Dead Nation Read online

  We didn't get much chance to visit the farms scattered throughout the county. There wasn't much need. The people who lived on them year round liked it that way, and the support staff who rotated in every few weeks were used to the duty and didn't often require assistance to do their jobs. It helped that the farms were all located in strategic places where zombies couldn't easily reach crops or livestock, blocked in by cliffs, large creeks, and other land features. At that moment I really wanted to fix my lack of appearances out in those enclaves, because some industrious farmhand deserved a hug for making sure we got actual beef.

  Bobby winked at Tabby. “Staying over again, I assume?”

  “If you don't mind,” she said.

  Bobby rolled his eyes. “I just assume you will at this point. Well, you two go set the table. Hannah should be home from school in a few minutes and she'll be hungry, too. I've got some logistics to go over before I sleep tonight and I could use help with the housekeeping stuff.”

  I felt bad for him, if I'm being honest. Bobby was as happy as I'd ever seen him, but his job was a lot harder than mine. I've lived in Haven on and off over the years. People ask me to fight, or plan a fight, or train fighters. It's what I've done all my adult life. It's easy for me. It also means I'm out of the house most of any given day, because my job means having to spend a lot of my time with the strike force.

  It left Bobby to take care of everything else during the day, including the household tasks like cooking. That would be bad enough, but he's also our logistics guy. The whole strike force works because the big bastard sits down in front of ledgers and works out our numbers. For everything. Weapons, food, supplies of all kinds. He figures out what we need and then haggles it out with Haven's quartermaster. It would actually be easier if he had to deal with the civilian market, but the strike force falls under the domain of the permanent militia. If we wanted to start a war and get all the captives held by the Relentless Sons killed, we'd just ask the roving militia—composed of former enemies with enough firepower to level a small city—to intervene.

  Since we didn't want that to happen, we had to be the scalpel to their chainsaw. The militia was great for the purpose it served. This situation just didn't fall into their area of expertise.

  Without Bobby, none of it would have worked. I'd spend half my time fighting for resources. It made me perversely happy to know that when the day came to move against the Sons, the hard part would be over for him.

  Well, pretty much. He'd be safe and at home with Hannah, no longer beholden to accounts and tallies. But he'd also have to wait here knowing I might never come back.

  That knowledge made every dinner something to cherish.

  2

  Here in the world after the apocalypse, you might think society keeps going because of the militia, who destroy marauder bands and zombie swarms with equal skill. Or maybe the cure for the plague, which we distribute as far and wide as possible to thin the ranks of the undead and keep the space around our settlements nearly free of them. Perhaps it's the intrepid ranks of artisans and other workers who have miraculously begun to rebuild industry and trade on a scale small enough to be frustrating but large enough to give us hope.

  I wouldn't blame you for thinking those things, because to some degree they're all right. But they're also wrong. There is one thing and one thing only we can consider a keystone for our continued survival.

  I submit for your approval: the humble potato.

  Inside Haven itself, we grow food everywhere. What used to be front and back yards are now food gardens as rigorously planned and meticulously cared for as any fighter jet. Every scrap of land not actively used for another purpose grows food, and potatoes make up the vast majority of that.

  Why? Because they contain nearly every nutrient we need. They grow prolifically, can be grown vertically if you decide to put in the effort as we do, and they store well. A hectare of land—that is, an area equal to 10,000 square meters or 100 meters on a side—can produce nearly 40 tons of spuds. If you wonder how we feed the five thousand or so souls living in Haven through the tough winter months, it's because dehydrating and grinding potatoes into flakes lets them keep for years.

  Don't get me wrong, farming is a full time job for most people in our community. Since the Fall began and this place was settled, we've had to solve problem after problem that comes with survival for such a large group. Thankfully we grew slowly over time, allowing leeway for thinking up water capture and storage systems and fixes for every other damn problem that came our way.

  Which was why when I had a day to spend with Hannah, I didn't bother showing her the packed dirt where men beat each other senseless to practice for the upcoming mission or give her a lesson on how firearms worked. It wasn't that she was too young—there was no such thing anymore—but because she was already learning them. I wanted my time with her to focus on the things that kept Haven going at a fundamental level.

  Which was how I found myself wearing coveralls and working in the dirt next to this tiny, amazing person who was now my daughter.

  Hannah scrabbled around on her hands and knees in a way that made me acutely aware of my age. We were harvesting potatoes for the first time this year, and if the cold cut through her clothes or gloves, she gave no sign. She worked with remarkable fury and delicacy in unearthing the spuds, tossing them in the bucket twice as fast as I could manage.

  “Honey, the chickens will still be there when we're done, whenever we get done,” I said patiently. Though Bobby and I didn't subscribe to the whole idea of one of us being the disciplinarian, he got away with reining Hannah in more often than I did because he spent so much more time with her than me. He was the favorite parent, which didn't bother me. Kids are tiny sociopaths whose judgment is a near perfect—if self-centered—meritocracy. So I considered it fair.

  “I know,” Hannah said before clenching her tongue between her teeth once more and clawing through the mound of dirt. “But I wanna feed 'em, not just see. So we have to be done by four.”

  I shook my head and held back a smile as she continued working. It never occurred to her that we could just stop and go feed the chickens. That no one would bat an eye if we decided to walk off and do something else. She understood that I was exempt from the normal work requirements because of my work with the strike force and my other responsibilities, and she was too young to be roped into the job without my consent.

  But she did it anyway. After a few more minutes Hannah was clearly starting to get overheated, because she unzipped her coverall halfway down her torso. She wore a tank top underneath it over her child-skinny frame—I really had no idea where all the food went—and I caught a glance of the scar poking out of the neck of the shirt.

  It was where she'd been shot. Where I had made the choice to let her be shot back before she was my daughter, when Hannah was a nameless child standing in the middle of a lonely road surrounded by her dead family.

  It was a decision made with the sort of cold calculation I was always good at. Trying to move in to save her would have given up my position, killing her and me in a fruitless attempt to do the right thing. Hannah knew all about it, and it was a testament to the world we lived in that she didn't blame me. She understood the logic of it. One of my biggest fears was that changing. That growing older and developing her moral framework would create a sense of horror at the choice I made. In a way I almost hoped for it. The children among us have had to come up in a world without much room for compromise. It's a hard place.

  There isn't a day that goes by when I don't hate myself for making the call, nor one where I can honestly admit even in hindsight I'd have done anything different. I was the reason for the scar marking the split second in which her short life nearly ended.

  If there was one consolation beyond the sheer joy of having her as my kid, it was that the scar itself probably wouldn't be much of an issue. In the world as it had been, something like that would have been an unusual feature, something so outside the norm
it would be impossible for her not to develop some kind of complex about it.

  Nowadays pretty much everyone had scars. Hell, mine cover most of my body. There are precious few examples I can set for her with my behavior given my status as Haven's resident black ops guy, but that's one I'm glad to showcase.

  Be who you are, and don't let anyone make you feel like shit over it.

  On the way back home, Hannah sat on my left shoulder. I rested a hand on her ankle just in case she lost her balance, but the kid had the agility that came with living as a survivor. In a tumble she probably would have flipped in the air and landed on all fours, ready to fight.

  “How long until you have to go, Mason?” she asked as she snacked on a boiled egg. Kids who helped with the chickens got one if they worked at least an hour, an incentive Hannah had learned about after we arrived at the coops.

  Her voice contained the barest tremor, so faint I almost missed it. She might not see me as her real parent, but that didn't mean she wasn't terrified of losing anyone else. Bobby and I made the decision early on to be completely honest with her about my job and the risks that came with it.

  Our original timetable for hitting the Sons was long since tossed aside. A lot of it was built on taking volunteers from across the Union who already had the skills I needed and adding a few more before the enemy could dig in or run off. We knew they wouldn't come for us. They were smart enough to understand how much it would cost them, especially since the militia would swoop in as soon as we called for help. If Haven was attacked or destroyed, the rest of the Union would make sure to stomp out the Relentless Sons to a man.

  Instead they had surprised us by staying in place—which we wanted them to do—but also going dormant. Which wasn't ideal. The Sons worked by moving to an area and raiding, but never enough to destroy the host body they attached themselves to like a parasite. There were so many of them that few settlements could have hoped to do more than piss them off in a fight. Eventually they'd siphon off everything they could from the locals, and then raid one last time to stock up before moving on.

  They had access to supply lines for fuel, but not food. Eventually we'd figure out exactly how those supply lines worked. Staying put, the Sons caught us off guard. Our intelligence made it clear they were farming in earnest for the first time rather than the minimal efforts my agents had seen upon investigating their previous encampments. It was easy enough for them to stay where they were without pissing us off too much by raiding since their stronghold was an old food distribution hub for a big box store. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of tons of food in the place. More than enough to feed their small army for a good long while.

  Since they represented no immediate threat, the decision was made to wait and use whatever spare time we were given by their dormancy to build our own special unit up in strength and breadth of scope. And so the strike force doubled in size, its members grew ever more skilled, and Hannah got her 'scary dad' home for a lot longer than expected.

  “I don't know,” I said to her. It wasn't a lie, but the words also didn't convey the sense of impending action that made my fingers tingle for a weapon. “My last trip out got us some good information, so it could be soon if Will and the council decide the time is right.”

  Instead of replying, I felt a small hand touch the back of my head. Her skin was warm, her fingers gentle. I'd let my hair grow in a bit from the stubble I usually buzzed it down to, but it wasn't long enough to grab with more than fingertips.

  I couldn't tell if Hannah was trying to comfort herself or me.

  “I don't want you to go,” she said. “It's so dangerous.”

  Well, shit.

  Before Hannah, I wouldn't have given going into a war zone a second thought. With Special Activities, I'd been dropped from a plane at low altitude at night into enemy territory and armed with only a suppressed pistol in order to kill a target. Combat and danger always scared me, but in a low-grade way I didn't fuss about beforehand. Even being with Bobby hadn't changed that much. I could have died any of a thousand times over the years, but I never grew the weary heart about the danger in it some other operators did. Another adult will hurt if you die in the field. They'll mourn and the scars will fade even if they last. They'll intellectualize it.

  Kids can't do that. Not even ones who grew up in a world filled with as much death as ours.

  “I know you don't, sweetie,” I said, giving her ankle a squeeze. “I know you're worried you'll lose me, and I won't lie to you and say it's not possible because you know it is.” I carefully avoided mentioning her dead family. It wasn't like she was going to forget, but bringing them up in conversation always hurt her no matter the context. I hated those long periods of quiet after letting something slip by accident, both because I knew she always fought back tears during them and because my words were the source of her pain. “All I can say is that I have to do it. There are a lot of kids there who need our help.”

  “I know that,” Hannah said, a sharp edge in her child's voice. “I just don't know why you have to do it.”

  I considered my answer as I plodded along and ignored the growing ache in my shoulder from her weight. “It's because even before the plague, I was one of the best people in the world at this kind of thing. If we do our job right there won't be much fighting. That's what I'm good at: winning fights with as little blood as possible.” Okay, that was stretching the truth pretty hard, but since I couldn't just refuse to do the work, I had to make the explanation as palatable for her as possible without minimizing the risks. “I'm pretty good at not getting killed, in case you hadn't noticed.”

  Hannah ran her hand over the scars crisscrossing my scalp and made a frustrated noise in her throat.

  “Looks to me like you're real good at getting hurt.”

  Kids say the damnedest things. Sometimes their observations leave no room for argument. All I could do was wait for my orders and do what I do best.

  3

  It seemed counter-intuitive, but the majority of training we did in the strike force was not focused on fighting. Or rather not on the sort of individual skills you might imagine. The end of the world forged people into weapons all on its own, and though my small army was composed of volunteers, there were still standards each of them had to meet. No one who came here did so without the ability to take care of themselves with or without a weapon.

  Our focus was on a set of more rarefied skills. Everything from infiltration to small unit tactics to destabilizing infrastructure. I'm not so egotistical I'd pretend I was the authority on everything, or even most of, what we taught people. I learned a few things myself. The end game was to make the strike force a nightmare for an occupying group of nearly any size. The skills we honed did have to be tested, however.

  Which was why I found myself prone on the cold roof of an abandoned shopping mall on the outskirts of Louisville a few days later.

  “They're not coming,” Tabby said next to me. Both of us scanned the area for intruders, binoculars perched on the top of the wall that ran the entire perimeter of the roof about a foot higher than its flat surface.

  Though I knew it was just a simulation, I hated sitting exposed this way. A sharpshooter could climb any one of a thousand trees in the area and sight us easily. There were a few structures around where people could get an even better look, but 8 years of Mother Nature had done a job on them. The mall was alone in a sea of concrete and safe from encroaching flora for a while longer. The same could not be said for the surrounding buildings. Personally I'd have risked perching in a tree before trying to climb a building wholly overgrown with ivy other plants shredding its walls to pieces.

  “They're coming,” I said, watching a particular patch of land. “I mean, that's the whole point of this exercise. We're simulating the conditions we'll face against the Sons. Zombies included.”

  The area I kept my eyes on was proof of that—the number of zombies gathered there was impressive. Louisville had been overrun since the early
days. It was too big and populous, with too many land routes in and out to be anything but a magnet for the dead. There were fewer around than in years past, but that was relative. Tens of thousands in the city and surrounding areas at the very least, and about a hundred of them shambled around the edges of the mall parking lot.

  Considering how cold it was, so many zombies showing up was a minor miracle. Usually they hibernate in cold weather.

  Tabby made a soft sound in her throat a moment later. “Ah. I see. Clever of them.”

  Her eyes caught what most people would have missed: movement among the dead not quite in sync with the rest of the swarm. We hadn't expected any zombies in the area today, which was part of why we picked this time to run the exercise. The point was to get close enough to enter the building without being spotted in time for anyone to stop them, and using the dead as cover was a smart improvisation. Cover your scent well enough—and assuming there weren't any New Breed zombies intelligent enough to spot the difference—and you could shamble alongside them for a while. The team integrated with the swarm had to have captured one of the undead without being seen, killed and gutted it, then slathered themselves with its gore. All in just a few minutes and on the fly.

  “Too bad it didn't work,” Tabby said.

  I pulled my binoculars away from my face and glanced at her. “What do you mean?”

  She gestured toward the incoming horde with one hand. “We noticed them.”

  “Just barely,” I said. “And we're looking for them. The Sons will have given up the kind of vigilance you and I have up here. They've been waiting for the other shoe to drop for months. Unless one of them fucks up and gives themselves away, I'm calling it good and letting it play out.”