by A. M. Geever
Miranda nodded, partly mollified.
Rocco said, “Locked up, he’s a drain on our resources, but if we put him to work, we’re at least getting something out of him being here. He says he wants to make amends and start over here.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake.”
“He’s a hard worker,” Rocco said. “He showed me how they sabotaged the sound defenses. We were able to upgrade them so that’s not possible anymore. And he dug out and built those new outhouses at the apartment complex. Now the people over there don’t have to hike all the way to the dining hall.”
“He built the whole thing?” she said, surprised.
Rocco nodded.
She’d seen the latrines when they got back from Kendall’s bunker, ten of them, which was a shit ton of digging, never mind building the outhouse structure and the brickwork and venting. She’d assumed there’d been a work detail for the job… He couldn’t have done it all by himself in that timeframe.
“One person couldn’t do all that.”
“Calling me a liar now?” Rocco said.
“I didn’t know about improving the sound defenses, but that doesn’t square things. Give him a participation award. Don’t let him roam around.”
Rocco sighed. “He’s not roaming around. He’s always got an escort.”
“Who was throwing a stick for my dog and letting him walk with a child.”
Rocco rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Tucci…you’re killing me here.” His hand dropped to the desk. “I’ll talk to Phineas. And if you want, you can pick out the escorts. Not you…you’re too much of a hothead.”
“I don’t trust him.”
“I don’t trust him, either,” said Rocco. “But I like to think I’m a good judge of people. He’s done some horrible stuff, but he’s not motivated by inflicting pain. He’s been a mercenary, not a psychopath.”
“And you’re qualified to make that diagnosis how, exactly?”
“I really think he wants to start over,” he said, ignoring her question. “I’m going to give him a chance to do that. We gave Mario the benefit of the doubt when you arrived here.”
“It’s not the same thing,” she said irritably. She didn’t want to think about Mario, much less have him trotted out as an example.
“With the reputation he had when you got here, yeah, it was. We’ve always tried to give people the benefit of the doubt. It’s what Anna would’ve wanted.”
Miranda threw her hands up in exasperation. LO’s previous commander was dead because of the attack that Victor had led.
“I know, I know,” Rocco said, his voice softer than before. “I do. I knew her a lot longer than you. Trust me… I know what he did. He’s not going back to San Jose; he’s said as much. Even if we send him packing, we can’t make him leave the area without devoting a lot of resources to it. Resources that we don’t have right now, quite frankly. I’m keeping a very close eye on him, and I’ve got others doing it, too. ,I had River assess him and she agrees that he’s not a sociopath or anything like that.”
“Just a scumbag.”
“If he really does want to change,” Rocco said, ignoring her comment, “doesn’t it make sense to get him invested in this place? He’s got some valuable skills. He does the shit jobs I’m giving him without bitching, and he does them right the first time. Wouldn’t you rather have him fighting with us than against us?”
A shiver raced through Miranda’s body. “Now I feel like I need a shower.”
Rocco snorted. “You look like it, too,” he said. Then he said, sounding like he was bracing for an attack, “As long as you’re freaking out, I’ve got Victor working on getting a ham radio working.”
It felt like the floor giving way below her feet, the sensation of falling was so strong. She gaped at Rocco, so stunned she literally couldn’t speak. “I can’t have heard you right.”
“You did.”
She pressed the heels of her hands against her temples, elbows sticking out at the sides, and paced in a tight circle.
“Oh my God,” she said. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God…”
“Settle down, Tucci. My thinking is—”
“Oh my fucking God. What the—” She stopped circling and stared at Rocco, her eyes wide. “Have you lost your goddamn mind?”
Rocco had gotten to his feet. When he put his hands on her hands still clutching her head, she jerked away.
“Look,” he said. “I’ve got a handle on it. I’ve got a plan.”
There were words coming out of his mouth, but it was like he was speaking Japanese. They didn’t compute.
In a calm, even voice, Rocco said, “We need to get word out about the vaccine by more than word of mouth when we’re ready to scale up.”
“But—”
“After we’ve hit a critical mass locally,” he said. “After we’ve got a couple labs set up that are isolated and hidden. We’re gonna need to do this on a bigger scale.”
“But you’re inviting an attack,” she said, incredulous. “Isn’t that the reason LO decided to not use long-distance radios? Isn’t that what you told me?”
Rocco sighed, running his hands through his hair. His brown eyes betrayed apprehension. “Yeah… But that— It was a long time ago, when we were smaller and weaker and didn’t know what we were doing. We got our asses handed to us. That’s when we put away the long-distance radios. But we fought them off last time. We lost people, and it’s fucked us for food, but we’re still here.”
“We got lucky, Rocco,” she countered. “There were zombies inside the palisade.”
“I know,” he said. “I know that. And because people know what to do, nobody got bit besides Anna.”
“But why Victor?”
Rocco sighed. His broad shoulders sagged, but his hands started waving in the air as he talked. “Because he knows what he’s doing,” he said, frustration bubbling in his voice like a pot about to boil over. “We’ve got old radios that’ve been sitting for years. They don’t work! The guys who knew how to use them aren’t here anymore, and forget about the flakes at P-Land… We don’t have anybody who knows how to do it, never mind fix one.”
“Get a fucking manual!”
“You’re killing me, Tucci,” Rocco muttered, shaking his head. “We have ’em, but he knows what he’s doing. He can do it faster and better.” He put his big hands on her shoulders. This time, she didn’t shrug him off. “Believe me, I don’t trust the guy. Do I think he can be rehabilitated? Maybe, but I don’t trust him.” He sounded wounded when he added, “I’m not an idiot.”
“I never said that.”
She felt the fight draining away, leaving tired resignation in its wake. Rocco wasn’t going to keep Victor locked up unless he had to, no matter how much she disliked it, and he was set on this ridiculous idea of letting him near a radio. She knew they needed to focus on getting enough food and providing housing for the people who were arriving to get the vaccine. Ramping up vaccine production had taken a distant second in the community’s priorities, because leaving people to fend for themselves wasn’t how things were done here, even if it meant they were scrambling.
She knew they’d have to scale up getting word out to people if—when—they got to that point, but h
er entire life had been turned upside down. Her friendship with Doug was careful and strained. Mario was gone, but tormented her in her dreams. Father Walter might be able to help her sort things out, maybe even fix it, but he might as well be on the moon. Karen wouldn’t know what to do, except take her shopping and bring her soup from Chef Chu’s, but it would help because it would be motivated by love.
And Tadpole… She almost whimpered out loud as the familiar feeling of desolation swamped her, sharp and bright as it rubbed like rough leather against the blister of her loneliness. She was so lonely she ached. She had friends here, but they weren’t the right ones, somehow. They weren’t the people who knew her best. That Mario was one of those pe
ople who did made her feel so crazy she choked on it, but so lonely she wanted to cry, and now this.
“Just give it a chance, okay? He’ll be under guard the whole time—not Phineas,” he said quickly, when she opened her mouth to object. “Larry, for one, because he gets the technical shit. And a couple bruisers who can’t be manipulated. Who hate his guts. I promise.”
“Jesus, Rocco…”
“And if it turns out you’re right and I’m wrong, we’ll lock him up again. He helped Gemma get home today. Seems encouraging to me.”
Rocco’s pinched face and beseeching eyes implored her to understand. He’s scared…desperate, she realized. That wasn’t a good mental state for making sound decisions. This whole thing scraped against every instinct for self-preservation she had, but his mind was made up; she could see it. Not only that, he needed her to believe in him. Now that her temper had been checked, she could see just how much.
“Fine,” she grumbled. “We’ll do it your way.”
For a second, she thought about telling him how terrified she’d been when she first saw Victor with Gemma. How the instinct to protect the toddler had hit her so hard that it might as well have been her own child. She couldn’t stand the idea of another baby lost to a monster.
“You okay, Tucci?”
Miranda blinked, surprised by the tears beginning to pool in her eyes. Her exhaustion wasn’t just making this morning’s developments hard to take in; it was loosening her grip on her emotions.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I didn’t expect this much drama before breakfast.”
Rocco’s eyes narrowed. “You still having trouble sleeping? Are you drinking that tea?”
“A little, sometimes,” she said, deflecting his concern. “I woke up with a headache.”
Rocco didn’t look like he was buying it. “Have you been drinking this morning?”
“What?” she said. “No!”
“You smell like booze.”
“I had a few ciders last night and spilled one. I grabbed the first thing I laid hands on so I could go look for Gemma. I’m not drinking my fucking breakfast.” She plastered a smirk on her face and said, “If you don’t like me objecting to your cockamamie schemes, come up with something better than that to harass me with.” The hair of the dog, he didn’t need to know about. She wasn’t getting into the falling on her ass part, either. “I still don’t like this.”
“You wouldn’t be you if you did.”
Miranda crinkled her nose and pursed her lips. “That was weirdly complimentary. You aren’t going to hug me or anything?”
He snort-laughed. “Hardly. You still leaving for the bunker tomorrow?” She nodded. “Go get that shower and bother someone else, okay? I’ve got work to do.”
Rocco was still adjusting to being LO’s new commander. He needed people who believed in him, not people who stormed into the office to yell at him. It wasn’t that the two were mutually exclusive, because she already believed that Rocco was good at his new job. Once he got more comfortable with it, he’d be great. This nonsense aside, she ought to let him know that she had faith in him, even if she disagreed with him sometimes.
“I hope I’m wrong about Victor,” she said.
Rocco gave her a wan smile. “You and me both.”
Portland made Miranda’s neck itch, and not the kind relieved by scratching.
It wasn’t like their world was predictable, not in the way that the old one had been, but the zombies in Portland were weird. You could walk for hours without encountering them, then turn a corner and bam! You’d find yourself in the middle of a horde. In the ruins of other cities, large areas with no zombies weren’t as common; they were pretty much everywhere even if density varied. In Portland this wasn’t the case, and there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for why sometimes you’d find zombies in an area, but the next time you wouldn’t.
Rhyme and reason with zombies, she thought to herself. I’m more tired than I thought.
Maybe it was because, coming from the West, Portland felt like a tease. Most of what was in the city’s limits—not that that meant much these days—was east of the Willamette River. The idea that reaching the Willamette was the same thing as being through Portland wasn’t true, but somehow, the notion that it was had become embedded in Miranda’s brain. From the crossing at Ross Island Bridge, it was fifty miles to Kendall’s bunker, give or take. They would drive beyond the bridge until the roads got so bad that they had to set out on foot, which still left at least two day’s walking.
She hated the Ross Island bridge. It was a reminder of when she’d arrived here. When she’d still been with Mario, and they’d been happy. When there hadn’t been the emotional distance she now felt between herself and Doug, and none of them had any idea what the next six months would hold or how badly everything would go off the rails. She tried not to think about it when she made the crossing, but she always did.
The bridge was a waypoint, and something caught her eye as they approached the barricade. There was one at both ends, made of welded steel slabs that had been used in road work to cover holes in the road. Rectangular inset windows about a foot long and covered by bars were at eye level every few feet, so the integrity of the fortifications could be checked before entering. They stopped the truck and Miranda and Rich got out. She shaded her eyes as she peered through.
“It’s the food scouting party Rocco took out yesterday,” she said softly, a jolt of surprise running through her at the sight of a white box truck.
“Didn’t they have two trucks?” Rich said, turning to her.
“They did,” she said.
A few minutes later they were through the gate and pulling up to the scouting party truck. Rocco was near it, and recognized as they drew near. Sean, the red-headed mechanic Miranda had met at the meeting about the food shortage, was with him. Sean’s right arm was in a sling, and he winced with every step.
“Why’s Rocco doing this?” Alec asked. “Surely he’s too valuable to lose, since he’s running things.”
“That’s why he went,” Rich said. “To set a good example.”
“Good to see you guys,” Rocco said when they were in earshot. He looked like he’d aged since Miranda had seeen him yesterday. His mouth was set in a grim line, and his broad shoulders slumped.
“What happened?” Miranda said.
“Nothing good. We got to the grocery distribution center, like we planned. It was farther away, but there was more food there than I expected…canned stuff. Peaches mostly, but better than nothing. We got both trucks loaded up and were on our way back when the other truck got a flat.”
Rocco shook his head and closed his eyes. Miranda could tell he was blaming himself.
“Rocco’s truck was already around the corner when we got the flat,” said Sean.
Rocco said, “We backed up into the intersection so we could turn around to go back. We’d already decided to leave the truck in place and come back for it, and then there were zombies everywhere, from one minute to the next. Bill and the others weren’t even twenty feet from the truck when they had to run back to it.”
“Did anyone make it besides Sean?” Rich said.
“Yeah,” Rocco said. “Victor was in the cab with me, and—”
“Victor’s with you?” Miranda said. The idea that Rocco would take the mercenary out to cover anyone’s back beggared belief.
“Victor’s the only reason we got anyone out of the truck Sean was in,” Rocco said tiredly. “Gloria and Phil—they’re newcomers—were in the back of our truck with the food, so I wasn’t worried about them. We drove into the horde.”
He paused at the collective intake of breath. Driving into a horde was never a good idea. Bodies got tangled in axles, windows broken. A box truck sat high enough that zombies would have a harder time swarming the cab, but they’d all seen it happen.
“We got our cab about three feet from theirs, on the passenger side. Victor climbed to the roof of our cab, to make room. Bill was�
�” Rocco stopped.
Sean said, “Bill had been driving, but he couldn’t shut the door after he got back inside. They were trying to get over him, drag him out. I was firing at them.” His voice got tight, and Miranda saw tears well in Sean’s eyes. “He was trying to hold on to them while they were attacking, so they wouldn’t fall back out. So they couldn’t get to the rest of us. It was one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen.”
Rocco sighed, scrubbing his face. “Victor shot enough of them between the trucks that they could open the door. We got Alicia through no problem, but—”
Phineas barked, “Alicia’s with you? What the hell is she doing with you?”
Alicia was the virologist who’d worked with Mario to create a new vaccine for the zombie virus. From the appalled looks on everyone’s faces, Miranda and Phineas weren’t the only ones shocked that she was participating in the food scouting.
“I didn’t want her to come, but she and Bill have been dating…” Rocco grimaced. “I figured if I let her come this time, she’d get it out of her system and that’d be that. I fucked up. Obviously.”
“But she’s okay?” Rich asked.
Rocco nodded.
“What happened to your shoulder?” Alec said to Sean.
“One of them caught my foot when I was jumping over. Victor caught my arm and pulled me up, but it got wrenched pretty bad. He thought we should immobilize it till the doctor can look at it.”
“Good Lord, Rocco,” Rich said. He put his hand on Rocco’s shoulder. “Is there anyone in the back of the other truck?”
Rocco’s laugh was bitter. “Of course there are people in the back… We’ll try to get them tomorrow or the next day, once things settle down. They’ve got water and food.”
After a moment’s silence, Rocco turned and walked toward the truck. Everyone followed. The back roller door was up. The truck was crammed to the ceiling with boxes of canned goods. The ones Miranda could see had PEACHES IN SYRUP written on the sides. Not a lot of caloric value, but like Rocco had said, better than nothing. The stacks of boxes looked like a lot, but she knew this wouldn’t last a week at LO. And they needed more than peaches.