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SHAUN
Shaun has exactly two goals to accomplish in the next thirty minutes.
The first goal is to save his ex-wife.
He turns to Alvarez, his best friend of the apocalypse. “I know this Kate woman is your friend. I know she’d be here if she could. But she’s not. You have to let her go, Alvarez. We have to win this battle on our own.”
“I know that.” Alvarez throws his shoulder against a wooden pallet stacked with canned food. Sweat glistens on his temples from the exertion. “Give me a hand, will you?”
Shaun joins his friend on the far side of the pallet. The other man is younger by at least a decade. His dark hair is greasy and badly in need of a cut, the ends curling around his ears and along the nape of his neck. Stubble shadows his face, almost as dark as the crescents of fatigue under his eyes.
“On the count of three,” Alvarez says. “One, two, three—”
They throw their combined strength at the pallet. It gives way, scraping against the hard-packed earth. A small trap door in the ground is revealed.
“It’s not forty-eight to seven,” Shaun says.
Alvarez’s mouth tightens, but all he says is, “Grab that empty box.” He gestures to a weathered card board box sitting on top of a stack of canned food they brought in last week.
Shaun passes him the box while Alvarez opens the trap door. Inside is the secret stash of booze he’s collected over the last six months. Shaun is one of the few who knows about this hiding place.
Alvarez transfers the bottles from the hidey-hole to the box. Shaun tries to make sense of this act. Surely he doesn’t think he can trade a box of booze for Jessica and the other hostages? Rosario wants Fort Ross. She won’t settle for a box of liquor.
“It’s not forty-eight to seven,” Shaun says again. “It’s not a simple calculation. We’re talking about lives.”
His ex-wife’s life, to be exact. Jessica’s life. Shaun may have broken her spirit, but he’s not going to stand by and watch her get executed. Not when he has the power to save her life.
Even if that means manipulating his best friend to do it.
If there’s one thing he knows about Alvarez, it’s that he cares about every single resident of Fort Ross. Every. Single. One.
This is his greatest strength and his greatest weakness as a leader.
Shaun plans to exploit that weakness. It’s a classic, under-handed salesman tactic.
“Twenty-eight minutes,” Shaun says. “You have twenty-eight minutes before Rosario executes our people. You don’t want the blood of seven people on your hands.”
Alvarez says nothing. He sets the box of booze on top of the pallet. Even exhausted and bent under the weight of hard decisions, the younger man is radiant with goodness.
The sight makes Shaun’s throat tight with emotion. The two of them had watched one another’s back from the start. Their friendship began when Alvarez rescued Shaun and Jessica from a herd of zoms who had them penned inside a station wagon on the side of the road. Shaun, in turn, saved Alvarez on a scavenging run when a zombie crawled out of a doghouse and went for his legs.
“Twenty-seven minutes,” Shaun says, hating himself even as he says the words. Jessica would call him out for being an asshole.
Alvarez walks away, leaving the box of booze in plain sight on top of the pallet.
“You’re not going to hide these somewhere else?” Shaun asks.
Alvarez doesn’t turn around. “I haven’t decided yet.”
Shaun deduces this has something to do with Rosario. He takes it as a good sign.
He catches up with Alvarez. They weave a brisk path through the compound of Fort Ross. It’s a trading outpost built in the early 1800s by Russians.
Alvarez cuts around tents and RVs that fill much of the interior, making his way toward the large double gates on the northern side. The residents of Fort Ross cluster near the gates. They fall back as Alvarez approaches, making room for him. They are tense with anticipation of the unknown.
Alvarez presses an eye to the slit in the wood of the massive wooden gate.
Shaun does the same. His gaze goes straight to Jessica, one of the seven people held prisoner by the squat, rotund woman known as Mr. Rosario.
A burly man with a chest-length beard and beer belly stands behind Jessica, pinning her arms. His ex-wife looks the same as she always does.
Her face is emotionless, but her eyes burn with bright anger. Looking into her eyes sometimes feels like staring into the forge fires of hell. Shaun isn’t remotely religious anymore, but if there is a hell on earth, it’s in his ex-wife’s eyes.
He could say it was the death of their two daughters that broke the once-loving woman with a heart of gold. Sometimes, if someone asked him about Jessica, that was the lie he spun.
The truth was, the shroud of anger and rage she wore had been in place before zombies took their children. The blame for that lay squarely on his shoulders. He’d never entirely forgiven himself for breaking her heart. In the end, there hadn’t been a choice. Not really. That just made it all the worse. He had singlehandedly broken her.
Of all the people who asked about Jessica’s silent, pent-up state, it was Alvarez who peppered him with the most questions. He tried to be casual and off-handed about it, but there was something Alvarez didn’t know: Shaun had been a top salesman before the world ended. He could read people the way a professional rafter reads a river. And he knew Alvarez had a thing for Jessica.
Alvarez didn’t act on it. To start with, there was the age difference. There was also the fact that she was his best friend’s ex-wife. But Shaun saw those seeds of admiration plainly in his friend’s eyes.
And right now, as the seconds ticked down, he planned to use that little fact to his full advantage. Alvarez didn’t know it, but Shaun had donned his salesman hat the minute he realized Jessica had been taken hostage. He was already in a full-court press, using every trick he had in the book.
“There are no scales,” Shaun murmurs to Alvarez. “Fort Ross is a community. A family. We don’t turn our backs on each other. You are their shepherd, Alvarez. Those seven people out there count on you every bit as much as the forty-eight in here. Don’t let them down.”
“Twenty-four minutes,” someone in the crowd calls out.
Make the customer a hero. It’s one of Shaun’s favorite sales tactics. Right up there with deploying his value wedge.
“Every person in Fort Ross looks up to you.” Shaun leans forward to speak in Alvarez’s ear, his voice soft and smooth. “There’s a reason for that. They know you’ll protect them. They count on you to protect them.”
Create a space for yes.
This is a crucial step in closing a deal. If you never shut the fuck up, you never give your customer a chance to say yes to the deal you’re proposing.
It takes all of Shaun’s willpower to shut his mouth and wait.
He studies Alvarez’s profile. The younger man stares through the slit in the twelve-foot high wooden fence around Fort Ross. The redwood planks are more than four inches thick.
“Twenty-three minutes.”
All of Shaun’s attention is on Alvarez’s profile. His mind works in overtime, prepping counterarguments to every possible argument Alvarez could pose.
When Alvarez continues to stand there in silence, Shaun drops his last card.
“Be their savior, Alvarez. Our people need you.” Jessica needs you.
Alvarez closes his eyes. Agony etches every line in his face.
For one panicked moment, Shaun thinks he’s misread the situation. That he fucked up his one and only chance to save Jessica.
Then Alvarez turns to him. “I don’t know the right thing to do,” he says softly. “But you’re right about one thing. There are no scales. It’s not forty-eight to seven. It’s fifty-five. The lives of fifty-five people are in my hands. I’m going to do my damndest to save them all.” The fierce determination in his voice nearly makes Shaun sob with relief.
I’ve got you, Jessie, he thinks. You’re going to live.
Shaun grabs Alvarez’s shoulders in a brief squeeze. “You’re doing the right thing.”
Alvarez turns to the gathered crowd. “We let them in.” His voice is quiet, yet somehow it carries. “We let the enemy in. Tonight, when they eat our food and drink our alcohol, we strike. We’ll take them out when they’re drunk and bloated on our supplies.”
And finally, Shawn understands. The alcohol. The box of booze left in plain sight on top of the pallet of food.
Alvarez has a plan.
“We have twenty minutes,” Alvarez says. “Use that time to hide everything that can be used as a weapon. Tools. The cast iron cook ware. Any pieces of wood small enough to be used as a knife. Do not hide the obvious weapons. They will expect us to disarm when we open the doors. If they don’t see a decent pile of guns and knives, they’ll be suspicious. Any questions? No? All right everyone, get to work.”
People disperse into the fort, hustling off to follow Alvarez’s orders.
“I hope I’m not making a mistake,” he says, watching them.
Shaun’s heart crumples at the agony in the other man’s eyes, but he steels himself for the next phase of his plan.
Time to turn his attention to his second goal. He didn’t work his ass off to save Jessica only to lose Alvarez.
He and Alvarez hide three hammers at the bottom of a wood pile. They stash a few screwdrivers under loose floor boards in one of the original fort buildings. They tuck large rocks underneath one of the RVs. All the while, Shaun maps out his next move.
Rosario’s shrill voice echoes through a megaphone. “Sixty seconds, assholes.”
Alvarez and Shaun rush back to the gate, each of them taking up position on either side of the large redwood beam that holds the doors closed. It takes two of them to heft the giant log out of the wrought iron slots.
The community gathered behind Alvarez shifts, unease running through them.
“Lay down your weapons,” Alvarez calls.
In truth, there aren’t a lot of weapons to lay down. There’s a scattering of firearms among the residents, but with zombies being drawn to sound, collecting them has never been a top priority. Most people are armed with hammers, screwdrivers, and knives. They might have the drug lord’s people outnumbered, but she has them outgunned ten to one.
Alvarez draws in a shaky breath, neck and shoulders stiff with tension. He places both palms on the twelve-foot gate, ready to push it open.
Shaun rests a hand on Alvarez’s shoulder. He looks into the dark eyes of his friend.
Time to close. Time to wrap up his last deal, the most important pitch of his entire life.
“Let me do it,” Shaun says. Goal number two, he thinks. If it’s one thing he excels at, it’s meeting his goals.
Alvarez shakes his head. “Too dangerous.”
“Exactly. Our people need you, Alvarez. Don’t throw yourself away.”
Alvarez purses his lips. He opens his mouth, argument plain in his eyes.
Shaun holds up a palm, silencing him. He plays dirty, going straight for the younger man’s heart.
“Let me do this, brother,” Shaun says. “For Jessica. Whatever happens, take care of Jessie for me, okay? She needs you more than she knows.”
Invoking Jessica—and Alvarez’s feelings for her—gives Shaun the opening he needs. Alvarez’s mouth falls open, confusion and protest furrowing his brow.
Before he can formulate a response, Shaun shoulders him out of the way. He pushes open the gate, revealing the besiegers who have come to take Fort Ross from them.
He makes damn sure he’s the first one to be seen by the enemy.
He makes damn sure he stands in the open gateway like the leader of Fort Ross, hoping to god Rosario and her goons pin a target to his chest and spare Alvarez.
He feels the moment when Rosario’s eyes land on him. Her stare pierces through him like a spear.
He’s a dead man.
Goals accomplished.