Dead Nation

by Joshua Guess

  “What's up?” I asked. For once I had no idea what was coming. Tabby had grown increasingly quiet and more focused over the last few days.

  Her expression turned thoughtful for a few moments. “I was thinking of something Colin said before we shipped him off. About how everyone in the Sons' camp knew something would have to change. That they'd need to settle down.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Said it felt like they were a whole country full of dead people walking. Things were getting difficult. Tensions got high.”

  “That's what I'm worried about,” she said. “If things were that bad before, when it was just the daily worries...I mean, how long will they hold out with this much pressure?”

  I laced my fingers together and leaned on the table. “You mean, how long until something breaks and they take it out on the captives, especially the kids? You're worried about Logan, I know.”

  “Yeah, I am,” Tabby replied. “Obviously. I'm also concerned that if we go too much longer without hitting phase three, we're going to push them too hard and break something.”

  Up to this point, no one had really given me any resistance on the plan. Not because I was the boss and they were afraid of pissing me off or anything—the entire thing was a collaborative effort by the strike force. It wasn't my plan, but ours.

  “I agree with you,” I said. “If the Sons see themselves as a dead nation, just a bunch of people waiting for a last chance to go out in a blaze of glory, everything goes off the rails. If they think they have even a remote chance of survival, they'll keep their leverage until the last possible second. Since this last gambit with the hidden zombies failed to stop the strike force, they're probably teetering right on the edge of desperation.”

  Her eyes blazed with sudden, fierce hope. “You mean we're changing the schedule?”

  I nodded. “Yes. As soon as the cure has had a chance to clear the field, we move. I'm taking the rest of the day to do a few last checks. I'm hoping Harry will have stayed ahead of schedule on that hole, because we're going to have to do all of this in perfect sync if it's going to work.”

  That blazing hope in Tabby's gaze didn't dim at all. She knew the risks. She knew how badly it could go.

  But the reward—being with her son again—was worth every one of them. For both of us.

  19

  I have killed. Many times. I'm supposed to tell you it never gets easier, and that every death takes something away from you. That may be true for other killers—and that is what I am—but not for me. Those particular clichés would be lies coming from me.

  When you scrape away all the justifications and dig down to the raw nerves of it, I sleep at night because I kill bad people. I'm fully aware of the slippery moral slope this attitude represents. As a SEAL and later as an operator for the CIA, I had to trust that the people above me were making the right calls. I know for a fact they didn't, at least sometimes. Now I rely on the collective judgment of those around me to keep me from becoming the bad sort of monster. The kind I spent most of my career afraid I'd turn into.

  As I stood with the transmitter in my hand, calming my nerves before holding down the button and opening my mouth, it was not a fear of public speaking writhing in my chest like a bucket of greased eels.

  It was fear of the consequences of that speech. If I was wrong, if I chose the incorrect tone or stressed this word over that one, it could lead to a cascade of unfolding death and destruction unlike anything ever wrought by my own hands. The lives of innocents hung in the balance. Too many. Too goddamn many for me to fuck this up.

  I closed my eyes and thought of my father. After mom died, he became my universe for a long time. He was my rock, a rawboned and weather-beaten cowboy aged far too young by the rigors of a hard life. He was one of the most supportive, open-minded, and compassionate human beings I ever had the privilege to know. Thinking of him always centered me.

  I opened my eyes, closed my hand over the transmit button, and spoke.

  “Men and women inside the compound,” I began. Some deep part of my brain was surprised I couldn't hear my voice blaring from the speakers arrayed around the place. Silly, of course. I was too far from the nearest of them and underground to boot. “This is Mason. You may know me as the man who punished a team of your people last year when they killed a family passing through. One of many families the Relentless Sons have broken. Had your group moved into our territory and settled in without harming our people, we might never have had any idea what you were up to. How you prey on the innocent.”

  I gave that last word a little bite. Not on purpose, though I don't think the true intensity of my rage slipped through.

  “Here is a one-time offer,” I continued. “You release every captive inside. Every parent forced to work because you have their children, and every child. You let them go from the south entrance and the rest of you can leave from the north while my people guard the innocent. We won't risk trying to be in two places at once. If you leave here, if you give up the lives you're holding hostage, you get to walk away. It's that simple. You have thirty minutes to respond.”

  I gave a frequency I could be reached at and let the handset drop away. Despite the coolness of the night, sweat beaded on my face. I didn't look forward to the torturous waiting period. It was something I'd privately worried would drive me to do something risky and stupid.

  Turned out not to be a problem. The radio—running through a repeater further up the cave—squawked to life. “This is King,” a static-laden, broken voice said from it.

  “Mason,” I replied. “Ready to take the deal?”

  A tinny laugh echoed through the small speaker. “You got a big brass set on you, boy. I'll give you that. I've seen you out there running with your crew. Everywhere at once. Bit showy for my taste.”

  I took half a second to feel a rush of triumph at that statement. I was extraordinarily careful about showing my face in line of sight of the compound. Ron and the other Mason lookalikes managed to give exactly the impression I was hoping for. “These are my people. I don't lead from behind.”

  “Ouch, that hurts,” King snickered. “To answer your question, no. We're not taking your deal. I'll give you credit, son. You didn't do a bad job out here. You penned us in, but there's a lot more of us than you. We're in a defensive position. And we have leverage. From the looks of what you've done so far, I'm guessing you're a pretty good tactician. You could bloody our noses. Maybe worse. But you aren't gonna win.”

  I took a moment to carefully consider my reply. “You also have nowhere to run.”

  “Empty threats,” King said. “I admit, before your little show just now I thought you might be hard enough to come at us even with all those kids in here. You gave away the game. So I'll tell you what happens if you try it. I send every parent out there. How hard do you think they'll fight knowing we have their kids?”

  The threat wasn't surprising in the least. It was actually what I expected from King. I hadn't known at all whether he would reply to me, but I knew if he did that this was the trump card he would play.

  Not because of my mastery of psychology or deep insight into the human condition. I was told by more than one of the captives I'd taken. It was a strategy which would always work because of how viscerally effective that leverage was.

  “You have twenty-five minutes to change your mind,” I said, then switched off the radio.

  I turned to Harry, who was standing nearby with a grin. He gave me a thumbs up. “We got that. Playback is ready whenever you are.”

  Here is where I diverge from what was in front of me to tell you exactly what the situation around the compound was. This is not speculation, but the plan. Meticulously arranged and executed. I was not there to see it, but I know at least that the setup was exactly as described.

  The cardinal directions:

  To the south, a contingent of reinforcements from Haven waited on the slim possibility that King might accede to my ultimatum. They were just far enough back from the wall to h
ide within the shadows cast by the trees at dusk. Their job—their only job—was to sit and wait. Among them were scouts, medics, and a core of combat experts I'd trust to get me out of just about any situation.

  To the west was the cave I stood in, guarded by a small contingent of the Union militia moved in under cover of night the day before. Otherwise there were no major combat elements on that quadrant. It was the most heavily guarded and patrolled on the wall, being the easiest point of attack.

  To the north there were a few patrols on the ground to watch for King and his men should they decide to leave. They were very well hidden and under strict orders not to fire unless fired upon.

  Sounds thin, doesn't it?

  Well.

  To the east stood a long stretch of open land between the compound wall and the nearest trees. Call it a hundred yards. The land on that side sloped downward from the wall slightly, enough that anyone attempting a straightforward assault would have to go uphill to do it, without cover. If you were standing on that section of wall, the pale blue shape of the distant water tower could be seen rising over the trees.

  The trees, now those were interesting. The broad and deep woods bordering the west were mostly bare, with few evergreens to be found. Their density was great enough to offer tremendous cover, however. Especially at night. A talented operator could theoretically climb three quarters the way up one of them without being spotted. In fact, that long stretch of woods spanning the entire length of the western wall could hold any number of hidden figures.

  And why stop there? Seems to me you could do that all around the roughly square wall surrounding the compound. If you had enough sharpshooters, you could cover every single sentry and guard at once.

  Even more interesting, if you wanted to keep the attention of those guards during the day, you'd position people in the woods far enough back that they could be spotted between the trees and heard as they worked without making clear targets of themselves.

  So we did that, too. I had people felling trees for two nights. While they were doing it, six highly skilled men and women in ghillie suits worked their way toward the eastern wall. This was dangerous as hell, and if not for the sparseness of the men on the wall it wouldn't have worked. That, and a bunch of other factors like the angle of the hill and the height of the wall itself making the shadows there deeper. Suffice it to say I'm impressed those six were able to accomplish their mission without being seen.

  Months of planning and a hell of a lot of adapting on the fly went into those preparations. Every war is fought on a battlefield, whether it's the physical layout of the land or in the minds of its combatants. Detailed observation and rigorous information gathering all came together in that single moment.

  I stood in the darkness of the cave, lit only by a single offset light that wouldn't shine upward, and faced my team. Now that descriptor encompassed more than just me, Jo, Tabby, Jackie, and Marie. Ten others stood with us, all armed and armored. We wore black from head to toe, even on our skin.

  “No speeches. You know what to do,” I said. “As soon as we get the signal, we move.”

  One by one we climbed the simple but ample stairs leading to the roof of the cave. A platform large enough for all of us with room to spare waited. A technician stood there, just off to the side of the hole itself. A thin rope dangled from the gaping maw and a thick black wire extended from a small device the man held in his hands, vanishing up the void we would soon be climbing through.

  “What's the word?” I asked.

  The technician shook his head. “Nothing so far. All the guards on the western wall are still—oh. That got their attention. First round is apparently a go.”

  I nodded. Wouldn't be long now. The pieces of phase three were designed to operate as a single, fluid mechanism, but every machine needed an initial surge of power to get it going. The kick start here came in the form of the packages left behind by our brave soldiers in ghillie suits who'd crawled up that damn hill and risked their lives to give those gifts to the wall.

  I knew that a few seconds before, sentries all over the compound were caught off guard by the sudden bright flare of several dozen pounds of magnesium-based incendiaries going up at once and setting a fifty-foot section of wall on fire. The fire itself would serve a useful purpose in the minutes that followed, but the light—that was the signal.

  “They're looking away,” the technician said as he watched through the plumber's drain camera running up to the surface. “And there it is.” He turned the small monitor toward me, where the closest guards could be seen laying on the ground in their own blood. Our marksmen did the job well. We would only have a short window before those not killed by the initial round of rifle shots began to understand what was happening.

  The technician pulled the camera down with a single yank, then grabbed the rope. The small earbud I wore—that everyone down here wore—clicked three times as the signal to proceed went out to every soldier.

  The tech pulled the rope, stripping away the bracing holding those last few inches of dirt in place. With practiced ease, the little man pulled a ladder up from the side of the platform and locked it in place. He looked up at me with a fierce grin. “Good luck, sir.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and moved up and into the compound.

  Moving from below ground to above was a baptism of a sort. In the cave I was the general, the man forced to second guess his choices and work out a thousand possibilities. On the surface, I was just me again. A man with a specific, clear mission. A singular goal that could only be accomplished by acting without hesitation.

  All that time, all that planning, all that fucking self-torture was absolutely worth it for the chance to do this right.

  Part Three

  Revolution

  20

  What no one tells you about being a killer is the frame of mind you find yourself in. It's not just the military or covert operations; everyone from police snipers to high-level private security have to find that emptiness inside them. It's the only way to survive in the moment. If you run hot, full of emotion, you risk the lives you're there to save or protect.

  When I popped up to the surface, one of the surviving guards from the western wall was running right past me. With his night vision ruined by the fire and me standing in a deep pool of shadows, he didn't see me out of the corner of his eye. Not even the gleam of my knife as I drew it—because its black blade had no gleam to give.

  I leaped forward and snatched the collar of his coat and rammed the knife into the side of his neck in the same motion. I felt the spine of the blade grate against a vertebrae just before pushing the edge forward and out. Thankfully the spray of arterial blood faced away from me as he fell to the ground. I glanced around to see if there were any more surprises coming our way.

  “Clear,” I said, and stood watch while the others piled out of the hole.

  According to plan, another announcement boomed from the speakers arrayed around the compound just as the last of my team made it to the surface. The recording of King arrogantly telling me how he'd sacrifice the lives of the parents whose kids were being used as hostages played all the way through. It wouldn't come as a surprise to anyone inside the walls—but there was a fair bit of daylight between knowing something like that and hearing the man himself say it. As an isolated piece of information it didn't have much impact.

  But I ask you to consider the situation.

  From the very beginning, the strike force did everything it could to condition the people inside these walls for this moment. Forced servitude starts with a feeling of powerlessness and that only grows over time. You can't expect a population held in check by threats to their children to rise up and fight back in a vacuum. When conditions are against you, you change the conditions.

  You show those people that their captors are not all-powerful. You push them back by cutting off their supply lines and taking as they take from others. You grind down your enemy's confidence finely over time. You manipulat
e them into withdrawing without instigating backlash that will end in tragedy. You break the illusion of total power by ghosting in from the dark to snatch away their people, their supplies, even their mindless armies. Sure, you take a few hard knocks along the way, but in the end you've shifted the terrain enough that the hundreds of people who once lived in total fear begin to believe there might just be cracks in the armor.

  And most of all, you capitalize on things the enemy will never consider. Such as the solidarity between those victims. The shared hate and determination among them was, from everything I'd been able to glean, a pile of gasoline-soaked rags just waiting for a match.

  Over the PA system, Ron struck the flame.

  “We know you're scared for your children,” he said, his gruff voice surprisingly compassionate. “We have only one thing to say to you: we're coming right now. You will never have a better chance than this. You've been waiting for this moment. Seize it. We will be in black.”

  “Well, that's our cue,” I said, raising my fist and motioning the group forward. We moved along the interior of the wall, with me in the lead. The dark there was more than enough to shield us from the view of anyone more than a few dozen yards away. The remaining guards on the wall weren't much of a problem for us. They were few and far between, and distracted by the sound of gunfire and small explosions as the reserves from Haven and the militia appeared from their hiding places all down the eastern half of the wall.

  Yeah, we had backup. A lot of it.

  The hard cough of a suppressed handgun firing behind me briefly filled the night. Three rounds in half a second, and before I could glance over my shoulder to see who let off the shots, the dark shape of a sentry I hadn't noticed tumbled from the wall not ten feet in front of me.