A Place Called Hope (Z-Day Book 2)

by Daniel Humphreys

  “Looks like they’re coming this way. You think they’ll stop?”

  Sandy’s mouth went suddenly dry. It did seem like the craft was lower in the sky than it had been a few moments before. As he watched, it continued to get lower, and the visible quickness of its initial speed fell off to next to nothing.

  “Yeah,” he said. He resisted the urge to reach down to the pistol he had holstered under the messenger bag. “It looks that way.”

  A crowd gathered, and Sandy resisted the urge to tell them to hide or to take up arms. In terms of raids, using a blimp would be an odd way to go about it. Lee and his people had used military equipment, but this didn’t have the same feel.

  The blimp made a pass over the compound at low altitude, then came back and landed on the boat ramp, nose to the water. The rear of the gondola lowered, and a group of people trotted down the ramp. Most of them wore camouflage and carried slung rifles, though the short blonde woman in a windbreaker and sunglasses stood out for her lack of both.

  Sandy shrugged at Mason, and the two of them moved a bit closer. He considered the hoe for a moment, then planted it in the ground and left it to mark his progress. Visitors or not, at some point, they needed to get the work done.

  He stepped up on the asphalt of the boat ramp. The new group saw him coming. Sandy thought that he saw a brief frown flash across the face of the woman with the sunglasses, but she turned to one of the soldiers, and he couldn’t see her expression at that point.

  An older man in camouflage headed toward him. He had an odd gait, and Sandy realized, after a moment of consideration, that one or both of his legs was a prosthesis. He half wondered if that had been the result of an impromptu amputation after a bite. That was how it usually went in the movies, anyway, though he’d never had the occasion to try. Jason had gotten a bad scratch, a few years back, and Sandy had plunged one of his two remaining injectors into the man’s arm as the traces of gray began to race toward his heart. If there was an expiration date, they hadn’t hit it yet, because the gray had faded and Jason was still kicking.

  Needless to say, Sandy kept his last injector close at hand whenever he went over the wall.

  The old Marine stuck his hand out. “Major Pete Matthews, sir. Glad to find some survivors.”

  Sandy mimicked the gesture. It had been a while, and the handshake felt incongruous. “Sandy Scopulis. Pleased to meet you.”

  Pete turned and indicated the river. “We’re scouting out potential landing spots to move some equipment from the Gulf to Indiana and Ohio.” He turned back and grinned. “We’ve got some old satellite data that said there might be survivors around here, but the damn things are falling out of the sky and we don’t have anything recent. Glad to see you held out.”

  Sandy didn’t know what to say, so he settled for, “Wow. Yeah, there are a couple dozen of us now. We try to—” The Marine that the woman in sunglasses had spoken to was staring at him now, and though he didn’t know why, he was starting to worry that it was the worst-case scenario. Sandy tried to ignore it, but the man nudged one of the other Marines, and then both of them were staring. The first man pulled a deck of cards, of all things, out of his pocket and flipped through it. He stopped, stared, then showed it to the second Marine. “—to keep our heads low,” Sandy finished, then glanced back at the staring men. Sandy opened his mouth to ask what the problem was, but before he could get the first word out of his mouth, both Marines burst into action. The first man clotheslined him to the ground, while the second brought his rifle off his shoulder and put the barrel close enough to Sandy’s face that he got a sniff of gunpowder from the end of it.

  “What the hell, LoPresto?” Major Matthews barked.

  “Major! It’s him, sir, sure as the world. Jack of Hearts.”

  With a confused look on his face, Pete hobbled over to the Marine he’d called LoPresto. Sandy’s people were muttering, but there were enough guns on the other side that no one seemed ready to make a move—yet.

  Sandy calmed himself and said, as clearly and loudly as he could manage with an assault rifle in his face, “Everybody relax. It’s going to be all right.”

  The Marine with the rifle in his face snarled. “Give me an excuse, asshole. I’ll blow your head off and feed zulu the rest.”

  The first Marine handed Pete the playing card, and as the major compared it to Sandy’s face, his expression grew cold and hard. “You a doctor before the end, Mr. Scopulis?”

  Sandy closed his eyes. They know. “That’s right.”

  “What kind of doctor? You work in a hospital, back in the day?”

  “No,” he whispered.

  Pete leaned in and turned the playing card over. It was falling apart, tattered from heavy use, but centered between the J and red heart symbol was the picture from Sandy’s GenPharm employee ID. He looked at the last decade’s version of himself, the world-killer smiling like a fool for the camera, and felt the urge to vomit.

  The old Marine’s eyes seethed with rage. “Every bill comes due sooner or later, boy. And it’s time to pay the piper.”

  To be concluded

  in

  A Place for War

  Author’s Note

  When I first wrote ‘A Place Outside the Wild’, I told myself it was a standalone, and that I’d move on to other projects once I got the crazy thing out of my head.

  Yeah. About that…

  Along the way, I found myself wondering what would happen next. I’d healed Charlie’s voice and his spirit, but how would he move on from there? I started thinking about the inevitable breakdown of complex machines in the face of entropy, and the ball that I’d started rolling with the evolution of the zombies, shamblers, zulus, or whatever your preferred term is. In case you’re wondering just what in the world Miles, Larry, and the rest are up to, the next book will answer that question. In the meantime, check out the first book in my Paxton Locke series, ‘Fade.’ I can’t promise you zombies, but there’s magic, snark, and plenty of heroic derring-do.

  Thanks to my editor, Tim Marquitz, for polishing out the rough spots.

  I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank the massive crew of redshirts that tossed their names in the hat for this book. I thought the cast of the first book was big; this one required spreadsheets to manage! I didn’t kill you all, but there’s always next time. Guys like Pat Vieby, Richard Fox, Paul Piatt, Jon Del Arroz, Coop LoPresto, the ‘Hansen Brothers’ (John Olsen and Erik Hansen) and many more let me borrow their names and in many cases provided valuable insight. Thank you, again.

  And now for the marketing bits . . .

  Word of mouth is the best, most cost-effective advertising there is for a new author.

  Critiques are even better. Whether you enjoyed this book or not, please consider leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads. If you did enjoy it (or want to yell at me for killing your favorite character) feel free to follow me on Twitter for updates, snippets of works in progress, and other randomness. If social media isn’t your thing, you can check out my blog.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Daniel Humphreys is the author of the Z-Day series of post-apocalyptic sci-fi thrillers and the Paxton Locke urban fantasy series. His first novel, "A Place Outside the Wild," was a 2017 Dragon Award finalist for Best Apocalyptic novel.

  Dan loves sci-fi movies, target shooting, and tinkering with computers. He has spent his entire career in corporate IT and suffers from elevated blood pressure due to a lifelong love of the Arizona Cardinals. He lives in Indiana with his wife and family.

 

 

 
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