Z-Day (Book 3): A Place For War

by Humphreys, Daniel

  The fallen blocked the approaching horde a bit, but in the aggregate, they had the same impact as boulders on an avalanche—the flow went around either side. They made the halfway point before Miles had squeezed off a dozen rounds.

  Hurry up.

  He licked his lips and flipped the carbine onto three-round burst with his thumb. Focused between the two buildings, the noise level was this side of spectacular. Five squeezes of the trigger later, the bolt carrier locked open on the empty magazine. “Time to run,” he said, hoping that the noise had been enough to pull the rest on the airfield toward the opening he’d gone down rather than those on either side.

  He dropped the magazine on the way and palmed a fresh one home. Any time other than this, discarding a mag would have been a venial sin, but he was already breaking every other rule in the book. What was another, considering?

  Miles passed the next gap and breathed a sigh of relief. The tail end of the crowd was visible, but they seemed intent on following along with the rest of the chain into the alley he’d first ducked into. A few seemed to notice him rush by and began to hobble in his direction, but he was behind the next hangar in line before they could advance more than a few steps.

  The sight was similar at the next gap, but the one after that presented him with the tempting sight of empty space. Refusing to let himself trust it, he kept running. He didn’t look behind, but he could feel the press of diseased flesh behind him, as silent as it was. In all the zombie movies and shows he’d watched before Z-Day, most of the things had moaned or hissed. Zulu was as silent and implacable as death itself.

  Once he passed the halfway point, he cut back between a pair of hangars. This alley was empty save for bits of wind-blown debris, and the echoes of his heels on the ground followed him as he burst back out into the clear.

  His impromptu plan had worked, for the most part. The lion’s share of the horde was down at the opposite end, and while there were a few between him and the lake, they were spread out or crippled. Miles didn’t stop to celebrate, though. The few between him and his destination perked up at his appearance and began to home in.

  Miles’ legs burned, but as he’d told Byers, fear was a great motivator. Straight down the middle of the runway, he avoided or just plain bowled over anything that got in his way.

  The grass at the end of the runway only came up to his knee, but he still had to slow down as he entered it lest he trip over some hidden obstacle. At a fast walk, he glanced over his shoulder. To his surprise, most of the horde was still down at the other end. In a way, he supposed it made sense. Most of his noise had been down at the end, and if they weren’t looking in his direction as he headed to the beach, there was nothing to draw them back this way. “That’s not going to work,” he said. He checked the immediate area again to make sure nothing carnivorous lurked in the weeds, then shouldered his carbine and started shooting.

  That got their attention, even if his fire was ineffective. The heavy bullets in his weapon were big and slow—outside of 100 yards, it would have been a damn miracle to get a headshot. That wasn’t his intent, though. He accomplished his true mission as the horde bunched up like a snake and reversed direction to head back toward him.

  A subdued buzz from the lake told him that the RHIB approached. He put the carbine on safe and slung it over one shoulder. He grinned and cupped his hands. “Come on down to the river and get baptized, brothers and sisters!”

  He turned and sprinted out onto the beach. After his run across the airport, he’d been ready to swim for it. Byers and the others must have finagled another landing spot to match the timing up. Holding his carbine up over his head, he waded out into the water as the boat pulled in close to the beach. The cool water creeping up his legs came as a shock, but only made it up to mid-thigh before he got out to the boat. He climbed aboard half on his own power and half-hauled in by Byers and Vir. His friend slapped him on the shoulder. The RHIB’s diesels revved up in a deep-throated roar, and they pulled away from the shore at what felt like a shocking amount of speed after his run on foot. Out in deeper water, the helmsman spun around to parallel the shore while the other two crew members prepped the big .50-caliber Browning machine gun on the bow mount.

  Miles propped his back against the hull and luxuriated in the sensation of sodden socks. The gunners called out as the leading edge of the pursuing horde came into view, headed for the edge of the water, and they raked the shoreline with a short burst, then another as more stragglers followed their doomed compatriots.

  Byers shook his head in open admiration. “Damn fine work, Matthews. Everything go as planned?”

  Miles decided to put off telling him about the lone bullet hole he’d put in the hangar. He waited for a lull in the Browning’s fire, then replied, “Walk in the park.”

  October 19, 2017

  Outside of Ironton, Missouri

  Z-Day + 1

  The kid wiggled around while she adjusted her grip, but as soon as Molly got him into a semi-comfortable position, he tucked his head into the intersection of her neck and shoulder and fell asleep.

  Must be nice. She bit back the urge to say it. The backpack-style diaper bag was more awkward than heavy. With both straps on her shoulders, that weight wasn’t much of a burden. The kid was pretty light, but asleep he became a limp—dead weight, whispered the nasty little voice in the back of her head—burden requiring periodic pauses to stop and adjust. He didn’t seem to care, though the intermittent buzz of his light snores was often interrupted by soft cries. Bad dreams unless she missed her guess, and who could blame him?

  She’d taken the north leg of the T-intersection. At the time, it had seemed the best of her two options. The opposite branch was a one-lane gravel road with a stripe of grass running down the middle. Her chosen route was paved, at least. Claire’s fate told her all-too-well what she could look forward to if she suffered a sprained ankle or some other debilitating injury. Carrying the kid was tricky enough without having to worry about uncertain footing.

  Despite the circumstances, the walk was actually quite pleasant. The sky was free of clouds, and a light breeze offset the heat from the sun enough to be comfortable. To her right, Stouts Creek burbled and flowed as it headed toward the bridge she’d left behind. The trees on either bank shielded their passage from the view of the county road paralleling their own route. Every so often, a figure would stagger into view. Most of them headed south. She realized with a chill that cutting off the siren by itself hadn’t been enough. With no other stimulation to draw their attention, the creatures carried on.

  I can use that, she mused, adjusting her grip on the little boy. Like a pump fake, almost. She pictured the countryside, envisioning the ripple effect of the sound drawing the infected toward the bridge behind her. It might not work as well with a car since there’d still be some noise, but if she could create some sort of persistent effect, she could sprint away. That would pull some to her, but if she avoided them or hid and waited for them to pass by, she should be able to move in relative freedom. Her stomach growled again, and she sighed. Her empty stomach made the realization that life was about to turn into a never-ending chess game even worse.

  Their prospects for food seemed shaky. She paused and looked longingly at a farmhouse on the other side of the road, but the front door stood open and the screen door was a shattered ruin. It was impossible to say what horrors lurked inside, but no way was she going to try and find out.

  The only thing in view on what she was coming to regard as the ‘safe’ side of the valley was the vague silhouette of a farmhouse across the field on her left. She paused to study it for a moment, then considered the road. If it had continued to the north, she might have considered cutting across the field, danger of tripping and all, but it looked like the way turned back to the west ahead, which should bring them closer. If it’s safe here, it stands to reason it’s safe over there—doesn’t it?

  Even if no one was home, she was hungry and tired enough that the
prospect of breaking in didn’t seem as out of bounds as it would have been a few days before. Her mouth began to water, and she shook her head and started walking again.

  Legs burning with fatigue, she’d nearly given up hope that she’d find a way across the harvested field when she came across the south road. The western road continued on, into the woods that rose into the slope of Taum Sauk, while the south road skirted along the edge of the field.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” she said under her breath. It took everything she had to push past the desire to stop, but she knew if she quit now it would be even harder to get up and moving again.

  The two-story house nestled in the woods looked normal enough, but as she drew closer she grew leery. The area around the home seemed deserted, and she’d assumed the strange effect that kept the zombies at bay on the bridge extended this far, but what if it didn’t? If she had to run for her life, could she do it hauling the kid?

  Shit.

  Molly eased off the road. There was no ditch, thankfully—she didn’t know how she’d have negotiated it. She eased into the shadow of one of the larger trees and eased the little guy off of her shoulder. To get the backpack off, she needed to lay him on the grass. She moved slowly to avoid jostling him. By the time she got the bag off and onto the ground, he blinked at her with sleepy eyes.

  Crap. “Wait here,” she whispered. “I’m going to make sure it’s safe. No monsters, okay?”

  Tears welled in his eyes, and she cursed herself for thinking you could calm a toddler with reason.

  “No go!” he cried out, and she winced at the volume. “No go!”

  “I’ll be right there,” she said. She patted at his arm, unsure how best to reassure him. “Look, see? Sssh.”

  His eyes followed her pointing finger, and the tears stopped as though turned off by a switch. “Gam?” His voice was quiet at first, then rose to a higher, excited pitch. “Gam!”

  Like a shot, the kid was on his feet and running through the grass on the side of the road. Molly lunged in an attempt to grab him, but her fingers grasped only air and she fell flat onto her chest. Stunned, she could only watch for a handful of heartbeats as the little boy sprinted down the lane as though shot from a cannon.

  “Gam! Gam! Gam!” he screamed, and Molly wanted to scream right along with him, but she was too terrified to do so. It wouldn’t have mattered, he was making noise fit to raise the dead, which was pretty damn ironic, wasn’t it?

  She pushed herself up and gave chase. After a moment, she learned one lesson she’d missed while avoiding babysitting—little kids were freaking fast. Molly lowered her hand and pumped her arms, putting everything she had left into a full-out spring. She narrowed the distance between them, and she opened her mouth to call out—

  A figure stepped out into the road right in front of the sprinting toddler. A terrified scream burst from her throat, and she wanted to flinch, to run away as the figure bent down and wrapped arms around the little boy, sweeping him up into the air. The kid screamed right along with her.

  And then she realized that the screams were squeals of joy, punctuated by the same word, over and over.

  “Gam. Gam. Gam.”

  Molly blinked, and the figure resolved itself to a powerfully-built elderly man, bald and bearded and undeniably alive. All the tension went out of her at once, though her heart still hammered in her chest.

  “Who are you, and why do you have my grandson, young lady?”

  Chapter Six

  May 16, 2026

  Kelleys Island, Ohio

  Z-Day + 3,132

  Pete leaned over the pilot’s shoulder as the Orca descended toward the landing strip. They’d picked up a few experienced Black Hawk operators before departing Hope. Anne Guglik had spent most of the flight cross rotating them through the copilot’s seat to train them on the heavy lift dirigible’s similar controls and wildly different handling. The fact that the former CIA agent was their most experienced pilot was a bit disconcerting from an operational standpoint, but her own skills smoothed the transition. It also helped that the big vessel was a forgiving one. Short of tearing a hole in more than one of the redundant gas cells, it was damn hard to crash.

  Not to say that all the flights were comfortable ones. They’d run into a windstorm during their transit across the southwest dicey enough to make Pete pine for the ground, zulu-infested or not.

  For the time being, they wouldn’t be taking that sort of risk with this particular craft. They’d been able to recover three of the experimental blimps from the Skunkworks facility in California before being overrun. One was being taken apart, piece by piece, to determine how best to duplicate it with the tech the surviving remnants of the US military had recovered over the years. Another tech team had a much more entertaining job. They were sketching out designs for bomb racks and installing them in Orca 2 before beginning combat testing. That left the final craft as a trainer and short-run shuttle. Even then, they weren’t going to be taking it on any long, overland expeditions until they resolved the maintenance issues with the helicopter fleet.

  General Vincent had been cagey on that aspect, back at Hope. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to put more weight onto Pete’s shoulders than he already carried, what with the loss of half his team on the West Coast, or maybe he was trying to temper enthusiasm. Either way, the vibe had been weird back home. He’d only been gone for two months, but the change in that short time was jarring.

  He could rationalize that part of it well enough. Ever since Z-Day, most of what they’d accomplished had come about from pure sweat equity. The fences, the buildings they’d converted or built, had all come about gradually. Life was more static, and change came about more organically, if at all.

  In the time he’d been gone, the Seabees had expanded and extended the perimeter fence around the community he’d helped to establish. The old telephone pole and board walls were still there to provide defense in depth, but the main cordon around the farm and new military base consisted of shipping containers standing on end. Even buried deep in clay-rich Indiana farm ground, the new wall averaged twenty-five feet in height, backstopped with observation posts and shooting positions. If zulu ever came to Hope again, he’d find that their new walls were not so easily breached.

  Which was comforting in a way, but it was also an indicator of how well and truly screwed they were. Steel-clad walls and chain link had kept them safe for so long that Pete didn’t like to think about the consequences of a world that required this new form of safety. He glanced at one of his traveling companions. Doctor Scopulis still had a bit of the nervous energy from his initial encounter with the Marines, but the Orca flights had done a bit to help in that regard. Pete smiled as the other man tried to get his son to look at the lake below them. After a cursory inspection, the youngster—Patrick was his name, Pete thought—turned back to the drawing pad full of blank sheets that one of the Marines had nabbed for him. Kid grew up looking at the river, Doc. Guess a lake ain’t all that, in comparison.

  The third member of the group, Kendra, noticed Pete’s study and gave him a flat stare. He kept his face blank and gave her a single respectful nod. After a moment, she returned it and broke eye contact. The wife and mother hadn’t warmed up to the situation quite as fast as her husband had, but Pete could hardly blame her. Not that long ago, he’d been in her shoes—fearfully coordinating a response as a Marine LAV came calling at their front gates, wondering if it was the precursor to a fight or the possibility of something better.

  In the case of the small river community, something better was on the horizon, or so he hoped. The barricades that group had put up weren’t as good as even Hope’s originals, and while they had some terrain advantages, he shuddered to think what the result might have been had they encountered a horde like the one that had nearly overrun his community back in March.

  Plans were in motion to move the river folk from their own settlement into Hope, along with their livestock. Pete’s jaw had dropped wh
en he’d seen their pens full of pigs; none of the Hope people had eaten bacon since Z-Day. In the not-too-distant future, the bacon cheeseburger was set to become a thing once again. He’d worried about the space to fit all the survivors together, but other revelations during his short trip home had put an end to that concern while raising others.

  Pete mentally categorized people in one of two ways—ants and grasshoppers; makers and takers. While he wasn’t surprised to see that most of the people who seemed to have left Hope were the ants of the community, the strange attitude he’d gotten from some of those who’d stayed behind had stuck with him. It was no surprise that one-time community council member Norma Benedict had been one of the ones taking point to try and throw her weight around. The woman had been a full-time pain in his ass for years. A desire to get away from her was entirely understandable. What he couldn’t fathom was how every single member of his family seemed to have up and left. The grasshoppers hadn’t taken over his home place, thankfully—he much preferred letting the Marines set up shop in there if needed, given its proximity to the central observation post. A quick conversation with Vincent and some of the Marine officers got the ball rolling in that direction, but they hadn’t been able to give him any information as to why his people had left other than oblique comments about staying out of civilian leadership issues.

  Politicking and deal-making had never gone away, even with the end of civilization. And that sort of thing was bound to become more prevalent the more people they found, but Pete had a hard time wrapping his head around the concept that Larry, Miles, and Tish would just retreat like that. And as much as he was ready to jump Miles over it, he wasn’t sure that the right time to do it was right after he told his nephew that Charlie was dead.