Reckoning in an Undead Age

by A. M. Geever

  “I like this guy,” Phineas said.

  Miranda said, “Forget it, kid.” Then to Alec, though she was grinning, “Don’t encourage his delusions.”

  The good cheer and high spirits continued, as did the teasing for a few more minutes. Even though the weapons cache had been a bust and most of the P-Land group was dead, Miranda was enjoying herself. They had a survivor, which was more than she’d expected, and another bolt-hole to add to the list. It was remote, so they’d probably never use it, but that was beside the point. It was beautiful on the mountain, green and lush, with huge pines and firs towering overhead, filled with birdsong and the scurry and chitter of animals. Most had lost their fear of humans, with only the older generation of longer-lived species being especially wary. None of the animals stuck around to investigate, but the curious stares were longer. One of the few good things about zombies was that they didn’t eat animals. Humans were the only food source—and infection vector—that interested them. Miranda knew there were still threats to the environment and wildlife—nuclear power plants that had melted down, and toxic chemical dumps without humans to maintain them—but on the whole, the nature had been the post-apocalyptic world’s only winner. She was glad there was at least one.

  They set a brisk pace, following the remnants of the road at first. It petered out after two miles, a washed-out section the initial chink in civilization’s foray into the wilderness. More sections had washed out and eroded, accelerating the cycle, until it was almost impossible to tell where the road had been. The semi-solitude of the hike was a double-edged sword. It was nice to not have many conversational demands; they didn’t talk much, mostly out of habit. Right now, though, Miranda didn’t like the space it gave her mind to wander to things she’d rather not think about—mostly Tadpole. How different things would be if she hadn’t lost him, and—

  Delilah barked, then crashed off into the underbrush.

  “Delilah!” Miranda shouted, quiet forgotten as she watched the pit bull shoot off like a rocket. “Leave it!”

  Delilah didn’t look back, nor break her stride, still barking like a maniac.

  “Goddammit. I’ll be right back, guys,” Miranda said, not bothering to wait for an answer.

  A second later, Phineas caught up with her. They picked up the pace. It wasn’t smart to go off on her own, even if she could repel zombies, though concern that Phineas’ recently healed broken leg might not be up to this steeplechase niggled at her. Within a minute, all thoughts but watching her footing were driven from her mind as she darted through the trees, jumped over fallen logs, and ducked under branches.

  “Good thing there are hardly any zombies up here,” Phineas grunted.

  “Tell me about it,” she said, a little breathless.

  They pressed on, following Delilah’s barking. Miranda looked ahead and thought she saw Delilah stop. The pit bull’s growls and agitated barking continued.

  “She’s just ahead,” Phineas panted. “I see her.”

  Delilah’s barking set birds in the trees above them into the air. Then a high-pitched, terror-filled squeal cut through the forest.

  “Delilah!” Miranda cried, anxiety skyrocketing.

  A burst of energy propelled her forward. She leaped over a downed log, then lurched to a halt in a small clearing. Delilah crashed through the underbrush, squealing and yipping. She zoomed by, in the direction they had just come, a caramel-brown blur of motion.

  Phineas caught up to her. “What the fuck was that? Where is she going?”

  Miranda scanned the clearing. “I don’t know—”

  Her words dried up, crumbling inside her mouth like dry autumn leaves. Fear flooded her body, and a cold sweat that had nothing to do with her sprint slicked her skin. A rumbling growl, followed by an agitated snarl, filled the clearing. Miranda’s feet rooted themselves to the ground.

  Phineas said, “Holy shit.”

  Miranda had seen her share of exotic animals, released from zoos by well-meaning zookeepers, when it became apparent that humanity was getting its ass handed to them. The cat roared from a boulder above them on the other side of the clearing, hackles raised along the orange and black fur of its spine. Its pink nose crinkled over peeled-back lips, revealing inches of long, sharp incisors. Its rounded ears were almost lost, flattened back against the massive head. The menace and death in the golden eyes wasn’t a threat, but a promise. Miranda felt as mesmerized as Mowgli, the boy from The Jungle Book raised by wolves. Only this time, the hypnotist wasn’t a snake using psychedelic eyes, but slashes of black covering the white and orange face of a tiger.

  A strangled gasp of terror scraped out of her mouth. The tiger’s proportions were massive: seven feet long from shoulder to haunch, paws like dinner plates, and easily three feet tall at its front shoulder. A long tail stretched behind it, twitching in agitation. Raised above them on the boulder, it looked like it could leap the twenty-foot clearing in a single bound.

  Miranda could hear the rasp of Phineas’ ragged breath alongside her own. The tiger roared again, the sound echoing through the forest and reverberating in the marrow of Miranda’s bones. Should she try to shoot it? She wasn’t sure she could draw fast enough, despite the distance between them. Tigers were fast; she knew that much from stories she’d heard. Her heart twinged at the idea of killing such a magnificent beast because her stupid-ass dog—who was going on a leash for the rest of her life—had been idiot enough to chase a predator that could eat her in one bite. But she didn’t want to be eaten today, and if it came down to her or the tiger, she wasn’t going down without a fight.

  “Do y-you…know…what…t-t-t-to do?” Phineas stuttered.

  Miranda shook her head infinitesimally, afraid the movement might increase the tiger’s ire. Then a tiny, fuzzy orange and black head popped up from behind the boulder near the tiger’s hind paws. A moment later, it was followed by another, and another, and still one more, until four little cubs blinked at them from the shadow of their mother’s deadly protection.

  “Fuck,” Miranda breathed.

  The tiger had cubs. Delilah had probably chased one of them until she ran afoul of mama tiger. Now, mama tiger was doing what any mother—no matter the species—does: protecting her babies. A rush of empathy for the mama tiger welled inside Miranda’s breast. She knew how it felt when your child was threatened. She knew how primal it was, how deep the instinct to protect, to sacrifice, felt. How you’d do anything—cut off a limb, leave your home, sell your soul—to keep your baby safe. She’d failed to protect her baby, been powerless to save him. But she knew how it felt to be ready to take on the world, even if it meant your death, if it would keep your child safe.

  “Shit,” Phineas whimpered.

  They had to do something to save themselves, but shooting that tiger and orphaning her cubs was out of the question—for Miranda, at least.

  She kept her voice low. “We’re gonna back up, okay? Real slow.”

  “What?” Phineas squeaked.

  “She doesn’t want us. She just wants her babies safe. We can’t outrun her, and if we turn tail, she’ll probably attack.”

  At least, that’s what Miranda thought the tiger would do. Dogs chased if you ran, and you weren’t supposed to run from mountain lions, but back away, fight if you had to. But this was no mountain lion. Resistance—apart from a firearm—would be futile.

  Miranda said, “Ready?”

  She saw Phineas’ tiny nod from the corner of her eye.

  “We’re going real slow, no sudden movements.” She took a shallow breath, her pounding heart roaring in her ears. She flinched when the tiger roared again. “Take your time to find your footing. Slow and easy. One, two, three.”

  She raised her foot, slowly, like thick honey on a cold morning. She put her foot behind her, touching it lightly on the ground before placing it down, toe to heel. Then her other foot, touch down lightly, toe to heel. Her eyes were riveted to the tiger. She kept track of Phineas in her peripheral vision. E
ven though its mouth was still contorted into a snarl, the tiger’s ears raised from its head. It snarled again, a menacing rumble in its throat, but it didn’t roar. One of the cubs climbed up on the boulder and walked under its mother. It roared at them, a tiny squeak, as if to say, ‘Don’t mess with my mom!’ It was so charming that despite her terror, the corners of Miranda’s mouth quirked in a smile.

  They continued backward at a snail’s pace. Now twenty feet from the clearing, Miranda could still see the tiger. Mama tiger still watched them retreat, but her body language had relaxed. She even licked the head of one of her cubs. After another ten feet of crawling retreat, Miranda heard the tiger chuff low in its throat. She lowered her massive head, gently butting it against the most playful of the cubs, then turned away. She stepped off the boulder onto higher ground, waiting only long enough to make sure her babies were following.

  “Holy shit,” Phineas said. “Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.”

  The tiger, followed by her tumbling, rassling cubs, tail now moving languidly behind, disappeared into the forest.

  “Holy shit,” Miranda said, echoing Phineas.

  “We’re still alive, right? I’m not dreaming this?”

  Miranda’s laugh was high and sounded a little unhinged. “No thanks to my fucking dog.”

  She looked over to Phineas. If his eyes got any wider, they’d take up his entire face.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” he said.

  As one, they turned, and crashed through the forest.

  “Is this the right way?” Miranda asked after a few minutes. “It doesn’t look right.”

  “It’s away from the tiger. That’s all I care about!”

  Miranda reached out and grabbed Phineas’ arm. “Wait,” she said, her chest heaving. She pulled him to a stop. “This isn’t the way we came.”

  Phineas stopped, though he looked like he didn’t want to. He turned in a circle, taking in their surroundings.

  “We got a little turned around,” he said. “As long as it’s away from the tiger…” His voice trailed, then he said, “What’s that?”

  He didn’t sound panic-stricken, so at least whatever he saw wasn’t another tiger. She followed the line of his pointing hand. Miranda squinted, then took a step forward. The hillside in front of them sloped up toward Mount Hood, which told her they had indeed gotten very turned around. A hundred feet to their right, the ground lowered, making a bowl-shaped depression. On the bowl’s far side, a boulder jutted out from the hillside, forming an overhang covering what looked like a cave, but the lines were all wrong. The boulder had lichen and moss growing on it, and some fallen branches and years of pine needles lay in drifts on it, but it was too straight.

  Phineas said, “Is that a door?”

  “Let’s check it out,” she said, unease prickling over the back of her neck.

  They walked closer, scanning their surroundings as they progressed toward the boulder. The closer they got, the more Miranda realized it wasn’t a boulder. It wasn’t even natural. On either side below it, slanting inward just a few degrees, were cast concrete supports that connected with the underside. It looked like a lintel.

  “That’s a door,” Phineas said, his voice low and a little awestruck.

  “Oh my God,” Miranda murmured.

  Phineas was right. Recessed fifteen feet into what Miranda had first mistaken for a cave, stood a blast door painted with splotches of green, brown, and gray. It was wide enough for a large vehicle, maybe even a truck, to drive through, and about twelve feet high. She heard a high-pitched buzz. Above the door, a tiny red light blinked, affixed to the top of a security camera. The camera swept left to right and then back again, the buzz only pausing at the apex of each sweep of direction. Had she not been looking at an unmarked door built into the side of a mountain, she’d have thought it was a mosquito.

  Phineas turned to her, thunderstruck, and said, “It’s a bunker.”

  An hour later, everyone was back at the blast door. Miranda and Phineas blazed their route once they established where east was, which had been easy because Mount Hood was east of Portland. They eventually stumbled onto a section of road they’d already traveled, so finding Rich and Alec had been pretty straightforward. Delilah had been with them, with a long cut, not quite a gash, on her left hind leg from her run-in with the tigers. It wasn’t very deep, and she was still alive, so it must have been one of the cubs she’d tangled with. Rich had already given her first aid and tied a length of paracord to her collar, so they’d been ready to go once the tiger adventure, and subsequent discovery, had been recounted.

  “I don’t think we’ll be able to hack this keypad,” Rich said. “Someone might be able to, but I don’t have the skills.”

  “Who built this?” Phineas wondered. “And why is it out here?”

  Alec said, “It doesn’t look military. Was there anything of strategic importance in Portland?”

  “Not that I know of,” Miranda said. “They didn’t usually put secret bases near metropolitan areas.”

  “That you know of,” Rich said.

  She looked up at the camera again. “Hello? Anyone there?”

  The camera continued its lazy sweep, left to right, right to left, every thirty minutes. Clearly, it was automated.

  “Maybe it was one of those prepper people,” Alec said. “You know, who stored supplies to ride out nuclear wars and such?”

  Miranda shrugged. If this was a prepper bunker, it was someone with a lot of money. How they’d built anything like this so close to Portland, and on Mount Hood, would have required serious connections, maybe even payoffs and bribes.

  Rich said, his voice thoughtful, “There were a lot of hate groups, white supremacists, and separatists in the northwest. Could one of those groups have built it?”

  Miranda said, “They’d have needed to be well-funded. This land wasn’t cheap.” She bit her lip, brow furrowing, as she looked around the forest. “It doesn’t seem like a very good location to bug out to, though. There’s a water source with the stream, but there’s nowhere to grow food out here without clearing the land.”

  “Wouldn’t the area have been crawling with zombies early on, being so close to the city?” Alec asked.

  Phineas nodded. “Getting here wouldn’t have been a sure thing. There are so many bridges in Portland. They all ended up being choke points.”

  “Unless you were rich enough to have a personal helicopter,” Miranda said.

  Rich said, “True. So, what do y’all want to do? There might be people in there, but if there are, they don’t seem in a hurry to answer the door. And it might be empty.”

  “We should—” Phineas began, but Miranda cut him off.

  “Let’s talk over there,” she said, motioning away from the blast door.

  “Why?” Phineas asked.

  But she was already walking away, followed by Alec and Rich. Delilah limped along beside her. When they clustered together again, she said to Phineas, “There are microphones and speakers over there. If there’s anyone there, we don’t want them knowing what we’re thinking, or to give away anything about LO.”

  “That is a whole new level of paranoia, Miranda,” Phineas said. “Even for you.”

  “With what happened recently, it’s not,” Rich countered.

  Phineas scowled at them for a moment, but didn’t argue further. “We should go home and tell Rocco,” he said. “Let him decide what to do. There are tigers out here.”

  “Aren’t you the least bit curious about what’s inside?” Alec asked the younger man. His face lit up as he speculated. “If it was someone’s bolt-hole, it might have food, especially if whoever built it isn’t here. Though that still leaves us needing to get inside.”

  “I was thinking about food, too. There could be a lot in a place like this,” Miranda said, looking to Rich. “We can’t ignore this, and I’m dying to know what’s inside. How about we camp out?”

  Phineas said, “There are tigers.” />
  Miranda waved his protest away. “She was just defending her cubs. She’s not interested in us, and we’re not going to chase after her like some dogs,” she said, staring at Delilah for a moment. “If we stretch, we have a week’s worth of rations. We’re far enough from the Nanitch Lodge that those zombies won’t get here right away, if they even make it this far. Rich and I can keep you two safe. Let’s stay a night or two… We’ll leave if we need to. Maybe if we camp out on their doorstep, they’ll let us in.”

  “I’m game,” Rich said. “There’s an overhang if it rains, and enough of us to have a good watch rotation.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Alec said, grinning.

  “But there are tigers,” Phineas moaned, almost whining.

  “Just a night or two,” Rich said to him, amusement suffusing his voice. “I won’t let any tigers eat ya. Zombies neither.”

  Phineas’ shoulders slumped in defeat. He turned and trudged back to the blast door, Rich following.

  “You don’t really think this will work, do you?” Alec asked Miranda. Despite his query, he looked excited, like they were now on a bona fide adventure.

  She shrugged, then grinned at him, his excitement infectious. “No idea. But a secret bunker is super cool.”

  “I do feel a wee bit guilty making poor Phineas stay. The tiger really shook him up.”

  Miranda snorted. “It was fucking terrifying. I knew they were big, but dude… It was massively big. Like jump the clearing in a single bound big. The cubs were super cute, but the mama was terrifying. I don’t even want to think about how much bigger the males are.” A shiver ran down her spine. Male tigers had to be as big as baby elephants. “Don’t worry about Phineas. He’ll be back to wooing me by morning.”

  “How do you think he’d react if you ever said yes?”

  Miranda blinked, surprised at the question. She’d never thought about it, because it didn’t mean anything. It was just her and Phineas’ thing.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “He’s a smart kid, though. He’d probably run with it.”