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

by Humphreys, Daniel

  An expectant hush went through the crowd. Tish had come into the meeting with the faint hope that someone else would step up to the plate. The problem there was that most of those who would take point on an issue like this weren’t here. Pete and Charlie were on their mission, and Miles and Vir were still on Kellys Island, working with a military detachment to ensure that the place was clear. Well, damn. Guess it’s up to me get the ball rolling.

  She raised her hand.

  “Tish, you have the floor.”

  She stood slowly, keeping her head down as she composed her thoughts. When she finally looked up, she focused the entirety of her attention on Norma. The big, fake smile on her face wavered a bit at the intensity of the glare.

  “Cooperation. Working together. I’ll admit, those are solid sentiments. I can’t help but find it a little ironic, though, considering the circumstances of how Norma lost her seat on the council.” She turned away now, scanning the crowd. She put a little bedside manner into this look, and it was a warmer, more inviting than the one she’d shared with Norma. “For those of you who don’t know, despite long-standing protocols in place to ensure the safety of the entire community, Norma Benedict ordered the doors shut on the shelter when the infected breached the fence. In so doing, she exposed me and several others in the medical clinic to danger, including children. Cooperation is a nice word, but it only works when it’s a two-way street.”

  “I don’t think cooperation means taking your ball and running away when you don’t get your way, either!” Norma folded her arms across her chest.

  Jim Piper pounded his fist on the table. “Tish has the floor. You had your turn—let her speak her piece.”

  Chastised, Norma returned to her seat.

  “Running away. That’s actually funny, Norma,” Tish retorted, trying not to laugh. She searched the collection of kids trying to ignore the proceedings in the school area and pointed out one of the older ones. “Alex Worthington has more courage in his little finger than you ever thought about having. Have you been outside the walls in the last eight years?” The teenager didn’t seem to appreciate the curious buzz that rose in the audience. Tales of the impromptu expedition into the zombie-infested Wild hadn’t spread, much, and Tish felt a little bad about pointing him out.

  The other woman sputtered. “Have you?” Jim pounded on the table again for order, but neither woman acknowledged him. Frustrated, he tossed his hands in the air and gave up.

  “No, I haven’t,” Tish agreed. “But I seem to recall that was something foisted on me by the council when you were trying to run things.”

  “Nothing has changed between then and now,” Norma said. “You and your like-minded friends are still too valuable to this community to leave. You’re too important a resource to put in danger. You’re a doctor, for God’s sake. You took an oath.”

  “Everything has changed. I went along with your little decree back then because we didn’t have options. There was nowhere else to go to. Now, we have choices. My being a doctor shouldn’t, and doesn’t, matter one bit.” She scanned the crowd and pointed at Captain Hanratty, the community’s military liaison. “The Marines intend for this to be a permanent base. That means medical facilities, probably better than what we managed to scrape together.” Not at first, she judged, but it wouldn’t help her case to point that out. They had most of the damage repaired from the undead attack, but the hospital building, while well-built considering the materials they’d had access to at the time, was much too small considering the population explosion they were looking at. Even with all the people who wanted to move on.

  Norma raised her chin and sniffed in derision. “You have an obligation to this community. From my perspective, you’ve had a place of safety for nearly a decade, and all we’ve asked of you is to use your talents to help everyone else.”

  “Again—you’re one to talk. Obligation? That’s rich, considering you’re standing on my family’s property.” She looked out across the crowd, daring them to meet her eyes. “Every one of you should be ashamed of yourselves.” She caught her father’s wince, but she was too far gone to care one whit about diplomacy. Tish ticked names off on her fingers. “Tom Oliver. Martha Bradley. Pete Matthews. Three farms founded this community. The owners of that land took you in, gave you a place of shelter. And you think I owe you something? Not just no—hell, no.”

  The crowd buzzed. It rose for a moment, cresting until Larry Vance’s voice boomed out to overpower it. “Enough!” He waited for silence to reign, then continued. “My daughter, direct as she may be, has it right. This is a community, not a suicide pact. Nothing has changed in that regard. Before the Marines arrived, people were free to come and go as they pleased. Not many did, but it’s happened before. Was exile a potential punishment? Yes, it was, but it was also a choice members of the community were free to make.”

  “The people who want to leave are too valuable!” Norma cried out. “We won’t make it without you!”

  “I don’t agree,” Larry said. “Will it be an adjustment? Of course. Will it require many of you to get out of your comfort zones? Undoubtedly.”

  Tish smirked at him, but she wasn’t sure if he saw the look. That’s a subtle way of calling them lazy bastards, Dad.

  Someone—she couldn’t see who—in Norma’s crowd shouted. “We should vote on it!”

  Larry grinned, but there was no mirth in the expression. “No. You don’t get to vote on my right to my own labor, to my own life. I seem to recall we fought a war over that notion some time ago.” His smile faded. “If you insist on trying it again, I don’t think it will end the way you hope it will. Push the issue, and you can get the hell off of our property.”

  “That’s the Matthews’ farm, not yours. What gives you the right?”

  Her dad scanned the crowd. Apparently unable to identify the speaker, he shrugged. “Pete’s been my best friend and business partner for decades. I’d say I’ve got a pretty damn good sense of his disposition on the matter. Tell you what. When he gets back, you take it up with him, see if you like his answer any better.” Laughter rippled in the crowd, and Larry pushed on. He raised a hand to point someone out. “Miss Martha left her property to Val, there, before she passed on. You on my side, Val?”

  The slender former elementary school teacher happened to be in a relationship with Larry, so the thumbs-up from Tish’s potential stepmother came as a surprise to no one.

  “How about you, Tom?” The community’s cattle farmer and pub owner frowned at the sudden attention, then shrugged and stood up.

  “Y’all know me. And I’m not one to hold back charity. But—”

  “Unless it’s a beer, ain’t that right, Tom?”

  Tom snapped right back. “You’re just mad cause I cut off your tab, Ben. Sit down and shut up. Farming’s hard enough work. We’ve got plenty of hands, here. Funny, then, how hard it is to find enough when things need doing. I’ve bit my tongue over the years and let it slide. End of the world and all that. But I’ll be damned if I let you rabble try to tell my friends and neighbors where they can live.”

  “You’re leaving, too!”

  Tom shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere. This land’s been in my family for generations, and God willing, will be for generations to come. But I am with Larry and Val. He didn’t say the word, but I will. You talk about obligation, but what you’re really talking about is slavery. You think Miss Tish wanted to miss nights at home when her kid was little, tending to your ailments? You cry about her being the only doctor, Norma, but did you ever volunteer for Tish to teach you? Did any of you? Eight years, I’ve taught more than a few of you what little I know. That’s the way of the world, now. And if you didn’t see the sense in that, that’s not Tish’s problem. That’s not Larry’s problem. It’s yours.” He folded his arms across his chest. “You want slaves, you can find somewhere else to do it other than my land, too.”

  Tom’s speech had taken most of the air out of the crowd, but Norma was stil
l undeterred. “Slavery?” She threw her hands in the air, incredulous at the charge. “That’s nonsense, Tom Oliver, and I resent the implication!”

  “You want to force people to live here and work against their will, Norma. What the hell else would you call it?”

  She stood there, opening and closing her mouth in shocked surprise. With renewed vigor, Jim Piper pounded on the table.

  “We’re not getting anywhere, here, people. Larry—you say you won’t accept a vote on this, but how the hell else are we supposed to decide?”

  Her dad crossed his arms across his chest and shook his head. “You still don’t get it, Jim. It’s not a decision for this council to make. You and Calvin want to vote against my position, call it a quorum? Then this community is done. Anyone that supports it is free to get the hell outside of the original borders.” He nodded at Hanratty. “Sorry to saddle you with refugees, Captain, but it seems certain people have forgotten how inalienable rights work.”

  Now Piper’s jaw hung open. “I—well, I guess I don’t know how to respond to that, Larry. It feels like blackmail, from a friend.”

  Calvin’s voice was quiet but firm. “It’s a moot point, Jim. I stand with Larry. There’s the quorum. There will be no vote on restriction or permission for those who want to leave. Which says to me that anyone here is free to go as they choose, as they always have been.”

  The crowd murmured, and Calvin frowned. “You’re all missing the bigger picture, here. Did anyone think to ask Larry, Tish, Aasha, or any of the others who’ve expressed an interest in leaving for their reasoning?” He waited for a beat, but he seemed to know the answer was a resounding no, so he continued. “Tish—if you leave the island, will you ever come back here?”

  “Of course, I will. I’ve got friends who are liable to stay. Why wouldn’t I want to visit?”

  Calvin nodded. “The island represents an opportunity. Farm ground. Greater opportunity for crop diversity. Other resources—fish, for one. It’s liable to become a port for trade from the other bases. Our exports go out, imports from places like the Caribbean come in. This situation isn’t a threat, it’s a blessing. It’s another stepping stone toward our reconstruction of the civilization we all thought we’d lost. Keeping all our eggs in one basket made sense when we thought we were alone in the Wild. That’s not the case now, and if we’re going to thrive, we need to expand. That takes land, and resources—neither of which we have in any real sort of abundance, at least until the Marines complete their expansion of the perimeter.”

  Heads were nodding in the crowd, and quiet whispers passed back and forth. Instead of fear and worry, Tish saw thoughtfulness and excitement bloom on the faces of her neighbors. Even Norma had a retrospective expression as she considered Calvin’s take.

  For all the fire and fury that Tish had brought, and for the subtle knife of her father’s words, Calvin’s speech seemed to have turned the corner. All at once she felt as though a weight lifted off of her shoulders, and she glanced over at Frannie.

  “Well, that went better than I expected.”

  Chapter Eight

  October 19, 2017

  Outside of Ironton, Missouri

  Z-Day + 1

  David’s first destination, to Molly’s surprise, was the intersection where she’d found Hatcher. He parked his battered Chevy pickup in the road next to the abandoned patrol car and stared at the wreckage of the minivan.

  She hesitated to break the silence, but finally said, “Did I forget something in the van?”

  He jumped a little, as though startled. “What? Oh, no. Don’t mind me. Just ruminating.” Even at idle, the sound of the truck’s engine drew the zombies from the driver’s side of the wreck. As before, they only advanced to a certain point before stopping. Molly couldn’t be sure, but it looked like the barrier was about the same place as it had been, before. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to move around.

  When she mentioned that, David hummed in interest, then pointed at the glove box. “Open that, please.”

  She clicked the button, jumping back a little as the open cover revealed a large pistol. It was pretty much impossible to not be around guns in a small, Midwestern town, but after what happened to her mom and dad, she’d never looked at them with the same acceptance as most of the people she knew. Maybe it was silly—Mr. Metz hadn’t shot her parents, nor had this gun—but she still felt a vague sense of unease when she looked at it.

  Molly glanced at David and realized that she was the subject of an intense stare. The silence drew out again, but she resisted the urge to break it. She was starting to believe that this was a man of few words, but when he had something to say, it would be worth listening to.

  Seeming to find what he sought in her demeanor, David gave her the barest hint of a nod. “It’s a tool, not a toy. Always remember that.” He reached over and pulled it from the glove box while keeping the barrel pointed away from the both of them. Bringing it closer, he pressed a button on the side, and a metal rectangle dropped out of the bottom of the handle. He pulled back on the top. The entire upper half of the gun slid back, revealing the barrel and ejecting a fat, brass-and-copper colored round onto the truck’s bench seat.

  He plucked the bullet off of the seat with his free hand and offered her the pistol. Molly hesitated for a moment, then thought about the overwhelming sense of helplessness she’d felt on top of the diner. She remembered the terror she’d felt when the window of the van caved in. If she’d had some means of protecting herself, would Claire still be alive?

  Would Gram?

  She took a deep, shuddering breath and accepted the pistol. At first, it felt awkward in her grip, but David reached over and shifted the angle of her hand. Settled, it felt natural, if a bit heavy.

  “That’s a Springfield 1911A1,” David said. “Pretty much the same model I carried in Vietnam. Gun design in service over a hundred years, you know it’s done right. If your hands were any smaller, it might not work for you, but you’ll be right as rain.”

  “I’ve never shot a gun before,” she said.

  He took the pistol back and reassembled it. “We’ll take the time to teach you. Lot of things we’ll need to do unless I miss my guess.” He opened the door and stepped out onto the road. “Come on.”

  Molly moved around the front of the truck and waited. David tucked the pistol into a pocket of his overalls, then pulled open the door of the cruiser. “You weren’t kidding, girlie. Looks like a damn rocket ship in this thing.” He looked around for a moment, then pressed a button under the steering wheel. The trunk lid unlatched with a soft popping sound.

  She licked her lips and resisted the urge to clear her throat. “Molly,” she said finally. “Call me Molly, please.”

  He smiled. “Guess I need to do just that—so long as you call me David. I heard Mr. Metz too much at the bank.” The thought must have tickled him because he wheezed a bit of a laugh. “I imagine the loan officer has more important things to do than call me to drum up business, these days.”

  David pulled the trunk the rest of the way open and studied the interior. Curious, Molly stepped forward and joined in the study. She’d never really thought about what Deputy Wischmeier might keep in the trunk of his car. It was, to her surprise, packed full. Mike had things arranged in some semblance of order, but there was a definite sense of clutter as well.

  “Here we go,” Mr. Metz—David—said. He pulled a duffel bag with a red cross emblazoned on the side out of the mess. “Throw that in the bed of the truck, please.”

  She held it for a moment, head cocked to one side. “Is that—okay, I guess?” Logically, she knew that the rest of the Sheriff’s Department was as dead as Claire’s brother, and no one was there to tell them not to take anything. It still didn’t feel quite right.

  David looked up, squinted, then grinned. “Hell, you stole the whole car first. You think they’ll get tore up about a first aid kit?”

  Smiling, Molly shook her head and laughed for the first time
in a couple of days. It felt good, like a pleasant reminder that she was still alive. “I guess not.” She placed the bag as instructed, and came back. He was flipping through a cardboard box. After a second, he closed the flaps and stuck it back in the trunk.

  “Never imagined they’d carry speeding tickets in bulk, but I guess it makes sense. He’s got enough blank forms back here to choke a horse.” She watched as he continued sorting. He handed her a red cylindrical carrying case about the size of a fire extinguisher labeled ‘Orion Emergency Flares.’ David shrugged at her questioning look. “We need to make a run for it in the dark, that’s a good way to draw attention elsewhere.” He pantomimed throwing a stick. “They’re easily distracted, you give them enough to focus on.”

  “How much did you watch on TV last night?”

  David gave her a grim look. “I saw enough. One way or another, I don’t think we’re coming out of this anytime soon. We need to hunker down, protect everyone and everything we can, and wait.”

  She came back with empty hands. Now he was studying a black vest with ‘Iron County Sheriff’s Department’ stenciled on it. “Body armor, I guess. Might come in handy. Unsavory types might look at this as a good excuse to create a ruckus.”

  Molly took the vest and decided to broach a point that had been weighing heavily on her after she’d eaten. “Mr. Metz—David, I mean. I don’t want to impose on you and your family. I’ll be out of your hair tomorrow if I can trouble you for a place to sleep tonight. You’ve already done too much, and I hate to ask you for any more.”

  He cocked his head and squinted at her. “You have somewhere else to be? More family?”

  Her dad had a sister in the Pacific Northwest, somewhere, but Molly hadn’t seen her in years, and her aunt hadn’t even bothered to come back for the funeral. Somehow, she doubted she’d be able to walk all the way to Oregon. Even if she had the address, Bonnie’s place was out of the question. “No, not really. But if things are as bad as you say—you’ve got a family to provide for. I can’t take anything away from that.”