River of Night

by John Ringo

  “We don’t have that long,” Risky’s voice sounded behind them. Both men jumped.

  “God-damnit, don’t do that!” Kaplan said. Then he almost fumbled his first attempt to reholster the pistol that had appeared in his hand.

  “We don’t have anything like that long,” Risky said, ignoring his comment and the gun. “And it’s not so much about what’s in cabin as what’s outside.”

  “I’m listening,” Tom said flatly. After the initial surprise, he hadn’t reacted to her quiet approach.

  Although he acknowledged Oldryskya’s role in saving their collective skins, he’d elected to keep her at an arm’s distance despite…everything. She’d run out on Tom’s team before, prior to the Fall. Later she’d fought her way free of a kidnapping as the Cosa Nova mob devolved into fratricide. A happy side benefit was that she’d been able to return their stolen escape boat, but she was still an outsider whose first allegiance wasn’t clear.

  “The reason that schoolteacher is losing mind is because she doesn’t see the point,” Risky said, choosing her words carefully. She was conversational in English, despite it being a third language for her, or fourth if one counted “Jersey mobster” as its own dialect. “If everyone’s dead, if it’s really all gone, then why stay inside, why bother to live? Simple survival not enough.”

  “Simple survival looks pretty good, considering the alternative,” Tom retorted. “We wait long enough for the cooler temps to drive most of the infected indoors, then we get to the refuge, take stock and, well…”

  There was a brief silence.

  “That’s the point,” Kaplan said. Rhetoric and allegory wasn’t his strong suit, but he was trying. “You done good, Boss. Your plans, your vision got us out of a really bad spot. We’re here, we’re fed and safe, mostly. Out of sixty million people between Boston and Atlanta, how many can say that? Damn few. But being alive lets you think about what comes next. And what comes next is…well, suppose we get to the refuge. Then what?”

  “We do our jobs,” Tom said insistently, raising both hands in the air. “The mission is get to the Site, assess, protect and rebuild. That’s what we do. Mind you, just getting there is enough to occupy us. Travel at day or night? Scavenge along the way? Do we bring trade goods? Where will survivors have clustered? Do we dare approach anyone? There are plenty of problems to solve, Kap.”

  “Biggest problem of all you don’t mention,” Risky wasn’t going to be derailed. “Everyone needs a reason to live. Before, maybe it was money, or having family or making art. Those reasons don’t matter anymore, not if everything is gone. Is all gone, yes?”

  The conditions of the Fall had been clearly visible during their escape. The failing TV and radio broadcasts were plain. After a week or two, and by general agreement, the survivors had agreed to avoid talking about their families or what lay outside.

  “Yeah,” Tom said. He rolled one shoulder, stretching it as much to relieve his stress as loosen the an old injury. Then he looked towards the sluggish estuary that was slowly oozing by, ferrying the occasional bloated corpse to the Atlantic. “I think that it might be. Oh, there’ll be small groups of survivors in lots of places. But organized government? I doubt that there’s anything more than isolated military units, submarines for example. Probably military command centers like Cheyenne Mountain. Maybe even some science outposts, like McMurdo maybe.”

  “Nah,” Kaplan replied, shaking his head. “Last transmission on the ten-meter from the Beeb said that infections were confirmed there.”

  McMurdo Station, far away in the Antarctic, had been one of the last scientific redoubts to go dark. Many hopes had been pinned on isolated groups of scientists who tried to produce a vaccine or a cure, laboring until the last lights were extinguished. How the disease had infiltrated a research station during the heart of Antarctic winter was just another mystery that would have to remain unsolved until the immediate challenge of survival was overcome.

  “Ten meters?” asked Risky.

  “A radio band, good for long distance,” Tom answered. “In the right conditions, you can communicate thousands of miles with good gear and a school-taught comms guy. Something else we planned for but don’t have. We have a couple of transceivers, but…”

  All three fell silent. Listening to the number of active radio stations dwindle had been hard. A few times they had caught a last sign off as journalists or amateurs bid an empty channel goodbye. And good luck.

  A long ululating howl sounded across the water.

  “Hunter,” Kap said dryly. “Best we get out of sight.”

  Their little house was tucked into trees well back from the creek. Tom had foreseen the need for waystations for any bank stragglers on the way to the long-term refuges. He had borrowed from his military training to find Selected Areas For Escape, or SAFEs. These were locations where the survivors could evade detection more easily, though they weren’t truly safe. Their current house in coastal Virginia was completely shielded from the nearest road and the drive was blocked by heavy brush and ditches. During the first few weeks, car engines and a few boats had been audible. Then, occasional screams.

  Tom had kept everyone inside until lately, and even now he sharply limited outside excursions. The competition for the external guard duty that rotated among the reliable members of their party was fierce.

  The last month had been quiet, except for the hunt. Warm weather, mosquitoes and hunger kept the infected in motion. Like schools of sharks, the bands would be composed of relatively healthy zombies of the same approximate size. They seemed to prey on livestock, humans, pets, and occasionally each other.

  “There’s got to be a better reason, Tom,” Risky said, motioning towards the dark water that oozed past. “Just being alive and leaving the world to that, it isn’t enough to keep us together.”

  “I’ll think about it,” replied Tom.

  “We’ll all think about it,” added Kaplan.

  * * *

  Sergeant “Worf” Copley was in a strange place. Oh, the SAFE wasn’t bad as accommodations went. The actual immediate tactical environment wasn’t too unusual in his experience.

  Unconventional chain of command complete with admin pogues in charge? Yep.

  Strap-hangers and civilians underfoot. Meh. You ever seen an embedded CNN camera crew?

  Bitched up supply situation. It happens.

  Living in cramped communal quarters for an extended period. The Army called that an ordinary Tuesday.

  It was how he and his sole remaining subordinate had arrived here that was some next level bullshit. You could call it a long, strange trip, but that would be a charming understatement.

  The experienced National Guard staff sergeant had been out of communication with higher since the harum-scarum withdrawal from Washington Square Park, shooting and meleeing infected all the way back to Bank of the Americas, where they found a no-shit for-real command post on Wall Street. Wall-fucking-Street! Then, marooned out of contact with higher, he’d directly negotiated a deal for vaccine with the civilian in charge—an action so far above his pay grade that he still had a nosebleed. Then he’d helped run a noncombatant evacuation from a twenty-million-dollar Park Avenue property, while keeping Specialist “I mean—it’s a Faberge egg and it’s just sitting there, Sergeant!” Astroga from helping herself to the semi-abandoned baubles in the mansions. Then he got into a running gun fight with cops and the FBI.

  The F-fucking-B-fucking-I. Who, as it turned out, had fucking Stinger anti-air missiles, because of course they did!

  Worf hadn’t had the time to worry about shooting cops, but at least the moral quandary was clear. They’d been making a very sincere effort to shoot Mrs. Copley’s little boy before he could return the favor. On that basis alone he just fought to keep himself and his little team alive. Finally, before he had time to process that fracas, there’d been another, rather one sided firefight at the docks, where Astroga had gotten shot. Her armor kept the rounds out, thank god.

 
It was nearly as much combat time as he had from two OIF deployments, combined. And about as satisfying.

  About like a visit to the latrine on day six of an all MRE spreadable cheese diet—a lot of strain for very little output.

  The Russian girl, Khabayeva, had saved all their asses, though. Then off they had gone, hey diddle diddle on a long ass boat trip. During the all night over-water transit Copley had been too damn tired to think it all through. Once he had made certain that Astroga was as comfortable as she could be with her bruised ribs, he had deployed his woobie and chimped down for nearly the entire boat ride.

  Now they were in the bank’s hideout.

  At first, just the relief of being out of New York City was enough. Worf and the little band of bank survivors had lain up within a relatively short distance of a major naval base and listened to the VHF harbor traffic as ship after ship punched out, the fleet surging seaward as though it could outrun the land-based plague. Enough transmissions made it clear that the virus was already at sea.

  He tried to imagine how he would fight zombies in a big steel squid bin. Pity those bastards.

  Over in the corner, the tied-up schoolteacher had quieted. It was a classic case of freakout, no H7D3 virus required.

  Astroga was chatting quietly with one of the schoolkids, and was kibbitzing their cards. Despite her unrecalcitrant pseudo-E4 attitude, Cathe Astroga had a surprisingly helpful manner with the young teens. Decent kids and their good attitudes had made it easy to like them.

  Worf walked over to the wall and reapplied himself to the map pinned there. Even after a good long stare, none of their routes away from the SAFE looked particularly good.

  “Whatcha doing?” Astroga said from his elbow, materializing suddenly. She called it one of her super powers.

  “You know, you’re gonna do that to some new NCO one day, and their gonna lose their shit,” he answered, entirely too used to her little ways. “But, what I’m doing is looking at routes west. Sooner or later we have to drive out of here and it’s going to be a mess.”

  “Big highway right there,” the young private said, helpfully stabbing a finger at the blue line representing I-64. “Should take us west, no?”

  “No,” Copley replied seriously. “Think, Astro. Hampton Roads used to have more than a million and a half people and the only highway out is a two-lane interstate. It’s going to be a parking lot of stopped cars. What we need are side roads. What we gotta do is stay away from anything but really small towns.”

  He tapped the indigo push pin almost three hundred miles west.

  “Figure a week plus to get to Site Blue, maybe more,” he said musingly, while considering another local road that was marked in a dashed line. “Maybe a lot more.”

  “Hey, Worf?” Astroga asked in a surprisingly small voice. “You figure that Gunner is gonna be there waiting, right?”

  The last thing they had seen of Sergeant “Gunner” Randall, the third member of their New York city “presence” patrol, he’d been boarding one of the last helos scheduled to leave from the top floor of the bank. One bird had been shot down by an FBI Stinger. The resulting fireball had crashed back onto the roof, destroying a second aircraft still spooling up on the pad. They’d hoped that Gunner was in the one that got away.

  They had to believe it.

  “Hundred percent,” Copley said, forcing a smile. “He made it, sure. He and that bank intel guy Rune are probably living the life of Riley in a camp full of high bred banker chicks, right?”

  Astroga carefully did not sniff.

  “Yeah, the lucky bastard.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Site Blue (Bank Recovery Site Number Four)

  Blue Ridge Mountains, Western Virginia

  Paul was walking the perimeter.

  His daily routine varied between leading patrols outside the wire, performing nighttime light discipline checks or pulling maintenance on their limited supply of equipment. There were other members of the ad hoc security team, even a few whose experience approached his, that could have performed the chore. Nonetheless, he always found time to stroll watchfully along the internal fenceline. It helped him maintain a sense of proportion. As tough as it was, things could have been worse.

  He paused as the screams of a hunting pack carried across the valley. After the sound died he resumed his route.

  Even though Site Blue, named for the Blue Ridge Mountains, had not been completed by the time of the Fall, it had begun with some clear advantages. Those advantages had been critical to preserving the smaller than expected group that sheltered there.

  Site Blue was situated on the finger of a ridge overlooking a small lake, fed by a tributary of the Tennessee River. The land was anything but flat. The southern end of the Cumberland Valley was dominated by lines of steep, parallel ridges that were separated by cultivated land and small towns. Situated near the top of one such ridge, the site benefited from the elevation. Foraging zombies were disinclined to climb it and other survivors couldn’t see their camp unless they were right on top of it.

  Paul paused his walk and rubbed his smooth scalp. For the moment his supply of disposables was holding out, but eventually he was going to have to figure out how to use a straight razor or let his hair grow back.

  He looked over his shoulder, to where the camp blended into the hilltop. The earthen berm that was arranged like a horseshoe around the main facility dated to the origin of the camp as an old Scout lodge. As a result, there was a natural obstacle that prevented direct line of sight into the center of the camp. This reduced the chance of a light leak being detected from outside their hideaway at night.

  Beyond the berm was a new narrow link-expandable fence. More expensive than chain-link, it was harder to climb. The bank prep team had placed it inside a treeline a few hundred yards from the berm. It constituted their first layer of barrier defense.

  In the camp itself, a few buildings had been updated, though none were especially large or modern. The white painted communal eating hall had started life as the Scouts’ cafeteria, so it included enough seating for three times their current number. The workshop was a converted barn that still had a packed dirt floor. The administration building had been a sales office, intended to sell the camp off in lots after the Scout facility closed for good. A long, low prefabricated building served as their warehouse, stuffed with more than a hundred pallets of FEMA meals, the civilian version of the military’s reviled Meals Ready to Eat or MRE. It had taken less than a week for the survivors to rehash every MRE joke in existence.

  A small collection of solar panels generated intermittent power sufficient to keep a bank of deep cycle marine batteries mostly charged. With those, limited electric lighting was permitted inside spaces with blackout curtains. Rows of tan Containerized Housing Units, or CHUs, were neatly arranged along gravel lanes just broad enough to accommodate a vehicle. BotA had found a literal shipload and acquired them for less than disposal cost during the American withdrawal as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wound down.

  His old boss, Tom Smith, had sworn that they’d find a use for them, eventually. And so they had.

  The full complement of bank staff had never been assigned since Blue was the least prepared of Bank of the Americas’ refuges. The formal management structure that Smith had planned was never stood up. Since few of the senior bankers who were to be evacuated to Blue had arrived, the onsite survivors had created an ad hoc council to provide a way to organize the camp, apportioning work, distributing supplies and enforcing the rules that kept them all safe. As the senior-most surviving bank security representative, Paul attended both the informal daily morning breakfast coordination meeting as well as the bigger weekly Sunday get together.

  He glanced back towards the camp, but it was still safely dark.

  Zombies tracked light sources. So did other survivors. Both were dangerous.

  Careful to avoid silhouetting himself against the skyline, Paul approached a short rise downhill from the fence and look
ed out, across the valley.

  The dying light drew long shadows across his fields of view. No electric lights were visible anywhere. Humans instinctively feared the night. The infected, unless baited by artificial light or prey activity, tended to quiet down and stay near shelter during night hours. It was daylight that brought the greatest threat from zombies.

  He sighed as he turned his steps back into the camp. The weekly meeting was in a few minutes. Paul had insisted on deferring major decisions until more bank staff showed up and, because of his role at the bank, he had gotten his way. After several weeks, however, he had begun considering the possibility that neither Smith nor anyone else was going to show.

  Paul had spent all his time putting out fires, adjudicating minor disagreements, checking on critical supplies while trying to find things for the other survivors to do in order to keep them busy.

  There were too many little crises every day. He’d been forced to ask one of the non-bank refugees for assistance. He knew entirely too much about Joanna Kohn to be comfortable around her. Formerly the director of NYC Office of Emergency Management, she’d been one quarter of the informal but powerful council that had coordinated efforts between the cops, Wall Street, the gangs and the City government. Apart from the locals in the camp, she’d built the next largest group of organized staff and had sufficient stature to make their joint decisions stick.

  Despite her calculating nature, Paul had to acknowledge that it was her warning about the cops losing their minds that had let as many bank staff escape on what became the last day of New York.

  The first day of the Fall.