Z-Day (Book 3): A Place For War

by Humphreys, Daniel

  I need to leave, she realized. Ironton wasn’t the biggest town in the world, but there were more than enough people living there than she could handle on her own. She’d have a hell of a lot better chance out in the countryside. She’d pined for a bigger city for most of her teenage years, but now she wanted the exact opposite.

  Without much thought, she headed south again, but that soon revealed itself to be a bad strategy. Her previous trip through had pulled stragglers in her wake, and the side streets were filling with slower, stumbling forms. The renewed noise from the siren spurred them into faster action, and bodies thumped off the front and side of the car like a storm of violated flesh. Her eyes burned with tears, but Molly forced herself to focus on the road ahead. One side street seemed less occupied than the others, and she stomped on the gas and turned right. I need to move through areas I haven’t been through, yet. Even as the sound of her passage faded, the echo effect in the dead population of her hometown persisted. If noise and movement attracted them, there would be a cascade effect as those drawn to the damn siren pulled others along in their orbit. Eventually, the entire town would be following or converging on her. She glanced at the dash controls again, but she was afraid to mess with any of the switches while moving. Molly didn’t know how strong the windows in the patrol car were, but she wasn’t going to stop and find out. As stupid as it was, she had to keep moving.

  A map of the town formed in her head. The fastest way out of town would have been south on Main, again, but she’d inadvertently blocked her own path, there. “I need to go north,” she muttered under here breath. North, and then she could cut over on Russell to Lake. That road out of town headed more to the west than south, but it also had the advantage of heading into more unpopulated areas of the county than the more direct route.

  Pressing the pedal to the floor, she tried to ignore the figures that lurched toward her. They emerged from shattered front doors, alleyways, and well-manicured lawns. Somehow, she doubted that anyone would worry about cutting their grass anytime soon.

  With a start, she realized she was nearing sixty miles an hour. She braked, slowing down before she missed the turn. A postal worker in blue shorts and a shirt stained red reached out, but she gunned the engine again and was well away. Yet another addition to the comet’s tail of followers she was gaining. I need to ditch this car, she realized, and swallowed at the realization.

  “I’m going to have to run for it,” she said aloud, and the hollow sound of her own voice was jarring, even though the siren almost drowned it out.

  The turn onto Lake Drive was an easy one of about thirty degrees, and she resisted the urge to floor the accelerator. Traffic was growing thicker, and it was becoming hard enough to weave back and forth through stopped vehicles. Her speed dropped to fifty, and then an almost reasonable forty. Despite outpacing her pursuers, every newly-found instinct screamed at her to go faster, faster.

  The houses became more spread out, growing nicer and more ostentatious the further out of town she got. Lake curved to the north ahead, but without thinking she’d let her speed grow, and she had to jerk the wheel left around a three-car pileup. She missed the turn and continued on, onto a smaller road in line with Lake’s original line of travel. “Shit!” Molly shouted, glancing in the mirror. A cluster of figures staggered after her, abandoning their post at the pileup. Too close to stop and turn around.

  The area began to turn more rural. She left the nicer homes behind for wooded lots and harvested fields. The sudden isolation was an illusion, though. Ahead, at a T-intersection, a jack-knifed semi blocked the right turn toward her original intended direction. Her only way through was straight ahead, but even that looked to be a dicey proposition. A minivan, caught up in the same accident that sidelined the big truck, had ended up with its rear bumper in the metal barrier on the side of the narrow bridge up ahead. The front end jutted into traffic, crossing over the center line and narrowing the opposite lane.

  A handful of bloody corpses lined the driver’s side, slapping at tinted windows with ineffectual hands. The front end was a mangled wreck, shattered pieces of the bumper littering the road. The gap was narrow, but she thought she could make it.

  The roar of the engine and the wail of the siren turned the crowd toward her, but before they could do more than take a step or two away from the minivan, she crossed mental fingers and steered the patrol car through the gap. The car shook as the rear driver’s side quarter panel scraped the opposite bridge rail, but she made it with inches to spare on the other side.

  Just as she made it over the bridge, something went bang under the passenger side of the patrol car. The steering wheel began to shake in her hands. The debris had blown a tire, and she resisted the urge to scream again. “You wanted to abandon the car, kid,” she muttered. Talking to herself was starting to become a bad habit. What was the saying—it’s only a problem if you answer back? Fair enough.

  Molly braked, wincing at the squeal of metal on the pavement as she pulled to the side of the road. She threw the transmission in park and twisted the ignition. The siren cut off, and she sighed in relief at the sudden silence.

  The moment was short-lived—she needed to move. Molly threw the door open and climbed out of the car, prepared to run for her life. As she glanced back, an incongruous sight kept her still.

  There were half a dozen or more zombies on the bridge, and if her experiences of the past twenty-four hours were any indication, they should have been staggering toward her. Even without the siren to draw them to her, she was well within their visual range. Instead, the things stood, before the halfway point of the bridge, shimmying in place as though they thought they were moving.

  She’d seen some weird shit since yesterday, but this took the cake. Despite every urge to the contrary, she found herself walking back to the bridge. She was ready to bolt for safety as soon as any of the things headed her way, but they just stood there, doing their weird little dance.

  At the head of the bridge, she stopped and waited.

  For the first time, she got a close look at the creatures infesting her town. Their eyes were gray, featureless orbs the color of stone or metal. Darker lines of infection traced various blood vessels, blood soaking their clothing. Whether it was their own or any victims they’d claimed it was impossible to say.

  She was grateful for the gnawing hunger pangs in her stomach; it meant she didn’t have anything to throw up, though the queasy feeling that gripped her made her wonder if she was going to have to try, anyway. The moment passed, and she took a deep, shuddering breath.

  “Hey,” she said, and the things jerked. “What’s your deal?”

  One of them lurched forward, then recoiled. If she didn’t know better, she’d have guessed the reaction had been one of pain, but the things maintained an unnerving silence.

  Her feet carried her forward, and she stood in the middle of the bridge. Her stunned curiosity was enough to overwhelm the trembling fear in her limbs. Am I safe? What is this?

  Something stirred inside the minivan, and the line of zombies jerked away from her and rounded back around to surround the crumpled rear of the vehicle. Even then, she realized, they confined themselves to only a portion of the vehicle. It was as if there were some sort of invisible barrier in the bridge. The minivan straddled it, and they couldn’t push past the border to surround it.

  Her fear had subsided a bit, but she still advanced only through sheer force of will. She’d been closer to them up on the diner’s roof, but this didn’t feel anywhere close to the same level of safety, magic wall or not.

  As she got closer to the minivan, two things became apparent. The driver must not have been wearing a seatbelt, because the wreck had wedged her up and over the steering wheel, pushing the red-splashed windshield out of its frame.

  The second was that the driver had not been alone.

  The little boy looking out of the rear passenger window had a mop of brown hair. His eyes were puffy and red with tears, and s
weat soaked his Paw Patrol T-shirt. It had been cold last night, but she imagined it had been damn stuffy in the van yesterday and it was probably getting close, now. There was a gap in the window large enough for Molly to slide her thumb through—enough to allow a little fresh air but little else.

  She didn’t know enough about little kids to know how old he was, other than that he was young enough to still need the car seat but old enough to wiggle out of it or unbuckle himself.

  He blinked at her for a moment, then gave her a weary wave. Without thinking, she returned the gesture.

  The motion seemed to drive the zombies into a frenzy, and they renewed their attacks on the sides. Between the repeated thudding of flesh on sheet metal, she thought she heard the subtle sound of cracking safety glass.

  The little boy inside pressed himself up against the window of the sliding door and stuck tiny fingers through the narrow opening at the top. “Monssers,” he said. “I want mommy.”

  Then he burst into tears, and it took everything Molly had to not do the same.

  Chapter Four

  March 20, 2026

  Kelleys Island, Ohio

  Z-Day + 3,075

  The hike along the south road was uneventful and might even have been pleasant if they hadn’t been on high alert the entire way. And—as it had been since the outbreak—when things went downhill, they went there fast and hard.

  The airstrip was overrun.

  It was clean of debris, but a mix of uniformed soldiers and civilians in various states of undress dotted the long, east-west runway. It was quiet enough that most of them had fallen into hibernation, but a few of them wandered, periodically tripping over fallen infected and rousing them. The entire process felt like that old computer game, Asteroids, but with no ship to zoom around and blow up the drifting rocks. The narrower road running north-south next to the runway wasn’t as packed, but it still had enough infected on it to make just getting to the airport a dicey proposition.

  “Bad luck all around,” Miles muttered. He passed his binoculars off to Vir.

  “Maybe not,” Byers said. He waved a hand at the rows of oval-shaped metal buildings lining the southern edge of the runway. “The hangars look sealed. That’s a good sign.”

  “Still need to pull the horde out of there,” Miles pointed out. “Any suggestions, Sergeant?”

  “Slim chance of finding a running vehicle, never mind usable gas at this point. We need to keep them away from the hangars if possible.”

  “Why are they all here, anyway? Shouldn’t they have spread out more?” Lawrence wanted to know.

  Miles shrugged. “Self-fulfilling prophecy, in a way, I’d guess. Whenever the infection made it to the island, this looks like the last stand of the largest group of survivors. Without any external stimulus to draw them away, they stuck around. Then they hibernate until one of their buddies walks over them. Rinse and repeat. I wonder what they’re eating. They should have fallen apart by now. Birds, I guess.”

  Vir turned the binoculars away from the runway and began to scan the surrounding area. After a moment, he lowered them and frowned. “There’s no high ground in the immediate area to make a stand, either.”

  Sergeant Byers shrugged. “Sure. You don’t want a water tower or a cell phone antenna anywhere near a runway. Sucks, but it makes sense.” He paused to take a look around. “I don’t like how exposed we are, here.” He pointed back to the north. The ranch house nestled in the trees looked new enough to have gone in after the airport. Miles had to wonder if the owners had gotten a discount on the land, given its proximity.

  For that matter, they may not have even cared. His off-campus apartment in college had been a half-block from the railroad tracks. The first night, he’d fallen out of bed in surprise at the thunder of a passing freight train, but after a few weeks, he’d slept through the nightly cacophony. You could get used to anything. It just took time.

  With Lawrence checking their back trail, they eased up the road and ducked into the overgrown yard. With a thick span of trees to cut them off from the problem to the south, there was a sudden illusion of safety. Miles reminded himself not to trust it. Any noise out of the ordinary would carry, more so in a place devoid of living habitation or internal combustion engines. He eyed the ranch house, considered how well it might stand up to an assault of hundreds of infected, and didn’t like the answer he came up with.

  Miles nudged Vir with an elbow and muttered, “If it comes to it, no last stands. We run for it.” His friend didn’t seem thrilled with the sentiment at first, but he cocked his head to one side and nodded.

  Byers indicated a sagging shed on the south side of the property. The double doors faced south. Inside, they’d be out of view from the road, and the trees should block any direct view that wasn’t right on top of them. Considering the amount of brush built up in the trees, Miles judged they’d hear anything coming their way a long time before they were in danger of anything noticing them.

  Byers checked the shed with his flashlight first, before turning back to the others and beckoning them forward. It was a tight space, maybe eight by ten, and gardening implements hung from neatly-aligned storage racks on the three walls. A mountain bike hung from hooks screwed into the rafters. Cobwebs and dust caked everything inside.

  Miles wrinkled his nose and tried not to breathe too deeply. Calling a swarm onto their position with a sneeze would be embarrassing, to say the least. He scanned the interior for anything of interest. “Trek,” he noted. “Used to have the same brand. Good bikes.”

  Vir grunted. “I never learned. In London, we took the tube, or walked.”

  “Snob,” Miles retorted.

  “Hick.”

  “Granted,” he said, grinning.

  “You two done?” Byers knelt on the floor and traced a rough map in the dust-covered concrete. “Our primary priority is to ensure the safety of whatever is in those hangars. The joke might be on me, and it could be truckloads of toilet paper, but I doubt it.”

  “Hey, don’t underestimate the value of good TP,” Miles said. He caught the sergeant’s stare, ducked his head, and added, “Okay, I’m done.”

  The sergeant shook his head and waved his hand over the part of the map corresponding to the airfield. “Simple objective. Pull the squatters away so we can take care of them and begin the process of clearing the island. The million-dollar question is, how do we get it done without putting ourselves or the salvage in the line of fire?” He looked at each of them in turn. “I’m open to suggestions.”

  Miles eyed Byers’ sketch in the dirt and mentally compared it to the printed-out satellite images they’d consulted before the mission. “The runway ends pretty much at the beach, right?”

  “There’s a bit of grass, but not much. Call it a couple of hundred feet, tops.”

  “No fences?”

  The sergeant raised his eyebrows. “I see where you’re going. No fences. Grass before the beach, then the water. We set up an attraction in the surf, draw them there, and shoot them up with the RHIB’s Browning.”

  Vir grinned. “I like this idea. Are there speakers on the boat?”

  Lawrence shook his head. “We put a few bursts into the surf, it won’t matter.”

  Miles leaned his head to one side, considering the map from a different angle. “Secondary consideration.” He met Byers’ eyes. “Devil’s advocate. You could say that the smart play here is to pull back and extract at the boat. We can figure this out from a position of safety, bring in some more people if needed.”

  “Possible. But who’s to say there’s not a storm tonight that tears open the hangars. Or our coming and going gets the population riled up, and they do it for us.”

  “The hangars have held out this long,” Miles pointed out.

  “What’s the disclaimer? Prior performance is not indicative of future results? If I’ve learned one thing since the outbreak, it’s this—at some point, you have to take advantage of any opportunities that crop up. Most of the zulu
s are zoned out right now. We can’t count on that not to change, particularly if we bring in a larger—and louder—force. We get a crossfire going, it’s going to be that much harder to keep our people safe and avoid shooting whatever goodies are in those hangars.”

  Miles glanced at Vir, who nodded. “We’re down. Let’s do this.”

  There was a faint cracking noise from the forested area to the south. At once, they all fell silent, turning to face the otherwise peaceful-looking scene. The noise didn’t repeat, but the look of tension on Byers’ face didn’t ease. “Lawrence, check it out,” he ordered, standing and swinging his carbine off of his shoulder and holding it at the low ready.

  Miles cocked his head to listen, resisting the urge to close his eyes. The faint hiss of the breeze and the soft sound of grass whisking over Lawrence’s boots were the only sounds.

  The corporal stood at the borderline of the overgrown yard and the forest for what felt like an eternity. He had his rifle up and shouldered, and he conducted a slow sweep of the area in front of him before turning back and raising his free hand palm-up in confusion to Byers. The sergeant nodded, beckoning the younger Marine back. “Let’s head back,” he murmured. “This place is giving us all the—”

  Out in the yard, the snap of breaking bone was far quieter than the corporal’s suppressed reaction. To Lawrence’s credit, he held back his scream, jamming his mouth down onto his shoulder. When Miles and the others turned, they couldn’t see the immediate cause of the injury, other than the fact that the Marine’s left leg had plunged down into the ground halfway to his knee. The impact of his upper body on the ground twisted his face away from his self-imposed block, and an involuntary scream of renewed agony burst forth.