Then I came to my senses. No masks. No capes. Nothing that involved revealing myself. Everybody goes after the guy they see. Nobody goes after the man behind the throne.
Maybe a month later I heard rumors about some Reagan-era program, Project Krypton. It was like the Star Wars defense system—no one expected it to work. It was just something else the Soviets would need to match our research on and drive themselves deeper into bankruptcy doing it. Except Project Krypton worked. They got some serious results before the project was mothballed at the end of the Cold War.
When all those superheroes started showing up, though, it got people thinking. Especially me. They reactivated the program. I got transferred to it.
I mean, the battlesuit is a great idea, but it’s a thing. Things can break down. They can run out of bullets or batteries. And your power runs out with them. But if the power’s something inherent, something the soldier is, not something they’re wearing, then it can’t go away.
Besides, the military was a great place for me. After knowing a few over-eager ROTC students in college, I almost didn’t need any power to manipulate them. Say terrorism and patriotism in the right order and half the soldiers I met would shoot their own mother without asking why. The other half... well, they’d do it if I asked them.
Granted, when the exes showed it up it was a big wrench in my plans. Now nobody else could wash out of the program. I was still weeding through candidates, figuring which ones were easiest to influence without risking their brains bursting. Too many people die of multiple aneurisms and it starts to look suspicious. It starts to draw attention.
So I had to put a bit more thought into getting rid of the troublesome super-soldiers. The ones whose morals or sense of duty were too strong. But it wasn’t that hard. After all, they’ll do or believe anything I tell them. I can make them think their vehicle’s going to run out of gas. Or they should run full-speed into a mob of exes when the smart thing to do is to sit tight. Or that they should put a gun in their mouth.
Now, though, it looks like I might get the best of both worlds. The heroes are alive out in Los Angeles, and they’ve got a pile of civilians with them. Hell, the Cerberus suit might even still be out there somewhere. At first Shelly was all for letting them stay self-governed and alone, but a quick Q and A changed his mind for him. So now a team’s heading out to welcome them back to the United States of America. I’ll ask if I can tag along, too. In an advisory position, of course.
After all, what do you get when you’re the ultimate power behind the throne?
You get ultimate power.
Chapter 27
NOW
There were, by Specialist MacLeod’s guesstimate, about a thousand exes around the Krypton fence. He was good at guesstimates. Not even three years ago he’d worked the produce department at the Albertsons on West 24th where he’d amazed coworkers with the ability to put a number to avocados on an endcap or jalapenos in a bin. Since he’d signed up, he was still amazing people, but now it was spent brass on the firing range or zombies at the fence.
A thousand was more than usual, but not by a huge amount. A lot of them seemed to be stumbling across the desert these past few days and joining the mobs at the chainlink. The open space muffled their chattering teeth, but not by much.
Still, it was quieter up in a watchtower than down on the ground. Morning run around the perimeter always creeped him out. A lot of the dead things at the fence were wearing the same uniform he was, and he didn’t like to see it up close. Heck, the ex-soldiers walking the perimeter were bad enough.
His watch ended at fourteen-hundred. Fifteen more minutes and he was off duty. Pulling a shift alone sucked and he couldn’t wait until it was over.
He looked along the north side of the fence and gave a wave to D.B. over at the next tower. He was stuck with a solitary shift, too. The soldier waved back and MacLeod wandered across his tower’s small deck to look down at the gates. Three layers of steel pipe and chainlink between him and the dead.
Movement made him glance back into the base. A figure was wobbling across the open space between the gate and the helipad. At first MacLeod thought the back and forth gait might mean it was First Sergeant Kennedy, but just as quick he realized it was more of a stagger than a pleasant sway. He lifted his binoculars and confirmed one of the ex-soldiers was heading for the gate.
He picked up the tower’s handset and punched in the extension for the zombie handlers. “Short Bus, this is Tower two,” he said, “I think one of your kids is skipping class. You know anything about it?”
“Negative, Tower. Do we have a dead Nest?”
“Don’t know. Doesn’t seem to be feral, just wandering.”
“Copy. Someone probably gave it a vague order and now it’s trying to walk to Washington or something. I’ll send somebody out to retrieve it.”