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

by Humphreys, Daniel

  “We’ve got a guide taking us to guest quarters for the night,” Pete explained, taking point and heading toward the ramp that led down to the dock. The crew out on deck were far too busy to pay them any mind. The personnel down on the pier were assembling pallets of supplies and lining oil drums up alongside the ship. Supplies, Miles knew, most important among them gasoline and diesel fuel from the Hovensa refinery toward the center of the island. The Marines had more than beauty in mind when they’d set out to reclaim this tropical paradise. They’d needed a way to keep the conventional ships of the fleet involved in the war effort. The shuttered facility was more than capable of supplying those needs even at reduced output. Halfway down the ramp, Pete twisted and called back over his shoulder. “There’s a regular boat that runs out to Genesis Cay. That’s where all the GenPharm people holed up after Z-Day.” He glanced back at Sandy and shrugged. “Well, most of them.”

  The doctor grinned. “I think they lost my ticket, I never got the invite.”

  “Maybe so,” Pete agreed. “They don’t run much in the way of supplies out to them. Water, mostly, but they do send MPs and corpsmen to do health checks.”

  Miles frowned. “Why the effort? I’m guessing there aren’t any functional boats left on the island, so they must not worry too much about them taking off. Where would they go, after all.”

  “More to it than that,” Pete said. “There are kids there. Not many, but a few. They were mostly toddlers on Z-Day, but there are a few that have been born since.”

  “Good Lord,” Tish said. “That can’t be a healthy environment for a child.”

  “To say the least,” Pete agreed. “I asked General Vincent why they didn’t proceed with military tribunals, but he said they were reluctant to take that step in the absence of higher command authority. They were afraid it might seem high-handed to future generations.”

  “Bullshit,” Sandy said. Kendra smacked his bicep with the back of her hand, and Patrick giggled. “Sorry. But still—it’s not like you need a ton of evidence. If the rest are anything like Melanie, they’re proud to admit they did it.”

  “Agreed. The decision was before my time because I’d have been calling to resolve the issue rather than punting. But it is what it is. I suppose there was also the hope that some of them might have a change of heart and want to, well, defect, I suppose.”

  “Has that happened?” Miles wondered.

  “A couple singletons and one family. Total of five people out of the thirty-plus on the island.”

  Miles reached out and took Trina’s hand in his own. “I would have figured more of the survivors with children would have wanted something better for their kids.”

  Pete spat into the water as though the entire conversation had left a bad taste in his mouth. “They got it already, remember? A world without people.”

  December 10, 2017

  Outside of Ironton, Missouri

  Z-Day + 53

  “You sure you’re up for this?”

  Molly realized she had a death grip on her seatbelt and forced her hands down into her lap. “I’m good,” she promised Dave. In all honesty, she was anything besides that, but she wasn’t about to complain about it.

  Her gloves, heavy coat, and scarf were all donations from Anne’s closet. The coat fit well enough around her torso but she was already several inches taller than the older woman. Every wrong movement lifted the lower hem of the jacket and blew cold air on the sweatshirt she wore beneath. It was only a bit below freezing, but the bright green Gator utility vehicle Dave drove had no doors and no heater.

  A fresh blanket of snow coated the ground. While the roads were still warm enough that its covering had turned to slush, there was enough left everywhere else to blur any identifying marks, particularly on the farm access roads and back trails they were using at the moment. Based on Dave’s map, they should be right on the dividing line to the safe zone, but it was impossible to tell for sure. Finally, they came around a bend and he straightened in the seat, braking.

  “There,” Dave said, pointing. “That’s the Wallace’s house. The safe line probably runs through their laundry room on the back of the house, but to be safe I say we consider the backyard the place to be.” He gave the Gator a bit of gas as he cranked the wheel around to point them back the way they’d come. “In case we have to make a run for it,” he explained.

  Molly took a look around as they went through the turn. The nice thing about the snow was that it made it pretty obvious where the zombies had been, and where they weren’t. The powder around the two-story farmhouse was smooth, undisturbed. She didn’t see any houses on either side. As nervous as she was about taking her first steps out of the safe zone in nearly two months, this looked like a pretty good place to do it.

  Unbuckling her seatbelt, she stepped out and studied the backyard’s anonymous lumps under the snow while Dave got out himself. The largest one, she decided, was a pile of cut wood, but she wasn’t too sure about the second one. It had round edges, so it didn’t look like anything so terrible as a body, but not knowing what it was bothered her nonetheless. She raised a hand and pointed. “What do you think that is?”

  Dave cocked his head and studied the pile of snow. “Trampoline?” he guessed, and all at once Molly saw it. The snow had piled on and caved in the mesh netting over the top of it, but the same fabric on the lower half acted as a stopper, allowing snow to drift up and around the sides.

  Of course, as soon as she relaxed a bit, the little voice in the back of her head spoke up. What if there’s something under it?

  She was about the voice her concern to Dave but he shuffled through the snow and took hold of the upper rim of the trampoline before she could raise the alarm. With a grunt, he heaved it off the ground. Snow exploded into the air as Dave backed away with his pistol drawn.

  The circle of brown grass marking where the trampoline had rested was empty, and she let out a small sigh. Dave glanced over his shoulder, caught the look on her face, and winked. “We got this, kid. You ready?”

  Molly wasn’t, not even a little bit, but she forced herself to nod and shouldered the empty backpack she’d taken from the house. Dave blazed a trail through snow drifted in the backyard, which made things a little easier for her—it was well over knee-high in some places. The winter hadn’t been any worse than normal, but with no one to shovel snow or plow roads, there was plenty of snow for the wind to take, and some of the resulting formations they’d seen after they’d left the Metz farm were impressive, indeed.

  Dave got up on tip-toe and looked inside the windows of the small addition on the back of the house. “Anything?” Molly asked.

  “Washer and a drier, pile of clothes. There’s some detergent we could use, maybe.” With the cold weather, washing clothes had become an interesting task. They washed them in the kitchen sink. Then, since they couldn’t hang them up to dry on the clothesline, they hung them in the living room near the gas fireplace. The one bright side—other than the fact that it wasn’t as easy for Hatcher to splash them with suds—was that it was cold enough that they didn’t do much to get truly dirty. Molly hadn’t washed the jeans she was wearing for a week. They were getting close to standing up and walking into the dirty laundry all on their own.

  It was odd, actually, how the loss of the trappings of modern life had reshaped her definition of personal hygiene. She kept herself as clean as she could, and it wasn’t like she was going around smelling her own BO, but just as often she’d catch herself daydreaming about showers, and body wash, and endless hot water in a well-lit bathroom. The bland repetitiveness of their diet didn’t even phase her, now. If it came down to a fresh, hot pizza or being able to take a warm bath, she’d choose the bath in a heartbeat.

  Dave continued around the side of the house. His motions were more methodical now, and he paused periodically to listen. Molly imitated him without a word. She’d worked with him for enough hours now to know generally what to do without instruction, even if she didn
’t know the specifics.

  A few feet away from the front of the house, Dave paused for a bit longer than the norm, and Molly tensed, wondering if he’d heard something, but he finally started moving forward. He’d only taken two steps when he howled in pain. Staggering to the side, he topped onto the snow, curling around himself in a near-fetal position.

  She hesitated for a fraction of a second, then shoved forward through the snow to kneel at his back. Keeping her eyes up, expecting dozens of zombies to burst into sight at any moment, she hissed, “What is it?”

  Dave’s gritted his teeth, beads of sweat rolling down his face despite the chill of the day. “Arm,” he managed. “My God, my arm’s on fire!”

  That made no sense whatsoever, but he tore at the glove on his left hand with everything he had. The pain seemed to be so extreme that he couldn’t get a grip on it.

  She reached down, ripped the glove away, then recoiled in disgust and fear. There was a hard, white ring of scar tissue between his index finger and thumb. As she watched, thick black lines of something advanced under his skin from the scar, already past his wrist and under the sleeve of his coat.

  Holy shit—Dave got bit. But when? And why isn’t he one of those things?

  At once, Molly saw it in her head—the invisible border and the zombies that couldn’t go across. Why couldn’t they go across? If the mysterious antenna Dave was describing had something to do with it, what would happen if the infection was already in the circle? If it didn’t try to go out, what would happen if it crossed out of the safe zone?

  She reached down and took hold of Dave’s arms and heaved with every bit of strength she had. She’d lost weight in the last couple months, but she’d also been working hard and eating stupidly healthy. Molly Einhorn was probably in the best shape of her life, and Dave wasn’t all that much taller or heavier than she was. The snow made things simpler, and his legs cut twin tracks in the white fluff as she dragged him back toward the rear of the house.

  All at once, as though she’d flipped a switch, Dave stopped screaming. She forced herself to look down, ready to run if his eyes had turned steel gray.

  His face was pale, jaw trembling, but his eyes were still human. Taking a deep breath, Dave sat up and pulled the sleeve of his coat up. His forearm was a bright, angry red. The lines halted their advance, and Dave winced as he poked at one of them. He whispered. “What in God’s name just happened?”

  She raised her hand and pointed at the scar on his hand. “When did you get that? Where did you get that?”

  He blinked in surprise, thought about it, then said, “The day after the outbreak—the day we met. I told you, I was out looking for Hatcher. There was a guy standing in the middle of the road. I didn’t think he had the infection. He didn’t look as messed up as the ones I saw on television. I thought he’d been in a car accident or something. He bit me when I came over to try and help. I backed the hell up, as fast as I could.” Realization dawned in his eyes. “But he didn’t follow me over the line. I went home to patch myself up, and then you came along—” Dave shook his head. “I don’t know why I didn’t put two and two together. I never got sick, so I didn’t worry about it. The TV said infection usually takes no more than a couple of minutes.” His face went pale. “My God. If whatever is keeping the area safe ever stops, I’m a dead man walking. I’ll come after you, and Anne, and Hatch…” Dave buried his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking.

  She reached out and put her hand on his shoulder. At some level, she felt compelled to comfort him, but another, more insistent urge kept her head up and her eyes wary, searching for any sign of movement. They remained alone, but that could change at any moment.

  He composed himself and took a deep breath. “You’re going to have to search the house. I can’t cross over.”

  Molly blinked. “I can’t.”

  “You can. You have to.” His hands shook a bit as he patted the front of his jacket. “Shit. I lost my gun.”

  She swallowed and ventured across the intangible dividing land. Initially, she despaired that the gun might be gone for good, swallowed by the snow, but she found it in the area where Dave had begun thrashing and plucked it off the ground. It felt cold and heavy in her hand as she rubbed the snow off. They’d worked on shooting over the past few months, but not frequently. Their supply of ammunition wasn’t large enough to invest in the kind of training she needed.

  “You know the drill,” Dave urged. “Go to the back of the house and open up the laundry room window. You pass out what you find and I’ll load the supplies in the Gator.”

  “I—what if they’re in there?”

  “Damn it, girl!” Dave barked, and Molly cringed. “We don’t get guarantees, now,” he said, adopting a more soothing tone. “Do you want to live?”

  “Y-yes.” She took a shuddering breath and steeled her nerves. “Yes.”

  “Then do it.”

  Molly looked down at the gun, then, and wiped away the rest of the snow. Despite the lack of practice bullets, she’d spent hours handling the big pistol. While the weight didn’t feel completely natural in her hands, it was somehow reassuring. She pulled the slide back, saw the wink of brass in the chamber, and released it. The hammer was back, but the gun wouldn’t fire unless she had the beaver-tail safety depressed. Who knew if she could actually hit anything, but there was always the option of running away. She’d proven that she could accomplish that if nothing else.

  She met Dave’s eyes and nodded. “Okay. Okay. I’m good—what if the door’s locked?”

  He gave her a sad smile. “No one locked their doors around here, Molly. Maybe if they’d survived, but we’d see signs of that. Try it.”

  This time, she didn’t hesitate. The fear wasn’t gone, exactly, but heftier emotions she couldn’t entirely describe tamped it down to a manageable amount. Maybe this is what being an adult is like, she realized. Being scared all the time, but pushing past it.

  Molly turned and hugged the wall of the house as she ventured past the point where Dave had stopped. She took her time, using her eyes and ears to scan the surrounding area. She knew that Dave would call out if anything appeared in his line of sight, but her main concern there was any potential threats lurking around the front corner. As for the potential danger inside, she’d worry about that once she was in.

  The front porch was a solid construction of brick and concrete, shielded by an extension of the main roof. Trickles of snow decorated the bare surface, punctuated here and there by intermittent leaves. The crunchy signals of autumn might once have brought joy and anticipation of cool and crisp weather, but now she viewed them only as something to avoid, lest their noise give her away to a lurking danger.

  Taking the stairs in two leg-stretching steps, she weaved through the debris in front of the door and put her hand on the handle to the storm door. It came open smoothly, and she took a moment to lock the gas shocks open in case she needed to make a fast retreat.

  The front door was antique, aged wood with an inset panel of frosted glass. This effectively blocked any view she had into the house, though it seemed obvious enough that no one stood right on the other side—the soft glow of sunshine coming in the other windows in the front of the house told her that much.

  She reached down and tried the handle. Once again, Dave was right. It turned easily, and she pushed as the latch clicked open, letting the weight of the door carry it open on silent hinges. Molly backed away, cupping the pistol in the two-handed grip she’d found worked best for her.

  Nothing rushed toward the sudden opening, and the inside of the house remained still and silent.

  She stood there long enough for the frantic hammering of her heart to slow to a more relaxed rhythm, then crossed the threshold. The lush carpet softened her steps and maintained the hush inside the home, but it also put her immediately on guard—swoops of reddish-brown streaks decorated the rug in the open areas. The stains were long dry, but she knew what they were.

  A memo
ry of her mother’s voice came to her, then, from distant days when the only thing she had to fear was skinning her knees.

  Molly, don’t you track mud through the house!

  The undead didn’t wipe their feet, but she supposed that those who’d left these marks had done just that, on their circuitous route through the living room.

  Most of the space was open, the furniture pushed against the wall save for a recliner in the middle of the room facing a darkened television. She side-stepped, keeping eyes on the chair until she was at a wide enough angle to see behind it.

  The living room was empty. She shivered, then, and not from fear—the temperature inside the house was not much warmer than the outside, and white wisps of vapor puffed from her lips with each breath.

  Molly took a step forward.

  Under the carpet, wood creaked. Deeper in the house, a slow clicking noise sounded as though in response.

  “Hello?” Molly shook her head at her own stupidity as soon as the word left her mouth. The clicking repeated, for longer this time, and the speed of the repetition varied enough to make her suspect that the source wasn’t mechanical.

  Click click. Click. Click click.

  She took another step, and the floorboard creaked as she left it. Another, and the floor here was tighter and silent.

  Click click.

  The noise was closer now, but as she stood and waited for it to repeat, she realized it only seemed to do so as she moved. Whatever the source, it seemed to be in a fixed position. She adjusted her grip on the pistol and let the barrel lead the way around the corner.

  At first, Molly thought the hallway was empty, but she realized that the pool of shadow along the floor concealed something horrid in the darkness. The clicking sound repeated, drawing her vision down. As her eyes pierced the murk, realization burned through her, and bile surged at the back of her throat.