Ground Zero

by Jessica Meigs

  Remy looked around thoughtfully, taking stock of their surroundings. She spotted a dark blue minivan ahead of them, and an idea sprang to mind. “Why don’t we find a car or two to camp in for the night?”

  Ethan waved a hand toward a couple of the vehicles around them. “Be my guest, babe. I personally am not game on sleeping in a car that probably has or had a dead body in it.”

  Remy cringed at his words and wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Yeah, good point,” she conceded. She edged closer to the others, gripping her knife’s hilt tighter.

  “Hey, guys?” Gray called out. Their eyes turned to him, surprised that he’d spoken, but he didn’t return their looks. “Any of you know how to drive a motorcycle?”

  “I do,” Brandt said. Cade and Remy both nodded, and even Ethan looked as though his curiosity was piqued.

  “I drove one when I was younger,” he said. “And I taught Cade. I used one last year when I went back to Memphis, remember? Why do you ask, anyway?”

  Gray didn’t answer; he simply pointed off the right side of the road. Remy’s eyes followed his finger, and a wide grin spread across her face at the sight of the orange and black Harley-Davidson sign looming over the highway.

  “Oh fuck, Harleys,” Remy said almost dreamily. “I fucking love me some Harleys. I dated a guy once who had one. My mom hated it when I rode on it. She was so insistent that I’d get creamed out of the highway and she’d have to identify a box of paste as my remains.”

  “I don’t know how to drive one, but I bet those of us who don’t know how can hitch rides on the back of the bikes driven by whoever does,” Gray continued. He still didn’t bother to turn around.

  “It’s called riding pillion,” Cade grumbled. “And you’re assuming the bikes are even still there.”

  Remy snapped out of her motorcycle daydream and raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

  “We aren’t the only survivors roaming around the southeast,” Cade explained. “There are others, and there might even be others in this neighborhood. Considering how we’ve broken into shit ourselves, there’s no way other people haven’t been doing it, too.”

  “Well, I’m going to think positively and hope there’s at least three bikes in there,” Remy said.

  Cade shrugged and shouldered her rifle. “Just preparing for the worst-case scenario,” she said mildly.

  “We’ll have to worry about gas, too,” Brandt pointed out to Remy. “As long as we can get enough together to go the twenty miles from here to Atlanta, we’ll be fine. But most dealerships don’t keep much gas in their vehicles as a rule, in case of theft. It’ll take some time to get the fuel together.”

  Remy let out a slow breath, sheathed her bolo knife, and clapped her hands together gamely. “Okay, so let’s get this show on the road and go get us some motorcycles.”

  * * *

  The six made good time crossing the highway and picking their way through the overgrown underbrush and trash and debris littering the side of the road. Twenty minutes later, they stood outside the Harley-Davidson dealership Gray had spotted from the highway. Cade studied the building and the merchandise visible through the showroom windows. She didn’t like what she saw.

  “This place is practically untouched,” Cade said in concern, squinting at the windows. “There’s not even a crack in the damned glass.”

  “Yeah, that is a little…odd,” Ethan agreed. He moved to stand closer to her, framing his face with his hands to get a better look inside. “Everything else has been looted to hell and back. Why not this one?”

  “You think it could be dangerous?” Remy asked. She studied the building, her hand tightening around the hilt of her bolo knife. Cade, for her part, hefted her rifle higher. Just in case.

  “Anything in this state is dangerous now,” Brandt spoke up.

  “Fuck that. Anything in this world is dangerous,” Cade corrected, frowning at the building again. Its normalcy made it seem more ominous. In the post-Michaluk reality, anything normal should always be viewed as suspect. Especially anything overly normal. “What do you think we should do, Brandt?”

  “We need those bikes,” Brandt said. He tilted his head back to look at the sky, and Cade was momentarily distracted by the way his hair fell back from his face. “And we’re losing the light. We’ll need to hurry.” He turned his eyes back to the rest of them, and she shook free from her slight daze and focused in on his face. “Gray, you and Avi don’t know how to drive the motorcycles, so you two guard us. We’re going in to get the bikes.”

  “And how am I supposed to guard you when all I have is this?” Avi asked tiredly. She held up her machete, wiggling it with a quick twist of her wrist to emphasize her point.

  Cade rolled her eyes and dug into her bag. She withdrew the last of her spare handguns and tossed it to Avi. The blond woman put her hands out for the gun and nearly dropped it, barely wrapping her hands around the weapon; she missed the spare magazine of bullets, though, and it fell to the dirt with a crunch. “If any of us gets killed because you decide to be incompetent, or if you freeze again, I will kill you myself,” she warned Avi. “That’s a promise, not a threat. And I fucking hope you can shoot a gun at least a little better than you can catch one.”

  “I won’t miss,” Avi promised, her nervousness turning to sincerity as Cade watched her.

  “You better not,” she repeated. She shouldered her rifle once more and looked around them again. She studied the building closely before swatting Brandt’s elbow to get his attention. “Come on, Brandt. You’ve got my back on this, right?”

  “Of course,” he said. “I can’t believe you even have to ask.”

  “Hey, you can’t fault me for double-checking,” she said. She winked at him before breaking away from the others and heading toward the front doors. She heard footsteps behind her and saw Remy and Ethan following her and Brandt, their own weapons in their hands and their expressions guarded as they scanned their surroundings. “How should we do this? Two in and two at the doors?” she asked, pausing and putting a hand on one of the doors in question.

  “Might be faster if we all go in and get what we came for,” Brandt suggested. He nudged her aside and slipped the screwdriver out of the side pocket of her bag before leaning down and starting to work at the locked door. It took longer than she’d have liked for him to pop the lock. He pushed the door open with a dramatic wave of his hand. “After you, my dear,” he said, giving Cade a cheeky grin, though she couldn’t help noticing that the grin didn’t reach his eyes. Leave it to Brandt to try to keep their spirits up with jokes, though she was sure that none of them was truly feeling the humor. Not after Nikola and Theo.

  Cade gave Brandt a single nod and lifted her rifle to her shoulder. She switched the safety off and rested her finger lightly against the trigger, taking a slow step inside and sweeping her rifle across the entire showroom with a slow half-turn. She lifted her hand off the rifle and motioned for Brandt to follow her in. “It looks clear,” she said softly.

  She moved farther into the showroom, her boots squeaking on the shiny tiles. She made another sweep of the room as Brandt entered the dealership behind her. Remy and Ethan were just behind him, moving in a manner similar to Cade. Everything was still clear to her satisfaction, so she made straight for the nearest motorcycle that she thought she could handle.

  It was a gorgeous black Sportster, similar to the motorcycle Ethan had taught her to drive several years before, and she smoothed her hand over its leather seat. It brought back several fond memories as she looked it over. “I think I can deal with this one,” she said, just loud enough for the others to hear.

  Cade looked to Ethan; he’d already slid onto a similar model. “I’ve got one, too,” he announced. “Where would they keep the keys for these?”

  “I bet they’re in this safe,” Remy said from the other side of the room, her voice echoing off the low ceiling and the tall windows. She stood in front of a small, flat safe bolted to the wall, a numbere
d keypad set into its face. She frowned as she stared at it. “How the fuck do we get into it?” she asked in frustration.

  Brandt moved swiftly to her and nudged her gently aside to examine the safe, giving it a short nod. “I know this one,” he said confidently. Cade raised an eyebrow as he reached out and pressed 1-5-9-# on the keypad. It let out a soft beep for each number, and as he pressed the pound symbol, the safe emitted three short beeps. Brandt turned the knob below the keypad, and the safe’s door opened easily.

  Cade’s jaw dropped. “How in the hell did you do that?” she asked incredulously.

  “It’s a Honeywell safe,” Brandt explained. “The initial code is always one-five-nine-pound. A surprisingly large number of people never change the code. I figured it was a safe bet it’d get us inside.” He shrugged modestly and rifled through the contents of the safe. “Also, the print on those three numbers’ buttons was starting to wear off, which kind of backed up my assumption.” The inside of the safe was full of small numbered boxes, and Cade hurried to the bikes they’d chosen to check the numbered tags on them. As she called the numbers out to Brandt, the tall man shook the keys from the boxes and palmed them. He tossed a set to Cade once he had all three in hand.

  Cade caught the keys with a grin and straddled the bike smoothly. She slid the key into the ignition and adjusted herself on the seat. Before she could turn the key to start the engine and check the fuel levels, however, Remy let out a shout of surprise that brought the rest of them around. She pointed to something behind them, and Cade twisted around even farther. She swore loudly at the sight of a group of infected lurching toward them. Some moved quicker than others, as was typical of the groups they’d faced over the past year. They had every appearance of being the prior office staff of the building they were in. All were, naturally, intent on reaching the survivors’ positions.

  “Fuck! Brandt! Let’s go!” Cade shouted. She wrenched the key, and the motorcycle roared to life between her thighs. She could hear the others do the same over the sound of her own bike’s engine.

  “How the hell do we get out of here?” Ethan yelled. Cade heard his gun fire, and she looked in time to see one of the infected drop next to his bike. The man was too close to Ethan for her comfort, and she slid her eyes rapidly across the room, looking for options. It didn’t take her long to settle on one.

  “Leave this shit to me,” she said confidently. She lifted her rifle and rested it against her shoulder, aiming at the large glass windows in front of them. She fired three bullets into the glass; it cracked but didn’t shatter like she’d thought it would. “Fuck!” she snarled.

  “It’s okay! Get moving!” Brandt yelled. He leaped onto a motorcycle of his own, even as Remy fired two shots into the approaching infected. He revved the engine, gripping the handlebars tightly and eyeing the window in front of him. Cade’s eyes widened as she realized his intention. He didn’t even know how to drive a bike!

  “Brandt! No!” she yelled. Her cry was swallowed by the sound of Brandt gunning the motorcycle’s engine. The back tire squealed on the slick floor, seeking purchase as he rammed the bike forward. He sped toward the window, and at the last second, he flung himself from the bike and rolled across the floor. The motorcycle’s front tire came into contact with the window, and the glass exploded outward as the bike slammed through it and crashed to the pavement outside. Glass fell like rain as Brandt rolled up onto one knee, his gun already out and aimed at a well-dressed infected woman scrambling toward him. Ethan and Remy revved their engines, but unimpeded by the glass, they sped out through the newly created exit in the building’s showcase windows.

  Cade fired at the infected, trying to slow their progress as Brandt gained his feet and sprinted to her. Most of her shots missed, but a few struck home, slicing through limbs and shoulders and torsos. She revved the engine of her own bike and gritted her teeth. “Get the fuck on,” she ordered him, raising her voice over the engine. He gave her a mock salute before climbing onto the bike behind her. She suddenly felt the urge to slap him across the back of the head as she raced into the parking lot, skidding on broken glass and gravel.

  Gray and Avi climbed aboard Remy and Ethan’s motorcycles as Cade and Brandt caught up to the others in the parking lot. “You guys ready?” she asked, slowing down and stopping beside them. They nodded in answer, Remy’s nod a determined one and Ethan’s barely perceptible. Gray didn’t respond at all; he just stared straight ahead and held tightly to Remy’s waist. Cade wondered if he was going into shock over the day’s traumatic events. She wouldn’t have blamed him if he was; anybody with half a heart would have fallen apart at the horrific loss of someone so close to them.

  She straightened her shoulders and looked back at Brandt; he stared at the motorcycle dealership, his gun still in hand, one arm looped firmly around her waist. A couple of the infected remained at the edge of the window, negotiating the broken glass littering the frame. Brandt raised his gun and took aim, firing two shots. Both of the figures in the window dropped to the ground. She was impressed. “Now that you’re done acting like some big tough actions tar, which way are we supposed to go?”

  Brandt snorted and pointed in the direction he wanted her to drive. She nodded and turned the bike. “We’re going to have to move fast,” he called in her ear. “The noise of the bikes is going to attract a lot of unwanted attention. We’ve got to ditch them before we get into Atlanta.”

  Cade nodded and checked his grip on her waist. Then she signaled to the others, and the tiny convoy of three motorcycles headed down the highway toward the most dangerous city in America.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The group’s arrival in Atlanta wasn’t met with fanfare or celebration or even the instantaneous death Brandt had come to expect. Instead, they walked into the city unimpeded for nearly half an hour before they stopped in the middle of an intersection. He took a careful look around them, attempting to negotiate his view of the street around the cars and trucks and vans parked all around him, even as he tried his best to guard the others’ backs. He frowned deeply and squinted at the restaurants and shops surrounding them, trying to get his bearings.

  Brandt and the others had driven the motorcycles as far into Atlanta as they dared. Now they stood at the Y created by Highway 8 and Hollywood Road. He held his hand out to Ethan. “Let me see the map,” he said, wiggling his fingers impatiently.

  Ethan quickly handed the crumpled paper over, and Brandt scanned the surface. “We’re right here,” he announced, pointing to the map. The wind ruffled the paper, bending it over itself, and he sighed and flattened it out again. The others leaned over his shoulders to look for themselves. “We’re not too far from Luckie Street. Maybe five miles. If we hurry, we can make it in an hour and a half, maybe two, assuming we don’t run into any trouble. Which I can almost guarantee you we will.” He looked to them each in turn and added, “It’s just a matter of what kind of trouble we run into.”

  “Any trouble is bad trouble,” Ethan added solemnly. Brandt looked at him. The older man stared down the road, squinting into the distance over the tops of the vehicles. He could almost guess Ethan’s thoughts. Their intended destination might have been only five miles away, but that five miles could easily mean the difference between blessed salvation and bloody death. He suddenly wished they’d kept the motorcycles, if only to get to the Tabernacle that much faster, but the noise would have brought the entire city down on them quicker than anything else.

  “What about the people?” Avi spoke up, her voice pitched low. “I thought you were going to help me rescue survivors.”

  Brandt shook his head. “We lost two people just trying to get here. I want to help them. I really do. But we don’t have the manpower or the mindset when we’re going to be doing good to just get ourselves out of this.” He grasped her shoulder, squeezing it. “Just be patient, okay? I have an idea. When we get to Luckie Street, in the Tabernacle, there’s something we can use that might be able to get them help.
We’re not going to leave them stranded, okay?”

  “Yeah,” Avi sighed out. “Yeah, okay. Good.”

  Remy tapped his arm then, pointing off the side of the road wordlessly. He followed her hand to a marketplace and noticed a significant amount of movement to the side of the building. It looked suspiciously like the infected, or at least enough so that it made his stomach turn over. He shoved the map back at Ethan for safekeeping and motioned for the others to follow. “Come on. We’ve got to move. We’re killing time here, and the longer we stay in one spot, the higher the chances something will see us.”

  Brandt took Cade’s elbow as they started down the street, leaning in close to speak so only she could hear. “Keep your eyes open, you hear me?” he ordered. She gave him an incredulous look, but he pressed on. “I don’t want to dig you out of a hole, literally or figuratively. I want us to get to Luckie as fast as possible, and I want us to get there in one piece.”

  She let out a slow breath and nodded, hefting her rifle to get a better grip on it. “I’m not new to this,” she replied. “I learned urban street fighting in the IDF. I think I can handle it.” She shook her hair out of her face where it’d come loose from her ponytail and asked, “Should we leapfrog?”

  “That might be a good idea,” he agreed. “You and I will be on point. I’ll go first. Let Ethan and the others know what we’re doing.”

  Brandt moved ahead of the group to the center of the street, between two rows of cars, and lifted his rifle in a ready position. He heard Remy ask what was going on, but he continued on his way. He stopped about twenty yards out in front of the rest of the group and scanned the street ahead. There were no signs of anything coming toward them. He glanced back at the others and saw Cade positioning herself ten yards behind him. He smiled slightly. She seemed so in sync with him now that it was almost ridiculous. They worked well together, and it was all he could hope that they’d be in tune enough to be alert to any dangers coming after them. Then again, the whole damn city was one massive danger as far as Brandt was concerned. The sooner they got to the Tabernacle and pleaded their case for help, the better.