Dead Nation

by Joshua Guess

  Team eleven was one of four groups feverishly doing the work. The other half of the job was setting up as many traps as possible. There were a lot of different kinds, but I was partial to the deadfall traps. Probably because I came up with the idea. See, you design the open spaces on your roads in such a way that the enemy flees and has a bigger chance of breaking the direction you want him to. Then you use a hill or blind curve or some other feature of the landscape to hide the fact they're about to hit a dead end.

  And you make sure that dead end is next to a hill or cliff, or at least a stand of very tall trees. You rig trees you've already knocked down and stacked up to crash into the gathered enemies in the dead end as soon as they break a trip wire or some other trigger. Or you put a bunch of shaped explosives on ones that are already standing. If I sound fixated on trees, that's because it's a question of maximum impact for the least effort. Trees are big and heavy. They have a lot of potential energy, and that makes them great weapons.

  “I'll do a full run around your perimeter, but it looks good to me so far,” Kate said. “When do you think we'll start phase three?”

  I tried not to show any nerves, but the question was a bone of contention between me and a few of the team leads. “That's...fluid right now. We can't provoke a fight until we have more inside information. And that'll mean getting really close.” I couldn't take even the smallest risk with that part of the plan, so I didn't specify just how close we'd actually get. “Probably another two, three weeks. Right now our only problem is fending off stray zombies out here. Keeping so many people in the open is a lot more trouble than we expected considering how empty this area was before.”

  Kate nodded. “Yeah, well. They do like to show up when people start leaving their scent behind. I'm sure you'd rather not start a shooting war that will put the captives in danger, so give me a few days’ notice before you need us in place. We'll be there.”

  I couldn't help feeling a bit of a thrill at the thought. Yeah, I knew moving forward would mean bloodshed. No way around that. But it also meant getting Logan and the other hostages free, and I wanted that so bad I could taste it.

  Kate and her people were on their way back home a few hours later, leaving only the strike force spread around the perimeter in case any enemy eyes actually were closer than expected. I did as Jackie and Marie...we'll say asked since it makes me look less like a child in need of supervision, and kept to the secure routes set up by my people. That's a relative term not to be taken as a statement of absolute safety. It was secure from direct observation by anyone inside the compound, even from their new tower.

  Other than our endless circle of roving scouts and sentries, my team's circuit of the perimeter was last. It was not the kind of micromanaging an outsider might assume, but a more practical need on my part. I had to see how the preparations were coming along for myself so I could adjust resources as needed. That meant putting eyes on the whole thing at least every other day.

  Fortunately for us, our supply lines were in good order. The van had fuel to spare and with no enemies out here to fire on us we could take the outer roads not blocked by deadfalls and move inward on foot. It was much faster than trying to hoof it between sites or even navigating the labyrinth.

  “Let us go first,” Jackie said as we left the van about two hundred yards west of the last work site on our list. It was dusk, maybe an hour left until full dark. The whole team had been at it for hours. We'd all gotten pretty good at picking our way through the mess of fallen trees and dense woodland to get to the work zones. Not all the sites were being prepped as traps, but my paranoia about being observed meant we had to treat them all the same. No team could be seen as more or less important than any other.

  “We go together,” I said, gesturing at a tired Jo and Tabby. “We've been on our feet all day, and I'd rather have a team at my back if someone comes gunning for us like they did at the tower.”

  Marie raised an eyebrow. “A split team saved your ass when that happened, or so I heard it.”

  I let the words pass over me, the anger they caused a fleeting and unstoppable reaction to losing Greg. Marie wasn't being glib, only stating a fact. Nor was she minimizing the loss. I knew that.

  It also didn't matter. A lot of rage was inextricably tied to that day. I couldn't avoid feeling it at the slightest mention.

  “We're going together,” I said again, doggedly forcing my voice not to come out flat and cold.

  This was pulling rank and I was surprisingly okay with it. There were limits to what I could allow myself to be pushed into or out of as the case may be. There are a lot of bullshit reasons I could throw out there for wanting everyone in my sight. The deep down true one was plain old fear. I didn't want anyone else to die on me.

  The trip to the site itself was uneventful. From an outside perspective, we walked through a thickening copse of trees and into some truly gnarly terrain. This particular path included a steeply cut valley leading toward a massive sinkhole pretty close to the compound itself. Anyone watching us would assume we'd gone into it because it just didn't look like there was anywhere else to go.

  We didn't. Deep into the ravine, my people cut a cleft into the wall. It was a steep climb out, but gave us perfect cover to move toward our real location. This site had a different team working on it every few days and had since almost the first hour we'd moved the strike force from Haven. It was a long-term project. Getting people in here was a nightmare thanks to the density of the forest around us, but that same difficulty navigating the terrain made it virtually impossible for anyone living or dead to find my people.

  “How the hell did you find a geological survey of this area, anyway?” Jackie asked. “Not that I'm not impressed.”

  I smiled. “Haven is in the state capital. When the world fell apart, no one cared about the archives. They were basically untouched. And Kentucky has pretty good records. Had them, I guess. A place as big as the distribution center would have had to file a detailed survey before they could get approved to build. Not that hard to find, just took a while.”

  I had explained what this site was for on the way over—again, operational security was paramount. I didn't distrust Jackie and Marie, but there was no point giving them information before they needed it, just in case they were captured. Tired as we were, we still managed a decent pace as we moved much closer to the Sons' wall than anyone thought possible. The trick, you see, was not being above ground as we did it.

  The ravine was actually part of a small cave system in the area. Though we left it, there was another branch only a few hundred feet north. That one was staffed by my people. The entrance was a thousand feet from the wall, far enough away that no one would have any reason to consider it a problem. The cave itself extended much farther.

  Right beneath the outer perimeter, as a matter of fact. In bygone times, people digging a tunnel beneath a defensive fortification were called sappers. We didn't need to do much actual digging. Couldn't, really. The rock forming the cave was tough. Its roof was also very close to the surface.

  “How's it going?” I asked the foreman of the day, a man named Harry. He was the leader of team thirteen.

  “Gettin' there,” Harry said, waving a hand at the distant lights further inside the cave. “We've got the scaffolding done. It's all the way to the roof. The extension will take a little longer. About a yard and a half of rock between my people and the surface down there, so we best stay back to keep things quiet.”

  The actual construction wasn't happening right below the eventual point of entry, of course. Rather, pieces were built and then moved into place before assembly with muffled tools. It was a painfully slow process, and weakening the stone above would be even more so. Giving ourselves an entrance to the compound was worth any amount of effort. Hell, the whole mission up to this point was a giant show. It had real goals, good ones—but the entire plan revolved around making this part happen.

  “Good,” I said. “You're sure you can chew throug
h that rock without drawing too much attention?”

  Harry flipped one grizzled hand dismissively. “If we're right about the position, it'll be just inside the wall between two sentry points. Closest person will be thirty, forty feet away. We're using high torque, low speed abrasion to cut our hole. Hardest part will be keeping the generator quiet. It'll be fine.”

  Hearing those words filled me with a relief almost orgasmic in its power. Most of the last few weeks had been the prep work getting to this point.

  I clapped Harry on the shoulder. “Awesome. Keep it up. Come update me when your team changes out with your replacements.”

  Harry nodded and assured me he'd do just that, and we took our leave.

  “Lot of fucking walking for a five minute conversation,” Tabby grumbled. “Could've just sent a burst transmission or something, right? Telling us it was all good to go?”

  Jo answered before I could. “Yeah, if that was all we were going for here, but it wasn't. Mason wanted to scope the area, see if he noticed anything off. Make sure there were no signs of watchers or that our people were slacking.”

  Jackie chimed in. “Not to mention it's a morale boost to know the boss wants to check in on you, so long as he doesn't bother the people doing the actual work and slow them down. Gotta admit I'm impressed. That's a pretty light hand on the wheel, Mason.”

  I gave her a wink. “I'm not a complete idiot.”

  We talked off and on in low voices all the way back to the van, which we reached with no trouble.

  We were halfway back to base when the Relentless Sons made us all look like green recruits, and idiots to boot.

  15

  “What is that?” Jo asked as we trudged back up the long, shallow incline toward the van.

  The land around us was bad for noise; the slope and trees distorted sound in ways my brain couldn't immediately compensate for. “Sounds like rain to me.”

  The dead leaves carpeting this part of the world made a papery hiss when rain dropped to the ground, and that was what I was hearing now. Except...not. It was different somehow. I put up a hand to stop the others and closed my eyes, all my focus bent on listening. I tried to find a sound to isolate, a pattern or rhythm to grab hold of. It wasn't just a SEAL trick; lots of people from a bunch of walks a life had the knack of it. I learned it from a fling with a session musician in my early twenties.

  “That's not rain,” Jackie said. “Sounds like someone walking through a pile of leaves.”

  Or a bunch of someones dragging their feet through them.

  “Run,” Tabby said. “Get to the van!”

  We ran. Oh, man, did we fucking book it.

  All fatigue burned away in a flash of raw adrenaline as my legs pumped. The others were faster, their lighter bodies making up for shorter legs. Well, except for Jackie. She was just all around quick, and worked her way to the front of our group like the dedicated scout and protector she was. Which meant I didn't even see the zombie she killed with a single blow. My entire view was watching her whip a baton from her belt and flick it out to full length in a single, fluid strike.

  “Fucking swarm,” Marie gasped as we plodded in a slow-motion run up the hill. “How did it catch us off guard?”

  “No idea,” I said. And that pissed me off. It wasn't just a swarm, but a swarm. Only hundreds of pairs of feet had the capacity to mimic a natural effect like the sound of rain. It had been too big and spread out to be anything but a shitload of dead people.

  The zombie Jackie had killed was a straggler, but not far off from the main herd. This became obvious when we got within a hundred yards of the van only to see the herd of zombies crest the hill around it and pour down the slope toward us.

  “Backup site!” I shouted. “Run!”

  If anyone had a problem with me telling them to run while they were already doing so, they apparently decided to stick that complaint in their pocket for later. Like a school of fish, we all broke to our left—the direction of the nearest backup safe house and also the one most clear of the dead—and gave up trying to climb the hill. Pure lateral motion let us go a lot faster, easily outpacing the majority of the incoming zombies.

  Most, but not all. I let myself fall to the back of the pack just in case. We sped through the trees like forest spirits, jumping fallen logs and skidding over muddy patches with expert grace. It was the motion of skilled, practiced survivors honed by the desperate need to get away.

  Behind us I heard the uneven but depressingly fast footfalls of pursuers closing in on us. I glanced back long enough to discern the strange gray skin of New Breed zombies, moving with a reckless abandon no human could hope to match.

  Every time I do some real warrior shit and fight off a bunch of zombies on my own, I always remind myself afterward that moments like this are way more common. I don't go looking for these situations. I like not fighting. I run a lot. I try to make sure I'm the only one doing the running, though, because I hate putting my people in danger.

  The facts of the situation were these:

  Being chased meant there was no way for use to hide from this swarm in the short term. We were spotted. Which was bad because it made us targets but good in that we didn't have to play around with stealth or silence. The really bad part was that this surprise herd of the dead had our scent and we were laying more of it down with every step. They could and would track us like ants leading their brothers to a dead mouse in the woods.

  I could have thrown a few vials of ammonia in my wake, but it would have been a waste of resources. The woods were big. Our pursuers, both the New Breed immediately in my wake and the larger swarm behind them, would part around the cloud like water around a stone and carry right on chasing us down.

  All we could do was run. Sometimes that's the best option, unless you have a fetish for idiotic last stands.

  The footsteps behind me grew louder, closer. I could almost smell the desperation in the New Breed. Uncharacteristic, though. Usually they didn't take the initiative unless they were fairly sure of the outcome, or starving. Like the ones in that trapped warehouse.

  “Fuck!” I said, realization washing over me in a tide. “Motherfucker, that's what we missed!”

  Everyone else was running too hard to ask, and it wasn't as if it mattered right that second. I'd tell them when—if—we reached safety. Something had been bugging me for a while now and it was something so goddamn basic that I wanted to shoot myself for missing it.

  Namely that the number of zombies surrounding the compound was far, far lower than what the herdsmen gathering them out in the surrounding areas accounted for. Somehow they'd hidden huge groups of the dead, moving them without us seeing, and saved them for just the right moment.

  I pulled my pistol from the holster on my belt and took a quick look over my shoulder before taking a small jump and spinning in the air, letting my momentum send me into a slide as I brought the gun up and aimed, all at once.

  I've adapted to not using guns because they draw far too much attention. In this case, that wasn't a concern. Decades of practice took over as I fired. Deadly calm guided my hand—but the compensated barrel helped. I'm not one to risk my life on skill alone. The most useful equipment you can get is always the right choice.

  There were four New Breed behind me. The nearest was only a dozen feet away when my first two shots took him in the throat and just under his nose. The second was a few paces back but closed half the distance as my aim switched. That was another double tap, also successful.

  The third nearly had me. I dropped my elbows, aiming the gun up at an angle as it got in knife-fighting range and I fully admit that the pair of shots that tore through the bottom of its jaw and sent a geyser of brains through the top of its head were wild, stupid luck.

  The fourth one tackled me and bit me on the fucking cheek.

  Like a new recruit, I tried to pull away. A white-hot bolt of pain tore through my face, reminding me that this was a terrible idea and I was a moron for letting reflex take ove
r. The damn thing could have sheared the cheek off completely had it wanted to. Instead it used the bite as careful leverage as it frantically tried to claw through my coat.

  With a wince, I brought the gun around and up and fired not five inches from my face. The noise deafened me in that ear with a lance of pain that sent spots dancing across my vision. I felt the wash of hot gas escaping the gun pour across my face as the dead zombie fell away. I pushed away the pain and the loose, wet sensation on my face as I scrambled to my feet and sprinted at full speed toward the rest of my team.

  To their credit, they didn't stop and watch. This wasn't one of those situations where playing the hero worked out for anyone. I'd done what I had to. If not, those New Breed would have taken me down like a gazelle from behind, not a position anyone ever wanted to end up in. It was a necessary, calculated risk, and if the cost was a new scar atop the old ones on my face and some healing before I could hear in stereo, it was one I'd have paid many times over.

  It was only a few hundred yards from the van to the backup site, which was not an accident. We set them up at intervals near all the major work areas. They weren't fancy, but they didn't need to be. Without the small pack of New Breed nipping at my heels, getting caught up with the others and to the bunker was doable if not easy. The dead wouldn't be far behind, and in greater numbers.

  See what I did there? A vaguely paraphrased Star Wars reference to break the tension. Ha ha ha. My bleeding face was definitely smiling, I promise.

  I only actually caught up once the others slowed down a bit as they approached the site. I only knew it was there because of the small stack of wood sitting over its entrance. Jo and Tabby looked over their shoulders as I closed in, Tabby's eyes going wide and Jo scowling at yet another injury.

  “Fucking go inside!” I said.

  Jackie was already working on it, kicking over the wood and yanking the metallic ring hidden beneath it with a mighty upward jerk. A creaking metal hatch appeared from the debris-strewn forest floor. I glanced off to the right and could spy the nearby road in the distance. It was purely nervous habit. The fact that we were at the bunker told me our location.