Dead Nation

by Joshua Guess

  Jo let out a small, surprised noise. “So...what? Is this closure? You want to finish what you started?”

  “I don't think there's any such thing as closure,” I said honestly. “Not really. My dad and I had a long goodbye. I knew the end was coming. He did too. We left nothing unsaid—not that we were in much danger of that anyway. Every conversation ended with 'I love you' and we never went our separate ways angry. But I still miss him every day. I still think of a thousand things I wish I'd said more often. There's still a hole inside shaped like him. It never heals. Closure is bullshit.”

  Jo shook her head. “Then what?”

  “I think that desperation is just a need to end this chapter,” I said. “If I'm being honest, I took the mission to figure out what was happening to those people sneaking away from New America because I was bored. I didn't have much at home to keep my attention outside of Bobby, and he came with us. The time I spent with him and Hannah after...it shifted some priorities around. I can't help feeling like I have to do this, that I need to know the people who took Hannah's parents from her are never going to harm another soul. I need that before I can finally stop.”

  Jo laughed, a grim and mirthless sound. “I'm sorry. It's kind of funny, though. They're the ones who call themselves relentless, but you're the one having a hard time giving up. Sort of a momentum of violence, I guess. You spend all those years fighting and suddenly not doing it is like a shark not swimming.”

  I chuckled. “Except stopping is way less likely to kill me than keeping on.”

  “Yeah,” Jo said. “There is that.”

  We drove in silence for a long time. Not awkwardly, but companionable. We were embarking on one last big hurrah together, destination unknown. Maybe when it was all over, Jo would help me find where that next chapter started. Help me discover what else I might be built for other than being a bringer of death.

  God, I hoped it wasn't sculpture or something.

  Epilogue 2

  The sentry on the left took an arrow in the throat and didn't seem overly thrilled with this development. I think he was trying to yell about it, but the length of aluminum transfixing his vocal cords made it hard to tell. The one on the right actually—and loudly—shit himself. I know because I was hiding about five feet away, which was basically a ringside seat for that show.

  He took a pair of arrows but neither of them stopped the full-throated shriek of warning which woke the small camp and had everyone within armed and on the pavement in a handful of seconds. All those sets of hands clenched around guns. All those racing hearts. All those deep breaths.

  Lungs, man. You just can't get around needing to use them.

  I pulled pins from two cylinders in my hand and gave them a toss. On the other side of the narrow hole between vehicles serving as a gate, Jackie did the same. Circling the wagons was a tried-and-true method of keeping zombies at bay, but it also kept you penned up. Oh, I'm sure the people inside the twenty-foot wide space probably could have climbed over their cars and trucks if they really tried, but that kind of thing required the ability to see and breathe like a normal person.

  The first coughs and cries of pain erupted at once. I gave it a five count before I stood.

  I walked toward the plumes of white smoke with impunity. I wore a thick hooded cloak cut to the waist—okay yes, fit was basically a poncho, fuck off if you're gonna judge me—and a military-grade gas mask. Old but serviceable. My knife was out and the small voice module built into the mask was active, carrying my words to the men staggering in front of me, desperately trying to escape the pain suddenly flooding their bodies.

  “You might have noticed that this isn't your normal tear gas,” I said brightly as I stepped up to the first man and drove the blade of my knife into his neck, severing his spine. I let go of his greasy hair and watched him tumble to the ground. “A friend of mine is a pretty good engineer. She managed to piggyback one of these little aerosol things she put together about a year ago onto the spray nozzle. Clever, really—I'm sorry, I'm getting off topic. Anyway, right now your lungs are giving you trouble. Hard to breathe, and it burns like a motherfucker. Don't worry, that's not fatal. Not that you cunts deserve any less, but it doesn't do me any good.”

  Jackie appeared next to me, stepping through the cloud in her own mask. She quickly stepped in and took out three more people, leaving just five. That was the number of survivors we decided on. They would be the nucleus of what came next.

  Between us we were able to bind those five hand and foot with rope and line them up in the middle of the circle of pavement. I took a cheap knife from a pocket of my coat and tossed it in front of them. “When I'm done, you can cut yourselves free. I wouldn't want to do all this talking just to have it wasted because a zombie showed up while you were hogtied and ate you all. I hate saying shit twice. So, are you paying attention?”

  The tears rolling down their faces ruined their ability to make out details. To them I would be a shrouded blob of a figure with a slightly distorted voice. No identifying features. Even now their breaths came slightly easier. The concoction Jo came up with—bless the time she'd spend working Kell's lab learning chemistry—was a mild respiratory depressant and dispersed outdoors very fast. They nodded, each of them, with a fervor that made me certain they'd hang on every goddamn word.

  “It's real simple,” I said. “A few years back you probably heard of a group so big and dangerous you absolutely didn't want to mess with them. Then they left, and this territory was suddenly all yours again. I'm here to tell you those days are over. You'll probably hear rumors that we took losses. Yeah, we did. But those of us who're left are the ones you don't want to fuck with. Ever.”

  I walked forward and crouched down a yard away from the captive marauders, right next to the knife I'd thrown at them. “You assholes leave here and find your little buddies. You tell them the Relentless Sons are back, and we're coming for you all.”

  Later, as we sat in a remote and quiet camp, I sprawled out on my back and contemplated the stars. I lay that way for a long time as the others celebrated this first move in a game that could take days or months, with no way of knowing.

  “That was smart,” Jackie said as she sat next to me, a cup of hot tea in her hands. “You think it'll work?”

  I shrugged as best I could while laying on my back. “Don't know if they'll end up doing any real damage, but I know enough about marauders to know they don't like eating anyone else's shit. They'll ask around. If they think the Sons are hurt bad enough, they'll band together to beat the hell out of them and take their stuff if for no other reason. There were too damn many Sons before. That's no longer the case.”

  Jackie ginned and let out a low, dark laugh. “Yeah, but you don't care if that happens. You're just using them as bird dogs.”

  I looked over at her in slight shock. “Huh. I didn't think anyone worked that out.”

  Jackie flapped her hand once. “Please. The hardest part was always going to be finding them. Getting the local marauders to flush out King and his circle jerk of followers is the obvious goal. Anything else is gravy.”

  “I'm that transparent, huh?” I asked.

  Jackie sat her cup down and joined me on the grass. “No. You told us what we were doing, but not why we were doing it. You let everyone draw their own conclusions. Maybe the others think you're trying to kill the last of the Sons using marauders as your weapons, but I know better. You want to weaken 'em. Tire them out with running. Then you want to pounce and deliver the death blow yourself. You want to feel King die with your own hands.”

  “Well, I'd settle for putting one in his forehead from five hundred yards, but yeah. You've got the shape of it,” I agreed.

  “Good,” Jackie said. “That's what I like about you. You're a big picture guy.”

  Huh. That wasn't what I expected to hear. “Might need a bit of context.”

  “I mean, I know it's personal for you,” Jackie said. “I'm not a moron. Good leaders blame themselves
when people die, and your kid was almost killed by King's orders. You have reasons of your own, but you also understand what I think of as the Ender principle.”

  “You're seriously not using that book to describe me right now,” I said.

  Jackie laughed. “The shoe fits. You don't just want to end this fight. You want to end all the ones after it. Maybe that'll be your legacy. You kill the last of the Sons so thoroughly and publicly that no one wants to pick a fight with Haven for ten years.”

  I sighed. “Jo is entirely too damn talkative for her own good. I guess she's told you all my deep, dark secrets?”

  “Hey, man, lots of people like to be dressed up as a unicorn while wearing a ball gag,” Jackie said sympathetically. “Nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “Har fucking har,” I groaned.

  She sat up on her side, just far enough to have a sip of tea. “Yeah, she talked to us about it. You're our leader. We need to know what's going on with you. My suggestion is if you don't want people to worry about you or wonder if your state of mind will get them killed, don't let out any more deeply personal information. Take it or leave it.”

  “Nah,” I said. I didn't have to think about it very long. “I'd rather you guys know what to look for and call me on my shit. I'm not gonna go crazy or anything.”

  Jackie laughed hard at this. “Spoken like every white boy who went crazy. Don't worry, I'm just fucking with you.”

  In truth, I'd felt a lot more balanced since talking with Jo in the truck. Sometimes the best possible thing you can do is have someone force you to take a look at yourself. I was blessed with a group of friends who had no trouble doing it. I wasn't out of control, yet I'd come close to it.

  That wasn't something any of us could afford from here on out. Andrew King and his men were north of us, and there were countless bands of marauders just waiting for our hand to aim them at him like missiles. Eventually the tactic would pay off, and we would have to be ready.

  Once King and his men popped their heads up, we would be waiting to chop them off. Then I'd be able to finally go home and rest with my family.

  Well, with the rest of my family. Blood is only blood, after all. Family is at least as much choice as genetics. After years adrift, it was kind of amazing to find one again. I didn't intend on letting anyone stop me from going home to them again.

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  Joshua Guess, Author

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  Also by Joshua Guess

  The Fall (Completed Series)

  Victim Zero

  Dead Will Rise

  War of the Living

  Genesis Game

  Exodus in Black

  Revelation Day

  Beyond The Fall

  Relentless Sons

  Dead Nation

  The Faded Earth

  Deathwatch

  Song of the Badlands

  Men of Stone

  The Ghost Fleet

  Cascade Point

  Borderlander

  Breakspace

  Carter Ash

  The Saint

  The Next Chronicle

  Next

  Damage

  Cassidy Freeman

  Chosen

  Living With the Dead

  With Spring Comes The Fall

  The Bitter Seasons

  Year One (With Spring Comes The Fall, The Bitter Seasons, bonus material)

  The Hungry Land

  The Wild Country

  This New Disease

  American Recovery

  Ever After

  Black Sand

  Earthfall

  Ran

  Apocalyptica

  This Broken Veil

  Misc

  Beautiful (An Urban Fantasy)(Novel)

  Soldier Lost (Short Story)

  Dog Dreams In Color (Short Story)

  With James Cook

  The Passenger (Surviving The Dead)