26

ZOMBIE

NORTH OF URBANA, the old highway cuts through farm country, the fallow fields on either side glowing silver-gray in the brilliant starlight, the burned-out shells of the farmhouses black freckles against the sheen. The caverns lie nine miles as the crow flies to the northeast, but I’m no crow; I’m not leaving this highway and risking getting lost. If I keep up the pace without stopping to rest, I should reach the target before dawn.

That’ll be the easy part.

Superhuman assassins who can look like anyone—for example, a sweet, hymn-singing senior citizen. Little kids who wander near encampments and hideouts with bombs embedded in their throats. Doesn’t exactly encourage hospitality to strangers.

There’ll be sentries, hidden bunkers, snipers’ nests, maybe a vicious German shepherd or a Doberman or two, trip wires, booby traps. The enemy has blown apart the fundamental glue that binds us together, turning every outsider into the intolerable other. That’s funny, the sick type of funny: After the aliens arrived, we became aliens.

Which means the odds of them shooting me on sight are pretty high. Like in the 99.9 percent neighborhood.

Oh, well. YOLO, right?

I’ve looked at the little map printed on the back of the brochure so many times, it’s burned into my memory like an afterimage. US 68 north to SR 507. SR 507 east to SR 245. Then a half mile north and you’re there. Easy-peasy, no problemo. Three to four hours quick-stepping on an empty stomach with no rest or sleep and sunrise coming.

I’ll need time to reconnoiter. I have no time. I’ll need a game plan of how to approach a hostile sentry. I have no plan. I’ll need the right words to convince them I’m one of the good guys. I have no words. All I’ve got is my winning personality and a killer smile.

At the corner of 507 and 245 there’s a waist-high sign with a big rust-colored arrow pointing north: OHIO CAVERNS. The ground rises; the road arches toward the stars. I adjust my eyepiece and scan the woods on the left for green glow. I drop to my belly shy of the hillcrest and crawl the rest of the way to the top. A paved access road winds through more trees toward a cluster of buildings, tiny black smudges against gray. Fifty yards away are two stone markers with white signs mounted on top of each: OC.

I inch forward the way we were taught in camp, low-crawl-style: face in the dirt, rifle in one hand, the other extended forward. At this pace, I won’t reach the caverns until well after my twenty-first birthday, but that’s preferable to not being alive to celebrate it. Every few feet I pause to lift my head and scan the terrain. Trees. Grass. A snarl of downed power lines. Trash. A single, tiny tennis shoe lying on its side.

After another hundred yards—and a hundred years later—my outstretched fingers brush metal. I don’t lift my head; I drag the object in front of my face.

A crucifix.

A chill goes down my spine. I didn’t have time to think, Sullivan told me. I saw the light glinting off the metal. I thought it was a gun. So I killed him. Over a crucifix, I killed him.

I wish she’d never told me that story. If I didn’t know better, I’d consider finding a random crucifix in the dirt to be a good sign. I might even hang on to it for luck. Instead, it feels like a big black cat crossing my path. I leave Jesus lying in the dirt.

Scooch, scooch, pause. Look. Scooch, scooch, pause. Look. I can see buildings now, a gift shop and welcome center, the remnants of a stone well. Beyond the buildings, weaving between the tree-shaped gashes in the dark, is a thumbnail-sized, fiery green blob of light headed straight toward me.

I freeze. I’m totally exposed. No place to take cover. The blob grows larger, edging along the front of the welcome center now. I rise to my elbows and sight him through the scope of the M16. He’s such a little guy that at first I think he’s a kid.

Black pants, black shirt, and a collar that in better days was white.

Looks like I’ve found the owner of the crucifix.

I should probably shoot him before he sees me.

Oh, how stupid. What a dumb idea. Shoot him and you’ll have the whole encampment on your ass. Fire only if you’re fired upon. You’re here to save people, remember?

The man in black with the green blobby head disappears around the corner of the building. I count the seconds. When I reach 120 and he hasn’t reappeared, I high-crawl it to the nearest tree, where I brush the dead grass and dirt from my face and try to collect my breath and my thoughts, in that order. I do better on the breath part.

I’m getting now why Vosch passed over Ringer to promote me to squad leader. She was definitely the wiser choice: smarter than me, a better shot, sharper instincts. But I got the nod instead because I had one thing that she didn’t: blind loyalty to the cause, and unflinching faith in its leader. Okay, that’s actually two things. Whatever. My point is that faith trumps smarts every time. Guts beat brains. At least that’s true if you want an army of misguided, suicidal buffoons willing to sacrifice their lives so the enemy doesn’t have to.

Can’t hide here forever. And I didn’t leave Dumbo behind so he could die while I hid with my thumb up my ass waiting for an idea to spring forth in this Cro-Magnon brain I’ve been blessed with.

What I really need, I decide, is a hostage.

Of course, that idea comes five minutes after the perfect candidate disappears.

I peek around the tree toward the welcome center. Nothing. I haul ass to the closest tree, stop, drop, peek. Nothing. Two trees later and about fifty yards closer, I still don’t see him. He probably just found a private place to take a leak. Or he’s already below, safe and warm and telling Ringer all’s clear topside while he gently rocks Teacup to sleep.

I’ve been having fantasies about these caves since Ringer left, minus the priest, in which she and Teacup stay warm and dry and well-fed throughout this endless goddamned winter. I think about what I’ll say when I finally see her. What she’ll say to me. How the perfectly dropped phrase might finally make her smile. There’s a part of me that’s convinced this everlasting war will end when I coax a smile out of that girl.

Okay, I decide, forget the priest. That welcome center has to be manned. I might end up with half a dozen hostages instead of one, but beggars can’t be choosers. I need to get into those caves ASAP.

I scan the terrain, plot my route, mentally rehearse the assault. I have one flash grenade left. I have the element of surprise. Surprise is good. I have my rifle and Dumbo’s sidearm. Probably will not be enough. I’ll be outgunned, which means I will die. Which means Dumbo will die.

There’s a single window facing me. I’ll smash it with the butt of my rifle, toss the grenade, and then hoof it around the building to the front door. Six seconds, tops. They won’t know what hit them.

That’ll be my story, anyway, when I tell my grandkids about this day: I was so focused on the window, I forgot to look where I was going.

I wish I had another explanation for how I fell into that damn hole, six feet wide and twice as deep, a hole you couldn’t miss, even in the dark, not only because of its size but because of what it contained.

Bodies.

Hundreds of bodies.

Big bodies, little bodies, medium-sized bodies. Clothed bodies, half-clothed bodies, naked bodies. Freshly dead bodies and bodies not-so-freshly dead. Whole bodies and body parts and parts that used to be inside bodies but no longer were.

I went down to my hips into the slimy, reeking mass, and my feet found no bottom—I just kept . . . sinking. Nothing to grab hold of except bodies, which slid down with me. I came face-to-face with a fresh one as I sank—like a really fresh one, a woman in her thirties, her blond hair caked in dirt and blood, two black eyes, one cheek swollen to the size of my fist, her skin still pink, her lips plump. She couldn’t have been more than a few hours dead.

I twist away. I’d rather face a dozen rotted faces than one that looks that alive.

I’m shoulder-deep by this point and still being sucked under. I’m going to be suffocated by human remains. I’m going to drown in death. It’s so ridiculously metaphorical, I nearly bust out laughing.

That’s when the fingers lock around my neck.

Then her definitely-not-corpse-cold lips against my ear: “Don’t make a sound, Ben. Play dead.”

Ben? I try to turn my head. No way. Her grip is too strong.

“We’ve got one shot,” the voice whispers. “So don’t move. It knows where we are now and it’s coming.”