by Joshua Guess
God, I was tired. I needed sleep in the worst way. Instead I did all the things I was supposed to.
I set up the main office, unfolding the card table and placing the duffle right where it should be. I plugged the radio into the massive battery pack and made sure the folding solar panel would get enough sun to keep the thing topped off. I ate something. Couldn't tell you what.
Everything passed in a faded blur. A sense of horrible familiarity swept over me. This was just like my days back in the navy. How many times had I gone through this routine when moving from base to base and ship to ship? How many steel or concrete boxes had I thrown my gear in? One right after another for so much of my adult life. The work wasn't just first, it was only. I recalled with a worn-in sense of guilt the feeling of relief I'd had when my dad passed away. I loved him deeply. He was the best friend I ever had and the best father I could have asked for. Which was why among all the other emotions that came with news of his passing, I felt that strange breed of relief. Because I wouldn't have to feel guilty about not seeing him more often or calling on a regular basis. The work could come first. The next set of orders could hit me at any time with nothing holding me back.
It was all wrong now, though. A year ago I was a very different man. Now I had the last thing I ever expected: a family.
And that choice changed a lot for me. Not just in the obvious, practical ways. Not just because I had something to truly live for outside of myself. Not even just because surviving meant sparing Bobby and Hannah the grief of losing me. My perspective had shifted back toward the sort of considerations I'd left behind after lowering my dad's casket into the dirt.
I sat on the bed tucked away in what had been a manager's office—the advance team did their job well—and let my head rest in my hands.
For the first time in ten years at least, I stopped. I have no other way to describe it.
When you're like me, you put up layers of defenses. The shape of your mind alters, often deliberately, to protect you from the realities and practical consequences of the things you have to see and do. Witness enough death, betrayal, and failure and eventually you'll break. I think of it like sluice gates; you have to channel it all in just the right way so the experience doesn't erode you. Life sort of washes over you, and if you're not careful the more turbulent parts of the flow will undercut the banks where you think you're most solid.
All the defenses I'd carefully put up over the years had begun to crack and unravel. You can't be a parent—not a good one—or in a committed relationship and have the same hard-eyed staring match with death you're used to. The mental toolbox required to spit in the reaper's face does not translate well into domestic bliss.
So for a little while, I stopped. All at once.
I let the grief over losing Greg truly sink in. I berated myself for spending less time with him as a friend than I should have. Beat myself up for leaving his brother alone in the world. A good man was gone because we'd been sloppy somehow.
Mostly I just let myself cry over losing a friend. Right along with it were the dozen other conflicting emotions I knew were perfectly natural, but I didn't bother analyzing them. I just let them happen.
Getting it out of my system now was good for the soul, but also practical. I wanted a clear head for the near future.
Part Two
Hubris
13
The broken finger bothered me somewhat, but from the way my two new teammates babied me, you'd think the damn thing fell off.
“I need to talk to team seven in person,” I said to Jackie, the more reasonable of them, again. “I'm going.”
Jackie, who was of Samoan descent, blocked the doorway. The whole doorway. At six feet three inches tall and with the large frame inherent to many of her people, she was one of the most imposing women I'd ever seen. No, scratch that. One of the most imposing human beings. She was one of the best scouts to come out of the Haven training program, and in addition to strength easily matching my own, she was graceful as a damn cat. Which made sneaking away from her nearly impossible and moving past her with brute force laughable.
“Let me do a run between us and them,” she said in a completely reasonable tone, one which might be used on an unruly child. “You have no idea what's out there even if it is only half a mile.” She glanced at my hand and the thick dressing Jo had wrapped around the splinted finger. “You were shot a few days ago. I wouldn't want you getting hurt because you're not at your best.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Look, why don't you just go with me? Is that a compromise you'll live with?”
Something close to a cackle echoed off the wall as Marie, the other new member of Team Let's Give Mason a Bunch of Shit For No Fucking Reason, put in her considered opinion. “Will you listen to him, Jack? He thinks he's going anywhere at all without us. That's so cute.”
This is where I'm supposed to tell you how Marie is Jackie's opposite, small and lithe and subtle. Sorry, but no. In real life, partners aren't always dramatically themed. Marie was tall as well, if more lanky than Jackie, but muscled like a dedicated swimmer and with a face that proudly carried zombie scars straight across it. Will clearly sent me two guards rather than subordinates, people he knew could be just as stubborn as needed.
“Look, I need to go. They've been doing perimeter sweeps and—”
Jackie waved a hand at me. “Yeah, okay. We'll go. All three of us. The others can man the fort. You give us five minutes to get ready and we'll head out.”
Jo and Tabby watched the whole scene play out from one corner of the big central room, amused looks never leaving their faces. Smug. They were being smug at me.
“Some friends you are,” I mumbled loudly enough for everyone to hear as my wardens trotted off to put on their gear.
“They're right,” Tabby said. “You shouldn't be going out alone. That's just stupidly risky this close to the compound. What if one of their zombies wandered this way and caught you off guard?”
I gave her a look of mock indignation. “That's just hurtful.”
“No, I'm serious,” Tabby said with an earnest expression. “Anything could happen, Mason. You take a bad step and twist an ankle and suddenly you're not a killing machine anymore. You're a meal. You spent months polishing the volunteers in the strike force. You drilled into them to fight smart. Take your own damn advice and stop acting like a child.”
I put my hands up in surrender. “Okay, jeez. I was never going to go alone anyway; I just thought doing a full scout ahead of time was overkill. This way we don't risk being spotted twice. We're not giving anyone watching an idea of which direction we'll be going ahead of time.”
“Huh,” Jo said appreciatively. “That's...actually a good point. If Jackie and Marie are spotted while they scout, there might be an ambush waiting on the actual trip.”
It was basic stuff, but easy for people to forget in the heat of the moment. I opened my mouth to chide Jo for not seeing the point instantly, but Jackie walked back into the room. The new scout armor—well, one variety of it—was designed to be pulled on with a single motion. It was custom made in Haven, and the art had flourished over the years. The same armorers made my gear in the massive shop that churned out more than a dozen finished pieces a day at worst. Scouts needed to be able to suit up and strip off without messing around with buttons or buckles, so each component was layered over stretchy fabric.
But that was where the off-the-shelf components ended.
Jackie looked like a matte black crustacean minus the claws. Plates of armor covered the important bits, hard plastic shells backed with bulletproof linings and the usual strike plate on the chest. Every bit was coated in a layer of spray-on polymer that gave the stuff a slightly roughened texture and would snap the tip off a knife if anyone was stupid enough to try to stab her there.
“Damn, that's scary looking,” I admitted.
Jackie barely reacted, a slight nod to acknowledge that, yes, I'd accurately reported the truth, then darted over to grab her
go-bag and weapons. Unlike me, she and Marie wouldn't be loaded down with a ton of extra stuff. Scouts traveled light, and though the armor was heavy in aggregate and surely uncomfortable, neither woman had so far showed the slightest sign of being slowed down by it.
“You kids have fun,” Jo said as we left through the rear door.
No matter what anyone thought, I really was done looking for fights. I'd been on the way toward it for a while now, and Greg's death was a tipping point I didn't know was even coming. I'd be a good boy and play it safe. Not because anyone guilted me into it. Just because it was the right thing for me and the people in my life.
Rolanda Spence—who to Jo's annoyance went by Ro—was at the makeshift base for team seven just as I hoped. I was the only person with a permanent address, so to speak. Our few permanent bases didn't house a single team for more than a day or two at a time. The operatives in the field moved often, sometimes every day. They had to make do with using a small, reinforced van as a mobile work space. Or rather, Ro did. The rest of her team was far too busy to spend much time there.
“Mason,” she said as casually as if I were a neighbor running into her at the local hardware store. “What's up that you couldn't just radio me? Or did you just want some fresh air?”
I glanced at the small, hand-drawn map of the area Ro used as a visual aid to track her people, all of whom were scouts. The map was laminated and the routes and positions written in dry erase marker, easy enough to wipe away with her palm if bullets started flying. It was good operational security—never leave anything behind the enemy can use.
“No news on my end,” I assured her. “Actually it was your last report I wanted to talk to you about. The four-mile patrol reported a sighting of the tail end of a swarm moving away from here. Are you sure that's right?”
Ro nodded, pushing one stray, slim dreadlock behind an ear. She had the vaguest hint of a Jamaican accent, most of it rubbed away from thirty years living in the States. “That was Jeremy Scahill's unit. He's very good. They all are, but he stands out. Not that I think the worst scout in Haven would mistake a herd of zombies moving away from a hot zone.”
I nodded. “Yeah, that's what I figured. Weird, though, isn't it? Zombies are drawn to conflict. They know bodies will be left behind.”
“Jeremy reported to me that there was New Breed leading that pack. At least a dozen that he could see,” she said. “They're probably biding their time until the shooting starts. It's not like the competition is going to thin out on its own.”
That was the damned truth. Our lock down of the Sons' compound was complete but loose. The protective cordon of zombies around its exterior hadn't gone away. True, they weren't feeding the dead now that they couldn't send out hunting parties, but that didn't cause the zombies to leave. Instead, most of them simply hunkered down and went into the weird hibernation they used to conserve energy. The Chimera in their systems made it as easy as falling asleep. This was actually more of a problem for us than if they'd remained an active mass of moaning, chattering threats. At least then we might have been able to sneak someone in close, hiding in the crowd. As it was now, any approach by our people would trigger them to wake and act as an alarm for the Sons.
“Just...look, I know your people are good,” I said, and Ro frowned. Everyone hates it when their boss tells them shit they already know, and I really didn't want to be that guy. “Something about it just feels off to me, okay? Have them keep a watchful eye for any more swarms. I can't put a finger on what's bugging me. I'd like everyone on high alert.”
Ro spun her stool and crossed her arms, leaning back against the thin wall welded in place next to her workstation. “Mason, I know you're under a lot of pressure here, but we're running a patrol five miles in every direction from this place. Which is full of people who'll kill us if they realize they outnumber us by probably fifteen to one. We made 'em cautious enough to choose to withdraw into their compound, but not scared enough to not risk coming out shooting if they start to feel so trapped we give them no other option. So you tell me: do you think my people have enough pressure on them to keep their eyes sharp?”
I put my hands up defensively. “You're right. Zombies going a direction we don't expect isn't a reason to panic. I know the scouts are doing their jobs well. I never meant to imply they weren't. I'm sure they'll report any strange patterns in zombie movements as soon as they see them.”
Here was the conundrum: simply by the fact that I mentioned it, Ro was almost certain to pass along the words to her people. Even if it was only to bitch about how the boss didn't seem to have faith in them—though I doubted she would frame it that way because all my team leads understood the necessity of a united front. Confidence and trust were crucial.
No, Ro would bring it up because on an instinctive level, scouts were basically walking, talking weird shit detectors. Their training was shaped around the concept of noticing everything and fitting it all into a working model of what fit logically in a given situation and what didn't. Noting the odd stuff meant possibly giving advance warning to the people they gathered information for.
Ro might not like me telling her what to look for, but she'd respect it. That was just how she operated. How all of them operated, actually. I'd been highly selective when the volunteers for the strike force rolled in from the other Union communities.
“Let me know if you hear anything,” I said. It was lame and unneeded. Ro was thorough. Of course she'd give me every detail.
But that was what my job was, now. When this started last year, I was a one-man army by necessity. We had no clue a huge organization of assholes moved into the area. Maintaining the balance right now meant hemming the Sons in without pushing them toward anything desperate.
Why? What was the point of a stalemate, you ask? Well, there wouldn't be one if that was the end goal. You can't cram together a few thousand people and expect that situation to carry on in stasis for very long. The balance we had to find was in making the Sons want to be behind their walls without making them feel like they had to be there. In the place of their leader, whose name had changed from person to person under interrogation at first but which I was now sure I knew, I'd have done the same. Withdraw to your stronghold and plan your next move. They could afford it, given the massive stock of food supplies available.
The whole of phase one was aimed toward this goal. Make them think we actually wanted a fight by provoking them with attacks on their supply lines. Instead of giving us what we wanted, they pulled back—which was my plan all along. People can give me shit about psychology all they want, but it works.
We needed the Sons to vacate the outside world because phase two wasn't all about keeping them in check. It was about wanting them to think that was our goal so we could do something else entirely.
14
“You're sure they aren't running scouts outside their walls?” asked the scout standing next to her motorcycle atop a hill three miles from the compound.
She wasn't just any scout. Kate was an old—and apparently former—friend of Kell, as well as Will Price's partner. Having the governor of Haven at your back lent your opinions a lot of weight, but I wasn't particularly worried she'd go home and talk shit about us. Kate was cold in a way that didn't have a thing to do with cruelty. I didn't know her well, most of my knowledge being secondhand from Kell, but from what I heard she was almost sociopathic in her practicality.
If that was true, I hadn't seen much sign of it. She was part of the phase two advance guard. We had to keep the Sons penned up long enough to allow reinforcements to set up far enough out of sight that the Sons wouldn't feel the need to bust out of the cage we'd put them in and give us a fight. By the time they realized the noose was tightening, we wanted to have the land around the compound altered enough to favor us, as well as enough guns on the ground to make a fight of it.
And it all came down to whether Kate thought we were doing a good enough job.
“None that we've seen,” I said. �
�I'm sure they have hidden exits somewhere, but if they do they're not using them. That tower gives them a good vantage point.”
I gestured roughly in the direction of the compound, though it was too far away to be seen. Over the last two weeks, the people inside had assembled a makeshift observation post on top of their main building. It stood another fifty or sixty feet up with a crow's nest at the apex. The thing was thrown together with pre-cut lumber they must have hauled in from a defunct home improvement superstore. It was actually kind of impressive work.
“Out here, we've been left alone,” I continued. “We've been careful to work from the outside in. At least on the big, obvious stuff.”
Kate acknowledged this with a nod. All around us, team eleven worked tirelessly to sculpt the land. It was less impressive than I make it sound, but also highly effective for our goals. The first part of this job was to block off roads with trees. Not hard since the Sons had already done much of that work when they created the warren of choked highways and state roads spread all around the compound. The first time I went up against them, their camps spread as far as fifty miles away. After my team and I managed to break one of those camp and kill everyone in it, they must have realized they were spread too thin and withdrew.
When phase one began, the camps were all within five miles. Now, obviously, those were abandoned as well. Most of the local roads were already closed off when we started, but my people finished the work. Now not one single straight shot out of the Sons territory remained. There were ways one could drive into and out of the area, but you had to know the exact routes. The labyrinth of twists and turns we'd made of the surface streets would cause any fleeing enemies to run into a dead end unless they got luckier than any human beings in history.
And that was just out here at a distance. We were slowly moving inward, dropping trees to increase the complexity of the net almost hourly. There was a limit to how close we could get and still do this safely since the Sons would be able to hear us work eventually, but we were far from reaching it.
