Storm Horizon: A novel of the zombie apocalypse (Haven Book 3)

by Brian Switzer

  "That being the case, and not desiring to murder a few hundred strangers, I tried to drive them out. The word I got about the people living in my future home is their leaders are nothing if not resourceful. And that turned out to be true. Every time I tried to run them off, they overcame my efforts- despite the fact they didn’t even know they had a fight on their hands.

  "But whatever you may think of me, Coy - and I hope you think well of me, even in light of these things I'm telling you- one thing is true. It’s not my desire to show up where you live with an army at my back to kill everybody in your little community.

  "I brought you here today so you could go back and tell your leadership that those caves are mine. They are mine, that's where I live now, and we are coming soon to take them over. I don't want to hurt anybody.

  "But Coy, I’ll order the death of anybody still there when we show up.”

  Seventy-Three

  * * *

  For several long moments, Coy didn't speak. He concentrated on his breathing and on meeting Kayla's gaze while he chose his words. She looked nothing like a woman who just threatened to kill two hundred men, women, and children. She rested her chin on the cup of her hand and watched him with wide, innocent eyes. A ghost of a smile played on her lips.

  He had no doubt she anticipated several of his reactions and had ready answers. He wanted to ask her a question she wasn’t prepared for. When he spoke, his tone was calm and measured. "Have you ever been down there?"

  "In the caves?"

  He nodded.

  "We drove to the bottom of the hill in high school once. Why do you ask?"

  "The tunnels- they are huge, Kayla. You could fit a small city inside, with room left over. Me and a guy walked two miles through one, and we didn't come near the end."

  "I know how vast an area it is, Coy. I intend to fill it with followers. But what's your point?"

  "You can move your people there and we’ll stake out a spot far away from you. Neither side needs to know the other exists."

  She shook her head before he finished. "That would never work. Even if there’s no problem with how we allocate resources - keeping people fed, clothed, and supplied - it still won’t work. From everything I understand about your dad, he would never tolerate my existence next door. Nor could Danny, or Jiri. Your mother would hate the sight of me. Back when the Judge called the shots down there I might've allowed you to talk me into that sort of arrangement. After all, I’d just co-opt his leadership or kill him if things weren't working out. But with the new management, living side-by-side in peace and harmony isn't a viable proposal."

  Coy gaped at her. "How do you know about my Mom and Dad or Danny?" His face grew hot and he chuckled without humor. "You've got somebody in the community."

  She gave him a Cheshire-cat grin and a small shrug of her shoulders.

  "Who? There's no way it’s somebody in my group, so it's got to be an Originals. Who is it? Mark? Joe? Who?"

  "Dear boy, I'm not saying you are correct. But if you are, would it be prudent for me to tell you the person's name?"

  She had him there. He closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. A comment she made during her long oration sunk in and he froze. "Attempts to evict us."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "You said you'd attempted to evict us but you weren't successful."

  "Yes, that's correct."

  "You sent a team to let a herd loose in the tunnels. Right, that was one of your attempts?"

  "The mission wasn't my idea, but I okayed it. The theory was that if we convinced your community the tunnels weren't impregnable to the demons you'd find someone else to go. You meaning your entire group, not just you, of course."

  "Six people died during your little mission. Six people who had never harmed anyone and were just trying to make it through…." he trailed off as another idea came to mind. "And Riley? Did you have Riley killed?"

  "There was a gentleman that we killed in one of your tunnels- I never learned his name. The man that killed him was supposed to kill your father, but someone interrupted and out-fought him."

  A rage burned inside Coy and he cautioned himself to be careful. If he lost his temper and ended up dead, there wouldn’t be anyone to warn his community of the coming assault.

  "That's seven people. Seven innocent people with no bone to pick with you. And they're dead. Just dead. How do you live with yourself?"

  "Dear boy, don't try to play on my emotions and don't be obtuse. I believe you are aware by now that I give little thought to the nobodies that come to unfortunate ends along the way to me achieving my goals. If I'm prepared to destroy two hundred lives tomorrow, do you think I'm at all bothered by the handful I destroyed yesterday?

  You don’t see the full picture. The tunnels aren’t the end for me Coy, they’re the beginning. With the tunnels as my headquarters, I’ll quickly control all of Southwest Missouri. Then I’ll reign over the state and soon the entire Midwest. If that’s God’s will for me how could I let a handful of insignificant people stand in the way of it coming true?

  He clenched his fists in frustration. “Ok, then. How long? What kind of timeframe are we talking about?"

  "For you and your people to clear out of the caves? Two weeks from tomorrow. We'll return you first thing in the morning. I'd imagine we’ll drop you a mile or two from the caves. But I don't handle the logistics. You go straight home, get your dad and the other leaders together and tell them they have two weeks from that minute to clear out."

  "Okay, let me ask you this. Dad doesn't like it when people tell him what to do. Heck, I'm not even sure he'll believe me. So if you come marching down the hill in two weeks and we are still there, what happens?"

  "Death. Death happens, Coy."

  Coy leaned forward on the table and supported himself with his elbows. He rubbed his thumbs together in an absent-minded way as he fought to control the anger rising inside of him. "What makes you… We spent a year on the road, putting creepers down and killing people who tried to take what was ours. What makes you sure you can beat us?"

  Her laugh was light and airy. "Are you a student of military history, Coy?"

  "No, ma'am."

  "I am. But you don't need to be one to understand what happens when an army a thousand people strong marches on a ragtag group of a few hundred. And of those, how many real fighters do you have? Twenty? Thirty?"

  "And I suppose all of your people are well-trained fighting machines? How can you be so blind? Do you really not understand what I'm saying, Kayla? While your army spent the last year tending to your every need, my people were out in the shit. Those ditch-diggers today- I'm not saying they are worthless, but how many creepers have they put down? How many many men have they killed?"

  She gazed at him from the other side of the table, calm, a little Mona Lisa smile her only sign of emotion. "I thought you knew me better. Those ditch-diggers- if half of them dying helps me reach my goal… well, I've still got the other half to work with, don't I?

  "I'll lay it out for you, dear boy. After that, we'll not speak of this anymore. It's wearisome, and I'll not endure many more of your questions or your disrespect before I send you back to your parents with your balls in one bag and your head in another.

  "Over a thousand of my people will march on your home in two weeks. They will come armed with automatic weapons and carrying plenty of ammunition. The rabble lined up against them consists of forty or fifty capable men and a collection of warm bodies. They don’t possess enough weapons to arm the capable people, much less the warm bodies. They are almost out of ammunition. We will roll through them like Sherman on his way to the sea, Coy. Would you like to hear more history?"

  Coy shrugged his shoulders. "Just say what the fuck you have to say. You don't need me to play my part in your little drama anymore."

  She looked at him, unblinking, for a long moment. Any hint of the genteel woman of means she was gone and he saw her for what she really was- a murderous sociopath
. Then she flipped the switch somewhere inside herself and transformed back into her pretend persona.

  "If you studied your history you would recognize the situation. It's happened before- when the Japanese made their bonsai charges, armed with bayonets and pitchforks, and attacked American Marines with rifles and grenades. It happened when the Poles send men on horseback against German tanks. When Armenians armed with sticks and rocks tried to defend their women and children against Turks armed with guns. And it will happen in two weeks if you don't get your father to get out of my tunnels. We'll sweep down on your people with enough bullets to blot out the sun and they will be powerless to stop us."

  She stood, stretched, and drained her wine glass. "Convince your father, Coy. I rather like you, and I appreciate your spirit. I hope that we can meet again someday, in a situation where we can be on the same side. But knowing your body shares a mass grave with two hundred other people on the far end of that quarry won't cause me to lose one second of sleep. Convince your father."

  She turned to leave. She made her way toward the door on unsteady feet- she drank two bottles of wine by herself.

  Maybe it was the blase way she talked about murdering his family, maybe it was her casual and dismissive manner, or maybe it was something else; his temper finally broke free. He jumped to his feet and his thighs collided with the table. It tilted crazily; glasses spilled and dishes crashed to the floor before it settled back into place. “Hey, you crazy bitch!”

  She froze with her back to him.

  “I’ll give you my Dad’s answer now. You say your bullets will blot out the sun? Then we’ll fight you in the dark, you murderous cunt.”

  Ten seconds passed that felt like an hour. She didn’t move or speak. He panted, his face twisted with rage, and waited for her to call men to kill him. He saw his steak knife on the edge of the table and palmed it, determined to go down fighting.

  Her shoulders rose and fell, and she continued toward the door. "Chet will be here momentarily to show you back to your room," she called over her shoulder.

  Seventy-Four

  * * *

  Coy stretched out on the soft mattress, the comforter pulled up over his body. Three hours had passed since Chet pulled his bed down for him and left with the admonition that he would return to wake him at six in the morning. He’d tossed and turned since then, unable to sleep for more than a few minutes without the same thought pulling him awake.

  A passing comment of Kayla's electrified him when she said it and dominated his thoughts during the night. They don’t possess enough weapons to arm the capable people, much less the warm bodies. They are almost out of ammunition.

  Coy rolled that sentence around in his mind over and over again and always came to the same conclusion. She wasn’t aware of the trip to the armory. He forced himself not to react when she made that statement even though throwing it in her face would have been more satisfying than his steak dinner. I guess you don’t know everything, you silly witch. My camp is armed to the teeth.

  For whatever reason, her spy inside the quarry hadn’t gotten the news to her. She expected defenders armed with a mishmash of rifles and shotguns and almost out of ammunition.

  That made Coy's job an easy one. He had to get out of here in the morning. He had to get home, meet with his Dad and the other leaders, and relay Kayla's ultimatum. And they had to determine the identity of her spy before the spy told her they would meet the attack with hundreds of automatic weapons backed up by plenty of ammunition.

  Coy imagined Kayla at the head of a line of cars and trucks rolling across the quarry bottom. Side-by-side tunnels suddenly spat fire and Terrence’s fifty cal roared to life. She could only watch as hinges blew off doors, engines exploded, and tires flew through the air.

  As he laid there thinking of those images, sleep finally pulled him into its grasp. The corners of his mouth turned up in a smile as he drifted off.

  Seventy-Five

  * * *

  There was a knock at Coy's door shortly after six the next morning. He opened it and there stood Magnus, grinning like he’d won the lottery. He held a steaming cup of coffee and appeared bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, despite the early hour.

  "Mind if I come in?"

  Coy didn't answer, just stepped back and pulled the door open further.

  "I'm not making the trip back, kid. But I wanted to come up and tell you so long."

  "Why aren’t you coming?"

  Magnus shrugged his shoulders. "I have plans to make. Plus, there's no real threat involved this time. I mean, what are you going to do, escape? You’re going home."

  Coy buttoned his shirt while Magnus spoke. He didn't reply; instead, he sat on the bed and laced up his boots.

  Magnus eyed him as the silence grew thick. He slurped coffee from his cup and cleared his throat. “Hey, kid- no hard feelings about the way this went down. Not necessarily how I would have handled it, but you do what the boss says, you know?”

  Coy fiddled with his shoestrings and didn’t look up. “Yeah, especially when the boss is crazy.”

  Magnus’ answer surprised him. “She is a loon, isn’t she?”

  Coy rose to his feet, his eyes blazing. “Then why do you work for her?”

  Magnus met his gaze without blinking. “Do you know what I did before the outbreak?”

  “How would I?”

  “I worked as a mechanical contractor. Heat, air, refrigeration, plumbing, piping. I knew more about heaters and refrigerators than any other three guys in my company. Guess where that got me?”

  Coy raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

  “A spot on a crew, with the boss’s idiot son-in-law as my foreman. The boss’s idiot son was the vice-president, and the boss was an idiot himself. I spent my days cleaning up their messes and not even getting a thank you for it. Same with my old man. My old man was a genius. Taught me everything I know. Give him some glue, string, and baling wire and he could make an engine run no matter what was wrong with it. He spent forty years on the county road crew and retired with the same job title he hired on at. If there was a broken machine anywhere in the county, they sent my old man to fix it. When the dam sprung a leak in ‘82, they got him out of bed at three in the morning to tell them what to do. But he was black Irish with a temper when he got to drinking, and he drank most of the time. So he never got a promotion.” Magnus was almost yelling now, and he jabbed a finger at Coy for emphasis. “He worked for seven different bosses over forty years, and he could do the job better than any of them. But his name never came up at the end of the year when they announced the new foremen and crew leaders.

  “But take a gander out there now. It ain’t like that anymore, is it kid? There’s a meritocracy in this country for the first time since the 1940’s. It doesn’t matter that I’m a little rough around the edges, or that I say ain’t and drop my g’s sometimes. What matters is that I get the job done."

  "That's great, Magnus. I'm glad the death of billions generated you some upward mobility. But let me ask you- this meritocracy you're talking about? Why don't you go to work for somebody with decency? You could do some good and make this world a better place. Instead, you hitched your wagon to a mass murderer."

  Coy hoped his words would cause Magnus discomfort, but he was in for a letdown. The big Irishman gave him an easy grin. "Because she's got the power, kid. When she sat down there last night and told you she would run the Midwest someday- she told you that, didn't she?"

  Coy nodded.

  "She wasn't just talking out of her ass. All this out here, all the things you saw yesterday? She got that done in eight months. This building you're standing in? It was a pit of filth and shit and disease. Men were murdered and women were raped. It was a third-world slum. And she walked through the door and cleaned it up in less than a month. Kayla has the power. And she trusts me. And I'll tell you what- I would rather work for the bad guy then work for the good guy and have the bad guy kill me."

  "She’ll lose in the end
. It may be the end of the world but I think there's still a place for things like honor and doing the right thing."

  Magnus chuckled and walked toward the door. "Good luck with that, kid. Me, I'll stick with power." He opened the door but instead of walking through the doorway, he turned back. "Hey, Coy."

  Coy gave him an expectant look.

  "I think you're an okay kid and you have a pretty good future in front of you. Convince your dad to move. I won’t like killing you, but I won't hesitate a second to do it."

  “I’ll think on that if you’ll do something for me.”

  Magnus spread his arms wide. “What’s that, kid?”

  “When you come, have an escape plan ready in case things don’t go your way. Because I won’t like putting a bullet in your heart but I’ll do it to keep you from hurting someone I care for.”

  “Sounds like no matter what, one of us will have to do something we don’t want to do.” He offered Coy his hand.

  Coy shook it and gave the older man a tight smile. “Sounds like it.”

  Seventy-Six

  * * *

  Four men Coy had never seen before walked him back down the hallway and rode the elevator with him. They hurried through the sanctuary then gripped his arms and guided him to a white cube van in the parking lot. The guy in charge withdrew a hood from his back pocket and gave him an expectant look. "I hope this isn’t gonna be a problem because they said to hood you up."

  He shrugged and bent forward at the neck. The man pulled the hood snug and tied it in place with what felt like a hunk of rawhide. A hand tapped him on his head. "Is that too tight? Do you have enough wind?"

  "It's fine." Coy's voice sounded muffled to his ears. The van door slid open; they guided him to the doorway and lifted him inside. A hand smacked a seat and the man who placed the hood over his head spoke. "Have a seat right here. Here's how this will work. You sit back here and be quiet. I have a man on each side of you, so don’t mess with your hood or get too smart. I'll hogtie your ass and throw you in the back without a second’s hesitation."