Dead Nation (Beyond The Fall Book 2)

by Joshua Guess

  Bobby's mouth tightened into a thin, angry line. “But other people won't be. You know they won't. And it'll be my fault if—”

  Bobby slapped the table. “Bullshit! This is not on you, Mason. You didn't make King into a murderous asshole. You aren't responsible for anything he's done or will do. He got away. That's not your fault. It's not your job to go out there and risk your life to save the world from every terrible thing in it.”

  When I didn't say anything, too afraid he would mistake my words or get angry for how I felt, Bobby continued.

  “It wasn't your job to go out there and kill every single one of them, either,” he said. “You went to get those kids free, and you did it.”

  I sighed. I didn't know what consequences my response would have, but I knew it was inevitable. The words had a weight, a gravity of their own, because they were the expression of an idea so unstoppable in my mind that I was helpless against its strength.

  “It's not my job,” I said simply. “It's my responsibility. However you feel about it, I can't live with myself knowing he's still out there.”

  Bobby sat back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling, briefly closing his eyes in what I knew was an attempt to get himself under control.

  “I don't want to spend the rest of my life afraid you're going to die every time you leave the house,” he finally said.

  I couldn't help laughing. I waved an arm expansively. “Bobby, look at the world. Even the cure only goes so far. It's gonna be the way it is for decades. Maybe for the rest of my life and yours.”

  “I know that,” he said fiercely. “It doesn't mean you have to make things worse for yourself by running out there trying to save the world.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Funny. You didn't complain when it was your world I was saving.”

  He had no reply to that.

  25

  I sat in the conference room with the Haven Council and let me tell you something: it's pretty hard to shock a group of people known for being the toughest survivors in a world destroyed by undead cannibals. But man, I did it. Someone throw me a parade.

  “You honestly think we're going to approve something like that?” asked one of the more conservative members of the council, an older man named Davison. “You're talking about mass murder.”

  I was, in fact, talking about just that. Explicitly in those terms, because I wasn't a fan of dressing things up to make them easier to digest. “Yeah. I am. Let's not pretend any of you are above skirting that constitution you put so much time and effort into writing. You asked me to help you build an intelligence apparatus, and I did. You had no problem with my strike force killing the Sons in open combat. This is just finishing the job.”

  Several of the councilors opened their mouths to protest, to add nuance or explanations about why that violation of the law was acceptable. Will Price, however, raised his hand and silenced them. “Let's skip over the legal aspect for a minute. We can talk about whether to classify them as marauders later. That would cover our asses. I'm more concerned about what you're asking us to give you. You want to go after these people with weapons of mass destruction, Mason. We've both been in the service. That's not a small ask.”

  I let nothing show on my face, but I felt a pang of annoyance that Will, a former grunt whose entire career was spent on one base or another, would try to take that tack with me. He was a student of warfare and military history, and he had a surprisingly broad and deep grasp of both. I knew he understood in a very real way how dangerous what I was requesting really was.

  “Will, I've been out in the shit when you were in middle school.” I said. “I've picked through the bodies of women and children in villages where some local tyrant got his hands on a weapon that made them vomit up their internal organs. I hunted those men down to make sure they could never do it again. You know that. Don't preach to me.”

  “I'm not,” Will said. “I'm honestly not. The nerve gas we liberated from the armories and reserves was meant to be used in a dire emergency because it's so dangerous. You're asking us to let you take it out there where you could die and it could fall into the hands of someone like King. Do you really think he'd have your restraint?”

  I grimaced. “It's something I've considered. I have precautions in mind. King can only get so far before he runs out of fuel. I can do this on my own. No more of our people need to be put in danger. I'm risking a lot myself just offering to do it.”

  Bobby's face flashed in my mind. Disapproving. Scared. Worried.

  “We'll talk it out and vote on it,” Will said. It was as close to a promise as anyone got from him. The council could and often did take their time deliberating in the hope that some contentious issue or another would fade away or resolve on its own. All of them had to feel the same moral imperative to stop King as I did. Not in the same personal way, but no survivor could sit idly by knowing there were predators out there coming for our people. Or people like us.

  “Thanks,” I said, and stood up to leave. I stopped with my hand on the doorknob, unsure if I should voice the truth pushing at the back of my throat. Then, I thought, fuck it. “You should know I'm going after them anyway. Alone if I have to.”

  I left them with that thought. It was just honesty, and in the final analysis I almost wanted to go it alone. Better to die from lack of help than take someone I cared about down with me. I knew without a doubt it wouldn't go that way, though. I wouldn't lie to anyone about my intentions, nor would I refuse volunteers.

  The chemical weapons in our armory were quick and efficient. And they really were dangerous in the extreme. Maybe Will was right.

  Besides, I had other options.

  Kell had a way of sighing that made you feel like an idiot, an asshole, and a small child all at once. I think it comes with having the sort of brain that can push the limits of science so hard it feels like the laws of physics might start breaking.

  “You realize you're asking me to give you a crash course in chemistry, which I'll remind you is a messy bitch of a discipline, so you can make things that will probably kill you because you're not trained for this and you'd be doing it without a lab, right?” He spared no expense in filling his gaze with exactly as much scorn as the words carried.

  “Don't hold back on me now, McDonald,” I said lightly. “Tell me what you really think.”

  From the other side of their small apartment, Kell's wife Emily snorted a laugh. “I think you're an idiot, if my opinion counts.”

  I looked at her, surprised. “You've hunted down people like this before. I have a hard time believing you've got a problem with this.”

  “I don't,” Emily said as she nursed their baby, who at that moment was a bundle wrapped in a badly knitted blanket Jo had made for them. “I think you're an idiot for wanting to Billy badass your way through this like you always have. You can't fight hundreds of people, Mason. You can't even kill that many the way you think you can. Not without perfect conditions, the kind no one in this room believes for a second King will give you. If you try, you're just going to scatter them again.”

  Kell nodded at this bit of wisdom. “And then you'll just be hunting down small groups or individuals. I think you're so dead set on taking this guy out you're...not thinking clearly on this. It's been a few days already. Do you think King and his men just waited around so you could track them? Come on, man. I don't have your training but even I know someone like that would have done everything he could to vanish.”

  “I...” The sentence began as a protest, but the thought behind it was reflexive. A habit formed by years of pushing forward when other people argued and made excuses for why a thing couldn't be done. My instinct to fight back wasn't logical or based in facts, and it took a few seconds for their words to sink in.

  I took a long, hard look inside and asked myself what I would do in King's position. I decided Kell was right. Emily was right. This one-man army attitude was the next best thing to a death wish, and an operator as cold as King would have made h
imself scarce.

  “I think I know which way he went,” I said, realizing it only as the words tumbled out of my mouth.

  Kell's eyebrows rose. Behind him, Emily rolled her eyes.

  “No, seriously,” I said. “You're right. I haven't been thinking clearly. If it were me, I'd retreat to where I was strongest. Arm up, resupply. Get my bearings while I lay low. It would be impossible for the remaining Sons to hide out in our territory at this point. The militia is all over the place. Our scouts are looking for any sign of them, and that many people on the run will leave a lot. They had to have gotten away fast, and in a rush they would have backtracked. Gone north, back into the areas they controlled before coming this way. I'd bet a limb they left supply caches behind, or had their allies set some up.”

  Kell gave me an exasperated look at this statement. “Really?” He stuck out the leg with the prosthetic just below the knee.

  “Sorry,” I said sheepishly. “Thanks. You guys have been a big help.”

  “I don't want you to go again,” Hannah said as she hung from my neck while I walked. I slid a hand under her bottom and hoisted her onto one hip. “I want you to stay. Please.”

  The words cut right to the heart of me. I made it back from one mission, improbable as it seemed. Now I was planning another. This time with far less time and without the resources I'd hoped would even the playing field.

  “They said no,” Bobby remarked, not asking a question. He'd seen me come back from my meeting with Will and understood the look on my face without explanation. “Can't say that bothers me.”

  “They said no to giving me the, uh, stuff I asked for,” I corrected, trying to avoid mentioning weapons designed to kill thousands where tiny ears could hear. “They're giving me the go-ahead for the mission. Volunteers only, and we're limited to what's left over from the strike force. That's plenty.”

  Bobby shook his head ruefully. “You're still healing from the last one. You've been home a week, Mason. At least get yourself back up to full strength first.”

  “I can't,” I said. “I'll have to heal up on the road. The longer we wait, the harder it's going to be to find these guys and, um...”

  “Kill them,” Hannah finished for me.

  “That's a little creepy,” said a voice from Bobby's other side. There walked Tabby and Logan, not holding hands this time but never far from each other, either.

  “What is?” Bobby asked, a slight note of challenge in his tone.

  Logan shrugged. “Hearing a little girl say that. Like it was the weather.”

  “That's the world, kid,” I said. “Hate that you all have to grow up so quick, but there's nothing we can do for it.”

  Tabby cleared her throat. “You know I won't be going with you, right? I'll never be able to thank you enough for what you did, but...”

  I waved dismissively with my free hand as Hannah tried valiantly to scramble up me and onto my shoulders. We were going fishing at one of the ponds across the road from Haven. Hannah loved to fish, just not the walk there. For that she needed her mighty steed. “I never thought you would. You and Logan have been apart for a long time. I can't blame anyone for wanting to stay with their kid.”

  “Then why won't you stay with me?” Hannah asked in that bluntly innocent way kids have. She was smart enough to know the answer in a perfect vacuum, but small children rarely had moments of clarity guided by pure logic.

  “Because I there are other boys and girls out there those people might hurt,” I reminded her. “Same people I went after before. I let them get away. I won't do that again.”

  This time I'd stop King for good. There was no carefully staged plan, no captive population to slowly agitate into action. No tanks, no militia, no large-scale assaults. The Haven council and the governors of the Union, Will included, were of the opinion that with the main force of the Relentless Sons killed or captured and the remainder out of their hair for the moment, their resources were better spent elsewhere.

  Couldn't fault them for that. The Union was a big place. Haven was one of the largest communities in it, and its territory was vast and spread out. Even the brief time the scouts were dedicated to our fight on the northwest boundary of the state, the strain on those left behind was clear. Only so many people to work the shifts needed to keep watch and maintain security meant things could be missed. Mistakes made. Lives could be lost as a result.

  No, I didn't hold it against Will that the blank check he'd written me had run dry. I would make do with what I had. The next—and for better or worse, last—fight would be straightforward. One side the hunters, the other, prey.

  I didn't intend on being the gazelle in that scenario. I was the one looking for watering holes to stalk.

  Epilogue 1

  “I can't believe this shit is still here,” Allen said as we hauled a heavy door away from the cellar it protected. We tossed it aside, the hinges long since rusted away to nothing, the tall grass and debris we'd coated it with a couple years earlier drifting around us in a dusty cloud. The cache was virtually invisible from further away than five feet, and the old house here had burned to the ground sometime in the early days of the Fall.

  “Wish I could have seen this place when it was still standing,” I said, wiping sweat off my forehead. The woods around us grew more dense the further from the ruins you got, but the place was plenty isolated without the rampant overgrowth that filled the lot where the house once stood. “I bet the people who owned it had all this land, too. The driveway is like half a mile long.”

  “Guess it's not really that surprising no one else came by here, then,” Jo said from behind us, where she was...we'll call it supervising. “So, what do we have?”

  Allen and I descended into the low cellar, which had been prepared by us just after we returned to Haven. We'd accumulated a lot of gear, and not all of it was stuff we wanted to hand over to the quartermaster to be given out. Call it an insurance policy in case we ever had to run again. As large and powerful as Haven was, no community was invulnerable. The Fall taught us that lesson with brass knuckles.

  “Old armor, which might come in handy,” Allen said, tossing a heavy duffle up and out onto the carpet of grass where it landed with a clank. “All the insulation we stuffed in the cracks here seems to have kept the worst of the weather out. Not seeing any water damage.”

  “Yep,” I said, hauling several cans of ammunition up to ground level. “Looks like these made it okay.”

  Jo peered down at Allen, who was coming up with another armful of gear. He carried these bags gingerly. She raised an eyebrow. “Are those the ones we took from that police station in Louisville?”

  “Sure are,” he said through gritted teeth as he carefully sat the bags down. When he straightened, he knuckled the small of his back and put hands on his hips. “We really gonna clean this whole thing out?”

  I gestured toward the group of people standing by the small cluster of vehicles where the virtually disintegrated gravel driveway opened onto the lot. Jackie and Marie stood watch, along with Ron and a handful of others who had been eager to see this through to the end. “We don't have a lot of manpower, so I think it'd be good to give the team as much bang as possible. We're not going to die for lack of firepower.”

  We hauled everything over to the pickup I was using as my own vehicle. So far we'd emptied two other caches, and I wasn't sure if we'd have to dip into the final pair. Most of this stuff was redundant; extra rifles and rounds for them, replacement armor plates, MREs for if things got truly desperate. Mostly I wanted the gear for the bits Haven wouldn't give us, things too precious to hand out without good reason.

  I slapped the side of the truck. “Okay, let's roll out.”

  “I'm riding with you this time,” Jo said.

  So far everyone on the team had taken their turn in my passenger seat in a badly-disguised attempt to keep me from spiraling into self-doubt or worse, more narrow obsession. Because it was a kind gesture, I let them think they were fooling me.
Jo at least didn't bother with the pretense.

  “You okay?” she asked once we were on the road. Our next stop would be a Haven fuel cache, deeply hidden but one of the concessions Will gave us. This trip was open-ended. With no idea how long it might take to run down the enemy, the least the council could do was make sure we had the fuel to go for as long as we needed. We were, after all, attempting to make sure King could never come back to bite Haven in the ass.

  “Like you have to ask,” I said.

  I saw her drilling that too-perceptive gaze at me from the corner of my eye. I very pointedly didn't meet her eyes. “I do have to ask. You're different. Have been since the Sons hit us with those zombies, but way worse after we broke them. Known you a long time, Mason. You've always been the first one to jump into a fight, but you were always in control. Calm, I guess. Now it's like you're constantly looking for something you can't quite find.”

  “Desperate,” I said, the word slipping out of my mouth. That was happening a lot more lately. Decades of self-control and discipline were failing, the cracks in the walls I'd shored up too many times too damaged to maintain their shape. “That's the word you're looking for. I'm desperate.”

  Jo cocked her head sideways. “For what? You've lost before. Had people die before. What makes this different?”

  I leaned against the door and drove with my left hand, letting my right fall away. It was how my dad drove everywhere, whether it was on the farm or across five states to pick me up for leave. “I don't know if I can explain it in a way you can understand, kid.”

  Jo sat back against her own door, feet extended across the bench seat in front of her, arms crossed. It was just stupidly dangerous, but I said nothing. “I'm pretty smart. Try me.”