A Place Called Hope (Z-Day Book 2)

by Daniel Humphreys

  Snipers in the field often wore specialized camouflage ghillie suits, covered with bits of foliage to make them blend into the territory. Anne’s cover took much the same approach, though instead of foliage she had covered herself in sun-faded scraps of newspaper, junk food bags, and cardboard. From the outside, the only thing that made the lumpy collection of trash on top of the electrical housing look out of place was the unblinking eye of the spotting scope.

  Anne took a sip of water and fiddled with the knobs on her scope. It was a poor replacement for the specialized CIA gear she’d once used. Over the years, everything she’d managed to haul back from her final mission to Ukraine had either been broken beyond repair or lost. The off-the-shelf civilian scope paled in comparison to what she’d once had, but it sufficed.

  An overgrown golf course blocked her direct line-of-sight to the mall, but she was able to look around the fringes. The glass doors leading inside the mall and the larger anchor stores were all shattered. “So much for that movie,” she muttered under her breath.

  That breath caught in her throat as a figure loped out of one of the shattered doors and paused in the light. She’d seen her share of stage two zulus in the last few months, and this one exemplified the type. Far from emaciated, this one looked almost healthy, though scarred-over bites puckered the mottled gray of its skin here and there. This zulu had died hard, but it had also endured any human survivors that might have put it down since. One leg of its tattered jeans ended at the knee, while the other was frayed up to the middle of its calf.

  And, worst of all—it clutched the shaft of a bone-tipped spear in one hand.

  “Shit,” Anne hissed.

  April 3, 2026

  Lockheed Skunkworks

  Z-Day + 3,089

  Without the entire mission team on site, there wasn’t much for McFarlane and his Marines to do other than wait. They rearranged cases of ammunition to serve as impromptu benches and stacked empty cases to serve as a radio table. They sat facing out, sipping water as they kept watch.

  McFarlane noticed Charlie’s intent study of the area to the west and commented, “She’ll be fine, Chuck.” The handle had spread quickly, and McFarlane even got the joke when he saw the lever-action rifle the man preferred.

  Charlie gave him a silent nod, and McFarlane turned back to look out beyond the fence. Thinking she’d be fine didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to hold watch, himself.

  The earpiece of his MBITR crackled to life. “Icarus One, this is Spork, how copy, over.” McFarlane couldn’t hide his grin. Stupid or not, she’d earned the handle, and you didn’t go around changing those.

  “Read you loud and clear, Spork, over.” The Marines around him heard his side of the exchange and perked up.

  “I’ve spotted at least one stage two on the north side of the mall, over.”

  “Is your position compromised?”

  “Secure here, but I’m concerned about the inbounds. These things are like cockroaches, Top. If I see one, there’s bound to be more.”

  “Hold one.” McFarlane drummed his fingers on his mag pouches. They hear those choppers before we’ve got our lines of defense solidified, we’re hosed. He glanced at the Hansen Brothers.

  “How long to get the DPV ready to roll?”

  The two glanced at one another, and Olsen took the lead. “Call it five minutes, Top. It’s gassed up, we need to clear off the lift sling and we’re gold.”

  McFarlane nodded. “Get to it. We’ll be down there shortly to open the gate up.”

  He switched channels on his radio. “Icarus Six, this is Icarus One.”

  The major was in the air. His voice was clear, but the background noise of the rotors and engines was still audible. They hadn’t explicitly discussed it, but McFarlane had half-expected the man to try to run the battle from the ship. Point in his favor, there.

  “Go ahead, Top.”

  “We’ve got a suspected infestation in the shopping mall, Major. I’d like to, ah, disturb the ant hill and get them distracted before you hit the LZ.”

  “Kick it. We’re fifteen minutes out yet.”

  McFarlane suppressed a smile. It was so nice to have superior officers who didn’t think they had to micromanage everything. “Aye-aye, sir. We’re kicking.”

  April 3, 2026

  Aboard the USS Jack Lucas

  Z-Day + 3,089

  Captain Wilhite was an astute judge of character. Lieutenant Commander Lynn Repko was a very angry woman.

  She could hardly be blamed, of course. Eight years ago, she’d been the DCAG, or second in command of the USS Gerald R Ford’s air wing. When the outbreak hit, she and her fellow Naval aviators had dropped every bit of ordnance the Ford had in an orgy of destruction. They took down bridges and generally cut a swathe through the swarms of infected, for all the good it did.

  Their F/A-18F Super Hornets might have been useful even without weapons as reconnaissance platforms, but when fuel and spares dwindled, the apex of mankind’s technological development had less worth than a paperweight.

  When they pushed her jet over the side, it felt like they were ripping her heart out.

  And while she was a senior officer in rank, she wasn’t qualified to captain a ship even if they’d had the vessels to spare. At an inch under five feet in her socks and barely a hundred pounds, she was also too small to shift to combat arms.

  The survival of the Lucas, along with her unique qualities, gave her a shot. The brass reassigned Repko, giving her command of the fleet of drones, the enlisted men and women who flew them, and the ship’s offensive capabilities.

  The span of control would have been out of the ordinary if not for the GPS system’s lack of reliability. The drones served as the eyes for the rail guns. Repko hadn’t flown in years, but at least she still got to blow things up.

  The logo that Senior Chief Petty Officer Carl Mackey—Lucas’ COB, or Chief of Boat—commissioned for the side of the guns eased the sting a bit. When Repko had flown, she’d done so wearing a helmet emblazoned with a Kalashnikov-toting Hello Kitty on each side. The same scaled-up logo now decorated the rear of each of Indestructible Jack’s rail gun turrets.

  “Weps, we have a call for fire,” the CIC communication officer called out. “Shopping mall west of operational area, north parking lot.”

  Repko glanced at the map overlay with indicators displaying the positioning of their drones in the air. “Mitchell, redirect your flight path west.”

  “Redirecting west, ma’am, aye.” The young man said. She moved behind him and studied the ground video on his secondary display. It wasn’t ‘flying,’ per se. The drones had built-in systems that maintained course and level depending on the direction the operators selected. That made it a bit better, she reflected. If the stations had looked like traditional cockpits, she didn’t know how she would have handled it.

  “There it is,” she breathed. Mitchell zoomed in a bit on the zulu. “Is it looking at the drone?”

  “Looks that way, ma’am. That’s a little…”

  “Off-putting, to be sure,” Repko agreed. “Mark it.” What is that, a Dillard’s? I always hated Dillard’s.

  “Target marked.”

  She turned to the rail gun control station. This was Ensign Bob “The Martian” Marvin’s domain, and he already had his system up. “Targeting data acquired, Lieutenant Commander. Adjusting for position, and…”

  Out on the bow, the turrets twisted as one, electric motors whirring into action. The barrels lifted in concert and pointed into the sky off to starboard. The clouds were beginning to burn off under the dawning sun, and it had the look of a beautiful day.

  In CIC, Repko rubbed her fingers together, waiting for Ensign Marvin’s confirmation.

  “Target locked, ma’am.”

  “Ten-round salvo, Ensign. Give me an earth-shattering kaboom.”

  The younger officer gave a savage grin and pressed the fire button.

  The foredeck was clear, but an automatic klaxon a
nd strobe activated to warn any personnel away. A few moments after Ensign Marvin initiated the command, the twin turrets spit fire and flame. The projectiles were magnetically-propelled, unlike a traditional Naval cannon. The sheer velocity of the five-inch shells heated them to the point that impurities in the air itself burst into flame until the passage of cooler air across them cooled them. The supersonic crack-crack-crack was audible for miles around. Each gun alternated fire, allowing a few moments for the barrels to cool before firing again. They’d maintained the capability to manufacture new rounds, but the barrels themselves were a different story.

  The overlapping pattern of shells arced across the coast and the national forest. Thunder boomed behind them. Their peak velocity was shy of Mach 7—about 5,000 miles per hour, or over three times the speed of the long-retired Concorde.

  The shopping mall was a bit over a hundred miles from the coast. 72 seconds after firing, the first shell hit.

  Chapter 29

  April 3, 2026

  Lockheed Skunkworks

  Z-Day + 3,089

  The first indication Guglik had of the incoming fire was a high-pitched whistle.

  The spear-carrier turned away from the circling drone, seeking out the source of the new noise. Anne bared her teeth in a savage, mirthless grin.

  “Eat it, sucker.”

  The shells hit the roof of the shopping mall and the parking lot to the north side in a rolling series of booms. The secondary explosions that immediately followed came about not as a result of internal explosives, but from the sudden conversion of the energy of velocity into heat. The shells burst into pieces, and high-velocity shrapnel tumbled through the department store, touching off more fires and wrecking structural members.

  Chunks of asphalt and other debris sprayed out from the impact zone, smashing dust-smeared car windows. Secondary fires blazed in the long, dry grass surrounding the parking lot. Guglik found herself leaning forward, eyes trying to pierce the smoke that wreathed the area.

  There. Movement, and lots of it. Debris shifted toward the rear of the store, where the rest of the mall still stood. As soon as there was a hole big enough, gray-skinned bodies boiled out of the ruined building like ants from a kicked-over hill.

  “Icarus One, the neighborhood is awake and pissed-off. Your turn.”

  April 3, 2026

  Lockheed Skunkworks

  Z-Day + 3,089

  McFarlane didn’t bother to respond to Agent Guglik. He barked an order to Charlie and Corporal Ropati, and the three men heaved.

  Before the outbreak, the reinforced gate had opened and closed on a long electric chain drive. The Marines had found it simple enough to pop the master link on the chain to free it from the motor-driven gear system. Opening it by hand was a bit more difficult—the sucker was heavy.

  Metal squealed, and McFarlane tried not to wince. There was no helping the noise. If anything, the explosions to the west and the symphony the Hansen brothers were about to conduct should confuse the issue.

  As soon as there was enough clearance, Olsen fired up the DPV’s engine and shot through the gap. Immediately, McFarlane and the other Marines reversed their direction of pull. The gate closed a bit easier than it had opened, but he still wasn’t comfortable with it.

  “Charlie, get the chain hooked back up. Corporal, you’re with me.”

  Most of the vehicles in the parking lot rested on flat tires, but a couple still looked to have enough air in them to roll. He’d made note of the models from the roof, then sent Charlie down to find keys. After so long, the gas was certainly bad, even if the batteries had any charge, but all they needed to do was get the steering wheels and transmissions unlocked. It was going to be a right pain in the ass to navigate with no power steering, but that’s why he’d brought Ropati.

  The Jeep keys Charlie had retrieved worked on the Cherokee, and he unlocked the ignition and put it in drive. “Push, Corporal,” he ordered. He cranked the wheel all the way around to the left and pushed while standing in the driver’s door. The SUV didn’t want to move at first, but after a few moments of straining, they got the wheels turning. He’d worried about damaging the gate, but the Jeep had been sitting so long that it was barely moving faster than walking pace.

  Charlie trotted over from the chain and joined Ropati at the rear. The speed increased a bit, and McFarlane called out for them to let off as they approached the gate. He tried the brake, but he wasn’t sure if it was that or the mushy tires that eventually brought it to a halt a few inches in front of the gate. “Give it a little more,” he ordered, and the three men strained again. This time, the bumper kissed the tubular steel of the gate. He nodded to himself in satisfaction. McFarlane threw the transmission back into park and set the emergency brake. “Let’s get that next one in line and get back up to the roof before the choppers get here.” It was going to suck for the Hansen Brothers if and when they had to get back inside, but there was nothing to do about that now. If anything, their rolling metal pillbox was the safest place out here.

  April 3, 2026

  Lockheed Skunkworks

  Z-Day + 3,089

  The area around the warehouse was wide open as far as PFC John Olsen could see, but he knew that was deceptive. On the flight in, he’d taken note of the roads outside the perimeter fences. Rush hour had ground to a permanent halt. If they wanted to move around, they needed to go off-road.

  Thankfully, the DPV was well-equipped for that, and they had eyes in the sky to keep them from getting into a situation they couldn’t get out of.

  “Lucas, Olsen,” he said into his headset. “Where am I going?”

  After a moment, the drone operator running the unit overhead came back. “Head northwest, Olsen. The gates there are open and there aren’t any cars in the way. From there, head west until you come to Sierra Highway, then head north. There’s plenty of room on the shoulder.”

  He glanced over at Hansen. “Hit the speakers when we get to the highway?”

  The other Marine gave him a thumbs-up. They’d been friends for so long that each could often tell what the other was thinking just by body language. Pranks aside, they kicked ass when it came time to take names. He supposed that they were lucky the brass hadn’t sent them to separate units.

  Maybe Top is right. It might be time to take things down a notch.

  They passed the runway north of the warehouse and cut into the grass. The stuff was dry and stunted—the blades barely brushed the bottom of the DPV’s chassis, so he had no problem seeing. It was still clear ahead, so he gave the buggy a bit more gas. Even with the armor, it was running lighter than usual, so he refrained from goosing the throttle. Loaded up it could hit sixty, and he had no desire to find out how much faster they could go. Zulu could only run so fast, after all. No need to get crazy.

  The grass ended, and he guided the DPV back onto the pavement. The gate stood ahead, and as promised the way was clear, though the wooden drop bar was down. He grinned at Hansen. “I’ve always wanted to do this.”

  The DPV’s tires barked on the asphalt as he gave it more gas, and the zulu catcher on front worked like a charm. The drop bar shattered into pieces, and they were out of the base proper. He didn’t even need a street sign to know they’d reached Sierra Highway. The line of cars headed south into town told him this was a major thoroughfare. He turned right and headed north. The soft shoulder was a bit bumpy, but nothing they hadn’t dealt with before. Hansen kept a good grip on the 240 Bravo, keeping an eye on the desert to the east.

  “Hit the music,” Olsen said, and the other man reached back and flipped the switch on the inverter they’d wired into the buggy’s electrical system. For a moment, the only sound was the Volkswagen burp of the engine, and then a cheery pop-music beat pounded out of the speakers.

  Olsen brought the DPV to a halt. He shouted over the music, “What the hell is that?”

  Hansen twisted around in his seat and grabbed the stereo receiver. “Dude, what color is your iPod? This one is o
range.”

  “Mine’s green. What song is that?”

  The other Marine squinted and read the text off the display. ““Mmmbop.” By—Hanson?” He clicked buttons. “It’s the only freaking song on here!”

  Olsen slammed a fist into the steering wheel. “Somebody’s pranking us. They swapped it.” Realization dawned, and he keyed his MBITR. “Del Arroz, you asshole!”

  April 3, 2026

  Over Las Padres National Forest

  Z-Day + 3,089

  Rather than stare out the window, Pete had his eyes closed and his chin tucked into his chest. Though he looked asleep, he was awake and thinking. He cataloged contingencies, what-ifs, and considerations, all while trying to ignore the bumps and shimmies as the Sea Hawk passed through the air. He was Recon; he wasn’t used to air assault. Not that an armored vehicle would have gotten far, even if they’d been able to deploy one off the Lucas.

  Needs must, Marine.

  His radio crackled in his ear. “Del Arroz, you asshole!”

  Pete raised his head and frowned at the Staff Sergeant. Del Arroz had curled over, laughing. When he noticed he’d garnered an officer’s attention, he blanched.

  “Just a little something to, umm, bolster morale, Major,” he explained smoothly. “Permission to reply?”

  Amused, Pete nodded. He’d heard the story about the flashbang and the books. It looked as though payback had come due.

  Del Arroz keyed his own MBITR. “Beg pardon, PFC. I thought you’d enjoy the musical stylings of the brothers Hanson. Any relation?”

  Before Olsen or Hansen could reply, McFarlane stepped in. “Keep the channel clear, Marines. What’s the issue, Olsen?”

  “Someone switched out our iPod, Top. Hansen had a playlist ready to roll, and now, it’s just—it’s all “Mmmbop,” Master Sergeant.”