it was everywhere. The main instrument I had to play was my rifle, and since the exes showed up I’d gotten very proficient with it. Solos, duets, I even led a few six-piece numbers that got rave reviews under the name Staff Sergeant Harry Harrison and the Unbreakable Twenty-ones.
When it all went really crazy, it had been six weeks since our first attempt into Yuma. Four weeks since First Sergeant Paine blew his own head off and most lines of communication went dead. The last one said the feds had flown some super-robot out to Los Angeles, and that made Captain Freedom furious. He’d been arguing we should be on the front line all along, and Project Krypton had just been lost in the chaos of the Zombocalypse.
Yeah, Zombocalypse. Neat, huh? Gus told me that one.
Thirteen days since the first of a small army of exes staggered across a few miles of desert to pile against our fence line and fill the air with the staccato chatter of enamel and ivory.