He felt the vague sensation of descent as Guglik directed her current trainee and tried not to sigh. Looks like the reprieve on that duty has ended.
She turned and spotted Pete. “We’re going to do a touch and go, take advantage of the clear skies to get these guys some more stick time.”
Pete nodded. “The Detroit will be here in the morning to take us down to the Caribbean. I’ll see you then, Agent Guglik.”
She touched a pointer finger to her temple. “Guess these guys better shape up fast without me. We’re going to need the airdrop capability soon, it looks like.”
Pete scowled, but there was no real animosity to the expression. “Why am I not surprised you know more about what’s going on than I do?”
Her eyes twinkled. “That’s my job, Marine.”
With the Orca’s electric turbines pushing down to counteract the buoyancy of her lift bag, the pilots kept the craft on her skids long enough for Pete to lead the Scopulis family down the rear cargo ramp and onto the runway. Once he turned to wave that they were all clear, the turbines rotated, and the craft left the ground with the faintest scrape of metal on the tarmac. With next-to-no cargo loaded aboard the vessel, it fairly well leaped into the sky. He watched it leave with a rueful smile, and couldn’t help but think about the sluggish way the same craft had responded while hauling one of its crated twins beneath it, during the escape from Skunkworks.
“Are you all right, Major?” Sandy’s voice was wary, and it snapped Pete out of his daze.
“Fine,” he said. “Just woolgathering.” With his focus on the ground, he took a moment to marvel at the activity around them. Dozens of uniformed figures rushed to and fro, and a constant, low-level buzz of activity filled the air around them—on the other end of the runway, toward the heart of the island, bulldozers and other heavy construction equipment worked at projects he was too far away to make out. That, in and of itself, was unique enough to merit a second look. Another, subtler aspect struck him as he studied their surroundings.
Damn—there aren’t any walls.
That was the advantage of being on an island, of course, but until he’d actually seen it with his own eyes, some part of him hadn’t been ready to believe it. “Amazing,” he said.
Pete flagged down an enlisted man with the look of a runner. “Corporal, can you direct me to Miles Matthews?”
The kid was too young to have been in the Corps before Z-Day, and his broad smile took even more years off of Pete’s estimation. “Yes, Major. You’ll find Mr. Matthews in the main maintenance hangar, right there, sir.”
He pointed, and Pete nodded as he marked the indicated building. All the hangars were identical, which made it hard enough to tell them apart, but none of them were open, save for the one the corporal indicated. “As you were, son,” Pete said, letting the Marine continue on his way. He turned to his guests. “Shall we?”
They followed at his side, and he could sense them holding their own strides back to match his own odd gait. He’d had the prosthetic limbs for so long that he didn’t have to think about modifying the way he walked, and while his pace was respectable, it was a bit less than what he’d managed before.
“Is this safe?” Kendra muttered. She had one arm wrapped around Patrick’s shoulders, while she kept her other balled up into a fist near her stomach. He realized that his Marines had confiscated the handgun she’d worn at her side back at Viebey, and she’d never gotten it back.
“We’re fine,” Pete promised. “Even if the island wasn’t clear, zulu would be more interested in the bulldozers than us. No worries.”
She still had a doubtful look on her face, but some of the tension went out of her arms.
“What’s the big project?” Sandy asked, pointing toward the heavy equipment.
“That’s what we’re about to find out,” Pete said. He led them into the open hangar but stopped dead in his tracks after only a few steps. Stunned, he could only stare at the sight before him. Reading about it in the mission binder was one thing—seeing it with his own eyes was far more visceral.
A grinning mouth full of shark-teeth fangs boasted a forward-jutting, multi-barreled cannon right over head height. There was nothing graceful or elegant about the machine in front of him. It was all straight lines and deadly purpose.
The A-10 Thunderbolt II—affectionately known as ‘Warthog’ to American ground-pounders—was a Cold War relic, constantly on the chopping block because it was too slow, not stealthy enough for modern air combat. But up until the end, it had survived, unkillable in the halls of Congress and nearly as unstoppable on the battlefield. Pete remembered seeing pictures from some of the other guys in the Gulf back in the day. One of their pilots had taken flak from an Iraqi anti-aircraft gun and returned to base with rear stabilizers that looked more like Swiss cheese than aircraft wings.
He thought about the havoc lightly-armed drones had been able to wreak on the attacking horde out on the West Coast. A cruel smile crested his face as he envisioned the impact of a far heavier payload.
Pete realized someone had spoken to him, and he turned. His nephew stood there in oil-smeared coveralls, a proud smile on his face. “What do you think, Unc?”
“It’s the most beautiful damn thing I’ve ever seen. How—how many of them?”
“Twelve,” Miles said. His sounded tired, but there was a tone of satisfaction in his voice. “Along with literal tons of spares, a barely touched pile of ordnance, and a mish-mash of Black Hawks and Apaches.”
“Will they fly?”
“Sooner or later, if we can figure out pilots. Oh, yeah. We’ve got an Air Force again.” Miles glanced toward the Scopulis family, then frowned. “Pete—where’s Charlie?”
October 19, 2017
Outside of Ironton, Missouri
Z-Day + 1
The little guy’s name turned out to be Hatcher Metz. ‘Gam’—his grandpa—was David, and grandma Anne made the best damn biscuits Molly had ever had in her life.
She supposed that extreme hunger might have skewed her perception a bit, but she didn’t think it was by much. Her own Gram had been a fine cook, but this—this was amazing.
Her transition from the road to the Metz house was a blur, though the fact that she’d brought Hatcher along greased the rails of her entry. After a round of hugs and kisses, the little boy ate his weight in chicken nuggets and promptly fell back asleep in his grandmother’s arms.
Anne Metz was a trim, silver-haired lady with a graceful manner of movement that made Molly awkward and clumsy just watching her. The confrontation with grandpa David on the road stunned her into silence for what felt like an eternity. It was impossible to say how long her verbal paralysis might have continued had the little boy’s grandmother not stepped out into the yard, assessed the situation, and called out, “For goodness’ sake, David, can’t you see you’ve terrified the girl half out of her mind? Let’s get her inside.”
Molly hadn’t even had to ask for food. With the same interminable sixth sense that grandmothers held the world over, Mrs. Metz detected the hollow place in the middle of her and proceeded to unload all sorts of mouth-watering delicacies from her refrigerator. The little guy was happy with his microwaved chicken nuggets, but Molly gorged herself on leftover fried potatoes, sausage patties, and biscuits along with no-kidding real butter and homemade strawberry preserves. Even the process of Mrs. Metz warming the food up in the microwave seemed a wondrous thing after the ordeal Molly had been through. She wasn’t sure why the power in town had gone off, or why, but the darkness that had fallen last night had been an impenetrable one.
David Metz turned away from an adoring study of his grandson and cleared his throat. “Where’d you find him, young lady?”
“There was an accident over on Babcock Road,” she replied. “He was stuck in a minivan. That was a good thing, though, because those things—” She shuddered. “I couldn’t leave him behind.”
He cursed under his breath. “That damnfool girl.”
Anne gave her husband a dirty look. “Language, dear.” She looked back at Molly. “Our son and daughter-in-law—Hatch’s parents—are on a trip. He was with his mother’s sister yesterday. When things started to go bad on the news, we called her and asked her to bring him here, and she could stay with us as well. I think she thought she was going to get her boyfriend. When they didn’t make it by yesterday afternoon, we assumed the worst.” She smiled and squeezed the little boy in her lap.
“She didn’t make it,” Molly said. In more ways than one. “There wasn’t anyone else in the car.” She winced at the memory of the ruined form in the driver’s seat. “And she wasn’t wearing a seatbelt.”
“I’m glad you came by when you did,” Mr. Metz said. “I checked the northern half of the county and came back to stop in before I checked the rest.” He shook his head. “Can’t believe he was so close, all this time. Bethany must have gotten lost, or panicked—who knows. Babcock’s way out of the way from her place to ours.” He looked over at his wife and grandson again, then said in a mild tone, “Why don’t you settle him in his pack and play, Annie? He’ll sleep better in the quiet.”
A look passed between the two adults, and the grandmother eased herself to her feet. Once she’d left the room, David let out a deep sigh and rubbed his bald scalp. “Where were you when it happened, young lady?”
Molly squirmed a little under the intense focus of his stare, but she forced herself to relax. Nothing about these people raised the hair on the back of her neck. This is a safe place—you can relax. “School. And call me Molly.”
He smiled a little. “Rick Einhorn was your daddy, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Shame what happened to him and your mom. He was a hell of a ballplayer, back in the day. Bess took you in, that right?”
She hesitated for a moment, trying to reconcile the name with the face that popped into her head. “Gram—yes. I live with my Gram.” Her throat felt thick and tight. “Lived, now, I guess.”
Mr. Metz squinted at her for a moment, then reached across the table and patted her hand. She noticed for the first time that he had his left hand wrapped in gauze. “We won’t talk about what you’ve seen. It’s a hard thing, for damn sure.”
“Do you know what happened, Mr. Metz? Is someone coming, to, I don’t know—fix things? I spent last night stuck on the roof of Desi’s and all morning running for my life.”
His shoulders sagged a bit. “We’ve still got power, though who knows how long that’ll last. We’ll work ‘round that when the time comes. TV worked for most of the night, but…”
“Most of the night?” Molly echoed.
“It’s everywhere, Molly. New York, Los Angeles, overseas. The St. Louis stations stayed on till early in the morning, but the signal cut out right after a bunch of screaming started.”
She stared down at her hands and fought the urge to cry. “What do we… I don’t…”
“We’ll figure it out.” He reached over to the kitchen counter and grabbed a folded map. Rearranging dishes on the table, he spread it out between the two of them. “Tracy—that’s Hatch’s aunt—lived up in Pilot Knob. I headed up Shepherd Mountain Lake Road this morning, trying to get the lay of things.” His finger traced northward along the road, pausing at an intersection a few miles west of the small town he’d mentioned. He’d marked a crisscross into that point on the map with a Sharpie. “Didn’t see much of anything till I got here. Road east was blocked, and a handful of those infected people were milling round in the northbound lanes. They got all sorts of excited when I pulled up in my truck, but they wouldn’t walk past a certain spot in the road. Damnedest thing I’d ever seen, especially after—” He glanced around to make sure the two of them were still alone, then leaned closer. “Things got a little hairy on the news later in the night. I don’t think the FCC was paying much attention to what was going out. Some of the stuff I saw on a camera view of Times Square…” He shuddered. “Easiest to put it this way—those things don’t stop for nothin’. Here, they do.”
Molly leaned in and studied the map. After a moment, she figured out where she’d found Hatcher, and touched the paper. “Here,” she said. “The same thing. No matter what, they wouldn’t cross the bridge.” Her finger moved along the path they’d taken. “The creek hid us, most of the way, but a few still saw us. They’d get to the bank and just stop and stare.” She thought back on what happened to Gram, and Claire, and the unrelenting horde that had chased her out of town. “You’re right, they don’t stop.”
David grunted and marked the spot she’d indicated. There was a third mark on the map, further to the west.
She laid a finger on the final mark. “And here?”
“Tried to find a way around. Found another line they wouldn’t cross.” His face sagged. “Some folks I know got a farm out that way. Infected.”
“That’s miles out of town, that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Does anything about this make any sense?”
“Not really,” Molly said. “Wait—” She bent her head and looked at the map from another angle. The three marks didn’t make a straight line, but if you looked at it just right, it was almost a curve. She grabbed an oversized coffee mug and slid it around on the map. With a bit of tweaking, she hid all three marks under the curve of the mug. “It’s not a line they won’t cross, it’s a circle.”
“Safe zone.” Mr. Metz made an interested hum deep in his chest. Sliding the map closer to him, he traced around the rim of the mug with his marker. With the cup removed, he revealed a broad black radius that encompassed a whole lot of blank space on the map. He drummed his fingers on the table, then made quick circles on a few places where the circle crossed roadways. “Care to keep an old man company on a drive in the country?”
May 16, 2026
Kelleys Island, Ohio
Z-Day + 3,132
The look on Pete’s face told him everything he needed to know before the question was all the way out of his mouth. “Oh,” Miles said. “Oh, damn it.”
He wiped his hands down the front of his coveralls, then looked for a place to sit before he collapsed. There was nothing close. He wobbled in place, but he didn’t start crying until his uncle stepped forward and pulled him into a tight hug.
“It’s my fault,” Miles managed. “If I hadn’t opened my damn mouth and told everyone he was immune, he’d never have felt pressured to go along.” It was overstating things to say that the Marines had forced Charlie to allow them to test his blood, but the process annoyed him enough that he’d loudly refused to cooperate anymore. Miles couldn’t help but think that had more than a little to do with Charlie’s willingness to go along on Pete’s mission.
“Don’t put that on yourself,” Pete said, his tone firm. “I asked him, not you.” His jaw worked as he paused before concluding his statement. “And don’t sell him short, either. He went out on his own terms and saved us all, son. When we win this war, they’re going to put up a statue of Charlie Maddox somewhere or I’m going to start putting my boot up people’s asses.”
Miles laughed despite himself, then groaned. “Oh, hell. Frannie.”
Pete winced. “That’s my next stop.”
He glanced over his uncle’s shoulder and saw the trio standing inside the hangar entrance. The adults—husband and wife? —were trying to look everywhere except Miles and Pete’s reunion, but the little boy couldn’t have cared less. He was too busy staring at the Warthog in the center of the hangar. “And you brought guests,” Miles said. He glanced down at his hands to assess their cleanliness, then stepped over and extended his hand. “Miles Matthews.”
The husband shook it. “Sandy Scopulis. This is my wife Kendra, and our son, Patrick.”
“Nice to meet you, Patrick,” Miles intoned seriously. “I’ll have to have my daughter take you around, introduce you to all the other kids here, on the island. We’ve got plenty.” He looked back up, shook Kendra’s hand, then looked back at the gu
y, Sandy. There was something—he cocked his head to one side. “Do I know you from somewhere?”
The guy went a little pale, but before he could speak, Pete put a hand on his shoulder and interjected. “First and foremost, he’s a friend, boy.”
Miles frowned at his uncle and turned back to the newcomer. At once, it hit him. “You worked for GenPharm. You spilled a Mountain Dew on a NAS.”
Sandy let out a weak chuckle. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess I did.”
The math clicked home in Miles’ head. He remembered the problem because of how facepalm-worthy it had been, but also because it had been one of the few times he’d gotten clearance to access the research areas as a vanilla IT guy. “Son of a …”
Pete’s fingers dug into his shoulder and arrested his sudden surge forward. “Friend, I said. It’s a long story, and this is neither the time nor the place for it. He chose the wrong—” Pete glanced down at Patrick. The kid was still more occupied with checking out all the gadgetry and piles of stuff inside the hangar, but everyone knew little kids heard exactly what you didn’t want them to with crystal clarity. “The wrong partner. She took advantage of him.”
Miles stared into Sandy’s eyes for a moment before shifting over to look at Kendra. The look she gave him was one of defiance—chin-high, shoulders back. She more than seemed to trust him. Which didn’t necessarily mean anything, but the slim, balding man in front of him didn’t seem the mustache-twirling type. “Damn,” he said. “What are the odds?”
“Like winning the lottery, I guess,” Pete said. “But, alas, this isn’t a social call.”
Miles grimaced. “Why am I not surprised?”
“Well, on the bright side, it should be an easier trip than California. I want you and Sandy to sit in on some renewed questioning of the GenPharm people down in the Caribbean. The thinking is, your presence might shake them, get something out of them that we can use.”
“Decryption still running slow?” The mission that stranded Miles on top of a skyscraper had been a success despite the loss of men and equipment. They’d hauled out a treasure trove of data backups from a redundant server facility in the GenPharm corporate building. Most of the documents Miles had looked at while copying the trove onto flash drives were useless now—cargo manifests, projections for the spread of what the inner circle called Project Guidestone, that sort of thing. There were also gigabytes of encrypted data the surviving NSA, CDC, and Naval Intelligence people squealed in delight to get their hands on.
Z-Day (Book 3): A Place For War Page 7
