“My name is Lara.”
“Lara, it’s good to hear your voice. We have a lot of questions.”
“Such as?”
“Are you in charge over there?”
No. Far from it. I’m so out of my depth I feel like I’m constantly drowning, except people keep telling me I’m doing fine. Great, even.
God help us.
“Yes,” she said into the microphone.
“Where are you currently located?” Beecher asked.
Nice try.
“That’s not information I’m willing to divulge at the moment, Colonel.”
“Is there a reason?”
“I don’t trust you.”
Beecher chuckled. “Fair enough. It’s a dangerous world out there. It’s difficult to know who to trust.”
“Agreed.”
“So what can you tell me, Lara?”
“Ask, and we’ll find out together.”
“All right.” Beecher paused for a moment. Then, “First of all, the silver. We’ve been trying to kill these things for nearly a year, then overnight your broadcast changed everything. How in God’s name did you know about silver?”
“Trial and error and a lot of experience,” she said. “My turn, Colonel.”
“Fire away.”
“Are you willing to say where you’re located?”
“We’re in Colorado. Five miles out of Denver.”
“Are you in some kind of bunker?”
“Nice try,” Beecher said.
She smiled. “Your turn.”
“Now that you brought it up, are you under or aboveground?”
“Aboveground. You?”
“Both.”
“Now who’s being cute?”
Another chuckle. “I don’t mean to be. Have you ever heard of Bayonet Mountain?”
“No.”
“It’s an old 1950s Cold War bomb shelter designed to withstand an atomic bomb. As it turns out, it works just as well against ghouls, as you call them. That’s where we are now. My men and a sizable civilian population.”
“What’s your definition of sizable, Colonel?”
“At the moment, just over 4,000 military personnel and civilians,” Beecher said. “How about you? How many do you have over there?”
She looked back at Maddie, who mouthed back, “Four thousand?”
Lara took a breath and said into the microphone, “We have, uh, just slightly less than that, Colonel.”
“Can you say how many?” Beecher asked.
“Not at this time.”
“Fair enough. So tell me, Lara. Any ideas about how to take back the planet from these bloodsucking bastards?”
That made Lara pause.
“Lara?” Beecher said. “Are you still there?”
“I’m still here, Colonel.”
“Did I say something wrong?”
“No. I’m just not sure why you’re asking me that question. You’re the one with 4,000 people with you, including soldiers. I’m just a civilian.”
“You’re more than that. Your message saved our lives, Lara. Learning about silver has turned the tide for us.” He paused again. Then, “You don’t have a clue what you’ve done, do you?”
She didn’t, because she had put out the message at Danny and Roy’s insistence. Lara was still grieving what she thought at the time were Will’s and Gaby’s deaths. The radio message was supposed to give whoever was still out there hope, but in so many ways it was to give herself hope.
“No,” she said finally. “I guess I don’t.”
“You gave us a fighting chance,” Beecher said. “Your broadcast changed everything, and I’m willing to bet there are others monitoring this frequency right now, who have been waiting for someone to lead them…”
3
Gaby
The spork was white and plastic and flimsy in her hand. It was one of those disposable utensils that came in cases of a thousand. It barely held together as she picked her way through the baked potato, so it was a good thing the toughest food on the brown cafeteria-style tray were strips of shriveled bacon, dirty brown rice, and two buttered biscuits.
As for its ability to penetrate the human skin, well, she didn’t have very high hopes. They didn’t even trust her enough to give her one of those plastic butter knives. As if she could actually stab anyone with it. Of course, that wouldn’t have kept her from trying, though the point was moot since she didn’t have one.
“You barely touched your food.”
She rubbed her thumb along the teeth of the spork. The two middle claws were probably too weak to puncture anything as tough as human skin, but the two flanking teeth were twice the size and just as sharp. Better yet, they were reinforced by the oval-shaped spoon connected to them. So, pretty tough, as far as flimsy plastic utensils went.
“Gaby?”
Even if she couldn’t get the plastic teeth through flesh, she might still be able to dish out some hurt. It wouldn’t be a killing blow and she probably couldn’t dig deep enough to sever a major artery, but there were possibilities—
“Gaby!”
She looked up at him. “What?”
“You hardly touched your food,” Josh said. “You should. We’re celebrating.”
“What are we celebrating?”
“My birthday.”
“Your birthday?”
“I turned nineteen last month. I was going to tell you when we met in the park, but… Well, you know.”
She nodded. “Happy birthday.”
“Thanks. Too bad we don’t have any cake. Do you guys have cake on the island?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh well, I guess it doesn’t matter.” He smiled. “We’re not kids anymore. Do you realize that? We’re both nineteen. Damn. When did that happen?”
She sat across from him, the frail portable table between them. The tabletop space was so limited that a quarter of their trays dangled off the ends. Josh had eaten most of his potato, wrapped in aluminum foil and baked over a grill, and was shoveling a sporkful of brown rice into his mouth. He seemed to have grown since the last time (Days? Weeks? How long have I been here?) she had seen him back at the camp in Sandwhite Wildlife State Park. In another couple of weeks, his hair would be long enough to tie in a ponytail. She wondered if he had left it long on purpose, or if he was too busy for a barber because of the demands of his new job.
What was the job interview like, Josh?
“I know it’s not a lot,” Josh said, almost apologetically. “But it’s more than most of the people here get to eat. We have to ration the food until we can grow more in the fields. Most of them are still eating MREs and stale bagged chips. Cans of SPAM, if they’re lucky. We found cases of those in a warehouse outside Shreveport. Mountains of them. I guess it’s true what they say. When the world ends, only the cockroaches and SPAM will be left.”
I’m supposed to be grateful for this. Potatoes baked over a grill. Strips of bacon. Dirty brown rice.
“Where did you get the bacon?” she asked.
“Wild hogs. They’re all over the place. Somehow, they managed to survive all this time; I have no idea how. We already have farmers raising them, and in a few years they’ll be plentiful and everyone will be eating bacon and biscuits in the mornings. Oh, and eggs, too. Plenty of chickens are still running around out there. When we’re done, the farms will be the biggest part of the towns.” Josh picked up his water bottle from the floor and twisted it open. “You never asked me how I found you at the pawnshop.”