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

by Humphreys, Daniel

  Z-Day + 3,287

  “Cease fire! Cease fire!”

  As the command cascaded down the line, the streams of mortar rounds arcing into the park slowed to a trickle until one last, petulant shell exploded in a black burst in the middle of the writhing horde. The walls of fire were also beginning to die down. The first FireStorm had emptied its fuel tanks and headed back to the staging area for a refill while the second stood by.

  Going to have to call up resupply soon, we’re getting low on rounds, Coop judged after a spot check of the crates around Corporal Gray’s mortar team. He turned, searching the sky to the east, then nodded to Stahlberg. “Pause the music. The boys will want to hear this.”

  With a grin, the lance corporal mashed a button and cut Dave Draiman off in mid-snarl. It had been, Coop reflected, one of the most eclectic concerts of all time. There was plenty of hard rock and metal, to be sure, but zulu was indiscriminate—any noise would do, and the Marines had mixed things up a bit. You didn’t often hear Tupac dropping beats between songs from Five Finger Death Punch and Disturbed, with Justin Bieber for an encore. He was pretty sure Paolinelli had only put that last one in there to be a smart-ass.

  The song of the moment, though, was a more primal one. He unhooked the microphone and pressed the button. “Gateway-One to Hellcat.”

  “Copy, Gateway.”

  “One request. Give us a bit of the good stuff to start, if you catch my drift.”

  The pilot must have gotten a kick out of that. She laughed out loud over the channel before replying, “You got it, Gateway.”

  The hissing whine of twin jet engines raised in pitch, and the sailors and Marines manning the barges, boats, and fixed positions turned to watch as the gray aircraft banked. The Warthog curved around to the north before turning again, parallel to the west bank. Coop glanced at the horde, wondering if they heard the noise or knew what it meant.

  Close enough to the deck to make Coop’s skin crawl, Hellcat’s A-10 seemed to slow as fire and smoke erupted from its nose. The stuttering sound of the 30mm cannon hit their ears a few seconds after the rounds began to carve a great, gaping gash through the packed horde. Dismembered body parts and chunks of sod flew into the air.

  Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrt.

  And then the A-10 was gone, and a raucous cheer poured from the throats of every living soul on the river. Coop jabbed his fist in the air and screamed along with them in pure joy. That first pass had been more effective than anything he’d seen even in the early days of the war. Pack ‘em in tight, and we’ve got this!

  Hellcat made two more passes before running out of cannon ammunition. The third time through, a flurry of rockets joined in before the low-altitude party came to an end. Everything that came after would be high-altitude death from above—laser-guided smart bombs targeted by the SEALs on the bridge.

  “All right,” Coop said to Stahlberg. “Hit the speakers and see if we can’t keep them concentrated in the park until the Warthog runs dry.” The fires were out, at this point, save for the intermittent smolder, but there didn’t seem to be any major open patches in view, other than the ones created with each impact and explosion. Louder, he called out to the rest of the Marines on the barge. “Check and redistribute rounds, Marines! I don’t want anyone running out before resupply arrives.”

  Stahlberg flagged him down. “Bridge team is on the horn, Sergeant—call sign Trident.”

  Coop unracked a headset and put it on. With whatever techno-dance crap was pounding out of the speakers at the moment, he was probably going to need the cans. “What the hell is this?” he said to the lance corporal before toggling the transmit button.

  “Brute, by KMFDM,” he announced, proudly. “It’s my jam, Sergeant.”

  “Roger that,” Coop muttered, then transmitted. “Gateway-Two for Trident, go ahead, over.”

  “Gateway, take a look at the north side of the park if you can catch it from this angle. We’ve got some leakers.”

  He scanned the shoreline with his binoculars and understood immediately. A stream of infected had moved off the grounds and onto the Eads Bridge. If not for the crater in the center of the span, he’d have thought they were trying to flank the barges—so what the hell was zulu up to? As he watched, the arm of the horde coalesced, advancing up the bridge toward the center of the river.

  “I see it, Trident. Thoughts?”

  “After California, I don’t like when I see anything different. Can you put iron on target? I’d like to save the big stuff for denser targets if possible.

  “We can range,” Coop confirmed. “What’s the status on the Orcas?” Bomb racks empty, the pair of craft had turned south, heading for the staging area the Seabees had set up on the island he and his men had scouted months back. Cleared of infected and with the river dredged, it made for a great arms depot.

  “Mechanical issue with one of the birds, ground crews got it fixed but it threw a wrench in our timing. They’re thirty minutes out, but they should be here before the next A-10 to give us time to reestablish the kill box.”

  Up on the bridge, a cluster of infected teetered on the edge and tumbled into the water below. There was a good twenty feet below the barge’s hull and the bottom of the river, but hell. That was only four zulu high. “New target!” he yelled, waving for attention, then pointing at the bridge. “HE on the bridge! Take out that cluster.”

  As the mortar teams scrambled to reorient their tubes, he muttered into the open channel. “We’re outside of spear range, Trident, but if you see any bodybuilder zulus, shout it out so we can white phosphorous their ass.” The so-called alpha infected seemed to absorb or generate additional nanites, mimicking muscle tissue. The one his unit had encountered had bounced around like an NBA player and torn two of his Marine buddies, Ropati and Del Arroz, to literal pieces with its bare hands. The only thing that allowed them to get away had been the suicide charge of the civilian consultant, Charlie.

  “Heck with that, Gateway—we’ll call a smart bomb down on it, first. Nuke it from orbit.”

  Black puffs of smoke appeared above the shattered deck of the bridge, tearing into the line of infected as his teams got the range and started dropping rounds on target. A few went long or short, but most were right on the money. Solid shooting, gents. He keyed the radio one more time. “Only way to be sure, Trident. Gateway out.”

  May 7, 2018

  Taum Sauk State Park, Missouri

  Z-Day + 201

  After the first few days, Molly knew what she had to do.

  By the start of the second week, she saw her opportunity.

  She didn’t have a watch, but she had a very real sense of a countdown clock in her head nonetheless. It took everything she had to maintain an attitude of defeat in spite of the elation she felt at having a plan to actually do something. If her captors thought she was up to something, they would pay her and Hatcher far more attention than they had been. Their apathy was a crucial aspect.

  Henry and the contractors had fallen into a comfortable pattern. In the mornings, two of the security crew would release her and Hatch from the trailer and escort them to the mess tent. Once the two of them had grabbed breakfast, their escorts took them to the lab. There, Molly killed time and tried to keep the youngster entertained while Hans took blood samples and regaled her with rambling speeches. She’d started to suspect that she represented more than a caretaker to Henry’s experiment. The scientist talked so much, it was obvious that he was lonely and in need of an audience.

  By lunch, Hatcher would start whining. Since Henry had begun using him as a guinea pig, his appetite had gone into overdrive—one of the side effects, and not the worst one. The afternoons were easiest. The doctor didn’t take any more blood samples, and Hatcher usually dozed while she paged through paperback after paperback she’d found in a cabinet in the camp’s central storage.

  Molly could measure the passage of time by the check marks on the calendar in the lab, as well as by the slow crawl of gray along Hat
ch’s extremities. At first, he’d scratched at the marks, complaining that they itched, but over time he’d grown used to them.

  The contractors had been leery at first, but as soon as Henry had assured them that there was no chance of the little boy turning, they enacted a rough sort of adoption, dubbing him ‘Stripes’ and saving portions of the candy from their MREs for him. To his credit, Hatcher remained suspicious of pretty much everyone but Molly, staying as close to her as he could. The cage, thankfully, was no longer in use—he’d shied away from the blood draws at first, forcing Molly to hold him steady for the doctor to do his macabre work. Hatcher still didn’t like the needles, but he only whimpered a little bit now.

  Henry and the contractors didn’t seem to pay much attention to her after she reached a deal with the mad scientist. Oh, a few of the men still made snide remarks, but Connelly must have known that something was up in that regard, because the same two guards never escorted them twice, and more often than not, one or both of them were female. In a way, that was almost worse than the open ogling. The hard-faced women in the crew carried themselves with open bravado and regarded her with something close to disgust. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen that sort of thing. In a way, she supposed a group of soldiers, even private ones, were a lot like a sports team. And every time the boys and girls teams intermingled in the gym, someone on Molly’s team adopted a similar air as her periodic escorts. Overcompensating for a lack of—whatever it was. She supposed it was hard enough doing that sort of work as a man. It must have been doubly hard to be a woman in a mixed ‘team’—at least with basketball, the coaches kept things separate.

  In a way, it was a blessing to have the mercenaries ignore her. If they’d known what was going through her mind, they would have killed her.

  The little things can be pivotal.

  Dave’s words burned through her mind, morning and night, and so she watched and listened. It was like cramming for a test without the benefit of written material or notes, and this exam was far more critical than something like the SAT. Despite Henry’s promises, she had little faith that she and Hatcher would be long for the world after they got what they needed from him.

  The plan started innocently enough. On the third day, she’d asked if the contractors could take her back to the Metz farm, at least to get some toys or something to keep Hatcher occupied, but Henry blew her off. When her only response was a sigh, he began a lecture about the power requirements of the camp.

  “The solar panels can run the exclusion transmitter on their own, barely. With the rest of the equipment in here, we keep the grid up with diesel generators. We have limited fuel—we can go get your ‘toys’ or we can leave when the time comes. Your choice.”

  Molly settled for raiding Henry’s office supplies. She taught Hatcher how to make paper airplanes until one flew too close to the scientist. He went into a rage and commenced another lecture, so that ended that experiment. Another foray produced a box of rubber bands, so she spent a morning entertaining Hatch by launching small wads of paper into a trash can set against the wall, well out of Henry’s area. Without thinking about it, she slipped a rubber band around each wrist before their escorts came to take them back to the trailer. Back when she played basketball, she’d worn a tiger-striped silicon wristband. Growing up, her grandfather had taught her to shoot free throws and made her wear a rubber band on her shooting hand. Every time she missed, he made her flick the band, just a little. He’d died long before she ever made the team, but she’d kept the habit, flicking her wristband on the rare occasion she missed from the charity stripe. It was a rare game indeed for her to miss two in a row.

  That night, in the trailer, with the warm lump of Hatcher balled up next to her side and the soft buzz of his snores in her ears, she stared at the moonlit ceiling, snapping the band every so often. Thoughts of her grandpa turned to thoughts of Dave, and a slow predatory smile crept across her face as the plan tumbled into place in her mind.

  Two weeks after making a deal with the devil, she was about to change the terms of the bargain.

  She didn’t know if Hatch felt the nervous tension in her, or what, but he eschewed his normal nap that afternoon and entertained himself by drawing with a set of multicolored Sharpie pens from the office supplies. Setting off a world-wide apocalypse apparently required a lot of redundant paperwork.

  Afternoons were easier than the mornings. For one, Henry didn’t need blood, most of the time, so he ignored the two of them unless he wanted to pontificate on some issue. After the first few days she’d considered asking if they could go back to the trailer after lunch, but once she conceived her plan, she realized that the lab was the best place to be.

  Molly couldn’t help but feel as though the digital clock mounted up near the ceiling was running slower than normal. Finally, thirty-seven minutes after they’d returned to the lab, the building shook once, then again with more vigor. A series of explosions thumped in rapid-fire succession, halting Henry in his tracks and even piquing Hatcher’s interest. Molly closed her eyes and whispered a prayer of thanks.

  As soon as she opened them the lights flickered, came back on, then went out completely.

  The darkness persisted for a few seconds before battery powered emergency bulbs mounted near the exit door kicked on. Cloaked in shadow, Henry looked even more sepulchral than was normal, and his voice shook as he whispered, “What the hell was that?”

  Molly laughed, the hysterical pitch to her voice frightening even her. “That was the sound of you losing, asshole.”

  Outside, the crackle of gunfire filled the silence left by the explosion.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  October 18, 2026

  Taum Sauk Mountain, eastern Missouri

  Z-Day + 3,287

  Groaning, Miles rubbed his forehead. In spite of the major leak in the lift bags, Guglik had managed to slow their descent long enough for everyone to secure themselves, but that just delayed the inevitable. The craft had begun to list to one side as they got closer to the ground. Blinking, Miles realized that things had only gotten worse from there—when they’d hit, they must have rolled because he was staring up at the row of seats on the opposite wall of the cargo bay. Arms and legs dangling, Sandy hung from his restraints, but Miles could make out the slow rise and fall of his chest. Unconscious, he hoped.

  Pete climbed through the opening into the cockpit and dropped to the wall-turned-floor. “Sound off,” he said, hoarsely. He had a bad cut above one eye—the bleeding seemed to have stopped, but that side of his face was a mask of blood.

  Miles waved a hand and fumbled at his straps. His fingers didn’t want to work right, at first, but he focused and got himself unhooked.

  “Here, Major,” Byers called. The scarred Marine shifted a pile of equipment and eased closer to the front of the compartment. “Any landing you can walk away from, I guess.”

  Pete stopped near Miles and gave him an intent look. “You all right?”

  Miles twisted his neck and sighed in relief as it crackled. “Nothing some ibuprofen and a cold beer won’t cure.”

  His uncle rolled his eyes and patted him on the knee. “Dig out a first aid kit. Guglik broke her arm.” Pete moved further back, calling out as he went, “And somebody get the doc down and wake him up!”

  All things considered, they’d made it through the crash as well as could be expected. The Marine wounded by shrapnel from the surface-to-air missile was dead. Whether the crash had exacerbated internal injuries or simply reopened his wounds, Corporal Tom Moore had bled out before any of the others regained consciousness.

  Other than the CIA agent’s broken arm, the rest of the group was good to go save for a full complement of bumps, bruises, and scratches. Miles’ head throbbed in time with the beating of his heart and there was a tender spot near his left temple, but it wasn’t anywhere near enough to force him to throw in the towel. The zombie apocalypse was hell on sick days.

  “First things first,” Pete sai
d, once they’d wrapped Moore’s body in a tarp and rearranged the compartment into something approaching order. “How are the rest of our systems looking? Can we radio for help?”

  Lieutenant Jay Darnell, the copilot Guglik had trusted enough to bring along, shook his head. “The aerial ran along the centerline of the life bag. The explosion or the crash damaged it. I can’t get a signal.”

  Pete pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. Miles had seen that expression often enough to know that his uncle was close to blowing his top. “Options? Do we have a backup system?”

  Guglik nodded. “There’s an emergency set. The antenna’s on the end of a coax wire. Someone’s going to need to climb a tree if we want to get any sort of signal range.” She lifted her arm and gave them a sheepish grin. “I’m out of the business at the moment.”

  “Have we checked outside?” Miles wanted to know. “The crash couldn’t have been quiet. We aren’t going to be climbing any trees if zulu has us surrounded.”

  “There is that,” Byers agreed.

  “The crash butted the nose up against some trees—there’s not much to see out the front,” Darnell said. “Even if we wanted to open the cargo bay, it takes long enough to close that’s probably a bad idea. Which leaves us one option.”

  Everyone raised their heads and looked up. There were a pair of personnel access doors on either side of the fuselage aft of the cockpit section. The port door was out of commission, but the starboard one was their last—and best—option.

  If they could get it open.

  “I don’t suppose anyone brought a ladder,” Sandy said with a frown.

  “Human pyramid it is, then,” Miles joked. “Maybe we can grab enough broken limbs to throw some sort of ladder together.”

  It didn’t take long for him to realize that he and Byers were going to draw the short straws on going outside first. Guglik’s injury and Pete’s prosthetics took them out of the running, and Darnell, Lawrence, and a Marine lance corporal named Burton tended toward the stocky side of the spectrum. Of the remaining survivors, Miles and the sergeant were the tallest of the lighter weights. Corporal Brian Wood was of average build but short, and PFC Joe McDermid was about Miles’ height but heavier.