Ex-Patriots

Chapter 13 - The Spirit of Freedom THEN

My great-great grandfather was born a slave. On his fourth birthday he and everyone he knew became free citizens of the United States. When he was eighteen, he changed our family name to what he thought was the greatest word in the English language. I never met him, but my father did. It’s a powerful thing, to think how short a time that was.

Now there’s a black man in the White House. And a black man was selected to be the symbol of the new American military. It was a long process for both of us.

My first posting as an officer was Iraq. December of 2003. I’d been there for eight weeks, a freshly-minted second lieutenant, when a soldier in my section, Private First Class Adam James, found a well-constructed IED on a patrol. He was killed instantly. From what I was told later, the two soldiers on either side of him were dead within the hour. They were lucky never to regain consciousness. Sergeant James Cole lost his left leg and three fingers off his left hand. I was thrown fifteen feet into the side of our Humvee.

Three men dead. One crippled for life. I suffered a concussion, a broken arm that needed two pins, five fractured ribs that got wire supports, and eleven pieces of shrapnel which needed to be surgically removed. One of the doctors said they took out as much metal as they put in. I know some men and women who save such things as trophies. I didn’t want to be reminded of failing the people under my command.

I spent three months in a hospital in Germany, received a Purple Heart, and was put back in the field. I always prefer to be in the field, and those days an officer who went into the field willingly was considered an asset.

Six years later I was standing in front of the colonel’s desk at Project Krypton, asking to be assigned to the field. It was May fourteenth, 2009. I recall thinking later we should mark it as the day the world ended, but that kind of negative thinking was bad for morale.

“They’re mindless things,” Shelly told me. “This virus turns people into walking vegetables. No real threat at all unless they’re in large numbers. The media’s just blowing things out of proportion again.”

I hadn’t served under the colonel for long. I don’t think I even knew if he was married or not at that point. I did know he was a horrible liar. Lying is a politician’s game, not a soldier’s. All good soldiers are bad liars. The best ones are horrible at it.

Shelly was lying. There were uprisings in every major city. Even Yuma proper had reported a few dozen wandering the streets. If there were dozens wandering the street in a state where more than half the citizens carried firearms on a regular basis, it didn’t bode well for anywhere else. But he was a good soldier, and his orders told him it wasn’t a crisis and we weren’t needed.

“Be that as it may, sir,” I said, “I’m requesting deployment into one of the hot spots. The Unbreakables are ready to go.”

“It’s still too soon for active deployment,” Shelly said. “Sorensen thinks all of you need another month or so of observation. Especially you, captain. It’s been three weeks since you finished your treatments.”

“And I feel excellent, sir. Better than excellent.”

The corners of his mouth twitched. It was what passed for a polite smile in the colonel’s office. “The official decision, captain, is you and your men would just be overkill.”

The Unbreakables had only been my men for a month. But I knew they were good soldiers. When I was first introduced to them, Shelly and Sorensen assured me they weren’t picked just for their names. I think the doctor found something funny about it. I’m sure similar coincidences have happened in every branch of the service at one time or another.

Besides, I’ve taken enough good-natured ribbing about my name over the years. I can’t say anything about anyone else’s. According to my mother, I was named after her father and the sitting president when I was born. As my father tells it, I was named for his boyhood hero, a man of honor and the greatest soldier of two worlds. I’ve often sided with my father when the topic has come up.

“From what I’ve heard, sir,” I said, “the actual heroes are trying to pitch in and not having much luck. We’d hardly be overkill.”

“Really?” said Shelly. His voice was dry. “What exactly have you heard, captain?”

“Through official sources, sir, I’ve heard they’ve deployed the Cerberus exoskeleton in Washington D.C.”

“Official sources is Agent Smith shooting his mouth off again, correct?”

“Yes sir.”

“What else have you heard?”

The base was locked down, but rumors still made their way in. A few sources said the heroes were kicking zombie ass everywhere they went, but most of them told me the heroes were making no headway at all. They were slowing the spread of the infection at best. And there were a few stories that some of them had died. Even one or two claims they’d come back, and there were super-powered zombies overwhelming the police in some cities. It did occur to me that no one could name which heroes had died.

“Nothing else, sir,” I said.

He nodded. I was sure there was nothing I’d heard that he hadn’t. “Is that all, captain?”

“Sir,” I said, “permission to speak freely?”

“Granted.”

“As I understand it, sir, all of B company is being pulled out of Yuma and redeployed in civilian centers.”

“Yes,” he said, “they are. There’s still more than enough forces stateside to deal with this epidemic, especially with a few platoons of regular Army backing them up.”

“Regardless, sir, isn’t this just what the Unbreakables were created for? If our control group is gone, any testing has to be over. If the testing is over, there’s no reason for us not to be doing our jobs.”

Colonel Shelly considered my words and a red drop swelled up under his nose. In the desert climate, nosebleeds aren’t uncommon. First Sergeant Paine tells me two or three of the soldiers in A company get them. I opened my mouth to say something and the drop hit the bursting point, too big to support its own weight. It became a red line across the colonel’s lips. A few drops hit his paperwork.

“Damn it.” He pinched his nose and tilted his head back.

“Can I get you anything, sir?”

“Thank you, no,” he sighed. “Captain, for the time being you and your men are not needed in this action. You will remain assigned to the proving ground. Those are your orders. Is that clear?”

“Yes sir.”

That was that. He took his hand away from his nose and returned my salute. His attention went back to the paperwork on his desk. He yanked a kleenex from a drawer to dab at it. I’d reached the door when he called out to me.

“Captain Freedom.”

“Yes sir?”

He held out the blood-streaked warning order he’d been working on. “Take the Unbreakables toward Yuma tomorrow morning and see if you can find any civilians in need of assistance. Bring three transports with you in case you need to evacuate anyone. Deal with any infected you encounter.”

“Yes sir. Thank you, sir.”

I left his office and got a quick salute from his staff sergeant who was talking with First Sergeant Paine. Paine fell in next to me as we headed out into the hall. Walking side by side we filled the hallway. “Orders, sir?”

“Orders,” I said. “Finally.” I handed Paine the warning order. “Get first platoon prepared. We head out at oh-six-thirty. Any questions?”

He skimmed the paper. “None, sir.” He gave a sharp salute and reversed direction. I walked around the corner and almost flattened Doctor Sorensen. He glanced up at me.

“Captain,” he said.

“Doctor.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine, sir,” I said.

“What did you lift in the gym last night?”

“I’m up to twenty-two-fifty on the bench press, sir,” I told him. “I’m limited now by what can fit on the bar.”

He gave a nod. “I should’ve thought of that sooner,” he said. He reached out and pressed on my bicep with two fingers. His hand moved up and he tried to drive his thumb into the spot where my pecs ran into my shoulders. “Any muscle pain?”

“None at all, sir. Not even aches from exercising.”

“Excellent.” He peered over his glasses into my eyes. “How’s your appetite? Still good?”

“I’m on double servings, sir, but I think I’m burning most of it off.”

“Converting most of it straight to muscle and bone mass is more likely. Have you weighed yourself today?”

I’d started weighing myself every day while I was at West Point. For a man my size it’s important to keep off extra pounds. Since beginning Sorensen’s process I’d been gaining weight steadily. “Three-hundred and twenty-nine pounds,” I told him.

“Measured yourself?”

“Sir?”

“Your jacket seems a bit tight. I think you may have grown another inch.”

“It’s possible, sir.”

“Remind me to check during our next exam.”

“Yes, sir. If you’ll pardon me, sir, I need to prepare.”

His brows went up. “What for?”

“Nothing to worry about, sir. Standard recon in Yuma, looking for refugees and infected.”

“I see,” he said. He let it hang in the air. “Colonel Shelly is in, then?”

“I believe he is, sir. I just spoke with him a moment ago.”

“Thank you, captain.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The doctor had been distracted these past weeks. His family was back on the east coast. A wife and daughter, as I understood it. As the situation across the country had been getting worse he’d been debating if they should come out to join him at Krypton.

I was two yards down the hall when he called out to me. “Don’t exert yourself if you can avoid it,” he called out to me. “Stop if you feel any pain at all.”

Asking if I was feeling any pain had almost become a joke with Doctor Sorensen. Once I’d been accepted into the program he’d explained most of the process to me. The hormone and steroid shots. The surgeries. I glazed over most of it, to be honest. It wasn’t anything I needed to understand, and I got the sense he was saying it the same way some officers will work through a prepared speech whether it’s still relevant or not. He had stressed how much it was going to hurt when my muscles started to develop. I remember Colonel Shelly had given another of his subtle smiles at that.

I’d been serving in Afghanistan for seven months when, on a fine Wednesday morning in 2005, my squad was pinned down in a village between Farah and Shindand. One man was shot in the throat. Two took body shots in the sides that slipped past their armor. Another got shot in the thigh. It was deliberate. It forced us to leave him crippled and in the open, or to go after him. When a second round struck him in the shoulder I told the squad to lay down cover fire.

I’m big, but I’d surprised people with how fast I could move long before I went through Sorensen’s process. That surprise and the cover fire threw off the snipers’ first three shots. The fourth one didn’t miss, and I felt a kick in the middle of my back that told me my body armor had saved my life.

I never felt the fifth shot. In his report, Staff Sergeant Drake said there’d been a sound like a huge egg breaking and my helmet exploded on my head. I’d dropped in the dust, my head covered with blood, right next to the soldier I was trying to save. The rest of the squad fought off the snipers, lost two more men, and left me there for an hour before someone decided to make an obligatory check for my pulse.

There are just so many times you can be “one of the only survivors” before people begin to feel uneasy around you.

If I was a superstitious man, I’d’ve resigned my commission at the end of my Afghanistan tour. The thought did cross my mind, and I was going to be finishing that tour in the hospital anyway. But I knew better. The Army was where I was supposed to be and I was going to serve until I died. I had a duty to serve my country. The United States had fought a war against itself, spilled its own blood, so my great-great grandfather could be free. So I could have this proud name.

Could I do any less for my country?