Season of Rot

1

Jeremy lay shirtless, sprawled out on the wood of his deck and looking up at the Carolina night sky. The breeze, a gentle cool circulating through the warm air, carried the smell of his freshly mowed lawn, and the portable stereo beside him belted out the chorus to Rush’s “Working Man.”

He glanced at the bright green display of his watch. Almost two o’clock in the morning. The witching hour was long gone, but he felt pumped up and wide awake. He leaned over and hit the skip button on the stereo. “Fly by Night” replaced “Working Man,” and he smiled.

His heart pounded in his chest. He couldn’t explain it, but for some reason he felt on edge, eager. He lay back down and listened to the music.

Astronomy was not normally one of his interests, but tonight the sky seemed different, the stars hotter and pulsing bright. It wasn’t something he could explain, just a feeling he couldn’t shake.

He reached into the darkness beside the stereo and lifted a mug of sweet tea to his lips, arching his back a bit as he sipped.

In that moment, the world changed. A piercing light danced like lightning across the summer sky, and everything seemed to go white.

Jeremy dropped his tea, cursing as the cool liquid splashed over his naked chest. The light grew brighter and he had to shield his eyes. At the same time, the alarm of his wristwatch went off and the stereo erupted into sparks. Geddy Lee’s voice shrieked upwards, almost deafening, the music growing louder and louder until it finally went silent. Beneath the deck, his car came to life. Its horn honked randomly as its headlights lit up and blew out, the shards clinking onto the gravel driveway like rain.

Jeremy screamed, and the light was gone. Spots lingered before his eyes, swirling purples and greens. His temples throbbed.

Fumbling blindly, he grasped the railing of the deck and pulled himself up. His vision cleared, but around him everything was black. The stars seemed to have vanished from the sky, and the lights in the neighborhood had blinked out, the houses on the distant hills invisible in the darkness. Even the normal specks of headlights moving along I-40 below the mountains were missing.

He stumbled across the deck to the sliding glass door of his bedroom and went inside, flipping on the light switch. Nothing happened. He flipped the switch twice more. No light.

Bumping his way from the bedroom to the kitchen, he managed to reach the island in front of the sink. He yanked open the top drawer and grabbed his plastic emergency flashlight. It didn’t work. He bashed the light atop the island and shook it, but it didn’t come on, so he tossed it.

He felt his way along the island to where the phone hung on the wall. As he guessed, it was dead. His cell was too.

An irrepressible fear began to grow within him. Sweat beaded on his sticky skin, mixing with the droplets of spilt tea. He stumbled back to the bedroom’s large walk-in closet and found the shelves. As he pulled down his hunting rifle, his knees gave way and he dropped to the carpet. “Jesus Almighty,” he whispered, “what the hell is going on?”

He shoved a bullet into the rifle’s breech and jerked the chamber closed. Pulling his knees to his chest, he sank back against the closet wall to wait for dawn, his knuckles white as he held the rifle.

2

Pittsburgh

“What the fuck is going on?” Howard asked as he pushed his way into the crowded control room of the reactor plant. It seemed as if the plant’s entire staff had gathered in the small space. There were no alarm klaxons, no red glow of emergency lights. Only a small fire burning in the metal trash can beside Gibbons’ console. The flickering light seemed alien and out of place in the heart of the plant.

A wave of pleads, questions, and fear slammed into Howard as he entered.

“Shut up!” he ordered. “Shut the fuck up!”

The cacophony in the room dampened but did not end.

“Gibbons,” Howard barked, pointing at the pimply-faced engineer. “What the hell is going on? Twenty words or less. Now!”

The young man’s eyes went wide with terror in the pale light. “Everything has gone down, sir. Backups, outside lines… everything. The core will breach, sir. Without the cooling units functioning, it’s just a matter of time.”

Howard’s mind raced. Backups? Everything? That was supposed to be impossible. This was his damn plant. Things like that didn’t—couldn’t—happen here.

“How long?” Howard asked.

“There’s no way to know, sir. Ten seconds, an hour. Your guess is as good as mine.”

Howard opened his mouth to yell at Gibbons, but a heat wave blasted him. His flesh melted and burned away as the reactor ruptured.

The meltdown was visible for miles around as the night lit up like an exploding star, and a mushroom cloud blossomed toward the heavens.

3

New York

The freeway had become a war zone. Amy lay against her steering wheel, wondering how she had survived.

Even at this late hour, the freeway was crammed with traffic. When the light had appeared, a light more blinding than the sun itself, everyone’s engine had died and stalled. Cars slammed into trucks, into each other. Vehicles hit the concrete sides of the freeway while some overturned on the median. Flames blazed in every direction, and explosions ripped through the night.

Some people bolted from their cars, ran from the freeway as if their lives depended on it, while others tried to help those trapped inside the wrecks.

Amy watched as the driver of an eighteen-wheeler jumped out of his cab and opened up on the crowd with some sort of rifle; another traveler shot him in the forehead, and he crumpled to the asphalt.

Amy sat in her seat, sobbing, too frightened to move. Irrationally, she wondered what her boss would say when she showed up late at the hospital. Her only injury was a scrape on her hand, sustained when she had rear-ended the silver Dodge Shadow in front of her and had reached out to brace herself.

She tried to turn on the car radio, but nothing happened. She tried again and again until the knob broke off in her hand. Finally her head sank to the steering wheel, and she started to mutter a prayer as people screamed into the night across the freeway.

4

Washington D.C.

President Clark sat at his desk, shuffling through the reports from NASA and other organizations about the energy wave that had struck the earth. Below them rested even more reports, these from the military and countless government and law enforcement agencies regarding the chaotic aftermath. Things did not look good for the human race.

Of course, things were even worse than what he was hearing. Ninety percent of all communications throughout the world had been lost, and even inside the city proper, news had been reduced to word of mouth. All forms of technology that required more than simple kinetic or combustion energy were essentially useless. The wave had seen to that. Even the backup systems and batteries were down, though already some were coming back online thanks to the available scientists and technicians.

The effects of the energy wave on technology appeared to be dissipating at an exponential rate, but it would still take weeks, perhaps months, for the world’s more advanced systems to be fully restored. Fortunately, a few of the heavily-shielded military bunkers—like the one beneath the White House—had survived most of the wave’s impact, otherwise the president’s knowledge of the outside world would have gone from limited to nonexistent.

General McMahan kept insisting that President Clark flee the city and head for a more secure bunker in another state, and in fact the general was hard at work preparing a makeshift convoy from the civilian and military vehicles that filled the bunker, as well as the White House’s garages and parking areas. Even though nuclear attacks by the former Soviet Union or any other nation were highly unlikely, judging from the state in which the wave had left the US’s own arsenal, he claimed the city was not safe.

The droves of frightened people who wandered to the gates of the White House, pleading for assistance and looking for hope, disturbed McMahan and put him on edge, but he was even more concerned about those who had been driven mad by the wave, by some kind of electro-biological aftereffect on the human mind. Clark had asked the scientists about the madness, but their answers were vague; they assured him it would only worsen, and that few, if any, would be immune to the wave’s lingering radiation.

So far, Clark had refused McMahan’s requests to leave. He hoped his presence would comfort those citizens who had retained their sanity, give them hope that steps were being taken to resolve this catastrophe. The weight of the country and the world lay heavily upon his shoulders, and he could only hope his best efforts would be enough to ensure the preservation of humanity.

He set the stacks of papers on his desk and buried his head in his arms. With his eyes closed, he said a silent prayer to God to have mercy on them all.

5

Jeremy awoke as the first rays of the morning sun crept over the mountains and sparkled through the glass doors of his bedroom. He stirred inside the open walk-in closet and rubbed his neck. It hurt like hell from the way he had slept against the closet wall.

Looking down at the rifle in his lap, he felt like a fool. His nerves had gotten the better of him last night, and he wondered what the heck he’d been thinking. He bet the power was already back on—but what had been that strange light in the sky? Had he dreamt the whole thing? His memories seemed unbelievable and more than a bit crazy.

As he walked into the bedroom, he placed the rifle on the bed and glanced at the digital alarm clock atop his dresser. Its display was blank and unlit. So much for the power being back on. So much for a hot shower.

Jeremy changed into a tattered Rush T-shirt and a pair of fresh underwear and jeans. In the kitchen, he snacked on a muffin from the pantry as he tried the phone again. No luck there either.

As he ate, he vaguely remembered something happening to his car during the strange light, and he decided to inspect the damage.

The drive in front of the car was filled with shards from the exploded headlights, and when he tried to start the engine, nothing happened, not even a sputter.

He punched the dashboard and sat there for a moment, wondering what he should do. Luke Thompson lived just up the road from him, his nearest neighbor and friend. The old man was inflicted with terrible health problems, mostly from his age, but his smoking and constant drinking didn’t help. He might need a hand. Besides, if his truck survived the light, he and Jeremy could head into town and find out what was going on. At the very worst, Jeremy was sure he would walk away with a smile and a free beer.

Luke lived only half a mile or so up the road, so Jeremy took his time, enjoying the green fields by the roadside. Summer was truly here, and even the weeds were vibrant and beautiful. He had moved down here a few years back and didn’t miss the big city in the least.

As he started up the small hill of Luke’s drive, he didn’t see the old man sitting on the porch of the tiny shack that passed for a house. It seemed Luke was always there, whittling and waiting for passers-by whom he could harass in his own good-natured way.

Jeremy picked up the pace, nearly broke into a run. As he reached the house, he yelled, “Luke! You in there? Luke?”

The front door was open like always, but the outer screen door was shut. Three weathered, cracked concrete steps led up to the door. Jeremy bolted up them. He swung the screen open and peeped inside.

The living room was a mess. Some things never changed. He grinned at the microwave dinner wrappers, empty beer bottles, and crumpled cigarette packs that intermingled with the piles of dirty clothes covering the couch and floor.

Jeremy stepped inside, seeing instantly that the old man’s power was off like his own. “Luke? You here?”

He picked up an open pack of smokes from beside an overflowing ashtray on the TV stand and helped himself to one. He hadn’t smoked since high school, but he figured now was as good a time as any to start again. Lighting up, he took a deep drag and coughed like a kid. He ground out the cigarette in the ashtray and headed toward the bedroom.

He prayed the old man hadn’t passed away during the night. He and Luke weren’t exactly close—Luke was too old-fashioned to let his feelings show with anyone—but Jeremy got on well with him. No one else could make you smile the way Luke could. Jeremy couldn’t have asked for a better neighbor.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jeremy glimpsed someone or something outside, moving around the house. Not long after, the back door creaked open and slammed shut.

“Luke?” Jeremy picked up the ashtray from the TV stand and weighed it in his hand. Not his weapon of choice, but better than nothing; he imagined it would hurt like hell to have it smashed into your nose.

He went to call out again, but suddenly Luke came tearing at him from the rear of the house. The old man didn’t make a sound, but his eyes were wide open, his face split into a snarl. He hurtled forward in a desperate rage, and Jeremy barely dodged him, dropping the ashtray in the process.

Luke crashed into the TV stand and went down onto his hands and knees. His muscles tensed, as if he were going to lunge to his feet and attack again, so Jeremy kicked him in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him and throwing him onto his back. Jeremy dropped on the old man, pinned his withered arms over his head. “Luke, please, it’s me! Jeremy!”

Luke raised his head and snapped his teeth like a mad dog, incredibly strong somehow. Jeremy, forced to let go, rolled away from the old man, but not quickly enough—fingernails raked a long gash in his arm beneath the sleeve of his Rush T-shirt. Jeremy gritted his teeth, and then Luke was on him again.

Before he even realized what he was doing, Jeremy snatched up the ashtray from the floor and brought it down on Luke’s skull, crunching bone. Luke went limp and fell over.

Feeling sick, his whole body shaking with adrenaline and disgust, Jeremy dropped the ashtray; blood and gray hair had stuck to the glass. There was no doubt that the old man was dead. His scalp was caved-in and bleeding.

Tears welled up in Jeremy’s eyes as he unconsciously rubbed the wound on his arm. He fell onto the couch and sat there, staring at the dead television set in a daze.

6

Hours later, Jeremy placed an empty beer bottle on the TV table. The beer had been warm but good. You could always count on old Luke to stock his fridge with the essentials.

Thinking of Luke caused Jeremy to lean over and vomit on the floor in front of the couch. It was the same place Luke’s body had lain not long ago, before Jeremy dragged him into the bedroom and covered him with a bed sheet. The image of blood soaking through the thin white cloth made Jeremy retch again.

He rocked back and forth on the couch, replaying everything in his mind. Luke hadn’t been himself. He had been more like an animal. Jeremy wondered if any part of the old Luke had been left inside. He doubted it, and he tried to convince himself that he’d done what he needed in order to survive. It had been kill or be killed, simple as that. But still, it didn’t feel that way.

He cursed himself for being so weak.

Whatever had happened the night before was worse than a simple power outage; he realized that now. The light hadn’t been just a dream. Something was terribly fucked up with the world—and he should have been doing something about it. The day was half gone and he still hadn’t tried Luke’s truck. By now he could have been in town, hunting for help and maybe finding out what had happened last night. Yet he sat there, stealing a dead friend’s beer. Because what if the folks in town were like Luke? What would he do?

He had no idea, but he did know he couldn’t stay here, and there seemed no point in going home. There was nothing there for him.

After a brief search, he found the keys to the truck hanging in the kitchen, but before he started towards town he needed to do one more thing.

Holding a dishcloth from a kitchen drawer, he walked to the bedroom and looked at the corpse snuggled inside the sheet. Inwardly, he said a final goodbye to the old man as he built up the courage to step around him and open the connecting door to the storage room. Half a dozen rifles hung on a rack on the far wall of the room, and a glass case below them contained Luke’s collection of handguns. Not all of them were real—some were just replicas—but they had been Luke’s only real passion in life, aside from sitting on his porch, drinking and smoking.

Jeremy wrapped his hand in the dishcloth and smashed open the locked case. He inspected each gun carefully until he found one that was both real and loaded. It was an old-style .38, which he tucked into the back of his pants before lowering a .30-06 from the rifle rack. Although he didn’t know where Luke kept the ammunition for the handguns, Jeremy knew where he stored the ammo for the rifles and he stopped to load the weapon and dump the leftovers into his pocket.

Outside, he slid into the cab of the ancient, beat-up vehicle and turned the ignition. The engine rolled over on the first try and roared to life.

Jeremy glanced at Luke’s house one last time, then left a cloud of dust in his wake as he sped off into the distance.

7

Amy pinched her arm so hard she bled. Wake up! she thought. Oh please, God—wake up! The last few hours were a blur of death and running, but apparently this wasn’t a dream because it persisted.

She sat in the back of a van with her legs curled up beneath her. Across from her sat a boy of no more than twelve; Jake or Jack or something like that—she couldn’t remember.

In the driver’s seat, a man named Dan drove, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. His black hair was streaked with gray, though otherwise he appeared to be in his late twenties or early thirties.

The van jolted as it hit something in the street. Amy hoped it was a pothole, nothing else.

Sitting next to Dan, the woman, Katherine, held a 12-gauge shotgun in her lap, watching Amy and the boy intently. No one spoke.

There had been another man with them earlier who had gone crazy. Without hesitation, Katherine had splattered his head all over the wall, and she’d made Dan stop so she could kick the body outside. Amy could still smell the blood, and she had no doubt whatsoever that Katherine would kill all of them in an instant if she had to.

All day, they had driven south through the city in search of a safe place to get help, in search of others who didn’t have what Dan called the “sickness.” The van was both a blessing and a curse. It gave them the means to outrun any problems they encountered, but it also drew problems to them: the sound of the engine attracted the crazies. Already Katherine and Dan had been forced to fight them off half a dozen times. The noise also attracted the unwanted attention of other survivors, the kind willing to kill for the working vehicle. Thank God they had met up with that type only once and had been able to flee without a real fight.

Amy didn’t really know where Dan was taking them. She hoped he knew. But after all she had suffered and seen, she wondered if there was such a thing as a safe place anymore.

Her stomach growled. There was food in abandoned establishments and stores throughout the city; the trouble lay in stopping to get it. They had learned that fact quickly and the hard way. The diseased were good at hiding and they seemed to be everywhere.

Amy fished around in her jacket pockets and retrieved half of a candy bar she’d looted the one time they had stopped earlier that day. The boy watched her hungrily but said nothing. She broke off a large chunk and offered it to him. He snatched it from her and sat back, chewing it and smacking his lips. Katherine watched but showed no signs of caring. She must be hungry too, Amy thought, but she doesn’t show it like we do.

“We’ll be there soon,” Dan muttered, more to himself than to his passengers. “We’ll get help. You’ll see. Everything will be fine.”

Amy hoped he was right. She knew that Dan was on the verge of a breakdown and wasn’t at all lucid, but nonetheless she hoped.

8

President Clark stood on the White House lawn. He could hear the howls of the poor souls outside the massive walls encircling the yard. General Wiggins’s soldiers lined the barrier, shooting any of the things that were smart enough to devise a way over.

Early last night, people had begun to flock to the walls, seeking entrance and refuge. They were all long dead or changed by now, no longer human at all by his definition. They were monsters, soulless automatons who wanted nothing more than to rip his throat open with their bare hands. He could no longer force himself to feel pity for these creatures, but he did mourn for the people they once were. They had been his people after all, his nation, and they had trusted him. This is where he had led them.

He had refused Wiggins’s pleas to leave the night before, hoping that his permanent post would give people hope and help calm the rioting and looting. At least in D.C. He’d been wrong—he saw that now. The city was dead, his presence pointless.

He wondered if he had waited too long to take Wiggins’s advice. The White House walls were surrounded by the creatures, six or seven rows deep, pushing and clawing to get inside. Hundreds had been crushed in the stampede, too many to count. It was as if all of Washington was out there.

Some of Wiggins’s men were working around the clock to convert the vehicles inside the interior parking area into an armored motorcade, a convoy capable of piercing the ranks outside the wall.

Def-con installation IV was where Wiggins intended to head. Originally built to provide shelter from a nuclear holocaust, it was the closest functioning base, set deep in the mountains of North Carolina. Perhaps there they could find the answers to this mess and end the nightmare. With luck, they could build a new start for the world.

Clark jumped as a firm hand grasped his shoulder from behind.

“Everything is ready, sir,” said General Wiggins. “We’re just waiting for you.”

Clark nodded absently. “What the hell are we going to do, General?”

“Survive, Mr. President. My job is to get you out of here to Def-Con IV, and I’m going to do it.”

Wiggins led Clark to where the convoy had assembled just inside the southern gate. Five cars and two trucks comprised the fleet, civilian but covered in makeshift armor. Three of the cars no longer had roofs. They had been cut off to accommodate large .50 caliber emplacements, the kind normally mounted on the rear of army jeeps equipped for field duty. Bulky wedges of steel, shaped like battering rams, were welded onto the grilles of both trucks. The whole convoy looked like something out of that Mel Gibson flick about desert dwellers fighting for gas after the collapse of society. Clark didn’t know whether to break into tears or roll on the grass laughing.

“You ready, sir?” Wiggins asked, escorting the president to the second truck in the line. “It could get a bit hairy out there.”

“I am as ready as I will ever be, General.”

“Then let’s get the show on the road,” Wiggins said, laughing. He opened the door for the president, then walked off toward the lead truck.

As Clark watched him go, he couldn’t help but think of the people they were leaving behind: Dr. Buchanan, most of the civilian staff. The convoy could only hold so many people, and Wiggins had allotted most of the space to military and security personnel. Clark gritted his teeth; Wiggins had no right to jeopardize so many lives just to protect him, but to the general and his soldiers, it was their duty. The United States lived on as long as the president was alive, and in a way Clark was forced to admit they were right.

Besides, he almost thought Dr. Buchanan preferred being left behind. The scientist had claimed the energy field trapped in Earth’s atmosphere was changing. Apparently, the aspects of the energy that had crippled mankind’s technology would soon pass—”Two to four days, tops,” Buchanan had said—but that was the only ray of hope; the energy field showed no other signs of decay. Buchanan surmised that the energy was permanent, or close enough not to matter.

And worse, his most recent data showed that only eight percent of the world population was immune to the biological effects of the field. When Clark asked why most of the White House staff was as of yet unaffected, Buchanan answered that some humans possessed a greater tolerance than others and that the bulk of the White House personnel had been sheltered inside during the wave. He guessed they would be normal until they were outside long enough to absorb the same amount of radiation as those who’d been openly exposed to the light. That was why he seldom came out of the underground bunker; that was why he wanted to stay behind. The good doctor didn’t want to find out whether or not he was immune. He just wanted to stay sane for as long as he possibly could.

A contingent of Wiggins’s men still guarded the fences, and Clark watched from inside the second truck of the convoy as they opened fire into the creatures outside the southern gate. The things dropped in waves, but others moved up to take their place. The guards were sure to run out of ammo before the city ran out of creatures, but Wiggins would’ve known this and would have planned for it. Surely enough, within seconds Clark heard the thumping sound of grenade launchers being fired from the lawn. Explosions sounded outside the gate, and the lead truck shot forward, crashing its way into the mob. It plowed through the creatures, crunching some under its wheels and bouncing others off its armored plating.

Then the whole convoy was moving outside the gates. The M-60s mounted in the open cars blazed, and small-arms fire crackled over the howling creatures. Clark’s truck bounced as the driver turned out of the yard too quickly, hitting the curb as he swung around to follow the other vehicles.

Inside the cab of the lead truck, Wiggins smiled. Everything was going as planned. The convoy cleared the horde, and the open road lay before them.

“Sir, what’s that?” his driver asked.

Wiggins squinted. A lone creature had walked out of a building and was crouching in the road ahead as if waiting for them.

The damn thing had a rocket launcher held firmly against its shoulder.

“Oh shit!” Wiggins screamed, reaching over to claw at the wheel, the driver too stunned to react in time.

Light flashed from the launcher’s barrel and the rocket streaked into the cab where Wiggins sat.

Clark heard the explosion as he watched the lead truck erupt into a ball of fire. Adrenaline surged through his body, and his knuckles went white from his grip on the armrest.

The car immediately behind Wiggins’s truck crashed into the flaming wreckage so fast it overturned. Like a chain of falling dominoes, the convoy grinded to a halt. The creatures behind them were catching up, and more poured out of the side streets and alleys. They were everywhere.

One soldier manning a M-60 in the car behind Clark was torn in half as a dozen psychos attempted to pull him from the vehicle. His intestines left a trail of red on the car’s paint as the upper part of his torso disappeared into the angry horde.

“Mr. President!” the soldier beside him shouted as a grotesque, drooling face pressed against Clark’s window.

“Jesus!” Clark threw his arm against the inside of the glass to lend it extra support, hoping it would hold. “Take us back! Take us back now!”

The driver threw the truck into reverse and gunned the engine, backing straight into the brick wall of an apartment building. Clark was thrown forward from the impact, and his window shattered. Hands pulled him through the small opening into the street, dirty, bloody hands with jagged fingernails. He swam in a sea of biting teeth as his flesh was ripped and shredded, and in the distance black smoke rose from behind the White House’s open gates.

9

As Jeremy drove through the streets of Canton, he stared in shock at the mayhem around him. The whole town looked as if a war had been fought there. The Pigeon Center Market was a mess, its doors broken open, glass shards glittering everywhere. Other places were burnt to black rubble. Here and there cars were stranded in the road, some wrecked, others abandoned, their doors left open from when their occupants had fled. Some of them, unfortunately, hadn’t fled far.

There weren’t many of them—Jeremy could go for minutes at a time without spotting one—but when he did, he always looked away. The bodies were horribly mutilated, torn or hacked to pieces. Some even appeared as if they were partially eaten by a pack of animals.

Jeremy had seen only three survivors since he’d driven into town. Two of those had been crazy like old Luke, and he’d avoided them as best he could. The third, he thought, may have been normal, but as Jeremy’s truck approached, the man ran into the depths of the paper mill. Jeremy got out and called after him, but didn’t dare go into the dark, winding corridors alone, even with the rifle and handgun.

The Ford’s radio was broken, and everywhere Jeremy went, the power remained off. He knew little more than he had back at Luke’s.

On the edge of town, he pulled the truck to a stop at the Exxon station and killed the engine. The sun was setting, and long shadows stretched across the pavement from the pumps. He climbed out of the Ford, leaving the .30-.06 in the seat, but he pulled out the .38 and didn’t bother to conceal it. He knew better than to try the pumps themselves, so he walked towards the station.

The place was eerily silent. Like at the Center Pigeon Market, the doors were shattered, and Jeremy’s boots crunched on glass as he entered. The smell of rotten meat made him gag.

In front of the first aisle, the cashier lay on the floor with a gaping hole in her chest; it looked as if someone had shot her point-blank with a shotgun. Urine, tinted red, pooled around her corpse, and the summer insects buzzed about her, laying their eggs in her gray flesh.

Jeremy covered his mouth as he moved deeper inside the station. Displays were overturned; coolers were left open or shattered, the aisles ransacked, and about the only thing left untouched was the cash register. Money had become just green paper again, useless. From what he’d seen in town so far, people took what they wanted or died trying.

Jeremy searched the store and loaded a bag with everything useful he could find: a jar of peanut butter, a lighter, a few warm beers and some bottled water, a crushed loaf of bread. There wasn’t much left in the store, and it took a lot of effort to find even those few things. He also managed to find the store’s first-aid kit, buried under a pile of junk behind the main checkout counter. All in all, he considered himself very blessed.

He unloaded his treasure into the truck and went back to the storage shed behind the station. He shot the lock off the door and took a jug and a siphon cable from inside. Maybe he couldn’t get gas from the pumps, but there were more than enough vehicles waiting out there; it wouldn’t be a problem.

As he returned to the truck this time, he saw them coming down the road: five men and three women in tattered clothing. Their eyes seemed to glow yellow in the fading sunlight.

Jeremy threw the siphon and jug into the truck’s bed and leapt inside the cab. As he locked his door and cranked the engine, the people broke into a run. He floored the gas pedal and squealed out of the parking lot without looking back. He drove for over ten miles before he stopped to get gas from a Buick, which lay stuck in a ditch by the roadside.

As he waited for the jug to fill with gas, he wondered where he would go. If Canton was like this, he couldn’t imagine what Sylva must be like, much less Asheville. He thought hard about where he might be able to find help. Where the hell was a close enough place that might still be normal? He slumped against the side of the Buick in defeat, watching the road and tree line for any sign of movement.

It popped into his head then like a bomb going off. All his life in Canton, he heard stories about a military base up in the mountains. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember what it was called. Hell, he didn’t even know if it was real, but he knew roughly where it was supposed to be, and if anyone could get through this mess okay it would be the army.

He snatched up the jug and yanked the siphon cable free of the Buick as he ran for the truck.

10

New York was a distant memory, something from a previous lifetime. Amy shook her head to clear her thoughts. In her sweaty palms, she clutched a M-16 rifle she had stolen from a long-dead looter; she and Katherine were hiding behind a stack of crates on the dock.

Dan, God rest his soul, had driven them through the worst of it before he’d finally flipped out; Katherine had put a bullet in his skull. The boy, Jake, had died too. Apparently he suffered from some kind of asthma, and without his meds neither Amy nor Katherine had been able to help him. But all of that was the past now, clouded and murky like a fading dream.

Right this second, they had other things to worry about. Amy glanced over at Katherine, crouched several feet away. There was no question of who was the leader. Katherine, Amy had discovered, was an ex-cop, and she was good at what she did.

On the other side of the docks, a pack of human-creatures milled about, sniffing the air, occasionally turning on each other even as they stalked their prey.

Coming to the docks had been Katherine’s idea. They’d noticed them from the interstate, and she had suggested they could find a boat and set out to sea, maybe find an uninhabited island and start over, just the two of them. Even with their limited supplies, it sounded like a great idea. Traveling by sea was much safer than any road on the mainland. Out there, the creatures could never reach them.

Of course neither of them had planned on running into a pack of the creatures. Their new hope had blinded them, had made them careless, and now they were trapped, cut off from both the van and the boats.

She and Katherine would have just killed them—they were both well armed with gear they’d found or lucked into along the way—but the pack was over two dozen strong and this was their hunting grounds. Lord only knew how many still lurked in the buildings. Hiding from them had become the only option, and even that had made things worse, giving time for more creatures to show up as the women waited for the first ones to wander off.

Amy could see the strain on Katherine’s face. She couldn’t recall when either of them had last slept. Sweat glistened on Katherine’s tanned skin, and her glance said that this was it, the end for both of them. All that remained was deciding how they would die: either hide here and pray, or go out fighting to reach the van. Amy already knew what Katherine would choose, even as the ex-cop stood up with her shotgun and blew a hole in the nearest creature’s chest.

Amy wanted to leap to her feet and help her friend, but she refused to believe that all their suffering had been for nothing. Deep down she wanted to live, and she was forced to admit that Katherine’s pointless exit strategy was just macho bullshit.

Amy, still hidden behind the crates, watched the creatures charge toward them as Katherine pumped a round into her weapon and shot another psycho in its stomach, loosing its intestines onto the dock. Despite her bulging muscles, Katherine appeared helpless in the face of the horde closing in around her.

With tears in her eyes, Amy turned away as the things reached Katherine and tore at her with their nails and teeth. She tried to block out the screams for help as she crept towards the edge of the docks and eased herself into the water below.

Amy let the currents carry her into the dark beneath the planks, hoping the things would be too occupied with Katherine to search for anyone else. As far as she knew, they had not seen her.

Katherine fell silent, and Amy began to weep.

Hours later, when the sun had set and the docks had grown still, Amy hauled herself out of the water. None of the creatures had stuck around. Even Katherine’s body was gone, leaving only smears of blood where she’d fallen.

Dripping wet and wrinkled from the water, Amy stumbled to the van, her muscles aching from hours of keeping her afloat. She carefully checked the vehicle to make sure nothing was waiting inside, then slid into the driver’s seat. She clawed the extra set of keys out of the glove box and shoved them into the ignition. The moment the engine roared to life she knew the creatures would come pouring out.

She turned the key, and her heart froze as the van sputtered loudly without catching.

Amy tried again as she noticed movement on the docks and in the shadows of the buildings; the night came alive with the sound of hungry howls.

This time the engine turned over and she peeled out towards the main road, laughing hysterically as the van lurched over a speed bump, onto the interstate.

Despite the wreckage and abandoned cars littering the roadway, Amy found her foot getting heavier and heavier on the accelerator. Adrenaline rushed through her exhausted body as she swerved this way and that, dodging obstacles. She felt free, as if she were losing her mind, and it was okay. It would have been so easy to just keep going faster and faster until her reflexes couldn’t keep up and she died in a fiery crash. It would be a better death than being ripped apart like Katherine.

Amy reached to click on the radio, knowing she would only find static across the dial, but something flickered in the rearview mirror and caught her eye. The van almost collided with what was left of an overturned eighteen wheeler as she jerked upright in her seat.

Slowing down, Amy studied the police car that had come up an exit ramp behind her to give chase.

“What the hell?” She knew it wasn’t possible. Everyone in the world was either crazy from the effects of the wave, dead, or on the run like she was. Yet seeing the car’s flashing lights brought back feelings of hope. Maybe her flight was over and the officers would look out for her and take her somewhere safe. Maybe somehow in this city people had survived and organized.

She brought the van to a stop as the police car pulled up beside her. Amy was in the process of rolling down her window as she glanced into the car. A man in a tattered uniform with yellow-tinted eyes stuck a .38 out his window and aimed for her head.

“Oh God!” Amy snapped around to the steering wheel and rammed the gas pedal to the floor. The officer’s shot slammed into the van’s side just behind her door.

“Oh God, oh God, they’re not supposed to be able to drive!”

In the rearview, she saw the thing’s partner trying to lean out the passenger-side window to shoot at her.

He’s going to blow out my tires, Amy thought. There was no way she could outrun them, not in this van, not with the roads the way they were. But the creatures could die—they were just people driven crazy by the wave—so she did the only thing she could think of.

Making sure her seatbelt was fastened, she hit the brakes. Tires squealed as the van came to a halt—and the police car smashed into its rear.

Despite her seatbelt, Amy was thrown forward. Her forehead struck the steering wheel and her world faded to black.

She came to with a start. Something wet trickled down her face. Amy wiped at it and her hand came away covered in a warm, wet red. Her head was pounding, but otherwise she seemed okay. She reached over and dug a .45 from the glove box and unsnapped her seatbelt. When she opened the door, she sprawled out onto the road, unable to keep her balance.

The police car was still there, a mass of broken metal wedged into the van’s rear. The driver was clearly dead; pieces of windshield glass jutted from his face, and his head dangled at an unnatural angle.

Amy pulled herself to her feet and stumbled closer, holding the pistol ready. When she got close enough to see inside the car, she noticed the other officer’s bottom half resting in the blood-soaked passenger seat. The top half of his body was nowhere to be seen.

She slumped to the ground beside the car. It was only a matter of time until more of the creatures came out of the night around her, but both the van and the car were totaled. She needed a plan. She couldn’t just sit there and wait to die, regardless of how much she hurt or how tired she was. Her eyes were heavy with sleep and it fought to wrap her in its embrace. She shook herself awake, and her head throbbed from a fresh burst of pain. Her only chance was to find a working car with the keys still inside.

She got to her feet once more and walked down the interstate to start her search.

11

Geoff lay back against the tree trunk, perched high above the ground on a narrow branch, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. He massaged the corners of his tired eyes with his finger, then blinked several times to clear his vision.

Below him, a kid moved slowly up the mountain trail. Normally Geoff would have radioed the base to let them know and to get orders on what to do. Fuck that: normally he wouldn’t have been out here, risking his life to do the job of the base’s malfunctioned external sensors.

He hoisted his rifle to his shoulder and peered through its scope. The kid was in his later twenties and was dressed like a punk in ratty jeans and a T-shirt of some stupid rock band. Geoff could have dropped him right then and there, problem solved, but something kept his finger away from the trigger.

The last few days hadn’t been a cakewalk, even for him. He wondered how the punk had managed to survive, much less come so close to finding the base. Maybe Geoff had seen enough death over the last few days, or maybe he was just getting old; either way, the kid got to keep breathing.

He carefully took the cigarette from his lips and slipped it back inside the pack, then stuffed the whole thing into his jacket pocket. “Ah… shit,” he whispered to himself and started down the tree.

The birds were singing in the forest and the sky above was a bright blue filled with sunlight. The world went on as normal, oblivious to the hell mankind was going through. Geoff found that funny.

He reached the bottom of the tree and vanished into the woods without a trace.

Jeremy paused on his way up the trail. He shrugged off his backpack and opened it, hunting for the map he’d picked up from the remains of a local tourist trap. He knew the base wouldn’t be on the map, even if it did exist, but he wanted to check the other landmarks to make sure he was still headed in what he believed to be the right direction.

He didn’t hear his stalker step onto the path behind him until an arm snaked about his neck.

Jeremy choked and fought against his attacker’s grip until he heard the gun cock beside his ear.

“Stop it, kid, if you want to live to see the sun set.”

Jeremy stopped squirming. “Look, mister—”

“Shut up, kid.” The man released his hold and shoved him forward. Jeremy whirled around and almost broke into a smile when he saw the man’s green camouflage uniform.

“I’d tell you to go home,” the man continued, “but I guess none of us really have one anymore…”

The man, Geoff, was in his later fifties, and gray hair covered his head. His eyes were bloodshot and it looked as if he hadn’t shaved in days.

With cat-like grace, he scooped up Jeremy’s backpack and slipped it onto his own shoulder. Muscles rippled and bulged beneath his uniform. “So I suppose I’ll have to take you back with me.”

“To the base?”

“To what’s left of it, kid.”

As they made their way together through the woods, Geoff told Jeremy what he knew about the wave and about what had happened at the base, which he referred to as Def-Con IV.

Apparently, the energy had been some kind of shockwave from somewhere far beyond the space known to mankind, perhaps from some interstellar war, or from an alien species’ failed experiments with dark matter. It didn’t really matter where it came from.

The light was merely a side effect of the energy reacting with Earth’s atmosphere. A portion of the wave’s main body had been trapped in greenhouse gasses, and like a super and perpetual EMP on a global scale, the wave and its lingering remnants caused technological failures throughout the world, dampened or disrupted to the point of uselessness. Only basic things worked now; things like electricity and nuclear energy were out of the question until the field dispersed, which it was continuing to do a bit more every day.

The alien energy field also produced a type of ambient radiation, which scientists believed would still be there in a thousand years unless they found a way to deal with it. This radiation was what caused the rampant “plague” of madness across the globe. It broke down the neural pathways of the human mind to their most basic core, leaving human shells full of only instinct and violence, unless you were immune, and very few people in the world were.

At first, Def-Con IV retained contact with a handful of similar bases here in the United States and in the United Kingdom—for the first day they had even been in touch with the president and the White House—but they’d slowly lost contact with those bases one by one as the radiation plague and other problems took their toll. For all Geoff knew, Def-Con IV could very well be the last holdout of humanity in the world.

During the first few hours of the chaos when the wave had reached the earth, the base had opened its doors to the locals who had come seeking shelter. Very quickly, the staff of the base learned firsthand of the secondary biological effects of the wave as those same locals succumbed to the radiation.

A mini-war broke out inside the compound. It was a hard fight, but in the end Def-Con IV’s staff prevailed. Only Geoff and a handful of staff survived. Two were badly injured: one in a coma, the other in a wheelchair but healing. Geoff informed Jeremy that if he had come looking for salvation and hope, he’d came to the wrong place.

They went through the high barbed wire fence that surrounded the Def-Con complex, and Jeremy got his first good look at the site. Before the wave, it had disguised itself as an agriculture research facility. Inside the fence, there were only three buildings, two of them the size of toolsheds, but the third was fairly large and very much civilian in nature. Blooming gardens stretched beyond the buildings with flowers planted around their edges, and the rear fence was far beyond eyeshot.

“Pretty amazing, isn’t it?” Geoff asked.

“What?” Jeremy asked, as if snapping out of a dream.

“That the gardens survived,” Geoff explained. “Like I said, when the wave first hit, people were flooding up here in droves based on rumors and desperate hopes. Of course, all they really cared about was finding the base and getting inside. I don’t think many of them headed out into the fields. Most of them poured straight into the garage.” Geoff pointed at the larger building. “I guess they thought it had to be the base since it’s the only real building up here. It’s in pretty bad shape now. Most of the vehicles were stolen or damaged by the mob when we stopped letting people into the real base below.”

“How do you get inside?”

Geoff laughed and led him towards the more battered of the two sheds. Its door was new and a sharp contrast to the aged and beaten wood around it. “I had a hell of a time fixing this back,” Geoff said as he opened the door, barely concealing his pride. “Carpentry’s a lot harder than killing people, kid.”

The shed itself was completely empty except for a large metal plate in the middle of its unfinished floor. Geoff squatted and ran his fingertips across the hatch until his fingers felt a crease, the edge of a small lid that popped open to reveal a numerical keypad. He typed in an eight-digit code as Jeremy watched. Somewhere below the floor, a motor came to life and the plate rose up like a tilted manhole cover. Geoff motioned to the hole. “After you.”

Jeremy slid down into a metal tunnel just wide enough and tall enough for two people (no more than six feet in height) to walk comfortably side by side. When they reached the large vault-like doorway at the end, Geoff typed a code into another keypad on the wall, and the door dilated from its center. Beyond lay another series of corridors.

“Welcome to your new home, kid. You can call me Geoff. I don’t think I caught your name.”

“It’s Jeremy, Jeremy Davis.”

Geoff grinned. “You live around here, Jeremy Davis?”

“Not really… Well, I guess I kind of did.”

Geoff shrugged. “Didn’t we all. Well, I guess it’s time you met your new family.”

The soldier led Jeremy deeper into the base.

12

Nathanial Richards punched a button on the control panel in front of him and watched as the test ran again. On the gigantic screen across the room, an image of a translucent wave struck the earth once more.

Troy, sitting nearby, reclined and propped his feet up on a dark, malfunctioned console. He had no idea what Nathanial’s simulation meant, but from the way Dr. Sheena Leigh frowned in her wheelchair, and judging by the grim look on Nathanial’s face, Troy could tell it was nothing good.

The wave shattered as it struck the earth, slowing from the speed of light to a dead crawl in space as its fragments dispersed, each taking a different trajectory. Then the screen went black.

“Run it again,” Sheena ordered, leaning forward in her wheelchair.

Nathanial shook his head. “We’ve run it over three dozen times today alone, Sheena. There’s just no way to know where the pieces are headed. Maybe if we waited until the wave’s aftereffects dissipated in the atmosphere a bit more, we could link up to one of the satellites. Surely at least one of them had to survive. We could—”

“I said run it again,” she interrupted.

Nathanial got up from his seat as Geoff and Jeremy entered the room. He didn’t notice them, too focused on Sheena. “You run it again! I’m through for today. Until we get more data, we’re just wasting our time.”

“Ahem.” Troy cleared his throat and pointed over Nathanial’s shoulder at the newcomers.

Nathanial turned to face them, his features red with frustration. “Who the hell are you?”

“His name is Jeremy,” Geoff responded with an edge to his tone. “He’s not infected by the radiation, so you might as well just go ahead and welcome him aboard.”

“I hope to God he knows something about astrophysics and computers because I fuckin’ quit!” Nathanial stormed out of the room through an opposite entryway.

“That’s Nathanial,” Geoff informed Jeremy. “You get used to him. That guy over there slacking off is Troy. He’s military like me.”

Sheena rolled her chair up to them, and it was clear from the way her arms strained that she was not yet accustomed to her disability. “Do you, Jeremy? Do you know computers?”

He stared at her. Even wheelchair-bound, this tiny woman with flakes of gray in her black, pinned-up hair seemed tougher than Geoff. She met his stare, her eyes unwavering through her thick glasses. “Well?” she urged.

“Um… no, ma’am, I don’t.”

“What did you do before…?” she let her sentence trail off.

“I was an artist.”

Sheena cackled. “You sure know how to pick them, Geoff. What use is he going to be? And more importantly, who’s going to give up their share of the food to feed him?”

Troy hopped to his feet and moved between the doctor and Jeremy, sticking out his hand. “Glad to have you along for the ride. I promise not all of us are as crazy as we seem.”

Jeremy took Troy’s hand and shook it firmly.

“Bring him to the lab later,” Sheena ordered. “We need to make sure he’s clean.”

Troy winked at Jeremy. “Gotta go. Duty calls.” Then he grabbed the handles on the back of the doctor’s chair and rolled her out of the room.

“Who was that?” Jeremy asked as the pair disappeared down a corridor.

“That’s our doctor and science whiz, Sheena. She was in charge here before things went to shit. She still thinks she is, most of the time.”

A pale man, dressed in black and only slightly older than Jeremy, wandered into the control room. He wore thin, sleek glasses and carried himself with a flare of style. He stopped in his tracks when he noticed the two of them.

“Oh God,” Geoff muttered, “not Ian.”

“Good afternoon, Geoff,” the man said with a soft British accent and a smile. “And who might this be accompanying you today?” He didn’t wait long enough for a response, jumping back in as if hoping to interrupt any reply. “You don’t actually have to answer that. I couldn’t help but overhear your encounter with our resident witch doctor. She’s rather narrow-minded these days, obsessed with death you might say.”

“Death?” Jeremy asked.

Ian nodded, waving his hand effeminately as if dismissing Jeremy’s concern. “You’ve heard about the wave, I’m sure. It broke apart when it hit the earth, you see, and our good doctor is worried that a piece of it will hit the sun. If it did, it could disrupt the fusion reactions inside the star like it did the energy sources here; it would start a chain reaction and act as a booster as well, causing even our tiny sun to become a supernova. The sun would simply explode. It would be the end of our solar system. Of course, given our limited resources at the moment, it’s impossible to know where the fragments of the wave are headed.”

Jeremy blinked, stunned to silence. Ian laid a hand on his shoulder. “Carpe diem, young man. Don’t worry about the future, only be concerned with the time you have now.”

“What brings you out of your private coffin, Ian?” Geoff asked.

“Coffee, my good man, Coffee. I was just on my way to the mess to brew a pot while we still have some left. Would you two care to join me?”

“I think we’ll pass,” Geoff said without giving Jeremy a chance to respond.

“Have it your way then.” Cheerfully, Ian continued along on his quest.

“Come on, kid.” Geoff literally pulled Jeremy out of the control room. “Let me show you to your bunk.”

They rode a nearby lift down to the military living quarters, a row of twenty-four rooms lining a long corridor. According to Geoff, only three of the base’s survivors lived down here: himself, Troy and the repair tech Wade. Nathanial, Dr. Sheena Leigh (when she could be pried away from her projects), and the base’s communications officer, a woman named Toni, stayed on another level in the civilian section, whereas Ian made his home in makeshift quarters he’d set up inside the armory, despite all the available space. Ian had been the CIA liaison and was, in Geoff’s opinion, the only complete psychopath left in the complex. There was also a woman named Lex, who was in a coma, Geoff explained. She was kept in the medical labs so Sheena could keep a close eye on her; they weren’t sure whether she would wake up normal or be affected by the wave.

For the time being, Geoff assured him, Jeremy could stay with the “normal” people in the military quarters. The room he gave Jeremy was rather Spartan. It contained only a bunk, a small bathroom, and a single table supporting a computer tied into the mainframe.

“It’s not much,” Geoff said, “But it’s a hell of a lot safer than living out there with those things.”

A memory of Luke’s deranged, hungry face flashed through Jeremy’s mind and he shuddered.

“The creatures don’t come around here much. It’s rather secluded and very few people knew there was even anything up here in the mountains. We do get a few wanders now and again. Nothing we can’t deal with so far. Besides, even if the things flocked up here in droves, there’s no way they could get inside the complex proper.”

Jeremy nodded as he shrugged off his backpack and placed it on the bunk.

Geoff headed for the door. “You look like you could use some rest, so I’ll leave you to it. We’ll worry about finding you a job tomorrow. Everybody here contributes somehow for the good of us all—except maybe Ian. We have to work together if we want to stay alive.”

As the door slid closed behind Geoff, Jeremy slumped into the chair at the table and rested his head in his hands. It was true: he felt safer here than he had in days, and it was good to see people again, no matter who they were, but he still wondered if coming here had been the right thing to do.

Jeremy awoke to someone pounding on his door. He rubbed his eyes and climbed out of the bunk as a short, hideously muscled man entered the room. The man’s bald head gleamed from the light shining through the open doorway behind him.

“Time to go, new boy. We’ve got work to do.”

“Who… who are you?”

“Name’s Wade. I keep things working around here, but today I’m going into town and you’re going with me.”

“What? I just got here. Why me?”

“You’re not that dense are you?” Wade walked over and rapped his knuckles on Jeremy’s skull. “Hello in there.”

Jeremy backed away, and Wade glared at him.

“None of us other than Geoff have really left the complex since the wave. Hell, you lived through the shit out there. I need a guide, Jerm, and you’re it.”

“But I don’t know anything you don’t,” Jeremy argued.

“Daylight’s burning, new boy. Get your shit together or get out.”

Jeremy had slept in his pants, so he pulled on his Rush T-shirt and reached for his .38.

Wade saw him. “Leave that piece of crap. Here.” He shoved a .45 automatic into Jeremy’s hand. “We’ll stop and get you a real weapon on the way out too.”

Minutes later, Jeremy sat inside the garage with Troy, Geoff, and Wade. He held an Uzi in his trembling hands and watched as Wade worked underneath the hood of a military issue jeep that had seen better days.

Troy held an M-16 and took continuous drags off a cigarette. “I still don’t understand why you have to do this, Wade,” he commented between puffs.

“You want to keep breathing?” Wade shot back, his voice muffled by the hood. “If I don’t get the parts to fix the ventilation systems from where you idiots shot it up, we’re all going to be headed out of here, and I sure ain’t trustin’ you to bring back the right gear.”

Troy chuffed. “Next time a bunch of flesh-eating crazies get loose in the base, Wade, maybe you should have a talk with ‘em, huh? Tell them not to get near anything important as we blow their freakin’ brains out.”

Wade popped his head out from under the hood. “Fuck you. You think I want to go out there into Hell?”

“Look, Wade.” Geoff moved closer to the jeep. “Troy and I could do it. Just tell us what you need. You don’t have to go.”

“Yes, I do,” Wade said. “Jeremy here’ll be all the help I need; besides, the boy has to contribute somehow. Why not this way?”

Geoff raised his hands in surrender.

Wade tossed Jeremy the keys to the jeep. “Get in and crank her up.”

Jeremy did as he was told, and the jeep’s engine roared to life on the first try. Troy tossed aside his smoke and went to push open the building’s main door.

“Catch you later, guys,” Wade said. “We got some shopping to do.” Then he motioned for Jeremy to get on with it, and they drove out of the complex and down the gravel road towards Canton.

“So just how bad is it out there, really?” Wade asked.

Jeremy glanced over at the burly little man. “Everyone I saw on my way here was dead, crazy, or both. The power’s off everywhere.”

“No shit, Sherlock. I knew that.” Wade turned his gaze to the roadside for a moment, as if collecting his thoughts, then looked back at Jeremy. “There used to be one of those large chain hardware and electronics stores just on the other side of town. Did you see it on your way up here?”

“No. But I know where you’re talking about.”

“You think we can get in and out of it without getting our asses chewed off?”

“I don’t know. Those creatures… some of them are pretty fast. If they’re inside the store…”

Wade picked up the twelve-gauge shotgun from the seat between them and pumped a round into the chamber. “Shit,” he said, “just another day in paradise, huh, Jerm?”

On their way through town, Jeremy had to floor it twice as the creatures poured out of the ruins of buildings and shops, attracted by the sound of the passing jeep, but he and Wade managed to get by without any real close calls.

When they pulled into the large parking lot of the hardware store, only two creatures were milling about. Jeremy parked the jeep directly in front of the store’s Plexiglas entrance and grabbed his Uzi. He started to open fire on the creatures, but Wade smacked his weapon down.

“Don’t do it. You saw how the ones in town reacted to the jeep. The noise will just bring more of them.” He pulled a pistol out of the jury-rigged holster on his tool belt and screwed a silencer onto its barrel. As the creatures came snarling towards them, Wade dropped each one with a single shot to the skull. “Geoff taught me a few things,” he explained, tucking away the gun.

Together they shoved open the store’s heavy doors and stepped into the dark interior. “I’ll just be a minute,” Wade said, reaching for a buggy. “You stay here. Only shoot the fuckers if they get too close and you have to, okay?” Wade cocked his head to the right. “And keep the damn jeep running,” he added as he went inside.

About seven or eight of the creatures now occupied the lot, but they hung back, almost as if they were waiting for something. It was really creeping Jeremy out.

Finally Wade returned with a buggy full of circuit boards he must have ripped out of PCs; Jeremy couldn’t even begin to guess what the other odds and ends were for.

Wade tossed everything into the back of the jeep and hopped in. “Let’s get the hell out of here before they decide they’re hungry.”

“No argument here,” Jeremy said, switching the jeep into drive. He peeled out and tried to steer clear of the creatures.

As the jeep neared the exit to the interstate, a second pack of monsters came bounding out of the woods and made straight for them. Wade cursed and snatched up Jeremy’s Uzi. He opened fire out of his window, and several attackers fell, but now the creatures from the lot were charging at them too, advancing from the other side as if trying to block them in.

“Fuck—hold on!” Jeremy thrust the gas pedal all the way down. The jeep struck the curb and bounced out of the lot onto the road.

Wade looked back at the shrinking figures still giving chase. “That was too fucking close,” he muttered. “Way too fucking close.” Then he clapped Jeremy on the shoulder and grinned. “Good driving, new kid. Glad I brought you along.”

13

Amy opened her eyes. She didn’t feel completely rested, but some sleep was better than none. Eighteen hours had passed since her flight from the docks. She sat up in the backseat of the Toyota, which she’d finally found after a nasty encounter with a creature on the interstate. She had used the car to flee the city proper and had driven for hours, out into what seemed like the middle of nowhere, nothing around but the road and the trees, the safest place she could find for a nap. So she had locked the car doors and had stretched out on her seat, hoping that if any creatures stumbled across her and tried to get in, the noise would wake her up in time to deal with them.

It had been worth the risk. She felt much better physically, but she was still haunted by the horror of her situation. She was alone. The car was nearly out of fuel and she was down to only five rounds left in her .45. She missed Katherine. Hell, she missed the world. But worse, she still had no long-term plan, no idea how she was going to survive, no clue where she was headed. She had fled south, but she didn’t know how far. Virginia maybe? She wasn’t sure. Amy figured it didn’t matter. One state was just as dead as the next.

She needed to find others like herself who’d made it through the wave without going crazy, though she wondered if she were the last sane woman on Earth. The thought terrified her. And the creatures… If the cops who’d almost killed her were any indication, some of those things out there were getting smart. Not normal, but intelligent, and that made them a hundred times more dangerous. It was one thing to outrun or hide from a pack of mindless monsters and another thing altogether when they started shooting back and driving cars. What else were the things capable of now? Amy shuddered and pushed the thought from her mind.

Tenderly, she reached up to touch the wound on her forehead. It wasn’t serious, but she was worried about infection. She had no water or food, much less medical supplies, and trying to locate some in a city or town was out of the question. Even if she had been well armed, she wouldn’t have tried it on her own. So the big question was, what did she do now?

Using the car was dangerous. It attracted the mindless creatures and made her more noticeable to the intelligent ones as well. Going at it on foot seemed like an equally bad idea; she would have no way to outrun the creatures and she certainly couldn’t stand her ground and fight. What the hell was she going to do?

Finally she made a decision: Amy unlocked one of the car doors and got out, leaving the vehicle behind.

Water had been the deciding factor in her choice. In the car, she would have driven right past the supplies she required so badly to stay alive, unless she stopped at a gas station or something of the sort, and then she would have to deal with the hordes of monsters she attracted. The way she reasoned it, on foot she might be able to find a stream or some kind of berries in the woods. So she walked off the road and headed into the trees, feeling her way carefully through the newly fallen night.

14

Geoff met Jeremy and Wade on the road home about two miles outside the complex. “You done good, kid,” he told Jeremy when he saw the parts they had gone after. He ushered them on towards the base, but stayed behind to take care of any creatures that might have followed them back. He promised to meet up with them later in the mess, and then he disappeared into the trees, becoming a part of the woods themselves.

The inhabitants of Def-Con all sat in the meeting room. Sheena was allowed her rant on the importance of determining the various trajectories of the wave’s fragments—not that they could change those trajectories should a piece be aimed for the sun—and when she finished, Wade stood up and informed everyone that the base’s air system was fully repaired; he also updated the group on the life expectancy of the power core before giving the floor to the communications officer Toni.

Jeremy had not formally met her yet, so he watched the woman intently. She was tall and thin, in her late twenties or maybe early thirties. Her eyes were a bright green, and brown hair touched the tops of her shoulders. She spoke softly in a controlled, though almost shy, voice. Her efforts to reach anyone else in the government or military, or anyone on civilian channels and the small band frequencies, continued to meet with failure. Toni had no clue whether that meant they were alone in the world, or if the aftereffects of the wave simply hadn’t cleared enough to get out a good signal.

Geoff was the last member of the staff to speak, and despite the bleakness of the other reports, his was the most unsettling. The number of infected wandering close to the base was increasing at an alarming rate. Geoff hadn’t realized how much until today. No one blamed Jeremy’s arrival or Wade’s shopping trip, yet Geoff clearly thought these factors contributed to the problem. He wasn’t concerned about running out of ammo in the near future or worried about the creatures penetrating the complex; he was afraid the army of infected would grow so large there would be no way out of Def Con without a bloody fight. Geoff did not suggest abandoning the complex, as no one knew of somewhere remotely safe to set out for, yet he made sure everyone understood the threat of being trapped here for the rest of their lives.

When the meeting was over, people broke up into their own little clusters to continue private arguments over what should be done. Geoff and Troy pulled Jeremy out of the room and led him outside toward the garage. The night sky was clear and sparkling with stars. Two creatures were straining against the fence, and when they spotted the trio, they howled and slashed their flesh on the barbwire in their attempts to get in.

“Didn’t you just tell everyone to limit their trips up here?” Jeremy whispered.

“Yeah, but there are times and there are times,” Geoff said, walking to the fence as he drew his pistol.

“Come on.” Troy slid the heavy garage door open and led Jeremy inside. “Forget about them. They’re not why we’re up here.”

Jeremy heard two faint popping noises in the darkness behind him. When Geoff caught up again, Troy closed the door and hit the interior lights. He waved his arm around like a game show hostess showing off a prize. “Welcome to paradise.”

“The garage?”

Geoff tried to rub something red and wet off the front of his uniform. “It’s not the place but what’s in it, kid.”

Troy returned from the rear of the garage with a large jug in his hand. “Ta-dah! This here is Wade’s special home brew.”

“It’ll knock you on your ass,” Geoff said, “that’s for sure.”

“But you could drink in the complex. Why come up here?”

“There’s nothing like this down there.” Troy turned up the jug to his lips and took a long swig, coughing as it burned down his throat like liquid fire. “And hell, Geoff here would go crazy if he couldn’t see the stars. Mankind wasn’t made to live in the earth.”

“What he means is…” Geoff grabbed the jug from Troy’s hands, “we’d go crazy if we were cooped up with those suits much longer. All of them except Wade are educated people, and me and Troy here are the last of the grunts. None of them take him seriously at all, and they only listen to me because I saved their asses when the shit went down and they know I’m the only one who can do it again.”

Geoff offered Jeremy the jug, but he waved it aside. “No thanks. Isn’t getting wasted up here dangerous?”

Geoff laughed. “Isn’t breathing dangerous these days, kid?”

Jeremy didn’t answer.

Many, many feet below them, Sheena rolled her chair closer to Lex’s bed and reached out to take the woman’s wrist in her hand. Lex’s pulse still felt steady, if somewhat weak. There had been no change in her condition for days.

Sheena looked Lex over and winced. Once, she’d been a vibrant thirty-three-year-old woman whose charm and laughter lit up the dark corridors of Def Con. Now her skin was a sickly pale color and her long blond hair had lost its luster. Sometimes Sheena found it hard to believe she was looking at the same person who’d been her assistant, friend, and lover for the last five years.

She leaned forward in her wheelchair and rested her head on Lex’s chest. Tears glistened down her cheeks as sobs shook her broken body. She lifted her head, and her hand crept to the main power cord of the life support system. “I’m sorry,” Sheena said, no louder than a breath; then she pulled the plug.

A sharp, piercing tone filled the room as Lex’s vital signs flatlined. Sheena silenced the alarm with the flip of a button and turned out the lights. She wheeled herself out of the dark room without looking back.

“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,” Troy sang as the staff of Def Con gathered before the grave at the edge of the large gardens. Black-eyed Susans bloomed around the freshly dug dirt, their yellow petals straining to touch the sun.

To Jeremy, Troy’s voice sounded like that of a weeping angel. But as beautiful as the sound was, it stirred the creatures at the fence into a fury. Jeremy tried hard to block out the raging and the thrashing.

There were more of them today. They numbered in the dozens, and Jeremy noticed Geoff’s unease as the ceremony continued. The guard was armed to the teeth and clutching a fully loaded AK-47 in his hands. Everyone else seemed focused on saying goodbye to Lex, even Ian, though the CIA man didn’t look well. A sheen of sweat covered his snow-white skin, and he fidgeted with his handkerchief.

When Troy’s song ended, they all stood together, watching the bloodthirsty horde outside the gates until finally Geoff barked, “Okay! Everybody back inside—now!”

Jeremy wondered as he went if this would be one of the last times he would feel the sunshine on his skin.

Sheena kept the nature of Lex’s death to herself. Some suspected what she’d done, while others didn’t care, but no one confronted her about it. Lex’s death affected them all, including Jeremy, though he’d never met the woman.

A somber air fell over the Def Con complex. On the surface, Geoff, Troy and Wade waged a quiet war against the growing tide of the infected. Ian kept more to himself than ever, rarely leaving his makeshift quarters in the armory. Only Nathanial seemed to actually improve since Sheena suddenly stopped riding him about collecting more data on the trajectories of the wave in space.

Jeremy at last found the time to introduce himself to Toni, and the two spent hours each day trying to enhance the base’s communications gear to extend its range and the power of its signal. She was a very kind and warm person, Jeremy discovered, once you wormed your way around her defensive layer of shyness.

“Pass me the screwdriver,” Toni called from beneath the control room’s main communications console. Jeremy selected a Phillips head carefully from the toolbox and passed it over. He heard Toni work for a moment with the tool before she slid out and smiled at him.

“I think that does it. Anyone on this side of the country with so much as a handset should be able to hear us now.”

Jeremy grinned and pointed at the top of the console. “So this little red light is supposed to be on and flickering this way?”

“What?” Toni pulled herself up and looked at the light. Her whole body tensed up and she barely seemed to breathe.

“Was it something I said? I’m sorry if…”

She whirled on him and threw her arms about his neck as he stood there, totally dumbfounded.

“Someone out there is trying to reach us!” She half giggled, half screamed as she slammed a finger down to transfer the incoming transmission to the room’s speakers.

The broadcast was garbled by terrible static and interference, but they managed to understand a few words. “This… Freedom Station… Anyone… us?”

Toni held a hand over her mouth.

“Freedom Station,” Jeremy repeated. “Holy shit.”

Toni had already opened the channel and was responding. “We copy that, Freedom. This is Def Con, and you have no idea how happy we are to hear you.”

“Repeat… Couldn’t…” the voice replied.

“Go tell the others!” Toni told Jeremy. “I’ll try to clean this up some and keep the channel open… Go!”

Jeremy dropped his toolbox and darted off, yelling down the corridors.

15

The woods were quiet and a gentle rain began to fall as Amy made her way up the mountainside. The night had given way to a gray sky full of clouds. The rain was a warm one, however, and she welcomed it. She fished around in her pockets and brought out the last of the berries she had found during the night, plopping the whole handful into her mouth. They were wonderful, the food of the gods, but she longed for more and hoped she would come across another patch soon. She wasn’t a nature person, having grown up in New York, but she knew some berries were poisonous and had to be careful what she picked.

Briefly, she entertained the notion of trying to shoot or catch one of the rabbits that ran rampant in the woods, but she had no idea how to hunt them. If it came down to it, she swore she would eat grass rather than waste the last five rounds in her weapon. She couldn’t risk being defenseless if one or more of the creatures crossed her path.

Amy reached the top of the large hill, which, to a city dweller like her, was considered a mountain, and she looked down at the town below. The instant she saw it, she ducked into the foliage out of instinct. She cursed herself for being foolish. It was miles away. Nothing could see her… unless the creatures down there were the smart kind, keeping a watch with binoculars.

There didn’t appear to be any kind of road or trail leading from her position to the town. It looked as if the forest stretched all the way to the city limits. The town’s proximity meant she was much more likely to come across the creatures than she had thought, even if she kept to the woods and tried to cut around it. She took a moment to steel herself before heading straight for the town. She was going there, and she was going to find the things she needed. Maybe, if it was mostly deserted, she could find a home or some kind of building to hole up in and finally get some rest.

As the sun began to sink from the sky, she made it to the edge of the town. She hadn’t bumped into any creatures, and that was a good sign. She didn’t see any in the parking lot of the gas station either. It was the town’s most outlying building. It was damaged a bit on the outside, a few bullet holes and shattered windows, but from what she could tell it hadn’t been ransacked. It called to her with the promise of food and other wonders.

For over forty minutes she stayed hidden, watching for any sign of trouble or movement before finally creeping out of the trees. The sound of her own footfalls on the pavement unnerved her. She glanced around, making sure she was still alone.

As Amy approached the glass doors of the station, she breathed a sigh of relief. Not only did there appear to be no one inside, but its aisles hadn’t been trashed. She started to open the door when she heard a gun being cocked behind her.

“You can put your weapon down now, ma’am,” a voice with a heavy Southern accent ordered. She dropped the .45 to the pavement and turned to see a very large gun pointed in her face. She guessed it might be a Magnum like Dirty Harry used in the movies, but wasn’t sure. The man who held it was young, much younger than she was. He barely looked out of his teens. A mess of thick blond hair covered the top of his head and he wore a pair of filthy overalls over a white T-shirt that had seen better days. His appearance would have been comical if not for the way his deep-blue eyes watched her with such dead seriousness.

“I reckon you ain’t one of them,” he said, “but you sure as heck ain’t from around here neither. Everybody here is dead or crazy. I ain’t seen anyone else alive for a while now, so just where did you come from? Who in the heck are you, lady?”

“Amy. My name is Amy… I’m from New York,” she added hastily.

The man laughed. “New York? You’re a long way from home.” He lowered the huge pistol and nodded, as if to himself. “Welcome to Virginia, Amy. We’d best get inside. Most of them things are gone from ‘round here, but there are still a few stragglers left, I think. Best not to take chances, ya know?”

He reached past and opened the glass door for her. She started to head inside again, but he stopped her. “Don’t forget your gun,” he said, grinning and pointing at the weapon she’d dropped. “You may need it.”

She retrieved the pistol and followed him to the back of the station, where he unlocked a massive metal door and ushered her inside.

“Place used to be a restaurant or something,” he said, closing the door behind them. “When Pop and I bought the place, we turned the freezer into a backroom of sorts. We kept the door though. It’s solid steel. Nice place for an office if you get robbed or the world suddenly goes F-ing bananas.”

Amy didn’t laugh at his joke. She was busy eyeing the room. It was small and furnished with a singular desk and what appeared to be a makeshift bunk; food and other supplies were stacked all around the space and packed in the corners.

“You’ve been living here… since the wave, I mean?”

“Yeah,” he said. “No place else to go.” He sat on the bunk and stared at her. “Guess we have a lot to talk about, huh, Amy?”

Hundreds of questions flooded her head, but the first one she asked was, “You said most of the creatures are gone from this town. Where did they go?”

“You mean the crazy people? Don’t know. A group of guys drove into town and rounded them up—only the guys weren’t normal either. The crazies didn’t attack them. It was pretty messed up. I hid and stayed out of their way. Didn’t see much. All I can tell you is that they went south, all together in one big group with the weird guys leading them.”

“What’s your name?” Amy suddenly blurted; it had just sunk in that she was safe, at least for the moment, and in the company of another real human being.

“My real name’s Joseph Hunter, but I prefer Joe.” He stood up from the bunk, and from one of the boxes that littered the room, he produced a bottle of water. “I’m sorry, Amy. I bet you’re awfully hungry and tired from the look of you. Why don’t you help yourself to some food and get some sleep. I’ll keep watch outside. I have some things to tend to anyway. We can talk later, okay?”

He held out the water and Amy accepted it, drank most of it in a single gulp. “Thank you, Joe.”

He nodded and shut the huge door on his way out.

Amy ate a meal of Vienna sausages, Pringles and crackers, then stretched out on the bunk. A smile lingered on her lips even as she slept.

As the days passed, Joe told her the story of the town of Bloomington. Like everywhere else, it had been plunged into darkness and chaos the night the wave struck the earth. Joe and his pop made their way to the church that night with the other survivors, but the holy place hadn’t offered them any protection. The crazies outside attacked it time and time again, whittling down its defenders and their stockpile of ammunition. Then people inside began to change, and the pastor ordered that they be shot.

Finally Joe and his pop got of the church while they still could and made it here to their place of business. As far as they knew, by that time the entire town was crazy except for them. He and his pop had taken shelter here in this backroom, listening to the changed ones pounding on the metal door and howling for their blood. Eventually the crazies must have realized they couldn’t get inside, so they left the station. After that, there had been a few close calls, a few firefights with the mindless kind that couldn’t shoot back, a few narrow escapes when they ventured into town for things that weren’t kept on hand. But they managed, Joe informed her.

When Amy asked where his pop was now, Joe lowered his face into his hands and quietly told her that the old man had changed. “I got him with his own damn shotgun,” Joe told her. “Buried him out behind the station.” It was the hardest thing he had ever done in his life, and it troubled him still.

Joe imagined before he met Amy that he, too, would go insane, if not from the wave’s effects then from just the pain of being alone. He’d been extremely happy to find Amy on his doorstep. He believed she saved his life by showing up when she did.

She was grateful for him too, and she was happy in this place. In a matter of days, she had invited Joe to share the bunk with her instead of making him sleep on the floor. They needed each other desperately to feel alive, to feel hopeful when they looked in each other’s eyes. Joe wrapped his arms around her after they made love at night, made her feel safe and allowed her to think that someday things would be okay again.

What Joe had said about most of the creatures leaving town had proved true as well. As long as they were careful, he and Amy could venture almost anywhere they wanted, for supplies or to just get some fresh air and stretch their legs for a while. Well armed as they were, they never encountered more crazies than the two of them could handle. All they needed was each other, and together they could rebuild a little piece of the world they had lost to the wave.

16

The conversation with the Freedom had been cut short when its orbit had taken it out of range, but the survivors of Def Con had learned a lot during the brief communication. It wasn’t the real Freedom Station they were speaking to, at least not the one known to the public. The station identified itself as the Freedom II, a military-oriented prototype based on the original Freedom’s design; it had still been under construction when the wave hit. Hank, the astronaut with whom they spoke, explained that the original Freedom had been destroyed by the energy blast and that only the experimental shielding of the Freedom II had kept the station functional enough to save the crew and allow them the necessary time to make repairs. Still, only Hank and one other member of the eight-man crew were left alive, and they wouldn’t last long: they were quickly running out of supplies and were down to one-quarter power. Hank and Toni arranged a time to talk again when the station’s orbit brought it back into range, and they traded downloads of information regarding what they knew of the post-wave world.

Sheena was beside herself. Now she could finally get the data she needed firsthand to see whether the wave’s worst damage was over with. Nathanial, Geoff, Wade and Troy were howling for a celebration. Only Ian seemed reserved.

“It’s a lie,” he informed the crowd gathered in the control room. “There is no Freedom II.” His words cut their excitement like a knife.

“How could you possibly know that?” Sheena asked as Nathanial clinched his fists and almost charged the CIA man.

“Lies and cover-ups used to be how I made a living, my dear, or have you forgotten? I know more truth about what America has and hasn’t done in the last five years than all of you put together. Trust me. There is no Freedom II, nor will there ever be.”

“You’ll have to excuse me, Ian, if I don’t take the word of a self-professed liar over what my own ears just heard,” Geoff remarked.

“I’m inclined to agree with Geoff,” Nathanial said. “If Hank isn’t on the Freedom II, where is he? Who is he? It just doesn’t make sense for it not to be true.”

Ian sighed as if confronting a group of school children. “He’s one of them, the infected.”

“Oh, now that’s just bullshit!” Troy roared. “Those creatures up there can’t tell their asses from a hole in the ground. Have you ever seen one, just one of them, try to climb the fence? They could, you know, if they could think to do it.”

Ian sighed again. “Before we lost D.C., I received a packet of downloaded data on the infected from a doctor named Buchanan. Perhaps you’ve heard of him? He was the chief science advisor to the president. His reports in the packet disputed his earlier conclusions about the radiation and its effects. Yes, it turns some people into monsters, the majority actually, while some like us, for whatever reason, remain sane. Buchanan believed the possibility of a third group to emerge, a thinking, reasoning breed of those snarling killers up there…” He pointed at the ceiling.

“Fuck off, Ian,” Wade said. “You never told us this before.”

Ian ignored the mechanic and added, “You all heard what you wanted to hear just now, not what you actually did. Hope can be a powerful weapon if wielded correctly.”

“Get out of here, Ian,” Sheena ordered. “Go back to your damn coffin in the armory!”

Ian nodded and walked toward the control room’s exit. “Just promise me one thing,” he said. “Do not give them our location until you’ve had more time to study the transmission and its origins.”

“You’re too late on that one, Ian,” Toni called after him as he disappeared around the corner. “I already did.”

After a moment of silence, Jeremy said, “What if he’s right?” Suddenly he felt everyone’s eyes on him. “No, I mean it. He’s damn weird, I’ll give you that, but he was CIA. Toni, can’t we trace the source of the transmission? Find out where it came from?”

“Yeah,” she answered quietly. “We can, but it’ll take a lot of work.”

“It would go a lot faster if we had your help, Nathanial.” Jeremy glanced at the computer tech.

Nathanial shrugged. “Sure. Okay.”

“In the meantime, I think all the rest of us have stuff to be working on, right?” Geoff said. “Dr. Leigh, why don’t you continue your study of the wave; the rest of you, suit up. We’re going up top. There are about forty more of those things at the fence again and I, for one, want them gone.”

Troy shielded his eyes as he stepped out of the shed onto the main grounds of the base. The cacophony of the maddened creatures washed over him like a tide. “Jeez, Geoff, where the hell did you learn how to count?”

Geoff stepped out behind him and followed Troy’s gaze. There weren’t forty creatures outside the fence. They numbered closer to a hundred or more. The heavy, reinforced poles that held the fence in place swayed under the massive force.

“Got some gas no one seems to be usin’ over in the garage,” Wade offered.

Within minutes, Wade had a jury-rigged hose running from the large fuel tanks. Troy and Geoff helped him drag it out and turn it on.

“Yee-freakin’-hah!” Troy bellowed as he held the hose’s nozzle, spraying down the creatures and the fence alike. “Anybody got a match?”

Wade shook his head and held up a silver Zippo. “This was my favorite lighter,” he said, looking at it sadly. Then he lit it with a flick and tossed it at the fence.

Howls and screams rose up as a burst of blue flame swept through the ranks of the infected. Geoff shut off the hose, and the three of them stood in silence. Black smoke drifted into the heavens, and it was all Troy could do not to vomit from the odor of burning flesh.

“I don’t believe it.” Nathanial slumped over his computer screen. “What the hell does it mean?”

He and Toni had been able to trace the source of the message supposedly from Freedom II. It hadn’t come from orbit at all but rather somewhere in South Carolina—only a few hundred miles away from the complex.

“It means Ian was right,” Jeremy said. “Someone out there, whether it’s those creatures or not, knows we’re here now. They know we’re alive and sane. Worse, they know how many of us there are.”

“Oh God,” Toni said, suddenly sobbing, “I am so sorry.”

“Hey.” Jeremy took her in his arms, and she nestled her face deeper into his shoulder, wetting his shirt. “It’s all right. You didn’t know.”

“So what do we do now?” Nathanial asked.

Jeremy gritted his teeth. “We get ready. We get ready for whoever or whatever’s coming.”

17

The doors of the lift opened onto the armory level. Jeremy had never been to this part of the base before and was taken aback by the condition of the hallway. Unlike the rest of Def Con, this area hadn’t been repaired since the battle after the wave. The lighting was poor, as many of the lights had been shot out or were flickering badly, casting eerie strobes along the corridor. The metal walls themselves were scarred by some kind of explosion, as if someone had set off a grenade. Spent shell casings littered the floor as Jeremy made his way to the end of the hall. The entrance to the armory was open. Ian emerged from an unnoticed side corridor behind Jeremy.

“How the mighty have fallen,” said the agent.

Jeremy whirled around at the sound of his voice.

“Calm down, young man. I’m not some monster come to end your life.”

“Ian, you were right about the Freedom II.”

“I know.” He walked past Jeremy into the armory. “Would you care for some music? I find Wagner particularly relaxing in times like these.”

“How did you know so quickly about the Freedom, I mean?”

Ian took a seat in a folding chair between the racks of weapons, which lined the walls of the vault-like room. “Their shielding,” Ian said. He picked up a cold cup of tea sitting beside the chair and sipped at it. “There was a project like what they described, but it never got off the ground. The energy expenditure to generate the kind of field they mentioned was impossible. The project was scrapped because of it.”

Jeremy took a seat on the floor in front of Ian. “Why do you stay down here so much?”

Ian laughed. “I’m not immune to the radiation like the rest of you seem to be.”

Jeremy’s mouth dropped open.

“This is the most shielded part of the complex. I choose to stay here because I value my life. Even so, I am finding it harder each day to resist the urges rising inside of me. Very soon I think you may find yourself in a position where my disposal will become vital to your own survival.”

Jeremy shifted uncomfortably.

“I assure you,” Ian said, “you will have to do it. None of the others, not even our good doctor, even suspect that I am unwell.”

He paused and set down his tea. “I don’t have any magical answers about who the people onboard the fictional Freedom II might be. I’m not God, Jeremy. But whether they are looters, survivors like us, or reasoning versions of the creatures outside, they will be coming. Will they bring death or hope? I don’t know. Personally, I believe hope died the second the wave touched our world.”

“Will you help us get ready for them?”

“There’s nothing I can do, Jeremy. I’m certainly not about to go up top again, and I don’t think you can really ask that of me. Geoff is the military expert. He can handle it.”

“And that’s it? That’s all you have to offer?” Jeremy shook his head. “Don’t you care about anyone?”

“Yes,” Ian answered, “I care about me, and either way, I am dying. Now good day.”

Ian picked up a book and opened it to the chapter marked with a piece of ribbon. Jeremy didn’t argue. He got to his feet and went in search of Geoff.

Something had to be done, and it looked like it was up to them to do it. His life and the world he knew had been taken from him once; he wasn’t going to give up this place too—not without a fight.

18

“It can’t be done,” Geoff slurred, dropping the empty jug to the garage floor. “This base was never designed to be a defensible position out here. It’s a damn bomb shelter, kid, a really high-tech one, but still just a shelter.”

Jeremy grabbed Geoff by the front of his uniform and tried to yank him to his feet. As drunk as Geoff was, he pulled Jeremy’s arm behind his back with incredible ease as he stood. “Kid, it’s all open space and fields up here. The fence is the only real obstacle to anyone who wants onto the grounds. If these things show up with welding torches and burn through the perimeter and the outer seal in the shed, then maybe they deserve to have us for dinner.” Geoff released his hold on Jeremy and staggered out into the sunlight. “Jesus, kid, I just roasted a mob of people alive to save your ass. What more do you want from me?”

“Where are Troy and Wade? Maybe they’ll listen to reason.”

“Reason!” Geoff spun around to face Jeremy. “There ain’t no reason left anymore, kid. Just death, death and the dying.”

Jeremy drew the .45 from the holster on his belt and leveled it at Geoff. “Do you want to die so badly, Geoff?” He shook the gun. “I can make it happen, right here, right now.”

Geoff’s eyes narrowed, and he finally nodded. “Okay. We’ll play it your way, Jeremy. We might as well go out fighting.” He stumbled over and threw an arm around Jeremy’s shoulders. “I just hope to God you or Wade can come up with a way to make a stand up here. I’m shit out of ideas.”

Outside the fence, three new infected knelt, gnawing on the charred remains of their less fortunate brethren.

Nathanial Richards sat alone in the control room. He looked at his watch; two hours until the next message from the Freedom was due. It was far more than enough time for what he had in mind. His fingers danced over the keys of his computer and the complex was his.

He was not a man given to worry. Born to the CEO of one of America’s leading pharmaceutical corporations and to a mother whose life revolved around him due to the constant absence of his father, he considered himself blessed. Nathanial never wanted for anything. Even in college, when the police had raided his dorm room and found his stash of narcotics, his father had swept in and made it all go away. What was a petty possession charge to a man who carried senators, bought and paid for, in his pocket? His parents had always been there to save him, and he had never doubted that they would come. But they were gone now. No more bailouts. Political power and money meant nothing these days.

Outside of his family, the only true friends Nathanial had ever known were computers. From the time he could type, machines were a part of his life. They gave him his own power and control, but the wave had taken even them from him. Oh sure, there were computers all over Def Con, but the web and cyberspace no longer existed. He’d lost everything. Nathanial was alone, and death was coming for him. The transmission from the Freedom II had fired his hopes that the old world would return, but now he knew deep in his heart that the people on the other end of the transmission were evil incarnate, and he wasn’t going to let them take the last thing he had left: his soul.

Weeks ago, he had been forced to disable the base’s self-destruct system to save himself and everyone trapped with him. The codes had been easy to break for someone like him, and they were even easier to manipulate now. Def Con itself would be his shield when the darkness came, a shield of fire and retribution.

His soul would remain his own.

Wade finished covering the last mine as yet another one of the infected emerged from the trees. He didn’t waste the time or the ammo to dispose of it. Instead he broke into a run for the gates. As he passed through, Troy and Jeremy slammed them shut behind him. The psycho threw itself against the barbed wire, clawing at the fence and foaming pink at the mouth.

“That does it.” Wade collapsed to the earth, out of breath. “We’re as ready as we’re going to be.”

They had spent the last few hours littering the area outside of the fence with mines and barricading the doors of the garage. “As long as those things out there don’t trip all the mines before our company shows, we should at least have a chance,” Geoff said. He had drunk cup after cup of black coffee, trying to sober up while supervising the others.

“Don’t worry,” Troy said, patting his .30-.06, which was equipped with a sniper scope. “Me and my friend here won’t let them.”

“Guess all we can do is wait,” Jeremy said. “It’s almost time for the Freedom II to make contact again.”

“You go on and be there with the rest of them when it happens,” Geoff urged as Troy climbed to his position atop the garage. “Us three pretty much got things covered up here.”

Jeremy nodded. He took one last glance at their work and then headed for the shed and the outer seal leading into the complex.

19

Toni was the first to join Nathanial in the control room. He looked haggard, as if he’d never left his station since the Freedom’s first transmission. Jeremy and Sheena came in minutes later. No one asked where Ian was and Jeremy was thankful for it. He hadn’t decided what to do about the former CIA agent’s condition and didn’t see any reason at this point to add the worry to the rest of their collective woes. “Everything ready?” he asked.

“We’re set up to trace them the second they make contact,” Nathanial assured him. They all watched the communications console as the figures on the time display flashed and changed to the appointed hour.

“Come in, Def Con. This is Freedom II. Do you copy us? Over.”

“Go!” Jeremy shouted at Nathanial, and the computer engineer began the trace.

Toni hesitantly opened a response channel. “This is Def Con. We copy you, Freedom II.”

Seconds ticked by in silence. No reply. Nathanial indicated that he’d managed to get a fix on the origins of the transmission. All the color had bled from his face. “It’s coming from a point just two miles south of here and closing slowly… Sweet Jesus. They really are coming for us.”

Troy saw the convoy first from his spot atop the garage. A line of pickups, four-wheel drives and jeeps bounced up the winding gravel road, growing ever closer. Troy counted thirteen vehicles in all, and numerous men and women on foot jogged along at their sides. The thing that bothered him, though, was the infected’s lack of interest in the convoy. He knew for a fact that there were packs of the creatures still out there in the woods, but for whatever reason they were not attacking. It could only mean one of two things: either these people knew a way to control or ward off the creatures, or they themselves were so poisoned by the radiation in the atmosphere that the infected didn’t recognize them as human.

Using hand signs, Troy gestured what he saw to Geoff and Wade, who were concealed in the remaining bushes just inside the fence. Then he said a prayer for them all and checked the chamber of his rifle to make sure it was ready.

“Come in, Freedom II. Come in,” Toni repeated over the open frequency.

“Give it up,” Nathanial suggested. “They got what they wanted: a definitive fix on our exact position. They’re done talking now.”

Toni’s shoulders sagged with defeat. Her fears were confirmed, and in that moment she knew she was the one who had called this new terror upon them. She turned to look for Jeremy, but he was already gone from the control room.

It was one of the joggers rather than one of the vehicles who stumbled onto the most outlaying mine. The explosion and the rain of pulpy, charred flesh brought the convoy to a halt. People began to pour out of the vehicles and leave them behind.

Troy swore under his breath. Whoever was leading the mob knew what they were doing. The working trucks were too valuable to lose, and by approaching the base on foot it would cut down the damage the mines could inflict on the transports.

The .30-.06 propped against Troy’s shoulder had a pretty good range. He sighted one of the joggers as the moving mass of attackers began to pick up the pace. Troy put a round through his target’s throat just as the mob reached the main section of the minefield. Explosion after explosion tossed dirt and body parts into the air, but the people just kept coming, without even pausing to tend to their wounded.

In the bushes, Wade took a deep breath and made his peace with God. The fastest of the joggers had already reached the fence. He saw one of them toss something at the barbed wire, and then his world went white.

Troy watched in horror as his friend was blown apart, along with a large section of the fence. The attackers flowed through like ants. He fired off a last shot with the rifle, then tossed the weapon aside and tried to scurry down from the garage roof.

Geoff remained hidden the whole time. He waited in the bushes as the attackers ran past on both sides. They moved like men but they weren’t really human anymore. Their battle cries were the snarls of maddened dogs, and their skin was tinted yellow with sickness. He caught a glimpse of one’s eyes. There were no whites left, just a sickening bloodshot mass.

Geoff switched his AK-47 to full auto and stood up, spraying the backs of the fifteen or so that had made it by him. They crumpled like weeds before a scythe.

A rifle cracked and a bullet ripped through the back of Geoff’s shoulder. He whirled around and charged at the mob head-on, his rifle blazing and spitting empty shell casings. He made it a few steps before his bullet-ridden corpse toppled to the ground, rolling from its momentum.

Troy, down from the roof, saw the base’s opening—Jeremy was trying to come out. Troy shoved him back down. “Lock it!” he yelled.

“But Geoff…”

“He’s dead. Wade too.” Troy climbed down and pushed Jeremy aside. He typed in the code, and something thumped hard against the hatch. A gun chattered and bullets pinged off the metal.

Both Jeremy and Troy ducked instinctively. “Shit!” Troy grabbed Jeremy and tugged him deeper into the base. “If they’ve got the gear with them to cut through between the outer seal and the inner lock… we’ve got an hour, maybe two, tops.”

“How many are up there?” Jeremy asked. The look on Troy’s face told him all he needed to know.

Deep in the bowels of Def Con, Ian threw down the book he was reading and screamed. Spit flew from his mouth as his head shook uncontrollably. He leapt up from his chair and ran at the armory door, but his shoe snagged a nearly invisible tripwire he’d set in place the day before; the armory’s lights turned red as its huge door slammed shut in front of him. Ian pounded his fists against it until the bones of his hands were shattered, and then he started to use his head.

Troy and Jeremy burst into the control room, nearly scaring Toni to death. “What the hell?” Nathanial bellowed.

“They’re cutting through the outer seal,” Jeremy said, panting for breath. “The others are dead.”

“Nat, are any of the exterior cameras still working?” Troy asked as he closed on the engineer.

“A few… not the one in the shed.”

“Bring ‘em online. I have a bad feeling our friends up there aren’t just going to be sitting on their asses in the time it takes them to cut their way in here.”

“Okay, I’ve got two cameras reporting operational. Both of them are a good bit away from the gates though.”

“Put the closest onscreen.”

The huge wall display flashed to life, showing a small group of attackers, who appeared to be reloading their weapons. In the background, other attackers stood watching something beyond the camera’s field of vision.

“Can you pan around and see what those others are so interested in?” Troy asked.

“I can try.” Nathanial worked at his keyboard, and the image flickered and bounced as the camera slowly turned. Three of the attackers stood outside the fence amidst a pack of infected. The creatures cowered around them like pets.

“I don’t believe it,” Troy said, rubbing his forehead. “Damn, those fuckers are smart.”

Nathanial furrowed his brow. “Huh? I don’t get it.”

“They’re rounding up the infected in the woods. When they cut through the seal, they’re not just going to rush in here. There’s no sense in them risking their lives. They’ll let the mindless ones come in first, hoping they’ll either overrun us or at least weaken our defenses.”

“Aren’t they all infected?” Toni asked.

Nathanial answered before Troy had a chance to. “Yes, but they’re not the same. These new ones aren’t at all like the ones we’ve had to deal with in the past. They’re much more advanced, like they’re evolving back into something much closer to what we are, just not as nice. And certainly not above using their lesser brethren as weapons or cannon fodder, or whatever you want to call it.”

“Somebody should get Ian. We’re going to need all the help we can get,” Sheena suggested.

“No,” Jeremy replied, “Ian’s fine where he’s at.”

“We should at least warn him,” Toni added.

“Ian’s fine.” Jeremy moved to take hold of Toni. “Trust me, he’s where he wants to be.”

“Jeremy.” Troy motioned him over to a table in the control room. Troy ripped a map off the wall and spread it across the tabletop. “You don’t have to die here. None of us do. There’s a back way out.”

“That’s impossible!” Sheena snapped. “If there was another entrance I would know about it.”

Troy ignored her and pointed to a spot on the map. “There’s a tunnel inside the ventilation system here. Wade found it a few days ago. It’s sealed up with an iron grate, but I think you can get through it. It opens into the back of the garage.”

“The garage? Those things are all over the place up there,” Nathanial pointed out.

“They’re spread out pretty good though, and most of them will probably follow the normal infected in here once they get through the inner door. If you wait until they get into the base, by the time you get up there you’ll at least have a chance.”

“What’s with all the you stuff?”

“Jeremy, someone has to stay here to slow them down and make them work for every inch of the base they take. That’s me. I’m the only real soldier left.”

“Troy—” Jeremy started, but Nathanial interrupted him.

“I’m staying too. So is Sheena. I’m not running, Jeremy, and Sheena can’t. She’d just slow you down and get you killed.”

Sheena nodded. “You and Toni go on,” she ordered. “Make sure you take the time to gather up the things you’ll need if you get past those things.”

“No!” Toni cried, squatting beside Sheena’s chair to embrace her.

Sheena didn’t return the hug. “Go on. You’ve only got one chance at this and time’s running out.”

Jeremy pulled Toni to her feet and looked back at Troy. There was so much he wanted to say but the words wouldn’t come. Troy smiled and shot him a mock salute. In spite of the tears burning in his eyes, Jeremy laughed. Then he nodded and led Toni out to gather what they would need.

20

The outer seal clanged as it dropped inside the corridor below, and minutes later a well-placed charge blew the inner door off its hinges. The mindless ones flooded down the passageway and into the base. Troy waited for them in the only unblocked passage to the control room.

A man dressed in the tatters of a tuxedo came tearing around the corner, pink saliva flying from his mouth as he saw Troy and howled madly at him.

Troy raised the automatic shotgun in his hands and fired, cutting the man in two at the waist. A woman in a bloodstained jogging suit was next, and Troy splattered her brains all down the corridor. When the shotgun clicked empty, he snatched up his M-16 and retreated towards the control room, firing on full auto into the increasing tide as he went.

In the control room, Sheena struggled clumsily to ready the handgun Troy had given her.

“You’re not going to need that,” Nathanial told her as the gunfire on the other side of the door was replaced by the sound of Troy screaming.

Sheena looked up at Nathanial and understood.

Finally the door burst open and a woman with matted gray hair and a bleeding hole in her left cheek led the creatures inside. Nathanial stabbed at his keyboard one final time.

Jeremy kicked the grate loose and leapt down into the garage. A quick glance told him that the area was clear of the infected—both breeds. He turned and helped Toni climb out of the vent.

Only a couple of vehicles were left, and only one that he knew for sure still ran. He tossed his pack into the jeep. “Get in,” he told Toni, “and hold on.”

Apparently one of the thinking infected had heard the thunk of the falling grate from inside the garage and was now opening the large doorway to check it out. Jeremy ran him down as he tore out into the dying rays of the setting sun.

The few attackers who’d stayed up top were caught completely off-guard. Jeremy took advantage of their confusion and plowed through them. He spun the jeep’s steering wheel, making a sharp turn toward the gardens and the rear fence. He was already deep in the fields when the first shots began to ping off the tail of the jeep.

He reached over and shoved Toni down in her seat. “Hold on!” he yelled as the jeep streaked towards the fence. He ducked under the dashboard as best he could, leaning over in his seat at the last second.

The jeep tore through the barbed wire, dragging a section of the fence as it made it clear. One of the tires blew out, but the jeep continued to roar forward until it crashed headlong into a tree.

Jeremy rolled out of the driver’s seat. His back felt like it had been ripped to shreds, and blood leaked from large gashes the barbed wire had cut in his T-shirt. He looked over his shoulder to see the attackers giving chase. “Toni, are you all right? We have to move!”

She didn’t answer and suddenly he realized she was no longer in the jeep. The barbed wire had caught her and had yanked her out. Her mangled corpse lay several yards back, tangled hopelessly in the fencing the jeep had carried with it. Jeremy knew she was dead from a single glance.

He grabbed up his pack from the rear of the vehicle and slung it onto his shoulder as the attackers opened fire again.

Suddenly the earth itself heaved under his feet and threw him into the woods as fire blossomed in a giant cloud from where Def Con had lain below it.

Epilogue

When Jeremy came to, night had fallen in earnest. The mob had been reduced to a scattered corpse here and there. Slowly dying flames could be seen inside the remainder of the fence around the Def Con complex.

Jeremy coughed and spat blood onto the grass beside him. He looked up at the full moon, and a visible shadow stretched across it, dampening its glow. Jeremy wasn’t a physicist, but he knew something wasn’t right about it. His mind groped for an explanation of the strange shadow until he remembered an old episode of the Outer Limits he’d seen and recalled Sheena’s warnings about the fragments of the wave. He knew one of them must have made contact with the sun, causing it to go nova millions, if not billions, of years early. The side of the earth facing the sun was probably an inferno of death, and even as he sat there watching the moon, a tide of fire crept its way towards him as the earth turned. He had only hours left to live, but he knew his death would be quick and he took comfort in that fact. He removed a bottle of water from his pack and twisted off its lid. The night was so beautiful, and since there was nowhere to run, he decided to make the most of it.

Amy and Joe sat on the station’s roof. It was a safe place to be outside at night, a place where they didn’t really have to worry about the creatures.

Joe spread out the picnic blanket as Amy got the food ready. He had cooked up some rabbit meat during the day, and Amy, though still learning, had made something close to being fresh baked bread. Joe sat on the blanket and popped open a bottle of wine. He smiled as he filled a glass for Amy and passed it to her. She took it even though she couldn’t drink it, and she pretended to be thankful for Joe’s sake.

He sipped at his wine as she looked him over. Amy was nervous about telling him. She had mixed feelings on the matter herself. Part of her was thrilled and overjoyed, but her rational mind questioned how wise it was to bring a child into this nightmare. She had to tell him though. It wasn’t as if she could hide it much longer, and he deserved to know. Amy figured she would never get a chance to do it more perfect than tonight.

She reached for his hand. He was glancing up at the stars. The sky was odd this evening, the stars different somehow. Amy placed a palm on his cheek and gently turned his face so she could look deep into his eyes. “Joe,” she said. “I have something to tell you…”