A Place Called Hope (Z-Day Book 2)

by Daniel Humphreys

  Sandy frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Your stunt gave me an idea. We need some way to generate noise, to draw them in. Sort of a three-card monte move. Draw the attention to one place, while you’re going to head somewhere else.” Pat tapped his fingers on the arms of his chair. “Firecrackers, or something?”

  “I’ve got a better idea,” Sandy drew out after a moment of consideration, “but I’ll need to tinker around a little bit before I know if it will work or not.” He thought back to the junk he’d discarded into the car back at the marina out of the suitcase. “And I might have to run back to the marina.”

  “In the morning,” Pat said. “Sun’s fixing to go down, and we go dark with it. One less thing for the zombies to home in on.”

  Infected, Sandy thought, but he didn’t correct the other man. Whatever the term they used, it didn’t change the fact of their existence. “So, we draw them out of town, then haul ass back. The pharmacy in town?”

  “Right on the main drag.”

  There were any number of problems with the plan. It all hinged on usable stuff actually being there to exploit. If another group had moved through, anything of use was liable to be gone from the former roadblock. Scavengers could have ransacked the pharmacy—though Sandy guessed that blood pressure medication would be low on their priority list.

  But if it did work, it had the potential to improve their chances of survival. Part of him wanted to back out, to start heading back north, but another part of him insisted that this was his place to stand. These people needed him. But just as much, he needed them. If he was honest with himself he had to recognize the fact that he’d only survived this long due to a long string of good luck. At some point, he was going to stop rolling sevens, and it sure would be nice to have friends at his back when it happened. “I’m in.”

  Pat sounded relieved. “You’re okay with it?”

  Sandy shrugged. “Hey, let’s consider it a down payment on a safe place to sleep, eh?” He reviewed the plan and shook his head slowly. “We’ll take it one step at a time and see how it goes.”

  Chapter 10

  March 12, 2026

  Forward Operating Base Hope—Southwestern Indiana

  Z-Day + 3,067

  He’d overslept.

  Charlie cracked an eye open and tried to decide where the ray of light slashing across his face was coming from. His bed was in the corner of the cabin that stayed dark no matter the time of the day, so—oh.

  He wasn’t in his cabin.

  Charlie propped himself up on one elbow and looked around. The interior design was pretty much identical to his own—they’d built them all from the same plans—but the decor was different. Less utilitarian and more comfortable.

  He rubbed his face and started to remember the origin of his incipient headache. Dinner with Twigs and Frannie had turned into a walk, which had progressed into dropping Twigs off for a sleepover with Miles and his family. His friend had grinned like a fool when he’d seen the two adults together. Then Charlie had dug a bottle of wine out of his stash and…

  Charlie groaned as he slid out from under the covers and propped his elbows on his knees. Drinking had led to talk, which he still found difficult even with his voice back. Alcohol had lubricated his tongue, though and he remembered reminiscing on the past. For the first time since Z-Day, he’d talked about his wife, Sheila, and his son, Cooper. Frannie had never met them, but he’d known her husband Cole. Despite that, she’d had a few stories that he’d never heard.

  They’d found solace together in their shared loss. She’d cried, he’d cried, and they’d fallen asleep holding each other.

  “Well, that’s embarrassing,” he muttered. Glancing around, he saw his boots. He snagged them and put them on. At least he still had his clothes on. He wouldn’t have to fumble around Frannie and Twigs’ stuff trying to find them. As he straightened the covers, he noted the edge of a scrap of paper sticking out from under one of the pillows. He unfolded it. Despite his headache and the sour taste in his mouth, the looping swirls of Frannie’s writing made him smile.

  Not a bad first date. I’m out of practice. We should keep at it.

  He folded the note and laid it on the wooden crate Frannie used for a nightstand. “Hell, I’m out of practice, too,” he admitted, then laughed to himself.

  Charlie took a moment to tidy the cabin. He didn’t know if it would be up to par, but he was too particular with his own things to leave someone else’s place a wreck.

  Not that they’d been moving furniture or anything, but the empty wine bottle and the plastic cup they’d been using were still laying on the floor between two chairs, and a few other things struck him as being in disarray.

  After a few moments, he realized that he was trying to delay the inevitable. He had to dredge through his memories for a bit to remember the term, but it finally came to him.

  The ‘walk of shame.’

  Charlie grinned and shook his head. He’d lived his self-imposed monk’s lifestyle for so long that any activity outside of that frame of reference seemed foreign. Let the rest of the community think what they wanted. He and Frannie knew the truth.

  Between his marriage and the intervening time after Z-Day, it had been twenty years since his last actual date. Back then, he might have regarded an ending like last night’s as just shy of a full-on disaster. But this had been different. The emotional communion the two of them shared had been important, if not for mutual peace of mind, but to lance wounds that had been long-ignored. There was no time in the Wild for counseling and therapy. You rubbed dirt on it and kept fighting, or you died.

  Too many people in the community had given up after witnessing the Z-Day’s horrors. For a time, Charlie had been one of them—mentally broken adults cared for as children, periodically surfacing from their mental retreats in hopes that normalcy had returned.

  Charlie had come out of his near-catatonia, but that didn’t mean he’d dealt with the loss of his family. Last night was a step in the right direction, and the familiar tightness in his throat when he thought of his wife and son were a bit less sharp than usual.

  The ‘date’ with Frannie, the risk he’d taken in trying to rescue Tasha and Dylan, were all baby steps on the road to recovery. His life had changed on Z-Day, but it was starting to look like he could at least make the best of that.

  Head held high, Charlie opened the door and stepped outside.

  March 12, 2026

  Forward Operating Base Hope—Southwestern Indiana

  Z-Day + 3,067

  Outside the trailer, Pete turned to McFarlane. “Master Sergeant, get your men and their gear assembled at the convoy. I want to get back to Perry before it’s too dark. Chief, help the good Doctor get packed up in a timely manner.”

  McFarlane gave him a nod. “Aye, sir, packing up to roll out.”

  Foraker grinned. “Why do I get the feeling you’re trying to keep me busy, Major?”

  Pete resisted his urge to smirk at the jibe and said, “I’m going to go track down Charlie, but I figure things might go better if it’s just the two of us.” He glanced at his watch. “Ninety minutes and we’re rolling, gentlemen.” The two enlisted men nodded and moved away to start herding Marines and gear.

  As Pete turned to head toward the older portion of the community, he realized with a grimace that it was going to be one long walk to the opposite gate.

  A low purr to the side turned his head, and he couldn’t help but smirk as Miles and Larry pulled a four-seater Gator utility vehicle out from behind the trailer. His nephew winked. “Need a ride?”

  Shaking his head, Pete slid into the backseat and fingered the grip bars. The loss of his legs had made the actual operation of the farm a hired-hand endeavor, but he’d still kept on top of things as much as he could before everything went to hell in a handbasket. The last time he'd seen it, he'd parked it in a corner of his garage to gather dust. “Where’d you get the gas?”

  Larry looked back over his s
houlder while Miles drove. “From the sound of it, most of your refinery output is diesel and avgas, but they’re still making a little here and there. Miles is just mad there’s not enough for him to get his Jeep up and going.”

  Pete’s nephew shrugged. “Jeep would be overkill. The camp’s big now, but it’s not that big.”

  Pete smirked. “I’m going to have to get you boys a bubble light to put on top.” The two in front glanced at each other. He’d known both of them long enough to catch the intent behind the gaze. “All right, spit it out,” Pete grumbled. “I’m on the clock, here.”

  Miles met his eyes in the mirror. “Vir and I have been tossing an idea around with a few others. I know your eventual plan is to have multiple secure bases around whatever communities you find, but that’s going to take time. And after last week I’m not sure that we have time to waste.”

  “What’s the idea?”

  “Rather than keep all our eggs in one basket, we’ve been thinking of splitting off. We’ve got a couple of dozen people on board. Even Tish, believe it or not. There’s a place up on Lake Erie — Kelleys Island. Before Z-Day it had a population of less than 400. But if we can scout it, and clear it — it already had farms, and the folks that lived there had practice at being off-grid. Depending on what kind of shape things are in, we may be able to snap-kick a working setup without having to worry about walls. It’s getting too late in the year to get a crop in, but we’ve got till fall to get ready for next season, at least.”

  Pete understood and even approved of the thought in one aspect, but it troubled him in another. This was his home, and his last blood relatives wanted to abandon it.

  Of course, it’s not like they’d be moving away. If anything, they’d be closer. So long as the brass kept him stationed at Camp Perry, of course. Which was not a long-term bet. “You in on this, Gunny?”

  Larry shrugged. “I know they just made me Mayor and all, but it’s been a little tense. Norma showed her hind end during the siege, but plenty of people weren’t around to see it. There’s been some static, calls for an election. Besides, where my kids go, I go.”

  “Trina’s been better, weirdly enough. Tish has been having some nightmares,” Miles confided, “but if I’m being honest this is all me. Well, me and Vir. He and Aasha took a trip to KI a few years back. We were shooting the breeze, spit-balling possibilities as far as security, and he brought it up.” Miles shuddered despite the warmth of the day. “I’m sleeping better than I have in a long time, but that fence gives me the willies. They beefed it up and raised it, but I can’t shake the feeling that it isn’t enough.”

  “It makes sense,” Pete admitted. “Guessing you’d need logistical help on our end?”

  “Yeah, at first. There was already farming, so we should have a preexisting supply of equipment, but who knows what condition it’s in?” Miles shrugged. They were almost to the original gates of the settlement. They were half-closed, to allow for the free flow of pedestrians, Pete assumed, but it was still an uncomfortable image. “Weapons and manpower we can handle. Seed is iffy. But that’s a next year problem.”

  “Seeds shouldn’t be an issue,” Pete mused. “Don’t spread it around, but the Marines invaded Norway before they crossed the Atlantic.”

  “Norway?”

  “There was some kind of government doomsday bunker full of seed samples there. Isolated enough that they didn’t have too many zoms to deal with. Guess they did pick up a few survivors who decided the Caribbean sounded more appealing than a polar outpost.”

  “Can’t say as I blame them. So, that’s a big help. I’m not sure how much of the ground they farmed before, but we could hit upwards of a thousand acres or more, depending on how aggressive we get in clearing ground. That’s an assessment to make after the island is secure, though.”

  “Right. Well, I’m sold, kid. It makes sense. I’ll put a bug in the general’s ear and see what happens. It would surprise me if they didn’t go for it, we lucked out and got a sharp group of brass to run the show.”

  “Rest of them were too dumb to make it, I’d wager,” Larry grunted.

  Pete raised an eyebrow at him. “And there is that.”

  Through the old gate, the territory was more familiar to Pete, though there’d been changes made in the short time since he’d left. The engineers had buried the twice-killed bodies of last week’s attackers in a mass grave in the southeast hay field. The tracks of the bulldozers still stood out in sharp relief on the stripped soil. Pete supposed he should consider himself lucky that the odor of burnt flesh no longer permeated the air.

  In days past, they would have hauled the bodies out beyond the wall for disposal, for fears of secondary infection. The one advantage they’d garnered from the military research of the plague was the knowledge that the nanotechnology was vulnerable to heat. Normal temperature extremes wouldn’t phase them, but a nice bonfire worked quite well enough.

  He scratched his chin and thought as Miles went off-road and headed toward Charlie’s cabin. The plan the general staff had put together called for the use of MOABs, but that type of weapon was primarily concussive.

  Thermobarics or napalm might be an even better option. And depending on what we can use or build, they might not be quite as heavy. Pete pulled a notebook out of one of his cargo pockets and jotted a quick note. This bore further thought. They’d have to be judicious as to where they used them, lest they create an out of control wildfire, but fire had been man’s primary means of survival for tens of thousands of years. It seemed somehow right that it might be their path to victory now, on the edge of extinction.

  Miles pulled to a stop and turned around in his seat. With a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, he said, “Here you go, Unc. That’ll be about tree-fiddy.”

  Pete held back his urge to laugh and gave Miles a hard-eyed squint. “Put it on my tab.” He climbed out, slapping Larry on the shoulder as he went.

  “Catch you later, Major,” the other man commented. Miles looped the cart around and pulled away. Pete frowned at the grins on each man’s face. “Feel like I’m missing the joke,” he muttered under his breath. He stepped up to Charlie’s door and knocked.

  After waiting for a moment with no response, he thought he might know what the joke was. He knocked again, but his effort wasn’t as vigorous this time. Charlie wasn’t home.

  “Smart asses.” Pete turned and surveyed the surrounding area of the community. People moved about with purpose here and there, but none of them was Charlie. For a moment, he half-wondered if his friend hadn’t taken off, but before he could complete that train of thought, someone called out.

  “Pete?”

  He turned to see Charlie heading his way. For a moment, he didn’t recognize the incongruity of the connection of the voice and his friend, but then it hit him. Of course. He healed. Pete shuddered despite himself. He knew there was no danger, that Charlie had been testing immune ever since the outbreak, but the fact that the nanoplague was having some effect on him was disconcerting, to say the least.

  He pushed his fears aside and stepped up to greet his friend. A handshake didn’t feel like enough, so he reached out and grabbed one shoulder in a half-hug. “Good to see you. Hell, good to hear your voice.”

  Charlie gave him a sheepish grin. “I’m still getting used to it myself,” he admitted. “You here to drag me away?”

  Pete sighed. “Gee, thanks, pal.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Can we talk inside?”

  Charlie looked puzzled, but shrugged. “Sure.”

  As the other man opened the door to let him in, Pete assessed the condition of his clothing and realized that Charlie looked more rumpled than was the norm. “So, hey—what were you up to last night?”

  Charlie closed the door and tried to keep his face blank. “Nothing in particular. Why?”

  Pete grinned. “You dog. Who’s the lucky lady?”

  His friend frowned. “It’s not like that.”

  “Oh. Well, I guess we nev
er talked about—”

  With an annoyed snort, Charlie interjected, “I spent the night at Frannie’s.”

  Pete raised an eyebrow, then decided he’d pushed the issue far enough. “All right. I’ll make it short. I need a scout.”

  Charlie doffed his shirt and began to wipe his torso down with a wet rag he kept on top of the cabin’s chest of drawers. “Right. And this has nothing to do with the confrontation I had with the doctor?”

  “Well, a wise man once said, sometimes when you have two problems they end up solving each other for you. So let me make you an offer.” Charlie cocked his head, then shrugged. Pete continued, “I’m dragging the doc back by his ear. He’s coming with us on the mission. En route to our final destination, you give him an opportunity to do one bone marrow test. It’s noninvasive from what I understand. We go on the mission, kick ass, come home, and you go about your business.”

  “Is this a carrot-stick thing?”

  Pete sighed. “No, Charlie, it’s a ‘please do me a favor’ thing. Well, two favors.”

  “Let’s say I agree to the marrow test. What’s the scouting mission?” Charlie drew a fresh shirt from the dresser and pulled it on.

  “You’ll love it, we’re hitting the beach.”

  Charlie gave him an annoyed look.

  “There’s some gear we need to get to in California. Before I send in two choppers full of Marines I want to get boots on the ground and eyes on target.” He shrugged. “You know your way around areas that are still overrun, and you don’t have to worry about an inadvertent infection.”

  “Where in California, Pete?”

  “Palmdale.”

  Charlie had to think about that for a second. “Shit, that’s north of Los Angeles, right?” He laughed. “Being immune doesn’t matter if I’m torn apart by a thousand shamblers.” He thought it over for a second, then amended, “Ten thousand. A hundred.”

  “It’s not like it’s downtown, man. There are freaking mountains between the two. Yeah, it’s not like what you’re used to, but it shouldn’t be that bad.” I hope. “And you’ll have plenty of support, Charlie. If things get too hot, we can extract you by chopper.”