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

by Humphreys, Daniel

  That Sandy could help him with. He didn’t have much in his pack to work with other than gauze and a roll of Ace wrap. If they survived to get back to civilization, changing the bandage was going to kick off another round of bleeding, but it would keep Miles from bleeding out, at least.

  The other man muttered to himself as he pulled up and closed screens almost faster than Sandy could follow. Finally, Miles stepped back from the computer. He had his eyes squeezed shut in what looked like pain, and he rubbed his temples with his index fingers. “Dumbest genius at GenPharm. The guy could design micro-circuitry with a hangover, but that was all specialized equipment. He couldn’t program his office voice mail without someone there to tutor him, never mind run custom apps on his Windows system.”

  “What’s the problem?” Sandy asked, hesitant to interrupt his train of thought. The room was growing warmer. The Marines still held their ground at the corner, but the delays between bursts of flame were growing shorter and shorter as the attacking zulus pressed their advantage.

  “There is, literally, one program on this system that’s responsible for controlling the broadcast equipment. You make the selection for on or off, set the timer, and press start. And that’s it. Those are the only options.” He shook his head. “Whoever coded it wanted something idiot proof that you couldn’t stop.” Miles gave a mocking laugh. “He must have known Henry pretty well.”

  “So, tell it to start now and press the button. Problem solved. Right?”

  “Wrong. It was set to run the program when I logged in, and the timer was already set. It was set to go off at noon on October 18, 2022, and it’s waiting patiently for that to roll around. The damn solar panels kept the CMOS battery charged, so the clock is—” Miles stopped cold. “I’m an idiot.”

  He leaned in, clicking the mouse and keyboard with growing urgency as the smoke thickened around them. Sandy looked down toward the end of the hall. The Marines were fighting on their knees, trying to stay closer to the ground where the air was still good. “What are you doing? Talk to me.”

  “The computer never lost power. PCs have a little coin battery in them, that’s supposed to keep the real-time clock set to the correct time. Without power, they don’t last forever. When they go bad, the calendar resets to a BIOS default. A lot of time, for an always-on system, we’d just set it to auto-update from a time server to stay synchronized until we could source a new motherboard or battery. But since it was a common problem, changing the date and time on a computer is easy as pie.” Miles clicked the mouse triumphantly, and Sandy noted the date and time displayed on the screen—October 18, 2022, 11:59 AM, EST.

  “Sixty seconds,” he said to himself. He screamed down the corridor. “Sixty seconds!”

  They said that time slowed down in moments like this, but for Sandy, it seemed to pass in a blur. Crouching down on the floor, he kept his eyes down the hall and prayed that the Marines could hold out.

  “Here we go,” Miles said. His tone was reverent, hushed.

  The clock rolled over to noon.

  At first, nothing seemed to happen. Then the background color of Henry’s timing program shifted from gray to green. The activity light on the computer went wild, and indicators flickered and shone on the attached electronics equipment. Sandy didn’t know what he should have expected—the timer would have gone off when the building was empty, so there was no real need for an announcement of success.

  “How long should it take?” Miles wondered out loud.

  Baffled, Sandy could only shrug. “I have no—”

  There was a shout from down the hall, and both men turned to look.

  Byers and the others had ceased their fire. They stared toward the entrance to the building. McDermid’s jaw hung open in shock.

  Sandy swallowed and managed, “That has to be a good sign, right?”

  October 18, 2026

  Taum Sauk Mountain, eastern Missouri

  Z-Day + 3,287

  Pete managed to take down two of the tentacled zulus before the rest pulled back behind cover. They seemed to have run out of bodies to herd toward the building, but that was a small blessing. There were enough left that he still had his pick of targets to snipe, away from the wall and visible at this angle.

  He and Molly had magazine exchanges down to a science now. He stretched his arm out with an empty, and she replaced it with a reloaded one and began feeding cartridges into the former.

  “Running low on ammo,” she said. “Half a box.”

  “Soon as I’m out, I’ll run out there and start clubbing the things to death with the stock.”

  Guglik snorted a laugh, but he didn’t bother to look over at her. You think I’m joking, lady? The closest thing I’ll ever have to a son is down there.

  He fired. The shot was a miss, but that was intentional. The impact raised sparks off the grille of one of the Humvees, and the tentacled zulu crouched there for cover shifted to one side, assuming that it was moving closer to safety. In actuality, it had just bared half of its upper body to Pete’s sight picture. It was more than enough. He cycled the action, took aim, then froze as the thing stood straight up to reveal its torso to him. The thing looked like it was having some sort of seizure. Every instinct screamed at him to take the clear shot, but he forced himself to wait.

  The umbilical connecting the zulu to the eldritch mass in the woods collapsed into a black powder, right between two of Pete’s thundering heartbeats. Motes of it floated in the wind. The thing the cord had controlled stood straight for a few moments, then crumpled to the ground with the boneless flop of something well and truly dead.

  He pivoted, scanning the entire width of the camp. Everywhere he could see, fallen bodies lay motionless on the ground.

  Pete lowered the Savage and licked his lips. “Is it—is it over? Did it work?”

  Chapter Thirty

  October 18, 2026

  St. Louis, Missouri

  Z-Day + 3,287

  Coop dropped the empty mag out of his rifle and patted his pouches for a replacement. He came up with nothing more than air, which was the cherry on top of their current shit sundae.

  “Last one, Sergeant!” Sullivan called out, tossing him a magazine underhand.

  “I knew there was a reason I liked you, Sully,” Coop said. He slammed the magazine home and palmed the bolt release. Thirty rounds stood between him and infinity. He didn’t think it was going to be enough.

  The mortars were silent—every Marine on the barge was at the sides, fighting a desperate holding action to keep zulu from getting past the fencing. Coop shouldered his rifle and blew the skull off a skeletal zulu at point blank range. They were, he reflected, about as surrounded as it got. Their last stand would have done Chesty proud, but even he hadn’t had to worry about the Chinese eating him and the rest of the Frozen Chosen.

  One way or another, Coop was pretty certain the first round of drinks in Valhalla were going to be on the house.

  The barge lurched violently, and the shifting of the deck under his feet told him that the starboard side was rocking up. Who knew how many were under them, now, but containment had failed, and they’d been rushing out of the park and to the bridge while Coop and his men had been trying to save their platform.

  Even if the barges to their south had cut their lines, he doubted that they’d drift anywhere at all. From the looks of things on Sergeant Paolinelli’s barge, next in line, they were in similarly dire straights.

  “Everyone starboard!” he called, and the Marines passed the order on. If they could get enough weight shifted to that side, maybe that would keep the port side from dipping into the river. As soon as they started taking on water, it was all over. The craft would capsize, and he doubted any of them would survive to swim to shore or even drift south to the bridge.

  The outside edge of the fencing on the port side dipped under water, and as his men heaved themselves onto the starboard rail in desperation, the barge lurched back, a bit, pulling it out of the water. They w
ere too late—a dozen or more zulus had grasped onto the upper side of the fencing while it was under water. A couple of them hadn’t moved far enough forward to be able to maintain their grip as the mesh lifted, but plenty more had not. With free access to their targets, the things rushed forward. Last ditch, desperate fire broke out. The sodden zulu swarm scuttled across the deck like crabs. They were moving too damn fast to be anything but enhanced. As his bolt locked open for the last time, Coop reversed his rifle to use the stock as a club. The heat shield around the barrel would have seared the skin of his hands if not for his gloves, but it was still uncomfortably warm.

  He swung the sharp corner of the buttstock down into the head of a zulu as it launched toward him, smashing the thing down to the deck. Even with half its skull caved in, the thing still fought to reach him, and he switched to the heavy heel of his boot, slamming it down, over and over to grind teeth, bone, and infected flesh into the deck.

  A sudden weight bowled him over, claws straining to reach something tender through his body armor. He got his arm up, grabbing hold of a neck to keep the thing’s head in place while he pulled his 1911 out of its holster.

  The big .45 boomed, and the first zulu went limp as another flopped down on top of him, jaw wide, teeth bared and descending—

  The thing collapsed.

  The weight of the bodies on top of him was more confusing than it was uncomfortable. Coop shoved the one he’d shot off, then poked the second one with the barrel of his pistol. It didn’t stir.

  He glanced up and down the deck, and saw a similar sight from bow to stern. The Marines had been overrun in spots—one man howled, clutching a bleeding arm, but the rest seemed fine, and none of the scuttling horde that had gained the deck moved.

  The barge lurched, suddenly, settling back down in the river. Whatever mass had been holding it up out of the water had shifted, somehow, letting them flop back down.

  He pushed himself to his feet and stared through the haze of smoke and the smoldering fires dotting the park around the Arch. “Holy shit,” Coop whispered.

  Sullivan appeared beside him. “Bill’s not changing, Sergeant. He got bit good, but there’s no infection. Could—”

  Coop cut him off. “Look at the shore, Sully.”

  The PFC followed Coop’s gaze, and his eyes bugged out as he saw what had him so transfixed.

  No zulus stood in the park. As far as the eye could see, the teeming horde they’d burned and blown up over the past hours had collapsed to the ground—puppets without strings.

  Meat machines no more.

  Coop pointed to the shore and shouted, “They pulled it off! We won!”

  “Oorah!” one of his Marines shouted, and it spread from man to man on the first barge

  Something moved on shore.

  The alpha carried no weapons, but the muscle bulging all over its frame and out of its skin made the identification a simple one. Picking its way through the fallen bodies of its brethren, the thing’s head pivoted as it mechanically scanned the line of barges. As the alien gaze went past Coop, he couldn’t help but feel as though the thing was studying him, somehow. Did it think? Did it feel? Was it merely the action of a simple program, or had it become something more in the past nine years?

  Had it evolved past the signal—or had it simply advanced to a point at which it could ignore the command to shut down?

  Either way…

  He couldn’t allow himself to surrender to fear. From this day forward, things were different. The world was once again their own.

  The thing on the shore finished its own assessment, then turned and jogged away. As it disappeared into the smoke, Coop lowered his head and spat into the river. “That’s right,” he muttered. “We outnumber you now, asshole. You better run.”

  October 20, 2026

  Approaching Kellys Island, OH

  VZ-Day + 2

  To Miles’ surprise, Molly was the more nervous of the two. He’d expected the ride with Hatcher to be something akin to being trapped in a car carrier with an irate cat. The kid marveled over the sensation of flying for a bit, then looked out the window for a while until he nodded off. Not easily impressed.

  He hid his smile as he leaned forward to close the gap between the parallel rows of seats. The conversion to a bomber had taken up most of the Orca’s cargo bay, and while they’d packed in a bit tighter than they had on the way to Taum Sauk, there was still plenty of room.

  “It’s going to be okay,” he said to Molly.

  She gave him a sheepish grin. “I know that, in my head. I’ve just got butterflies in my stomach. You guys are the biggest crowd I’ve seen since everything went to hell.”

  “You get used to it. The unfamiliar faces are weird at first. If you don’t like it, you can try somewhere else. Ever been to the Caribbean?”

  Molly got a far-off look in her eyes. “I’ve never even been on a vacation. My grandparents didn’t have much money.”

  “Welcome to the new world, kid. You guys made it.”

  Their survival hadn’t been a sure thing. The signal had worked as advertised. Every attacking zulu collapsed as one, leaving them with an abrupt victory. That win hadn’t cleared the smoke away, or the bodies of the fallen out of the hallway. The survivors waited for the air to clear, then they’d made their way to the exit, single-file, stepping over, around and sometimes on top of the bodies.

  The knowledge that up until a few minutes before, a scratch or scrape from any of the virus-laden tissue and bone they moved through would have doomed them made for slow going. But they managed, and the sight of the halo of fallen bodies around the block building as they emerged into fresh, clean air, was an electrifying one.

  Some of the Marines whooped in victory. Hatcher, as was his wont, stood there quietly.

  Sandy cried—open, unashamed tears of relief and joy. He’d helped to destroy that which he’d unwittingly helped to create. Miles could only imagine the burden that must have lifted from the man at that moment.

  Miles kept it together until Pete and the others rounded the corner. Rushing forward to embrace his uncle, he found himself laughing hysterically.

  “We pulled it off, Pete. Holy shit, we did it!”

  His uncle’s smile was tight with strain, but the hug they’d shared had been genuine. Once Pete was certain that Miles and the rest of the crew were safe and secure, he’d turned on one heel and walked off into the woods on the south side of the camp. When he returned, he wore a troubled expression. When Miles asked him about it, his uncle waved a hand.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Pete said. “I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

  It hadn’t, and when the Orca arrived to pull them out, it brought with it the news that the plan had worked. The attacking horde in St. Louis was no more, and the long-range radio channels were filling with excited reports of similar collapses in every outpost around the globe.

  The survivors of the US military were too few to man more than a few bases, but the reports from Guam lined up with those from Galveston, St. Croix, and the ships making the scheduled run up the eastern seaboard. Zulu was no more.

  Scattered reports, some more reliable than others, claimed that the signal seemed to have no effect on alphas. Without an army of undead to command, the threat they presented was an uncertain one. But that was a question for another day. Before they’d left the Taum Sauk camp, the third Orca had arrived, delivering engineers to recover the downed craft and to study the transmission equipment. Much of the discussion involved replicating the transmission using smaller towers—something the survivors could build a small town or farm around. The survivors had slept behind walls for far too long to abandon them completely, but an electronic fence guaranteed to stop any potential surviving infected in their tracks was a pretty good security blanket.

  But those were problems for tomorrow. Today, they’d come home.

  As the cargo ramp lowered, Miles realized that Molly’s butterflies seemed to be contagious. Hi
s stomach churned with nervous tension. There was no real reason for the sensation, but there it was. Just like Christmas morning, he told himself. A little bit of worry and a whole lot of anticipation.

  The explosion of noise was jarring at first. The sound of cheering and clapping wasn’t something he’d heard much of, these past nine years, but his heart swelled at the sound as he led the way down onto the tarmac.

  It seemed as if the entire island had turned out for their return. Dozens of uniformed Marines and sailors celebrated alongside civilians in faded and patched street clothes. There were plenty of familiar faces, as well. Vir and his family, Frannie and Twigs—the boy looking so much like his dad and Miles’ best friend that it hurt—Alex Worthington, and behind him Miss Val and Larry. And if his father-in-law was there, that meant that the rest of his family couldn’t be far…

  The crowd parted, and his daughter leaped into his outstretched arms. She shouted with inarticulate joy, then frowned and yelled over the crowd noise. “You left without saying goodbye.”

  Miles held back the laugh. “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry. I wanted to make it easier on myself. If you woke up and gave me this look, I don’t think I could have walked out the door.” He hugged her and brought his lips close to her ear so that this was for the two of them only. “Sometimes, daddies have to try and be brave, too.”

  Her face broke into a smile. “Don’t do it again.”

  “I promise,” he said. He looked past her, smiling at Tish. She beckoned him forward, trying to make the gesture jaunty, but he saw the tears welling in her eyes.

  Hell, he had them, too.

  Miles carried Trina along, and the family hug lasted until his lips found those of his wife. Mock-disgusted at the public display of affection, their daughter squirted away, satisfied now that all was right in the world.