by A. M. Geever
Doug stepped out of the way, and Skye exited the Comm Shack. Larry left ahead of Smith, whom Miranda waited for by the door.
“I just saw Phineas. He said he was heading home,” Miranda said. “I’ll go get him.”
“Thanks, Miranda,” Smith said. “But you need to get your kit together and get out of here.” She continued, her voice softer. “Are you up for this? I didn’t think to ask before.”
Miranda appreciated that Commander Smith had thought to ask. Truth was, she was dying to do something that would make her feel normal.
“I’m up for it, Commander. Happy to help.”
“Good,” Smith said. “We can never have enough people who’ll charge in, consequences be damned.”
She charges in, consequences be damned.
Unbidden, Mario’s accusation echoed inside Miranda’s head. She pushed it aside as she caught up with Doug and Skye. Delilah already followed them, as if she knew they were off on another adventure and she was going, too. Charging in was what she had always done, from the moment she decided that she would live when all of this started. The decision to meet danger head-on made her feel in control. It was an illusion, of course, but it was better than feeling helpless.
I can’t help what I am, she thought.
And Mario, of all people, should have known that.
So far, the influx of zombies was not too bad. The stench was another story. But any influx meant that at least some of the stations were off-line, and it wasn’t showing up on LO’s monitoring system. Miranda pulled her bandana over her nose and mouth. The only downside of spring and summer was how much the smell of decay increased in warmer weather. It didn’t matter that some of these zombies were almost eleven years old. They still stunk to high heaven.
Rocco turned at a break in the hedge that lined the road. The pickup thumped down a pitted gravel path alongside a tall, thick hedge before creaking to a halt. Delilah swayed gently into Miranda when the truck rocked, then followed her and Doug when they hopped down from the truck’s bed. Miranda shrugged into her small pack. She checked to make sure that her gun was loaded, snapping the magazine back into place before holstering it on her hip. Then she checked the other handgun in her thigh holster and made sure the machete on that same hip was secured. She cradled her assault rifle close, like it was precious cargo.
Rocco said, “Station Eleven is about a half mile from here. We go through the fence at the end of this path, then turn right. We’ll take a path through the yards of the houses along that street. The Station House has blue siding.”
Doug said, “It’ll have a fence, right?”
“Yeah, there is that,” Rocco said.
Larry looked in the direction of the moans, his face apprehensive.
“Been a while since you’ve been outside?” Miranda asked him.
Larry shrugged. “I’m fine.”
“Stick close to me, if it comes to that,” Miranda said.
Larry raised an eyebrow at her. “How’s that going to help?”
Miranda remembered that Larry didn’t know she could repel zombies. The fact that both she and Skye could was under wraps for the time being. She had meant to reassure him but had not thought it through.
Instead, she said, “I’m a shitkicker extraordinaire. And I have very good luck.”
“Okay,” Rocco said. “Let’s go.”
They walked single file, Rocco taking point, Doug bringing up the rear with Larry and then Miranda between them. Delilah mostly stayed beside Miranda but wandered off to sniff or investigate things Miranda could not see. Larry carried himself well. He scanned the area as they walked, carrying his machete lightly in his hand, and didn’t startle when a rabbit shot across the path in front of him. They all slipped through the hole in the fence and turned east.
The closer they got to the Station House, the louder the zombies coming from the north became. Miranda found it unsettling both how well LO’s sound defenses worked to keep the undead at bay and how quickly zombies arrived whenever there was a chink in the sonic armor.
The shadows lengthened as the sun dropped toward the horizon. Shit, Miranda thought, just a second before Rocco raised his fist to indicate they should halt. Delilah’s nose bumped into Miranda’s leg at the abrupt halt. Miranda could see the Station House ahead, six doors down, because of the tall chain-link fence that surrounded it. The house was intact, but a fat ribbon of gray smoke rose skyward from it.
“Fire isn’t zombies,” Larry said. “Who the hell would hit a Station House?”
Rocco turned back to face the rest of them. “I think we should—”
Gunfire erupted around them. Miranda dropped into the high grass. Delilah barked once and darted away. Rocco pulled Larry down, and Miranda lost sight of them.
Behind her, Doug said, “Where the hell are they?”
As abruptly as it had begun, the gunfire stopped. Miranda looked back to Doug. He was on his belly, ten feet behind her.
“The houses?”
Doug snorted, as if that much was obvious. “Can you tell which one?”
The moans and groans of zombies grew louder, excited by the noise of the gunfire. A few sounded closer than Miranda would have liked, but right now, they had more pressing concerns. And I can repel them, she reminded herself. But that only helped the others if they were right next to her. And only if they didn’t get shot.
Larry’s voice came from a little to the west. “We’re okay; how about you two?”
“We’re good,” Miranda answered, though whatever rock she had dropped down onto was sharp as hell.
She turned her head as Delilah crept close, hunkering down beside her. Relief that her loyal little pit bull was safe hit her in a rush. Delilah whimpered softly as she nudged Miranda’s hip with her nose.
“Miri,” Doug said. He held a rock in his hand and began twisting his yellow bandana around it. “I’m going to lob this back the way we came. Watch the houses. See if you can see them.”
She nodded, but when she started to twist, the pain in her hip flared bright, like the flash from a firecracker.
“Ow!” she hissed.
“What’s wrong?” Doug asked.
She reached down to touch her hip where Delilah kept nudging her. Her fingers came away bloody.
“I think I’ve been shot in the ass.”
“What?”
She held Delilah’s collar and forced herself onto her knees. A bright flash of pain rushed across her back and down her leg. She didn’t bother to try and hold the dog’s muzzle shut because any barking would be lost in the gunfire.
“Just throw your rock. I’m ready.”
Doug shot her a worried glance. A moment later, he cocked his arm back and threw the rock. Miranda gritted her teeth and poked her head up a little higher. Bright muzzle flashes lit up the upper-story windows of the house two down from the Station House. She had not realized how quickly twilight was descending until she saw the flashes.
“Two houses down from the Station House, toward us,” she said, pulling Delilah closer to her.
Rocco said, “I see it. You really hit, Tucci?”
“Unfortunately,” she said.
“Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do,” Rocco said. “I’ll give you five seconds of cover fire to get to Miranda. Then I’m going to give you a longer one to get behind the houses. The embankment above the stream is at the end of the lots.”
“What stream?” Miranda asked. She hadn’t seen any streams on the way in.
“I know it,” Larry said.
“What about you?” Miranda said.
“You can cover me once you’ve got cover. Don’t worry,” Rocco said.
“Rocco!” Miranda said.
“Tucci,” Rocco said, his tone indulgent. “I think you’re swell, too. Now shut the fuck up.”
A second later, a burst of gunfire erupted from Rocco’s assault rifle. Doug and Larry appeared beside Miranda from different directions.
“Can you walk?” Larry
asked.
“I think so,” Miranda answered.
“Get over my shoulder as much as you can,” Doug said. “I’ll carry you, just till we get there.”
Larry pointed behind them, away from the houses. “We’re going that way.”
When Rocco opened up again, Doug heaved Miranda onto his shoulder. The world jolted and rocked as he ran. Rocco lay down suppressing fire while moving backward in the direction they were headed. When they hit the backyard and veered behind the shelter of the house, Doug unceremoniously dumped Miranda on the ground. She and Larry ran for the embankment, Delilah dashing beside them. Miranda lost sight of Doug as she slid down the embankment to the stream.
A steady volley of gunfire ripped from nearby. Ten seconds later, Delilah barked as two dark forms dove over the lip of the embankment and rolled to the bottom.
Climbing to his feet, Rocco said, “Thanks, Doug. Appreciate it. We’ll fall back to the Insti—”
A bright flash filled the sky to the south, accompanied by a deep boom. A bright, flickering light illuminated the sky beyond the treetops, followed by a thick column of black smoke.
An explosion.
At LO.
36
“Are you sure you’re okay?” River asked.
Mario set down the empty cup of what was passing for coffee these days. The coffee they’d had at the Institute a couple weeks ago had not made its way to LO.
“I’m hanging in there.”
The lie tripped off his tongue so easily. He had said it so many times in the two weeks since the fight with Miranda that he almost believed it. He looked out the window of LO’s dining hall at the grounds of the Boys’ Home. River had arrived at the tail end of the dinner service, and he had waved her over to join him. That had been an hour ago, and he appreciated that she hadn’t asked about him and Miranda immediately. The dining hall was almost deserted; just a few people remained, and none of them sat nearby. On the cusp of twilight, the shadows outside the window grew long.
“How’s Miranda?”
Mario shrugged. Fuck if he knew. And sometimes, in his lowest moments, fuck if he cared.
“I have no idea,” he admitted. “We had an awful fight. I haven’t seen her since. She doesn’t want to see me, and most of the time, I don’t want to see her. I’m not even sure we’re still together, to be honest.”
He realized the truth of his words as he said them. He truly did not know where things stood or if they would get better. Or if he wanted them to.
You already have three children. You just abandoned ours faster.
Remembering her words felt as painful as when she had said it. She had accused him of thinking that their child hadn’t mattered, that one was interchangeable with another.
He had been just as bad. He knew she could be reckless, but it had been cruel to lay responsibility on her for what happened. Maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised that she came back with something just as hurtful, but he had no idea how to forgive her for it.
What had happened to Tadpole wasn’t her fault, and it wasn’t his, but you’d never know it by how they had turned on each other.
River’s dark eyes brimmed with sympathy. “You guys really love one another. Anyone can see it. And it’s not uncommon in my experience, her pulling away. It’s not the case here, it never is, really, but a lot of women feel like their body has let them down. That can really screw with a person’s equilibrium.”
Mario shook his head. “I don’t know how you come back from what we said to each other.”
River pushed the braid of her straight, black hair over her shoulder. She opened her mouth but never got farther. A bright white flash and a thunderous boom filled the sky outside, rattling the dining hall windows.
“What the—” Mario said.
The white flash turned into a yellow-orange fireball that billowed above the treetops, lighting up the sky on the far side of the Big Woods. Charcoal-black smoke, visible against the twilit sky only because of the light from the fire, spewed into the sky.
“Is that the Nature Center?” River gasped.
They scrambled to their feet and ran for the exit.
“I need to get my medical bag,” River said as she pushed on the exterior dining hall door.
“You have an armory at your place, right?”
River stopped, still holding the door with one hand.
“You think it’s an attack?” she said.
“I don’t know.”
They raced across the Boys’ Home grounds and through the sliver of woods separating it from the housing plan. People stood in windows and doorways, on lawns and in the street, everyone asking someone else what was happening. Still others—the kind of people who ran toward danger like he was now—sprinted into the Big Woods. Whether it was the Nature Center or the Woods itself on fire Mario could not tell, but it seemed to be growing.
They burst through the door to River’s house.
“In the kitchen,” she said, turning into her office. “Straight down the hall. The two cupboards next to the back door!”
Mario walked down the hall as quickly as he could. He didn’t dare run since he didn’t have a flashlight and the house was filled with shadows.
“There’s a lantern on the island counter,” River shouted.
Mario found the lantern. It was the kind with a crank, powered by elbow grease. He turned the crank as fast as he could.
There were cupboards on both sides of the back door, but two of them were floor-to-ceiling and vertical, the kind for storing brooms and garbage cans. Mario pulled one open. Rifles lined a stacked rack. He grabbed one, then checked to see if it was loaded, which of course it wasn’t. He didn’t see any ammo, so he opened the next closet. He scanned the ammo boxes quickly, found the right one, and loaded the rifle. Then he loaded another one for River. As he looked around the room, the lantern died.
“Fucking piece of crap,” he muttered, cranking it some more. He started pulling open cupboards, searching for something to carry more ammo in. He found canvas bags in a drawer. He pulled two out and returned to the ammo closet, hastily stuffing the bags. He turned at the sound of footsteps to see River in the shadowy outline of the door to the hall.
“I’m going to the Nature Center, or wherever,” she said.
“Here,” Mario said, thrusting a rifle into River’s arms. “Take this and the ammo.”
She only hesitated for a moment, then set down the medical bag in her hand. Mario slipped the rifle’s strap over his head and looped the bag of ammo over his shoulder.
“I have a better bag for that,” River said.
Mario followed her down the hall. She had left a lighted lantern in her office, and its glow spilled out to illuminate the area by the front door. River bent over a bin and reached inside, then straightened up and handed him a canvas messenger bag. He dumped his ammo into the messenger bag and slipped the strap over his shoulder, taking care that it did not get tangled with the rifle. River went to turn off the lantern. Mario pulled the front door open and hurried outside. As River joined him on the porch, Mario heard a short series of pops.
Gunfire.
“Did you hear that?” River said. “Was that—?”
“Yeah,” Mario said, trying to place its location.
Then came another short burst.
“That’s coming from the Boys’ Home,” Mario said.
“I need to see if anyone was hurt in the explosion,” River said. “I’ll send some people back here. Get more rifles so you’re ready for them.”
“Okay,” Mario said. “Hurry. And be careful.”
River nodded and ran down the street toward the Big Woods. Mario watched her for a moment, then looked down the street in the other direction. No lights were on in Miranda’s townhouse, and he had not seen her in the street. He had no idea where she was.
Please be safe, Miri.
It was not a thought as much as a silent, undirected prayer. He could already see a group of three people h
urrying his way. He ducked back into the house to get more guns.
Two minutes later, Mario, joined by Skye and three other people he did not know, were hiding among the strip of trees between the housing plan and the Boys’ Home. Mario crouched as low as he could while kneeling with one knee forward. He squinted, wishing he had some night vision goggles. Whoever was behind this might have them, which would leave the five of them hiding in these trees at a terrible disadvantage. The intruders had planned their attack well. There had been a new moon a day ago. The waxing moon’s rim of white did almost nothing to illuminate the dark landscape.
A ripple of movement caught his eye. A second later he could make out a figure, mostly because of its bulky outline and the insectoid-like protrusions sprouting from its head. He had been right about the night vision goggles. The agreed upon course of action before scattering into the trees was simple. Wait until they got close. Kill them all.
Another figure, and then another, emerged from the shadows. Ten seconds later, there were five. The even match was a stroke of luck because once they opened fire, their positions were blown. They had to wait. The intruders might be wearing body armor, and their posture indicated they had semi-automatic weapons at least. They needed them close enough to negate those advantages.
They were fifty feet out. Still crouching low, Mario nestled the elbow of his right arm against his knee, the heft of the rifle cradled in it reassuring. Forty feet. He took deep, measured breaths, because time had slowed down, stretching out like stiff taffy on a cold day. Thirty feet. Behind them—gunfire. Maybe from the Big Woods?
How many of them were there?
Twenty feet. He could hear one of them say something, the soft murmur of a man’s voice. Mario raised his torso straight, set the rifle’s stock to his shoulder, sighted up, and fired. On both sides of him gunfire rang out into the night. The figure closest to him fell, a quick burst of gunfire flying into the sky. Mario kept firing. He had to make sure the man was down.
Mario heard a grunt of pain on his left, one of the people who had come with Skye. He swiveled and saw another intruder pulling himself on the ground. He fired again. The downed figure jerked and shuddered, as if having a fit. There would be no mercy for these people. They had attacked unprovoked, were killing people Mario cared about. A quick death was too good for them.