The Dead Survive (Book 2): Fallback

by Lori Whitwam

And I wasn’t alone anymore.

  As soon as I was sure my legs were steady, we left the room and went in search of Marcus.

  We found him still on the opposite walkway, directing the mop-up phase of the battle. Few zombies remained in the lot, and the flow of new arrivals seemed to have stopped. I hoped any who had been wandering around the woods had finally all been drawn to the gunfire, and summarily been dispatched by our team. Melissa and Faith were scanning the edge of the lot, and I noticed Rebecca and Theo emerge from the woods, Anton and Javier close behind. Rebecca flashed Marcus a thumbs-up.

  We approached Marcus, hand in hand, and he turned when Ty cleared his throat. “Come with us, Marcus,” Ty said. “Quietly.”

  Marcus whispered to John, who glanced at us briefly, nodded, and went back to watching the operation below without alerting anyone else.

  Back in Marcus’ room, we quickly explained what happened, while Marcus struggled to take it all in, unable to rip his eyes away from the body lying on the cheap motel carpet with its head in a large pool of blood. “Gil? I never saw it. Fucking stupid,” he muttered. “Anton tried to tell me, and I told him to quit being paranoid.”

  So that’s who Anton had been talking about when I’d thought he was saying he didn’t trust Ty. Maybe I’d have to stop jumping to conclusions too.

  Marcus knelt and picked up the folded piece of paper Gil had dropped when we’d blown into the room…was it really only a few minutes ago? How was that possible?

  Marcus studied it a moment before speaking. “It’s numbers. No, it’s radio frequencies. Numbered one to five.”

  I thought a moment, then said, “So, were they using a different frequency on different days, in case someone caught a stray transmission and used it to track them down somehow?” I didn’t really know how radios worked, but it sounded plausible to me.

  “Seems kind of convoluted,” Ty commented. “But we don’t know what their setup is. If they don’t have a lot of communication equipment, they probably can’t keep one set dedicated to waiting for a message from each mole they have somewhere, assuming there were more than just Gil, and they can’t use the same frequency for everybody for some reason.”

  Marcus nodded. “We gotta call back home and let them know every fallback team needs to take stock of their people. Gil had those of flash-bangs, probably something they made. Start looking for that, and sheets like this.”

  “We’re pretty sure he didn’t get a message out, right?” I asked.

  Ty nodded. “He was still dialing in the frequency when we got here.”

  Marcus thought a moment, then said, “Well, just to be sure, maybe we should contact them ourselves.” I gaped at him, and he gave me a smirk and continued. “To be absolutely sure, we need to call ’em up and tell them where we’re going.”

  Where we were going?

  I must have looked totally dumbstruck, because Ty chuckled. “No, Ellen, he means tell them where we want them to think we’re going.”

  “Oh,” I said in a small voice, sort of embarrassed I hadn’t picked up on it faster. What could I say? It’d been one hell of a day. “But where would we tell them?”

  Marcus turned to Ty. “Son, you worked a lot around these parts, didn’t you?” Ty nodded that he did. Marcus pulled the now crease-worn atlas page from his back pocket and pointed. “What’s around about here, someplace they might believe we’d be headed?”

  Ty took the map and studied it closely. After a few minutes, during which I tried not to look at Gil’s carcass cooling on the floor in a coagulating puddle of blood, the mark of my machete forever carved in his cranium, he smiled and turned to Marcus. “Here.” He indicated a spot on the map, and Marcus leaned in to see where he was pointing.

  “Fucking perfect, Garrett,” he said, grinning.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Ty handed Marcus the map and took my hand. “Somebody got it in their head forty or fifty years ago to build a castle. They tried to make a go of it by giving tours, but who wants to tour a fake castle somebody just built in Nowhere, Kentucky? So it got sold, and it’s been some kind of event center, for weddings and stuff. Walled grounds, turrets, the works. Kind of a fairytale theme.”

  I smiled. It was perfect.

  Marcus was sold on the location. “It’s a good way from here, and nowhere near where we’re going. But how do we make the call? What if they know it’s not Gil?”

  I thought for a minute, then remembered what Cody had said. “Bluetick!”

  “Huh?” Marcus asked, confused.

  “Cody said Gil was saying base, something, and then he said bluetick to base. Bluetick must be Gil’s code name or some kind of password.”

  Marcus stepped toward the radio. “Well, we’ll give it a try. We’re outta here at first light anyway, so even if they bust us, they still don’t know where we are or where we’re going.”

  I still didn’t even know where we were going, but it didn’t seem the time to ask.

  We discussed strategy a bit more, and Marcus knocked the antenna a bit out of kilter, assuring the signal wouldn’t be too clear. Gil had been with us so long, it was unlikely anyone talked to him regularly enough to recognize his voice, but just in case, Ty would do the talking, having the voice most likely to pass for the dead traitor at our feet.

  Marcus looked at the sheet of frequencies. “Day one was the farmhouse. Day two was the impound lot. This is day three, so I’ll try frequency number three. Make sense?”

  We agreed it was the best guess we had, so he set the frequency and handed Ty the microphone.

  After several repetitions of, “Bluetick to base,” the radio gave a hiss and a crackle, and we heard, “Base to bluetick. What you got for us, bluetick?”

  Ty smothered a grin and said, “I have current location and final destination, estimated to arrive tomorrow at nightfall.”

  “Sounds good, bluetick, great job. Go ahead, bluetick,” came the reply.

  Ty glanced at the map Marcus had given back to him, and read off a highway route a good forty miles from where we were, in the direction of the fictitious fallback point.

  “Copy that, bluetick,” said the radio. “We have several teams within two hours of that position, can have them converge. Destination?”

  Ty told him about the fairytale castle. The presumed marauder on the other end of the transmission laughed at the visual image, but agreed it sounded like a good location. “Personnel count still the same?”

  Ty paused, then said, “Down one from last report.” I choked up a bit thinking of Cody out in the woods.

  “Roger that, bluetick. Remember your signal, and we’ll see you in the morning. Good job. Base out.” The radio fell silent. Marcus asked us to step out while he reported to the Compound. The other teams, and the Compound itself, needed to know about possible infiltration, and I was pretty sure if we had anyone in the area we’d just sent the marauders, they’d have a little surprise sometime tomorrow.

  The most interesting bit of the radio call was the base’s mention of having “several teams” in the area of our fake location. If they had several teams near there, they likely had them scattered throughout the region. Small bands of marauders hiding out in the hills until they were called to attack a convoy or fallback point could easily explain the abnormal, erratic behavior of the zombies we’d observed. Perhaps they’d also recently used the abandoned mansion as a meeting point, explaining the zombie activity there.

  When Marcus emerged from his room again, we went in search of the rest of the team. He gathered everyone and gave them a report on what had happened. More than a few tears were shed on Cody’s behalf, and several people insisted on seeing Gil for themselves, whether to assimilate the information or spit on his corpse, I had no idea. I didn’t care. I was done for the night.

  People were sent off to make certain the motel was once again secure and no new threats were wandering out of the woods. Others went to check on the welfare of the animals, minus the two chickens Gil ha
d sacrificed to try to breach our defenses and divide our forces.

  I accepted a mug of tea from Jocelyn, hugged Melissa and Faith, and sat on the old picnic table. I must have looked as wrecked as I felt, because Marcus approached, accompanied by Ty. “Dismissed, Hale. I can’t thank you and Ty enough for what you managed to do tonight, and I think you’ve earned a few hours of downtime.”

  “We’re leaving a little later than usual,” Ty explained. “Marcus says we only have a few hours to go, and everybody needs the extra time, even if it’s not much.”

  I nodded woozily and stood, leaning heavily on Ty. He helped me up the stairs, and when I paused outside my room, he tugged me further down the walkway and produced a key from his pocket. I looked back toward my room, at the key, then at Ty, unable to connect the dots.

  “I asked Marcus,” he said. “No big deal, but I want you to be able to rest without the girls pestering you about everything that happened.” He paused. “And to be honest, I really need to hold you right now. That’s all. I think I might be able to sleep a little bit that way.”

  “That sounds…like a real good idea,” I said, too exhausted to jump to conclusions in any case.

  Ty unlocked the door, and in minutes we were snug in the bed, his arms around me as we drifted off to sleep.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The next morning we all trekked into the forest and buried Cody in a lovely little glen by a stream. It seemed like a pointless thing to do, maybe, but it made us feel a bit better. Marcus gave a short but heartfelt speech about Cody and all he’d meant to the team, and how his final act had been to help us foil Gil’s plans and save us from being intercepted by marauders. I glanced across at Melissa, sick at the thought of what being a captive again would do to her. To us.

  We tossed Gil’s body in the dumpster behind the motel. It was more than he deserved.

  When Ty and I had woken that morning, we lay in bed a while, just talking. It was strange, and not something I’d ever experienced. My few encounters in college had been in dorm rooms, where the visitor had to be up and gone well before morning. And though all Ty and I had done was sleep, there we were, still together in the morning.

  Though I thought it might feel awkward, I was surprisingly comfortable in Ty’s arms, our heads on adjacent pillows. I wondered if it would have been like this with Quinn, then gently put that thought to rest. That was then, this was now, and though I’d always wonder a bit and miss Quinn, he’d told me to live…and now I might just be ready to try.

  I felt strangely safe with Ty. For the first time in too long, I trusted someone. I even told Ty a bit more about my captivity and the baggage I was hauling around, and why I might have issues from time to time. He said he understood, and it was fine. He’d wait.

  I believed him.

  As we loaded up for the last leg of the road trip from hell, people started asking Marcus to finally reveal where we were going.

  “Hey, hey,” he said, grinning, “we waited this long, so how about we let it be a surprise?”

  There were some grumbles, but Marcus looked happy, so in the end we let him have his way.

  An air of excited anticipation reigned in the van as we departed. It sure was a far cry from the tension of the previous day, followed by the near-miss at the mansion, and the outright horror of last night. Still, I kept an eye on the road.

  After a while, I began to relax. I saw zombies, of course, but nowhere near as many as the last two days, and they weren’t acting as strangely. That could change at any minute, but for now I chose to be hopeful.

  Melissa and Faith were sitting behind Patrick again, giggling and making guesses about our destination.

  Beside me, Ty squeezed my hand, and I thought again about our almost-kiss the day before. And I thought about…more. I’d get there, eventually, I knew, and I wouldn’t wait too long, because as Rebecca had pointed out, the world was a very uncertain place now.

  About three hours later, we turned onto a side road and started down an incline. I saw a sign and caught my breath. I pictured what I knew of the place as speculation broke out around me, and thought Marcus might just be taking us home.

  We pulled into a lot at a boat launch, and a massive reservoir lake spread out before us. But…where exactly were we going? The place was enormous, the far shore hazy in the distance, and stretching out of sight on either side. We clambered from the van and gathered with the rest of the excited team and waited for Marcus.

  He walked around the back of his SUV and approached the group, looking smug. “Well, folks, this is it.”

  “Yeah, it sure is,” Patrick said, “but where in all this are we going?” Other curious murmurs arose asking the same thing.

  Marcus gestured far offshore and slightly to our right. “There,” he said. “See that island?”

  An island? Really?

  He looked at us one by one, enjoying the ‘big reveal.’ “On that island is what was known as the Kent-See Lodge.”

  Davey gasped and said, “I read about that place. It was a fishing resort, real high-end. Opened up maybe five or six years ago.”

  “You got it, Davey,” Marcus said. “Our scouts found it late last summer, abandoned. The season hadn’t quite started yet when the outbreak hit. Looked like a few people tried to make a go of it early on, but it was empty when we found it.”

  Monte stepped in with more of the story. “Me and Phil, and a couple of council members, have been coming down here every so often ever since, getting the basics set up and bringing some supplies. Between that and what we’re bringing, we should be set for a while.”

  Marcus slapped him on the shoulder. “I ain’t been on the island yet myself, but I hear they did a fine job. But remember what I said back in training. We’re hard as hell to get to, but if people are around, they’ll figure out we’re there. Smoke, noise, whatever, somebody will know. So we come and go as little as possible, try to keep our activities, numbers, and assets as down-low as we can. Such shore excursions for hunting or supply runs will be made as discretely as possible. At night, in fog, whatever we can to conceal what we’re doing.”

  “How do we get out there?” Melissa asked. Good question.

  Monte waved down the bank from the boat launch. “Down that way, we got two big-ass pontoon boats hidden. And we have some inflatable rafts in the cargo truck. It’ll take a few trips, especially with the horses and goats, but we can have everybody across before long.”

  “What about the trucks?” Ty asked.

  Marcus took the question. “We got places nearby, spread out, to hide the livestock truck and vans. I guess one of the SUVs, too. We don’t need ’em all right now, but we’ll keep an eye on everything, check them to keep them running. The escorts will take back the cargo truck, and Javier is gonna drive back one of the SUVs.”

  Javier wasn’t staying?

  “Javier’s not staying?” Rebecca asked, her voice showing more emotion than I’d have expected. Hell, I wouldn’t have expected her to even notice. Could she and Javier…? No. No, really? Maybe she’d decided to take her own advice.

  “He’ll go back,” Marcus said, “and submit a detailed written report. We couldn’t relate all the details on the radio.” Knowing there were marauders out there hoping to guess our location—though they were currently on a wild goose chase—I totally understood that point. “He’ll come back in a couple weeks with more supplies and any updated information. He and Davey be making these runs every month or so.”

  “And while I’m out, I can probably get some huntin’ in,” Davey said happily.

  “But first,” Marcus said, “we need to clear the island, make sure no dead found their way there since we were here last, floating on debris or something.”

  A Zodiac was unloaded from the truck and inflated, and Marcus, Ty, Theo, Rebecca, Anton, and I climbed aboard. It seemed as if we glided just above the surface of the beautiful, still lake as the wooded island grew steadily larger before us.

  As we ne
ared, Marcus swung to the side and into a sheltered inlet. “We have a couple of folding docks in the bushes over there. Don’t want to make it obvious how to get on and off here.”

  “We could rig up some underwater obstacles for more obvious approaches,” Anton observed.

  “John’s already working up some plans,” Marcus replied. “He didn’t know where we were going exactly, but he was asked to think up some submersible barriers, things like that.”

  Anton nodded in approval as we pulled up to the bank and climbed out of the boat.

  We walked up a narrow trail through a thick stand of trees, until it opened up on a large clearing which was probably once beautifully landscaped, but now had a rustic feel. My jaw dropped as I took in a sizeable central lodge, with several cabins beyond. As we moved across the clearing, I saw pens already built for the animals, a chicken coop, and some outbuildings. Inside, Marcus told us, were equipment and supplies, and the larger metal building held the stockpile of supplies meant to be held in reserve for the rest of our community, should an evacuation eventually become a reality.

  We covered the grounds and the interior of the buildings, not finding a single dead surprise. We were off to a great start.

  Before we left to start bringing the team, the animals, and our supplies over, Ty drew me aside and into a hug. “So, what do you think?”

  I hardly knew what to say. “Um…it’s amazing.”

  He gave me a squeeze. “It sure is.” He leaned back and looked into my eyes. “I never thought I’d find a place like this again. I can do a lot here. I see where my shop needs to go, I even see where we could build a kiln.”

  I was still struggling to take it all in. “It even has a library,” I said, pulling back and poking Ty in the ribs. “It has everything we could possibly need.”

  Ty grabbed my hand and leaned down, and my heart nearly seized as I read the intentions in his eyes. I felt like he saw past the surface, all the way down to the real me, the person I’d become through circumstance, but who had maybe been there all along. Part of me was terrified, but then I remembered I wasn’t the weak girl who hid from everything that scared her. And I wasn’t afraid of Ty; if anything, I was frightened by the intensity of my own response to him.