by Perrin Briar
Debbie couldn’t tear her eyes from Dana. She had spoken the words she was most afraid to hear. Dana had meant every one of them. She would kill her, right here and now if she did not tell her what she wanted to know.
“Olympic Park,” Debbie said. “They went to Olympic Park. Now, are you happy?”
Dana couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She had to be sure it was genuine, and not something Debbie was saying so Dana would leave her alone.
“Tell me the truth!” Dana said. “Where?”
“Olympic Park!” Debbie said. “I tell you already!”
Dana released Debbie’s hair and rolled to one side.
“Now you can go, get yourself killed,” Debbie said. “Go.”
“My sister was out there three days longer than she needed to be,” Dana said. “All so you could have us take care of you. You’re the worst scum I’ve ever met. I’m leaving to find my sister. You had better not be here when I get back. Or I promise you, I will end you.”
The old woman’s eyes moved from Dana to Hugo, but he turned away from her gaze. She was alone in this.
“You say if I tell you-” Debbie said.
“I said it was your last chance,” Dana said. “I didn’t say it would guarantee you a place here. Now you’ve told me everything I need to know, you are of no use to us.”
Debbie could tell by the look on Dana’s face she was serious.
“Where will I go?” Debbie said. “Who will take care of me?”
“That’s not my problem,” Dana said.
She got to her feet and marched away.
“Dana, wait,” Hugo said. “We have to think about this. We need to come up with a plan of where we’re going to go, what we’re going to do.”
Dana grabbed her backpack.
“I have a plan,” Dana said. “I’m going to Olympic Park to find my sister. Come with me or stay here, but I’m going, and I’m going now.”
OFFENSIVE
Chapter One
Dana grabbed a packet of crackers from the cupboard and shoved them into her backpack. She added several tins of baked beans and packets of crisps. She moved to the refrigerator and extracted a large bottle of water.
“Wait,” Hugo said. “Wait.”
Dana zipped her backpack up and tossed it over her shoulder. She threw the door open and marched down the slight incline of the backyard toward the small boathouse at the bottom. Hugo was hot on her heels.
“Wait a minute,” Hugo said, grabbing Dana’s rucksack.
Dana shrugged him off. Hugo lost his footing and hit the deck. He was up again in an instant.
“Dana, wait!” Hugo said. “We have to talk about this.”
“Max is in Olympic Park,” Dana said. “That’s where I need to be.”
Dana lifted the wooden latch to the boathouse twin doors and pulled them open. Water lapped at the boat hulls like it was slapping them on the back, wishing them good luck on the journey ahead.
Dana moved for the small rowboat she had used the previous day. She knew it worked. There was no engine, no complicated sails to operate. There was no need to take a risk on something that wouldn’t work properly. She tossed her backpack into the stern and turned to Hugo.
“Are you coming or not?” she said. “I’m leaving right now.”
“We need more information,” Hugo said.
“Fine,” Dana said.
She climbed into the boat and reached for the knotted cleat. She began to untie it.
“Do you have any idea how big Olympus Park is?” Hugo said. “It’s huge. You can be as determined as you like, but you’re never going to find Max without a plan. You need to be smart, not rash like this.”
Dana sat on the bench and used an oar to push off from the boathouse, floating into the river. She would row to the other side and then find a vehicle to take her the rest of the way. Once she got to Olympic Park, she would begin her search.
Dana bent down and set to work rowing. Her arms still hurt from the previous day’s row, but she wasn’t about to let that stop her. Cold determination was etched deep on her face. She slowed once to look up at the boathouse, at Hugo, before turning her face away and concentrate on rowing.
I won’t be long now, Dana thought. I’m coming for you, Max.
Hugo watched Dana pull a few more times before shaking his head and heading back into the house.
Chapter Two
Hugo kicked a trashcan, sending it skidding across the kitchen floor. It struck the opposite wall with a hollow thud, spilling garbage over the marble.
Hugo quivered with frustration. Then he leaned against the refrigerator and slid down it onto the floor. His life was a profusion of mistakes and errors. They always put him in the most difficult situations. Take the current example. He was now in a nice, reasonably secure house, with an old lady he couldn’t even stand to look at. And yet, would he cook her meals and clean up after her? He might complain, but he knew he would. And that was his problem.
He was so weak.
Why couldn’t he be more like Dana? Why couldn’t he have more energy? More get up and go? Right now, as he sat here feeling sorry for himself, she was rowing across the river to go find her sister. Now, there was absolutely no way for him to help her.
Except there was one way he could prevent her from going, he thought. Then he wiped the idea from his mind. Honesty was not always the best policy. He couldn’t face telling her that. He promised himself he never would, that it would be the very last thing he would do to her, to inflict that kind of harm on her. It would destroy her.
And yet, he couldn’t just sit by and take care of the cretinous old crone who had lied to them both either. He wouldn’t allow himself to do it. He would follow Dana. He would catch up with her and help her in every way he could.
He stood up and grabbed his own worn backpack. He stuffed it with items similar to those Dana had. Everything he packed would come in handy, he knew. On field trips such as this one, there was never enough food.
Still, he couldn’t help but include a couple of books. He would likely get pretty bored in the evenings with nothing to occupy his time or thoughts. To him, books were as necessary as food in his belly and air in his lungs. He paused when he reached for the door handle.
In the rectangle of glass in the kitchen door, he spotted a small figure. It wasn’t himself, who was rather rotund, but skinny Poe. The little friend they had picked up in the hospital. He stood behind Hugo, in the doorway leading to the living room.
Hugo turned to Poe. The least he could do was look him in the eye when he was going to lie to him.
“Debbie will take care of you,” Hugo said. “The world is a different place now. It’s every man for himself. You need to learn to take care of yourself. Do you understand me?”
Poe whined like a puppy left at home. He understood. He was being abandoned. Again. He shuffled his feet side to side. His eyes were big and wide, filling and shimmering with tears.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Hugo said. “I told you. Be a man. Stand up for yourself.”
But Poe couldn’t be anything other than what he was. That was the beauty of him. He couldn’t lie or cheat or steal. He was a speck of purity in a world gone to shit. And Hugo couldn’t leave him.
“I’m sorry,” Hugo said. “After all this time of trying to be good, I’ve ended up becoming my father. Come here.”
He reached out and took Poe in his arms. Hugo couldn’t leave someone so helpless behind. Poe squealed with joy, knowing he would have someone there to look after him.
Even if Hugo didn’t want to take care of Debbie, he would still want to take care of Poe. He was helpless when it came to self-preservation, even more so than Hugo. There was no way he could rely on the old hag to take care of him. Poe could not feed, clothe or wash adequately. Hugo felt the drive to aid Dana drain from him and funnel into supporting Poe. He couldn’t leave Poe to die. He would regret it for the rest of his life. Dana was strong and able-bodied. S
he did not need him. But Poe did.
The kitchen’s back door opened. Hugo spun around a prickling sensation up his back. He sensed something dark and dangerous. He was wrong.
It was Dana. Just went to show how reliable Hugo’s senses were.
“Dana!” Hugo said, grinning like a schoolboy. “You’re back!”
“No heartfelt welcomes required,” Dana said, holding up a hand. “Tell me your plan.”
She hadn’t returned to chitchat. She’d come back for a plan of action on how to locate her lost sister. If Hugo still wanted to aid her, he would need to present a plan that made him a necessary part of it.
“Right, right,” Hugo said, gathering his thoughts. “We can get information from the internet.”
“The power’s off,” Dana said.
“Not for us,” Hugo said. “We have a generator. And the internet lines might still be up. Just because our power has gone off doesn’t mean the rest of the world has gone offline yet.”
He turned and headed through the house, toward the office on the first floor.
“What kind of information do you think you can get?” Dana said. “Do you honestly think a secret government facility will be advertising itself online?”
“Of course not,” Hugo said. “But there will have been signs. They can’t just click their fingers and build it. They would have created some inadvertent disruption. Anything from mysterious materials being shipped in, to government personnel and others employees leaving a trace. Nothing ever gets made without someone being notified of it.”
The office was a plush room with the very latest in computer technology. When money wasn’t a problem these computers would have been regularly updated with the most recent systems and designs. Hugo jumped on a computer and booted it up.
“I still don’t understand how you can access the internet,” Dana said. “The power grid’s down.”
“Many server centers have backup power generators,” Hugo said. “The power grid only went down a few days ago. Any backup system worth its salt would stay operational for a few weeks at a minimum. We just need to access one that’s still active and we’ll be good to go.”
Hugo used the computer and internet in a way Dana had never seen before. He didn’t use Google or any other search engine, but instead accessed some kind of DOS program. It was simple and ugly. Hugo assured her that every system had a framework like the one he was now using.
“They might not be pretty to look at,” Hugo said. “But they offer a functionality unsurpassed by any other.”
“Just get on with it,” Dana said. She was itching to get going.
Whatever Hugo knew about these computer processes would soon, in the new world order, be of less use than knowing how to set a snare trap. Technology and its uses would soon only exist in history textbooks. Dana doubted if the human race would ever recover enough to get to use it again or rediscover it for that matter.
Hugo’s fingers danced over the keyboard as he worked his magic. He searched and printed off everything he could find related to the building of a facility in Olympic Park over the past sixty or so years.
“Unlikely they would have built it before then,” Hugo said. “Not only did the technology not yet exist but neither did the need. The Nazis had been beaten and the world was at peace. For a while anyway. It was only with the Cold War that a lot of these installations got built.”
Dana wondered what she had done with her free time that allowed Hugo to be so good with computers. She didn’t know anything half as well as Hugo did about machines. What had she done with her life?
Hugo came to a conspiracy theory website.
“Here we are,” he said. “It says here some reports were discovered of army vehicles in the northern area of the park. Some locals complained about the sudden uptick in traffic, blocked roads, things like that. So long as people can complain, there will always be evidence of wrongdoing somewhere.”
“The northern part of the park?” Dana said. “Does it get any more specific than that?”
“I’m searching,” Hugo said.
He didn’t even blink as he tapped the keys, clicked the mouse, and zoomed from one article to another. A schematic with black and white photographs.
The printer was working on overdrive, spitting out the information at an alarming rate. Every piece of equipment in this place was top of the line.
“Uh-oh,” Hugo said.
“What is it?” Dana said.
“The internet’s really slowing down,” Hugo said.
“Is it the connection?” Dana said.
“No,” Hugo said. “It’s the internet itself. It’s… It’s dying.”
Hugo hit the print button a few more times before the monitor finally gave up the ghost and hit him with a 403 Forbidden page. Hugo pressed several more buttons, trying to bring up new pages, but it was no good.
The printer was still printing, working from the computer’s memory. Pages overflowed and fluttered to the floor.
“That’s it,” Hugo said. “The internet is now officially dead. I never thought I would see the day. The internet is supposed to be indestructible. Even if every computer went down, the information is still there, stored away.”
“Not a lot of good if there are no computers left to access it,” Dana said.
The printer spat out two more pages before coming to a stop. Hugo scooped up the pages and began collating them.
“Great,” Dana said. “Now we’re trusting our lives on the rumors from a nutjob website.”
“It’s all we’ve got to go on,” Hugo said with a shrug. “Better than nothing.”
“Not if it ends up pointing us in the wrong direction,” Dana said.
“We were going to end up searching the whole park anyway,” Hugo said. “What difference does it make where we begin our search?”
Dana pouted. It was gone as fast as it had appeared. She just wanted to argue.
“Listen, Dana, there’s something I need to tell you…” Hugo said.
Dana scanned his face. He looked pretty serious. What was it this time? Signs of aliens? Bigfoot sightings? But something in Hugo’s expression gave her pause for thought. Something was playing on his mind.
“What?” Dana said.
“Hm?” Hugo said.
His eyes moved left to right. He was skittish. He’d changed his mind.
“Oh, nothing important,” Hugo said. “Let’s get something to eat and look over these pages.”
“No,” Dana said. “We’ll take them with us.”
“In the boat?” Hugo said.
“Is there another way to cross the river available to us?” Dana said. “If you have a helicopter tucked in your underwear, feel free to let me know. We’ve wasted enough time already. Let’s go.”
“Wait,” Hugo said.
“What?” Dana said. “What now?”
“We need to secure the house,” Hugo said. “Make sure none of the undead get in while we’re out.”
“It’s already secure,” Dana said, rolling her eyes. “I distracted them with alarms from the other cars and houses.”
“That’s great,” Hugo said. “Except if they get distracted again, they’ll end up coming back here.”
“What could get their attention now?” Dana said. “We’ve already disabled the alarm.”
“I don’t know,” Hugo said. “But don’t you think it wise to prepare and have the place locked down for when we come back? The zombies near tore the front gate off its hinges. One even got through. I dealt with him, but I think we should repair it, otherwise, we won’t have anything to return back to. And then there’s the case of the man upstairs.”
“God?” Dana said, confused. “What man upstairs?”
“The man who turned,” Hugo said. “Stewart. He’s still up there.”
Dana pressed her lips together, forming a white line. She hated being delayed further, but she had to admit it was the smart move.
“All right, fine,” she said. �
��But then we’re out of here.”
Chapter Three
They reinforced the front gate with strong wooden beams, pinning it in place. It was the best they could do until all the zombies had left and they would be free to make more noise.
It had only been a few hours since the final car alarm had been silenced by the undead. They were still in the area. Hopefully, with nothing else to distract them, they wouldn’t return. Now they would be milling around, looking for their next target. The last thing they needed to do in the house was create that distraction.
They dug a shallow grave for Stewart, the soldier who had turned upstairs, placing him beside the family whose house they now occupied. They hung his dog tags from a cross hastily made of twigs.
“There,” Dana said. “Happy now?”
“Yes,” Hugo said. “Now, we can go.”
Chapter Four
Debbie sat in a recliner in the living room, silent as the grave. Dana sure wished she was part of the grave. She doubted the old coot knew how to die. Dana was certainly willing to teach her. She was an old hag, and yet despite everything she had done, Hugo couldn’t be mad at her. It just wasn’t in his nature.
“There’s plenty of food in the kitchen,” Hugo said to her. “You are to take care of Poe. You will feed him, talk to him, play with him, anything and everything he needs.”
Debbie was unresponsive. Her eyes were shut and she didn’t move a muscle. Hugo turned to Poe and braced him on either arm.
“You stay here, all right?” he said. “Debbie here will take care of you.”