Ex-Heroes

It’s What’s Inside That Counts THEN

Even with the shortage of pilots these days, we rated air travel. The rest of the team was in a passenger plane, sitting in real padded seats. I was on a bench, leaning against the interior wall of a C-130J Hercules, strapped into a fivepoint harness. Cerberus was broken down into over a dozen components and stored for transport. The crates were strapped to the sides of the plane, heavy Anvil cases mounted on solid wheels. With the way things were collapsing across the country, I wasn’t about to let it out of my sight.

The Cerberus Battle Armor System took five months to design and another four to build. At least six weeks of that was waiting for parts. Plenty of people had been working on exoskeletons before me. There was the Hardiman stuff the Navy tried in the sixties. Just before everything fell apart, Hugo Herr at MIT had one. UC Berkeley had their Bleex rig and the Hulc. Sarcos Incorporated had a great one. And all I had to do was flash my DARPA card, say “National security,” and I got to look at the blueprints and software for all of them, whether they liked it or not.

Then you can add in all the optional extras. The Army’s Future Force Warrior system. Interceptor body armor. The latest Taser designs. Motion-sensor targeting programs. All this technology was just sitting around, waiting for one clever woman to put it all together. Yes, I stole from the best. New York’s been lost. No one wants to say it, but there it is.

The entire city’s gone. Boston too. And Chicago. Washington DC’s hanging on by a thread, but I understand the president and his cabinet were evacuated to NORAD over a week ago. The west coast cities seem to have fared a little better, probably because they’ve got more sprawl and less concentration. One of the last decisions made by the DOD was to ship me and the suit out west. I was supposed to team up with some of the “superheroes” out there and be a visible symbol of government power, action, and safety in Los Angeles.

The rest of the Hercules was taken up by a platoon’s worth of Marines. I say “worth” because they were a patched-together group, a few surviving squads, individuals, and raw recruits out of basic that had been reorganized to make a functioning unit. I knew soldiers tended to be younger than most people thought, but seeing a bunch of kids all still in their teens drove it home. They were loud and boastful and bragging. And they were white-knuckle scared. Almost two thirds of the current enlisted US military servicemen were dead. Half of them were still walking.

Our plane tilted and everyone shifted their feet. One of the flight crew spoke for a few minutes to the platoon sergeant, a tall, heavy-set man who spent the flight checking his troops. He nodded to the airman and walked back to me.

“Little course correction,” he said. His voice was loud and brash over the roar of the engines. He was ten years older than most of the men and women following him. “Is there a problem?”

“No, ma’am, there’s been a development at Burbank. We’re diverting to Van Nuys.”

“That’s further into the Valley, isn’t it? We’re going deeper into held territory?”

“Technically, yes, but the airport is a safe zone.

Approximately two hundred civilians and staff there.”

“How much longer?”

“Thirty minutes.” He held out his hand. “Staff Sergeant Jeffrey Wallen.” I nodded at his nametag. “I know.”

“I’ve been meaning to compliment you on your outfit.” I’d been issued a flak jacket with no tags and a helmet. I wore them over my street clothes. “Well, nothing says military consultant like the Red Sox and digital camos.”

“You a fan?”

“An ex-boyfriend left it in my apartment. It’s got long sleeves and I don’t care what happens to it.”

“No love lost?”

“None.”

“When’d he dump you?”

“How do you know I didn’t dump him?” The staff sergeant shook his head and sat down next to me.

“Nobody dumps somebody back home. It’s always the other way around.” I smiled. “Seven months ago.”

“That’s cool,” he nodded. “Go for it, Wall!” A few yards back in the plane, one of the Marines sent a double thumbs-up our way and the others hooted and cackled.

It was the happiest, the most normal they’d looked for the whole flight. Wallen stared him down, but it was a friendly stare. “Sorry about that.” I shrugged it off. “They’re just blowing off steam.”

“So, you’re on the Cerberus team, huh?”

“You could say that, yeah.” He nodded. “You been with them a long time?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I’m just wondering about this guy,” he said with a shrug.

“What do you know about him?”

“Who?” He jerked his thumb over at the crates. “Danny Morris,” he said. “The guy in the suit.”

“I’m sorry …?”

“A bunch of the guys are just kind of wondering why a lab professor suddenly decides to be a government-sponsored superhero, y’know? Especially someone with no service history.” I bit my tongue and nodded. “Makes sense.”

“So how much do you know about him?” I toyed with a couple crude answers, but settled on “Quite a bit.”

“Like?”

“Genius IQ. Confident. The only person who completely understands how the suit works and can use it with any degree of competence.”

“Arrogant cocksucker, then? You can say it, I won’t tell.” I smirked. “I think all of you need to keep in mind that suit can flip a Humvee with one hand.”

“For real?” I nodded. “It threw a three-ton test weight fifty-five meters in one of the early trials, and we’ve made improvements since then.”

“Shit,” he grinned. “That’s bitchin’.”

“Yeah. Also, never say Danny.”

“No?”

“No. It’s always Danielle. Or Dr. Morris.”

“Danielle?” He struggled with it for a few seconds and then his eyes went wide. “Oh, shit. Sorry, ma’am. Dr. Morris. All of us just heard the name on the radio and—”

“Staff sergeant, sir!?” The airman was snapping his fingers again. Wallen gave me a quick glance and swayed across the deck. They talked for a moment and his shoulders sagged. He gave a sharp nod to the Marines as he made his way back to me. They weren’t buying it either. “What’s going on?”

“Van Nuys has been compromised. One of their fences fell fifteen minutes ago. We’re landing in a hot zone.”

“Can’t we go back to Burbank?” He shook his head and leaned closer. “Burbank’s gone.

Completely overrun. Right now our best bet is to land at Van Nuys and come out fighting.”

“Aren’t there other airports in Long Beach and San Diego?”

“Way too far out of the way.”

“Where’s my team? Are they meeting us there?” He looked me in the eyes. “Your team landed at Burbank forty-five minutes ago.”

“They—”

“We don’t know anything for sure. The tower there’s gone silent. But we have to assume they’re gone.”

“So we’re fighting?” He nodded and set his jaw. “Don’t worry, ma’am. We’re Marines.”

“I’m not worried.” I undid the buckles on my flight harness and stood up. “Let’s get the crates open.” Wallen blinked. “What?”

“We’re going to fight,” I said. “That’s what I’m here to do. I’ll need ten men for some heavy lifting.” He looked at the crates and back at me. His military brain was jamming up in an unexpected, non-combat situation. I’d seen it happen before. I shrugged out of my flak jacket, swayed over to the cases, and yanked on the first ratchet strap. “With my four-person team it takes me ninety minutes to put the suit on. Give me enough men, staff sergeant, especially if they’ve got some basic electronics knowledge, and we can cut that in half. You can circle the airport once and I’ll be ready.” I thumbed the combination locks, released the clasps, and opened the first crate. It was the helmet. The head. Cerberus glared out of the case at me with wide eyes and a fierce mouth. It was what Wallen needed to see. “Little,” he snapped, “Netzley, Carter, Berk. You and six other volunteers get over here and help the lady get ready to kick some ass.” Then he reached past me and pried open the second ratchet. I tried not to think too much about stripping in front of them, but to their credit only two of the male Marines and one woman stared as I dropped my clothes and pulled on the skintight undersuit. Cerberus doesn’t have a spare millimeter for excess clothing. From an ideal, technical point of view, I should be naked, but there are limits to what I’ll do, even during the apocalypse. Just over forty minutes later Wallen connected the last USB cables while Carter and Netzley held the battlesuit’s head over mine. He met my eyes. “Is that everything?” I nodded. “Good work, staff sergeant.”

“Just show me it was worth it.” He nodded to the two Marines and the helmet dropped down over me. I was plunged into claustrophobic darkness and the tight space of the dead suit pressed in. I had twenty-three seconds while they locked the bolts and the mainframe booted. Not all my work was stolen. I’d come up with the two elements that had been hindering everyone else. First was a reactive sensor system with no delay. Most exoskeletons were clumsy because every one of the wearer’s movements had to be fed back to the mainframe, which then made calculations and fed instructions back out to the individual joints and limbs. The whole process could take as much as half a second when someone was making complex movements like, say, walking, and half-seconds start to pile up faster than you’d think they could. It slowed reaction time and forced people to move and act differently wearing the suits, against their reflexes. In all fairness, this idea was somewhat borrowed as well, but I don’t think I’m going to get sued by a brontosaurus. My grad school roommate was a budding paleontologist who once mentioned the bigger dinosaurs had what amounted to a backup brain, a large nerve cluster that served no purpose but to keep their legs coordinated while impulses traveled up and down their spine. I stole the idea and created the idea of subprocessors built into every joint. Piezoelectric sensors fed to the minicomputers, which would relay back to the main processor while triggering the servos. Cut the reaction time to less than one-sixtieth of a second. The power source was original. I’d love to say it’s something amazing that would’ve changed the world and been installed everywhere, but it isn’t. It’s kind of exoskeleton specific. In very, very simple terms, it uses the negative movements of the suit to recharge in the same way hybrid cars use retrograde braking to recharge their batteries. Not a great analogy, but the best I can do that doesn’t take six pages. And it means a forty-minute battery array can last over two hours of full use on one charge. Those two courses in anatomy and biometrics actually paid off in the long run. The battlesuit’s mainframe hummed to life and the darkness vanished. Staff sergeant Jeff Wallen appeared in front of me with his men behind him. Power ran through my limbs and one hundred-thirty-seven tingling sensors lit up across my body. Targeting matrixes. Power levels.

Ammo counters. Integrity seals. I was strong again. The Marines looked even younger and smaller as I gazed down at them. The tallest was three feet beneath me. “How long until we land?”

“Six minutes,” said Wallen. “We’re on final approach. Are you as badass as you look in that thing?” My grim smile was wasted on them. “So much more than you can guess. Ready, staff sergeant?”

“Born ready, ma’am.”

“Not, ma’am,” I said, and my voice growled over the speakers. “From here on in, it’s just Cerberus.” He nodded and gave an evil grin. “Let’s look alive, Marines,”

he bellowed. “We’re on the ground and fighting in five.” They leaped away and hid their nervousness with hollers and ammo checks. The Hercules shook as the landing gear hit the tarmac. Inertia yanked us all in two or three directions. The suit’s gyroscopic systems kicked in, made me a statue. I took a deep breath and rolled my shoulders. Cerberus did the same on a much larger scale and half a dozen armor plates shifted across the suit’s back and shoulders. The ramp dropped with a whine of motors and a hiss of pistons. It wasn’t halfway down before we could see the dead things staggering across the runway toward our plane. I raised my arm and three hundred-ninety-five-thousand dollars worth of targeting software kicked in.

Crosshairs blossomed in my sight, ballistic information scrolled by in my peripheral vision, and the cannons thundered. Four exes exploded into dark

puddles before the ramp hit the tarmac. By technical definition, the Browning M2 was a massive, one hundred-forty-pound semi-automatic rifle, but it was hard to think of it as anything except a cannon. Normally they were mounted on Humvees, helicopters, or aircraft carriers. The Cerberus suit had one of them mounted on each arm, their barrels reaching a good foot past its three-fingered fists.

Twin ammo belts swung back to the file cabinet–sized hopper mounted on the armor’s back. They could fire nonstop for three and a half minutes, with an effective range just shy of two miles. I stomped down to solid ground flanked on either side by half a dozen Marines. Gunfire echoed across the landing strip and another ten exes fell. They were young and nervous, but they knew how to kill. I heard two screams as the dead fell on them. Having a three-hundred ton aircraft hit the ground a few feet away hadn’t stunned any of them. They were right on top of us. I moved out from under the plane’s tail. The suit identified dozens of targets. The cannons roared again and another handful of exes vanished in dark red clouds. Another scream came from behind us and I switched views inside the helmet. There were two or three exes crawling on the ground. The engines drowned out their chattering teeth. Their legs and spines had been crushed when the Hercules rolled over them during its landing, but that didn’t stop exes. One of them had Tran by the leg, gnawing through his camos and drawing blood. He beat its head in with his rifle stock and then fell over, clutching his calf and screaming. Netzley and Sibal stalked the other crawlers, and their skulls shattered with loud, harsh claps of gunfire. “Dose him,” shouted Wallen with a gesture at the wounded Marine. Carter ran forward and stabbed hypos into Tran one after another.

There was a common rumor massive doses of antibiotics could save you from the ex-virus. It wasn’t true. Officials have tried to stomp it out to conserve supplies. The ramp hissed closed and I targeted another four exes. Their heads popped into red mist. O’Neill was next to me, and the empty brass smacked against his shoulder and scorched his uniform. I glared down at Wallen. “This was the better landing zone?” He scowled back at me. “Yeah,” he barked. “What’s that tell you?” His rifle banged and a dead Mexican man flew back, arms flailing. “We’ve got radio,” shouted Wallen. “Survivors are in the main building.” He pointed across the tarmac, and a distant figure on a rooftop hopped and waved its arms. As I turned my head, the targeting software haloed several dozen exes between the runway and the building. “Watch your step,” I bellowed over the speaker. “Let me take point.” I pushed past them and grabbed the closest dead thing, crushing its skull in my fist. Not efficient, but it was the kind of morale boost they needed. I marched forward with the Marines flanking me. It took a month of fighting before officers realized the standard fire team didn’t serve much use against the exes. There were no grenade launchers or M240s here.

Just your basic M-16 for everyone, bayonets mounted, all set on single shot—-no bursts allowed. The walking dead continued to flail at us as we marched across the airfield. A quarter-mile to the south the armor magnified the remains of a chain link fence. It had been bent and twisted and pressed flat to the ground for a length of twenty yards, and dozens of exes were staggering through the opening every moment. No additional barriers or watchtowers.

The people hiding here had trusted a chain link fence with some barbed wire to protect them from hundreds, maybe thousands of massed undead. “The perimeter’s compromised,” I told Wallen. He gave a sharp nod. “We can’t stay here.” My cannons lined up and fired a few dozen rounds at the distant fence. I watched a line of headless exes drop. The next wave tripped over their bodies, and so did the next. It wasn’t much, but it was a space.

“Suggestions?”

“The main resistance is in Hollywood,” he said as we continued toward the terminal. “It’s eleven miles east-south-east of here. We hole up with these folks for a minute, get some transport together, and then get moving.” Wallen’s Marines cleared a path for us. By the time we’d reached the building they’d put down almost a hundred exes. We made it into the private terminal and I swore inside the armor. Not one defensive structure set up. These people hadn’t prepared for anything. I wondered how long they’d been here, or planned to be here? Once that fence went down they were exposed and defenseless. We could hear screams up ahead. And under the screams, hundreds of teeth clicking. There were over thirty bodies in the hall. Only a handful had been exes. A few dead things were gnawing on limbs and clawing their way into torsos. The Marines made short work of them. One of the younger ones, Mao, threw up. We passed a handful of offices before we entered the main section of the terminal. It was like the lobby of an office building. Maybe fifty people were scattered across the room as they tried to hold off twice as many exes. They were fighting with fire axes, shovels, and two-by-fours.

Barely any firepower among them. One fat idiot had a shotgun and kept blasting exes in the stomach. He didn’t seem to notice when he took down one of his own people with his wild aim. “Fucking hell,” he hollered, “the goddamned Army finally showed up!” He grinned, threw a loose salute at the Marines, and a teenage girl with a bloody, ragged torso wrapped her arms around him and took a chunk out of his neck. The fat man turned to throw her off and an old Chinese ex grabbed his arm and sank its teeth into his biceps. His shotgun went off one last time and he went down screaming. Another dozen people had died just since we walked into the room. I stomped forward and began crushing skulls. Wallen was right behind me, driving his bayonet through eye sockets. The Marines were damned good. In five minutes every ex in the room was dead. Seven civilians had died, and one more Marine. “Who’s in charge here?” shouted Wallen. A bulky man with a hunting rifle stepped forward. “That’d be me. Mark Larsen.”

“How many people do you have here, Mr. Larsen?” He looked at the bodies. “I think we’re down to about thirty of us down here. I’ve got fourteen families upstairs.”

“Any transport?”

“A couple trucks, including a diesel fueler. We’ve been waiting for someone to tell us where to go.”

“Good man,” said Wallen, clenching his fist. “Have someone get them warmed up and get your people. We’re moving out as soon as possible.” He looked at the crowd of Marines. “Alpha team, you’re with the trucks. Beta, keep the families safe.”

“Wall,” shouted someone. “Another wave of exes coming from the south. Lots of them.”

“How many is lots?” he shouted back. O’Neill leaned in from the hall. “Maybe four digits, sir. We’ve got ten minutes, tops.”

“I’m going out,” I said. “I can get in deep and hold them off.”

He nodded and I followed O’Neill back up the hall. The Marines were smart and well trained. They hadn’t wasted time with a solid barricade, just knocked over a ton of stuff for exes to trip and fumble with. They’d settled back and were letting off controlled, aimed shots, like a shooting range. There were just too many, though. The Marines were making a dent, but they weren’t slowing the tide. I marched toward the shambling crowd, cannons blazing. At this range, a round from the M-2s could go through four or five skulls before slowing down. I thundered through a hundred rounds in a few bursts and dropped twice as many exes. Then they were around me and I fired up the stunners. Exes don’t have any sense of pain, but they still have nervous systems, and those systems are still linked to their muscles. Which means a 200,000 volt blast will still drop one. The key thing to remember is it won’t stop them. The second the juice is off, they’re good to go again. One pass of my hands and a dozen exes collapsed. I brought my arms back and watched ten more drop. Rounds splattered off the concrete as O’Neill, Laigaie, and Mao kept them down. All around me. Ten, twenty, thirty of them. I swung my arms, swept a group of them together with a crunch of bones. They were hanging on my arms, on my legs, clutching at my waist. The sound of chattering teeth filled the battlesuit. I thrashed. I pounded. Warning lights flashed to remind me of the unexpected extra weight on each limb. I kept my eyes shut and crushed anything I got my hands on. My arms swung and I felt bodies slam against them. I normally don’t suffer from claustrophobia. Even when I first started wearing and testing the armor there weren’t any panic attacks or nervous moments. It wasn’t until the first time I waded into a horde of exes that I started feeling trapped in the suit. Someone shouted my name. It came again and I opened my eyes. Dozens of corpses surrounded me. The Marines had fallen back another thirty or forty feet. And a fresh wave of ex-humans was closing on me. Ma Deuce and her twin sister had a shouting match that left fifty or sixty exes sprayed across the tarmac. The armor thudded back while O’Neill and Mao dropped a few dead things. We moved out around the terminal toward a row of hangars. The lenses switched and I saw the row of families running alongside them. Wallen turned to check our flank and a tall ex fell on him. It was like the cheap-shot scare in a movie. A brunette woman, so close he didn’t have a chance. The walking corpse snapped its jaw and bit off most of his right cheek. The flesh peeled away and his nose stretched up with it for a moment. He yelled out and froze. Just for a second. Long enough for the ex to get a second mouthful. There was a crack as his nose broke and was pulled off his face. The Marines brought their guns up to shoot, but Wallen was flailing. A second ex latched onto his torso and sank its jaws in just above his collar. Dry fingers pulled at his arms, teeth pulled at his fatigues, and he fell back into the growing crowd of the dead. He never made another sound. “Go!” shouted O’Neill. “We need to get to the trucks now!” The M-2s turned the hangar wall behind us into confetti and I smashed through whatever was left. The Cessna inside got thrown out of the way as I cut through the next wall and into the hangar past that. The Marines flowed through the bottleneck. The exes bunched up.

Five minutes and another couple dozen dead exes later, we were at the trucks. Families were packed in the back and into the cabs. A third of the rifle platoon was missing. Netzley kept trying her radio with no response. “Move out,” I shouted. “I’ve got point, everyone falls in behind me. Anything gets within ten feet of the trucks you put it down.

Clear?” There was a shout from the Marines, my optics flared to white, and I heard a dozen screams. The computer struggled to compensate and the airport reappeared on the screens. The light was all wrong. Everything was bright and washed-out. The civilians were looking up, their mouths open in awe, and two old Latino women were crossing themselves again and again. Hanging above us was the shape of a man. It sizzled in the air, like high-tension lines on a damp morning. The white outline gave a friendly salute to Carter and tipped its head at me. Howdy. The voice buzzed like someone talking with a kazoo, except you could understand him. I heard you were coming. Would’ve been

here sooner but a lot of people thought you were still landing at Burbank. The suit’s sensors were still going wild. “What about the other team? Did the other plane make it?” The burning wraith seemed to slump a bit. They didn’t. I’m

sorry. O’Neill fired at a distant ex and looked back up. “You’re Zzzap, right?” Here to guide you to relative safety. The figure nodded at me again. Doctor Danielle Morris, I presume? “No,” said Carter before I could speak. “That’s Cerberus.”