“Ew.” Carter makes a face at her. “You couldn’t have waited until after I finished eating?”
“Anyone gonna eat the rest of this?” Ben prods the casserole. When everyone declines, he spoons the rest of the mixture into his bowl. “Your loss,” he says to no one in particular.
7
Mayday
KATE
“To the left,” Jenna calls. “Kate, dip your side!”
“I’m trying!” I’m on the bottom corner of the new solar water heater we’re installing. If I get any lower, my hand is going to get crushed.
“Use those killer leg muscles and squat,” Johnny says.
Jaw tense, I take his suggestion and shift my weight, straightening my back and sinking into a crouch.
“Perfect!” Eric crows. “Hold it right here.”
“Nice work, Mama Bear.” Caleb, holding the other bottom corner of the solar water heater, flashes me a grin.
“Easy for you to say,” I reply. “You’re buff. How did I get stuck on this end with you?”
“Luck of the draw.” He winks at me.
“You can set it down now,” Eric says.
I let out a breath and ease the solar panel into place. Eric gets to work bolting it down.
“I’ve been fantasizing about this moment since the world ended,” Jenna says. “Hot shower.” She smiles, face tilted toward the sky.
“I thought I was the only thing you fantasized about.” Carter slings one arm around her waist, pulling her close.
Jenna snorts. “You’re hardly a fantasy. I get you whenever I want.”
“Guys, let’s keep this G-rated,” Reed says. “There are sensitive ears present.”
“Who gets the first shower?” Ash asks.
“We still have to design a catch basin for water to fill the pipes,” Eric says. “We haven’t crossed home plate yet.”
“Yes, but when we do,” Jenna says, “one of us will get to go first.” She narrows her eyes at Ash. “I’ll thumb wrestle you for the rights.”
“You’re on,” Ash says.
“Oh, hell no,” Jesus says. “The only kind of wrestling I want to see is mud wrestling.” He points both index fingers at the girls. “You two. In the mud. That would have been some quality pay per view back in the day.”
“Dude.” Carter tightens his arm around Jenna’s waist, frowning. Caleb mirrors his frown, though he doesn’t say anything.
“Don’t blame me.” Jesus holds his hands up. “Your woman is hot. That’s not my fault.”
Carter opens his mouth to retort, but he’s cut off by Lila’s unexpected voice. It drifts up through the roof access hatch.
“Guys! Come downstairs.” The urgency in her voice stills me. “You guys have to hear this.”
“What is it?” I hurry across the rooftop and scramble onto the ladder.
“I was flipping channels on the ham,” Lila says. Her eyes are wide, her lower lip lodged between her teeth. “Someone is in trouble.”
I frown, unsure why this has her riled up. We’re six months into a zombie apocalypse. Of course, people are in trouble. It isn’t the first time one of us has met someone over the ham in a dire situation. Just last week we talked to a man caught in the cab of a semi at a monster truck rally somewhere in Texas.
“Trust me. You guys need to hear this,” Lila says.
We reach the second floor where we live. Ben comes out of the weapons room as we file past. It’s a dorm suite we converted to hold all the weapons we’ve scavenged. Half the supplies were brought by Ben when he joined us. The rest were taken from Johnson’s lair. Ben has been in there cleaning since lunch.
“What’s going on?” he asks.
“Come in here,” Lila replies. She ushers us into our main sitting room and cranks up the volume on the ham. “Listen to this.”
A woman’s voice bursts from the tiny receiver, filling the room.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday. Can anyone hear me? Boat grounded in Humboldt Bay. My husband was attacked by a great white. His condition is critical. Is anyone out there? Can anyone help us? Mayday, mayday, mayday. Our boat is a blue charter boat named Fairhaven.”
The message repeats three more times, the woman’s voice becoming more and more despondent with each one.
Lila turns down the volume after the third desperate message. She stares at us, lips compressed in a thin line.
“We need to help them.” Carter shoulders up to the table, reaching for the receiver.
Ben’s hand whips out. His big hand covers the receiver. “It could be a trap. It’s not safe.”
Carter frowns at Ben. “She said her husband was attacked by a shark. That’s not the sort of thing you say if you’re setting a trap.”
“It’s gotta be real,” Jesus says. “Who the hell says her man got attacked by a shark in the zombie apocalypse? No one would believe that.”
To my surprise, Caleb sides with Ben. “Someone just so happens to ground a boat in Humboldt Bay? It wasn’t exactly filled with boats before the apocalypse.”
I glance at Lila. “Have you spoken to her?”
Lila shakes her head, dark eyes still wide. “I had a meeting scheduled with Alvarez to go over composting techniques. He wasn’t there so I was just scrolling through the channels.”
Alvarez wasn’t there? It wasn’t like him to miss a scheduled ham appointment. I file the worry away to examine later.
“Turn it back up,” I say. “I want to hear the message again.”
“Mayday, mayday, mayday.” The woman on the other end of the receiver chokes on a sob. “Can anyone hear me? Can anyone help us?” She breaks down into tears.
It’s the sound of her sobbing that solidifies my decision. That is a genuine sound of someone who needs help.
Ben must see the decision on my face. His mouth opens, an angry furrow between his brows. I can practically smell the argument.
I cut him off. “That crying”—I jab a finger at the ham—“is not fake.”
He purses his lips, scowling at me. We lock eyes. I don’t look away.
“How many times have we talked to people we can’t help?” I say. “Just a few days ago there was that officer in Oregon. He was barricaded in a police station closet and slowly starving to death. And what about that woman whose semi was swarmed in Southern California? She was surrounded by zombies with no way out. All these people out there talking to us on their ham radios and we can’t do a damn thing to help them.” I rest my hand on the receiver. “This time, it’s different. We have the chance to help someone in our backyard. This woman, whoever she is, is asking for our help. I’m going. It’s the right thing to do.”
“Fine,” Ben snaps. “But we do it carefully. Recon the ship. Don’t show ourselves until we’re sure it’s safe.”
“We?” I raise an eyebrow at him.
“Did you think you’re going alone?” He stomps over to the door, sifting through the rack of weapons we have mounted on the wall.
“I’m going, too,” Carter says. “We don’t know what sort of shape this guy is in. You’ll need at least four of us if he has to be carried out.”
“I’ll go, too,” Jenna says.
“I’m the medic,” Ash says. “If the husband really has been attacked by a great white, I should be there to help.”
“Do great whites even live around here?” Eric asks. “I tend to be on Ben’s side in this argument. I think it’s a trap.”
“San Diego is home to the largest population of great whites in California,” Caleb says. “Humboldt County is the second largest population.”
“How do you know that?” Ash demands.
“I made it my business to learn about great whites the first time I saw Jaws as a kid,” Caleb says. “I’ll go with you guys. Ben and I are best suited to recon the boat. Assuming it’s even there.”
I’m grateful for the help. I run my eyes over the group, wanting to make sure we truly have everyone we need.
“Reed, suit up,” I say. He�
�s the fastest. I don’t know what we’re going to find out there, but there’s always the chance we might need a sprinter. “Jesus, you, too.” The man is a good shot.
That leaves Johnny, Lila, and Eric at home. Enough to keep an eye on Creekside until we get back. Ben is adamant about never leaving Creekside empty.
“Are we going to stand around and stare at each other, or are we going on a suicide mission?” Ben glowers. He has a rifle over his shoulder, a gun on either hip, and an ammo belt slung across his chest. I wish he didn’t look so good.
“I’ll finally get a chance to try this out.” Ash grabs the first aid backpack she assembled a few months ago from our supply cache. She takes it on supply runs, but until now she’s never had a real reason to use the things inside.
I move toward the weapons rack. The rest of the group mobilizes with me. I already have a knife and a screwdriver on my belt. I pick out one of the smaller handguns, a glock that I’ve been practicing with.
“Take one of the rifles,” Ben says.
I shake my head. “I’ve never used one.”
“Take it anyway. It could save your life.”
“At the very least,” Reed says cheerfully, “you can smash a zombie in the face with it.”
“We all know Mamita is good at smashing things.” Jesus touches the dent on his forehead. “Speaking of which, we should try out our new zom bats.”
He grabs a box filled with modified baseball bats. The handles have been sheared short and the bottoms welded closed with the original ends. Jenna, Jesus, and Carter have been working hard to assemble these new weapons.
“What do you think?” Jesus hands me one of the zom bats.
“Nice.” I give it an experimental swing. I can already tell it’s going to be better than the regular baseball bat. The others show similar appreciation as they receive their new weapons.
“We could get rich selling these things on eBay,” Carter says.
“Heck, yeah.” Jenna grins at her boyfriend. “We could finally afford our own place and move out of this dump.”
“Creekside is not a dump,” I say loudly, right as Jesus says, “Don’t forget who’s the master with the soldering gun. Half those eBay profits are mine.”
“One-third,” Jenna counters. “Or I’ll solder your hands together.”
“Ouch.” Jesus feigns wounded hands. “Carter, your woman is ruthless.”
“I know.” Carter slings an arm around Jenna. “It’s hot, isn’t it?”
“Okay, time to focus,” I cut in. “We need to move out. There are people who need our help.”
Ben blocks the door, preventing us from leaving the apartment. “We need to agree on a few things before we go out there.”
I put my hands on my hips and face him, ready for whatever argument he has in store. “Such as?”
Ben jabs a finger in the general direction of the group. “When we find the boat—if we find the boat—everyone else stays in hiding until Caleb and I give the all clear. No matter what happens, you wait for our all clear.”
I can’t argue with this logic. “Agreed.”
“Should we tell them we’re coming?” Jenna asks.
Ben shakes his head. “No. If it is a trap, we don’t want to alert them.”
“If it’s a real emergency, knowing help is on the way might give them the strength to hold on,” Carter argues.
My son makes me proud, but in this case, I think Ben is right. “We don’t alert them. We find them, recon, then decide our next steps.”
Three minutes later, we’re out the door and heading down Granite Avenue.
Running.
8
Horde
BEN
Granite Avenue is the street that runs along the north side of campus where most of the college dorms are. Creekside is nestled at the very end of Granite Avenue among the towering redwoods of Northern California. To most people, it’s a beautiful, picturesque road.
Ben hates it. It’s the place that holds the culmination of the worst moments of his life. It’s the place where he had been ordered to open fire on kids.
Kids.
Granted, some of them—a lot of them—had been infected. But a full-scale offensive on the college had been nothing more than mass murder.
That wasn’t even the worst part. This had been the place where Ben disobeyed a direct order and went AWOL. He scooped up half a dozen students and hustled them to safety. Away from the gunfire, away from the infected.
Ben had never, ever, disobeyed a direct order from a commanding officer. Sure, there had been moments when he’d had to grit his teeth and mentally cuss someone out for a stupid order, but he always followed through. It’s what a good soldier did. He’d always taken pride in being a good soldier. Of doing the right thing for his country, even when it was hard.
All that was shattered on this godforsaken road.
As he runs down it with Kate and the others on their foolhardy mission, it takes all his focus not to fall back to that night of gunfire and madness.
Usually, he focuses on the swing of Kate’s ponytail. It’s a good anchor. Keeps his brain from spinning out of control.
Now that she’d gone and hacked her hair off—which looks damn good, even though he’d fucked up trying to tell her that—he isn’t sure where to look. The natural thing to focus on is her ass in those skin-tight running pants. He’s grateful she swapped out the tiny running shorts for the mission, though in truth they aren’t much more protection. If any of the little shitheads catch him looking, he’ll never live it down. He settles for watching the sweat spot forming between her shoulder blades.
Granite Avenue, for its part, is indifferent to his PTSD bullshit. The place had been akin to a Sandbox warzone a few months ago. Rotting corpses strewn across every conceivable surface. Feasting carrion birds. Maggots and flies everywhere. The smell of death had been inescapable.
Then Kate got it into her head that she wanted to clean up the neighborhood. She took them all to the campus greenhouse. Goddammit if they hadn’t unearthed five wheelbarrows.
It had taken them weeks to cart away the bodies. Jenna was the one who came up with the idea to cut a hole in the fence separating the college from the freeway—and the twenty-foot drop to the once-busy road. After that, it was only a matter of collecting the bodies and dumping them over the side.
These days, Granite Avenue is stink-free, fly-free, maggot-free, and vulture-free. The same can’t be said for the rest of the campus, but if Kate has anything to say about it, she’ll have the entire campus cleared one day.
He loves that she thinks she can do it. That they can do it. Where everyone else sees death, she sees hope.
Ben keeps his focus on Kate’s shoulder blades. Her sweat spot expands from a few dots to a large, lopsided circle about the size of a fist. He exhales in relief as they hit the main road and turn south. This street is sandwiched between the western perimeter of campus and the drop-off down to the freeway. The memories aren’t so thick here.
They soon reach the vast wrought-iron fence that surrounds the athletic field where they come for target practice. The field most definitely is not fly- or vulture-free.
They leave campus and turn west across the bridge that takes them over the freeway and into downtown Arcata. He watches the others transform, muscles tensing and eyes scanning. They kill their fair share of zombies every time they make a trip into town, but there are always more to deal with.
As they crest the top of the overpass, Ben glances to the freeway below. It’s a mess of cars and zombies, even more so since they started dumping bodies down there. He’d like to dump kerosene over the entire scene and drop a match to it.
“We should run south along the freeway,” Jenna says as they exit the overpass. Her voice low so as not to attract any undead. “It’s a straight shot to Humboldt Bay.”
Kate nods. “Good idea. Everyone, stay alert.”
Ben maintains his position at the back as Kate takes her position at
the front. He doesn’t trust anyone else to do a proper job of rear guard.
“Bro.” Ahead of him, Jesus nudges Reed in the arm. “Remember this place?” He points to a small blue house they pass.
Reed smirks. “Totally. That’s where we delivered the E.”
“And scored ourselves an invite to a par-tay.”
“That was some good E.” Reed sighs.
“Those were some horny chicks,” Jesus adds, nostalgic.
“Yeah, that too.”
The conversation makes Ben want to bash their heads together. Everyone is out here putting their lives on the line, and all they can do is reminisce about fucking and doing drugs? Is it any wonder living around these kids makes him insane?
Something crashes with a hollow thud. It sounds like a trashcan just went over.
More than a dozen zombies shamble onto the street in front of them. They’re a mere two blocks away. There are so many they clog the road, creating a solid barrier blocking their way. Soft moans pepper the air.
Not good.
Kate cuts away from the frontage road, turning right at a cross street. It’s residential, lined with colorful bungalows and an auto repair shop. Several blocks ahead of them is a worn-out strip mall
Their fast jog turns into a run. Fluorescent orange running shoes might be the most despised thing he owns, but right now he’s grateful for their quiet rubber soles.
Kate ducks behind the corner of the auto repair shop. They pile after her, all of them breathing hard.
Breathing hard, but not out of breath. There’s a difference. They have Kate to thank for that.
Ben peers around the corner, looking back up the way they came. The first few zombies stagger into view. Hard on their heels are more. And more.
And more.
“Follame,” Jesus mutters, squinting down the road beside Ben. He often defaults to Spanish when he’s stressed.
“How many are there?” Carter whispers.
No one answers him. Ben stares, his eyes resting on the zom that stands in the center. It’s a nondescript man in his forties, clothing torn and gray from long months of exposure. It wears a baseball cap that was once bright red, but is now a dull maroon.
Undead Ultra Box Set | Books 1-4 Page 64
