SNAFU: Black Ops

—1— The Soldier and the Samurai

The soldier was a ghost in a dead world.

He made no sound as he moved because noise was suicidal. Noise was how to attract the dead. Noise was how one became dead. The soldier was alive because he had learned those lessons long ago, often from seeing others make mistakes they could not undo. The soldier had buried so many people, even people as skilled as he was. Maybe that meant he was lucky, or maybe it meant that in many ways he was closer to an animal than a man. His instincts were feral, driven by a predatory nature that had let him survive when so many others had fallen. Stronger people, faster ones, better ones. He, though, survived. All of those deaths were lessons, and he was a good student in the school of survival.

Now he was a soldier in memory only. It was how he defined himself because it steadied him, gave him purpose. Gave him a reason to stay alive even when death called so sweetly and so persistently. Death, after all, was the kingdom where everyone he had ever known and loved now lived. Living was a lonely, brutal thing.

He moved up a dry slope past cactus and twisted shrubs, watching the terrain, listening to the wind. When he stopped, he stood still as the ancient trees. That was a skill he had learned when the world was still alive. When you stop you have to become part of the landscape. You can’t do anything to draw the eye.

The trick was to be a ghost so that he did not become a corpse. Before the end of the world that concept made sense to any soldier; since then it was an unbreakable rule.

Even so, being alive often made him feel strange, alone, and freakish. It sometimes made him feel every bit as much of a monster as the things consuming the world.

The living dead. The walking dead. The hungry dead.

Zombies.

Even now, even years after it all fell apart, the soldier sometimes found it hard to accept that zombies were real, that they were pervasive, and that they were the most enduring fact of life. Of everyone’s life. They were as much an unshakable constant as the need to breathe. They were. They were here, and from what little anyone knew of the rest of the world, they were everywhere. The plague had spread incredibly fast because it was designed to be quick-onset and one hundred per cent communicable. Nature could never have created so perfect a monster. No, it had been the cold minds of madmen on both sides of the Cold War who had taken civilization’s noblest advances in science and medicine and twisted them into weapons of mutually-assured destruction. Bioweapons had been officially banned but never actually abandoned. The lie that assured the black budget funding was that they needed to create the weapons so that cures and prophylactic measures could be created.

It was the logic of the shield maker who actually wanted to make and sell swords.

Lucifer 113 had been an actual doomsday weapon and though it had been locked away and chained up, it had slipped its leash and now the world had died, been consumed, and gone quiet.

And through that quiet the soldier moved, silent as the death that defined him and everything else.

He reached a knoll and paused, crouching in the shelter of a crooked pine tree, and surveyed the landscape. Red rocks, barrel cactus, yucca and Joshua trees. Some big horn sheep grazing on the tough grass near the dark mouth of a cenote. Nothing else.

None of them visible. That meant nothing, though. If they had no prey to chase they would stop walking and stand as still as statues, as still as stovepipe cactus. Dangerously easy to miss when scanning an area so wide and vast as Red Rock Canyon in Nevada.

There was movement and the soldier pivoted on the balls of his feet to watch a young man break from the cover of a creosote bush and move along a fault line, keeping to the shadows cast by an up-thrust ledge of ancient rock. The young man moved with an oiled ease that made the soldier long for the lost days of his youth. At fifty-five, the soldier could feel every year, every hour, every injury, every inch of scar tissue that marked his passage through a violent life. The kid had never taken a bad injury. To the heart, sure, but not to the body, and he moved like a dancer.

He moved smart, too, and the soldier nodded his appreciation. The kid was learning. Getting better, sharper, faster. Earning his right to live in a world as thoroughly unforgiving as this one.

The young man saw something and came to a complete stop, freezing and blending into the landscape. The soldier squinted as he surveyed the terrain to see what had spooked his apprentice.

He heard it before he saw it.

The dry desert wind brought the soft, low, plaintive moan of an absolutely bottomless hunger. One of them, crying out its need.

Then it stepped into sight, coming out of a shadowed space between two boulders tumbled down that slope by a glacier millennia ago. It was a man, or had been. Tall, heavy in the shoulders, wearing the soiled and sun-faded uniform of a Nevada State Park ranger.

The soldier did not speak, did not rush to help. He watched, instead.

The young man wore khakis and a many-pocketed canvas vest over a long-sleeved cotton knit shirt. He wore a backpack, too, and fitted between the pack and his own back was the lacquered scabbard of a katana, a Japanese sword of the kind the Samurai once used. It was nearly a match to the one the soldier had strung across his own back. The sword’s silk-wrapped handle rose above the young man’s right shoulder. He also wore a pistol in a belt holster and a knife strapped to his thigh.

He waited until he was sure there was only one of the dead shambling toward him, and then he stepped toward the zombie. His hand flashed up and down and there was a glittering arc of silver.

The zombie’s head fell one way, the headless body fell the other.

The soldier rose slowly and walked down the slope to the kid.

“Nice work,” he said.

“Thank you,” said the young man. “I think he was alone and—”

“And you should have used your fucking knife, Tom,” said the soldier.

“What?”

The soldier pointed to the far end of the valley. Three figures were moving toward them. Then a fourth stepped out from behind a tall cactus.

“That sword is pretty, and points for the sweet kesa-giri, kid, but that much polished steel is a big frigging mirror,” said the soldier sourly. “You might as well have rung the damn dinner bell.”

Tom Imura looked crestfallen. “I didn’t stop to consider—”

“Really? No shit.”

“I… I’m sorry, Joe,” he said.

Captain Joe Ledger pulled a pair of sunglasses from the vee of his sleeveless fatigue shirt and put them on.

“Don’t be sorry, kid,” he said. “Do better.”

“Yes,” promised Tom.

Ledger pointed to the four figures staggering toward them. “Now go clean up your mess.” He sat down on a rock, pulled a piece of goat jerky from his pack, and began to chew.

Tom Imura cleaned the black blood from his sword and returned it to its scabbard. Then he drew his knife. It was a double-edge British commando dagger with a matte black finish over the steel. Totally nonreflective. He drew a breath, held it for a moment, exhaled, nodded, and then set off to meet the four zombies.

He didn’t see Joe Ledger grinning at his retreating back.

—2— Top and Bunny

“This place looks great, you said. We’ll get a lot of rest for once, you said,” growled USMC Staff Sergeant Harvey Rabbit, call sign ‘Bunny’, as he brought up his drum-fed shotgun. He began firing, filling the air with thunder that drowned out the low, hungry moans.

Bunny cut a sour sideways look at his best friend, First Sergeant Bradley ‘Top’ Sims. The dark-skinned, grizzled former Army Ranger held his SIG Sauer in a two-handed shooter’s grip and fired steady, spaced shots at the pale figures closing in on them from all sides. The two men circled slowly, clockwise, finding targets everywhere.

Absolutely everywhere.

They worked this like they’d worked a hundred battles of this kind. Killing the dead. Accepting the insanity of that concept as an unshakeable part of their world.

The front line of the dead went down.

The next line was fifty yards back. The Colorado Rocky Mountain slopes around them fell still as insects and birds alike silenced their calling to hide from the battle threatening their home.

“So tell me, Old Man,” asked Bunny as he lowered his weapon, “do I look well rested?”

Top shrugged, eyeing Bunny with a creased brow. “You look alive. Say thanks and stop being so damn high maintenance.”

“High maintenance my ass,” Bunny replied as he readied himself for the next wave. He aimed his shotgun at another zombie and shot it point blank in the forehead. “As far as I can tell, it’s a miracle either of us can walk without a cane at this point.”

“The miracle,” Top said, dropping a walker with a double-tap, “is that either of us still have all our limbs. That we’re even alive, Farm Boy.”

In truth, Top had been the farm boy, having spent his boyhood summers in his uncle’s Georgia peach grove. He’d gone off to the Rangers and fought in battlefields all over the world, then retired to see if he could be a farmer. But he had come out of retirement after his son was killed and his daughter crippled in the early days of the Iraq War. He’d volunteered for the newly-formed Department of Military Sciences, hoping to lead a team into combat in the new War on Terrorism. Instead he became the strong right hand of Captain Joe Ledger’s Echo Team. That was where he and Bunny had met and become best friends and teammates.

“Won’t be for long if I keep letting you pick our campsites, Old Man,” Bunny complained, and then they both went back to work. Firing, stopping only to reload, as zombies continued to advance — some limping on partial legs, others with partially eaten heads or faces or missing arms. Bunny was a six-foot-seven-inch, powerful, blond, former SoCal pro-volleyball player who’d joined the Marines and went from Force Recon to the DMS. Bunny, Top and Ledger had served together, side by side, their whole time at the agency.

Until things fell apart.

“The survivors we rescued yesterday said it was clear,” Top snapped, motioning downslope toward the old log cabin where they’d tried to spend the night — an abandoned escape for some unknown city dwellers that might never return.

“Well, clearly they were full of shit!” Bunny snapped. “Maybe we should go back and kick their asses. Just as a way of saying thanks.”

The last two zombies fell, their heads blown apart.

Top and Bunny panned around in a circle, looking for any signs of movement or further targets. The stink of rotting blood and flesh mixed with the sweet smell of pine needles and moss filling the cool mountain air as it breezed gently around them.

“Clear,” said Bunny, his voice too loud in the sudden quiet.

“Clear,” agreed Top. “Won’t last, though. All that shooting will bring more of them out of the woods. Won’t take ‘em long to get here, either.”

Top swapped out his magazine and holstered the SIG, then dragged a sleeve across the sweat on his face. “Hot as balls today.”

“Cover my six,” Bunny said. “This time, I think I’ll pick our shelter.”

“Hooah,” muttered Top, and they moved out in tight formation, covering each other as they followed a trail through a copse of ponderosa pines leading up a nearby slope.

Ever since the world fell apart under Lucifer 113, or The Plague as the public usually called the outbreak, Top and Bunny found themselves as soldiers without an official mission. There was no government, no DMS, no active military. The world had fallen completely off its hinges, and what was left of America — and maybe the world — was an all-you-can eat buffet for the hungry dead, with pockets of humans trying to survive here and there.

In the absence of official orders, Top and Bunny had assigned themselves a mission. The rules were simple. Keep moving. Save whom they could save. Kill as many zombies as was practical. Rinse. Repeat.

They’d become successful enough to earn a reputation as ‘the garbage men’, as one group of survivors had dubbed them. They'd once met a salvage team out in the wasteland who’d heard of them and repeated what he’d been told. ‘Call them in and they’ll haul your ass out and empty the garbage you leave behind.’

Not something you could put on a tattoo, but it worked well enough.

As for the nickname of ‘The Garbage Men’, Bunny hated it, but Top thought it was hilarious.

“Yeah,” Bunny protested after they’d left the salvage man, “But we’re not a pair of fucking janitors. We’re saving lives. Where’s the respect?”

Top just said, “People use humor to keep their spirits up in impossible life situations. They don’t mean disrespect. It’s a joke.”

Bunny didn’t see how there was anything to joke about. The world was for shit and it might never recover. Millions, maybe billions of people were dead. More were dying, and everyone who died, no matter how, reanimated and joined the flesh-eating horde. No matter how many they shot, more kept coming. Top somehow managed to stay optimistic, but all Bunny could do was keep thinking how fucked they were.

FUBAR.

Fucked up beyond all repair.

Yeah.

—3— The Soldier and the Samurai

Joe Ledger and Tom Imura scaled a tall rock as twilight began filling the canyons with shadows. In another kind of world they would have used the darkness as a time to travel quickly without being seen and without the oppressive desert heat. But the dead did not rest and they hunted at night. Actually they hunted all the time, but at night the lifeless bastards were harder to see coming, driven by smell and hearing when it was too dark to see. No one Ledger had talked to during the fall knew how the zombies stayed alive, or why they didn’t rot past a certain point, or how they could use any of their senses. It seemed to make no scientific logic, but for Ledger it meant he simply did not have sufficient information. Everything made sense in the end. Everything, and he had encountered some of the most bizarre threats any Special Operator had ever encountered. Even when it looked like it was something supernatural, there was always some kind of weird goddam science to explain it.

The fact that all of the scientists he knew were also dead skewed the math. It meant he might never get the right answers.

Once he and his apprentice were up on top of the rock, they pitched a camp, and ate a meal of cold salted rabbit and water. The elevation kept the dead away, but a cooking fire up here could be seen from miles and miles away. They sat together, wrapped in blankets against the cold of the desert night, and talked.

“I wish Sam was here,” said Tom. It wasn’t the first time he mentioned his older brother, who had been a sniper on Ledger’s Echo Team. As far as Ledger knew Sam had been killed a few days after the dead rose. Or so he had been told.

“Me, too,” he said.

Tom must have heard something in his voice because he turned to the soldier. “Joe… do you think there’s any chance he’s still alive?”

“A chance? Sure,” said Ledger, nodding. “The lady cop I met who’d been with him said she had been told that he fell under a swarm of zoms, but she didn’t actually see him get bit. Sam and his field team, the Boy Scouts, were helping the cop get a whole convoy of school buses filled with kids out of danger. They were overrun and Sam was doing what he could to give them a chance. He went down and the buses got out, but…”

“But…?”

“Sam was dressed for combat. Ballistic helmet with a face shield, Kevlar vest, limb pads, armored gloves. The works,” said Ledger. “He wasn’t exactly naked and painted with steak sauce, you dig? He might have made it out. But he didn’t have a vehicle, at least as far as the cop knew. And going back for him would have put the kids on the table for an all-you-can-eat buffet.”

“Then he could still be out there?” asked Tom. He was a nice young guy. Early twenties. Tough as nails. Smart. Decent. Damn good fighter. But he wore his heart on his sleeve and he pinned his own survival on ideals like hope and optimism, which was dangerously fragile scaffolding as far as Ledger saw it.

Even so, he didn’t try to kick that structure down. Tom had a little half-brother, Benny to think about. The kid was back in Central California, in a small makeshift town built around a reservoir high up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Tom had helped establish, build and defend that town, but he often left his brother in the care of his neighbors while he went out into what the people in town called the great ‘Rot and Ruin’ to look for survivors. Tom had rescued more than two hundred people so far, which made him a hero.

Joe Ledger had no interest in settling in the town. Like Tom, he was on the prowl for survivors, too. However, it was only half of his own self-imposed mission. The rest of it was less humanitarian. Or, maybe it was a service to the community in the most extreme terms.

He and Tom were not out here to kill zoms.

No, they were hunting people.

Tom must have read his thoughts. “What’s wrong with them?”

It was a question the young man asked in one way or another nearly every day. What’s wrong with them? Them. Not the dead. Smart as he was, Tom did not seem able to crawl inside the head of living people who saw the apocalypse as the chance to shake off all moral constraints, all ethics, all inhibitions. There were packs of predators out here — mostly, but not entirely men — who preyed on camps of survivors. Stealing their food and supplies, brutalizing the men, raping the women. Sometimes raping the children, too. Ledger and Tom had found absolute proof that human beings — the uninfected living — were a thousand times more savage than the legions of hungry dead. They had come upon camp after camp and read the proof in the twisted bodies, in the small violated corpses, in the leavings of monsters in human shape. Tom had called them animals at first, but later changed that to ‘monsters’ because animals did not do this.

Tom had been about to graduate from the police academy when the world fell. Since then he had bloodied his hands, but it was only after Ledger had taken him under his wing that Tom Imura had become a practiced and efficient killer. A hunter of hunters; a predator who preyed on predators.

“They do it because they’re weak,” said Ledger. He tore off a chunk of rabbit and chewed slowly.

“Weak?”

“Sure. Don’t confuse dangerous with strong. You’re strong, kid. So am I. So are the kinds of people, trained or untrained, who stand up to protect those who can’t protect themselves. That’s what defines strength. Just as being brave in the face of danger defines courage.” Ledger chewed and shook his head slowly. The sun was down and there were ten billion stars spread like diamond dust above them. “The people we hunt aren’t tigers or lions. They’re jackals. They hunt in packs because they’re too fucking afraid to hunt alone. And in those packs they trash talk so that everyone thinks they’re tough, but it’s a thin coat of paint on a pile of shit.”

“They put up a good fight, though,” observed Tom, but Ledger shook his head again.

“No. They fight, but it’s not a good fight. They fight because they’re afraid of dying, and they’re afraid of the pain of dying. But they aren’t warriors. They’re not going down in any fucking blaze of glory. Even a cockroach will fight.” He spat over the edge of the rock, listened, but didn’t hear it land. He shrugged.

They sat in silence for a long time. There was no moon tonight and the wind was quiet. Far away they could hear sounds in the night. The rustle of something small and fast moving through the brush. A little ground squirrel, maybe, or a rat. The distant call of a night bird. The soft, plaintive moan of something dead and hungry.

They sat and watched the stars.

“I miss my dogs,” said Ledger.

“Me, too.”

When Tom had met Ledger the big soldier was traveling with two monstrous dogs that were half Irish wolfhound and half American mastiff. Baskerville and Boggart. On one of their ‘training’ trips up to San Jose Boggart had gone missing and when they found him the dog had adopted a girl who called herself Rags. The girl was a scrappy little thing. Young but tough as iron, and she and the dog had bonded. After a violent run-in with a group of raiders who called themselves the Skull Riders, Ledger, Rags and the dogs had gone east. When Ledger returned nearly two years later, he had Baskerville with him as well as a new full-bred female mastiff he called Cupcake. Boggart, Ledger told Tom, had elected to stay with Rags, and the soldier was fine with that. Cupcake had joined his little pack. However the two big dogs were back in Mountainside because Cupcake had just dropped a litter of five very large, very noisy pups. Ledger missed his dogs. He liked them a lot more than he liked most people.

After nearly an hour, Tom said, “Maybe we’ll find some horses.”

“Maybe,” Joe said dubiously.

“If we don’t it’s going to be a long walk to Oro Valley, Arizona.”

“Yup.”

They sat in silence, watching the stars above them swim through the Milky Way.

“Joe…do you think it’s real?”

Ledger said nothing.

“The cure they keep talking about,” persisted Tom. “Do you think it’s real?”

Ledger sipped some water and washed it around in his mouth before swallowing.

“Christ, kid, I hope so.”

—4— Top and Bunny

Top and Bunny wound up spending the night in the loft of a barn on old but clean hay, taking turns sleeping three hours then keeping watch — each twice that night. The next morning, they headed for the Arizona-Colorado border, several survivor groups having hinted that they’d heard rumors of another group struggling in the small town of Sun Valley near Petrified Forest National Park.

Top led the way, because the Georgia farm boy rode horses like it was second nature. Bunny, on the other hand, was an Orange County, California surfer, and his horse riding skills continued to amuse Top every time he watched him. Since riding along with a constantly chuckling companion had begun annoying Bunny fairly quickly, Top just rode ahead, so he could avoid the spurts of spontaneous laughter he’d been prone to when they’d first started out. Bunny knew this although it went unacknowledged. He loved the old guy anyway, though God knew he’d never say that out loud.

The two hundred and two mile journey would take them a little under fourteen hours at normal speeds for the horses — about eighteen minutes per mile — and using the older state highways to avoid the cities, where most large colonies of zombies congregated, also saved time. But they still had to be well rested and conserve their strength to remain effective when they arrived so they’d already decided to split the journey into two days.

They’d waste less energy riding early mornings and at night once they left the foothills of the Rockies and hit the desert. Cooler temperatures would be easier on all of them, despite the dangers of the dark. The same EMPs that had destroyed the zombies and automobiles had also eliminated many snakes, scorpions, and other predators. But not all by far. There were always the random zombie pods, but dealing with scattered zombies was much easier than the city hordes, and they were used to that.

As they rode south, the foothills turned to prairies and pine forests. The latter were littered with twigs and pine needles that crunched under the horses’ hooves more softly than dead leaves. Crickets, birds, and other creatures chirped in the branches and overhead in a constant droning symphony of sound. The wind blew strong, bringing the hot desert winds and smells of sand, dust, and dry grass to mix with the sweet scent of pine sap and needles. From time to time, amidst the pines, Bunny even thought he detected a faint scent of butterscotch, but decided his mind must be playing tricks. As the forests gave way to prairies, the prairies eventually gave way to gravel and rock formations. Trees were soon conspicuously absent, and the air became thicker with heat, making their lungs work harder.

The whole time, Bunny thought back on the nineteen years since the world had fallen apart and the DMS had ceased to exist, at least for Echo Team. They had once been like a family, but now they were all scattered to who knew where. They didn’t even know if anyone one else was still alive. Only Top remained in Bunny’s world and Bunny in his. And that was only because they’d been together on a supply run when the EMPs hit and they’d been stranded, forced like so many others to fight to survive. Teaming up had been a natural instinct after so many years of it, and here they were. Somehow they’d survived when so many others hadn’t. Bunny thought of Joe Ledger, Rudy and Circe Sanchez, Leroy Williams, whom they all called ‘Bug’, and Junie Flynn. He thought of the strange and enigmatic Mr Church who was their leader and about whom Bunny knew next to nothing. Last but not least he thought of Lydia Ruiz, Warbride, who’d gone from teammate to friend to lover. God, the memories of all them.

“Farm Boy!” Top shouted, startling Bunny from his reverie.

“What?” He shook it off and looked around as his horse just barely steered clear of a cacti bunch that would have surely torn into his leg through his pants. Fuck, he thought, grabbing the reins and resuming control.

“You’re lucky animals have good instincts,” Top said, shaking his head. “You falling asleep on me?”

Bunny shook his head. “No. Just remembering.”

To Bunny’s relief, Top read the look in his partner’s eyes and no further explanation was needed. He grunted in sympathy and they rode on together, now side by side for a while.

—5— The Soldier and the Samurai

They did not find horses.

Not live ones, anyway. They found a farmer’s field full of bones and they found a half dozen zoms dressed in field denims standing around looking blank. Tom stopped by the rail and stared at the dead, and the zoms slowly turned toward him and began walking. There was never any hurry in the world of the dead. They were inexorable and indefatigable, but they were never hasty.

Tom reached over his shoulder for the handle of his sword, but Ledger stopped him.

“They’re not going to hurt anyone,” said the soldier. “They’re too clumsy to climb over the fence and who in their right mind would go in there?”

Tom frowned. “Right… but shouldn’t we… what’s the word you like to use? ‘Quiet’ them?”

Ledger shrugged. “Why? They’re not in pain. They’re not going to get lonely or any of that shit. They’re dead but they don’t know it. What good will it do anyone?”

“It would be merciful. They were people once, Joe. They had their lives stolen by the disease and now they’re in this living death hell. Or whatever you want to call it.”

Ledger sighed and walked over to stand beside Tom, watching the zoms shamble their way.

“Here’s how I see it, kid,” said the soldier. “These people are gone. Yes, we can mourn who they used to be, and we can feel compassion for how they died and for what was taken from them. I get that. We both get that. It sucks worse than almost anything. The only thing that would suck worse would be if they knew they were dead.”

“Knew?”

“Sure, if their personalities were somehow trapped in there, aware of what had happened to them. That would be the biggest suck-fest of all time.”

Tom went pale. “Jesus Christ…”

“But you’ve looked into their eyes, Tom,” said Ledger. “Have you ever seen so much as a flicker of personality? Of intelligence? Of awareness?”

“No.” He sighed. “No, I haven’t.”

“Of course not, because whoever lived in those bodies is gone. To heaven, to hell, or to whatever state of existence is waiting on the other side of death’s front door. I don’t know.”

“Maybe it’s nothing,” said Tom. “Maybe there’s nothing after this.”

“Maybe,” said Ledger, “but boy would that be a fucking kick in the balls. After all these thousands of years of religion and prayer and everything else, it would be a rotten fucking cosmic joke if this was it, finished, done.”

The zoms were almost up to the fence.

Tom said, “What do you believe?”

Ledger bent and plucked a long stem of wild grass and put it between his teeth. It bobbed up and down as he chewed the end.

“Not sure what I believe in has a name,” said Ledger after a moment. “I was raised Methodist back in Baltimore, but that’s kind of for shit. None of what happened squares with any religion’s apocalyptic prophecies, which tells me two things. Either everyone’s wrong and the universe has bent us all over a barrel, or this isn’t the actual end.”

Tom watched the zombies. “How much closer to the end do we need to get?”

The closest of the dead, a woman in jeans and a man’s flannel work shirt, thrust her arms between the slats of the fence rail, gray and withered fingers clawing at the air inches from where the two men stood. Ledger reached out and offered his fingers to the dead woman, who grabbed them and tried to pull them toward her mouth. Ledger was stronger and he did not give an inch. The zombie kept trying, moaning softly, but Ledger remained unmoved. Only when the other zoms reached for him did he pulled his hand free and wipe it on his jeans.

“Maybe the line in the sand,” he said quietly, “is when there’s no one left like you.”

“Me? I’m more of a skeptic than you are.”

“About religion, sure. Maybe. But you’ve been working your ass off to save your little town. What are you calling it?”

“Mountainside.”

Ledger nodded. “You may not have much optimism about your spiritual future, but you have a lot about the future of the people in Mountainside. About your stepbrother’s future. About the possibility of there even being a future.”

“I could be delusional,” said Tom, half smiling.

“You could. Not sure you actually need to believe in anything much yourself except life. You do believe in that, and don’t tell me you don’t.”

Tom nodded.

“So, as I interpret the whole End of Times thing,” said Ledger, “an actual apocalypse should be all exit doors and no other options. I’m not seeing that here. Neither are you. Fuck, even those ass-pirates who are preying on survivors think there’s a chance at a future.” He shook his head and tossed the blade of grass into the wind. “We’re living in a fully dramatized example of that old samurai concept. Nanakorobi yaoki. You know that one?”

“’Fall down seven times, get up eight’,” said Tom.

“This is one of the times we get up.”

“What if we get knocked down again? What if that doctor in Arizona doesn’t really have a cure? What then?”

“Then we get up a ninth time,” said Ledger. “And a tenth.”

They watched the zoms, standing just outside of the reach of those dead hands. Then Ledger raised himself on his toes and looked over to the side of the farmhouse that stood on the edge of the field. A smile blossomed on his weathered face.

“What?” asked Tom.

“Maybe there’s a God after all,” said Ledger, “and maybe he’s not a total dick.”

“Huh?”

Ledger pointed to the porch. There, exposed by the slanting rays of the sun, was a pair of heavy-duty mountain bikes. “Not horses, but then again we won’t have to feed and water them.”

Tom pulled out his binoculars and studied them.

“Shit. The tires are flat.”

Ledger shrugged. “This is a farm in the middle of no-fucking-where. You trying to tell me these people didn’t have spares, patch kits and hand-pumps? Really?”

Forty minutes later they were pedaling along the road with the farm and its people falling slowly behind.

—6— Top and Bunny

Bunny estimated they were less than a mile outside Sun Valley when they heard the screams. They’d traveled until early afternoon the first day, then slept during daylight and resumed their journey at night and into the early morning, winding up doing six hours the first day and over seven since they’d started out the previous evening. The journey had been quiet and unexpectedly uneventful — the two soldiers having somehow managed to avoid any pods of zombies or other hurdles the entire way. Until now.

The screaming came from multiple voices.

“Does that sound like children?” Bunny asked.

Top nodded. “Women, too.”

They spurred their horses simultaneously and raced in the direction of the screams. The undead didn’t scream, they moaned. Some humans were still out there and in danger — probably under zombie attack. As they rode, they checked their weapons. Bunny’s chest tightened and he took a deep breath, focusing his energy and senses as he always did when preparing to go into combat. Beside him, he saw Top go through similar preparations, though they each put their own spin on it. They’d faced fire together hundreds of times, yet the prep remained the same. Military discipline and common experience.

As they topped a small rise, they began making out voices mixed with the screams — shouting, pleading, arguing… No distinct words yet, but enough to confirm there were several humans involved — male, female, and children.

They rode into fields of heavy cacti and petrified rock, and Bunny spotted a fading, cracked sign saying, ‘Welcome to Petrified National Forest’. A trail had been laid out, lined with logs connected by pillars of stone. The well-worn dirt path between them was around ten feet wide, so they turned their horses and began following it in the direction of the voices and screams.

Some nearby cacti bore beautiful purple and green flowers in stark contrast to the sharp spindles shooting out of every other available surface upon them. Bunny briefly wondered if animals were fooled. For what purpose had the plants grown such camouflage and how many generations ago?

Then the trail turned and they were winding along the top of one of two facing natural stone walls, layers of red, yellow, tan, and grey revealed along the sides that ran down into the canyon between them — loose rock, grass, and cacti growing scattered along the slopes. It was stunning, a clear reminder why the place had drawn the attention of the Department of Interior and become a National Park.

The shouting and pleading became intelligible now.

“No, they’re just babies!” a woman sobbed.

“Hold her down!” a man yelled. “We can’t help them now!”

“How did they find us again?” another woman wondered, her voice filled with pain and mourning.

“Get back under cover or they might come back for you,” the yelling man ordered.

Then Bunny spotted a dirty cargo van, its white exterior spotted with mud and debris, peeling along a thin natural road that ran down the middle of the valley on the canyon floor. Gunshots echoed as rocks and pebbles shot up from the road, the rounds missing the van as it peeled away as fast as it could manage on the slippery surface.

“Who the hell has a working van and frigging gasoline?” After the EMPs hit the cities, most above ground vehicles and gas pumps stopped working. Bunny had heard rumors that vehicles parked in metal buildings or underground might escape the problem, but it had been a long time since he’d seen one. “Should we stop it?” he called to Top.

Both reined their horses to a stop and aimed their weapons, eyes searching for targets, trying to determine who was attacking whom.

Finally, Top shook his head. “We don’t know what’s going on yet.”

“Someone stealing children,” Bunny said.

“Or rescuing them,” Top countered.

Then they heard the distinct click of a shotgun and pistols being cocked behind them and whirled to find two men and a woman, faces dirty from dust and sand, standing near the trail edge, weapons aimed right at the two soldiers’ chests. Bunny knew that with quick movements, he and Top could be off their horses and taking the three out, but Top shot him a look that said, ‘wait’, so he hesitated, watching his partner.

“Drop the weapons now!” the man with the shotgun ordered. He looked to be in his thirties. From the way the others responded to his voice, Bunny suspected he was the leader.

“Easy there, we mean no harm,” Top said, as he and Bunny lowered their guns, moving them slowly toward their holsters.

“Freeze!” the woman shouted, shifting nervously, her .45 swung toward Top’s forehead. She was tan with long blonde hair and looked a decade younger than the leader. Top and Bunny stopped moving.

“Yes, ma’am,” Bunny said. “Just trying to put them away.”

“Who are you?” the leader demanded. “What are you doing here?”

“Soldiers, come to help,” Top said. “First Sergeant Sims, US Army Rangers and Master Sergeant Rabbit, USMC.”

“Army and Marines together?” the leader said with a quizzical expression. “You aren’t official then.”

Top shook his head. “Not many official teams left, you know. With the troubles.”

“Yeah, we’re all on our own,” the woman said angrily. “And we don’t like strangers.” She took a breath and her .45 faltered a bit, but then Top shifted slowly in the saddle, turning to look at her and she snapped it up again, stiffening.

“Just wanted to say that we understand,” Top said. “We don’t know who to trust anymore either. That’s why we’re together. We trust each other.”

“Till death do us part,” Bunny joked.

“You a couple then?” the third person, a scowling younger man with the .45 aimed at Bunny’s forehead snapped. He looked like he was barely out of his teens, his short blonde hair similar to the girl’s. Could they be related? Either way, he’d spread his legs apart shoulder-width and locked them there, steady, ready for anything. Young or not, he clearly had experience with his weapon and Bunny had no doubt it was a shot he’d probably make.

“Not that kind, no,” Bunny said, shaking his head.

“You’ll have to pardon the farm boy,” Top said, shooting Bunny a warning look. “His sense of humor sometimes comes out at the wrong times.”

“This ain’t no joke!” the woman snapped, glaring at Bunny, then locking her eyes back on Top.

“We know that, ma’am,” Bunny said, swallowing. These people needed to seriously chill. They clearly had no idea that Top and he could have taken them out in seconds if they’d wanted to.

“We’re looking for a camp of survivors from Sun Valley we heard might need help,” Top said quickly. “We were on our way there. Rode in from Colorado.”

“Help? What kind of help?” the leader demanded.

“The undead, some kind of raids, finding shelter and a good hiding place,” Bunny explained.

“And what’s it to you?” the scowling young man said.

“We have experience with such things, come to offer it,” Top said.

“Who was in the van?” Bunny asked.

“None of your business!” the woman said, waving her .45 again.

The leader’s eyes softened as he read the two soldiers. “Caroline, let’s calm down a bit and hear them out, okay?”

“I’m calm,” the woman said. “Calm as I’m gonna be after what just happened.” She relaxed her arms a bit, lowering the .45 slightly.

“What happened?” Top asked softly.

“We were raided,” the leader said, pointing the shotgun at the ground. “Some strangers came and took women and children and a couple old men.”

“Took them where? For what?” Bunny asked. Humans raiding to kidnap other humans had to mean they were sick or going to be. What other explanation could there be in these times?

“The Lab. Experiments. Damn crazy doctor,” Caroline mumbled, shaking her head.

“What lab? You’re raided by other humans?” Bunny asked.

“What’s it to you?” the scowling man said, waving his pistol again. “Why are we telling them anything? We don’t know them! They could be with the Doc!”

“They’re on horses for one, Steven,” Caroline said. “The doctor’s people come in vehicles.”

The leader nodded. “And if they were with the Doc, they would have left together, not hung around.”

“We caught ‘em. Maybe they’re playing dumb, Owen,” Steven said, looking toward the leader.

“We’ll take their word for it for now and watch them closely,” the leader said, nodding in the younger man’s direction. “Lower your weapon, Steven, okay?”

Steven hesitated, his scowl changing to a face twisted with confusion. Owen nodded again, then slowly lowered the .45 a little and relaxed his stance.

“Now, you two slide slowly down off those horses so we can talk, okay?” Owen said.

Top and Bunny exchanged a look of agreement, then nodded and slowly dismounted, making sure to keep their hands well clear of their weapons as they did. Their feet thumped on the stone ground as they landed, sending dust and loose rocks up in clouds around their boots. As Top turned to Owen again and opened his mouth to speak, a whistle sounded from somewhere in the distance.

“They’re gone,” Caroline said, and all three relaxed a bit more, exchanging knowing looks.

“How many did they get?” Steven wondered.

“We’d better go back to camp and take a count,” Owen said.

“What was that about a lab? A doctor taking people?” Bunny asked, exchanging a puzzled look with Top.

“That signal’s from our camp,” Owen explained, ignoring the specific question. “All clear.”

Top and Bunny grunted but held position. That one they understood perfectly.

“What about them?” Steven asked, motioning to the two soldiers.

“They’re coming with us,” Owen said. “But you two stay behind them and be ready.”

“You’d risk letting them know where our camp is?” Caroline asked, looking uncertain.

“We move it a lot,” Owen said. “We’ll keep them under guard. We need time to find out more about them. But first, we need to make sure the perimeter’s secure again. Okay?”

After a moment, Caroline nodded then stepped forward and took away the weapons from the two soldiers — pistols and rifles slung off their shoulders. She didn’t inspect their bags or pat them down, for which Bunny felt grateful. She handed one rifle to each of the men and put the pistols in her belt, then stepped clear.

Steven’s jaw tightened as he grunted in affirmation and motioned sharply for Top and Bunny to follow Owen. Top and Bunny each grabbed their mount’s reins and led the horses after the group’s leader.

—7— The Soldier and the Samurai

They heard the screams from miles off.

It was not the empty moans of the hungry dead. It was not an animal sound. These were screams from human throats. Male and female. Raised to that terrible pitch where the screams rip themselves out of throats, damaging tissue, violating the air, breaking the world.

Ledger and Tom were at the top of a hill and the road down twisted in and out of a scattered community of RVs and campers. It was like a hundred such camps they had seen, and like the others it looked like a war zone, with zombies everywhere and partially-eaten corpses sprawled and rotting in the weeds. Vultures circled endlessly in the high, dry air.

However those screams were alive. They were immediate.

Neither man said a word. Instead they kicked their bikes into motion and pedaled as hard and fast as they could, accelerating downhill. They could not see any living people, but the screams had to have been coming from outside — they weren’t muffled the way they would be if the victims were inside one of the campers.

It was only when they heard the gunshot that they skidded to a stop.

The dead don’t use firearms.

“Off,” snapped Ledger and they let the bikes fall. Tom, who was used to Ledger’s methods by now, immediately faded left, running low and fast toward the outermost camper, making the maximum of cover. He drew his sword because it was a cloudy day and there was no sunlight to reflect from the blade. Ledger went right, running a zigzag through the dead, twisting to avoid them without having to engage. He did not draw a weapon because the situation hadn’t yet revealed how it needed to be handled. It was a lesson he still needed to teach Tom.

He stopped at the corner of a rusty RV that sat on flat tires. Ledger knelt and did a quick-look around the rear bumper, then retreated to let his mind process what his eyes had seen.

Beyond the RV was kind of a pen made from old shopping carts, heaped junk, and cars that had been pushed together. He could not see much of what was going on inside the pen, but there were at least a dozen zombies pressing close to it. A fresh scream from inside the pen told him this was where things were happening. Ugly things. Up close the screams sounded younger and more thoroughly infused with comprehensive personal outrage as well as physical pain. Two guards stood atop the highest points on the pen wall. Both men; both dressed in travel-worn clothes and makeshift armor. Jeans, hockey pads, football helmets. And guns. The guards ignored the zombies, confident that they were out of reach, and instead cheered on whatever was happening in the pen.

Ledger held still and listened to the noises, picking them apart, cataloging them. Several men. How many? Six? Ten? Somewhere in that range. A small pack. The male scream had ended when they heard that gunshot. The female scream continued, rising and falling.

The situation sucked. Outnumbered and outgunned, with at least one helpless victim and the complication of sentries and the zombies. In most circumstances this would be a walk-away, a hopeless scenario.

But not for Ledger. He knew he could never leave this unaddressed. That wasn’t who he was. The young scream made that absolutely certain. A long, long time ago, back when he was fourteen and the world was decades away from falling off its hinges, Ledger and his girlfriend, Helen, had been attacked by a group of older teens. Ledger had been stomped nearly to death and had lain there, bleeding and helpless, while the teenagers ruined Helen. Although Ledger and Helen had both lived past that day and had healed in body, neither had ever healed in spirit or mind. Helen eventually found her way out and it was Ledger who found her after she’d gone away. Found what was left of her. An empty shell from which all of Helen had leaked away. The whole process had fractured him, splitting his mind into three distinct personalities. One was the Modern man, the civilized and ordinary part of him, the one who clutched to his dwindling supply of hopes. The second was the Cop, the strong, quiet, intelligent, detail-oriented investigator and thinker. That part had been his mostly reliably dominant aspect.

And then there was the third part, the aspect truly born on that horrible day so many years ago. The Warrior. Or as he preferred to be called, the Killer. Savage, uncompromising, brutal, relentless. However it was the Killer who was, in his way, the most compassionate and protective, because he did whatever was necessary to protect the members of his tribe against all predators. Children were always to be protected. The young, the weak, the helpless. It was hardwired into the brain of the Killer to make sure they would not perish, for as they went so went the tribe itself. Basic Survival 101.

The Cop leaned out and analyzed the scene again, noting distances, placement, weapons, obstacles. However when he rose, it was the Killer who went to war.

He did not signal Tom Imura. That wasn’t necessary. Tom would either understand and be ready to function as a member of their small hunting pack, or he wouldn’t. Warning him would create a risk Ledger could not afford. Besides, Tom was smart and fast and a killer lurked in his soul, too. Ledger had seen that before. It hurt Tom to kill, but he his regrets and his humanism did not slow his hand. Not at all.

Ledger drew his Heckler & Koch MK 23 pistol as he rose from his point of concealment and held his gun out in a firm two-hand grip. He did not run but instead took many small steps to prevent the weapon from being jolted. He had twelve rounds in the box magazine and a thirteenth in the pipe. The range was good enough for kill shots, but Ledger didn’t want these men dead. Not yet. Instead he shot the closest man in the thigh, aiming center-mass to insure a shattered femur. The .45 round punched all the way through at two hundred and sixty meters per second. The man screamed and twisted and fell.

The zombies lunged up to catch him, to drag him down, their nails and teeth ripping into the man before he ever hit the ground. Ledger swung the barrel to take the second man in the hip, the foot-pound of impact knocking him backward off the pen wall. Ledger heard his screams as soon as he fell out of sight.

And then it was all insanity.

The zombies who weren’t tearing at the first man wheeled toward him, empty eyes filling with naked hunger, mouths biting the air in anticipation of fresh meat. Ledger shoved his gun into its holster and whipped his katana from its scabbard. He was not as stylish a swordsman as Tom, but he was a more practiced butcher. He cut his way to the wall of the pen and everything that reached for him fell. Nothing fell whole.

There were shouts from the other side of the pen wall, and Ledger dodged sideways and leapt onto the wall fifteen yards from where he had fired. When he reached the top he saw nine men in the center of the protected area, and every one of them was looking in the wrong direction. A naked girl of about thirteen lay bruised and beaten on the ground, her young body covered in blood. It was obvious she had been brutally used. They did not see Ledger as he drew his pistol once more and swapped in a full magazine. They did not see Tom Imura slip over the far wall, silent as death.

Ledger opened fire on the men.

This time he shot to kill.

The pistol was accurate within fifty meters. The range here was less than ten. He did not miss.

Men screamed and fell. Others tried to turn their guns — shotguns, hunting rifles, Glocks — on him, but then Tom ghosted up behind them and his sword did quick and terrible work.

It wasn’t a fight. Neither Tom nor Ledger was interested in a fight. This was slaughter. It was two against nine, and it was over in seconds.

When Ledger climbed down from the wall the last of the men was begging for his life. Ledger watched Tom’s face as the young man stood over the injured man. The girl lay six feet away, and from the way she was breathing it was clear she was on the verge of death. Her eyes were glazed and there were dreadful wounds all over her. The man on the floor was naked from the waist down and there was blood on his penis. Not his blood.

Even so, Tom didn’t kill him. Not right away. Instead he asked a question. “Why?”

The man looked at him and then turned to look at the girl. He frowned as if seeing her for the first time. Then he turned back to Tom.

“She’d… she’d die out here anyway,” said the man. He said it reasonably, as if what he and his friends had done to her was clearly okay given the circumstances.

Tom’s eyes went dead.

His sword moved and then there was fresh blood on the man’s face and body.

On the other side of the pen wall the screams had stopped and there was the wet sound of meat being torn, of chewing, of bones being cracked open for their marrow. Flies swarmed in the air.

Ledger and Tom knelt on either side of the girl.

She was a tiny thing. Emaciated, covered with infected sores, filthy.

Dying.

Tom offered her water and there wasn’t even enough left of her to remember how to drink. They dressed her most immediate wounds and covered her body with their blankets and the two men sat together, holding her between them, keeping her warm as the day wore on. Sometimes Tom spoke to her, whispering softly, making promises the world could not let them keep.

When she died, Joe took her from Tom, rolled her onto her stomach, drew his knife, and slipped the blade into the base of her skull. She would never reanimate. She would sleep.

They buried her and then the two men sat down with their backs against the pen wall.

And wept.

—8— Top and Bunny

Owen led them down a winding path, descending the hillside to the valley road below. They followed that for about five yards, then wound into a cacti field and across a parking lot to a brick, one-story building with a worn wooden sign that read ‘Park Headquarters’ out front by the entrance off the road. American flags waved in the wind from several poles around a lot that contained RVs, official Park Service vehicles, and various civilian cars and trucks scattered throughout. Trees and landscaping decorated the land surrounding the lot and lawns leading up to the building.

Several armed men and women, as ragged and dirty as the trio, rushed to meet them, eyeing Top and Bunny with suspicion. After Owen explained their presence and fired off instructions, he left them behind with the sentries and headed inside. Within moments, Top and Bunny watched their mounts being led away, their packs removed from their backs, and were patted down thoroughly — men removing their knives, the spare Glocks they kept in their boots, and extra ammo.

“We want those back,” Bunny objected, but Top silenced him with a look. Just go with it for now, it said. Bunny sighed, nodding back in acquiescence.

Then they were surrounded and led into the building, then shoved into a small office and locked inside, guards posted outside. The office had a wooden desk, its surface covered by scattered stacks of paper, file folders, and manuals. Two old, faded grey metal file cabinets with three drawers occupied a corner behind it along with a table holding a laser printer and three open wire baskets marked ‘In’, ‘Out’, and ‘Pending’. The office smelled dusty and stale, like it hadn’t been used in a while, which it probably hadn’t. Top slid into a padded wooden chair facing the desk, while Bunny paced. A few moments later, the door opened and a woman brought them water bottles then left again.

“Well, they’re sure glad to see us,” Bunny said, taking a chair along one wall near the file cabinets.

Top unscrewed the cap off his water and took a long drink before responding. “We’ve dealt with cautious survivors before. You know we’d be the same.”

Bunny sighed, leaning back in the fiberglass chair against the wall. “Yeah, just anxious to get on with it.”

“Drink your water and relax, Farm Boy,” Top said with a chuckle. “We’re here. That’s the first step.”

“If these are even the right people,” Bunny muttered, then uncapped his own water and drank.

They waited in silence then until Owen finally came back for them an hour later. He’d cleaned up a bit, the dirt and grime gone from his face, his hair combed, and the shotgun had been left outside. He took a deep breath, nodding at them as he moved around the desk, and slid into the cracked leather chair behind it, leaning back and putting his feet up on the surface as he thought a moment.

“Why don’t you boys tell me who you are again and why you’re here, heavily armed, on our doorstep,” Owen said.

Top nodded and began explaining. He described generally their past work in black ops for the government, and how they’d stayed together after The Plague, fought to survive like anyone else, and then found their training and knowledge could help others and began looking for those needing help.

“Like some kind of modern A-Team or something?” Owen joked.

“Wow. A-Team. That’s old school,” Bunny said and looked at Top. “Didn’t you watch that when you were a kid?”

Top shot him an annoyed look as Owen chuckled. “You knew what it is, didn’t ya?” He turned to Owen again. “There’s just the two of us. No van either. But we do what we can. We came here because a group in Colorado heard rumors someone might need help finding permanent shelter, setting up defenses, getting supplies, etcetera.”

“And then we saw the raid,” Bunny said.

“Why didn’t you stop them?” Owen asked, his eyes accusing.

“To be honest, we weren’t sure who the good guys were or what was happening,” Top said.

“For all we knew, the kids were being rescued or something,” Bunny added.

Owen grunted and his eyes turned sad as his shoulders sunk and he leaned back in the chair behind the desk.

“Everything okay?” Top finally asked.

Owen shrugged. “As fine as it can be after one of the doctor’s raids, I suppose.”

“Who is this doctor and why are you being raided?” Bunny asked.

Owen met their eyes a moment as if weighing options then continued, “We don’t actually know. Just rumors and such from others who claim to have seen or heard things. But as they tell it, the doctor runs a lab down outside Tucson. They used to raid the survivor camps there. One of the reasons we started relocating two years ago, making our way north. Somehow they tracked a few of us up here and started raiding us once every few months. We’ve lost twenty-five people, including ten women, ten children, and five elderly. We lost six tonight.”

“And you don’t have any idea what happens to them?” Bunny asked.

“Experiments we’ve been told,” Owen said, his eyes wrinkling as he pondered it with obvious pain and regret. “Something about a vaccine for The Plague, but a few captives have supposedly escaped and they weren’t cured, they’d been turned. Some graves were discovered in a nearby park as well that people say were victims of the lab.”

They gaped at him.

“A vaccine? Holy shit,” gasped Bunny. “That could change everything!”

“How sure are you?” demanded Top. “Is this real intel or rumors?”

Owen locked eyes with him. “You hear something from so many different sources, experience the raids on your families and friends, your children, you start believing the worst. Doesn’t much matter if it’s true. People are being kidnapped. Others turned up dead. Draw your own conclusion.”

Top grunted with understanding. Echo Team had dealt with many similar rumors and situations for the DMS. “But you know where the lab is?”

Owen shook his head. “Just rumors. So far, at least, but a lot of people believe them. Yeah, we’ve talked about finding it. Getting our children and loved ones back. But the teams come heavily armed for the raids. Can you imagine what the security is like around the lab?” He shook his head. “We can’t risk it. That is, if we could even find it. A couple of people tried to rescue their families, we heard, with disastrous results.”

“This has gone on for two years?” Top looked as if he couldn’t believe it. Bunny knew that look though. Beneath it was simmering fury.

“More like four,” Owen said. “We just decided to try and get away, out of reach two years ago. Look. My people are mostly city folks, a couple farmers, but most had never touched a weapon before, let alone served. I had training from an enlistment after college, so I’ve taught them what I could, but defense is our best strategy. Organized, strategic attacks would probably just get more people lost or killed.”

“And they tracked you here…” Bunny shook his head.

“Someone who saw us could have told them, I suppose,” Owen said. “Truth is, we rarely see zombies these days, keeping to ourselves. If we weren’t constantly moving to try and avoid the raids, we could settle in. This headquarters recycles waste and water and we could stay here indefinitely, hunt the desert for food, grow our own — but that would just make us easier to find.”

“They only come every few months?” Top asked.

Owen thought a moment. “Yeah, every two or three. We haven’t really nailed down a pattern. It varies.”

“But if you stay here, you’ll be okay?” Top said.

“We might be,” Owen said. “We could make a go of it.”

Top and Bunny exchanged a look that spoke volumes. They’d worked together so long, reading each other was just part of it. They both agreed they needed to help these people, and that had to start with finding the lab and seeing what they could do to end the raids.

“Why don’t you tell us everything you know about this lab and doctor and where we might find it?” Top said.

—9— The Soldier and the Samurai

They camped in the pen that night.

The men they killed had been poorly equipped, but there were some useful items. More ammunition, guns, a better backpack than the one Ledger had. Three freshly-killed geese, and a whole box of power bars. Plenty of water, too, as well as matches, knives, and most of a bottle of Advil. All useful.

Ledger and Tom opened a kind of vent in the wall and threw the bodies out to the dead, then blocked it up again.

The man who had screamed was dead, his body pinned to the ground by short lengths of rebar. He reanimated and Ledger sent him on to the other side with another quick thrust. They buried him next to the girl. The man was black, the girl was Latina. There was no identification in their clothes, no names to put over their graves.

“Hey, Joe,” said Tom, looking up from a backpack through which he was rifling. As Ledger came over, Tom handed him a faded map of Arizona. “These sons of bitches knew about the cure.”

Ledger took the map and sat cross-legged beside Tom, and spread the map out on the ground. There was a circle around a spot in Oro Valley and the name Pisani scribbled in black and underlined a half dozen times. Above the name was the word ‘CURE’, and even though this wasn’t the first time Ledger had heard about this, it still made his heart flutter.

“Shit,” he said.

Tom licked his lips. “Does that mean this is real?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out.”

The story had been passed from one survivor to another, but it had been whisper-down-the-lane, becoming so distorted that Tom and Ledger had wasted weeks following bad leads. Now in the space of a week they had three separate indications that an infectious disease researcher named Al Pisani had a working lab in, or near, Oro Valley in Arizona, a few miles outside of Tucson, and that Dr Pisani had developed some kind of vaccine. The reports were not from any official source because, as far as they knew, there were no official sources left. Which made the whole thing a big fat ‘maybe’. Seeing it again on a map was not conclusive, either, because these scavengers might have heard the same unreliable stories Tom and Ledger had heard.

Or, maybe, these bastards had better intelligence.

Tom must have read his thoughts. “Maybe we should have… you know… asked them before we…”

Ledger waved it off. “Fuck it. That’s yesterday’s box score, kid. Besides, sometimes a motherfucker just needs to die and these motherfuckers were all past their sell-by date. I can’t see either of us having any kind of meaningful conversation with them.”

Tom said nothing. Instead he set about building a campfire so they could cook the geese. The zombies outside moaned, but neither man cared.

“If it’s true,” said Tom while he worked, “what’s that really going to mean? How could a vaccine be mass produced? The EMPs killed the power. Frankly, I don’t even understand how this Dr Pisani even has a working lab.”

“Portable generators and ingenuity,” suggested Ledger.

Tom grunted and concentrated on fanning the flames. Ledger sat there slowly plucking the feathers off one of the geese. He stared into the heart of the newborn flames.

“If there is a vaccine,” he said, “then we’ll find a way to mass-produce it and distribute it.”

“That would be enormously difficult, though.”

Ledger smiled at him. “Seriously, kid, do you have something better to do?”

Tom smiled back. Smiles were rare for him.

They talked and cooked and ate and talked some more as the clouds slid across the darkening sky. Neither of them spoke about the hope that was being kindled inside their chests. They were each superstitious in their own way, as soldiers and samurai, killers and hunters always are. Talking about hope was like holding a burning match up into the wind. Instead they let the fire grow slowly in their hearts.

That night they slept and dreamed of not being dead.

Rare dreams for both of them.

—10— Top and Bunny

It took another two long nights of riding to reach Oro Valley, the general area where Owen’s people thought the lab might be located. Owen’s people had provided a few details the two soldiers used to scout the area until they found the lab itself, which took them most of a day. It was well hidden inside a rocky cliff side south between the smaller town and Tucson itself — or what was left of it.

Tucson, like most major cities, had been hit hard by the EMPs and other weapons the government deployed in an attempt to eradicate Lucifer 113. From the rise where they’d stopped and pulled out their binoculars, the city stretched off into the horizon under a grey cloud.

The lab must have been built inside the rocks well before that, as it had a well-concealed, well-guarded entrance with multiple security systems that had clearly been in use before the EMPs took them out. The cavern entrance was clearly big enough to take vehicles inside, with a thick steel, hydraulic door its only visible opening. That explained the cargo van, as far as Bunny was concerned. He wished the DMS had had the same so they could be using a vehicle themselves instead of the horses. His ass still ached from the hours of riding. He rubbed at it as he thought about it and Top chuckled.

“How long’s it take to get used to riding?” Bunny wondered, his skin.already clammy from the sun blaring down overhead.

“We’ve been doing it almost two years, so maybe forever for you,” Top said with a grin. “I feel fine.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve been riding most of your life, Old Man. Or maybe your ass is so old the nerves are shot anyway.” Bunny gave up on his ass and scratched at an itch developing on his sides. Fucking desert. He hoped it wasn’t some poisonous creature that’d somehow made it into his clothes.

Top laughed. “See any sentries?”

Top didn’t seem to be bothered by anything at all. That just annoyed Bunny more. At least if they both were itching and miserable, he’d feel better about it. Son of a bitch. Bunny shook his head as he adjusted his field binoculars again and took another look.

Top tapped Bunny’s arm and nodded to a spot on a slope leading toward the cavern. The road was mostly blocked by a wall of cars, but there was a gap across where two men were erecting a moveable boom made from heavy-grade PVC pipe.

“Looks like they’re setting up a checkpoint,” said Bunny.

“Uh huh,” agreed Top, “which means they’re getting ready for visitors.”

“Who, though?”

“My guess,” said Top, “would be ordinary people. If this doctor really has some kind of vaccine then this would be a good chokepoint to filter anyone coming to get a shot. They’d want to screen anyone going into the actual base. Can’t let just anyone stroll up. The doctor’d be too damn important, and if there’s a lab in there, then controlled access would need to be guaranteed. Especially if someone shows up from one of the camps these cats have raided.”

“Why bring them here, though? I mean, from what I can see they have a nice set-up down there. Protection, limited access, plenty of spots for elevated observation and defense. They have power and security. Why let anyone in? Why not send teams out to do field inoculations?”

“Don’t know,” said Top.

“Kind of want to find out,” said Bunny. “On one hand we have what could arguably be the greatest humanitarian project in the history of… well, history… and on the other we have some of these guys acting like bad guys from a Mad Max flick. Doesn’t compute.”

“No, it don’t.”

“So we have to get down there,” said Bunny. He scanned the landscape again. “Those cameras and sensors can’t still be working, can they?”

“I have a feeling that’s why they took their raids further out,” Top said. “Less likely to inspire visitors bent on revenge.”

“I can’t imagine many people have found this place,” Bunny said. “Even with a slim lead, it took us almost a day.”

“But we’re experts,” Top said. “My old ass just has a feel for it.”

Bunny rolled his eyes and Top laughed again.

“There’s the checkpoint, though,” said Bunny. “They must have told someone. Maybe they sent teams out to invite some people.”

“Who?”

“Don’t know. Can’t be anyone who’s already pissed off at them. Has to be someone, though, because that checkpoint looks new. Maybe they spread the word to select groups. All it would take is a few of their people going from survival camp to survival camp dropping rumors to control the way the news spread. It wouldn’t be a stampede. People would come here in dribs and drabs.”

“Why would they do that?” asked Top, then suggested the answer to his own question. “Maybe they don’t have much of the vaccine. Or maybe it takes a while to produce. Control the news and they can distribute at a speed that works with their production.”

They thought about that.

“That makes sense,” said Bunny slowly, “but it doesn’t fit with the raids. Why take kids? Why take anyone? Why not send medical teams out to spread the vaccine? Why be bad guys when they’re trying to be good guys?”

Top looked at him. “Oh, hell, son, you want me to recite the number of times a group in power decided who deserves to get a resource?”

Bunny said nothing.

Below them the thick steel door began to slide slowly upward. Once it reached about five feet, several armed men ducked under and filed out to form two lines on either side.

“Six,” Bunny counted.

The soldiers stood and waited, chattering as the door continued rolling upward.

“They’re waiting on something,” Top said.

Bunny clicked his mouth and motioned to the left where a cloud of dust and sand had risen on a dirt road that led right to the compound entrance. As he and Top both focused their binocs on that point, a tan GMC troop carrier with matching camouflage fabric cover over its bed rolled into view. Two armed soldiers were in the front, but as it rolled up and waited for the door to clear its top, they saw only civilians in the back, each of them wearing a brightly colored red, white or blue band around his or her wrist.

“Where are they going?” Bunny wondered aloud as the truck pulled forward into the compound and the door immediately began sliding downward again.

“I don’t know, but we need to find a way in there,” Top said.

“So where’d the people come from?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out,” Top replied, kneeing his horse and steering it toward a nearby trail that led down off the rise into the valley and paralleled the road the truck had taken. “Come on, Farm Boy.”

Bunny released his binocs, letting them slide down to hang against his chest as he absentmindedly rubbed his sore ass. “Great, more riding.” As he grabbed the reins, he added, “Hooah,” but it was almost a whisper.

—11— The Soldier and the Samurai

They rode the bicycles all the way to the outskirts of Tucson.

Tom Imura was in his twenties, fit and lean and, as Ledger saw it, composed of whipcord and iron.

Ledger was north of fifty and none of his years had been easy ones. He’d long ago lost count of the number of bones he’d broken — either in the dojo or, more often, in combat — or the stitches. Or the surgeries, for that matter. He felt like an ancient mass of scar tissue and screaming nerve endings. After the first hundred miles he was sure the bike seat was made from iron and covered in spikes. His ass hurt. His balls hurt. His molecules hurt. After the second hundred miles of the four hundred and seventy mile journey, he had developed a tendency to yap like a cross dog at anything Tom said. Even when the young man offered words of support or compassion.

They were somewhere on I-10 East when Tom said, “You’re not too old for this.”

“I didn’t say a fucking thing,” growled Ledger.

“You were going to.”

“The fuck I was.”

“You were,” insisted Tom, his voice calm, his face showing no sign of the strain of the long ride. “You’ve been saying it roughly every thirty miles.”

“Bullshit.”

“And you say it every time we have to get off and walk uphill.”

“You’re out of your frigging mind.”

“And you say it every time we—”

“You realize that I’m heavily armed and have no compunction about shooting people,” said Ledger.

“I’m not wrong, though,” said Tom.

“Sure. And that’ll look great on your tombstone.”

They rode for a mile in silence.

“And besides,” said Ledger, “fuck you.”

“Point taken.”

They rode on.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” said Tom after a while, “but this was your idea.”

“Two in the back of the head, so help me God. I’ll leave you by the side of the road.”

Tom broke out laughing and the sound of it bounced across the desert and rebounded off ancient rocks and vanished into the hot sky. Ledger cursed him, his hygiene, his forebears, and accused him of fornication with livestock. Tom laughed harder.

It took a while for Ledger’s scowl to crack. Longer still for his lips to twitch. But when he started to laugh he laughed a good long time.

They pedaled along past abandoned cars and old bones, past the crushed hull of a 767 airliner, past dozens of wandering zoms. They laughed off and on for a long time. When the laughter fell away, one or the other of them would cut a sideways look and they’d be off again.

—12— Top and Bunny

Top led the way along the trail, both turning their bodies to avoid identity by any surveillance equipment. They’d tucked all guns except for the sidearms behind their saddlebags so they looked like just two men riding across the desert — not that unusual to necessarily draw much interest.

The trail wound through rocks, scrub, and scattered cacti parallel to the road but about fifty yards out. Soon they’d followed it around a bend where they couldn’t see the lab compound’s imposing steel entrance door. The cloud of dust from the truck had faded, though Bunny thought he could still make it out in the distance.

They rode in silence, both alert and ready, Bunny’s hand resting on the top of his saddlebag so as to look casual yet ready to reach for his rifle at any moment. They began hearing voices ahead, almost like a crowd.

“You hear that?” Bunny asked Top.

Top nodded. “Some kind of gathering.”

“For what?”

“Could be where they got those people.”

“Did you notice those wrist bands? They were all red.”

Top grunted. “Yeah, whatever that means.”

And then they rounded another bend and found themselves facing five armed men with AK-47s aimed right at their hearts or foreheads. The trail here had wound much closer to the road, and a white van like they’d seen during the raid at Sun Valley sat parked at the curb behind the men.

“Halt!” one of them ordered loudly, eyes narrowing. The other men simply glared at the newcomers.

Top and Bunny both slowly raised their hands, faces taking on their best innocent looks.

“Somethin’ the matter, gentlemen?” Top asked, turning on his old-Georgia drawl.

The man who’d given orders nodded and the other four rushed the horses, two grabbing for Top and Bunny’s sidearms, while the others searched their saddlebags.

“Whoa! Look what we have here!” a young soldier barely out of his teens pulled out Bunny’s sniper rifle and two boxes of ammo.

“Here, too!” the one searching Top’s saddlebag called and produced Top’s rifle as well.

“Armed to the teeth. Who are you and where are you going?” the leader demanded. Older than the others, his hair was cut short in a military crew, and grey at the edges, his face creased from age and exposure, his eyes fierce but tired — a man who’d seen too much.

Top and Bunny exchanged a look. “We’re just trying to survive,” Bunny said then. “Lot of damn dead folks out here looking for a quick lunch. A guy’s got to protect himself out here — you know that.”

“Kind of the reason we’re still on this side of being dead,” Top added.

“Uh huh, just two innocent guys,” the leader grinned. “Tie their hands and get them off those horses,” he added, motioning to his men.

Top and Bunny were yanked down hard, falling to their knees in clouds of dust as the men yanked their hands back and produced black zip ties. The leader and two others kept their weapons trained on the two strangers as the young blond and another soldier bound Top and Bunny’s hands behind them.

“Look. We’re just passin’ through,” Top said, voice sincere. “Why are you doing this?”

“We don’t have much use for strangers,” the leader said, then locked eyes with his men. “General Black will want to see them. They don’t look like innocent civilians and we can’t take chances.”

“Yes, sir,” the men responded almost in unison, then pulled Top and Bunny to their feet and led them toward the van.

The leader motioned to the blond and another younger man. “You two bring the horses to the checkpoint.”

“Yes, sir,” the youths replied and turned back to Top and Bunny’s mounts.

“What do we do?” Bunny asked through gritted teeth as the men hauled open the back doors of the van. Then one unlocked a metal bench and lifted the lid, depositing their knives and guns inside before locking it again.

“Just let this play out a bit,” Top whispered back. “We need more intel.”

The men shoved them now and they stumbled forward, climbing into the van.

Keep your cool, Top’s eyes said.

But Bunny didn’t like this one bit. Even if there was nothing he could do but follow Top’s advice.

—13— The Soldier and the Samurai

They saw the sentry before the sentry saw them.

Ledger and Tom rolled to a stop at the top of a slope that ran down into Oro Valley. In the far distance there was a soft cloud of gray that hovered perpetually over what had once been Tucson. Down the valley there was some kind of complex built against or, more like, into a wall of a mountain. He saw vehicles parked down there and they looked to be in good shape. Tom saw them, too. Before either of them could comment a tan armored personnel carrier came rumbling out of an entrance in the rock wall. It turned and headed farther down the valley. Tom grabbed Ledger’s arm.

“Did you see that?”

“I saw it, kid,” murmured Ledger.

“But how? The EMPs…”

Ledger studied the mountain and nodded to himself. “There must be a hardened facility down there. We had them all over. They built them underground and inside mountains during the Cold War to make sure they would survive a Russian attack. Then they repurposed them for all kinds of black budget R and D projects. I’ll bet this was a bioweapons lab of some kind. There were six or eight of them that were so far off the radar than even I didn’t know about them, and it was my damn job to know about them.”

“How’s that possible?” asked Tom, watching the APC vanish inside a trail of brown dust.

“Fuck, kid, there were so many cells operating inside the Department of Defense that half the time no one knew what all was going on. Legitimate stuff and other shit that was definitely not supposed to be happening, at least as far as congress and the taxpayers were concerned, but which seemed to somehow always get funding. This has all the makings.”

“Okay,” said Tom slowly, “but what does it mean?”

“It means they might actually have a working lab,” said Ledger. “With power and operational computer systems. Holy polka-dotted fuck.”

“Does that mean this vaccine is legit?”

Ledger thought about that for a moment. “To be determined. Something’s hinky. Look down there.”

He pointed and Tom used his binoculars to study a spot at the base of the slope where there was a makeshift guard post constructed of a pair of dead cars positioned on either side of the highway and a boom made from a length of white PVC pipe. Two men were working the checkpoint and they were busy with a line of people who stood in a wandering line. Ledger and Tom sat on the road in the shade of a billboard that told everyone who passed that Waffle House was offering two breakfasts for the price of one. Someone had taken the time out of surviving the apocalypse to draw a pretty good version of a zombie head atop the illustration of a short stack of pancakes. The soldier and the samurai were nearly invisible in the dense shadows thrown by the sign. Their bikes lay out of sight in the weeds and both men studied the checkpoint with binoculars.

“Those guards are not military,” observed Ledger. “But… that might not mean much. Things fell to shit, so they might be working for whoever’s in the mountain, doing grunt work.”

“The guards are taking supplies from the people in line,” said Tom.

Ledger studied the transactions at the gate. “Doesn’t look too nefarious. No one’s flashing weapons. Look at the people farther back in line, they already have stuff out and bundled up. I think it’s a barter of some kind.”

“What for what? A road tax?”

“Maybe. Or payment for treatment.”

Tom grunted and they continued to watch. Each group stopped at the checkpoint and offered something to the guards. A wrapped bundle of what looked like canned goods, a bottle of water or a can of kerosene, skinned rabbits, and other goods. One guard took the items and placed them in a big John Deere wheelbarrow and the other tied a piece of colored cloth around the wrist of each person.

“You seeing the colors?” asked Tom. “Red, white, and blue?”

“Uh huh.”

“Most of the kids are getting blue. None of the men, though.”

“Uh huh.”

“Most of the men are getting red. And a few men and women are getting white.”

“Uh huh.”

Tom lowered his glasses and looked at Ledger. “What do you think it means?”

“Too orderly to be random color choices,” mused Ledger. “But they’re being specific about it. Can’t tell from this far away, though. We’ll need to get up close to gather intel.” He stood slowly, hissing at the aches in his hips and tailbone from the many days on the bike.

Tom rose, too. “Makes me wonder what kind of colors they’d give us.”

Ledger squinted down the hill. “Uh huh,” he said.

They hid most of their gear behind the billboard and covered the bikes with tumbleweed and bunches of grass. After some careful consideration of what they could afford to part with, they walked down the hill.

There were a dozen people ahead of them and Ledger struck up a casual conversation with an elderly couple who had a small child with them. Not their grandchild, it turned out, but an orphan they’d taken under their wing. The three of them were all that was left of a refugee camp in Fort Grant.

“What happened to the fort?” asked Tom.

The old man, whose name was Barney, gave them a bleak look.

“The dead?” asked Ledger.

Barney shook his head. “Nah, we held them off pretty good. Once we figured out how to kill them, we built the fort up even stronger and everyone learned how to top them. We’d have teams go out wrapped in folded over mattress covers and work gloves with thick plastic glued to the outsides. Teams of three. Two would use heavy-duty rakes to kind of stall the eaters and the third person would bash ‘em in the head. Rinse and repeat, you know? The eaters never learn from what’s happening to others of their kind.”

“Good tactic,” said Ledger, nodding approval.

“It worked,” said Barney. “But times got hard, you know? Winter’s a bitch and farming’s not the easiest thing to do when you have to protect a couple thousand acres from wandering eaters. We ran through the supplies the raiders found in houses and stores and the like. Had some damn lean times, but then the first crops came up last spring and we were good to go.”

“But…?” asked Ledger, letting it hang.

“But then people started getting sick,” said Millie, Barney’s wife. “All sorts of stuff. Infections from cuts. Bacteria in the water. And then the flu came around and we lost half the town in four weeks.”

“Jesus,” murmured Tom.

“Got worse,” said Barney. “After the flu we got hit with all sorts of stuff. Tuberculosis, syphilis, mumps, you name it. None of us knew how to manufacture the drugs.”

Millie shook her head slowly. “We survived the end of the world, we survived the eaters, we fought off raiding parties, we got through dust storms, and we survived two awful winters and then diseases that weren’t even much of a thing before the End came back and wiped us out. Barney and me got out with ten others, including little Polly here.” He gave the little girl’s hair a gentle caress. “But now it’s just the three of us. We heard about Dr Pisani and we came out here. You know… hoping.”

It was a sad story but a familiar one, and sadder for all that. Ledger felt old and used up hearing it.

“What exactly have you heard?” asked Tom.

The next few people in line behind the old couple turned and were listening to the conversation.

“Well,” said Barney, “it’s a cure, isn’t it?”

Everyone nodded.

“I heard that it prevents you from turning even if you get bit,” said a Latino man wearing a Phoenix Suns ball cap.

“No,” said Millie, “it’s supposed to cure you even if you already have it.”

As she said this, she pushed the little girl behind her. It was a reflexive action. Protective. Ledger caught Tom’s eye and he saw that the young man understood. There was both understanding and heartbreak in his eyes. Although there was no obvious wound, both men knew that the girl was probably infected. A hidden bite or something else. Eating an animal that had been bitten by a zombie would do it, as would getting infected blood in an open wound or in a mucus membrane like the eyes, nose or mouth. The girl didn’t look sick, but that did not mean much. Some people got ill right away and lingered for weeks; others sickened and died overnight, and a few could go for quite a while before symptoms showed.

“Does that mean they can cure as well as prevent?” asked Tom.

“That’s what I heard,” said Barney, nodding firmly.

The Latino man’s companion, a short Asian woman, nodded, “Dr Pisani is a saint. I heard she was a famous doctor who worked with all kinds of diseases.”

“’She’?” asked Ledger. “I thought it was Al Pisani.”

“Allie,” explained Millie. “Allison. Women can be scientists, too.”

“As I know very well,” agreed Ledger. “I knew a lot of top flight women researchers, clinicians and practitioners.”

The Latino man studied him. “Who’d you lose?” he asked. “On Dia De Muertos.”

The Day of the Dead. It was one of a hundred different nicknames Ledger had heard for the end of the world. Tom’s little colony called it ‘First Night’. It was all the same thing. And though it took longer than a single night or day, it came out to the same thing in the end. The world they had all known had stopped. Just stopped. Those parts of it that had tumbled past the big point of impact were fragments. They were the things people clutched at to keep some sense of order, some aspects of things remembered, a comfortable lie of normalcy.

The truth was that the world continued to dwindle. If it got to the point where they dipped below five thousand people clustered in one area, then the gene pool would start to get pretty shallow and eventually would evaporate.

Ledger looked at the man and said, “I lost everyone.”

They all stood and looked at each other. They all nodded. No one commented.

At the head of the line the guard yelled, “Next!”

And the line moved forward one full step.

—14— Top and Bunny

The men drove the van back to the compound, approaching from another side of the mountain where a village of red, white, and blue tents had been set up in front of another steel, hydraulic door like the one they’d been observing. The camp was big and contained several large circus-sized tents. The camp bustled with activity, and Bunny noted the red tents seemed much more heavily guarded than the others. The driver stopped and waited for the steel door to open before pulling inside. As the van door opened revealing a cavernous space, Top and Bunny took in their surroundings, seeing several barred holding cells labeled red, white, and blue nearby amidst several troop trucks, vans, and a strong smell of gunpowder and chemicals, like a hospital or lab.

“Red, white, and blue,” Top said, nodding to Bunny, but neither of them had any idea what it meant. Then they were being dragged along a corridor and shoved into a small white-walled room with two chairs facing a table.

“Sit!” someone demanded, then the door slammed behind them, leaving them alone.

“Jesus Christ, what is this place?” Bunny wondered.

“I don’t know, but we’re in it deep now,” Top replied.

“They took our weapons,” Bunny said. “We could have taken them out.”

“They had us dead to rights. One or both of us might be dead.”

Bunny sighed. Top was right but he still wished they’d put up more of a fight. “What do we do now?”

“Wait,” Top said simply as he stumbled over and slid into a chair. After looking around the room — standard interrogation plainness — it smelled clean, almost sterile, and the walls, table, and chairs shined like they’d been scrubbed regularly. Bunny went over and took the chair next to him, facing the table.

They didn’t wait long. Within a couple minutes, the door opened and a man in black entered, his slacks and black button down shirt creased, clean, like a dress uniform. He wore no tie but had on a leather jacket over the shirt and combat boots. He stared across the table at them, with the leader of the men who’d captured them standing at attention beside him as the door shut again.

Leather Coat nodded. “You don’t belong here.” His voice was sharp, baritone, with the firmness of one used to be in command. Was this their leader? The General perhaps?

“Where’s here?” Bunny asked.

“Cowboys out wandering about,” Leather Coat asked. “Not very smart given the state of the world.”

“Just trying to get along,” said Top. “Going day to day, that’s all.”

“Sneaking around and spying is ‘getting along’?”

The older man who’d led their captors stiffened and started forward, but Leather Coat stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Leave it, Diamond.”

The older man, Diamond, sighed, nodded, then stepped back to attention in his previous spot, watching them like a hawk.

“You got pretty much one chance here, fellows,” Leather Coat said. “Tell me who you are, where you got such fine weapons and ammo, and what you’re doing poking around our perimeter, and we might spare your lives.” He turned and winked at Diamond, who grinned as if they were exchanging a secret.

Bunny assumed they were dead regardless and spat, “No thanks.”

Top, who’d been taking it all in, shifted beside him. “As I told Diamond here,” again in his best Georgian drawl, “we’re just passing through trying to survive. We don’t want trouble and we didn’t bring no trouble with us.”

“No trouble and yet you have a military cache?” Leather Coat asked, clearly not buying it.

“Shit, man, everyone’s armed,” Top said. “Zoms don’t fall down from harsh language, and there are a lot more of them than there are of us. Old man like me has to tilt the odds in his favor, feel me? You understand. Clearly. You’re all heavily armed. Circumstances seem to demand it, don’t they? If we want to survive, I mean.”

Leather Coat locked eyes with Top a moment, considering, reading him, then he smiled. “Can’t argue with that, can we, Major Diamond?”

Diamond nodded. “No, sir.”

Leather Coat turned back to Top and Bunny. “Part of how we stay alive is deciding whom we let have weapons and whom we don’t. You understand? Can’t have untrustworthy types wandering around shooting at just anyone.”

Top smiled warmly. “Yes, sir, makes sense to me. But we were just passing through and headed on down to Mexico.”

“Mexico? Why?”

Top shrugged. “Find some shelter, food, supplies, and maybe stay away from the cities and live a while longer.”

Leather Coat chuckled. “Mexico, huh? Mexico’s full of rotting wetback zombies and shacks, Reb. Doesn’t sound very smart to me.”

Top shrugged again. “Sometimes the least expected places provide the best resources in times like these.” Bunny watched as the two stared at each other for a bit, then Leather Coat chuckled again.

“Well, sorry to say you men won’t be making it.” He turned to Diamond. “Major, red tag them and throw them in with the next batch.”

“Yes, General,” Diamond replied with a stiff salute as Leather Coat turned for the door.

“General? General who?” Bunny demanded.

Leather Coat turned back. “General Ike Black, son.”

“General of what army?” Bunny retorted.

“The only army that matters in these parts.” Black smiled knowingly, then turned and left the room.

“Well,” muttered Bunny, “that was fun.”

Then men rushed in and yanked Top and Bunny to their feet, pushing them out the door and back down the narrow corridor toward the cavern with the steel door and holding pens, Major Diamond leading the way. Bunny’s wrists hurt from the rope cutting into them and his shoulder wasn’t too happy either from all the yanking.

“Fuck you very much,” he said under his breath.

“Throw them in there,” Diamond ordered, motioning to nearby pen.

Top and Bunny were halted outside the door, and the rope cut from their wrists. Bunny was about to rub his with relief when the rope was replaced by red wristbands, and they were shoved inside.

“The rest of you clear the others out!” Diamond shouted. “New batch coming in!”

The holding pen door clanged shut as Top and Bunny watched the men around them scramble.

Men and women in lab coats appeared, hauling stretchers — some on wheels, others not — toward the waiting troop trucks, white sheets laid over the top. A coppery smell, like blood, filled the air and mixed with the chemicals, gun powder, and sweat.

“Load ‘em up,” one man said, laughing as he stepped up into the truck with a buddy and took stretchers from the incoming workers. As they turned to carry one back into the truck, the sheet shifted and wrist fell out — a wrist with a red band like the ones Top and Bunny now wore.

“This can’t be good,” Top said as they both stared.

“Wonder what the blue and white mean,” Bunny said.

They exchanged a knowing look — We gotta get the fuck outta here… fast.

—15— The Soldier and the Samurai

The guard beckoned for them to come up. Bernie and Millie glanced at them over their shoulders as they walked on with the little girl between them. Ledger had listened closely to the questions the guards had asked the old couple.

“What did you do before the End?”

“Can you cook from scratch?”

“Do you have any skills? Can you fix a car? Did you work in construction? Are you a plumber? Do you have medical training?”

“Have you served in the military? Or the police?”

“Can you hunt and fish? Do you know how to dress what you catch?”

Like that. Fast questions. Very interesting questions.

Both Bernie and Millie were given red wristbands. The girl was given a blue one.

Bernie had served in the first Gulf War and then worked as a cop. Millie had been an accountant. Ledger did not see an immediate connection that would have put them in whatever the ‘red’ category was.

The couple before them, the Latino man and Asian woman, had both been given white bands. He had been a mechanic working mostly with two-stroke engines — ATVs, motorcycles and lawnmowers. The woman owned a hothouse where she grew herbs for restaurants.

Why white for them and red for the older couple? Was it an age thing?

Then something occurred to him and he grunted softly. Before they stepped up to the guard, Ledger leaned close to Tom and whispered, “I’m a baseball coach from Pittsburgh. I went deer hunting every year.”

Tom looked startled for a moment. “I don’t—”

“You’re a cook. You like to fish.”

“I…”

Ledger gave him a hard stare, and after a moment Tom nodded.

“Hey,” called the guard, “I ain’t got all day.”

They stepped up and the questions began. Ledger took point and went through his fictional career teaching health class and coaching baseball. He had the build for the sport, and even the guard seemed to buy it right away. “You played what, third base?”

“Right the first time,” said Ledger, smiling and trying to look like Robert Redford from the old movie The Natural. When the guard asked if he had ever hunted, Ledger went through a story about this eight-point buck he’d tracked and how he made venison stew that would have made you cry. He knew he sold it well.

“You ever serve in the military?” asked the second guard.

“Me? Nah. Not much for that sort of thing. Maybe I should have, but the only fights I ever liked were about keeping a hotshot runner from stealing third.”

They all laughed about that.

When it was Tom’s turn he laid on a thick Japanese accent that was totally false. Like his older brother, Sam, Tom had been born in California and had never even been to Japan. The accent rang true, though, and Ledger figured he was mimicking his old man. Tom talked about working at a sushi place in San Francisco. He talked about how he sometimes used to catch the fish he’d later clean and serve. He sold it really well. So well the guards were starting to look hungry.

“You got anything for the general?” asked the first guard.

“General?” asked Ledger, playing dumb. “This a military thing?”

“Yeah,” said the guard, “we’re here to protect and serve.”

That was a police slogan, but Ledger didn’t bother to correct him. “Who’s the general?”

“Ike Black,” said the guard. “He is the man, too. Tough cocksucker who’s going to put this country back on its wheels.”

“Is he?”

“Damn skippy he is.”

“Make America great again,” said Ledger with a straight face. “Count me in.”

The guard nodded as if they were all on the same page. “We’re big on swapping goods for services, around here, if you can dig it.”

“Sure can,” said Ledger. The name Ike Black tickled something in the back of Ledger’s mind. He’d heard that name before but it had been a long time ago and the connections were somehow wrong. A general? No, that didn’t seem quite right, but he couldn’t pin down what he remembered. “Let me see what I got.”

Ledger fished in his pack and brought out a revolver he’d taken from the men they’d killed. It was a hell of a thing to offer. His own pistol was hidden in his pack, and their swords were stashed between rocks half a mile out of town.

The guard took the revolver and nodded like a kid on Christmas morning. “God damn, man,” he said. “Smith and Wesson Chief’s Special. This is a classic. Sweet.”

“Glad you like it.”

“This your own piece?”

“Found it in a house that had been overrun,” Ledger said. “I took it but it’s not really my kind of thing. I’m more of a long gun guy. Can’t hit shit with a little wheel gun like that. Besides, what’s a gun going to do for me if I get sick, right? There are more eaters out there than bullets. I’d rather know that those dead fuckers can’t make me into one of them, you know?”

The guard offered him a fist and they bumped.

“We’re looking for guys like you,” he said.

He tied white ribbons around Ledger’s wrist, and when Tom turned over a pouch filled with rabbit jerky he got one as well.

Everyone smiled at one another and the guards told them to go straight through to the center of the camp. They thanked them and moved off. The camp was big and covered much of the area outside of the mountain entrance. There were several large tents that looked like they might have belonged to a circus back in the day. Above each was a flagpole, and Ledger saw several white flags, some blue flags and, on the tent set apart from the others, a red flag. There were three times as many guards around the red tent and he pointed this out to Tom.

“What’s it mean?” asked Tom.

“Nothing good,” said Ledger.

Behind the white tents was the entrance to the mountain, which they could see as they drew closer. The door was a massive panel of reinforced steel that was partly raised to allow people to enter. A line of refugees, all of them wearing white bands, snaked out of the mouth of the cavern. There were guards everywhere, standing watch outside the entrance and walking up and down the lines checking to make sure of the wristband colors. All of them heavily armed.

Tom said, “Something’s wrong here.”

Ledger grinned. “No shit.”

“You didn’t want them to know we used to be cops.”

“Nope.”

“You know something or just guessing?”

“Bit of both,” admitted Ledger. “I was trying to stack the odds in favor of us getting white ribbons.”

“Why?”

They walked a few paces before Ledger replied. “Because I have a bad feeling that anyone going to that red tent isn’t likely to enjoy what they find.”

Another team of guards stopped them as they approached the end of the line.

“Drop your gear over there,” said one of them, pointing to a row of wheelbarrows. “No one’ll touch your shit.”

They did as asked; though Ledger hoped like hell that no one would search the backpacks while they were inside. He had an explanation for the automatic pistol, but it would be harder to sell here than at the guard outpost. These men looked sharper, more competent, and far less agreeable.

“Arms up and out,” said the second guard. “Legs wide.”

Ledger pretended to be too dense to understand that they wanted to frisk him, and he let the guard push him roughly into the correct position. He had expected this, though, and had left most of his other weapons with his sword. His small Wilson rapid-release folding knife was clipped to the low Vee of his undershirt because the front of the chest was one of those places most people never bothered to check, even during a vigorous pat-down. Nor did they pat his chest now. They hadn’t taken off his shoes or belt, either. Ledger kept his relief and amusement off his face.

Once they were cleared, one of the guards told them to go into the tent. They did and inside they saw what looked like an old-fashioned vaccination set-up of the kind once used in third-world countries by groups like the World Health Organization. People stood in a long switchback line that brought them to three separate inoculation stations where official-looking people in white lab coats administered shots. Once each person had received an injection they were ushered out of the tent through an opening in the back. There were maybe a hundred and fifty people in all. Most of the people were women, and young women at that. Ledger noticed there was an unusually high percentage of attractive women for a group that was supposed to be more or less random. Peppered among the women were healthy-looking teens and a few men. The mathematics of it all made Ledger’s heart sink and his jaw clench.

Tom caught his mood and quietly asked, “You see something?”

“Don’t you?” asked Ledger.

The young man looked around the room for several minutes, then nodded. “The ratio?”

“And—?”

“Too many women. No one’s old. Wait, that’s wrong. None of the men are older than you, and you don’t look as old as you are.”

“No. So what’s that tell you?”

Tom frowned. “Doesn’t make sense if this was just for inoculation.”

“Nope. But tell me why.”

“If this was a real cure, then everyone would be in here. That little girl’s not here. In fact, I don’t see anyone who looks starved or sick. No one with a bandage over a possible bite.”

“Nope,” agreed Ledger.

“This treatment is supposed to work even if you’re already sick. So why aren’t they showing people that?” asked Tom. “Seems to me that would sell this pretty hard. Curing the sick.”

“Uh huh.”

They spoke very softly, making sure the other people in line didn’t hear them.

“Not having the warm fuzzies about all of this,” said Ledger. “It’s both too good to be true and not set up the right way. Too many things are off about this.”

“People are buying it.”

“Dude, let’s face it, this is the apocalypse and someone’s offering a possible fix. This is a seller’s market.”

“What’s our play?”

Ledger considered. “Without looking like you’re doing it, count the guards. Don’t miss any. Get a good sense of where they are, how they’re armed. Look for places of concealment in case we have to do something creative.”

“‘Creative’?”

“Uh huh.” He nodded at the big, dark mouth of the cavern. “I got a feeling we’re walking into the dragon’s mouth, kid. That general they mentioned, Ike Black? I know that name. Can’t quite place where, but it wasn’t from a Nobel Peace Prize announcement. There’s something wrong about him. It’ll come to me. Point is, I think we’re about to step into some shit. If I’m right — and, sadly, I’m usually right about this kind of thing — then it could all get crazy real fucking fast. You understand me?”

“Yes,” said Tom.

“Watch me for cues. Be stupid and agreeable. Don’t be threatening in any way. Follow my lead and if I make a move then I want you to move with me.”

“What kind of move?”

“Don’t know yet,” said Ledger. “I’m going to let the moment tell me what to do. You understand that?”

“Yes.”

They nodded and moved with the line, but they kept enough distance between them and the end of the line to be able to speak together in low tones.

“If this goes south on us, Tom,” said Ledger, “I need to know that you’ll do whatever’s necessary. Don’t freak out. Pick your targets and watch your fire. You understand the concept of trigger discipline. Remember your training. We protect civilians as much as possible, but we have to win any fight we start. No bullshit. War isn’t polite.”

Tom looked appalled. “You think it’ll come to that?”

Ledger rubbed at the blond-gray stubble on his chin. “It usually does.”

The line moved forward and in forty minutes it was their turn to step up to the table. It was immediately clear that two of the lab-coated people were assisting the third, a woman of about forty, with long auburn hair and a lovely face. Her hands moved with professional competence, accepting syringes, swabbing with pieces of cloth soaked in alcohol, jabbing with practiced deftness, handing the used needle off, taking a new one. Over and over again. Doing it fast and doing it well.

Ledger looked at the doctor, trying to catch her eye and read her. She was disheveled, her clothes were dirty and stained, and her hair hung in lank threads. If all he had was a quick glance he might have put it down to an earnest desperation to get as much done as possible, to fill every minute of every hour of every day with the good work she was doing. Pushing herself to the edge of exhaustion because what was personal comfort when measured against saving the actual fucking world?

That’s what a quick glance would have told him. Ledger, however, was not in the habit of making quick or hasty judgments. Reliable intelligence required attention and consideration.

He glanced at the guards standing just a few feet behind Dr Pisani. There were five of them. Four were generic brutes with hard faces, dead eyes and callused hands resting on the automatic rifles slung over their heavy shoulders. The fifth was a different kind of man, and Ledger met his eyes only briefly and when he did he projected absolutely nothing because this was a far more dangerous man than the guards who stood with him. This man was tall, lean, wiry, hawk-faced, with cat green eyes and a slash of a mouth. One corner of that mouth was hooked upward in a permanent, knowing, mocking smile. It was clear to Ledger, as he was sure it was to Tom, that this man was in charge. Not just of this post, but of everything. He wore a black leather jacket but beneath was a military blouse with two stars pinned neatly in place. A major general. He stood with a faux slouch that Ledger had seen a lot of good fighters affect. His long-fingered hands hung loose at his sides, and he wore the kind of loose-fitting clothes that allowed for quick, unhampered movement.

Danger, Will Robinson, mused Ledger. He shifted his gaze away before the man could fix on him. There was something very familiar about the man, but Ledger could not quite place it.

So, instead he focused on Dr Pisani, trying to catch her eyes. It took a moment, but as the doctor prepared to inject the woman in line in front of Ledger, Pisani glanced at him and their eyes met. Locked. Held. He wanted to make contact with her, to make sure she saw him as he saw her. That’s when Ledger knew that everything that was going on here was as wrong as his instincts had warned.

There was a look in the doctor’s eyes. Not exhaustion. Not the weary triumph of having succeeded in something great. Not even the fatalistic sadness of someone who wished she could have succeeded in her great achievement sooner.

No. None of that was in Pisani’s eyes.

Instead, what Ledger saw in those lovely, intelligent brown eyes was a total, overwhelming joy. A joy that was too much, too big, too wild.

It was the kind of limitless joy of a mind that had broken loose of its moorings.

The doctor who desperate people traveled hundreds of miles to find was absolutely insane.

—16— Top and Bunny

It didn’t take long before the workers switched from hauling bodies to herding groups of people. As the troop carriers filled with dead pulled out, they were replaced within five minutes by troop carriers carrying the living — all wearing red, white, and blue wristbands. This time, the reds were immediately put in with Top and Bunny, until their red holding pen was full. And then the next and the next. The whites and blues were split, some being taken off further into the reaches of the cavern and whatever lay beyond their line of sight, while others were ushered into the appropriately marked holding pens for blue and white.

“Wait. Where are they going? Why are we being put in here?” one woman demanded, looking longingly off after the other blues.

“We can only process so many at a time, okay?” the guard replied, smiling warmly as if to reassure her. “You’re next, I promise. Look, there’s nice chairs here, Blu-ray players, books.”

He was right. Unlike the pens for the reds, the whites and blues had been given couches, chairs, tables with games, flatscreen TVs with Blu-ray players, bookshelves of books and magazines. All stuff to make them comfortable and help them relax while they waited, which meant either the guards didn’t care about the reds relaxing or the reds, for some reason, wouldn’t be waiting as long.

Bunny elbowed Top and tipped his head toward the other pens. “What’s wrong with this picture?”

“Everything,” Top agreed, whispering.

“How come they get to sit and we have to stand here?” a red-banded old man said. “My legs are tired and I have a bad back!” He scowled, his voice dripping irritation.

The guard just turned and shoved him further back into the red tagged cell. “Shut up and do what you’re told, old man. Make room for the rest.”

“Do you have any idea who you’re talking to?” the old man demanded, but before he could say anything further, the guard backhanded him across the face, knocking him to his knees. Two more guards rushed in, grabbed him, and dragged him out the door.

“You just got yourself a speed pass, old man,” the sneering first guard said, watching as the others dragged him, feet trailing behind, off into the cavern where the groups of blues and whites had gone.

“Jesus,” Bunny said, exchanging a look with Top.

The first guard noticed a line of men who’d stopped to stare. “Get in there! Go!”

They started moving again as he turned back to his duties. Bunny searched every face for anyone familiar. No one. He shook his head. “I don’t know why but I keep looking for someone we know.”

“Don’t stop,” Top said as his eyes continued scanning faces. “So am I.”

As more and more people filed in, the first trucks having been replaced by three more, the overwhelming smell of gunpowder and chemicals now mixed with the smells of sweat, body odor, colognes and perfumes — of people.

Then Bunny did a double take as his eyes scanned a line of whites climbing off a nearby GMC. Son of bitch, that almost looks like… it can’t be.

“Fuck, Top,” he mumbled. “My eyes are getting so tired, I’m seeing things.”

“What?”

“That guy over there looks almost like Captain Ledger. I mean, I wish it was, but—”

“Where?” Top’s eyes snapped over to where Bunny indicated. “Son of a bitch. Doesn’t that kid beside him look almost like Sam Imura?”

“Yeah,” Bunny agreed. “Weird. But it can’t be. They’re both dead.”

Top grunted. “Technically we didn’t see them die, but after nineteen years, yeah, I think you’re right.” He went back to searching another line as the two men moved off out of view, further into the cavern, urged by guards.

“We gotta come up with a plan, son,” Top said then, leaning closer to Bunny’s ear. “A way to distract the guards, get ourselves out of here.”

“Hooah,” Bunny replied. “You know, there’s a lot of us here. If people got excited for some reason…”

“The door’s locked,” Top said.

“So we find a way to make them unlock it.”

“Okay, Farm Boy, and how is that?”

“Just follow my lead,” Bunny said, and an idea formed as he remembered the old man they dragged off. If the others started to question, if they worried about their fate — people could be all sorts of unpredictable under such circumstances. They might even get riled up enough to alarm the guards. “We’re all gonna die!” he suddenly shouted.

“What are you talking about?” Top asked, raising his voice to be heard.

“The red bands!” Bunny said. “We don’t get chairs, Blu-rays, games, books — it’s obvious. They don’t give those to red banders because we’re gonna die!”

“Stop saying that!” a guard outside their holding pen said, shaking his head. “Everyone just remain calm. The colors are for sorting treatment.” A couple other guards muttered and glared in Bunny’s direction.

“But that old man — when he complained about his back, they beat him and dragged him off,” Top said. “What kind of medical treatment facility is this?”

“The kind where you wait your turn and don’t ask questions,” Major Diamond said, appearing before them with a cold stare. “One more word out of you two, and you’ll find out all about that old man.”

“You just threatened us!” Bunny shouted.

“Hey! They’re right!” someone else said.

“Why are you threatening us if we’re here for treatment?” another called.

Then chaos erupted in the red cells as people began chattering, calling out questions, pounding at the doors, shuffling nervously.

More guards moved in, some whispering calm words, others waving guns and ordering people back from the barred walls.

Bunny grinned at Top as he called out, “We’re all gonna die! I know it!”

—17— The Soldier and the Samurai

When it was his turn to bare his arm for Dr Pisani, Joe Ledger did a quick but thorough read on the syringe. It was clean and the barrel of it contained a completely colorless liquid. Before the End, Ledger had spent a lot of years taking Echo Team into conflict with terrorists, many of whom used bioweapons. He’d been in every major biological and chemical development lab in the United States, and dozens around the world. He was a frequent visitor to the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health. As a result he knew what viral transport media looked like, just as he knew what vaccines looked like, including the various versions of Lucifer 113 and the counter-agents developed to try and stop it, notably Reaper. As the doctor raised the syringe, Ledger looked from it to the doctor, meeting her eyes again.

“This is a cure?” he asked quietly.

Pisani twitched. “Yes, yes, it won’t hurt. Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried, Doc. I admire you for what you’re doing. But I have a question,” said Ledger, pitching his voice so that only she could hear him, “what kind of vaccine is this? Is it an antibiotic of some kind?”

“No,” she said, “it’s a broad-spectrum antiviral vaccine.”

“Ah,” he said, taking time to remove his jacket. “But I’m confused about something. They said that Lucifer 113 was unstoppable. They said that the addition of Reaper to the bioweapon strain was what caused it to jump to an airborne pathogen. I’m really impressed that you’ve been able to counteract something that was designed to be unstoppable.”

“N-no,” she said quickly. “We broke the pathogen down and this is the cure. It’s the real cure, a perfect cure.”

Her words tumbled out way too quickly. Ledger nodded, still smiling warmly at her. He draped his jacket over one arm. She swabbed his arm with alcohol.

“But what confuses me,” he said, “is how an antiviral will work against Lucifer 113. I mean… it’s not actually a virus.”

She froze, the needle a quarter inch from his flesh. Her eyes were huge and filled with strange lights. “What…?”

“As I understand it,” Ledger said, “Lucifer was built using select combinations of disease pathogens and parasites and then underwent extensive transgenic modification with Toxoplasma gondii as a key element, along with the larva of the green jewel wasp. It has genetic elements of the Dicrocoelium dendriticum and Euhaplorchis californiensis flukes that combine to regulate that aggressive response behavior into a predictable pattern. None of that is a virus, so how does this work? I mean, not even an antibiotic would work because this isn’t really predominantly bacteriological, so how can an antiviral do any good?”

Dr Pisani stood there, the tip of the needle trembling near his shoulder. “No, I… I mean I… what you don’t…” Her words tumbled and tumbled and fell off a cliff, leaving her blank-faced except for those wild eyes. Ledger saw tears there on her lower lashes, and the doctor’s lips trembled almost in time to the needlepoint.

The two lab assistants realized something was wrong and stepped forward. So did one of the guards.

“Doc,” asked one of the assistants. “Is something wrong?”

The other assistant gave Ledger a suspicious look. “What did you say to her?”

Ledger’s smile was bolted into place. “I just told her how much I admire what you’re all doing here.”

Everyone looked at Pisani. Tears broke and fell down her cheeks. “It’s a perfect cure.”

The second assistant jabbed Ledger in the chest with a stiffened forefinger. “That’s not what you said. Tell me what you—”

“What’s holding up the line?” demanded the hawk-faced general as he pushed his way toward Ledger. Tom shifted a half step away, but Ledger knew it was to get some room for movement if this turned weird.

Ledger had been expecting it to turn weird since the checkpoint but he was glad to see the young man read the moment this well. Just how weird was to be determined. No one was pulling guns yet, which was good, but everything in the cavern had come to an abrupt stop.

The first assistant pointed at Ledger. “This guy said something to the doc and it’s got her all upset.”

The general walked right up to Ledger and kept approaching in the way some hard-asses do when they want to force someone to back away. It was a bully’s trick that usually triggered a response based on the natural tendency to maintain a bubble of personal distance. Ledger knew the trick, and for a moment, he almost chose to step back to let this man own the moment. But then something changed that, and Ledger knew that it was going to change the trajectory of the entire day.

He recognized the man. When they’d met before, he’d been wearing the same black leather jacket and similar black pants to what he now wore.

Ledger knew his name.

So he stood his ground and let the general invade his space and get all the way up to a chest-to-chest contact. Ledger was a big man, but he was in his fifties and he’d been slouching to make himself look older and smaller than he was. This army officer was about not quite six feet tall, which made him a couple of inches shorter than Ledger. When it was clear Ledger wasn’t going to step back, the general placed a hand on his chest and pushed. Ledger allowed it, and for a moment they stood there, studying each other with professional thoroughness.

“Well fuck me blind,” murmured the general. “I know you.”

“Been a long time, Ike,” said Ledger.

General Ike Black shook his head. “We all thought you were dead.”

Ledger said nothing.

General Black turned to his men. “You know who we have here? This is Captain Joe Ledger. America’s number one covert gunslinger.” His eyes clicked back to Ledger. “Jesus on a stick, Ledger, if even half the stories about you are true you’ve killed more people than God. Everyone used to say that if they send you in the shit’s already hit the fan. You took down the Jakobys, the Seven Kings, that crazy anarchist bitch Mother Night. All that stuff.”

Everyone was staring now. Even Tom was looking sidelong at Ledger.

“People exaggerate,” said Ledger.

“No they don’t,” said Black. “People don’t know the stories I’ve heard, and I heard them from the people who know. You’re supposed to be a psychotic, bloodthirsty, ass-kicking psychopath. You’re the one they send in when they want scorched earth.”

Ledger sighed. “Nice to be remembered for one’s accomplishments. I also threw a good breaking ball and I’m pretty good with Donkey Kong and Ms Pac Man, but nobody ever talks about that.”

“And they said you’re a smartass who mouthed off to at least three presidents.”

“Five,” said Ledger. “But who’s counting?”

Black grinned. “So the zombies didn’t eat you.”

“I’ve proven indigestible so far.”

“Where were you when things fell apart? Seems like you’re the guy they should’ve called in when Lucifer 113 slipped its leash.”

“I was out of the country,” said Ledger with real sadness. “Trying to save the world. Wrong apocalypse. By the time I got back it was all for shit.”

They stood there and the cavern was completely silent around them. General Black cocked his head to one side and scrutinized him. Then he glanced at Dr Pisani, who stood nearby with glazed, confused eyes and tear tracks on her face. “What did he say to you, Doc?”

Pisani licked her lips and opened her mouth to speak, but then shook her head.

General Black frowned at Ledger. “Maybe you’ll tell me what you said.”

Ledger shrugged. “I just told her how much I admire what she’s doing here. What you’re all doing here. Saving the world.”

“Saving the world,” echoed Black. “That’s all you said?”

Ledger could feel the anxiety coming off of Tom. The young man had a great poker face but his body was rigid with coiled tension. Ledger caught the subtle shift as Tom moved his weight to the balls of his feet. A martial arts trick; a fighter’s trick — using muscular tension and weight distribution to prepare the body for immediate high-speed movement.

Ledger smiled now and he lowered his voice so that the conversation was private between Black and him. “Listen, Ike, I think I get what you’re doing here. This facility, the sorting of people, the vaccine. I get it. We both get it. The ass fell off the world and it’s either going to go completely down the shitter or it’s not, and the only way it’s not is for someone with the vision, the balls, and the talent to put it back together.”

Black said nothing.

“You were always a bad boy. Blackwater and then Blue Diamond. You’re no more a general than I’m Catherine the Great. I get it. The old system’s gone, so long live the new system. There’s no government anymore, no army, no nothing. Who’s to say you don’t have the authority to pin some stars on your shirt. I’m cool with it because it’s the first smart thing I’ve seen anyone do since this all fell apart. Someone had to do it. I wish I’d thought of it first, but I didn’t. You did. Far as I’m concerned that means you earned those stars. You got my vote, for whatever it’s worth.”

“Really?” said Black in a voice that was heavily laced with disbelief.

“Really. If someone doesn’t start a new government and organize a new army, there’s not going to be a future because there’s not going to be a human race. So, props to you.”

“Funny hearing this from Uncle Sam’s number one problem solver.”

“Uncle Sam’s dead,” said Ledger. “I’m not. The president ate the vice president and congress ate each other, so there’s no one signing my paychecks these days. I’m not a young kid anymore and, quite frankly, I’m getting tired of being a one-man-army in a rerun of The Walking Dead. The odds are against me.”

“You have a friend,” said Black, nodding to Tom.

“Him? Fuck. He’s a sushi cook. He’s good with knives and he doesn’t mind taking orders. He’s nothing to this.”

“To what? You’re talking a lot, Ledger, but you’re not getting anywhere.”

Ledger glanced around and then leaned closer. “The vaccine is bullshit. I think your Dr Pisani is bugfuck nuts, and she’s injecting people with tap water. There is no vaccine for Lucifer 113, and if there was it wouldn’t be antiviral. You know and I know it. Maybe the doc knows it, and that’s why she’s blown out her circuits, though I suspect she was already damaged goods before you started this operation.”

“Still not hearing anything I want to hear,” said Black. “And we have a line of people wondering what the hell is happening here.”

“Sure. How many guys you have here, Ike? Twenty? Thirty? If they’re all like the nuclear scientists guarding the checkpoint then you’re working with inferior materials. How many of them were actually military?” When General Black didn’t answer Ledger nodded. “That’s what I thought. So what happens if all those people coming here get wind of this as a shit operation?”

“What makes you think—?”

“Come on, Ike, I’m not stupid. That color coding thing? Maybe the tourists think that’s some kind of Sorting Hat, but I don’t think the red-band people are going to a nice safe dorm. They’re old, or sick, or useless, or dangerous. You’re weeding out the dangerous ones. Tom and me got through because he’s a cook and I told the guards that I was a ball-player and amateur hunter. Cooking and hunting are important skills for a colony, and that’s what this is. I bet you pulled out the medical staff, anyone who can fix, make, repair or build and they got white bands, too. That’s what the vaccine thing is all about. It’s a beacon to draw people to you, and if you can protect them, they’ll never know that they’re not actually immune. Tell me I’m wrong.”

Black’s eyes narrowed, but then he gave Ledger a tiny nod.

“So, here’s my offer,” said Ledger. “I’ve trained more real soldiers than you’ve ever seen. I know weapons and tactics, I know defense and attack. You said it yourself, I used to be Uncle Sam’s go-to guy for fucking up other people’s days. That’s me. I figured this shit out in fifteen minutes. Someone else is going to do that, too, and they might not be in here. They might be out where they can spread the word and gather a bunch of villagers with pitchforks and torches. If that happens, do you want me dead in a ditch or do you want me overseeing the defenses of your new kingdom?”

It took a long time for General Black to respond. The room remained quiet though no longer silent. There were discrete coughs and the rustling of people shifting nervously. No one interrupted the private, whispered conversation.

Finally, Black said, “How do I know that I can trust you?”

Ledger shrugged. “You’ll have me watched. Put guards on me. Don’t give me a gun until you’re sure. If I twitch the wrong way, do what you got to do. But that’s not how it’s going to play out, Ike. I’m offering a barter. I need a home, I need a clean bed and a shower — God knows I need a shower — and I want three squares, a roof over my head, and a life again. You can give me all of that. In return I’ll give you an army.”

General Black straightened and walked a few paces away. Ledger cut a look at Tom and saw that the young man’s calm was cracking under the strain of uncertainty and imminent danger. Ledger made a very low, very small gesture with his left hand. Calm down.

Tom’s tension eased by about two per cent.

Then General Black raised his arms out to the side and turned to the people who were waiting in line.

“Listen to me,” he roared. “Everything is okay. In fact, everything’s great. This man here is Captain Joe Ledger. You won’t have heard of him, but he was a very famous soldier. A Special Ops solder. Best of the best. He’s come here to join us. To help us. And he is my friend. Let’s show him how much we appreciate his coming all this way to support our sacred cause.”

The guards began applauding first, and if it was a bit slow and uncertain at first, Ledger could understand. Then the medical staff joined in and then everyone. Only Dr Pisani did not applaud. She stood staring at Ledger with confused eyes and a mouth pulled rigid with fear.

Ike Black strode over and took Ledger’s hand, holding it high as the applause swelled, and then shaking it. He used the handshake to lean in and whisper in Ledger’s ear.

“If you’re fucking with me, Ledger,” he said, “I will have you skinned alive. Don’t think I’m joking. I’ve done it a dozen times before. I’ll cut your balls off and make you eat them.”

His handshake was crushingly hard, but Ledger knew the trick of positioning his hand so the bones braced against the force rather than collapsed within the stricture. He met Black’s eyes and smiled at him.

“You don’t have to worry about me,” he said. “You don’t ever have to worry about me, General.”

—18— The Hall of the Mountain King

The big treatment hall was cleared and the people with the white wristbands were sent outside to bed down in one of the big tents, with Ike Black telling everyone that the doctor was exhausted. There was no option for discussion or debate as soldiers moved in and cleared the room.

“Let me show you fellows around,” said the general. “I think you’ll appreciate what we’re trying to do here.”

The tour started with introductions to Ike Black’s senior staff, most of who were clearly not military men but instead looked like a roughhouse crew of bikers, backwoods hunters, and general hard-cases. Tough, but not in the same way professional soldiers were. Harder in the wrong places and with noticeable lapses in personal discipline and an understanding of military procedures. For all that they were dangerous, and more so because their actions would be random and unfiltered.

Joe Ledger and Tom Imura shook a lot of hands as the general showed them around the complex.

“This was a hardened facility,” the general explained. “The rock and iron in the mountain kept them from EMP burnout and the blast doors kept the eaters out. Tucson’s a total loss, and when I got here there were half a million of the dead bastards walking around.”

“How’d you handle that?” asked Ledger.

“Controlled burns, mostly. Brush fires, some incendiaries fired from our helicopters.”

“You still have helos?”

“Had,” said the general wistfully as he led them into an adjoining chamber where a hulking Bell UH-1Y Venom ‘Super Huey’ squatted. “One crashed and this one needs parts that we don’t have here, and we don’t have an aviation mechanic to tell our machinist what to make.”

“I might be able to help with this old girl,” said Ledger. “I’ve tinkered a bit.”

Black gave him a startled look. “Really?”

“Sure,” said the soldier, patting the gray skin of the helicopter. “Motors, rotors, and avionics. When you spent as much time in the field as I have you need to know how to fix your ride. Couldn’t Uber my way out of the kinds of places they sent me. I can fix a boat, too.”

“No boats out here,” said Black, “but I’ll file it away for when we expand.”

“What about ground transport. Anything need work there?”

“We’re doing better with vehicles. We have five Humvee light armored vehicles, couple of utility cargo trucks. Six noncombat vehicles. All in pretty good shape.”

“That’s not a big fleet for an army. You got how many guys here? Forty?”

“Fifty-one,” said Black. “We’ll make do. If we can’t drive, we’ll use horses. But one of my scouts found a place a few hundred klicks from here that has a crap-ton of three and four-wheel ATVs. Two-stroke engines, and we took in a guy today who fixes that kind of stuff. He’s sure as shit going to earn his room and board.”

The tour moved on, with Black becoming expansive and Ledger encouraging him to brag. Tom Imura drifted along behind like a silent ghost, and behind him were two armed guards. Another pair of guards walked point for their small party. Black was being welcoming, but not stupid.

They passed Dr Pisani’s lab, and although there was a guard the lab was empty and dark. Ledger paused outside to peer through the dusty glass. The general walked on a pace, then stopped and joined him.

“Does she know?” asked Ledger.

“Allie? Fuck no,” said Black, then he thought about it and amended that. “I don’t really know. She’s damaged goods, as you probably saw.”

“That a recent thing or…?”

“Nah, she was half out of her mind when I found her. She was here in the base with six pencil necks, four soldiers and a lot of dead people. They were in here for a couple of years. Teams would go out looking for survivors or trying to make contact with other groups, but none of them ever came back, and when I rolled up the last ones here had pretty much lost their shit. The soldiers threw in with me right off. I wasn’t regular army, but like you said, what does that matter.”

“Word,” agreed Ledger, nodding.

“The lab crew had been working on a cure, and Allie Pisani swore she had cracked the damn thing, but…”

“No?”

“No. It can’t be cracked. There was this other doctor, Monica McReady, who was a big shot in bioweapons from out at a station like this in Death Valley, and for a while they were feeding intel to Allie, but then they went dark. And it happened at just the wrong time, right when Allie thought she was onto something, but she needed some vital info from McReady. Couldn’t go in the right direction without it, and bam. Done. Nothing. I think that’s when Allie Pisani lost it. I think she saw it as some kind of slap in the face of hope and optimism, or maybe she thought that it was proof God was throwing in the towel on this whole shit show. Not sure, and don’t really care. I mean, sure, a cure would have been dope, but we never got it and won’t get it, so we make do. No use crying over spilled milk, am I right?”

“Right as rain.”

Black smiled broadly and nodded approvingly at Ledger. “God, it’s nice to have a conversation with someone who gets me, you know? Someone who’s both been there and done that and doesn’t have his head all the way up his ass.”

“Believe me, General, I’m enjoying this conversation, too.”

“Fuck that ‘general’ stuff unless we’re around the tourists. It’s Ike. Ike and Joe, okay?”

He stuck out his hand again and they shook, both of them grinning at each other.

They wandered outside into the camp. Ledger caught Tom’s eye and saw the younger man’s confusion. He gave him a wink and allowed him to interpret it any way he wanted.

“So how’s this set-up work, Ike?” asked Ledger. “I have a line on the white wristbands, and I’m pretty sure I dig what you have in mind for the reds. Dead wood, am I right?”

Ike Black paused for a moment, his eyes searching Ledger’s face. “You disapprove?”

“Me? Fuck no. Planet Earth’s a lifeboat, brother. We can’t waste food on anyone who isn’t going to make it anyway. And we can’t waste food on anyone who’s not going to help us row to shore. Far as I see it sentimentality is a sucker’s game.”

General Black paused a moment longer, then nodded. “Glad to hear you say that.”

“And, let’s face it, Ike,” said Ledger leaning close, “I didn’t last this long by being Mr Rogers, you dig? It’s not a wonderful day in the neighborhood and not every motherfucker I meet is my neighbor.”

One of the guards said, “Preach.”

Black shot him a stern look but did not disagree. Instead, he gave another nod.

“What about the blue tents?” asked Ledger casually. “Women and kids?”

“They’re being protected.”

Ledger snorted. “Don’t blow smoke up my ass, man. And don’t bullshit a bullshitter. The general population’s pretty fucking small and if we’re going to rebuild then we need breeding stock. Younger they are the more seasons they have to squeeze out new Americans, am I right?”

Ike Black stopped and stared at him, a small hopeful smile playing on his lips. “Christ, you really do get it, don’t you?”

“It’s pretty black and white, Ike. It’s survival of the fittest and with humans that means survival of those people who can make the hard choices.” He clapped Tom on the shoulder. “That’s what I’ve been trying to teach my friend here. How to do what’s necessary when it’s necessary.”

Tom cleared his throat and, still using the thick accent, said, “I’m working on it.”

“General!” someone called.

They all turned and a guard with a radio headset ran up and whispered in the general’s ear for a few minutes. Black pulled him aside and they whispered back and forth for a bit before the general nodded and the guard ran off, talking into his headset as Black rejoined Ledger and Tom.

“Anything wrong?” Ledger asked.

The general shook it off, then a shrewd look came into his eyes. “Tell you what, fellows, there’s no time like the present to put your money where your mouth is.”

“Meaning what, big man?” asked Ledger.

“Red tent,” said Black. “Sometimes we pick up some troublemakers along with the dead wood. Case in point… we got a couple of real hard-cases in lockdown. Couple ex-military who I think are still fighting for truth, justice, and the American way. Old school, head-in-the-sand types.”

“Sounds inconvenient. What are you going to do with them?”

Black’s smile brightened. “Me? Nothing. But I thought it would be a great way for you fellows to make your bones. Not to offend, Joe, but talk is cheap.”

“What do you mean?” asked Tom.

Ledger laughed. “Big Ike here wants us to prove that we’re not just a couple of con artists sweet-talking our way into the good life, isn’t that right?”

“Something like that,” agreed Black.

“So,” continued Ledger, “he wants us to go into the red tent where they have those hard-cases and put them down.”

“I…” began Tom, but Ledger clapped him on the shoulder again. Hard.

“Don’t turn green, kid. Wouldn’t be the first useless cocksuckers you ever killed. Not even the first this week.”

Tom said nothing, but there was doubt in his eyes.

“The general’s right,” said Ledger. “Talk’s cheap, and man… there’s just about nothing I wouldn’t do to sleep in a real bed and not having worry about waking up with some dead asshole nibbling on my dick. If that means popping a cap in some bad guys, then booyah. I like me more than I like some assholes I don’t know. So, bottom line, it sucks to be them.”

“That,” said Black with a merry laugh, “is what I like to hear.”

“When you want this done?” asked Ledger.

“First light?”

“Fuck no,” said Ledger. “Why wait? Let’s close this deal right damn now. I’ll pop one and let Tom do the other and then you can point us in the direction of a cold beer, if any such thing still exists.”

“Will Irish whiskey do?” asked Black.

“Yeah,” said Ledger, “it will. Let’s rock.”

—19— Top and Bunny

Though they succeeded in creating the chaos they’d wanted, and even slipped out of the cell when the guards opened it to come in and restore calm, Top and Bunny quickly found themselves surrounded by six men with rifles pointed at their heads while Major Diamond used the butt end of a rifle to slam them each in the stomach and send them to their knees, gasping for breath. They hadn’t even had enough room to react because of the constant crowd surrounding them.

“You boys just bought yourself the front of the line,” Diamond said with a sneer and nodded to the two guards.

The two prisoners were yanked to their feet as the holding pen door slammed and locked behind them, then dragged further into the cavern past cells where the white and blue banders were enjoying books, Blu-rays, furniture. Then they were shoved into a closet-sized cavern and locked in darkness.

“Fuck,” Bunny moaned. “That worked great. What now?”

“Now we wait 'til they come for us and be ready to jump them,” Top said. “Relax and recharge while you can, son.”

Bunny heard shuffling as Top slid against the stone and sat on the floor nearby and he followed suit, sighing. “We shoulda had a better plan.”

“Shut the fuck up, soldier.”

“Just saying.”

And then Bunny heard a chuckle. Top was laughing at him. “What?”

“Once an idiot, always an idiot,” Top said through laughter.

“Hey, this idiot has had your six for over twenty years, Old Man.”

“I know, it’s a fucking miracle I still have a six,” Top replied.

“Fuck you,” Bunny moaned and then grinned in the darkness, chuckling a bit himself.

Soon, they were both laughing, and that was the last thing Bunny remembered as he fell into darkness and slept restlessly against the hard, cold stone.

A bright light.

That was his next memory, as he awoke blinded and heard men talking. “Get up!” someone ordered.

“On your feet!” growled another.

Then they were being lifted and dragged out of the cavern, surrounded by armed men again.

The guards moved quickly, keeping them surrounded. Bunny only made out bits and pieces of their surroundings — a door marked ‘lab’, a few white-coated workers moving in and out, then a line of people with blue bands. They wound through a short corridor into another room past a line of white banded people waiting before a dispensary of some sort with lab-coated workers at a counter, handing out small cups of liquid or pills, he couldn’t tell which.

Then they went through thick steel doors into another cavern, passing a line of men with red wristbands like their own, waiting. They all looked tired, shifting continuously like people who’d spent too much time on their feet for an unknown purpose. Bunny could relate. What were they lined up for?

Then he and Top were shoved at the front of the line and they saw General Black approaching with a kid in a many-pocketed canvas vest and green khakis, a kid who Bunny recognized — a kid he’d seen the day before who looked a lot like their old teammate, Sam Imura.

Then he gasped, his breath frozen in his lungs as his eyes came to the man in the sleeveless fatigue shirt and sunglasses standing on the other side of the general from the kid. His hair was greyer, his face lined with age, but Bunny couldn’t believe his eyes. His knees wobbled and he fought to stay on his feet. “Captain,” he whispered.

Top stared beside him, frozen just the same. He had the same deer caught in headlights look in his eyes as he stared at the man, too.

Bunny shook his head, trying to shake off the vision. This can’t be real. Joe Ledger’s dead. He felt tears forming in the corner of his eyes. Could it really be? He’d never believed in fucking miracles, but he was looking right at one.

—20— Four Jacks and a King

Joe Ledger stared at the two men in the front of the line. The big blond guy and the older black guy.

They were impossible faces.

Dead faces.

Ghost faces.

The ground seemed to tilt under Ledger’s feet and the light from the torches and lanterns got instantly brighter. So bright. Too bright.

He said, “What…?”

Very softly. So softly that only two people heard him.

Tom Imura and General Ike Black.

They turned to look at Ledger. The two men in the line gaped at him. The guards stood around, none of them realizing that something important was happening.

“What’s with you?” demanded Black sharply, and that caused everyone to turn in his direction — guards, prisoners, and even a few camp civilians who were passing by. The moment froze around Ledger.

Years ago, when Ledger had been recruited by the Department of Military Sciences one of the main reasons he had been chosen and asked to lead Echo Team was because he lacked the flaw of hesitation. He saw, processed and reacted with zero lag time, a side-effect of the Cop and Killer working in perfect harmony, blending astute judgment with instinctive reaction.

Now he stood rooted to the ground for what seemed like forever. He could feel his mind catching fire and for a moment — a single burning moment — Ledger wondered if the delicate balancing act of juggling personality aspects had all come crashing down. He knew that such a calamity was always possible, that control over his personal damage was in no way an absolute.

What made it worse was that he saw the realization blossom like diseased flowers in the eyes of those two prisoners. Top and Bunny were alive. They were prisoners. They were scheduled for execution at his hands. And although they were every bit as shocked as he was, he could see how they were reacting to his reaction.

All of this — the self-awareness, the understanding of his own deadly hesitation, the connection with Top and Bunny — happened in a microsecond. It felt so much longer, but it wasn’t. The Killer knew it wasn’t. The Cop knew it wasn’t. Ike Black’s words had just been spoken less than a heartbeat ago.

A heartbeat.

And that was how long his hesitation lasted.

Seemed like forever. Could have been.

Wasn’t.

Ledger turned away from the prisoners and smiled at Ike Black. “You know, Ike, something funny just occurred to me. You’ll think this is hilarious.”

The doubt on Black’s face wavered and he half-smiled. “Oh, yeah, what?”

Ledger stood next to him and pointed with his left to Top and Bunny. “See those two assholes over there?”

“What about them?”

Joe Ledger chopped the general across the windpipe with the edge of his left hand. He did it without a single muscular flicker that would have telegraphed the move. He did it the right way. And he did it very fucking fast.

There was a second moment of hesitation as Ike Black staggered a half step back. The guards stared. The passersby stared. The other prisoners stared.

Tom Imura did not. Nor did Top and Bunny.

They moved.

Tom pivoted in place, grabbed the closest guard and hit him with a cupped palm to the ear, putting a lot of torque into the blow, sending the man crashing into a second guard. Top and Bunny rushed at the nearest guards. Their hands were zip-tied but their feet were not, nor was the rest of them. Bunny ducked low and plowed his two-hundred and sixty pounds of hard muscle into a guard and hit with such locomotive speed that the man was plucked off the ground and carried with Bunny as the Marine rammed into the rest of the sentries. Top kicked the kneecap off the man closest to him, then pivoted and kicked a guard who — quicker than the others — was raising his rifle. The steel toe of Top’s boot caught him under the balls, crushing them and smashing the bottom bones of his pelvis. The gun fell and the man collapsed into a fetal ball.

Ledger tore the front of his shirt down to release the Wilson rapid-release knife and with a flick the short, wicked blade snapped into place. Without pausing, Ledger slashed it across the throat of one man and the eyes of another. Tom caught the second man, spun him and tore the rifle from the screaming man’s hands.

Ledger raced over to Top and Bunny, slashed the zip ties free, gave them a single dazzling, maniacal grin, and dove back into the fight. Ike Black was still on his feet, still trying to suck in air past the wreckage of his throat. Ledger slap-turned him and used him as a shield as he drove toward a pair of soldiers who had been part of the prisoner detail. The men saw their general and even though it was clear the man was badly hurt, he was still the god of their little world. They hesitated, and this time the hesitation was fatal, and Joe Ledger made them pay for it. He slammed Black into the arms of one, reached past the dying general to slash the forearm, the biceps and then the throat of the first guard. Then he grabbed the other man’s hair, jerked him free of Ike Black’s desperate clutches, and cut his throat, too.

Gunfire erupted behind him and he whirled to see Bunny and Tom fanning out, each of them firing as they ran. Top lingered with the prisoners and Ledger saw the flash of silver. Top had found a knife somewhere and was cutting the strongest-looking prisoners free; then he pressed his knife into a willing hand and let the newly freed prisoners continue the liberation. Ledger saw a guard running toward him and dove down beneath the spray of bullets, using a dead man for cover, feeling the bullets thud into dead flesh. He took the man’s Glock, rose up and fired, fired, fired.

There was a huge rumbling sound and Ledger whirled to see the cavern door descending.

“The cavern!” he bellowed, and raced toward the open maw of the cavern. The others followed, though Bunny peeled off toward a parked M1117 Guardian Armored Security Vehicle. Top fired as he ran and killed a man who stood at the door controls, then he punched a red STOP button. The door jerked to a halt four feet from the ground. Ledger and Tom ducked in after him.

Outside, a man saw Bunny coming, whirled and tried to get inside the ASV before the hulking giant could reach him. He was one step too slow. Bunny shot him center mass and from the loose way he fell it was clear the bullet had clipped the soldier’s spine. Then Bunny was inside the vehicle. Ledger was just crossing into the complex when he heard the bull roar of the vehicles muscular .50 machine gun. The mass of soldiers running toward the sound of battle suddenly started dancing and twitching as Bunny tore them to pieces.

Tom and Top Sims caught up with Ledger just inside.

“What’s the plan, Cap’n?” asked Top.

“Rules of engagement are pretty simple, Top,” said Ledger. “Everyone wearing a uniform is a bad guy and there are a lot of them. This is a target-rich environment. Let’s clean house.”

Top grinned. “Hooah.”

“Hooah.”

“It’s good to see you, brother,” said Top.

“You might be a figment of my imagination, Top, but for now I’ll take it. Rock and roll.”

They laughed, as if the world was a wonderful place. They laughed as if the odds were stacked in their favor and the night was not filled with gunfire and screams. They laughed because they were alive. For now, they were alive.

The four of them were badly outnumbered.

They were outgunned, even with the .50 machine gun and a full box of ammunition.

They were not outfought.

The men in Ike Black’s army were not soldiers. They thought they were predators.

They were not.

The gunfight lasted eleven minutes. The last of the soldiers fled the cavern, running from the killers who came hunting them in the steel corridor. They ran for safety into the camp.

Where all of the freed prisoners were waiting.

—21— The Quick and the Dead

When it was over the survivors had to go around with knives and kill the soldiers they killed. Reanimation was a fact of life. Everyone who died, no matter how they died, came back to life within minutes.

Ledger, Top, and Tom came out of the cavern to find Bunny directing the cleanup. Ledger walked past him to where Ike Black had climbed to his feet and was taking his first steps as one of the living dead. Ledger slung his stolen rifle and flicked the Wilson’s blade into place again. He stopped, though, and let the zombie shamble toward him.

“I ought to let you stay this way,” Ledger told him. “Kick your ass out of here and let you wander until you rotted away.”

The zombie tried to moan, but the damage to its throat was too severe.

“You thought you were so fucking smart,” said Ledger. “King under the mountain. Shit, I had this whole plan about pretending to join and working my way up to be your right-hand man and then putting two in the back of your head when no one was looking. I was going to take over this whole operation and maybe make something legitimate of it. But you know what?”

The zombie shuffled closer.

“It’d be too damn much like polishing a turd.”

The dead general reached for him.

“Besides… as it turns out,” said Ledger quietly, “you were no general at all. You’re nothing. Not before you died and not now. If me and my boys hadn’t come along, someone else would have taken you down.”

Ledger batted aside the hands and caught Black by the throat in an iron grip. The dead mouth snapped but Black had no angle for a bite.

“Just between you and me, Ike old buddy,” said Ledger, “I’m kind of glad I get to kill you twice.”

He stabbed Ike Black through one eye and then the other, and then he swept his arm over and down, driving the blade like a spike through the top of the zombie’s skull. The motor cortex died, shorting out the lingering nerve conduction that gave the undead thing its mobility. All tension went out of Black’s body and he fell like a scarecrow knocked from its post.

Ledger stepped aside to let Ike Black sprawl face-first in the mud.

Around him the prisoners were finishing the cleanup with a relish that was every bit as ghoulish and vicious as the things they were killing. Ledger couldn’t blame them.

He went back to the others and pulled Top and then Bunny into fierce embraces. They all laughed and there were tears in their eyes. The stories of how and where and why and what would come later. For now they stood in the glow of a miracle. They had survived when so much of the world had not. Impossibly, they were alive. Impossibly they were all here.

“What do we do now?” asked Tom when they all stopped laughing and backslapping and shaking hands.

They looked at the milling crowds. Top said, “The cure’s phony?”

“Completely,” said Ledger.

“Fuck,” said Bunny. “Once these folks get their shit together they’re going to be hurt by that. A cure… shit, that’s what brought us out here.”

“I know,” said Ledger, “the truth doesn’t always set you free.”

“Do you think Dr Pisani can be helped?” asked Tom. “Maybe she can come back to… well, to herself.”

“What good would that do?” asked Bunny, “if she’s flipped her gourd, I mean.”

Ledger said, “Black mentioned something about research Monica McReady was doing. Remember her?”

Top and Bunny nodded. “She still alive?” asked Top.

“Unknown. She had a lab somewhere in Death Valley, but I don’t know where it was and Pisani lost her shit when McReady stopped transmitting. But…”

He let it hang but the others nodded.

“Worth a try,” said Top.

“Anything’s worth a try,” agreed Bunny.

“I’m going to try for it,” said Ledger. “Go see if I can find McReady, or at least her notes, and bring what I can back to Dr Pisani. This place may have been a big fat lie but maybe we can change that and—”

The earth beneath them rumbled and they whirled to see the heavy door begin descending again.

“No!” bellowed Ledger and he pelted toward the cavern. The others ran with him, and Tom outran them all. He was twice as fast as the older men and he reached the cavern well before them.

But not in time.

The door closed with a boom that echoed off the rocky walls of the canyon.

There was a keypad outside, but none of them knew the code. Everyone who did was either dead, or inside the mountain.

“It was Pisani,” gasped Tom. “I saw her. She bent down to look out as the door closed. It was her.”

A moment later all of the electric lights in the camp went out.

The four men and the survivors spent a full day trying to find another way in. By the end of that day Bunny saw smoke rising from a hidden vent. It was black, oily smoke and it poured out with fury and funneled high into the sky.

No one ever managed to get inside, and after a while they stopped trying. The smoke told them what they would find.

They stayed with the survivors for a week, helping them organize, advising them, giving each of them some training.

Then the four men left Oro Valley. They came to a crossroads. A real one, though the metaphor was not lost on any of them.

“I’ve got to get home,” said Tom. “My brother’s back in Mountainside, and I’ve been away too long.”

“Yeah,” agreed Ledger. “My dogs are there.”

“What’s with you and dogs?” asked Bunny. “You were always about dogs.”

“I trust dogs,” said Ledger.

Bunny thought about that. Nodded.

Tom said, “Do you and Top want to come with us? There’s plenty of room and we could always use a couple of fighters.”

Top ran a hand over the gray stubble on his head. He glanced down the road that led northwest. “I heard there was something maybe starting in Asheville, North Carolina,” he said. “Big refugee camp there and some folks making a stab at building something new. Maybe a new government.”

“Or maybe something as bad as this,” said Ledger.

“Maybe,” said Top. “But… I kind of feel we have to go look.”

“Yeah,” said Bunny, “if there’s even a chance it’s for real, then they’re going to need guys like us.”

“We could use you in our town,” said Tom.

“They got you, kid,” said Top. “And you handle yourself pretty good.”

Ledger felt like his heart was being torn out of his chest. He needed to go with Tom. He needed to go with his friends.

The moment stretched and they stood there in the heat of a cloudless morning.

Finally Top grinned at Bunny and said, “You know, Farm Boy, I’m not at all sure Captain Ledger ought to be left all on his own like that. Who knows what trouble he’d get hisself into.”

“You think we need to hold his hand and keep him from wiping his ass with poison ivy?” asked Bunny.

“Hey,” said Ledger. They ignored him.

“He’s as likely to get his dick bite off by a zombie as he is to walk off a cliff,” said Top. “How many times we have to drag his broken ass out of some firefight and carry him all the way to intensive care?”

“I can’t count that high,” Bunny said, nodding sagely.

“You guys are hilarious,” said Ledger.

“I’m missing the joke,” said Tom. “What are you saying?”

Top adjusted the straps on his pack, but Bunny answered. “What the old man’s saying is that we’ll make sure you kids get home safe from the prom. Then we’ll go see what kind of trouble we can get into down south. Sound like a plan?”

They smiled at each other. The four big men. The four killers.

They nodded to one another and turned northwest, walking slowly, without hurry away from the death at Oro Valley, leaving their footprints behind them in the dust of the great rot and ruin.