by Joshua Guess
Tabby was skeptical but didn't argue the point.
We didn't make a show of seeing them, just in case anyone else was watching us. If we were going to pretend the team was unseen, letting the others participating in the exercise know we'd spotted the ones peppered into the swarm would change their reactions. They'd alter tactics.
Part of why I let it go on was because I wanted to see how this ended. The strike force had been given orders not to pursue this particular tactic for the simple fact that the compound used by the Relentless Sons was usually kept well clear of zombies. It simply wouldn't be an option in most circumstances.
Yet there was something to be said about taking advantage of an unexpected variable in the field. If the dead could show up here, it was possible they might do the same during the real thing.
“They might actually make it,” I observed.
Tabby let her binoculars slide back around to the swarm naturally. “Hmm. I don't think so. Look harder.”
Curious, I let my attention slip from the humans seeded among the crowd and onto the crowd itself. She had seen what I hadn't, focused as I was on the living among the dead. Zombies were starting to twitch as if they noticed something was off. “Shit. They can smell them.”
I was about to call for help on one of our radios when the entire team broke from the swarm all at once. Some kind of signal between them, a prearranged thing. Why, though? The zombies hadn't quite made them out as human. They might have been able to pull it off.
“Tag,” a voice said from the roof behind us. “You're it.”
I glanced over my shoulder to find the team lead for the 'enemy' group today, a man I knew very well. His name was Ron, and he could have been my brother if you were judging basic characteristics. He was about my height and build, white, with short hair and a few facial scars. Ron was one of two decoys who would serve to confuse the enemy about my location when we finally took the fight to the Sons.
“How the hell?” Tabby said, nearly pulling her gun before realizing Ron was only a pretend enemy.
I smiled. “You gave us an obvious target. Man, I feel stupid. That's first year tactics.”
Ron smiled and shrugged. “There's a reason misdirection is a classic. It works. Just waited for one of your sentries to get distracted and slipped in. Got lucky, I guess.”
We all knew that wasn't true. Luck played a part in any operation, but a skilled asset knew how to maximize his advantage. Getting this close was well beyond a passing grade.
“Did that faster than we expected,” Tabby noted. She waved a hand at me lazily. “Should we go ahead and have them do tomorrow's exercise?”
I smiled. “Oh, absolutely.”
Years in the service taught me a valuable lesson when it came to training people. Namely, you should sometimes reward cockiness with even harder work. It sounds purely like a dick move, but knocking someone on their ass just when they think the world is at their fingertips is a wonderful way to keep them humble. Overconfidence can kill whole empires. Little people like us don't stand a chance against it.
This time we gave them a moving target and a list of restrictions. The framing was simple: all the participants had to do was take the truck Tabby and I were in captive without killing anyone. They were not allowed to use projectile weapons of any kind to do it. No shooting out tires. The conditions of the exercise stated that anything as noisy as a gunshot would alert reinforcements.
I was interested to see how they'd approach the mission. Tabby drove us on a steady if relatively slow route back to Haven from Louisville. The trick wasn't just stopping us—that was only the end game. Going slow meant keeping engine noise low, and since the teams coming for us had no idea which roads we traveled on, the difficulty level was fairly high.
“This is dumb, you know that,” Tabby said as the dilapidated pavement rolled by beneath us. “We've been doing these simulations for a month now. They've been ready for a while. Some of them since before they came to Haven. The longer we wait, the more unfocused and restless they'll get.”
“Yeah, I know,” I replied with a long-suffering sigh. “I've made that point to Will and the council every time I've spoken with them over the last six weeks. I could understand not wanting us to fully commit all at once, but they're not even letting us start gathering information. I don't like trusting what a few long-range scouts can gather.”
She glanced at me sideways. “Didn't your friend Emily train them?”
“Sure, some of them,” I agreed. “It's not their training I'm worried about, not even the ones who started after Emily moved on to open the new school. It's that there aren't many we can dedicate to the Sons and the land they control, and they're under orders to remain at a distance. That's great for letting us know when those assholes send out long-range patrols like the one we took captive last week, and worthless for the sort of detailed intel we need to have a snowball's chance at breaking their backs.”
“I guess you told the council that, too,” Tabby said with a wry smile.
I shrugged. “I was more professional than that, but yeah. Basically exactly what I just told you. I don't get why they're being so timid. They know the stakes.”
Tabby's grip on the steering wheel tightened. No doubt Logan was on her mind. I couldn't begin to imagine the all-consuming fear she lived with. The constant worry that with the Sons thinking she was dead, there was no reason to keep the kid alive. We knew for a fact it wasn't standard practice for the group, however. Keeping children as hostages for their parents' good behavior was a delicate game to play, and the balance would instantly be thrown off by the casual murder of hostages with no further value. Our...discussion with the captives we'd taken the week before confirmed that theory as true. Kids were used as labor, something the Sons needed a lot of.
They'd stopped taking hostages after our initial conflict with them, but if the plans for expansion we'd heard about were true, they'd have to start again. Setting up a small kingdom required more hands than they currently had, and we fucked that up for them by warning everyone within five states to stay clear of their hunting grounds.
Part of playing the long game was creating pressure. You had to find ways to push the enemy the direction you wanted, into having the reactions you wanted. Warfare of any kind was about conditions, resources, and training. Managing all three maximized the chance of victory.
“What can we do to convince them?” Tabby asked, not for the first time. I had to give her the same answer as always.
“Nothing,” I said. “If we could get away with just leaving without orders and doing it anyway, I would. There's just no way. Will knows me well enough to understand it's a possibility. He'll have planned for it.”
I wasn't looking ahead, so I had little warning as Tabby slammed on the brakes. The seat belt dug into the scar tissue on the right side of my neck as I lurched forward in my seat. I saw her wide eyes begin to narrow in anger as I looked ahead and found a man standing in the middle of the road. He must have run from the tree line.
He was wearing a vest lined with explosives, a wired switch in his hand and a mad grin on his face. Ron, again.
I had just enough time to realize we were in a trap before it snapped shut on us. Armed men and women swarmed the truck from the woods, each wearing a small brick of explosive on their chest. They climbed the sides and began planting the bombs all over the place. Ron stayed where he was, far enough away that he could hit the switch before Tabby could even hope to run him down.
One of the faux enemies tapped the armored covering over the passenger window. “Drop the keys and exit slowly, or we all die here.”
I shook my head ruefully as Tabby complied. I hadn't seen this coming at all.
“Okay,” I said, impressed with the simple effectiveness of the plan. “I'll talk to Will again. You're right. It is stupid to keep on waiting.”
4
It took another four days to finally convince the council the time was right, and even then I had to expl
ain in excruciating detail that no, I wouldn't be wasting lives on some idiotic frontal assault. There were so many Relentless Sons that every one of the strike force wearing Iron Man armor wouldn't have been enough to keep them from murdering the shit out of us. This was going to be a different kind of fight, both by design and necessity.
It wouldn't be straightforward, and it wouldn't be fast. Facts everyone seemed to know even if they weren't anywhere close to the task force.
Kell was no different. “I can't believe you're heading out this quick after they gave you the go-ahead.”
We were sitting in the hangar, now being remodeled since a bunch of people no longer lived here. The makeshift rooms built in haphazard stacks were already gone, with new construction in its place. The new living quarters would be more logical and spacious in design, which would have been nice when I was living there. We sat at a small folding table on the main floor of the hangar about halfway between the skeletal frame of the new living space and the lab that took up the other half of the building. Kell took a healthy bite of whatever stew was kept on the fire to nosh on throughout the day.
“Really? You can't believe it? Because I've seen you run for your life at a moment's notice with your whole life's work of research stuffed in a go-bag,” I said, pushing the remains of my own stew around in the bowl a little.
Kell rolled his eyes, a surprisingly childish gesture for a man six and half feet tall with deep facial scarring and who had earned a pair of doctorates right around the time he could legally buy a beer. “That's different. You're mobilizing a big ass group of people, and god knows what you're about to get up to. You probably need whole vans just for gear, if I know you at all. Last time you went up against these assholes, you personally used up an entire assault team's worth of ammunition.”
“Hey, there were three of us,” I said defensively. “And technically Bobby was the one who fired the rocket launcher. Jo and I had nothing to do with that.”
“Point is,” Kell said around a mouthful of food, “logistically speaking you have a ton of shit to line up. I'm just surprised you're able to do it so fast.”
I shrugged. “No great mystery to it, man. We've been gnashing our teeth for this. We've been ready.”
Kell nodded, perhaps a little sadly. He was no stranger to a fight. For that matter, he was one of the few people I never wanted to get into a tussle with. He was a better than average hand to hand combatant if not close to my level, but he had a couple advantages most people didn't. Just about everyone left in the world had at some point defended a position or stepped up to protect the helpless and found their boiling point of blinding rage—what one of my instructors called survival rage—and lost themselves in it. It normally happens when anger blends with exhaustion and pain to break through to the ol' reptile brain.
Most people lose control and get sloppy when they fall into that mode. Kell doesn't. He uses it. Used to be the wife and baby daughter he lost at the start of the Fall that triggered the response. He'd think about them in combat and suddenly even his allies are shitting their pants in fear. Now he doesn't fight unless absolutely necessary, but I've seen him bring the fury. I think it's Emily, his new wife and mother of his child, he thinks of now.
The sadness wasn't because I was going to war. I think Kell hated the idea of not taking his place in it. Being exempt from combat unless enemies were at the walls ate at him, no matter how valuable he was to Haven.
“Well, we should get to your checkup, then,” Kell said, scraping out the remains of his stew. “You've put this off too long, you know.”
I grimaced. “You try having chunks of your skin cut out and see how often you visit the doctor.”
Kell wasn't technically a medical doctor, but he might as well have been. Medicine was one of the things taught exhaustively here so as not to lose the knowledge. He'd been an on and off student years back, but since we made peace with New America he jumped in with both feet.
Luckily, this wasn't a trip where I got an MRI. That was a limited resource since it drained our power reserves significantly. I only got one a month, and they were so damn boring that having Kell filet my arm and side was preferable.
“Looks good,” he said after a very long half hour. “The Chimera tissue growing through your old wounds and scars doesn't seem to be permanent. Just the layer running beneath your skin. I'll want to do an MRI when you get back to Haven just to make sure, but this is encouraging.”
I nodded and gave him a jaunty wink, but inside relief washed over me like the ocean at full tide. The damn plague had kept me alive—or brought me back, it was tough to say—a bunch of times. The thick tissue that held my wounds together long enough for my body to heal on its own had begun to look like a problem. About six weeks earlier those bands of material started to thin and reabsorb into my flesh, though since this was all new territory, no one knew if the trend would continue.
The worry was that I'd get hurt one time too many and the stuff would hinder my movement. Or worse, impinge on my brain functions if I hurt my head badly. Knowing that wasn't going to happen any time in the near future was a weight off my shoulders.
Now all I had to do was avoid getting shot to death and I was good to go.
When the moment finally came, I found myself unable to leave home for the first time in my adult life. I lost my mom young, and my dad encouraged me to join the service. I knew he'd be okay without me, and he was right up until he died. I had precious few close friends before the Fall, and most of them were in—sometimes on—the same boat as me. People in the Navy were used to packing up and shipping out. You get numb to the idea of even having a real home after long enough. Got to a point where I barely even kept an apartment.
Yet as I stood with Bobby and Hannah on the hard-packed dirt of the training yard, I couldn't leave. Despite the vast gap in their ages, both were children of the Fall. They understood the grim necessity of the work ahead. They knew the dangers, and both understood even if they didn't like the risk.
I'd already said my goodbyes, but found myself reaching for Hannah again. She complied happily, letting me sling her into my arms and wrap her tight in them.
I saw Bobby's face over her shoulder, the beginnings of thunderclouds forming on it. I raised an eyebrow slightly in curiosity, and he glanced pointedly at Hannah. Taking the hint, I put her down and kissed her cheeks before putting my hands on either side of her face.
“Sweetie, go say goodbye to Tabby and Jo,” I said gently.
The little girl gave me a long-suffering sigh. “You can just say you want to talk to Bobby alone, you know.” She ran off to do as she was asked.
When Bobby and I could speak freely, I stepped close to him. “What is it?”
“You have to go,” he said, betraying no sign of the worry I knew was brewing in him. “You keep putting it off while we're standing out here and she's gonna start thinking you're not coming back. That this is goodbye, not just a goodbye.”
Oh. “Yeah, that's not good.”
A sudden, impish smile broke out on his face. “A degree in psychology and you missed that. Good to know there are some things you're not amazing at.”
“Plenty,” I said. “Okay, I'll go. Just make sure she knows I'm coming back. I'm not gonna get myself killed if it's avoidable.”
“I'll steer away from using that exact phrase,” Bobby said dryly. “But I'll get the sentiment across. She knows this isn't going to be the kind of fight where guys get in real close and duke it out, so that helps.”
There was so much more I wanted to say, but I held the impulse in check. A fact of life most people come to realize at some point is that there's always one more thing to say. Another affirmation of love or respect or hope. Our lives are fleeting and so deeply intertwined with other people that few of us ever get to wrap up every dangling thread. There were no words I could say to Bobby to convey how much joy he brought into my life, or how much I respected him.
So I let my first goodbye with him stand.
This was more for Hannah than anything else—he and I made our peace with me leaving slowly over time, as most people do with big decisions.
I gave him a powerful hug and turned to leave.
“Gimme five,” I said to Hannah as I approached her and my team. She responded by running at me and jumping as high as she could manage, wildly swinging her arm upward to slap my palm.
“You guys should go,” Hannah said after she landed and let out a whoop. “You're the boss, right? You gotta go keep those guys in line.”
I laughed. “You've been listening to too much shop talk. Yeah, we're going. You be good. Listen to Bobby. Help him out with stuff, okay? He might not show it, but he's probably going to have a hard time with this. He wants to be out there watching my back.”
A shadow darted across her face, there and gone in a flash. The emotions behind it were predictable but complex. Fear at the idea of her other adoptive parent going off to war and leaving her alone—possibly forever. Guilt that Bobby wouldn't be there to keep me safe, and more guilt that she was relieved he was staying behind. Hannah was probably too young to parse it all out as quickly as I could, so I threw her a wink.
“I'm glad you two will be safe here together,” I said. “Bobby is a good guy to have in a fight. That's why I trained all these other people. We'll keep each other safe. While I'm gone, how about you go spend some time with Kell and Emily. I bet they could show you a few things.”
Hannah's eyes lit up with the same intense radiance she gave off when confronted with any pleasant surprise. She was too young for Emily's school, and only now regaining her full health after the gunshot to her chest. Bobby and I talked about it and decided a little early training was perfectly reasonable. If it kept her occupied and her mind of worrying over me, it could only be a good thing.
She nearly vibrated with excitement, her fear for me overwhelmed by the prospect of getting to be like one of the cool older kids she saw marching in formation around Haven. Part of me was amused, but deeper down I was also sad. This was what the world was, like it or not. Hannah's earliest memories were of zombies and marauders, her idols the men and women unafraid to dive into the fray and fight like gods.
