Ex-Patriots by Peter Clines Read Free Book Online Page B

down a final bag and hopped out
of the truck.
    “Moving on, then,” said St. George. A few
yards down the road he could see another, larger gas station with a
shot-out sign. He could remember driving past it a few times back
in the before days, back when he was just a college maintenance guy
moonlighting as a superhero in a thriving Los Angeles, but he
couldn’t remember if it had been an Arco or a Mobil or what.
    Hector stepped up onto Road Warrior’s lift gate and paused. He looked back and forth up the street. “What
is that? Is that... flies?”
    Lynne cocked her head to the side. “It’s not
flies. Bees, maybe, or hornets?”
    “It’s not insects,” said St. George with a
shake of his head. “Too steady. It almost sounds like...”
    He rocketed thirty feet into the air. “Grab
the flare gun!” he shouted down at them. “Red flare, fast!”
    Jarvis fumbled in his pack. “What the hell is
it?”
    “No way,” said Lady Bee. Her eyes were wide
and she smiled as the droning sound grew louder. “No way!”
    “It’s a plane!” shouted St. George, going
higher into the sky.
     
     

Chapter 4 - Signing Up
     
    THEN
     
    If your parents gave you a name like Augustus Phillip
Hancock, you’d’ve joined the Army, too. Trust me. When I turned
eighteen, I wanted to be anywhere but Little Rock, so when Eddie
said he was going to sign up I did, too.
    Now, I ain’t supposed to tell anyone about
this. When I got pulled into Project Krypton last year, still a
fuzzy right out of boot camp, they had us sign a bunch of waivers
and security paperwork. Nobody with wives or kids. Nobody who was
an only child. Then they shipped us off to Yuma, which I can say is
dead center in the middle of nowhere. A woman from Broadsword
company said she’d heard the whole project used to be based at
Natick, like you’d expect, but it’d gotten so big they had to set
up a whole sub-base out at Yuma for it. One of the fellas said the
little base should be called Kandor, and two or three fellas
thought that was really funny, but I didn’t get the joke.
    One of the fellas in Broadsword also said all
the paperwork we’d filled out was the same stuff they use for
suicide missions, but I think that’s bullshit. Although, looking
back at it, maybe it ain’t.
    I was one of the lucky ones. Turns out my
company, Greyhound, was the control group. We were eating sugar
pills and getting shots of saline water. Apparently they can just
stick that in you and it doesn’t do much of anything.
    So, yeah, Greyhound was lucky. Angel and
Devil companies, too. Well, kind of. They’re all getting dialysis
or something for a few weeks. They weren’t getting sugar pills and
saline.
    Broadsword are the fellas that got screwed.
Their company had the biggest concentration of the stuff the old
doc was giving us. It didn’t go over well. I’ve heard them talking
about all the stuff Angel and Devil are getting, plus marrow
transplants and hormone therapy and stuff. None of them are
complaining though. We all know what happened to Lucas and Jacobs,
and ain’t nobody wants to go through that.
    Well, none of us know officially. But we were
all there for the start of it and Eddie works in the medical wing.
He saw how they ended up. So we all know.
    At first it seemed great. All of Broadsword
company was bulking up, getting stronger, just like the old doc
wanted. Then they all started getting cramps. And they were...
swelling. You know those fellas who get crazy ripped? The ones who
hit the gym every day and do contests and stuff? It was like that.
Their arms and legs were getting bigger and stretching their skin
so it was creepy tight and their veins stood out. And they weren’t
even working out much.
    It hit Jacobs first. He just got itchy. He
tried to be a good soldier, suck it up and not let it get to him,
but it kept getting worse. After two days his eyes were watering.
Not crying, just watering bad.
    Third day we told him he had to go see the
doc. He was