by Joshua Guess
A girl her age should look up to singers or astronauts or want to be a doctor. And maybe she'd lose the bug—it wasn't like other careers didn't exist in the Union. I just hoped we could rebuild enough civilization to make them the sort of rock star options they were when I was a kid. Our emerging culture was necessarily one of violence. It'd be nice if it didn't have to stay that way.
“Go on,” I said. “See if Bobby will take you over to the hangar today. I bet they'd love to have you.”
“Awesome,” Hannah said, giving my legs one last hug before dashing off back to Bobby. I took one last look before heading to the vehicle that would be my home and base of operations for the near future. My team was waiting.
“You ready?” Tabby asked as Jo headed toward the driver's side door.
“Yes ma'am,” I said, and it was true.
I was already pushing Bobby and Hannah out of my mind. I wanted to come back to them in one piece, and doing that meant leaving behind anything that could distract me or rob me of focus at a critical moment. More than ever before, I needed to be meticulous and ice cold. No mistakes. No losing control.
The Relentless Sons wouldn't know what hit them.
5
I found it slightly ironic that in our mission to slowly dismantle our human enemies, zombies were actually the far more immediate threat. Back when the Fall first began, the cold months were the rare safe time. Zombies have—or rather, had—less capacity to endure lower temperatures. They'd often go into a sort of inert state, only waking fully when prey was nearby.
The Chimera moving them like puppets evolved, and that evolution spread. With those mutations came other breeds of the dead. The idiotically named Smarties were more intelligent than average if not quite to human standards. They eventually gave way to the New Breed, which are even smarter as well as being tougher and stronger.
Yet the ones we dealt with were plain old school zombies. Nothing special about them other than numbers. No gray skin and clever eyes like New Breed, who seemed to have worked out as a species that attacking humans was a bit of a Kobayashi Maru. Years of running against the meat grinder taught them it was smarter to stay far back and hope the regular zombies got lucky enough to score a kill.
My team left our ride, a heavily customized ambulance, behind. Not far, just a hundred yards from where we'd set up our first base. Better to clear the path rather than risk breaking something by driving through the swarm.
“Jo and Tabby, you take right,” I said as we moved toward the dead people who had taken keen notice of our advance. “Greg and Allen take left. I'll keep their attention.”
Our team of five was composed not of people with authority within the strike force, myself excluded, but those I wanted at my back. Greg and Allen were old friends of mine, brothers from coal country who were superior woodsmen and hunters. Former coal miners, both men were stocky and powerfully built. They drifted off as directed, as did the ladies.
The last time I was stuck out here with the dead I had to make do with what I could steal or find. This go round was different. With Haven's resources at my disposal and plenty of time to plan with Bobby and the others, every person in the strike force was kitted out with custom gear.
It was why I didn't bat an eye as the cluster of dead people sped up their shamble. I wore a new armored coat to replace the one I'd lost on that last trip. My gloves were closer to gauntlets; the impact resistant plastic knuckles were framed with removable metal braces acting as supports for the four-inch spikes jutting from each of my closed fists. I wore a light helmet that made me look kind of stupid, and the shield strapped to my back was there if I needed it. For now it would remain a protective device to keep the dead from noshing on my exposed neck.
My heart rate didn't pick up as the majority of the swarm, seeing a lone and easy target, ganged up on me at once.
The first dead person to reach out for me was a woman in the tattered remains of a dress, mostly just seams with ragged bits of cloth flapping in the breeze of her motion. It was impossible to tell what color it had been; years of grime and dust rendered it an ugly grayish brown. I let her clawed fingers grip my arm with the feverish strength all of the dead possessed.
Then I punched her in the face as hard as I could.
The grip bar bit into my palm and sent a lance of pain through my wrist. The armature was rugged but unforgiving. It let me pierce the brains of zombies with relative ease, though pain was one of the costs. Before she could drop I spun in place and hurled her body toward the group, knocking a pair over and scattering the rest in clumsy evasions.
I kept on moving as I ignored one attack after another. Zombies are strong as shit, but they're not tacticians. Basic things like breaking balance are beyond them. Their hands grasped at me stupidly while I remained safe inside my reinforced clothing.
One hard sideways stomp and I kicked a knee in backward with a grisly snap. The key was to stay moving, never let them pile on. The constant pushing and pulling looked more like schoolyard wrestling than the sort of calculated destruction people expected from me. That's real life for you. Messy. Unpredictable.
Which is not to say I didn't end up needing some help. The crippled zombie managed to drag itself over to me while I was distracted and latch onto my leg. I stumbled in surprise and the pair of dead men in front of me didn't waste the opportunity. They lunged forward and yanked at my coat, desperate to dig beneath its layers for a tasty treat.
I would have killed the damn thing hanging onto my leg, but I couldn't. The two standing zombies had too much leverage for me to reach down. I focused on breaking their grip and felt a sharp pain as the one clinging to my leg bit into the thinner material covering my upper calf.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't get a little panicked just then. Not terrified, but worried.
I needn't have. Before things could devolve, Jo appeared with one of the modified screwdrivers all of my people now carried on their belts. With two deft thrusts, she killed the pair I kept distracted. No wasted effort.
Cleanup took another five minutes or so. The crowd was small, and probably only showed up here because they smelled the faint traces of the advance team who'd located the building and set it up for us. While much of our work would require constant movement, in between those trips this small cinder block shoe box would serve as the strike force's main base.
It wasn't fancy or even particularly notable. It was just a place where we could coordinate and do the damn work.
We settled in quickly. The advance teams were excellent at their jobs, leaving plenty of supplies for us so we didn't have to haul absolutely everything with us. The building was an old 1960's era telephone exchange, or had been at one time. In the decades since, it had been sold, which was made clear by the many modifications to the structure. About a hundred feet on a side, windows had been cut into it and all the modern conveniences added. There was no running water, but other than that the place was fairly posh. It was also centrally located on the east side of Relentless Sons territory, making it ideal as a command post.
Allen and Greg went out to run local patrols. Not for zombies—we didn't care if they showed back up. We only cleared them away to access the building. There was a garage area that had started life as a loading bay, and with the van inside it we had a sort of airlock. Zombies could roam around all they wanted, and we could leave if we needed to by driving out of the building and through them if it came to that.
No, the brothers were going to keep an eye out for the Sons. The effectiveness of our operations going forward would hinge on being unseen, or at least fading away like smoke after completing objectives. This building—or wherever my group happened to be—was the only place the complete plans for this campaign could be found. A little vigilance was in order.
Tabby caught a nap since she was taking the night lookout shift, leaving Jo and I to finish setting up. This mostly involved hauling the small safe box into the main living area and carefully disarming the incendiary t
rap rigged inside it. That was how important the mission documents within were.
“You saw Kell before we left?” Jo asked, far too casually. She was young enough to be my daughter, still in the waning years of her teens, but her youth was deceptive. The girl—sorry, young woman—could fight as well as anyone I've trained. She had a mind that soaked up skills and information like a vampire sponge. Her preference was for mechanical things, but she'd spent a good deal of time doing biology training with Kell in the lab and was our team's medic to boot.
“Yep, he gave me the checkup,” I said. “The Chimera is slowly dissolving, so it's all good.”
Jo gave me a slightly disbelieving look as we finished setting up the small desk that would be my workstation. “He said that? Those exact words?”
I mentally counted down from three. Jo was like family to me, and in that vein she could get under my skin from time to time. “Hey, you could just not do the whole cryptic teenager thing and just tell me what's on your mind, you know.”
She smiled, and it wasn't a nice expression. “Kell maybe didn't give you the entire skinny. It's true the Chimera tissue dissolves over time, but too many injuries in a short period of time can still be a problem. We did some...tests with volunteers. One injury causes the stuff to grow. Another one will make it grow faster, and not just at the new wound. Every injury will react. Do I need to explain how bad fast-growing, invasive tissue can be if it's near a vital organ?”
Oh. “Well, that sounds a lot like cancer.”
Jo shook her head. “It isn't. But it can interfere with important shit inside your body. You've already got a bunch of the permanent stuff under your skin. Lucky for you, it doesn't respond the way this new tissue does. You take a couple bad shots in the wrong places, and you could have your circulation cut off or worse. Think about head trauma. Do you really want a lattice of it running inside your skull, competing with your brain and the Chimera that's in there already?”
I grimaced. “Shit, no. Why the hell didn't he tell me all of this?”
Jo shrugged. “If I had to guess, I'd say it's because it wouldn't make a difference and he didn't want to put you off your game. Long term, you'll be fine. You just go without taking an injury for a while and the immune response tissue breaks up. Though, knowing you, that's a tall order. Kell already knows you're going to be careful not to get hurt if you can avoid it, so in his mind it's sink or swim. Either you'll be fine and you won't get injured badly enough for this to matter or you're gonna die.”
“Super comforting,” I griped. “Any other news I should be aware of? Is my strain of Chimera gonna make me grow a fucking horn or something?”
Jo grew thoughtful. “I wouldn't categorize it as a horn, necessarily.”
“Ha ha,” I said. “Cute.”
She grew more serious. “I'm under orders to give you regular exams while we're out here. That's from Will, who Kell asked to make it official, as in a requirement for this mission. No one wants to lose you to another weird turn in your biology, so twice a week you're gonna have to sit through me poking at you.”
It wasn't my ideal situation, but I'd live with it. Getting the council—and Will—to finally sign off on this operation was always going to come with strings attached. I had to offer my services with Haven's intelligence apparatus, which I helped create in the first place, as part of the bargain. Just when I think I'm out...
“It's fine,” I said out loud. “Chances are I won't even see much combat.”
Jo barked out a laugh. “Please. Don't insult both of us.”
I put up my hands defensively. “No, I'm not saying I won't be in the field. Of course I will. Just that this isn't like last time. We're not going after a single hard target. There's no doubt we'll come up against the Sons out there while we're taking their lunch money, but that isn't the goal. You know that as well as I do.”
Jo looked skeptical, and it was hard to blame her for that. For as long as she'd known me, I had played the part of the scout. The front line operative unafraid to fling myself into any fight no matter how dangerous.
This was different, and in ways she would only grow to appreciate over time. We'd be out here for months, or so the plan called for. If ever in the history of warfare a campaign could be described as death by a thousand cuts, this was it.
In fact, within a day or two the first of those cuts would be made, and I fully intended to be there to watch the Relentless Sons bleed.
6
One advantage of sneaking up on a convoy which followed a route designed to avoid the crowds of zombies plaguing the main roads was, well, no zombies to deal with. That was good, and not for the obvious reason. Yes, not having to fight the dead to reach our target was nice even if zombies sometimes provide excellent cover or distraction. But the main reason it was helpful in this case was the lack of dead bodies to tip off the Sons that we were here.
The road in question was in no way unique. That was part of its appeal, I had to assume. Like most of the county and state roads in the years after the Fall, this one was littered with a heavy carpet of debris barely hiding the awful state of repair the surface was in. The Union didn't have the resources to fully maintain even our most used highways, but we tried. Countless miles of blacktop like the one I watched with practiced patience from my hiding spot hadn't seen a highway crew since the collapse of civilization.
When you needed to get something from point A to B unseen, back roads like this one were the way to go. Unless of course a group of expert long-range scouts who had been watching you for months knew the schedule and routes you followed on any given trip. Our people were very, very good. They might have been kept at a distance from the Sons' compound by Will's orders, but that didn't stop them from getting every scrap of information they could find.
The convoy was made up of three vehicles. Two armored SUVs bracketed a tanker truck full of new gasoline. It took five days for the tanker to go from the small refinery held by the Sons near the Canadian border to their new domain in northern Kentucky, and five to go back. As long as my people had been watching, this schedule never changed. The slow pace was necessary given the unpredictable roads, but there was never a shift in arrival or departure days and the teams manning the convoy were steady as the tides.
The trucks made their slow roll into the hot zone and I couldn't help holding my breath. It was an old habit, one drilled into me from years of waiting in cold places for moments like this. There was no chance any of the men could see my breath fogging in the nearly absolute darkness I hid in, but some instincts are too deeply rooted to break.
At a leisurely fifteen miles an hour, the trap wasn't fatal. Hell, it didn't even damage the vehicles. That was actually a key part of the plan. The lead SUV stayed a solid hundred feet ahead of the tanker, so when a section of road suddenly collapsed out from under its front wheels in a narrow trench, there was no pile-up. The other two drivers reacted precisely as human beings will when a car in front of them suddenly stops: they followed suit.
The instinct was predictable, which made it a perfect exploit. We could have taken out those vehicles at any time if we wanted a show.
We didn't.
I lurched from my hiding place and sped toward the front SUV. No doubt the men inside saw me. I made no effort to remain unseen. I was counting on the confusion in the handful of seconds between hitting the trench and noticing me to slow their reactions and make the convoy guards indecisive. Do they stay safely inside and count on the armor to keep them safe or knock open the gun ports to do a little spray and pray?
The trick is timing everything just right so neither one matters a bit. I cleared the space before the guards could pick an option and launched myself up as soon as I could grab the side of the truck. Funny thing: the hatch cut into the roof didn't have a lock on it. Probably because the people inside weren't worried about a zombie getting high enough to throw the thing open.
I did just that, tossing a pair of grenades in simultaneously. I threw myself o
ff the roof and away. My boots hit the ground as the flashbang did its work inside the SUV. Normally those things don't do any real damage, but in the tiny space there was no telling what the pressure wave might have done. The tear gas was slower but just as effective. Men from other teams were right behind me, masks on as they hauled the dazed enemies from their vehicles.
Each guard was unceremoniously disarmed, bound, and tossed into a rough pile. They'd be questioned even if the returns from captives were mostly worthless at this point. The Sons were smart enough to know the people that kept disappearing were being squeezed for information, and apparently they didn't care enough to give those folks incorrect info to throw us off. Instead everyone they sent out was a black hole of information, totally void of anything useful. We'd been lucky with that last batch; the kinds of things we wanted to know were more day to day. Nothing anyone would consider secret.
And when their interrogators were sure the guards had nothing to offer, they would each have a blade slipped between their ribs before their brains were destroyed to prevent reanimation.
“We got it,” Ron, the leader of this particular excursion, said to me. “You didn't need to come here to oversee this personally. My people handled it just fine.”
“Oh, I know,” I said. “You did a great job.”
And they had. The other two vehicles had been taken down in perfect sync with mine, and in exactly the same way. My team was mostly support for me, not front line operations like this, so they stayed back at base. Ron's was stacked with men and women who understood the need to function like lethal clockwork, each piece fitting together and spinning in time with the others.