David shook his head. “Don’t you worry about that. Things—things are different, now. People—living people? It looks like we’re going to be getting thin on the ground. ‘Sides, I turn you out, my wife is liable to tan my hide.” He winked at her. “You’ve got a place to stay. I can’t promise it’ll be easy, or safe without some work, but I’m not going to put a kid out into the cold. You brought us back our Hatcher, and that’s a debt we can never hope to repay.”
She blinked and wiped at sudden tears. “Thank you,” Molly said.
“Don’t think nothing of it. We make it to planting season, you might wish I had kicked you out.” He slammed the trunk shut and slung another duffel bag over his shoulder. Metal clinked inside as he patted the fabric. “With this, though, I think our chances are looking up.”
May 16, 2026
Kelleys Island, Ohio
Z-Day + 3,132
One of the Chamber of Commerce building’s conference rooms provided a break room for the staff of the makeshift clinic. He’d been far too busy to visit Tish at work, and he noted the contents with interest. An emptied vending machine with a shattered glass display window sat next to a long-dormant pop machine. Miles looked at the bright logos on the various buttons, and for a moment he indulged himself in the sensory memory of the snap-pop of opening a can; the soft hiss of fizzy soda over crushed ice.
His wife giggled. “We need to haul that thing out of here. Everyone who sees it for the first time goes all thousand-yard stare.”
Miles smiled at her. For as long as he’d known her, about the only thing that Tish ever drank was water or tea. Working three jobs, he’d sucked down enough carbonated drinks for both of them. Mountain Dew, Cherry Coke, Dr Pepper—he shook his head and held back a groan. Just stop thinking about it.
Pete gave him a knowing grin. “Hang a sheet up over it, maybe,” he suggested. He pulled out a seat for Sandy, then chose one for himself.
Miles sat down across from them. “It’s not as tempting when you remember that eight-year old soda is flatter than a pancake.”
Tish sat beside him and grabbed his hand under the table. She squeezed it as she fixed Pete with a stare. “You’ve got a look on your face I’ve seen all too often. Where are you headed this time?”
“Nothing’s easy these days, for obvious reasons. This one is about as easy as it gets. I want to take Sandy and Miles down to the Caribbean. We’ll dock at St. Croix, and from there we’re going to head on over to a little place the locals called Genesis Cay. It’s too small to show up on many maps, but I guess they decided it was a nice enough place to ride out the end of the world.” He offered them a thin smile. “Makes for a dandy prison, too.”
She leaned back in her chair. “And that’s it?”
“Pure intelligence gathering. You and Trina should come along. Sandy’s wife and son will be there. You can, I don’t know, enjoy the beach. Go snorkeling. Have a vacation.”
“All right,” she murmured. “I suppose the clinic will survive without me for a while.”
Miles smiled at the expression of wonder on Tish’s face, then turned to Pete. “After we get what we need, what’s the next step?”
His uncle glanced around the room. It wasn’t entirely necessary—they were the sole occupants and had closed the only door on their way in. “We’re beginning a slow-build to what’s likely to end up as the largest engagement since Z-Day. We’re taking the offensive, kids, and command wants to make sure we’ve got all the I’s dotted and the T’s crossed.” Pete stared into space for a moment, then shook his head to snap himself out of his reverie. “After what we saw in California, we can’t stand by and wait for zulu to fall apart. We need to start wiping him out, and fast.” He shifted a bit in his seat. “We’ve got some information driving the objective, but I want to keep that close to the vest until we get to the island.” Pete winked at Miles. “No offense, but you’re not a professional interrogator, and I don’t want you giving anything away.” He turned to Sandy. “If your appearance rattles her enough, the little we’ve been able to extract from the data Miles helped recover should—hopefully—push her over the edge.”
Tish cocked her head to one side. “Her? I’m sorry, what are we talking about here, exactly?”
Sandy stuck a hand over the table. “We haven’t been properly introduced. Doctor Sandy Scopulis. I worked for GenPharm, before. I unwittingly helped the people who started this whole thing.”
She stared at the hand for a long moment without reacting. Finally, Tish set her jaw and shook it. “Unwittingly or not—that’s not something I would broadcast. Especially around here. People who’ve seen their families torn apart in front of their eyes tend not to be too forgiving.”
Sandy drew his hand back. “Understood. You’re not saying anything I haven’t heard or told myself over the last eight years. At first, I didn’t do much other than run and try to stay alive. But—I met Kendra and her people, and they needed my help. I put them in that situation. Helping them was the least I could do. I owed them. And I’ve been trying to atone for my mistakes ever since.” He smiled wistfully. “How long have you two been together?”
Tish looked at Miles and arched an eyebrow. “I guess I had a thing for her for most of my life,” he said with a grin. “Took the world ending for me to take that first step, though.”
“I don’t know if you dated other people, before, but sometimes, when you’re with someone that you think loves you as much as you love them, you overlook things. You let things go you might otherwise question. You asked who she was? Her name is Melanie. She told me we were curing cancer, and I believed her. But when she pulled the plug on the world, she left me behind to die because I didn’t ascribe to her vision. She used me, Tish, but my own blindness is no excuse. One day I’ll have to face judgment for what I’ve done. But the least I can do while I’m still on this earth is every little thing I can to help. So, I do. One day at a time.”
The room fell silent while everyone absorbed the weight of Sandy’s statements. Finally, Tish nodded. “That’s all anyone can do, isn’t it?”
“My ‘he’s a friend and it’s a long story speech’ is so much faster, Doc.” Pete shook his head in mock irritation. “All right, circling back around. Same general travel arrangements as last time. We hop the Detroit on her regular run to the Atlantic down to St. Croix. While we’re doing our thing, the kids can check out the beach. I’m sure they’ll love it. I figure we’ll be on Genesis Cay for a day, maybe two, then we’ll head back.”
“What then?” Miles wanted to know.
“Hurry up and wait,” Pete said. “Honestly? It depends on what we get out of the interrogations. We’ve got troops training up for the mission at a couple of different sites. Other teams are moving to acquire additional ordnance and material, and engineers working to get aircraft back up to snuff like they are here. In one way or another, the majority of the fleet, including a lot of the civilian survivors, are doing their part to make sure this operation is successful.”
“We get it, it’s huge,” Tish said. “How about some more specifics?”
Pete gave her a dirty look, but she rolled her eyes.
Miles grinned. “She grew up with Larry, and you think that’s going to work on her? Come on, Pete.”
“Fine,” his uncle grumbled. “For the next stage of continental recovery ops, we need secure lines of supply. For obvious reasons, that means rivers.” He waited to see if any questions were forthcoming, then continued. “The St. Lawrence is good, we’ve got access to the Great Lakes, but part of what keeps it viable is the lock system. When the fleet made its initial advance before contacting Hope, they lost a lot of engineers and SEALs hacking the locks and pumps to be remote-operated.”
“Ross and Foraker talked about that a bit.” The two SEALs were the only survivors of the team that had escorted Miles to the GenPharm facility in downtown Cincinnati, and both hardened warriors had been there and done that in the years of conflict since Z-Day.
/> “The problem is, the pumps and lock mechanisms haven’t been maintained for years. The accessibility to the lower forty-eight doesn’t justify the investment of resources and time it would take to refurbish them, all while on the lookout for approaching hordes.” Pete shook his head. “Just the noise of ships like the Detroit moving along the river is enough to attract them. A few bridges are still up along the river, and there are jumpers on every trip. The Navy boys have got the deck clearance down to a science, but all it takes is one mistake, and we lose a ship.
“By way of comparison, all the bridges spanning the Mississippi are down. So that negates that danger while providing access to a much larger portion of the country. There are locks in the northern half of the river, but for agriculture and manufacturing needs, the states on the lower section of the river are perfect.” He shrugged. “The Great Lakes region is important, don’t get me wrong. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t be pouring so much effort into getting Kellys Island up and running. But the Mississippi is a jump-start to rebuilding our nation.”
“It’s a shallow river,” Sandy pointed out. “I’ve lived in a boat shop ever since the end, so you pick up a few things here and there. Will any of your ships even fit?”
“Nope,” Pete said. “Barge traffic was the rule of the road, back in the day. It will be again, and that’s fine. They’re better suited to move large amounts of material in comparison to a warship. We’ve already moved a couple of converted barges as far north as St. Louis.” His smile as he fell silent was a content, Cheshire cat smile.
“Converted into what, Pete?” Miles asked with a sigh. “Or is that something you can’t tell us, either?”
“Nah—just indulge an old man a little bit of fun. After what I dealt with out west, I’m going to enjoy what’s to come. We converted the barges to helicopter carriers, and for the next few weeks, they’re going to be dropping cargo packages along designated lines of approach.” He grinned wolfishly. “Remember Sticks’ dune buggy?”
Miles’ best friend had been an avid gearhead and off-roader before Z-Day. Once Miles, Pete, and the rest realized sounds drew the infected, they’d armored up Sticks Ferguson’s modified Volkswagen Beetle with sections of chain link fence and steel roofing, then hung a pair of massive stereo speakers off the back. The Hope survivors leveraged the mobile distraction to peel zombies away from buildings or businesses they wanted to scavenge. There were usually some left inside. Those were usually easy to handle, especially when you didn’t have to worry about reinforcements crashing in behind you. “Rhetorical question, I assume.”
“Pretty much. The tech guys put together a bunch of signal emitters. When they’re broadcasting, it drives zulu crazy and pushes them away. Our guys have been dropping them for a couple of weeks now. They’re solar-powered and pulse on and off enough that zulu can’t home in on the source, so they wander until they get the next hit. In the next couple of months, it’ll herd every mobile infected within two hundred miles of St. Louis into a holding pattern on the riverbank. We’re going to pack the fuckers in like sardines. Zulu roach motel.”
Miles couldn’t help but shudder as he pictured it. “And then what?”
Pete’s eyes glinted with satisfaction. “Then we blow them all to hell.”
Chapter Nine
May 15, 2026
Forward Operating Base Hope—Southwestern Indiana
Z-Day + 3,131
It wasn’t the best beer Lance Corporal Cooper ‘Coop’ LoPresto had ever had, but hell. At least it was free. He held the bottle up and let the subdued lights of The Last Bar play over the chipped surface. Like the world, the glass had seen better days. The Grolsch-style bottle kept a rubber stopper wired to the neck. Coop supposed bottle caps were a bit hard to come by, these last few years. He drained the last of the beer and set it down. “Another,” he called.
The barkeep, graying but with impressively muscled forearms, glared. “You going to get lit up and try to start something? If you are, you might as well fess up now. Good bottles don’t grow on trees. If you’re in here to fight, you’re drinking from a stein.”
Coop dug for the guy’s name. He had a nice buzz going, and he hadn’t paid a whole lot of attention in the first place. It wasn’t like the bartender was wearing a name tag. “Take it easy, Tom. I’m just here to chill.” He turned to the old-timer sitting next to him. The graybeard had done a hitch in the 82nd back in the day. He’d spent the last half-hour regaling the Marine with stories of his time in Panama during Just Cause. The details on the fight weren’t nearly as interesting as the descriptions of the señoritas.
Little thin on the ground here in comparison.
And of course, his buddy had his head down on the chipped and stained wooden bar, lips fluttering with light snores.
“One more,” Coop said. He patted his pockets. It looked like his beers weren’t so free after all. “I’ll settle this dude’s tab.”
Tom the barkeep thought about it, then nodded. He plucked the empty off the bar and turned to grab a fresh one from the big galvanized tub full of melting ice. The little town didn’t have much, but it had cheeseburgers, beer, and ice. Eight years after the end of the world, that was pretty damn cosmopolitan.
Coop handed over ten ‘bucks’ worth of trade scrip. Money was useless these days, but there was enough civilian industry around that the fleet issued soldiers embossed bills about the same size. After all this time, anyone still in the fight obviously wasn’t doing it for the pay. Although he did have to admit that Marines having a way to ‘pay’ civilians for scavenged goods reduced instances of ‘loot and shoot’ on recon missions.
The barkeep held the scrip up to the light and angled it back and forth. “You don’t have any change?” The community based their economy on quarters, of all things. Coop sighed.
“Fresh out,” he said, patting his pockets with exaggerated annoyance. “Just got back from the west coast. They’ll take that at the PX. Can’t say that for coins, champ. Too much of that stuff laying around out in the world.”
“Sure, if you can get to it,” the barkeep scoffed. Pussy, Coop thought but didn’t say. Tom gave the bill one more look, then shrugged. “All right. But if they don’t take it, you’re banned, you got me?”
“Roger that.” LoPresto just barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the civilian. Wood rasped on wood as the barkeep moved away and left him to his beer. At this point, he’d had enough practice with the wire-reinforced lids to get the top open and take a swig before he glanced over his shoulder to see who’d come in.
Shit.
Master Sergeant Ainsley McFarlane scanned the interior of the bar with the good humor of a robotic assassin. His eyes locked onto Coop, and one corner of his mouth lifted, just a fraction. It might even have been the play of shadow on his coal-black skin. Coop wouldn’t have laid money down, either way.
McFarlane stepped up to the bar, putting the old vet between himself and Coop. He opened his mouth to speak, but Tom came to Coop’s rescue—for the moment, at least.
“Get you a drink, Marine?”
This time the Master Sergeant did smile, teeth flashing white in the subdued lighting of the bar. His voice had the slightest hint of Jamaican patois. “I appreciate the offer, but I’m on duty.” His eyes flicked over to Coop.
“I am not on duty, Master Sergeant,” LoPresto said. “I checked.”
“Well, you’re wrong about one thing,” McFarlane said, then tapped the rank insignia on his collar. It was dim inside the tavern, but not so much that Coop couldn’t count seven bars and a star. He raised an eyebrow.
“Congratulations, Sergeant Major. I’d buy you a beer, but …”
“Brought something for you, LoPresto.” McFarlane placed a set of rank insignia on the bar in front of Coop. “And, sorry to say, you are back on duty.”
The Sergeant Major’s promotion was impressive enough, but that only represented an advance of a single rank. The three bars over crossed rifles he’d presented Coop
would bring the apparently former Lance Corporal from an E-3 to an E-5.
Making Sergeant had been a bigger deal the first time. He resisted the urge to take another swig of his beer—off duty or not, he didn’t think McFarlane would find it all that funny. He picked up the insignia and studied them. “You sure about this? It didn’t go so well, last time.”
McFarlane gave him a minute smile and an even smaller shrug. “If you hadn’t punched out that idiot, someone else would have come along and done it later. Besides, I’ve had my eye on you for a while, Sergeant. You did a damn good job keeping it together out in California. You started out as an 0341, right?”
Coop frowned at the sudden change of topic. Military Occupational Specialty codes didn’t mean much, post Z-Day. One killed zulu, or provided support to those killing zulu. Before the world fell apart, Coop LoPresto had been a mortarman. When a good chunk of the world died and turned cannibalistic, he’d ended up with a rifle in his hands more often than not. And he’d done well enough there to slide over into McFarlane’s Force Recon unit, even though they all only made for a pale imitation of the real thing. The fleet used up most of the real thing during the long war to return home. Pale imitations were as good as it got.
“Been a long time,” he said, redundantly. “But I can remember the tune if you hum a few bars.”
“Good. We’re heading back to Galveston to spin up a training program. Looks like you’re back in the mortar business, Sergeant.”
October 26, 2017
Outside of Ironton, Missouri
Z-Day + 8
The power had gone out for good yesterday, but it surprised Molly how little she missed it until after the sun went down. Without a working cell phone or television to keep herself occupied, the day felt both fuller and more focused. That wasn’t to say that she was lying around. In a sense, she’d worked harder over the last week than she ever had. It wasn’t so much sheer physical exertion as it was a constant, low-grade push to get things done.
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