Free Outcasts by Alan Janney

stares between their superior officers and me, they holstered their weapons. She wasn’t an active hostile. She was something else.
    “Now you realize just how helpless you are against your enemies. Against the Chosen and Infected. You have one chance to save Captain Comfy. What is it?”
    No one spoke. She growled and produced a smooth green grenade. THAT spooked them. And me. Was it real? It better not be. I hoped not. But it was. I knew Samantha. Crap.
    “In all likelihood, the Captain here is dead. You can’t realistically save him. The one chance you have, and this is important…” She pulled the pin out with her teeth and released the lever. I started to count in my mind. “…you can drop grenades and pray you survive.”
    One second. The troops backed away.
    “You can’t hit the Chosen. You can only slow them.”
    Two seconds. The Captain was white.
    “And your best chance is grenades.”
    Three seconds.
    “It might kill you. Might kill the Captain. But you’re probably already dead when it goes off.”
    She tossed me the grenade at four seconds. I Threw it straight up. It detonated two hundred yards high, a safe pop.
    Samantha released the Captain. He collapsed to his knees. Poor guy. Only human. She disassembled the pistol with one hand and the metal parts fell noisily to the ground. “Any questions?”
    “Yeah,” one of the guys said. A lot of cameras began emerging from pockets. “Can we get a selfie with you?”
     
----
     
    Colonel Jordan wasn’t happy with us. He appeared to be a perpetually irritated, thirty-five year old black stalwart. Older and wiser and angrier than his years. And his territory was in an uproar.
    Katie was besieged by the women on base. She’d been in gossip magazines, kidnapped on national television, named one of the 50 Most Beautiful People, dated the infamous Tank Ware, and now dated the Outlaw. She took pictures, signed autographs, and answered questions.
    Samantha was a hit with the guys. She beat them in arm wrestling. She outshot them. She doubled them in pushup contests, screaming at them the whole time. She turned down a dozen date requests.
    After thirty minutes of pestering, I finally relented to a race. Fifty guys lined up to race me across the width of the airstrip and back. I gave them a head start but I still lapped the field. They roared with delight. We played catch with a football until their fingers blistered.
    It was fun for an hour. But that was enough. I wasn’t a zoo animal. Nor a circus act. I grew weary of ducking uncomfortable questions. Fortunately Colonel Jordan began blowing an airhorn and ordering everyone back to their duties. He allowed Samantha to work at the shooting range, lecturing on new techniques for battling Chosen.
    “You two. Get in,” he ordered. We obeyed, Katie in the front, and me in the back. He climbed behind the jeep’s wheel and we motored back towards housing. “I’ve got over two thousand men and women stationed here, due to the threat downtown. Over thirty-five aircraft. And more arriving as soon as we complete major repairs. That’s a lot of moving parts. And the only way it keeps moving is through discipline, structure, and routine. I don’t like when those get disrupted.”
    I liked this guy. Gruff. Straight to the point. “I understand, Colonel.”
    “Don’t misunderstand. You and I, we have the same mission. On the same team. But I need Los Alamitos to run like a well-oiled machine. Now you two. Both of you. Reach under your seats. Packages just arrived.”
    We found insulated manilla envelopes. Inside were brand new phones with text messages from Puck.
    >> hey dummy key katie
    >> i see u left ur phones at ur houses
    >> puckdaddy transferred all ur data over to these new phones and erased the old ones
    >> wiped’em clean no worries
    >> don’t lose these!!!
    “Aw,” Katie smiled. “Puck’s so sweet.”
    “How’d he do that so fast? It’s not even dinner.”
    “This is the Plus size,” she