“Molasses,” Pete confirmed.
Miles thought about it. “The Caribbean, huh? After last time, I don’t think Tish will be so easy to convince. We may have to take her along.”
Pete rolled his eyes. “Let me guess—you’re angling for a honeymoon.”
He grinned. “I actually just had a conversation about that with Vir. Fun story, I’ll tell you about it while we head over to the clinic.”
Chapter Seven
May 16, 2026
Kelleys Island, Ohio
Z-Day + 3,132
Miles was right—it was a good story, and even Pete had to laugh about his nephew worrying about brass and magazines while running for his life.
“So,” he said. “What did you hit?”
It took a moment for Miles to catch his reference. “Oh, the hangar? Nothing, thankfully. It was a through and through. Couple pieces of duct tape and we were good to go.” He chuckled. “I think Byers still suspects it was me, but he let it go.”
Kendra and Sandy walked along silently, flanking their son as each nervously scanned the side of the road. The crews had mowed some of the areas where they’d needed to go into the brush, but for the most part, they’d left the weeds on either side of the road untouched.
Miles noticed Pete’s look and called out, “We cleared out every moving infected. There may be a few here and there hung up or crippled, but we haven’t seen any in a couple of weeks.” The two relaxed, marginally. Patrick carried on as he had been, stopping and studying various objects that piqued his interest.
“How effective was the fire from the boat?” Pete wondered.
“We still did a house-to-house and ran a couple hundred guys over the island for a few weeks. There were a few stuck in rooms, the usual. A few immobile ones in the woods, but for whatever reason, the majority of the island’s population stuck around the airfield.”
Sandy interjected, his tone curious. “Any guesses why?”
Miles shrugged. “We didn’t find a whole lot of records, but all the planes were in the middle of a maintenance cycle.” He gave Pete a significant look. “If I had to make a guess, they’re the ones responsible for taking out most of the bridges around the Midwest. The personnel on base here put them in hangars and got to work, but they got overrun before they could stop the outbreak.”
Pete grunted and kicked a fist-sized rock off the road into the brush. “Wonder how the infection got here in the first place. If they relocated all this hardware here, it must have been secure at some point.”
“There are a lot fewer boats in the harbors and slips than I would have expected. My guess is someone went to the mainland and brought the infection back, or infected refugees. The Air National Guard guys might not have even known what was brewing down south with air ops running.”
“Any signs of a fight?”
“A few. Looked like the same old song and dance to me,” Miles shrugged. “Charlie was always better at putting the story together than me.” He shook his head. “Damn.”
They fell silent, taking the time to simply enjoy the walk. Outside of the area immediately around the airport, forests and intermittent fields made up the lion’s share of the island’s interior. Homes and businesses clustered around the perimeter, though that seemed destined to change. As they neared the southern side of the island, they passed work sites where Seabees and Corps of Engineers personnel clear-cut selected portions of the wooded areas. It made for a hellacious racket, and Pete could understand Miles’ assurance that they’d cleared the place out. If there were any infected left, they’d have been swarming the bulldozers and excavators. The work crews carried weapons, of course. Safety was a relative term, these days, but nothing bothered them as the crew felled and topped trees and hauled them to waiting trucks.
“More fields?” Pete guessed.
“That, among other things. I never thought about it, but after we cleared out all the lumber yards around Hope, we had plenty to spare for new construction. But all the boards we didn’t or couldn’t recover—well, they’ve been sitting out for years, now. Maybe some of the treated stuff held together, but I doubt it.”
Pete grunted in annoyance. It wasn’t something he’d given any thought to, himself. They’d gotten out of the construction business after putting the fences and buildings up. He thought about neat stacks of rebar, sacks of concrete, and all the multitude of building materials they could have used, slowly rotting and rusting under the elements. If their roofs had held up, any big-box stores like Lowe’s or Home Depot should still have stuff they could use, but most of the major supply houses he was familiar with had been outdoor concerns. “Tree farms on top of everything else, then?”
“That’s the plan,” Miles confirmed. “Engineers are building a sawmill to process and dry the lumber. We’ll use a lot of it for the buildings the Marines are wanting to put up, but we should produce a surplus in the next few years. There’s a limestone quarry, too, so we should be able to produce cement down the road.”
“It’s a good start,” Pete admitted. “I can see the attraction. Still kinda wondering why y’all up and decided to abandon the homestead.”
Miles grimaced. “Well—that wasn’t my original intention. After what happened in the clinic, I thought Tish would be down for it. And she was. I never expected the idea to spread. And in my defense, I wasn’t there for the kicking and screaming.” He chuckled. “From what I understand, it got pretty intense. Larry or Tish can fill you in on the details.”
Pete frowned. “Don’t get me wrong, I understand the logic, I just never expected so many of Hope’s core would want to make the move.”
“Hell, Pete, you always complained about the people who weren’t carrying their own weight. Did you think you were the only one frustrated with the situation? It was something we had to deal with when Hope was the only game in town, but it’s a bigger world, now. That’s not a bad thing.” He glanced at their companions and said, “How about you two? How does your town deal with post-apocalyptic layabouts?”
Kendra shook her head and laughed. “We’ve never really had enough people to worry about it. There’s always more work to do than hands to do it.”
“How many people?” Miles wanted to know.
“Twenty-five,” Sandy answered. “Good chunk of them kids. The older ones do pretty well with the pigs, though.”
Miles stopped dead in his tracks. The others continued for a few steps before he shook his head and hurried to catch up. “Wait, hold the phone—you guys have pigs? Pork pigs, as in ham, sausage—bacon?”
“Well, yeah, that’s generally how it progresses,” Sandy grinned. “Don’t forget pork chops.”
Miles moaned. “Oh, man. How long has it been, Pete?”
He didn’t even have to think about the answer. It came to him immediately. “The week after Z-Day. Power went out and we had to cook up everything in the freezer. Any swine around here either starved to death in their pens or were easy prey for zulu.”
“Well, there’s the secret,” Kendra pointed out. “We don’t have any problem with, uh, workforce participation because we have bacon.”
Miles raised an eyebrow at Pete. He spread his hands and shrugged. “I can’t argue with that logic. I guess we’ll see when your people relocate to Hope.”
“They’re sending some pigs up here, though, right?” Miles wanted to know. “I know Tom’s sending up some of his cattle herd, but come on. Bacon, Pete. I’m not even sure I remember what it tastes like.”
Most of the businesses and restaurants seemed clustered around the docks on the south side of the island. There were a lot of people, both civilian and military, moving around with purpose, but there wasn’t as much work going on here as there had been in the emptier areas along the way. It surprised Pete that he didn’t recognize all the civilians. General Vincent must have kick-started the process of relocating refugees who were willing to work. If Pete had his way, he’d have stuck with the tropical islands, but then again, he hadn�
��t been stuck on one for years, either. He supposed even paradise got old.
“Most of the buildings are in pretty good shape,” Miles said. “The ones that had infected stuck in them for the duration were in the usual condition, but we’ve still got more space than we need.” He pointed to a large building in the center of a parking lot beside a small harbor. “There wasn’t any full-time hospital or clinic, so Tish and the gang took over the Chamber of Commerce offices.”
The handful of cars left in the lot sat on one side of the parking lot. This freed up the rest of the space for a spray-painted ‘H’ symbol surrounded by a circle. Pete pointed it out.
“Medevac?”
“We’ve had a couple of bad injuries—turns out logging is pretty dangerous work. Mostly, though, it makes it more convenient to shuttle people and supplies from the ships than it’d be using small boats. We’ve got a pretty regular schedule at this point—mostly dropping off workers and new residents.”
Miles led the way through the Chamber office’s double doors. Pete couldn’t help the broad smile that broke across his face. His great-niece sat cross-legged on the floor in the middle of the waiting room. She raised her head. “Uncle Pete!”
As she tackled one of his legs in a tight embrace, Miles’ wife stepped out from behind a partition. She stepped over, her own smile a mirror image of Trina’s, and hugged him for a long moment. “I’m glad you’re safe, Pops. Dad’s going to be ecstatic to see you.”
Pete rubbed at Trina’s hair. She ducked away from his hand with a giggle, then came back closer so he could continue to pester her. “Likewise, you two.” He looked around, glancing at the people working in the building. “Is Frannie around?”
Tish read his expression and her face fell. “The crews have been working around the clock, and we’ve been trading off nights. She’s sleeping, now.”
He sighed. “I’ll talk to her later, then. Right now, I want to hear your story about what happened back home.”
Miles’ wife grimaced. “Straight to the buzzkill. Trina, why don’t you take—” She looked up and met Kendra’s eyes.
“Patrick,” the other woman offered.
“Take Patrick and show him the playground. A few of the other kids should be playing.” She looked at Kendra again. “It’s safe, but there are a couple of adults out there, just in case.
“I’ll tag along.” She pecked Sandy on the cheek. “You can deal with all the serious stuff. I’m going to enjoy the sunshine and fresh air.”
“Thanks, honey,” her husband said. Pete just managed to hold back his laugh. Kendra seemed to have a good head on her shoulders. If he’d had any doubt about Sandy’s bona fides, the very obvious evidence of her love for him would have been more than enough evidence to ease that worry.
“You might want to pull up a stool,” Tish said. “This might take a while.”
April 3, 2026
Forward Operating Base Hope—Southwestern Indiana
Z-Day + 3,089
Tish detected a tense undercurrent in the air as she entered the combination cafeteria and school room. Scanning the clustered adults in search of friendly faces, she patted Trina on one shoulder. “Go ahead and go play with your friends.”
Her daughter had come out of her shell more than a little these past few weeks but was still quiet as a mouse more often than not. Trina offered her a sarcastic salute, then scampered over to the part of the building laid aside for a school. Not that there was a true difference between the atmosphere of either side of the building. Unless she was reading the room wrong, the area where the adults congregated was about to turn into something straight out of high school. Lovely.
She moved over to a table and took a spot next to Frannie Ferguson. The other woman was not only the community’s nurse, she was also a long-time friend and coworker. Tish took a surreptitious glance across the room and muttered under her breath. “Looks like things are breaking down about like we expected.”
“You must hate being right all the time,” Frannie said.
“It gets old,” she admitted. “Don’t tell Miles.” The other woman just smiled and shook her head.
They’d broken the converted barn up into thirds. The school and kitchen occupied opposite walls, with the cafeteria in the middle. The layout didn’t change much for meetings. The dining tables remained in their usual places, though an extra table with three chairs for the community council now sat to one side, near the school section. Tish noted with no small amusement that all the kids, ranging from toddlers to younger teens, clustered well away from the representation of the town’s small government.
No matter their ages, they played or occupied themselves with a quiet reticence that would have been eerie if it weren’t so familiar. Except for the oldest among them, the children had only known a world where the slightest noise at the wrong time could be deadly. The return of the Marines had helped make Hope safer than it had ever been, but hard-learned habits died hard.
One day, she promised herself. One day you will scream and carry on and make nuisances of yourselves like children should. And I will grit my teeth and remind myself of what might have been, and as much as the noise might distract or annoy, I will exult in it.
Two of the three members of the advisory council members sat at the table. Calvin Anderson was a tall, slender man with a pair of reading glasses perched on the end of his aquiline nose. He not-so-subtly looked at his watch, rolled his eyes, and murmured something to Jim Piper, the other rep.
Piper shook his head and laughed at Calvin’s annoyance. He was as tall as Anderson, but balding and more solidly built. He’d always struck Tish as the type of guy to slap you on the back before enthusiastically shaking your hand, like a stereotypical used car salesman. He hadn’t been—offhand, she couldn’t remember what he’d done, before—but the attitude was there nonetheless. She smiled to herself. Her husband couldn’t stand Jim, but then, Miles had little or no patience for equivocation.
“The man needs a floor vote to decide which shoe to tie first,” Miles had raged once. Hyperbole or not, he had a point. In a way, though, Tish saw the council rep’s attitude as a good thing. Before the Marines arrived and bolstered their population numbers, Hope was small enough to function as a direct democracy. They’d needed a calming presence to moderate things in meetings so that dozens of alpha-personality survivors didn’t end up in a full-out brawl over crop rotations or other minutiae.
She cast a dark look toward the other side of the room. One member, in particular, had been little help in that regard. For that, as well as other longstanding reasons, the council had voted to expel her. Norma Benedict was a standard-issue busybody. It would not have surprised Tish to learn that the older woman had been the sort to patrol her neighborhood measuring everyone’s grass to see who was in violation before Z-Day. She noticed Tish’s look and flashed an overlarge smile that failed to reach her eyes.
“Sorry I’m late!” The deep voice brought a smile to Tish’s face, and she turned to watch as her father limped over to the table and took the final seat.
Larry Vance was a retired Marine. Most of the hair left on his head had long gone gray, but he was more than tough enough to hold down the third council seat while also serving on Hope’s small police force. Less than a month ago, he’d taken a bad stab wound while trying to catch one member of a small group of town-folk who’d been dealing in black market goods and cooking methamphetamine in a hidden culvert outside of the fence. The fact that he was up on his feet already gave her no small sense of pride. There were more than a few people in the town that would have used the wound as an excuse to call-out from their jobs.
Which, in the end, is what this meeting is really all about. Those who are happy with sliding by in the status quo, and those who want to work for something more.
Survival for many had been a question of luck rather than ability. Once the walls were up and things stabilized, a chunk of the population just… geared down. Combined with the folks who could
n’t handle Z-Day from a psychological standpoint, the freeloader contingent made up roughly half of Hope’s population. The rest did most of the labor and occasionally cajoled and browbeat the hale and hearty of the other half into helping out. The dynamic made for intermittent moments of tension over the years, but when many of the foundational members of the community made noise about joining an exodus to Kellys Island, things came to a head.
And, sure as the world, despite losing her seat on the council, Norma Benedict was the point person for the loud and emotional anti-diaspora side.
Jim Piper cleared his throat and announced. “I’d like to call this meeting to order. Norma, you circulated the request. You have the floor for your opening statement.”
“Thank you, Jim,” Norma said in a sweet voice. For all her faults, she had great projection, and she was audible even without a microphone. “It’s come to the attention of many of us in the community that certain other members in, shall we say, critical roles are wanting to…” She hesitated, tried an expression of polite embarrassment on for size, and concluded, “abandon ship, for lack of a better term. We’d like to resolve this issue once and for all with the understanding that if we don’t continue to cooperate and work together, we’re that much more likely to, well, fail.”
After waiting for a few moments to make sure Norma had ended her train of thought, Jim called out, “Does anyone have a counterpoint?”
Z-Day (Book 3): A Place For War Page 8